The banners for the July 4 fireworks show will be going up this week, according to Kelly Crews, who is spearheading the community effort.
The banners will include the event’s premier sponsors. The banners will go up at the bottom of the Valley Center grade, at Cole Grade & Valley Center Roads and next week at the high school.
Another meeting for volunteers is scheduled for Wednesday, June 13, 7 p.m. in Room 3 of VC Community Hall.
Mrs. Crews told The Roadrunner: “We are currently preparing all road permit documentation and working with Lynn Lackey, Charlie Smith and Tim Bell to cut the costs of traffic management.”
She also gave an update on games for kids that will be held in the afternoon leading up to the show.
“We will be having the egg toss game but not the three legged or gunny sack because of a lack of available volunteers,” she said.
She added, “For the Egg Toss if anyone knows how to make that an awesome event like researching the National Egg Toss Championship that might be fun to turn the one event we have into an exceptional event.”
They are seeking prizes to be awarded to egg toss winners.
“If we don’t get some good ideas we’ll resort to ribbons and maybe one trophy for open division-meaning all ages,” she said.
There has been some discussion among volunteers about who or what organization may be interested in taking over the event next year. Lynn Lackey has expressed an interest in taking over the entire event next year, according to Mrs. Crews.
She concluded, “Chelsea Good and The Valley Roadrunner were in charge of the banners and did a great job. We should all be extremely thankful for the gift of her time.”
The Palomar Mountain School funding bill was passed last week in the California Senate.
The bill now moves to the Assembly, where it is being co-sponsored by Assemblyman Kevin Jeffries.
The bill, SB 667, would provide funding for the K-8 Palomar Mountain School, one of the last operational one-room schoolhouses in the county.
In recent years, the Valley Center-Pauma Unified School District has experienced declining enrollment, so they considered closing the small schoolhouse last year.
State funding was lost when the school was part of the unification of the Valley Center and Pauma school districts, which made the new school district too large to receive normal state augmentation.
Last year, district officials approached Senator Hollings-worth to carry SB 667 in hopes of keeping the K–8 school open for about 11 students living in the mountain-area community.
Closing the school would mean the students would spend at least 90 minutes on a bus each day, which is a safety concern during snowy conditions.
Erin Smith has been named principal at San Pasqual High School in Escondido effective July 1, 2007.
Ms. Smith is a graduate of Valley Center Junior High and Orange Glen High School, where she was a California State Scholar and a commended student in the National Merit competition.
She earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of California, San Diego with a major in sociology and a minor in English. In addition, she received a teaching credential and Master’s in Educational Leadership from San Diego State University.
Returning as a teacher to Orange Glen High School, Ms. Smith taught the social sciences, serving as department chairman, and English language arts. She was also an assistant principal there for seven years, and this past year was employed in that same position at San Pasqual High. Her service with the Escondido Union High School District totals 23 years.
During her career as an assistant principal, she has been responsible for staff development, curriculum design, teacher evaluations, counseling, oversight of facilities, supervising athletics and working with various parent groups.
Ms. Smith is married to Stan Alstrum, a retired teacher from the Escondido Union High and San Diego School Districts. She has a stepdaughter, Shelley Balla-Hawkins of Sacramento, and three grandsons.
Erin Lee Smith is the daughter of Valdo & Janey Smith, 38-year residents of Valley Center, and granddaughter of Mary Louise Davis of Escondido, formerly of Valley Center.
The Valley Center Planning Group Monday night got a first look at a proposed 190-unit development, Spanish Trails.
The project is proposed for the southwest corner of Cool Valley Road at Cole Grade.
However, it may already have a problem because some planners believe that the density proposed for it is too high.
Gary Romoff is a member of a three-family consortium who own 436 acres that they want to subdivide to build 190 lots. They have owned the land since the 1970s.
Romoff and engineer Mike Wunderlin of Wunderlin Engineering have already had their first meeting with the planning group’s subcommittee assigned to the task.
“This is an early cut,” Romoff told the group. He is not yet ready for a formal finished plan or to go to the County Dept. of Planning & Land Use.
He wanted to get the planning group’s reaction first.
“I don’t want to spend a lot of money if it’s not going to go anywhere,” he told the group.
Romoff, who is a farmer, said that the project’s tentative map was approved for 169 units five years ago, but that his partners decided they didn’t like the design. They recently hired another firm to plan the project. They came up with a design for 190 units.
The new proposal includes some clustering, but with the same net number of homes that would be yielded if the project was built on two acre lots, according to Wunderlin.
Some homes would be built on one acre lots and some on smaller lots.
It consolidates the 355 acres that were originally going to be developed and reduces them to 220 acres, leaving the native vegetation alone.
Wunderlin said that the project will create open space landscaped corridors between the developed areas.
Hiking and riding trails will follow the corridors. There may also be small community parks in the project.
The land has been approved for septic, but more tests are needed to see exactly how many septic systems it would support.
Oliver Smith, chairman of the subcommittee assigned to the project, said that there is some concern that the net number of developable units is too high.
“The original tentative map approved in 2002 had one hundred and sixty nine units. At one hundred and ninety it does not appear that they meet the same net acreage,” he told The Roadrunner.
There is a difference between gross acreage, the ratio between total acres and units proposed, and net acreage, i.e. usable land.
“You have to have a minimum lot average of 2.0 in order to be able to build,” said Smith.
Other issues that arose during the discussion are drainage and traffic.
Some of the project’s neighbors are concerned about traffic that would be increased on nearby Miller Road. Miller is a very windy two-lane road that connects Cole Grade and Valley Center Roads.
Smith said that in his opinion most residents from the new development would use Miller, which could create a problem.
Smith said that on the whole the project is a good one. “I’d like to see it go forward,” he said. “But the way they have described it will be a deal breaker if they can’t get the extra units out of the project.”
Sheriff's Search and Rescue have been looking for a missing person, Michael Day, since June 6.
On that day, around 9:30 a.m., deputies were sent to 14722 Sturnella Way to investigate a missing persons report.
The missing person is Michael Burt Day, 63, who is diagnosed with dementia and aphasia. He is the brother of Beth Pence, a local Realtor.
Michael Burt Day is visiting from Tuscon, Arizona. He was last seen about 5 a.m. Wednesday.
Day is a white male adult about 5'6”, 180 pounds, brown hair and eyes. Day was last seen wearing white shorts, khaki jacket, blue baseball hat and white tennis-shoes with black stripes. Day’s only means of transportation is on foot and/or public transportation.
Anyone with information as to his whereabouts is encouraged to call the Sheriff's Communication Center at 858-565-5200.
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Beth Pence, Day’s sister, provided The Roadrunner with this additional information:
“My brother, Michael Day, is 63 years old and is suffering from dementia and aphasia, which is a speech disorder. He arrived here in VC with my parents (ages 90 and 84) from Tucson on Saturday, June 2.
“Wednesday morning, June 6, he spoke to my dad at around 4:00a.m. looking for his cell phone. I woke up and passed his bedroom at 5:30 a.m. and noticed he was up, but he was no where in the house and figured he must have gone for a walk.
“At 8 a.m. I saw his cell phone in their car and realized that if he had gone for a walk, which he would do regularly back in Tucson, he wouldn't be able to call me if he got tired and needed a ride home. So I got in the car and started driving around looking for him. No luck, so at 9:30 a.m. I called the Sheriff's office to report him missing.
“Wednesday we had search and rescue, scent tracking dogs, who picked up his scent on Coyote Run and Cool Valley but lost it a little before Cole Grade. Astrea helicopters were out mid to late morning, again around 5:30 a.m. with bullhorns and finally at 10:30 a.m. with infrared.
“The command center was set up at the water district yard across from the post office. His photo was on KUSI and KNSD Thursday morning and an article in North County Times Friday morning.
“Search and rescue set up again Friday afternoon and did a second search. And I believe it was on various news channels Saturday though I didn’t see it.
“There have been no leads. He just walked out the door we are guessing between 4:30–5:15 a.m. last Wednesday and disappeared.
“He was probably wearing a blue baseball cap, white shorts, white undershirt, a vertical striped golf shirt (uncertain as to color) and white athletic shoes with some black on them. His speech is very limited. He can say one or two words at a time and the words he says are not always the words he means to say.”
This year for the first time every graduating senior had to participate in the Senior Interview, where they are interviewed by faculty and members of the business community. Colleen Heublein, purchasing manager for the school district and English teacher Craig Adams interview senior Alex Kaiser. Graduation is this Thursday, 7 p.m. at Jaguar Stadium. For some other senior interview pictures, log onto our Website.
Some bicyclists participating in Race Across America passed through Valley Center on the weekend. The race is billed as “The world’s toughest endurance Bicycle race.” One participant describes it as “the Everest of cycling events.”
The Valley Roadrunner
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