August 2, 2006 - Top Stories
If you want to see something truly amazing, drive over to the Valley View Casino where they are literally drilling into the living rock as part of an expansion that will rival anything that has happened in these parts.
Rock crushers and jackhammers are at work all during the daylight hours, and as customers leave their cars with the valets, behind them they will hear massive pieces of granite being pulverized.
“We hit a rock,” said Joe Navarro wryly. He’s the president and CEO of the San Pasqual Casino Development Group, Inc., the development arm of Valley View Casino.
“You mean rocks?” The Roadrunner asked.
“No, just one rock.”
And it’s a big one, too. But they are carving their way through it, making way for many new amenities that will make one of San Diego’s most popular casinos even bigger, better and more exciting.
“This is an exhilarating time for our casino and our 650 team members,” Bruce Howard, general manager of Valley View, told The Roadrunner. “Our new, expanded facility will further enhance our guests’ experience by providing even more gaming, dining and entertainment options. Our guests will also continue to receive the same level of attention and service both during and after the completion of the expansion process.”
Construction has begun on a new six-story parking garage that will add 1,200 covered parking spaces bringing the total to 2,000. This new parking facility is scheduled to open at the end of 2006.
But before the park structure is complete, the physical expansion of the casino will begin.
This expansion will add six new eateries to Valley View, including an all-new Market Square Steak and Seafood Buffet, voted San Diego’s best buffet by readers of Casino Player magazine.
Also included in the new dining options are a steak house, a 24-hour café featuring American and Asian-inspired cuisine, a walk up homemade pastry and coffee bar, an ice cream shop and an all-new team member dining room and grill which will provide free meals to all Valley View team members.
The expansion will add 450 new slot machines and eight new table games to the casino floor, creating a total of over 1,700 slot and video poker machines and 18 table games.
Three new bars will be added, including an elegant steak house lounge, an entertainment bar with live music, and a poker bar in the smoke-free slot area. Valley View will also add a special events center to the property as the perfect venue to host intimate concerts, parties and other events.
“Our growth in the last five years is thanks to our loyal guests,” said Navarro. “We are thrilled to be on the path to providing our guests with the ultimate casino experience and we hope they join us on this exciting journey.”
The expansion is scheduled to be complete for a grand opening in fall of 2007. In addition to the physical expansion, Valley View will also be adding to its team and is currently looking for more than 300 new employees.
For more information about Valley View Casino, visit valleyviewcasino.com or call 1-866-VIEW-WIN.
His brain and mouth move so fast and his ideas bounce around like ping pong balls, that the listener often has trouble keeping up.
Joe Chisholm is an idea machine—for a long time the subject of most of his ideas have been the preservation of the Hwy 76 corridor and a way of life that in both Valley Center and Pauma Valley is under constant siege.
He loves the San Luis Rey River Valley, which he describes as “a place where the coyotes and bobcats can come down and drink, where the Least Bell’s vireo can exist in an entirely different habitat. It’s a place that keeps the whole county health yas far as its ecology.”
Chisholm’s ideas tend to take off in several directions, and like a sidewinder on mescaline, curve back in on themselves and then shoot off in a new direction! It can be either very frustrating to try to take notes when he is talking, or simply exhilarating to just sit back and listen.
News writers beware! You will never, and I repeat, never, get a sound bite out of Joe Chisholm!
Unlike many people who feel that the casinos are the barbarians at the gates, and beat their breasts at the injustice of it all, Chisholm believes that gaming may actually be the salvation of this area’s agricultural and scenic heritage.
And it’s not the “when rape is inevitable” line of argument that says that the casinos are here and we might as well accept them and learn to live in their shadows.
No, Chisholm feels that gaming may be the engine of salvation because casinos generate tons of money, and it’s as much in their interest as ours to preserve what makes this area special.
It’s in their interest for people driving to them to see beautiful vistas and scenic farmlands with bucolic workers rather than alcoholic drivers.
Resort and recreational types of development are very compatible with agriculture, says Chisholm. Think of the Napa Valley in Northern California or the Tuscan region of Italy.
“For community planning to work, it has to be about forming bonds, and working together to accomplish common goals not about making enemies or placing blame,” he says.
Chisholm was recently reelected to his 15th term as chairman of the Pala/Pauma Sponsor Group, which advises the County on land use items, much like the VC planning group does.
The sponsor group serves an area of about 5000 residents, with boundaries that go almost to I-15 and up to Lake Henshaw and from Palomar Mountain (which it does not include) to Valley Center.
When you hear Chisholm talk, he’s apt to talk a mile a minute about concepts such as persuading all of the area’s casinos to support some sort of monorail or trolley system that would move players between them along a scenic route—without the need to widen Hwy 76 and destroy its value as a scenic highway.
“Scenic highway” is also a term that Chisholm uses a lot. He has for years tried to get elected officials and the public in general on board with the idea of turning Hwy 76 into a federal scenic highway, which would protect it from future depredations. See the map reproduced else in this article that shows his concept of a scenic highway.
He became involved in this more than a dozen years ago when 27 federal, state and local jurisdictions battled over a management plan for the San Luis Rey River Watershed.
To Chisholm it appeared that the real “stakeholders” of the community, the property owners, the farmers, and the Indians who actually live here, might retain little local control.
At the end of four years of wrangling, a management report was issued and the battle over who would control this area was put on hold.
He came to realize that the Indians who own the casinos and the rest of the area’s residence have a lot in common, but just don’t realize it.
“I found that both my Native American neighbors, as well as the vast majority of my farming neighbors seemed to share quite a few common interests,” he wrote recently.
This became obvious when Chisholm and various local tribes found themselves on the same side in fighting the “project that will not die!” the Gregory Canyon Landfill.
Regarding the landfill he wrote: “Although it’s hard to see any victory in an effort that still continues today, the effort itself has created a sort of common ground on which an army of divergent interests has rallied to fight for a common goal — our community and our home.”
People, he says, are coming to realize this basic truth: Everyone who lives in the San Luis Rey River Valley has a stake in helping to keep agriculture a viable land use, whether you make your living farming, or the view from your home encompasses farmland, or whether the business you are in rents hotel rooms to tourists or other recreational users.
“The quality of your life, or the quality of your experience while visiting our region, in a large part is determined by a common and I believe growing awareness in the importance of agriculture to all of our individual goals,” he says.
The value of ag in San Diego County is immense. It’s a more than billion dollar industry, and almost half of its value comes out of the San Diego watershed, which includes the San Luis Rey Watershed.
One thing that worries him is that in an effort to “save” Hwy 76 to make it more safe for drivers will destroy it.
“I fear the fix particularly on Hwy 76 is likely to involve ‘improvements’ that are in many ways worse than the dangerous conditions which currently exist. Paving the valley to turn Hwy 76 into a freeway will be the death for the valley. Finding a viable alternative will be extremely difficult.”
That’s one reason he consistently opposes the dump. “The fix is worse than the dump. To widen it means filling in the river in some places. So we are kicking ourselves, and essentially you start paving your way out to Pauma and changing the whole character of our neck of the woods.”
He tends to talk in such colorful terms, talking about “sticking your finger in a dike hoping to stop a leak that when it inevitably breaks allows the whole valley to be inundated with destruction.”
Chisholm continues to look at the struggle to save the San Luis Rey Watershed with optimism. One person at a time he’s converting new allies to his cause.
The total number of hours of outages for customers of the Valley Center Municipal Water District has declined significantly this year over the previous two years.
A report recently released by the VCMWD shows that the total numbers of outages for 2005-06 was 4,384, compared to 6,691 the year before and 8,083 the year before that.
The total hours of outage for 2002-03 was 3,350; 2001-02, 3,809 and 2000-01, 5,320.
District staff in its report speculated that the reason for the decline in outages was related to the number of construction-related outages, which started to decline in 2004-05.
“Also we continue to see the reliability benefits of our capital facility replacement and upgrade efforts,” the report said.
The average number of hours per outage is .480, according to the report. This is a definite improvement over previous years: last year it was 6.21 and the year before it was 7.33 hours per outage.
Previously the board of directors adopted a set of “10 Performance Measurement Standards,” including Water Reliability. These standards called for water service reliability to be “greater than 99%.”
That rate has actually been increasing each year at the district since 2000. Last year it was 99.3% and in the 2005-06 year it increased to 99.5%.
Another factor in high service reliability can be attributed to the following factors, according to the report:
• The district is steadily replacing older, less reliable facilities with new ones.
• New and replacement pipeline projects include more three-way valve intersections and shorter distances between in-line values to increase system operational flexibility.
• More district customers are being served by newer distribution facilities installed by development.
• Both planned and unplanned shutdowns are being carried out so as to affect as few customers as possible. During shutdowns customers are usually given temporary service through other means. For example, the district has a water truck that can deliver water for livestock or critical ag or horticultural needs.
• District crews stay on site continuously to restore the service as soon as possible
• Whenever possible, crews take advantage of shutdowns to install additional lines to increase system flexibility.
What started out as a “tribal forum” and evolved into North County Inland Regional Leadership (NCIRL) is moving to obtain non-profit status with the goal of having a say in shaping this region’s future.
The seventh meeting of NCIRL was held Wednesday night at the VC library.
The organization started out in April of 2005 as a meeting of tribal and non-tribal leaders coming together to identify and work on common regional goals.
For several months it has divided into several working groups that are looking at individual issues that affect the region.
The two driving forces behind the organization, Terry Van Koughnett and Larry Glavinic, both members of the VC planning group, led much of the discussion.
Van Koughnett said that he has applied for 501 (c)(3) tax exempt status for NCIRL. The organization’s mission will be to educate the public and become a regional voice in planning for the future. He expects that the tax exempt status will probably be approved within about a year.
NCIRL’s meeting included reports on the five areas of interest that the group is pursuing:
• Public Safety
• Regional Planning
• Economic Development
• Transportation
• Business/Board Organization
Public Safety/Impact of Gaming
Sheriff’s Lt. Sean Gerrity gave the report on the impact of gaming on local law enforcement.
His report (which you can read on our Web site: www.valleycenter.com) includes statistical analysis of the number of crimes that have occurred in the area served by the Valley Center substation since 1999.
Crime close to doubled in the years since the first casinos were built. However, Lt. Gerrity looks at it as more of an issue of an increase in population caused by more visitors from out of town, and employees of the casino.
Using figures provided by the casinos, he tabulated the following daily statistics.
Harrah’s Rincon: 8,600 patrons, 1300 hotel guests, employees, 400; Pala: 8,600 patrons; 1,300 hotel guests, 400 employees; San Pasqual: 5,000 patrons, 200 employees; and Casino Pauma: 4,500 patrons, 200 employees.
The exact figures, including profits, are closely guarded secrets of the casinos.
This influx, says, Gerrity, when combined with Valley Center’s population, adds up to about 52,475. The presence of the casinos has, in essence, doubled the “population” of the area served by the substation.
At the same time, his staffing levels have not doubled. They have remained at 14 patrol deputies. However, the surrounding reservations are paying for five additional deputies that are assigned to them. This does free up some staff.
“No other substation in the county has four, soon to be five casino resorts in its area,” said Gerrity. He called it an “unfunded mandate” that the State created since it signed the compacts with the gaming tribes in 1999.
The State has yet to provide mitigation funds for gaming in San Diego, even though it collects many millions of dollars in fees from slot machine licenses.
The current system of distributing mitigation funds collects money from casinos that were in existence in 1999. Those tribes get the lions share of the special distribution fund. Only three of San Diego’s casinos were built before 1999.
John Currier, chairman of the Rincon Band, is on record as criticizing the existing system, because it doesn’t provide mitigation funds to local communities, such as Valley Center.
Gerrity expects that the County will soon start pressuring the State on this issue. “I know how the County Board of Supervisors feels about unfunded mandates.”
Gerrity stressed that he wasn’t implying that the casinos bring in criminals, only that it increases the “population.”
The still rural nature of most of Valley Center’s roads helps account for the fact that the average response to a call for a deputy is more than 20 minutes.
Jim Quis Quis, a member of the San Pasqual Band, said he was concerned about stating that changes Gerrity talked about were attributable to “impact of gaming.” He argued that many other things could contribute to the rise in crime statistics, not just gaming impacts.
Gerrity said he would be happy to include those other impacts if someone were to identify them.
Regional Planning
Joe Chisholm, chairman of the Pala/Pauma Sponsor Group, said it is important for the group to identify what it is about Valley Center, Pauma and the surrounding areas that make them special. And what can be done to protect that uniqueness.
“We are on a threshold of going from a rural small area into ‘something else.’ What is that something else? We want to plan so that we can keep what we’ve got,” he said.
The group’s purpose should not be to duplicate other planning groups, but to look for ways “outside the box,” such as obtaining special funding to study a trolley system or some other way to preserve the region from being overrun with four lane highways, he said.
Fighting the dump
The meeting also included a report by Ruth Harber of RiverWatch about her organization’s efforts to stop the proposed Gregory Canyon landfill.
She noted that after her organization, the Pala Indians and the City of Oceanside sued that superior court Judge Michael Anello in October ordered a new environmental impact report for the dump. He ruled that the existing EIR was “seriously flawed.”
Anello ordered revisions of the traffic, water and biological sections of the EIR, and required more mitigation.
That makes the current EIR the “sixth or seventh,” said Mrs. Harber.
The struggle to stop the dump has raged for 18 years, she said.
The fight began when Waste Management Inc. (WMI), the largest trash company in the world, acquired rights to the property.
It successfully pushed a ballot measure, Prop. C, that bypassed the County Board of Supervisors, and allowed the dump to go forward.
It was fought all along the way by Mrs. Harber’s group, known at that time as the North County Coalition.
The firm that now controls the land is Gregory Canyon Ltd. It has continued to spend millions to push to be allowed to build a dump on the site.
Mrs. Harber denied the description of many press reports that the area surrounding the landfill is “sparsely populated.” She showed an aerial photo of the site with residences marked. Her own house is quite close to the site.
Between 30-40 homes have been built near the site, she said. “Don’t let anyone tell you it is sparsely populated.”
She said that the dump would, in addition to threatening the integrity of the San Luis Rey River, also threaten habitats of endangered species, such as the Least Bell’s Vireo and arroyo toad.
The Board of Supervisors in May approved a new revenue contract between the County and the proponent. It covers additional costs for the environmental review process. That doesn’t mean that the dump is a fait accompli.
“The fight is not over,” Mrs. Harber insisted. “It is not a done deal no matter what you’ve read in the press.” It still needs permits from several agencies.
The Pala tribe, once a minor player in this struggle, now has lots of gaming-generated money to fight it, she noted.
The tribe opposes the dump because Gregory Mountain, a site sacred to several area tribes, is adjacent to the landfill site.
Mrs. Harber scornfully quoted an attorney for the dump who, when told that the mountain was sacred, allegedly remarked “Well it may be their Sistine Chapel, but we own it.”
The EIR for the landfill is available at the VC library, or on the County’s Web site at: http://www.sdcounty.ca.gov/deh/chd/gchome.html.
The Valley Roadrunner
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