The 7th annual Valley Center Stampede Rodeo, sponsored by the VC Optimist Club, will be held on Friday, May 23 & Saturday, May 24 at Bates Nut Farm.
The rodeo committee is hard at work on the planning stages to bring Valley Center the best rodeo event yet.
They are: Pat Helly, Joyce Holmes, Geraldine McHugh, Dale Misner, Elton Howerton, Shawna Whitaker, Robin Collins, Jay Collins, Jane Rockenmacher, Brad Lesperance, Bob Snow, Ray Winger, Jim DeGaine, Brett Francis, Lisa Francis, Billy Wagner and Madelyn Wagner.
This year’s main sponsors are Rincon Band of Indians, Valley Center Wireless, KSON Radio 97.3 and 92.1, Markstein Beverage (Budweiser Beer), Pauley Equipment and Clairemont Equipment.
The Bronze sponsor this year is the Pauma Band of Mission Indians.
The V.I.P. sponsor will be Fat Ivor’s Rib Rack, famous for its delicious mouth-watering ribs.
Sponsors are always needed and welcomed. It is not too late to get a sponsorship package, if interested in being a rodeo sponsor and having your name advertised to thousands of people, contact Joyce Holmes at (760) 445-1723 or email her at Joyce@shoemakerrealty.com.
All rodeo proceeds go directly to the Valley Center Optimist Club who will present scholarships to two hard working high school seniors for volunteering to work at the rodeo. The Optimists also provide local schools with needed funds for their sporting programs.
If you would like to volunteer to help out with the rodeo or know of a high school senior who would be interested, contact Holmes (at the same numbers).
After the Western Days parade on Saturday, you are invited to mosey over to the rodeo grounds at Bates.
There will be plenty of food booths and vendor booths to view. For booth information contact Robin Collins (760) 644-3907 or email her at Rcpetservice@aol.com.
The rodeo will begin on Friday, May 23 with the opening rodeo ceremony starting at 7 p.m. Saturday, May 24 the opening rodeo ceremony will start at 4 p.m.
The rodeo is sanctioned by the NPRA (National Police Rodeo Assn.) which will allow local cowboys and cowgirls to enter in seven of the events: Barrel Racing, Team Roping, Calf Roping, Bull Riding, Bronc Riding, and for the little buckaroos the ever popular Mutton Bustin’. All new to the rodeo event line up this year the rodeo will offer Junior Barrel Racing.
The Valley Center Optimist s will be on hand serving food and beverages.
Rodeo tickets go on sale the beginning of May at the following locations: In Escondido, at Hawthorne Country Store & Cowgirlz. In Valley Center, at Terry’s Hay & Grain, Valley Center Pharmacy and Bear Valley Farm Suppl, Boot Barn in Oceanside and in Ramona at Elston’s Feed Store.
For more information on the Valley Center Stampede Rodeo log on to www.Valleycenterrodeo.com or call Geraldine McHugh at 749-1857.
Bill Kvitli has, ever since he became a teacher 14 years ago, been the go-to guy at the various Valley Center-Pauma school campuses where he has served, including the upper and lower elementary schools, Lilac School and the Adult Education School.
Kvitli, a Primary School teacher, was chosen recently as the district’s Teacher of the Year.
When he was given the award Kvitli said: “It’s not for anything that I did that you gave me this, because I didn’t do it alone. I had everyone who is at the primary school there helping me. Because of them we at the primary school are receiving this plaque this year. I couldn’t work with better people.”
If you ask his coworkers they will say that he was honored because he’s wonderful with kids. Parents love him. He listens. He goes above and beyond the call of duty. He’s been on every committee in the district. He loves what he does and it shows.
Kvitli became a teacher late in life. He at first managed a wholesale produce company.
“I always knew that someday I would end up teaching. I got older and decided if I made a change I would have to do it soon.”
He called the VC school district and asked to sit in on a classroom. That turned out to be Patty Christopher’s first grade classroom. He ended up observing her one day a week for a year.
“I decided that was what I wanted to do,” he recalls.
After he finished student teaching he got a call from then Supt. Jeff Mulford telling him that he didn’t want Kvitli to go anywhere else.
“When Dr. Mulford hired me one thing he liked was that I had life experience and I wasn’t coming here as a young person never having experienced anything,” he recalls.
Kvitli likes “seeing the light bulb when it comes on, when they really start to ‘get it.’ The kids are so responsive to learning. I’ve taught kindergarten through sixth grade. It doesn’t matter what their age, the majority are excited to learn. Really grabbing them is what I like.”
Last year the Primary School qualified to apply to be apply as a California Distinguished School, although it has not yet learned whether it has been so named.
As Kvitli explains it, “To qualify to apply your school has to have met every ADI goal. All your ethnic and socioeconomic groups must have met the goals. Then the list comes out and you qualify to apply.”
The school had met the criteria before but because it was a K-2 school it couldn’t apply. That changed last year. The requirements are now based more on standards based education.
“They wanted to honor schools like ours that think differently and have different set ups,” says Kvitli.
Kvitli and Susan Barry were picked to write the application. They had to answer 12 questions relating to standards based education and how the school meets the needs of all kids.
Writing the 40-page paper became quite a task, and opened Kvitli’s eyes.
“It was terrific. We interviewed everyone on the staff, called in community members and asked basic questions about the school: what we were doing right and what we could improve. That alone was worth it.
“Hearing everyone n the community say different things that they remembered helped us remember things that we had done. There were so many things that we had forgotten,” he says.
He believes that what makes the primary school special is dedication to the kids.
“No matter who you talk to, the custodian, or the lunch lady, everyone is involved with the kids. All feel that they have a part in those kids’ education. We all take it very seriously.”
He adds, “Being a K-2 school helps us focus on the early childhood education, which I think makes a huge difference. All of us are on the same page because we are all dealing with kids who are beginning their education. At our school we’re specialists.”
He loves what he does and wants to keep doing it, although he has a degree in administration. “I like the classroom. The other may in the future, but right now I’m not ready to leave.”
Being well-rounded, Kvitli has outside interests. You’ll see him playing small parts in dramatic productions—Most recently he appeared in the the Valley Center Community Theatre’s production of It’s a Wonderful Life. He has also appeared in several student-produced films.
He also sings, paints, does stained glass and belongs to several book clubs.
The acting is, “just for fun,” he says. He has also won several awards for photography for photos that he took while on vacation in Africa and Egypt.
Like all local teachers he is being hit by the budget cuts.
“We have been running on a slim budget for the last few years and now to be told to take ten percent off that, but we are expected to keep up the standards. Will we do it? Yes, because we are professionals,” he says.
“But it makes it a lot harder to search for pencils and paper and paint and wonder ‘will intervention teachers be able to come back and how will we be able to serve the kids who these intervention teachers have done such a good job with?’ Being teachers we are resourceful and we will find a way. And since this is Valley Center: parents always come to the rescue, either through the classrooms or through the TPC (Teacher Parent Club).
Over the summer the school district will be replacing the grass at Jaguar stadium with artificial turf at a cost of about $500,000.
This was adopted at the last school board meeting as part of the district’s five-year deferred maintenance plan.
At previous sessions the board had determined that the greatest deferred maintenance priority was to do artificial turf at the high school stadium.
According to Gary Pay, maintenance supervisor for the district, they spend $52,000 annually on the football field, including water, equipment, mowers, aerators and stripping the field.
“It’s a very nice field but I have to keep people off it. You can’t maximize your field because if you grow grass you have to keep people off of it,” he said.
“Synthetic turf and an artificial track would be a tremendous upgrade for this campus,” said Pay.
With artificial turf the field could theoretically be used 24-hours a day, although obviously it won’t be.
But, at the very least, more teams will be able to use the field and it will be possible to transition from one sport to the next without delays for repairing the field, he said.
According to Pay the artificial turf is guaranteed for eight years but they usually last from 10–12 years.
Dr. Obermeyer told The Roadrunner: “We will use Developer Fees and Mello Roos fees to pay for this project. Developer and Mello Roos fees are restricted funds that can not be spent on general fund expenditures such as classroom supplies or salaries. However, the money that is saved from watering and maintenance will be about $52,000 annually and that is money that will stay in the general fund. We have applied for a grant from San Diego County Water Agency and should receive about $50,000 for the project.”
Wright, Vernon Hollis
March 8, 1955 to April 3, 2008
Rincon Tribal Chairman Vernon Wright died Thursday night of liver cancer. He was 53.
Vernon Hollis Wright peacefully passed away in his home surrounded by friends and family.
Chairman of the tribal government and member of the Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians, Mr. Wright was born March 8, 1955, in San Diego to Vernon Hollis Wright and Beverly Jean Constantino. His mother was Luiseño Indian.
As a young boy, Vernon spent his time exploring his native San Diego. After receiving an AA Degree from Palomar College in 1986, he began his artistic journey, designing gold and silver jewelry.
He graduated from the Gemological Institute of America in 1990, and maintained a studio in Escondido where he sold and displayed his jewelry and watercolor paintings. He also was an expert appraiser of antique and custom jewelry.
Art gave him much to love, including his wife Diana Hooper-Wright, also an artist. They met through their respective art galleries, located in the same commercial complex.
Each piece of his art was accompanied with the following message, “…Through the observations of the complexity of nature (as an artist, jeweler and gemologist), I attempt to communicate a simple beauty that touches and resonates within each of us, for within that resonation we share a simple yet complex connection.”
Vernon Wright communicated in a way that touched and resonated with people, and he did so with great humility, kindness, and compassion.
Serving the Rincon people as chairman since 2006, his calm demeanor and even-tempered leadership inspired trust and cooperation.
Mr. Wright listened to people. He really heard and paid attention to what people said and felt. His quiet, steady strength and wise counsel combined with an ability to mediate led to a healing and new focus on the quality of life on the reservation. This inspired progress, hope and optimism, even when the tribe was faced with disasters such as the devastation caused by the 2007 Poomacha fire.
“Vernon made a difference in all of our lives, especially the government by refusing to create or nurture turmoil or factions. He left his ego out of tribal business and under his leadership the tribal council was able to make tremendous progress in the short period that he was chairman. In fact, we got more done for the Rincon people and land than any council had accomplished in the past eight years, since gaming began to generate a positive flow of government funds,” said Bo Mazzetti, Rincon vice chairman,
He added, “I know I speak for the entire tribal council when I say it is an honor and a privilege to have served with him.”
Mazzetti explained that since Chairman Wright had served more than half of his term, there will be no special election and the council will remain the same until the 2008 elections.
Council member Stephanie Spencer calls Chairman Wright “a best friend and mentor,” noting, that he loved his family, his friends and tribal community. “In return, he was loved and will by sorely missed by all of us who knew him and enjoyed the pleasure of his company as a person, artist, and tribal leader.”
Survivors include wife Diana; brothers, Steven Stallings of Chandler, AZ, and William James Wright of San Diego; sister, Donna Lewis of San Diego; and numerous nieces and nephews.
There will be a wake Thursday, April 10 at 5 p.m. in the Rincon Tribal Hall, located at 1 West Tribal Road, Valley Center, CA, 92028.
Services will be held Friday, April 11, at 10 a.m., in the Rincon Tribal Hall. Flowers may be sent to Alhiser-Comer Mortuary, 225 Broadway, Escondido, CA 92025, or the Rincon Tribal Hall.
Donations may be made to the American Cancer Society for liver cancer research, San Diego County ACS, 2655 Camino Del Rio North, Ste. 100, San Diego, CA, 92108, or the American Liver Foundation, 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 603, New York, NY 10038-4810.
Although growers in the Valley Center Municipal Water District’s ag program must cut their use 30%, some have wondered if they might increase their use by buying domestic, i.e. non-ag, meters.
Sorry, no cigar, they were told—or words to that effect.
After the district received several requests from farmers to buy additional meters, it occurred to the staff that it had better go to the water board to clarify the district’s policy.
The board looked at the policy at Monday’s meeting.
The staff proposes a policy that while farmers can buy extra residential meters, that they can’t use any extra water.
As VC Municipal Water District Gen. Mgr. Gary Arant put it, “Yes, we will sell you another meter, but your allocation to your property remains the same.”
The policy wasn’t formally adopted at Monday’s meeting, but the board will vote on it at its April 21 meeting.
Some feel that, yes, farmers must cut 30%, but once the Metropolitan Municipal Water District (the big agency that sells water to all of Southern California) gets the water and turns around to sell it to residential users, they ought to be able to buy it back using residential/domestic meters.
Arant was forced to explain that the Met feels that when the farmers joined the Interim Agricultural Water Program, which gives them lower rates, that they are also obligated to accept cuts during periods of shortages.
The Met would strongly regard an attempt by farmers to buy water on residential meters as the district trying to get around its obligation to cut ag use.
Arant, who helped create the IAWP in the 1990s, reminded directors that the largely urban Met board does not hold agriculture in high esteem. It is a struggle to keep that board from ending the IAWP completely, he said.
“The IAWP program while it may be popular here is very unpopular in parts of the Met. While we find implementing this program difficult we need to adhere to the letter of the program,” he said.
As the single largest ag user in Southern California, VCMWD is being watched very closely.
“We know we are being watched and we know we will be audited. The concern we have is that if people start setting extra domestic meters and are willing to pay full price and Met looks at our numbers and domestic deliveries go up disproportionately, it would figure out that people are paying full price and delivering it to their crops.”
The Met would consider that a circumvention of the program, he said. It would fuel an existing move among Met directors to end special ag pricing
Southern California is under pressure to cut water usage due to uncertainties with imported Colorado River water and a recent court ruling that requires that the California Water Project stop pumping whenever it threatens the Delta smelt.
The Met was authorized in the 1920s to build a water system to accommodate residential development. It was actually forbidden to build facilities for farming.
It sells water to ag users by designating it as “surplus.”
According to Arant, “The argument being made at the Met is that the ag program was established on the basis that there was surplus water, and now there is no surplus water.”
Ag’s defenders argue that the farmers made a bargain, took their discount and because they are taking those cuts that gives the Met water to shift over to its residential and commercial customers without requiring them to take cuts.
By the end of the year it is estimated that the 30% cuts will provide 48,000 acre feet to the Met to redistribute.
“Compliance with the program is important for both the short term and the longterm of the program,” said Arant.
He noted that some growers say that they would pay full price in return for guaranteed supplies, while others say that if they must pay full price, “it’s over.”
Director Chuck Stone argued that once the Met gets the water from cutting farmers, that they out to be able to buy it back at regular prices.
“It strikes me that we, including our ag customers, or any other Met consumer are qualified to spend full price for the water as some guy who is going to put in ten houses. What I can’t see is why Met would care as long as they pay full price.”
Arant explained that the Met sees the discount program as an investment. About $76 million have been returned to farmers in this district in discounts in the past 14 years.
“In their view they have invested in this resource and now they want to draw it out and transfer it to their M&I (municipal and industrial) customers. They are looking for ways to shift the demand. They will look at the usage and say that water meters shouldn’t show that high usage of water unless its ag use,” he said.
Stone insisted, “I don’t think anyone argues that the farmers shouldn’t reduce their use, but now the water is back in the market place.”
Arant countered, “I happen to know from the general manager of the Met that they do care. The Met is demanding that the terms of the agreement be upheld.”
When Stone said that treats farmers differently from other buyers, Arant responded, “Yes, because they paid lower rates.”
Several local farmers showed up to ask that the district allow them to buy additional meters and buy water at the non-ag rate.
One man, Kenneth Hancock, who bought 7.5 acres three years ago claimed that he didn’t know he could have withdrawn from the ag discount program last year, although the district sent letters to all ag customers.
He wants a new residential meter, but he doesn’t want to be limited to his current allocation.
Hancock attacked Arant: “I hope you sleep tonight knowing that you work for the Met, because you sure aren’t working for your constituents.”
Director Merle Aleshire answered, “I’m not saying it’s fair, but I don’t know of any better way.”
Director Bob Polito said the district has to live with the rules it has been given.
Arant got hot at the accusation. “I’m not trying to protect the Met, I’m trying to protect the ag program, without which there would not still be any agriculture in this community,” he said.
He said that if the ag discount program goes away, then the next thing he would hear from farmers would be, “ ‘I can’t afford to pay full price for the water.’ In this policy all we are trying to do is protect the program for this community. If we don’t live within the allocation we are penalized. For every acre foot we go ever, next year our allocation is reduced.”
One farmer, Ben Holtz objected to the policy, which he said discriminates against farmers. Under this policy ag won’t be able to ever expand, he said.
He proposed that the Met adopt a new program that would charge each water user a surcharge, which could then be used to lower ag rates by building more pipelines.
He called the current shortage, “a plumbing problem.”
He added that the best thing for farmers would be to end the IAWP program.
Aleshire commented, “You have piqued our interest in whether we should get out of the program. The policy favors development and not ag, and ag will have to figure out how to get by with less water or less acreage than they are used to.”
Polito commented, “I like the program. I like the discount. Without it I have a hard time of foreseeing a future. I’m not ever going to get that thirty percent back, so I take out my trees. I’m going to have a smaller operation but I’ll keep farming.”
“What recommendation would you give me, the younger generation of ag?” asked Holtz.
“I wouldn’t want to give you a recommendation for Southern California. Maybe Mexico or Chile,” said Polito.
Richard Lederer, renowned as the Way With Words radio personality, will be guest speaker at the Friends of the Valley Center Library’s annual meeting May 4 at 4 p.m. at the library.
His program will be entitled “Fascinating Facts About Our Presidents.”
Lederer will offer a treasury of facts about our American presidents: their feats, fates, families, foibles, and firsts. You'll have fun learning a lot about our presidents' lives, their accomplishments, and their roles in American history. All with a bit of fun tossed in.
Lederer is the author of more than 30 books about language and humor, including his best-selling Anguished English series and his current book, Presidential Trivia: the Feats, Fates, Families, Foibles, and Firsts of Our American Presidents. Dr. Lederer’s syndicated column, “Looking at Language,” appears in newspapers and magazines throughout the United States.
He has been elected International Punster of the Year and been profiled in magazines as diverse as the New Yorker, People, and the National Enquirer, and he is Verbivore Emeritus on National Public Radio’s A Way With Words.
Lederer will be signing his new book at this event.
The afternoon is free and open to the public. Reservations are suggested by leaving a message at: (760) 749-4371.
The Valley Center Library is located at 29200 Cole Grade Road.
Nicky Lovejoy, treasurer of the VC History Museum, displays thermometer which shows that the endowment fund has reached 58% of its goal. Donations and pledges totaling $146,000 have been made by individuals, local service clubs and charitable foundations. The fund, known as the Guardian Fund, will ensure that the museum has future operating revenues.
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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