Crime Drops 16% Despite City's Growth

Tulare - Despite a growing population, serious crime dropped nearly 16 percent in Tulare during the first six months of 2007.

The Police Department reported 1,741 cases of what the federal government considers Part I crimes, which include homicide, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, theft and vehicle theft. That is 330 fewer cases than reported in the same period in 2006.

The most dramatic decrease was in vehicles thefts, which went from 289 in 2006 to only 83, which Police Chief Roger Hill said was the result of several factors, including cooperative efforts with other agencies, public awareness and the hiring of more police officers.

Other drops as reported to the U.S. Department of Justice were as follows:

·  Burglaries, 345, down 18.2 percent from 422.

·  Assaults, 445, down 7.5 percent from 481.

·  Grand thefts, 813, down 2.5 percent from 834.

The following increases also were reported: four homicides, up from two; 13 rapes, up from seven; and 38 robberies, up from 36.

The overall drop in crime naturally pleases Hill.

“It’s kind of a double benefit if your population is growing and you’re enjoying a drop in the crime rate,” he said.

Tulare saw an 8.8 percent population increase in the past year—attributed in part to annexations of county islands—and now has 55,935 residents, according the official state estimates. The population five years ago stood at 46,250.

The severe drop in auto thefts came as the California Highway Patrol and local police departments in Fresno, Tulare and Kern Counties made a concerted effort to address the problem by targeting chop shops as well as car thieves, Hill said.

In addition, the public has become aware of the risk of leaving cars running and unattended for even a couple minutes, he said.

“They [car thieves] would cruise around and see a car running in a driveway and jump in and drive off,” he said. “That was becoming very common.”

The hiring of more police officers, the result of voter approval in 2005 of a sales tax increase for public safety and road repair, is another factor believed to have contributed to the overall slowing of criminal activity.

“We always believe additional police presence has a beneficial effect, but it’s hard to quantify that,” Hill said.

Capt. Wes Hensley recalled times when he was a watch commander on the graveyard shift that he worked with only four other officers to patrol the city.

“Now, most of the time, we have a sergeant and seven officers,” Hensley said.

With the increase staffing, officers have time to do more than race from call-to-call, he said. They can take time to do preventative patrols and talk to people on the street.

The department has 26 more approved sworn positions in the current fiscal year, which began July 1, than it did before the City Council decided to beef up the then 49-member police force in early 2005.

Not all new positions are filled, but progress continues to be made, Hill said.

Seven officers who recently graduated from the police academy are under going field training and should be working as patrol officers in about 10 weeks, he said.

“We’re running abreast of crime right now—not chasing it—and, hopefully, soon we’ll actually get in front of it,” he said.

A major focus of the Police Department has been drugs and gangs and that will not change, Hill said.

“That is the largest concern regarding the community’s safety,” he said.

The department also is continuing its effort to rid the area immediate west of the Union Pacific Railroad tracks of blight and misdemeanor behaviors such as prostitution, soliciting for prostitution and being under the influence of drugs, Hill said.

“We’re not going to solve the social problem, but we want to pretty much get it off our streets,” he said.

He and others, however, said the effort will not do much good if misdemeanor offenders are not required to do jail time.

The city has been talking with Tulare County Sheriff Bill Wittman about the possibility of renting unused beds at the new jail to hold the city’s misdemeanor offenders, who are often released immediately after they are booked, because the county cannot afford to fully staff the entire facility and the beds it can staff are needed for more serious offenders.

The likelihood of this happening, however, appears slim.

“What we think is it’s probably not an easy row to hoe [for the county],” City Manager Darrel Pyle said, who explained the county is concerned about its liability if all misdemeanor offenders are not treated the same.

Pyle, Hill and others report talks are continuing with the county and others about ways to address the issue, which is not unique to the city or county.

“Everyone understands the problem and we’re all trying to diligently find some resolve to our county’s and all of our problems,” Hill said.

City officials were upset in early July when police arrested five women on prostitution and drug use charges and seven men for soliciting prostitution and all but one were released on a citation when they got to the county jail.

“We need incarceration [for misdemeanor offenders],” Hill said. “We’re spending a lot of time, a lot of resources and a lot of effort for very little return and the community is fed up.”

The City Council received a letter from Tulare resident Pat Hillman about the same time as the prostitution sweep, reporting that members of the First Congregational Church were concerned about criminal activity in the neighborhood of the church and near the tennis courts in Centennial Park.

Since then, Hillman said, she and others have noticed a change for the better.

“The police surveillance has really increased,” she said. “I think they’ve really gotten on it. It was like instantaneous.”

A special team of officers in the department has been working in the area immediate west of the railroad tracks between Cross and Inyo avenues and extending five or six blocks west, Hill said.

“We have put high visibility effort in that immediate area and we have already seen a reduction in the suspicious activity that was there,” he said, adding that code enforcement and redevelopment officials have targeted the same area in an effort to eliminate blight and improve the quality of life.

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Lawsuit: Hospital Violates Latino Voting Rights

Tulare - Seven Tulare residents have filed a lawsuit charging the Tulare hospital district is in violation of the California Voting Rights Act of 2001 because board members are elected in a way that dilutes the Latino vote.

The lawsuit filed Aug. 10 in Tulare County Superior Court was prepared by Joaquin G. Avila, a reknown voting right attorney who has handled more than 60 of these cases, assisted with the writing of the state’s legislation and testified in Washington, D. C. regarding the federal voting rights law.

Members of the Tulare Local HealthCare District board are currently elected at-large, a method the lawsuit said prevents the district’s Latino residents, who comprise 47.3 percent of the population, from electing candidates of their choice or influencing the outcome of elections.

Despite a large Latino population, no Latino currently sits on the hospital board and only one, Victor Gonzalez, has served on the board since 1982, which the lawsuit said indicates a lack of access to the political process.

Gonzalez and another incumbent lost their election bids in November 2006, when voters elected two doctorsone who is East Indian and the other African-Americanto the board.

The lawsuit asks a judge to first declare a violation of the act and then to require the hospital district to establish district-based elections or another method to remedy the situation.

“We haven’t evaluated it, so at this stage I don’t have a comment,” said Dan Dooley, the hospital’s legal counsel.

Avila said preliminary research of voter data indicates instances of racially polarized voting in the 1994, 2000 and 2006 elections.

“There are statistical procedures that are utilized that look at voting behavior in predominantly Latino precincts compared with those in non-Latino precincts,” he said. The lawsuit notes the Latino population is located primarily in the southwestern and southernmost portions of the Tulare hospital district. The plaintiffs, in a prepared statement, said current board members all reside in eastern Tulare.

Avila said the state’s Voting Rights Act, unlike the federal government’s, does not require plaintiffs to demonstrate that  it is possible to create a Latino-majority district in order to prevail in a case.

Rosalinda Avitia, a 40-year Tulare resident and one of the seven plaintiffs, said she contacted Avila after she attended a couple hospital board meetings, in one instance to talk about the district’s mobile van which serves South County residents.

“I feel very concerned about where the hospital’s going or where it’s not going,” Avitia said.

Other plaintiffs in the suit are: Grace Calderon, Sigi Corral, Jacinto (Jack) Gonzalez, Demetrio Lopez Gudino, Jose Morin and Elizabeth Valencia.

Avila said his clients want the district to have a new voting method in place in time for the 2008 election.

Designated districts are not a new concept in Tulare County, where candidates in the  Kaweah Delta District Hospital, the Board of Supervisors, Visalia Unified School District and in all public entities in Dinuba run for the seat assigned to the area in which they live.

The change in Dinuba came after Avila filed cases against five public entities, including the Alta Hospital District, which has since ceased operations. The case did not go to trial.

Voting districts were considered in Tulare in the early 1990s, but rejected.

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Tulare - Music is one of the hallmarks of Patricia Hillman's life and a gift she has generously shared with the community, which is why the Tulare County Symphony League will honor her at its annual luncheon on Oct. 20.

“She has made such a contribution to music,” said Carleta Heumann, co-chair of the luncheon, which is held to raise scholarships for students. “She was one of the founders of the league and of the symphony itself; and she has promoted music in the schools. For all she's done, she certainly deserves to be honored.”

Hillman was “one of the main movers” who made the symphony possible, said Robert Cole, who organized and directed the symphony, which gave its first concert in April 1960 in Tulare.

“She was so great, not only in participating in the orchestra but helping me find other people to make it work and make it a community affair that was broadly based,” said Cole, now director of Cal Performances at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Everybody knew her, liked her and trusted her,” he said. “We've stayed friends for many years.”

Drummer Girl

Hillman and her sister, Eleanor Heiskell, grew up in a home filled with music.

Her mother, Margaret Heiskell, was a musician, who started playing the violin when she was seven years old.

“And she always sang,” Hillman said. “She taught elementary school and her students always sang, sang and sang.” Her father, John Heiskell, loved music too, “but he was strictly a listener.”

In 1933, when Hillman was five years old, Harold Bartlett came to Tulare and put together a student band. She and the late Jere Ramsey were taught to play the drums and became the band's mascots. Her sister, Eleanor, played the trumpet.

“She and I still play drum and bugle duets,” Hillman said.

When she was in fourth grade, she chose to play the flute, which she played at Cherry Avenue Middle School, Tulare Union High School and California State University, Fresno (where she also played drums), and later for the Tulare County Symphony.

“My mother was asthmatic, so she felt it was very important to have an instrument that you used your breath,” she said.

Hillman could not recall a time when she was growing up that she wanted to quit playing music.

“It was something that was really always a part of us,” she said. “I always loved to practice and it was fun. One of the advantages to being musical is it is something you can do all your life.”

She sees other benefits as well. Students who play with the band in school have a second family, she said.

“Kids want to be attached to their own families, but they also want to be attached away from their own families,” she said. “No matter how poorly you play, you're part of the group. It's an approved group where you can assert your own independence. I know music really helps kids all around.”

'A music town'

Hillman describes Tulare as “a music town.” When she was growing up “every kid in town was encouraged to play,” she said. “Almost everybody in school was involved in music.”

And decades later, when many school districts were eliminating music programs for financial reasons, Tulare kept its programs, said Hillman, who served 25 years on the Tulare City School District board of trustees and is currently president of the Tulare County Board of Education.

When she served on the city school board, she was always a voice for music, former Superintendent Bill Postlewaite said.

“She was not a single issue board member, but she was very interested in music and she was instrumental in us having a very good music program,” Postlewaite said. “She did what she could to make sure the district was going in the right direction.”

The symphony league's award could not go to a more deserving person, he said.

“She's just been a factor in a whole lot of activities that had a music theme behind them,” he said. “She was very active, for example, in restoration of the Tulare Community Auditorium.”

'Seems like cheating'

Hillman has also shared her musical talent in church. While growing up, she, her mother and sister would play for the Episcopal Church. She now attends the First Congregational Church, where she plays in the church orchestra at least five or six times a year.

“I just feel that God gave me this kind of gift and I enjoy sharing it as much as I can,” she said. “I think that's one way I can serve God and, in a way, it seems like cheating, because I enjoy it so well.”

Hillman is married to Dale Hillman and they are parents to a daughter and three sons, Honey, Scot, Bret and Kent, all but one of whom have played with the symphony. Son Kent is a professional musician who worked 13 years in the family's business before pursuing a career in music. He received a master's degree in May from North Texas University in jazz music.

“He's an excellent musician,” Hillman said.

All three of her sons were managers—did set-ups—for the symphony while growing up. And when they were too young to drive, orchestra manager Vern Kirschler, would drive them, she said.

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Year after Aug. 10 Fire Myers Ready to Rebuild

Tulare - A year after a devastating fire destroyed the downtown building housing California Office Liquidators, owner Lee Myers is gearing up to rebuild at the 227 South K St. Site.

Plans for a two-story building with balconies are expected to go to the Tulare Planning Commission for approval on Monday, Sept. 10.

“We’ll have the best seats in town for the parade,” said Myers, who decided to have functional balconies because “it adds a lot of character to the building.”

The building is designed to accommodate his business, and possibly a second on the first floor and another upstairs.

“We’re going to start doing some marketing,” he said.

The project will be a green build, using Logix bricks, which are insulated concrete blocks that serve as a form for poured concrete walls and keep buildings well-cooled in the summer and well-heated in the winter.

The blocks are also 10 times stronger than conventional brick, Myers said. “It’ll be the last building standing in Tulare.”

The project will also use photovoltaic energy, producing electricity from sunlight.

“I think it’s going to be one of a kind in Tulare County,” he said, adding he has not seen another commercial building here like it.

Tulare contractor Jeff Blagg will do the project.

Myers also said he hopes Olga Jordan, the out-of-town owner of the building to the north which was damaged but not destroyed in the Aug. 10 fire, will have improvements made in her building by time he’s ready to return to South K.

The fire, which was an accident, started in Myers building and he said their insurance companies have reached a financial settlement. Her building housed tenants who have relocated elsewhere in the downtown.

Having a fire destroy one’s business is a shock and Myers said he is proud of how resilient his family was in its aftermath.

“It’s always easy to roll over, but we were raised to pick ourselves up and go forward,” he said. “Life’s definitely a book being written and you can’t stop in the middle.”

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Conway Supporters Waiting for Announcement

Tulare - If she hasn’t already done so by the time you read this, Tulare County Supervisor Connie Conway’s supporters expect she soon will announce her candidacy for the state assembly seat now held by Bill Maze, R-Visalia.

Conway has filed a statement of intention with the Secretary of State’s office, signaling her desire to run for the 34^th Assembly District seat and she also has told several city and community leaders of her plans but has stopped short of a formal announcement.

Maze is completing his third two-year term in the Assembly and, unless term limit laws are changed, cannot seek a fourth term.

Robert W. Smith, another Republican who has worked as senior field representative for Maze in his Barstow office, also has filed a statement of intention with the state. He also has reported receiving $219,918 in contributions since Jan. 1.

Smith announced his candidacy in March and has lined up considerable support in San Bernardino County, where he worked 28 years in law enforcement before retiring in 2000.  Since then, he has worked for Maze and for the San Bernardino County Assessor.

The 34^th District is a large one, encompassing Inyo County and large portions of Kern, San Bernardino and Tulare Counties.

Smith, who has opened an office in Visalia, apparently was in the area recently seeking support from various city officials, including Tulare City Councilman Carlton Jones.

“It just kind of felt like my sister’s boyfriend was arguing with her at my house,” Jones said. “It just didn’t work. I really couldn’t hear what he was saying. He was trying to dog one of our own. I thought, man, you’re digging yourself a hole. And after I made it clear that I wasn’t interested in what he had to say, he still asked for my endorsement.”

Jones publicly endorsed Conway during the council’s Aug. 7 meeting, saying it is important to have someone locally hold state office, regardless if that person’s a Democrat or Republican.

He was surprised when Mayor Craig Vejvoda told him Conway had not publicly announced her candidacy. Vejvoda, who has said Conway has served as a role model for him, said he thought an announcement might be coming before too long.

Smith’s supporters have applauded his decision to announce early and begin lining up support because of the size of the district. Most of the 3 ½-pages of endorsements posted on Smith’s Web site appear to come from the San Bernardino County area.

Conway has represented the southwest corner of Tulare County, which includes Tulare, Tipton, Pixley, Earlimart, Alpaugh, Allensworth and Woodville, since 2001. She ran unopposed in 2004 and served as board chairman in 2005. Her father, the late John R. Conway, served on the Board of Supervisors in the 1980s and early 1990s.

During her board tenure, she has taken on leadership roles for the California State Association of Counties and is the organization’s immediate past president.

In 2005 the Governor named her co-chairman of the newly formed California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley and in 2007 she was appointed chairman. In February, the Governor also appointed her to the Public Employee Post-Employment Benefits Commission. She is also past president of the San Joaquin Valley Rail Committee.

Conway, who has described herself as “a worker bee,” was named the Tulare Chamber of Commerce’s 2006 Tulare Woman of the Year in recognition of her local contributions.

Prior to her board election, she served on the Tulare Redevelopment Agency board of directors. She also has been president of the Tulare City Historical Society, a trustee for the Tulare Hospital Foundation, a director for the International Agri-Center board and a chamber director. She was one of the founder’s of Leadership Tulare, the chamber’s training program for future leaders.

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