The next few weeks will tell whether Valley Center wants its annual fireworks show enough to raise the money to keep it.
The July 4 fireworks show has gotten a boost with a $10,000 donation from the Rincon tribe, but there remains $18,000 to raise and just about a month to do it, says organizer Kelly Crews.
That includes $600 in pledges already received and $2,500 left over from last year’s event.
According to Mrs. Crews a total of $30,000 is needed by the end of April to put on the show. “At this point we don’t have enough money to do the show,” she said. “We don’t have the monetary support that we had last year.”
A supervisor is needed to oversee setting up electrical connections, and all the logistics, including making sure that things are delivered and set in the proper location.
The fireworks company, Pyrospectaculars, out of East County, needs to have the money guaranteed by the end of the month for the show to happen.
Last year the Chamber of Commerce was the sponsor of the event, but it would like for someone else to take over the job permanently, and set up a non-profit corporation to put on the show in the future.
Mrs. Crews said she is trying to do that in time for the fireworks show. If that’s not possible, she hopes the Chamber will do it again this year. So far it has not committed to that.
She is also looking for someone to succeed her in the task of organizing it.
“The community of VC needs someone to step up and take over this responsibility. I’d love to see it go forward,” she said.
“Last year and in previous years we had very generous donors who made the show possible. We hope to see that happen again this year,” she said.
If the show happens, the organizers will have it at Jaguar Stadium again.
If you’d like to help with the fireworks show, or be a donor, call Mrs. Crews at 760-670-7062.
The tenth annual Jaguar Auction, the largest fund-raising event in Valley Center, will be held on Saturday, April 5, 6 p.m. at the Valley Center High School gym.
Last year’s event raised over $70,000. This year’s is expected to do even better.
This event is hosted by the VCHS Foundation. The fund-raiser includes a live and silent auction complemented with appetizers, desserts and beverages.
This is the largest fund-raiser for VCHS and the community. This year’s event will have a new proven fast computerized check-out system.
Tickets cost $10 and holders of tickets will be entered in a drawing for a big-screen TV system. You need not be present to win.
The event provides a fund-raising venue for the various VCHS clubs and teams as well as the VCHS Foundation endowment.
This is the Foundation’s tenth year to host the auction. It has gained in popularity and the profits have increased each year. A big part of the total success is due to the generosity of the various companies, businesses and individuals in the community and surrounding area that have contributed.
Great deals can be had on a number of fabulous products and services. They include golf packages, an electric guitar, Lake Tahoe vacation, two-person kayak, BMX bicycle, fire station dinner and tour (including a ride on a ladder truck), Charger tickets, 40-bottle wine coolerand many vacations and getaways.
Questions? Contact either Julie Stroh at 749-7863 or Janis Litchfield at 760-522-6399.
The VC planning group recently found that you can’t fight city hall. At least if city hall is the Board of Supervisors.
Ultimately the Board can pretty much do anything it wants as regards to density, putting developments that don’t fit the surrounding area into the plan, or redoing maps that locals have worked on for months and years.
And it does.
Case in point: For several months the Valley Center Planning Group has been trying to organize to fight a development on Fruitvale Road between Twain Way and High Point Drive.
The parcel has 96 units proposed on 38 acres. That is a much higher density than the group had adopted for the general plan update—or which is common in VC, where the two-acre minimum is the norm.
However, the Board of Supervisors has made its own map of proposed changes that it wants to add to the one the planning group has approved.
It doesn’t automatically assure the development approval, but it does assure that the developer gets a chance to make its case, despite a late entry into the process.
The Board Map includes the Fruitvale development, officially called the Twain Way PAA.
Each time the local planners organized to carpool to the Planning Commission hearings on this development, the commission changed the date.
It was postponed four times before finally being heard, when the commission voted 4-3 to approve proceeding with the Twain Way PAA.
This was opposed by Dept. of Planning & Land Use staff and many neighbors of the development in Valley Center who traveled to San Diego to speak.
Key issues for the VC planning group were density, lack of working with the planning group, a Board Map that dramatically deviated from the draft map with respect to densities, wastewater issues, and the neighboring chicken ranch (Foster Farms has a chicken ranch northwest of the property).
According to planning group Chairman Oliver Smith, “The key (from my vantage point at least) planning commission point voiced for those voting in favor was that the Planning Commission HAD to consider the Board Map as valid input for desired densities in Valley Center and that they owed the proponent an opportunity to show what they could do.”
That statement was made after the public input portion of the hearing was closed, so Smith was not allowed to refute it.
“To be honest,” he said, “I did not have a real strong response to this, particularly noting that all of the commission members are appointed by Board of Supervisor members and four of the seven are from Horn and Jacobs.”
The commission vote stressed that the proponents had only been given the chance to proceed and spend their money.
According to Smith, “The Planning Commission members made a very public point of saying that the proponent would not get special treatment when they came back just because they had expended a ton of money trying to get the major issues resolved if they did not resolve them adequately. A bit weak at best in my opinion but it is what it is.”
He added, “One good thing that came out was that the proponents stopped Susan [Simpson] and me in the parking lot afterwards and indicated a new desire to work with the planning group.”
The Commission did criticize the fact that the proponents had bypassed the planning group and suggested that it would be good to work with them.
At the parking lot meeting, Smith offered the proponents an open discussion forum with the planning group at its next meeting and, if appropriate, to set up a subcommittee to work with them.
The California Highway Patrol announced this week that Valley Center will be the first location in San Diego County to be used for a completely new kind of vehicle checkpoint.
Officer Oliver Brownstain, an agency spokesman, explained that officers will conduct intelligence tests of drivers and confiscate the keys of drivers who fail to pass them.
The checkpoint will be set up along Valley Center Road and could entail delays of up to 90 minutes for each driver, depending on how stupid they are.
According to Brownstain, “In January of 2008 SB 28284 took effect. This bill, popularly known as the ‘Driving While Stupid,’ law, mandates that California’s drivers demonstrate that they are intellectually capable of operating a motor vehicle.” The law exempts some vehicles, such as Humvees.
He added, without cracking a smile, “If you think that this law is unnecessary, then we probably want to talk to you further.”
Motorists taking the test will first be asked to get out of the car and go stand in the corner of a circle. The assistant testing officer will offer to hold any small bags of marijuana that they may be carrying on their person while they take the test.
Drivers’ keys will be examined for scorch marks, a sign of the operator attempting to insert the key into the cigarette lighter instead of the ignition.
The test will NOT be a rehash of the existing driver’s test that most motorists are required to pass when they first apply for a license.
It WILL consist of multiple choice questions such as: If a homeless person holding a sign asking for donations stands at the on-ramp to a freeway, do you,
1) put the parking brake on before you come to complete stop to give him some money?
2) pass him first, and then stop and go into reverse in order to give him a donation?
3) ignore him and continue driving?
Another asks: The best way to stop a car is,
1) by shifting into reverse
2) by running out of gas
3) with your foot
The law is considered a companion to a law that will take effect in July requiring motorists to use hands free devices when operating a cell phone.
Legislative researcher Hans Frei, after whom that law was named, explained the reasoning: “We figure that most people are really too intellectually challenged to figure out how to use hands free devices. So this law will catch them, too. You must realize that the purpose of traffic laws, contrary to popular belief, is to generate income for the state, not make people safer. We thought about lowering the speed limit on freeways to 35 mph, but this seemed to be less of a hassle to enforce.”
The new law is being introduced with a marketing campaign. Its slogan: “If you’re stupid, we want your car keys,” is starting to show up on billboards all over the state of California.
Brownstain emphasized that drivers seen sounding out the syllables on the billboards will be subject to being pulled over.
The campaign will include TV and YouTube personalities particularly associated with stupidity, such as Dom Deluise, Jessica Simpson, Lindsey Lohan, Jade Goody and Paris Hilton. Britney Spears is honorary chairman. Locally several news anchors will take turns as honorary spokesmen.
In New York a similar law is being introduced with Eliot Spitzer as celebrity spokesman.
Officer Brownstain conceded that this may entail some inconvenience to motorists and might even possibly cause some people to miss airline flights, doctor’s appointments and funerals.
“That’s the way it goes,” he remarked.
When confronted by a reporter who asked if this wasn’t a callous disregard for the rights of motorists, he chuckled and asked the reporter: “Where are you parked?”
He then commented, “We’re taking a page from our TSA brothers who have long held that the more they make people wait in line and the more humiliations they subject them to, the more they can justify their salaries. And while I wouldn’t want to bring up the current budgetary problems in Sacramento, I’m sure we could make these logjams move a little less like molasses if we were paid a living wage. Just a thought.”
The law was passed after intense lobbying by Mothers Against Dumb Driving, and S.M.A.R.T. (Single Matrons Against Retarded Transpor-tation).
It was opposed by YTYSM (You Think Your So Smart!) an organization dedicated to ending discrimination in the workplace on the basis on non-performance.
YTSYM plans to have demonstrators at the first Valley Center checkpoint.
“It’s bad enough that workers are required to be on time and do their jobs without mistakes. Now they are making it harder for us to get to work by making us know how to drive! It’s unfair!” said a spokesman for the group.
Officer Brownstain explained that CHP hopes to use the checkpoints as a way of improving public relations with local residents.
“We know that we’ll have folks as a captive audience so we might as well have a good time. We’ve approached the Chamber of Commerce and Chamber President Verle Yoder suggested that we use the opportunity to host a Sundowner.”
April Fool.
The Teacher Parent Clubs (TPC) hosted a “Letter Signing Day" on March 26. They asked concerned parents and voters to sign three pre-approved legislative letters relating to the budget crisis in Sacramento. More than 3,000 letters were signed! They will mail all letters out in coming weeks. See story inside.
The first of a series of interviews with candidates for Honorary Mayor of Valley Center.
This year’s candidates to succeed Doug “Doc” Dechairo as Honorary Mayor of Valley Center have been announced.
They are: Robin Collins, representing the Valley Center Vaqueros; Chelsea Good, representing the VC Rotary Club; Ron McCowan, representing the Valley Center Chamber of Commerce and Phyllis Kamps, representing the VC Women’s Club.
The Roadrunner interviewed Phyllis Kamps this week, who is enthusiastic about representing her club and has already decided what reforms she’s going to undertake if she’s elected.
First off, she’s going to campaign under the name: Miss Catfish Annie, which is appropriate, since she is the owner of the Lake Wohlford Cafe, where one of their biggest sellers in the Friday night catfish fry (with hushpuppies!).
“I was trying to pick something Western-sounding and Miss Catfish is like Miss Kitty (a former mayoral candidate) and my middle name is Ann, so it just got thrown in.”
But just because her campaign name is a fish doesn’t mean that her campaign is going to stink or be fishy in any way, according to her campaign manager, Donna Weldon.
Mrs. Weldon has successfully managed several political campaigns, although if pressed we wouldn’t be able to name them. She intends to use her vast knowledge of the community to put together a winning strategy for her newest client. She has already thought up and rejected several fund-raising ploys, such as a catfish sushi feast.
A more likely scenario is a casino night fund-raiser at the cafe. Whatever she comes up with will be announced here first!
“I’m going to have a blast with this,” announced Miss Catfish Annie. “I’m looking forward to riding in the parade as mayor.”
If elected she will immediately take steps. She will also guarantee that everyone has a good time at Lake Wohlford and catches a fish on their fishing pole.
A resident of Valley Center for 13 years, Miss Catfish Annie is married to “Smoky” Kamps and lives in Paradise Mountain Estates. She is active in the VC Women’s Club, and California Restaurant Assn.
She has owned the Lake Wohlford Cafe since October of ‘06.
“I’m very busy and I have a lot of fun,” she says. Sometimes she serves. Sometimes she cooks. “You have to do serving and cooking and even dishwashing upon occasion as an owner,” she told The Roadrunner.
“Friday nights we have karioke and all you can eat catfish. On Saturday nights we have live music,” she said.
“I’m hoping to become mayor and to earn lots of money for the VC Women’s Club because the money is for women’s scholarships in Valley Center.”
Docents are needed at the VC History Museum on Saturdays for two to three hours. Marge Deskovick will train you. Call her at 749-8278.
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
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