September 14, 2005 - Top Stories
Valley Center residents and people of good will from all over the county, state and nation are opening their hearts and pocketbooks to the survivors of Hurricane Katrina.
Note: Don’t forget The Roadrunner’s collection for the victims, which ends Oct. 10, when Dale Good and Don Martin will drive the donations to Louisiana. Just bring your donations by the office.
Brian Hawthorne of Hawthorne Country Store and Kim Laventure of Bear Valley Farm Supply last week joined forces to send a truckload of supplies to shelters in Baton Rouge, 40 miles north of New Orleans. They had chosen that location because it was close to New Orleans and had evacuee children whose parents were not accounted for.
Hawthorne didn’t have to drive that far. Instead, he found 2,500 people that were being sheltered at Kelly AFB in San Antonio, Texas.
Kelly, accompanied by his dad, drove seven tons in a GMC top kick that is normally used to haul feed and hay.
They started driving at first light on Friday and arrived two days later.
Contacted on his cell as he was driving home, Hawthorne described the experience: “It went great. We found 2,500 people being sheltered in Kelly AFB in San Antonio. We unloaded there and saved a day. They needed what we got and helped us unload.”
The evacuees were being helped by the Red Cross and Salvation Army.
“They were warehousing and given space by the military and providing all the goods that the people needed and more.”
The folks at Kelly, he said, seemed comfortable and healthy.
“They had plenty of everything they needed except a home and their difficulty is psychological because they don’t know if they have anything to return to.”
They were sheltered in a giant warehouse, where holes had been made to accommodate air conditioning units. There were 20 such units pumping cool air through 18 inch air hoses and ten generators.
Hawthorne’s father paid all of the trip’s expense which meant they were able to give everything they brought to the Salvation Army, including $2,200 in cash and checks.
That included $500 from the Valley Center Chamber.
Supplies taken on the trip included juice, water, food, mud boots, batteries, clothes, flash light, shoes and diapers.
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Mary Meade, the VC woman who helped organize our local CERT team, left this week for Mississippi as a reservist of FEMA.
She is staying in a “tent city” at the Air National Guard’s Camp Shelby near Hattiesburg.
Before leaving for the South she was working in FEMA’s GIS section in Pasadena creating situation maps for Operations Planning and Presidential Briefings! Southern California’s Region IX is providing back-up to Region IV, including creating, in a few days, a 400 person call center operating around the clock for hurricane victims to sign up for FEMA assistance.
Aware of some critical comments leveled at FEMA, Meade commented, “I have been appalled at the derogatory comments leveled at FEMA about response time. Not because I work for FEMA but because it is apparent that the message that each of us needs to be able to take care of ourselves for 72 hours after a disaster has not got out to everyone. I'm disappointed that so many people have abrogated personal responsibility in being prepared for a disaster.”
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Meg Doyal of Blackwing Farms in VC will be traveling to Louisiana between Sept. 21-Oct. 5 to help a group of flood victims that are often overlooked: animals and their owners.
She will be taking homeopathic remedies that will help treat grief, depression and shock in animals and their guardians and a compilation of plants, roots and flowers for horses to combat bacterial and viral infection.
She tells The Roadrunner, “Because all ingredients are top-quality human grade my wholesale cost to treat one horse for one month is $120. As much money as I can get together within the next 8-9 days for a whole order, the better.
“We all know these dogs, cats, horses and their guardians have been exposed to atrocities affecting them mentally and emotionally. Many have taken in contaminated water and food affecting their future health and resistance to disease. Remedies will help.”
If you’d like to contribute, write her, Meg Harrison Doyal, at Blackwing Farms, POB 1448, Pauma Valley CA 92061, call her at 742-3434 or email her at www.blackwingfarms.com.
Checks can be made to her or Blackwing Farms or Barn & Yard Remedies.Donations are not tax-deductible.
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Valley Center Community Church is organizing a large effort to help those impacted by Katrina.
According to Senior Pastor John Sale, the church belongs to an association of churches (Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelics) that includes several churches in the GulfPort area.
“The first thing we are doing is to send cash donations to them We just took a love offering a week ago with over $8,200 and money continues to come in,” said the pastor.
That money is being distributed by the sister churches that are closer to the situation.
“The other thing we’re doing is have families that want to adopt a family in that area that’s going thorough rebuilding and to make a commitment over several months to give to them financially, and help them along the way as much as possible. “
The church is also prepared to send a team to help with reconstruction and building.
“We’re also waiting to hear back. What they are telling us is that they are so overwhelmed that they can’t tell us what they need. We will try to respond to that as we can, whether sending more money or personnel if we can.”
One member of the church, Michael Damack, a physician’s assistant, will be traveling to the flooded area soon as a volunteer.
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If you want to tell us about your efforts to help the storm victims, give the editor a call this week at 749-1112.
Just when you think that the VC planning group might actually meet with a full complement of members—somebody resigns.
Longtime member Robert Hancock, owner of the VC Nursery, has resigned for health reasons.
According to VC planning group Chairman Andy Washburn: “Yesterday, I received a letter of resignation from Robert Hancock. He regrets that his on-going back problems have forced him to reduce his commitments. His family and business come first. I know we all understand his situation, wish him the best, and hope for a full recovery. His knowledge of Valley Center and landscaping benefited our community greatly. The good news is that he offered to continue consulting on landscape questions.”
That means that the search for a new member to the group, a process that takes longer than for the U.S. Senate to vote on a nominee to the Supreme Court, begins anew.
According to Washburn, some qualities that would be useful to a good nominee are as follows:
• Willingness to work.
• Responsible: attend almost all meetings, participate in subcommittees, and handle projects reviews well.
• Professional: able to work with people they may not always agree with.
• Concerned: care about the future of Valley Center.
• Knowledgeable: have special knowledge about some topic that will help the VCCPG do a good job of representing the interests of the community.
If you are interested in the job, call Leon Schwartz at 751-0163.
Two factors figure prominently in the school district’s reluctance to endorse the traditional version of sixth grade camp this year:
• It doesn’t want to spend the money and
• (Probably more importantly), it wants to reclaim the week that is now devoted to camp and use it for academics.
This is seen as necessary because the upper elementary school’s AYP scores declined this year over last. Note: The federal No Child Left Behind Act requires school districts to make determinations of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for all schools in the district.
An extra week of academics would give teachers that much more time to remedy that situation this year.
No “official” decision has been made about whether or not there will be a sixth grade camp this year. However, no money has been budgeted for it either and upper elementary school Principal Ron McCowan has held several meetings with sixth grade parents interested in preserving the camp.
He has another scheduled for Sept. 28, 7:45 p.m. in the gym (that’s right after the back-to-school night’s festivities).
The tenor of these meetings is not so much to come up with a way to save sixth grade camp in its present form, but to find a way for it to be funded independently of the school, as the Washington D.C. trips are, and to hold it when school isn’t in session, so that academic schedules of the sixth graders are not disrupted.
McCowan was asked to investigate the costs and options available.
Last year and in previous years the sixth graders have attended five days (Monday-Friday) at Camp Raintree or Camp Marston in Julian. Although there are school camps on Palomar Mountain, VC students have not attended there.
Of 315 sixth graders last year, all but 41 attended camp. Special classes were held for the children who didn’t go, but many chose to simply skip school that week, which deprived the district of their ADA (average daily attendance).
Most sixth grade teachers went with the majority of the class.
Twenty-three scholarships were given to help individual students whose parents weren’t able to afford the full cost of attending.
The issues that McCowan has presented at these meetings are these:
• Cost of the program, given that the school is in a budget crunch.
• Most elementary schools in the area don’t send sixth graders to camp, including the Escondido Elementary School District. Most of the schools who do send their kids are inner city schools whose children don’t have much opportunity to experience the “great outdoors.”
• Much of what is covered in camp is covered by local boys and girls scout organizations.
• Curriculum that is taught at the camps and whether it dovetails with the California state standards. Some earth science is taught in the camp experience, but on the whole camp has not aligned itself with the state standards.
• Is it money well spent?
• Can the same goals be accomplished with a different venue?
• Can the loss of a momentum from losing a week of academics be made up?
Many schools in the area are running scared and under the gun to improve test scores or be painted as a “program improvement school.” This makes any instruction time they can gain for academics precious.
The upper school was the only school in the district whose AYP scores went down this year, according to McCowan.
The $100 per student cost was borne last year by the district, with parents being asked to pay $40. The district also provides transportation and the sixth grade teachers to accompany the students.
“This costs the school forty-five thousand. My budget for running the school is seventy thousand dollars,” said McCowan. “The cost of camp has always come out of the school’s operating budget,” he said. “The amount we spend on sixth grade camp is half of an experienced teacher’s salary or a new teacher’s salary.”
Note: Obviously it takes more than $70,000 annually to run a school. The amount the principal refers to is the discretionary budget given to the principals at each school. It doesn’t include such things as teachers’ salaries, custodians, lunches, buses, but does include such things as paper and supplies.
McCowan also presented some of the positive aspects of camp:
• It provides team building
• It hits some P.E. standards
• It teaches nature conservation as well as skills such as canoeing, archery and wall-climbing.
He then presented some possible solutions:
• Parents pay the full cost of camp with fund-raising.
• Send kids to a different kind of camp, such as the Surf Camp offered in Imperial Beach.
• Do some other outdoor activity closer to home on the same lines as the Grad Nite activity put on by the TPC.
• Do an enrichment activity such as an overnight visit to the carrier museum USS Midway.
McCowan told The Roadrunner, “I get the sense from the parents who attended that it’s a nice thing to do but if you don’t have it in the budget . . .”
An issue to be considered if camp is not funded by the district is whether the community can support yet another major fund-raising effort each year.
But ultimately the most important thing may be the week of instruction that will be saved if camp doesn’t happen.
“I’d say that week is very important to us,” said McCowan.
People who want to talk to McCowan about this issue can send him an email at mccowan.ro@vcpusd.net or call him at 749-8555.
When you gotta go, you gotta go and Monday night the VC planning group pooh poohed a proposed mini-warehouse self-storage project on Cole Grade Road because it does not include plans for a public toilet.
Besides saving on paper work, not having a toilet on site allows the developer to provide 24-hour access to the storage facility.
But the planners, although flushed with initial success in agreeing on what they wanted to require of the project, tanked when it came to a solid proposal that both addressed all of their concerns and got enough votes to pass.
Flying by the seat of their pants for most of the evening, they generated a stream of motions.
The whiz kids on the group, the ones who do the grunt work, attempted to float several motions to the surface during the evening.
The developer’s engineer explained that the County is not requiring a restroom, however his logic failed to bowl over the critics.
“For some reason everybody thinks that people go to a storage facility to go to the bathroom,” complained Ralph Gonzales, the engineer for the project.
“The issue is that this is an area of high ground water. There is no alternative septic systems that have been approved by the county health department,” said Gonzales.
He explained that the location of the storage facility is in Valley Center’s flood plain and that the County won’t allow a toilet there, although it will allow a storage facility as long as no living person is on site to operate the facility.
“We have no means to provide the standard septic approach to this project,” said Gonzales.
The seat of operation will actually be at Grangetto’s, across the street, with off-site monitoring.
That’s why they designed it with an off-site monitoring system.
The planners absorbed this explanation but didn’t buy it.
Planner Leon Schwartz complained, “There are alternatives to a septic. There are facilities that could be used (such as porta potties). When you have to go you have to go! From my standpoint that is a real big issue with all of the kids that we have and the graying of VC.”
Gonzales said they would like to have porta potties but the county health department won’t allow it.
“When you go to the bank do you use the restroom?” he asked.
“The high school’s football stadium has porta potties that serve thousands of people on Friday nights, so why wouldn’t they allow this,” said planner Nancy Armstrong.
“If they would allow us porta potties, you can bet just about everyone in the impacted area in VC would have porta potties the next day,” said Gonzales.
Planner Larry Glavinic explained that porta potties are allowed on properties that have previously been allowed to build with toilets—and for special events.
Planner Kris Preston added, “We’re going to have a lot of bodies back there. The temptation will be to go around the corner and take a whiz and all of a sudden you’ll have a flood plain back there.”
Planner Frank Shoemaker said it’s really hard to get past the health department. “High ground water is the biggest issue of real estate development facing this community,” he said.
A stream of motions attempted to eliminate the project unless a restroom was provided. They went down the tubes.
No motion to support the storage facility passed. No motion to oppose the facility passed. No combination of the above— and they were tried— passed.
In other words, the group stalled when it attempted to take a stand and ended up without a place to sit.
By the end of the evening they, and the audience . . . were pooped.
Final arguments were made Friday in the legal challenge to the environmental impact report issued by the County on the Neverending Story that is the Gregory Canyon Landfill.
The Superior Court Judge in the case, Michael Anello, Friday issued a tentative ruling that appeared to lean in favor of those who have criticized the EIR as inadequate. He is expected to issue final ruling within a couple of weeks.
The proposed landfill would be in a canyon that is near Hwy 76 midway of Pala and I-15. The proposal has been hanging fire for nearly two decades.
In 1994 County voters approved by 68% Prop. C, which bypassed the Board of Supervisors approval process for the landfill.
However, legal challenges continued to dog the proposal in the years that followed the vote.
The plaintiffs in the case, included RiverWatch—a grassroots watchdog group that has been around as the counterpoise to the proposed landfill almost as long as the proposal itself has been around—the City of Oceanside and the Pala Band of Mission Indians.
They sued the County’s Dept. of Environmental Health and Gregory Canyon Ltd., the group that wants to build the landfill.
The challenge was very technical and included multitudes of pages. It alleges that Gregory Canyon Ltd. glossed over the dump’s potentially harmful effects to the San Luis Rey River and that the County abetted the process by certifying the report.
Some of the arguments centered on very technical issues, such as whether enough open space had been set aside to comply with the wording of Prop. C. The judge said that not enough open space has
In his tentative ruling the judge found that there were problems with the EIR, specifically the location of the proposed landfill near the river. He said the County had violated its own standards. He also wrote that the dump was too near several historical sites, including a family cemetery.
The dump’s lawyers countered that the passage of Prop. C superceded the County’s regulations.
The Valley Roadrunner
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