February 21, 2007 - Top Stories
Who are the young women competing for the title of Miss Valley Center 2007 crown and scholarships?
There are ten young women each with unique views and aspirations.
They have been busy preparing for the March 10 pageant “An American in Paris” which will be at the Maxine Theatre. Doors open at 6:30 and curtain rises at 7 p.m..
The Valley Center Pageant Assn. produces the pageant with support from the VC Optimists, Community En-hancement Grant Funds from the County and local businesses or individuals who sponsor the contestants with ads in the program or with donations.
Biographies
Here is a preview of the ten young women.
Contestant No. 1, Jeana Boulos. Jeana is 20 years old and a sophomore at Palomar College. She is the daughter of Ibrahim & Ibtissam Boulos and has three sisters.
Jeana stands 5’8” tall, has brown hair and green eyes. Her immediate plans are to transfer to UCSD to major in international studies and linguistics in the fall.
Later she plans on studying abroad in France and Spain and to master more languages and broaden her cultural knowledge. Jeana speaks four languages: Arabic, English, Spanish, and French. Her philosophy is to stop from time to time to truly appreciate the moment before hurrying on toward her goals.
Contestant No. 2 Dominique Alto. Dominique is 21 years old and attends Palomar College. She is the daughter of Raymond & Arvie Alto and has two brothers. Dominique stands 4’11” tall, has brown hair and blue eyes. Her immediate plans include finishing Palomar and transferring to Cal State San Marcos. She plans on getting a masters degree in nutrition and becoming a personal trainer. Her philosophy is “in life you get what you give.” Giving is the best part.
Contestant No. 3 Amanda Kaiser. Amanda is 17 years old and a junior at Valley Center High School. Amanda stands 5’4”, has brown hair and blue eyes. She is the daughter of Jeff Kaiser and Nancy & Mark Cranmore and has one brother and three sisters. After high school she plans on attending a four year college and getting her Ph.D in Psychology. Her philosophy in life is “It’s not where you came from, it’s where you’re going, it’s not what’s on you but what’s in you, and it’s not what you’re driving but what drives you that is important.”
Contestant No. 4 Whitney Bisplinghoff. Whitney is 18 years old and a senior at VCHS. She is the daughter of Jamie Edge and Chris Bisplinghoff and she has two sisters. Whitney stands 5’10’’, has brown hair and green eyes. Her immediate plans include finishing her senior year, and attending Palomar College while working at a part-time job. Her goal is to transfer to SDSU to study arts and communications and become a news anchor. Her philosophy in life is “it’s not the years you live in your life, it’s the life that you live in your years.”
Contestant No. 5 Kalyn Peirce. Kalyn is 17 years old and a senior at VCHS. She is the daughter of Keri & Henry Salmon and Rusty Lasley. She has one sister and two brothers. Kalyn stands 5’2”, has brown hair and brown eyes
Her immediate plans are to get her Gen. Ed. done, then go to cosmetology school. She plans to own her own salon. One ambition is to own a shop that styles for the rich and famous on movie sets.
Contestant No. 6 Ivory Martinez. Ivory is 20 years old and a junior at Cal State San Marcos. She is the granddaughter of Rose & Richard Micheletti and has one brother and one sister. She stands 5’5” tall, has brown hair and brown eyes. Her immediate plans include getting a degree in education and a teaching credentials. She wants to teach music at the elementary level. Her philosophy of life is “Always try your hardest and never give up. You’ll never know what you can do until you try.”
Contestant No. 7 Nicole Cutrell. Nicole is 17 and a senior at VCHS. She is the daughter of Tami Oleson and Cliff Cutrell and has two brothers. Nicole stands 5’5” tall, has blond hair and brown eyes. She plans to attend Pepperdine University and major in either vocal or theater performance. Her philosophy is “Life is too short for vanilla ice cream.” That is her way of saying “live everyday like it’s your last.”
Contestant No. 8 Katrina Brinkman. Katrina is 19 years old and a sophomore at Palomar College. She is the daughter of Paul & Candice Brinkman and she has one brother. Katrina is 5’8”, has blond hair and green eyes. She plans to transfer to Cal State San Marcos after she finishes Palomar. She wants to get a degree in psychology and go on to graduate school. Her philosophy is “Do not have any regrets, just see everything as an opportunity to learn.”
Contestant No. 9 Alida Diaz. Alida is 19 and a sophomore at Palomar College. She is the daughter of Peter & Sharon Diaz and Eric & Debra Jockinsen and she has one brother. Alida stands 5’11”, has brown / blond hair and hazel eyes. Her immediate plans are to finish Palomar and transfer to Cal State Fullerton. She plans to graduate from Fullerton with a major in business management and a minor in marketing. Her philosophy is “If you really want something than go get it. If you want to be happy, then be happy. If you want to be rich, be rich, because no one can stop you but you.”
Contestant No. 10 Brittany Byler. Brittany is 20 years-old and attends Palomar College. She is the daughter of Jim & Cynthia Byler and has two brothers. Brittany stands 5’9”, has blond hair and hazel eyes. She plans to attend Cal State San Marcos in the fall and earn her single subject teaching credential and special education teaching credential. She plans to be a high school special education teacher and to develop a women’s basketball team program. Her philosophy is “Let me win, but if I can not win, let me be brave in the attempt.”
* * *
So who is your choice?
Tickets for the pageant are available from the contestants or by calling Debra at 760-751-1051.
Presale tickets are $10 or $15 at the door on pageant night. If you are interested in supporting the scholarship pageant with an ad or donation call 751-1051 or e-mail the association at jockinsen@vcweb.org.
Could Valley Center become a winery Mecca, like Napa Valley or Temecula, or . . . Ramona?
Unlike crops that once flourished in VC but which are now threatened by the rising price of water, such as avocados and citrus, grapes are water misers. They are also immune to freeze damage: they go dormant in winter.
But could Valley Center ever become a wine growing region?
Maybe. If it takes a page from the book of a neighboring community—and under the right regulatory climate.
Some Ramona vintners visited the VC planning group meeting on Feb. 12 to ask support for a County ordinance to make it easier to for small commercial vintners to operate a tasting room.
Currently, for a small operation to open a tasting room it must apply for a major use permit, which costs thousands of dollars.
The ordinance proposed by the Ramona Valley Winery Assn., aided by the San Diego County Farm Bureau, would allow “boutique wineries,” that sell 12,000 gallons or less, to have tasting rooms without a major use permit.
This would put San Diego County in line with other grape-growing counties that encourage the industry, instead of discouraging it.
At his presentation to the planning group, Ramona vintner Bill Schweitzer said, “The supervisors have talked about supporting agriculture to preserve open space instead of paving everything over. What we are looking for is an ordinance to improve winery activities based on similar ordinances from all over the state, in places where they have a thriving wine industry.”
Their proposal comes before the Board of Supervisors on Feb. 28. The board will be asked to direct staff to write a draft ordinance and bring it back for a vote.
If such an ordinance was adopted, would it benefit Valley Center? Could we someday have rows upon rows of wine grapes as far as the eye can see?
“Absolutely,” said Eric Larson, executive director of the Farm Bureau.
“Any place that can grow grapes, and that’s the entire county, could become a wine producing area. You can even grow them in the desert if you have water. Valley Center is not climactically exempt,” he said.
The bureau favors an ordinance that makes it easier to operate a boutique winery.
“The bureau likes the idea that the smallest boutique wineries could have a tasting room without the onerous process,” he said.
“It takes a significant effort to build a new winery region,” said Schweitzer during his presentation. “To get it to where tourists come to a place and have people like your wine, and have them come and buy it and stay at your hotels and buy at your shops.”
For that to happen there must be a market that gives a sufficient return that growers can buy equipment needed to ferment the grapes, and the grape plants and then wait the four years to make a salable product.
Schweitzer noted that the San Pasqual Valley was approved as a wine-growing area the same year that Napa Valley was approved.
“Yet there are far more wineries in Napa.” He attributed that to the regulatory differences between those two counties.
Right now VC and Pauma Valley don’t so much have an infant wine industry as they have a seed that might grow into one.
Jack Woods of Orangewood Winery just opened Pauma’s first commercial winery. He sells to retailers such as Major Market.
Mike Sanders, who owns Accidental Winery on Lilac Road, is not far behind. He grows cabernet and shiraz grapes. He has a license to sell, but hasn’t sold any yet. He has four acres of vines, but also keeps avocados. This is an ideal arrangement. When avocados really need water, it’s time to deprive the grapes so that they build up sugar.
Other potential wineries in Valley Center and Pauma are just under the radar.
Around 30 acres near Hilltop Drive & Valley Center Road were recently purchased by someone who expressed an interest in planting a wine vineyard.
Allegedly, another potential winery is near the Armstrong Egg Ranch at MacTan.
Several acres of vines are planted near the Yuima Municipal Water District office on Valley Center Road in Pauma.
Woods “absolutely” likes the proposed ordinance. He wouldn’t waste a moment in opening a tasting room.
“The whole idea behind that movement is to help farmers,” says the retired radio personality turned gentleman farmer,” he said.
“You know how it is in farming, you get a buck for a bushel of corn and some guy turns it into a cake and sells it for twenty dollars!”
His operation would qualify as a “boutique winery.”
“I see absolutely no negative at all. There would be no reason in the world not to do it [open a tasting room]. It would make my little vineyard more of a producer. Right now it’s a hobby,” said Woods.
Sanders supports it too, although it wouldn’t do much for him. “Where I’m located it wouldn’t help me.” He is too remote for a tasting room.
There are plenty of good wine growing land near him, he said.
“There are some good locations, especially off Lilac. Up on these mesas where you get a lot of sun. It seems very good for wine. The sugars build up and they seem to ripen well up here.”
Last year Ramona acquired the right to be an AVA (American Vinticultural Area). That means vintners can say that their wine was made in Ramona.
If it was only that, wine businesses would see a temporary increase in business, Schweitzer told the planners.
“With today’s regulatory environment,” he said, “you can grow grapes and make wine as a wholesale limited winery, no problem. But if you want one person to visit your winery and sip an ounce of wine you need a major use permit. We have seen cases where it has $44,000 to $100,000 to allow one person to come and sip wine.”
They want the same privilege that produce stand owners have of being able to cut open a fruit and offer a sample to a customer.
In San Diego county, “it does not matter if you have a mom and pop store or Gallo, you have to have a major use permit,” Schweitzer told the planners.
“We can’t compete against Calloway or Two Buck Chuck,” he said. Selling wholesale barely covers expenses and doesn’t showcase San Diego wine.
“You don’t have tourists come to taste wine at Albertson’s,” said Schweitzer wryly.
Because the Golden State has had many years’ experience with wine growing, statistics show what works and what doesn’t.
For small wineries, the largest part of their income (55-68%) derives from tasting rooms with another 8-12% from wine clubs, telephone and Internet orders.
Successful wine counties allow small wineries to have tasting rooms “by right” without a discretionary permit.
“If you are very, small you don’t affect the environment or traffic. You ought to be able to get your business going before you have to apply for a major use permit,” said Schweitzer.
The regulation would create four winery categories :
• Boutique, up to 12,000 gallons.
• Small, up to 56,000 gallons
• Medium, up to 100,000 gallons
• Large, more than 100,000 gallons.
Every winery in the county is below the 12,000 benchmark.
Regulations binding the wineries to certain rules would be added in steps, depending on which category the winery is in.
The proposal would allow someone to keep farming a ten acre farm. “Not many crops allow people to do that and one of those crops is grapes,” said Schweitzer.
“We want a wine category that won’t trigger CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) because it has a small footprint on the environment.
Parking, allowable noise, what products can be sold, hours of operation, are all spelled out in the proposed ordinance.
“A boutique winery can’t even have a bus come up to it with visitors, and is very limited in offering events,” noted Schweitzer.
San Diego’s wine industry, “will make it if we have a regulatory environment that allows us to,” said Schweitzer.
Until now the arcane term “shelter-in-place” has been largely discussed by those who are interested in the proposed Stonegate development on the outskirts of the Deer Springs Fire Protection District.
That’s about to change.
The County’s Dept. of Planning & Land Use is reviewing a guideline to help planners determine the significance of fire protection plans submitted for new developments.
At the same time our own VC planning group will offer comments on this draft proposal and next month the VC fire board will talk about the issue.
Suddenly “shelter-in-place” is a sexy topic, even among those not looking for a way to stop a development just down the road.
What is shelter-in-place? The County’s draft “Guidelines for Determining Significance of Wildland Fire and Fire Protection” defines it this way:
“Shelter-in-Place Strategy. Shelter-in-Place is a last resort design concept with relocation of occupants a preferred action. In the event secondary access is unattainable due to topographical or geographical constraints, a Shelter-in-Place design strategy may be considered.”
Because the Stonegate development of 2,700 units has inadequate roads to support a mass evacuation, it is relying on a “shelter-in-place” strategy.
Critics feel this strategy is more “barbecue-in-place” than a way to protect people from fires.
However, for communities whose roads would be hopelessly clogged by an evacuation, it may be the only way to deal with suddenly homeless masses.
Abhorring “shelter-in-place” has been the rallying cry for opponents of Stonegate. It led to incumbents on the Deer Springs Fire Protection District board being defeated for reelection and replaced with candidates who swore to stop the development.
Oliver Smith, who serves on the VC planning group and the VC fire board, asked that the subject be put on the March agenda.
Smith explained his reasoning: “I asked for the shelter-in-place discussion item to be put on the next regular VCFPD meeting agenda for three reasons:
“1) It appears to be central to a major issue occurring in a neighboring fire district (Deer Springs and Stonegate).
“2) Curiosity as my personal Internet searching showed it mostly related to bioterrorism and chemical attack scenarios under Homeland Security.
3) The County is currently requesting input on a proposed wildland fire policy with provisions for the concept.
“At this point,” said Smith, “I would like to understand if it is something Valley Center needs to consider, is/has been used in some form in Valley Center, and what, if anything, the Valley Center Fire Protection District should be doing about it.”
VC Fire Chief Kevin O’Leary is unequivocal in his view that shelter-in-place is a last resort, and not a particularly good one.
O’Leary told The Roadrunner, “It has been the position of fire agencies that if you have time to leave, you should leave. At a vacant home, we do not have to worry about protecting residents, only our own people, and the animals that remain on the property.
“Questions you should ask yourself: Is saving your home more important than your life? Is saving your home more important than possibly suffering from burns and respiratory problem for the rest of your life?”
The chief added that there is no firefighter he is willing to risk to protect a home if there are undue risks involved.
“Wild-land fire can be unpredictable. Shelter-in-place has too many variables. Fires will burn differently depending on slope, fuel, aspect of slope, temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, other weather factors like cold fronts, time of day, time of year, etc.”
One day it might be OK to stay in your house, but on another it might not be safe to be anywhere in the area, he noted.
That’s hard to predict because fires create their own “weather.”
“At the Esperanza fire [of last November, where four firefighters lost their lives in Riverside county], something happened that allowed the personnel to stay at a house they thought they could defend, and they all died. Something major occurred and they did not have time to react. They had a lot of experience too,” said O’Leary.
He concluded, “In some cases, you cannot escape, and in some new developments, safe refuge areas are planned. These should be your last choice, or as directed by emergency personnel to shelter in place. There are cases where I have had to do this with entire communities, businesses, neighborhoods, because trying to escape would cause more harm than good.”
* * *
County officials are asking for public comment on the guidelines until Feb. 26. Send comments to: Department of Planning & Land Use, Attn: Mario Covic, 5201 Ruffin Rd., Ste. B, San Diego, CA 92123-1666
Brendan McNabb, the project manager for the Valley Center Road widening project, died suddenly over the weekend while attending a funeral. He was 48.
McNabb is survived by his wife and 17-year-old son.
McNabb died on Saturday. He was attending his uncle’s funeral, had just done a eulogy, sat down and collapsed.
McNabb has been a Capital Projects Project Manager since coming to the Dept. of Public Works in 2001. He was a native of Ireland.
“Everyone who knew Brendan knows he was a great person and an outstanding member of the DPW Team. Brendan will be very sorely missed,” commented Dept. of Public Works Director John Snyder Tuesday morning.
Although a County employee, McNabb was considered a good friend to Valley Center.
Former planning group Chairman Andy Washburn commented, “Brendan was a friend to Valley Center. Those of us who worked with him knew him to be knowledgeable, diligent, and fair.
“He made the effort to understand our local perspective on County projects. He walked Valley Center Road with us to work out the details of the road widening project. He was instrumental in revising the plans to include landscaped medians and pathways. He attended our Tribal Liaison Subcommittee meetings, organized by Larry Glavinic. When I was chairman of the planning group, I could count on his interest and assistance on issues involving the County projects in Valley Center. He will be missed.”
“A great thing about Brendan was that he was very responsive,” commented the VC planning group Chairman Keith Simpson. “If we made a call to him he would get back quickly with an answer. He was very professional that way, in addition to being a nice guy.”
Traffic delays can be expected at about 2 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 22, in order for the contractor to blast rock along Valley Center Road at Lilac Road. Blasting is a process that uses a targeted and contained explosion to break hard material that cannot be easily removed.
To ensure the safety of vehicles traveling along Valley Center Road, through traffic will be temporarily stopped when blasting occurs. The blasting and inspection process is anticipated to take about 15 minutes.
The closure time may be extended if additional cleanup work is necessary. Allow extra time while driving through the area or use an alternate route.
One lane traffic control with a flagging operation will be in place periodically from 9 a.m.–3 p.m. M-F. Traffic delays can be expected during these hours.
Observe posted speed limits to avoid double penalty traffic fines. Questions? Call the Project Hotline at (619) 232-2640.
The Valley Roadrunner
P.O.B. 1529, Valley Center, CA 92082
Tel. 760.749.1112 Fax 760.749.1688
Website: www.valleycenter.com
Email: editor@valleycenter.com
Copyright © 2007, Palomar Community Newspapers, dba Valley Roadrunner. All rights reserved. This content may not be archived, retransmitted, saved in a database, or used for any commercial purpose without the express written permission of the Valley Roadrunner.