July 13, 2005 - Top Stories
Trees are coming down along Valley Center Road to make way for the widening, which is supposed to begin between Woods Valley Road and Cole Grade Road this summer.
By DAVID ROSS
The County has produced a map of roads in Valley Center to show how easy or hard it will be to drive on them when VC’s General Plan 2020 is fully built out.
Several sections of road are highlighted in red or orange, which are the most clogged.
If your arteries were this clogged, you’d be dead.
Valley Center isn’t dead, but to keep it from grinding to a halt in several places is the purpose of a series of meetings that began with Monday night’s presentation to the VC planning group by Bob Citrano. He is the County’s man in charge of VC GP2020.
With the community’s input taken, and in some cases actually implemented, on the town’s residential, commercial and town center, the focus switches to the community’s road network.
“This is the kick-off,” said Citrano. “We are now embarking on the new phase of GP2020. This process will take a lot of months and take a lot of community input.”
A community workshop is planned for Sept. 10.
The Board of Supervisors GP2020 hearings in May produced two maps, the “draft land use map” and the “board alternative,” which included input from the supervisors.
Now both plans will be applied to traffic mapping.
The mapping assumes that the community plan is “built-out,” i.e., that every vacant parcel that can support a house will be built on. Where it is known whether local gaming tribes plan new casinos, that too is added.
Then a computer program tests the road network to see which parts collapse.
In tandem with this process, the Dept. of Public Works is studying the proposals to see what capital improvement projects it will have to build to keep the road network up to the point where it is livable.
The first phase, said Citrano, will be to look at the capacity of the road network.
They will study how well each road can handle the people scheduled to ride on it. They will ask if it needs to be two or three lanes, or continuous turn lanes.
“If the capacity isn’t enough, we can add lanes or make roads more connective,” said Citrano.
“We hope to balance the traffic flow over a variety of roads instead of having one road carry you, which is right now what you mostly have,” he said.
Roads are rated A-F on how well they carry traffic. A is best. F is almost a parking lot.
“We are focusing on roads that have an E or F,” said Citrano. “Level D is the worst the County is willing to accept. We’re looking to maximize movement and minimize costs and environmental impacts.”
Phase two will be to come up with a preferred alternative road network.
Phase three will be to look at “the character of the road.” What kind of shoulders should it have? Are medians needed? Should there be curbs and gutters, swales, etc.? What kind of pedestrian network should there be. Should there be bike lanes or transit stops?
Several roads are expected to fail. This includes parts of Old Castle near I-15, and Valley Center Road between Miller and Lilac.
The Board of Supervisors’ “alternative map” added back some densities that the County staff had taken out, contributing to the road failure, said Citrano.
Adding new roads doesn’t seem to be part of the tool kit for dealing with failing roads. In the worst case, said Citrano, densities will be cut to make the roads fit the criteria.
Planning Chairman Andy Washburn said he wants to do everything he can to get the public involved in the process, particularly the workshop meeting in September.
“I want the community to be involved in this because we are going to be deciding a lot of what Valley Center will look like in the not too distant future.”
By DAVID ROSS
A fight broke out at the middle school auditorium Sunday morning as the San Pasqual tribe was about to hold its quarterly meeting.
The fistfight started in the midst of the crowd of about 25 at around 10:38 a.m. and spread until it became fairly sizable, according to authorities.
Lt. Sean Gerrity, commander of the VC Sheriff’s substation, who was attending with a crowd control unit of 19 deputies, declared the meeting an unlawful assembly and shut it down.
“As soon as it started we pretty much stopped it,” said Gerrity.
Since the fight happened before the meeting actually began, the meeting was cancelled.
Three people were injured, but declined being transported to the hospital. One person was arrested: Louis Morales, 23, a resident of the reservation.
The injured included an elderly lady with a swelling on her forehead, one woman who was trampled during the confusion, and one man who was apparently one of those attacked.
Another, smaller altercation followed in the parking lot.
According to Gerrity, the cause of the fight is under investigation, since it is known that more people than just Morales were involved in starting the fight.
“We now have round-the-clock patrols all over the reservation until the tension subsides,” Gerrity told The Roadrunner.
* * *
There were indications that there might be trouble at the meeting as soon as it was known that the tribe had rented the middle school auditorium for a meeting that normally takes place at the tribal hall.
The school district office got a lot of angry phone calls last week because it rented the auditorium.
According to Supt. Karen Jobe, “Chairman Allen Lawson asked to rent the auditorium because he felt that he needed the space and the extra parking.”
The district is actually required by state law to rent facilities to anyone willing to pay to use them, she said.
However, there was a legal problem because state law also says that anyone can attend a meeting held in a public facility.
That conflicts with tribal law that says that only members of the tribe, something more than 200 people, are allowed to attend the meeting.
This sent Mrs. Jobe to the school district’s legal counsel to find out the district’s legal standing. Chairman Lawson, when shown that his rental contract required that the meeting be an open one, agreed to do that.
Mrs. Jobe was obviously unhappy that the school district was dragged into a tribal dispute.
“Why we are being vilified, I guess I understand. But it’s really kind of frustrating,” she told The Roadrunner this week.
“We have had good relations with the San Pasqual Tribe, and we want to continue to have them,” she said.
This all seems to be connected with an ongoing “family” dispute among the San Pasqual Indians, who, in recent months, have seen an attempt to recall their Chairman, Allen Lawson, which was ruled illegal by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
By DAVID ROSS
Last week’s fire scare at the foot of Palomar Mountain, which burned 80 acres, let local authorities test evacuation plans for the small community of about 300 residents.
The plans worked smoothly, according to Sheriff’s Sgt. Ed Wells of the VC substation, who was in charge of the evacuation that didn’t happen.
Wells, who has also developed evacuation plans for Valley Center and Pauma Valley, worked closely with the Palomar Mountain Volunteer Fire Dept.
“I can’t say enough about them. They are extremely well organized, well-motivated. They’ve been extremely helpful,” said Wells.
The volunteers developed a plan that was used three years ago during the Paradise Fire. But in working with Sgt. Wells they were able to coordinate everything with the Sheriff’s Dept., California Highway Patrol and state forestry officials on the mountain.
It is all part of an evacuation plan that encompasses the area served by the VC substation.
Who is evacuated depends on where the fire is and where it is going. The decision to evacuate is made by the fire department in charge. The deputies carry out that order so that the firefighters can worry about what they do best.
Tuesday’s fire began in Pauma on the far west end of the mountain.
The first part of the response was to notify the campgrounds and the Christian School. The Nate Harrison grade, a dirt and gravel “four-wheel drive” road connecting Pauma and the mountain, was closed. The up lane of S-6 was also closed with the down lane open for residents to leave the mountain.
South Grade was kept open for emergency vehicles, said Wells.
Everything went according to plan, said Wells. “If we had had to actually evacuate people it could have been done in a timely manner and made a difference.”
“The fire never actually reached Palomar, but it turned out to be a really good drill,” said Sgt. Wells. “We went through the process as though it was a genuine evacuation.
The Sheriff’s Dept. used the Palomar fire station as their command post and coordinated with the fire department and CDF, who all have radios.
“We have maps that show where everyone lives and where everyone might be camping. So we know where we have to go the inform them. We also coordinate with Red Cross to establish a shelter area at the middle school,” said Wells.
They also mobilized animal rescue deputies to have them ready in case they needed to move horses or livestock.
Because of the nature of the mountain, the number of trees, the sparse population, and the fact that only three roads lead in or out, it’s likely that residents wouldn’t have much notice if a fire actually threatens them.
“There are some areas where there would be very short notice,” said Wells.
Although no one was actually “evacuated,” the San Diego Unified School District’s sixth grade Camp Palomar was emptied as a precaution.
The Red Cross did set up an evacuation center at the middle school, but the evacuation was cancelled an hour later. That was kind of creepy for the volunteers, since they were scheduled for an evacuation drill on Saturday.
The fire began about 2 p.m. on Adams Drive near Hwy 76 on Tuesday. CDF and fire units from all over the county quickly converged on the area, which was hit repeatedly by air tankers and firefighting helicopters.
The fire was mostly knocked down by late that evening.
Briefly threatened was the historic old homestead site of Nate Harrison, the “first white man on the mountain,” (he was actually an ex-slave). Harrison’s stone cabin has been excavated by San Diego State University archaeology students for the past several years.
The land, now owned by Jamey and Hanna Kirby, was briefly evacuated.
The Valley Roadrunner
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