January 10, 2007 - Top Stories
‘She’s a dynamo! Energy to the tenth power,” an admirer wrote about Marcia Townsend, who this week was named the Valley Center Chamber of Commerce’s Citizen of the Year.
Mrs. Townsend will be honored at Saturday’s Chamber Installation Banquet, 6-10 p.m. at Harrah’s Rincon Casino & Resort in the Pavilion Ballroom.
One of last year’s celebrated Dos Valles Garden Club “Calendar Girls,” Mrs. Townsend has been an active member of our community since she and her husband, Cal, moved here nine years ago.
“I have always felt you get out of life what you put into it,” she says. “It can be your job, marriage, club activities or your family, friends and community. So I work hard, but try to always have fun along the way.”
Another fan writes: “Marcia never says ‘no.’ Only, ‘How can I help you?’ ”
With her happy smile and infectious giggle, Mrs. Townsend has often been seen around town during fund-raisers.
Another admirer says, “She was the one that gave the most credit to the giver for his/her generosity and willingness to aid the community, and further made sure that the recipients thereafter patronized those businesses.”
She was born in Kansas City, Missouri, but raised and schooled in Barstow, California.
For many years she worked in human resources at Solar Turbines, a company on Harbor Drive in San Diego. There she met her future husband, Cal, who worked at the legal department of the company.
After they retired they moved to Valley Center, where they almost immediately became involved with the community.
Among the organizations or activities to which she has dedicated volunteer hours are: Valley Center Republican Women’s Club, Dos Valles Garden Club, volunteer staffing of the Paradise fire relief center, fund-raising for the Maxine Theater and grant writing for the enhancement of Adams Park.
She explains how she joined the Republican Women’s Club. “I had never really been involved in politics, but Jean Kraus, my neighbor, was involved in politics, so she got me involved. That first year I got us involved in the Western Days parade. The next year I got the guys to engineer the float elephant ‘Miss Liberty.’ VC artist Phyllis Raynes designed her and we built her using 8,000 pieces of tissue paper.”
She was president of the Republican Women for two years. During her terms she focused on registering Republican voters and scheduling interesting speakers, among them Star Parker and Ron Nehring (current chairman of the California Republican Party).
Her first love in the Republican Women’s Club is taking high school students, members of TARS (Teenage Republican Students) to Sacramento to learn about state government.
“I have done that for five years,” she explains. “When they start out they don’t really know much about the government and then you get up there and learn all sorts of things.
“We have been introduced on the floor of the Assembly and had tours of the Senate floor by Senator Dennis Hollingsworth. We’ve sat in on hearings. It just opens their eyes to what is involved in governing the state.
“One year I took a girl who said she was going to go be the first female governor of California. Then she changed her mind and said she wanted to be president.”
As she talks about the GOP women and the Dos Valles Garden Club, Mrs. Townsend is careful to give credit to others who, she feels, actually did the work. When talking about having good speakers, for instance, she will add “Jay Ward was my first vice president in charge of speakers.”
She first heard of the garden club from friends.
“I used to do some gardening, but when we moved here we put in cactus and succulents and buried the lawn mower by the driveway because we were never going to mow the grass again.”
Burying the lawn mower doesn’t preclude gardening, however.
Since she’s joined Dos Valles she’s learned more about gardening and specialized in floral design.
She tells The Roadrunner: “I’m taking classes to study design. I have one more class to pass and then I will be a flower show judge. Next year you will be able to say about me, ‘Here come de judge!’ ”
She is current president of the garden club, a job she has held for a year and a half.
The celebrated calendar, in which unclothed, but tastefully covered garden club women posed, started out because the club had a shower shack left over from a flower show.
Mrs. Townsend suggested that they use it in a Western Days float. Ladies from the club in shower caps and bathing suits appeared to be taking a shower together “to help save water.”
“People just loved that! People were cracking up,” she recalls.
Then member Shirley Skinner hatched the idea of a calendar.
“I’m probably the only president of a garden club who would say yes to something like that, but I said, ‘Let’s go for it!’ ” says Mrs. Townsend, who was Miss June in the sunflower field.
It raised $12,000 for various charities in town.
“It was fun and so many people have enjoyed it and gotten a laugh and a smile from it,” she says.
Many have asked if they will do it again. Well, obviously not this year. Maybe someday.
Another important project she has been involved with is renovating Adams Park.
“When the park and rec district lost their caretaker and no one was looking after the park it became full of thistles,” she recalls.
Club members hauled 40 loads of debris and thistles out of the park.
“Now it is cleared out and we just finished planting 40 native plants in that area,” she says.
To fund that she got a small grant from the California State Garden Club to buy native plants, and a larger $2,400 grant from Supervisor Bill Horn’s discretionary fund. That grant will also buy two new picnic tables.
This year’s Arbor Day celebration at the park in March will be a big celebration. Small signs like you see in self-guided tours will be there for the day so visitors can see the botanical name and common name of what garden club members have planted.
“I like to be involved and I feel like this is a terrific community with lots of hard-working people,” she says. “I feel like if you are going to live in a community you should be involved.”
Three years ago after the Paradise Fire devastated Valley Center, a distribution center was set up on School Bus Road to give out clothes and goods.
Mrs. Townsend, working under Diane Conaway, took the responsibility to ensure that there were workers to distribute clothes.
She called the service clubs and asked them each to take a day and organized the volunteers.
The center operated for four months.
Mrs. Conaway told The Roadrunner: “During relief efforts for the Paradise Fire, Marcia Townsend was instrumental in managing the donations of goods that poured in. Marcia rallied and organized scores of volunteers from various VC civic groups to man the trailer. She personally volunteered her time for many weeks, sorting clothing and other donations, and helping fire survivors to sift through the mountains of goods to find clothing and household items for themselves.
“She always has a cheerful, helpful attitude to any task and is a real joy to work with! She is a true gem in this community,” said Mrs. Conaway.
Mrs. Townsend also worked to try to pass Prop. GG, the unsuccessful attempt several years ago by the parks and rec district to get the community to support a funding source.
Charity work has always been part of her life.
“When I worked at Solar Turbines I was president of the volunteer association. Each year we put on a golf tournament, and during its ten years we made over half a million dollars for different not for profit organizations, including the San Diego Burn Institute.”
She couldn’t do as much as she does without Cal’s support.
“He is always there. He is so supportive,” she says. “Part of the deal when we joined the garden club was that we did it as husband and wife.”
Since it might not exist in a few years, the VC fire district may postpone a survey to gauge public support for raising benefit fees.
Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO), which oversees all special districts in the County, later this month will release a report on the feasibility of a regional fire district called the Micro Report on Regional Fire Protection in the Unincorporated Areas of the County, Phase I.
This puts the Valley Center Fire Protection District in limbo about its own funding crisis.
A previously released “Macro Report” covered the concept of merging in phases and offered seven options.
The “Micro Report” narrows that to three options. Want to know what they are? You’ll have to read the report.
LAFCO was asked by resolution of the Board of Supervisors to study the feasibility of dissolving the existing districts and forming a new district .
This district would absorb all rural and unincorporated fire districts, including VC, Deer Springs and Palomar Mountain.
The first phase would be to fold all the volunteer fire departments and the existing districts created after the passage of Prop. 13, such as VCFPD, but also Ramona, Deer Springs, Rural Fire Protection District, Palomar Mountain Volunteer Fire Dept. and departments in Julian and Borrego Springs.
The report won’t include a way of funding the district. It does identify probable costs.
This is what most experts, including most county fire chiefs, feel is key to creating the district.
However, John Traylor, the LAFCO staffer working on the report, told The Roadrunner: “A funding mechanism is being worked on by the Board of Supervisors. From the very beginning adequate long-term sustained funding has been the key issue.”
Last fall the VC fire board was preparing to conduct a mail survey to gauge local support for a vote to increase benefit fees.
However, it is likely that at the January meeting the board will take the advice of its consultant, SCI Consulting Group, to postpone the survey until after the LAFCO report is issued.
“If the regional district is created it would mean that the local district would no longer exist,” said VC Fire Chief Kevin O’Leary.
Whether this proposal is pie-in-the-sky or feasible depends on how it will be paid for.
“The fire chiefs want to know where the money is coming from,” he said. “There isn’t a lot of disagreement that we should find that before we move forward.”
Despite that hurdle, some feel a regional fire district is inevitable, as is evidenced by the Board of Supervisors’ willingness last year to fund extra firefighters for several districts, including Valley Center.
“I’m not sure where it’s going,” confessed board Pres. Mel Schuler, who has attended some of the LAFCO study group meetings with O’Leary.
“My sense is the County is pushing hard to set it up. The biggest setback is funding. But other than that I would say they are going straight ahead and everything is leaning towards them doing it,” said Schuler.
One question is whether fire districts would be forced to join.
“I think they can force it but there are some criteria that will allow communities to vote on it,” said O’Leary.
According to Traylor, the Board of Supervisors is the ultimate authority for creating the regional district.
“There may be a vote [of the people in the new district]. There is no provision for individual districts opting out. There are voting provisions and a protesting provision.” That’s all according to state law and will be spelled out in the report, according to Traylor.
Chief O’Leary notes that there are advantages and disadvantages to a consolidation.
One advantage, he says, is that it would allow VC to build and staff a third fire station.
“There is a savings in the districts because you consolidate all your individual departments, you have one payroll,” said O’Leary.
“All these individual districts now have their own staffs for administration. I don’t know how much it will take but in theory it will reduce the number of personnel,” said O’Leary.
It might not reduce actual expenditure, he said, because the regional district may want to pay for things the cash-poor districts can’t afford now.
“I could see an increase in costs, because right now we can’t do all the programs we want to do,” he said.
The biggest disadvantage, according to O’Leary, is the loss of local control.
One issue is governance, i.e. how would the regional district be governed.
O’Leary said the Board of Supervisors could probably pick the first governing board, which might have seven or 11 seats, and would include representatives from most districts being folded into it.
After that, district-wide elections would pick the governing board. There is no guarantee that each district would have a representative.
That’s a problem for Schuler.
“Conceivably you might not be represented at all. Probably it is more likely that some little community might not be able to generate enough votes to have a representative on the board,” he said.
Another possibility is that each community would have a fire advisory committee. That re-minds Schuler, who served on the VC planning group for many years, of ultimately how powerless advisory groups are.
“An advisory committee sounds good, but when all you do is advise that can adversely affect what you’d like to get done,” said Schuler.
One question that VC fire directors say relates to whether the public will support higher benefit fees, is if money raised locally will stay local.
In other words, given the uncertainty of the regional fire district, should the VC fire district go forward with trying to increase its funding, since it is threatened with possible financial catastrophe in a few years?“By law any money raised in taxes and benefit fees and Mello Roos has to remain in the community,” said O’Leary.
That will have to be explained adequately or Schuler thinks there will be trouble. “I think it’s confusing. It has to be explained as best you can to the public. If we need to go for a funding increase what is the guarantee that those fees will stay in the community?”
It will make such an election more difficult, Schuler believes.
“Some people have the idea that if the County is taking over our fire services, let the County pay for it. Why would we increase our taxes? But even if the County is running it you want the very best you can afford,” he said.
One big challenge, according to O’Leary, is making the regional district work with all of the various forms of revenue. “But honestly it’s not much different than what we are doing here now,” he said.
How long before such a district could be in operation, if funding is found for it?
“If it’s phased in you could start fairly early,” said O’Leary. “If you consider the three-year funding that the County gave us, they are already starting to make those types of improvements.”
He added that having that extra funding, “has been ab-solutely wonderful. It makes a world of difference to do all the things you need to do.”
“I don’t know if it’s a good thing or not,” said Schuler. “There’s a lot of questions that kind of thing ends up generating. Such as what that would do to the current staff of the fire district.”
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If you want information about the study, call John Traylor at 619-531-5190 or visit the LAFCO Web site at: www.sdlafco.org/
This week work began on two projects at the Valley Center Parks & Recreation District: replacing the old sidewalks at the community hall, and fixing the pool restrooms at Adams Park.
The pool restrooms have for a long time been a community eyesore. They are as old as the park pool itself, which opened in 1976.
Everything but the shell is being replaced in the building, according to Parks & Rec. Gen. Mgr. Doug Johnsen.
He said that the lockers in the locker room will be replaced and a handicapped accessible entrance is also being installed.
The project costs $150,000, most of it coming from Parklands Development Ord-inance (PLDO) funding.
The sidewalks at VC Community Hall are also being replaced all the way around the building. These sidewalks, said Johnsen, are also very old, possibly as old as the building itself, which was constructed in the 1920s. He said that they have begun disintegrating
The sidewalks will cost $32,000 and should be done in two weeks.
The restroom renovation should take two months, according to Johnsen.
Joy Justis, who created and defined the position of Valley Center Fire Marshal and has held the job for 17 years, will retire in April.
The longtime Valley Center resident will use her newfound time to spend lots more time with her grandchildren. She will be available on a consultant basis occasionally if the Valley Center Fire Protection District needs her, she told The Roadrunner.
We asked her what the biggest part of her job is. “Working with the public,” she said. “Working with the community. Basically what I’m here for is to interpret what the chief and the board of directors want and to carry out policy.”
Fire boards operate considerably different today than they did when she first took the job.
“We used to have more of a hands on board than we do today,” she said. “It used to be that board President Chet Dorman took care of finances in the district and Bud Moler did the mitigation fees.”
The board functioned in those days like a volunteer unpaid staff.
“That started changing about the year I came in. When the first board left, staff had to take over the items that they did. When Chief Dave Lewis (Chief Kevin O’Leary’s predecessor) left there was more of a gap in interpretation of policy and procedure,” she said.
The thing that Fire Marshal Justis has always found rewarding is working with the community. “I enjoy people. If you reason with people they usually do what the fire marshal wants them to do, because they are safety measures and they see the logic of it.”
Most of her work involves checking plans for upcoming projects, making sure that businesses and residents know about fire regulations, research and carrying out district policy.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to become a rodeo queen?
Imagine yourself on a beautiful horse, flying through the arena and the spotlight is on you. All the little girls jump up and scream hysterically. They all want to see you with your beautiful appearance and sparkling performance.
The feeling you experience is beyond euphoria. When you exit the arena you are swarmed for autographs and pictures and when the dust settles you find a little girl waiting to meet you.
Taking the time to ask the little girl her name and take a picture with her makes you realize that you have probably just fulfilled one of her wildest dreams.
Proudly, as Valley Center Rodeo Queen, I have been given the opportunity to change people’s lives. Although most of the excitement happens in the arena, many duties follow the excitement of a town’s annual rodeo.
Beyond the glitz and glamour of being rodeo queen there are responsibilities, duties and obligations you must meet to serve as an ambassador of your town and its rodeo.
Being crowned as a rodeo queen means you are now the spokesperson of your town. Some duties include appearing at community events and other rodeos, volunteer work, and representing your town’s annual rodeo.
Although being rodeo queen is fun and exciting, it also takes hard work and determination.
Your best way to show that you have what it takes to be a rodeo queen is to present these characteristics throughout your local rodeo queen pageant.
Many prejudices begin by saying the VC Rodeo Queen contest is another form of a beauty pageant. This may be true, but the beauty you are judged on is not what you look like in a swim suit or an evening gown.
The beauty you see winning rodeo queen pageants all over the country is the beauty a young woman finds within herself to perform as one with her horse. It is the beauty of confidence and strength in a young woman’s heart, and finally it is the beauty of the love and dedication she has for her community and the sport of rodeo.
As an outgoing queen, it is my duty to inform young women all over to take the next step towards making their dreams a reality.
If you have the heart for rodeo and the love for your community then you have what it takes to be the next rodeo queen in your town.
With the New Year finally here, it is time for pageants to begin searching their area to find the best girls to compete in their rodeo queen competition.
Looking back on my year as a rodeo queen I would encourage all young ladies to compete this year because the experiences you have as a rodeo queen are once in a lifetime.
The people you meet, the places you go, and the knowledge you gain are definitely worthwhile by the end of your reign as queen. Good Luck!
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Look for advertisements in this and coming issues about the VC Rodeo Queen contest.
Lindsey Saletta as Peter Pan and Sammi Carr as Wendy in the VCHS production of Peter Pan, playing this weekend at the Maxine. Tickets are on sale an hour before the show. Questions? Call 749-7390 or visit www.maxine.vcpusd.net
The Valley Roadrunner
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Tel. 760.749.1112 Fax 760.749.1688
Website: www.valleycenter.com
Email: editor@valleycenter.com
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