Twin Oaks Ready for Expansion

Tulare - A project in the works since Twin Oaks Assisted Living opened in 1999 is about to come to fruition.

With final state approval expected early next year, Magnolia Health Corporation will go out to bid on a 99-bed skilled nursing facility adjacent to Twin Oaks on the corner of Merritt Avenue and M Street, said Ken Moyle, chief executive officer of Magnolia Health Corporation.

The project, which needs an updated conditional use permit, will go before the Planning Commission Dec. 17. The permit is needed before the state gives its final approval, Moyle said.

That elusive approval from the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development should come in January, he said.  Magnolia has been working with OSHPOD since 2000, right after Twin Oaks Assisted Living opened.

 “It became an absolute nightmare,” Moyle said, explaining every time the state changed its lead architect, which happened three times, the project got delayed and Magnolia had to make changes.

Moyle said the facility – with both assisted living and nursing care on the same campus - will be the only one of its kind between Bakersfield and Fresno.

‘Good News’

  “This is something the Valley doesn't have, combined assisted living and convalescent [care],” he said.  He said this is good news for couples when one needs extended care that the nursing facility can provide and the other needs assisted living. With the new facility, both can live on the same campus.

 The new facility, about 35,000 square feet, will be constructed on the vacant lot south of the assisted living facility. It will be a separate facility and finish out the Twin Oaks complex.

 Moyle said the facility would employ 110 to 120 people, from registered nurses to housekeepers. “Everything you'd expect to see in a nursing home.”

 The new facility will be similar to Merritt Manor, which Magnolia owns and operates at the corner of Gem Street and Merritt Avenue. However, the new facility will be larger with a complete rehabilitation unit that is about four times the size of Merritt Manor's, Moyle said. Twin Oaks Rehabilitation and Nursing Center will provide both long- and short-term care.

Merritt Manor

Merritt Manor, which has 99 beds, will continue to operate.

 “We're very excited. The City Council is excited,” he said, noting most of the skilled nursing facilities in the area are at least 40 years old.  “It's been a long time since a facility has been built anywhere.” He said those using such facilities today have different and greater needs than whose who did 40 years ago and require more services.

  “We anticipate the majority of rehabilitation patients in the area coming to Twin Oaks,” Moyle said. While the facility will mostly house seniors, he said it could also take care of younger people with extended rehabilitation needs.

Magnolia hopes to complete construction of the one-story structure in six to eight months, he said. The project is expected to cost in excess of $6 million.

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Billy Long: Salvation Army's Faith-Filled Volunteer

Tulare - Capts. David and Ruth Scott remember the day 14 years ago when Billy Long showed up at the Tulare Salvation Army office and asked if he could help with Christmas.

When they put him to work ringing the Salvation Army bell—a paid job at the time - little did the Scotts realize Long would become a holiday fixture.

 Capt. Ruth Scott had foot surgery earlier this year and she said she lost track of the time until the door opened and Long walked in.

“Oh, no! It's Thanksgiving,” she said, realizing she had a lot of catching up to do.

Long shows up at the Salvation Army in September and volunteers through the New Year. “He's down here 14 to 16 hours a day with us six days a week,” David Scott said.

A few years after Long started ringing the Salvation Army bell, the Scotts decided they would no longer have employees, but Long stayed and continued ringing the bell anyway.

“I like helping people,” he explained.

When young people began to hassle Billy—who is handicapped because of an accident at birth—the Scotts put him to work inside the office, where he became Ruth's right-hand helper. He assembles kettles, fills boxes and performs a myriad of other tasks.

“He's majorly handicapped and he does more than our young strapping volunteers,” David Scott said.

Special Affinity

Ruth Scott, who was born in Mexico and has an accent, said she feels a special affinity with Long, because people sometimes dismiss them because they have trouble understanding them.

“People don't see the person inside,” she said. “They don't see how beautiful our Billy is. He has such a big heart.”

Long took care of his sick mother for many years before she died two years ago. “Talk about a faithful son,” Ruth Scott said.

Long, who has a delightful sense of humor, tells the Scotts that David is the captain, but Ruth is the general.

At the beginning of each work day, he and “the general” engage in a secret salute. He calls her “general” and she calls him “sergeant.” Then they pray

“We say, 'With the Lord's help we can do it,” Ruth Scott said.

At the end of the day, they repeat the ritual, except they conclude “we made it with God's help.”

Long agrees deeply with that sentiment. “Without God's help we cannot do nothing,” he said.

“That's one of the things I love about Billy,” Ruth Scott said. “He loves God so much.”

Heavenly Talk

The two talk about heaven a lot.

“Once in awhile, he asks, 'do you think I will be doing Thanksgiving in heaven?'” she said. He also teases her that in heaven maybe he will be the general and she the sergeant.

“I love him like my second son, my best friend, like a brother,” Ruth Scott said.

Long is an “extremely committed Christian,” David Scott said. “He takes great joy when he sees us and say, 'my eye's on the mission.'”

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Council Oks Further Motor Sports Complex Talks

Tulare - While consultants continue to work on an Environmental Impact Report, Tulare city officials and developers of a racetrack complex proposed for 700 acres adjacent to the International Agri-Center are trying to hammer out development and reimbursement agreements.

The public got a glimpse of what those talks entail last week when City Attorney Steve Kabot asked the City Council for direction regarding five concepts relating to the financing, construction and on-going maintenance of public improvements, the payment of development impact fees and the enhancement of city revenues.

Kabot emphasized that he was only asking for permission to explore the concepts with the developer.

 “Nothing in this in any way is committing this council or the city to this project…,” he said.

In a 4-1 vote, December 4,, the council amended its memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Tulare Motor Sports Complex, a limited partnership that involves Fresno developer Bud Long, and gave Kabot and City Manager Darrel Pyle the go-ahead to further explore the possibilities of:

• Applying a portion of the new sales, property and transient occupancy taxes and other revenues such a mammoth project would generate for the city toward the impact fees the developer must pay. The city has worked out similar agreements with other developers.

• The developer building out all public improvements in the area and the city reimbursing him over time for costs incurred that were not directly related to the motor sports project. Kabot called this “a very new and different concept.”

• Forming a Community Facilities District with the developer/property owner to help finance a portion of the public improvements and ongoing maintenance and operations costs. This tool, which has been used elsewhere in the state, has not been tried in Tulare.

· Adding a surcharge to all tickets sold for Motor Sports complex events as a new source of revenue for the city. Other cities with major sporting events do this, Kabot said.

· Requiring an agreement that the developers designate Tulare as the point-of-sale of all purchases so the city can reap the sales tax benefits. A similar agreement exists with Land O' Lakes, Kabot said.

Sierra Club

Prior to its vote, the council heard comments from several people, including Tulare resident John Kamansky, who read a portion of a letter from Gordon Nipp, vice chairman of the Kern Kaweah Chapter of the Sierra Club. Nipp called upon the council to authorize a study to determine what a motor sports complex will cost the city to provide services.

“For many projects, benefits are impacted or outweighed by costs,” Nipp wrote. “In our opinion, the MOU should state explicitly that the financial analysis will estimate costs as well as benefits.”

Visalia resident Ron Hansen, a College of the Sequoias biology teacher, offered to provide the city with information about habitat issues in the area of the project, including a band of oak trees and the presence of Swainson Hawk nests near Elk Bayou.

Tulare resident Tony Nunes, a neighbor who is opposed to the proposed complex, told the council he's looking forward to learning the findings of the environmental impact report.

While the council and city staff have told him they are maintaining an “open mind” about the project, Nunes said he does not find that to be the case.

The way staff has worked with the developers on this project is no different from the way they've worked with other developers, Kabot said. He also said he, the city manager and the city staff have made certain that the city has spent no city funds on behalf of the developer.

The city did hire and is paying a consultant to do the $250,000 EIR, but the developer is reimbursing the city from an account set up at Citizen's Bank.

Number of Races

Thomas Wilson, another Tulare resident, asked about the developer about the number of races that would be held at the tracks. He also asked whether such a project was really needed to “boost this economy.”

Developer Bud Long was in the audience and Councilman Carlton Jones asked him if he would brief the council on his conversations with NASCAR officials and what has occurred in the year since the proposed project was first announced.

Long said he could not elaborate on what has transpired until later in the process.

“It makes it hard for me to answer questions from people,” said Jones, who asked Kabot if it was normal for a developer at this stage in the process to say, “We don't have anything to tell you.”

Kabot said it is normal and he used the outlet center development as an example.

“We never knew as we went along who their tenants were going to be,” he said.

Developers often have tentative agreements in place before they get city approval for their projects, but they normally do not say who those tenants are until they have a final agreement in hand, Kabot said.

Mayor Craig Vejvoda said he favored exploring the concepts outlined by Kabot, maintaining it would be “a tremendous disservice to the whole community” if the city did not explore them.

“We can't lose in this case—they're putting all the money up,” Councilman Richard Ortega said.

Macedo said he will continue to oppose the project.

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TU to Honor Roger Nixon

Tulare - Composer Roger Nixon sometimes ditched school as a Tulare Union High School student, but it wasn't because he didn't like his teachers or classmates. He liked them, but he loved playing the clarinet more.

“I took it very seriously,” said the 1938 graduate who is expected to return here Tuesday to be inducted into Tulare Union's Hall of Fame. I practiced four hours a day…I was just obsessed with it.”

School officials weren't pleased and at one point even threatened to put his mother, Betty, a gifted thespian who did not object to these practice sessions, in jail.

“They weren't trying to be mean,” Nixon said. “They just wanted me to obey the law as it existed.”

Nixon's love of music has led to a long and illustrious career as a composer and professor of music at California State University, San Francisco, for 30 years until his retirement in 1990.

 His compositions for band, wind ensembles, orchestra, opera, keyboard, and chamber and choral groups are played throughout the world and his musical excellence has earned him a Phelan Award, the Neil A. Kjos Memorial Award, the ABA/Ostwald Band Composition Award and five grants from the National Endowment of the Arts.

Early Years

Nixon, who was born in Tulare on Aug. 8, 1921, to Posey G. and Betty D. Nixon, began his formal music education on the clarinet with Harold Bartlett, a teacher at the old Central Grammar School, where the Tulare Historical Museum now sits.

“He was a very gifted teacher—a clarinet teacher—and he was very eager to show Tulare he could teach music,” Nixon said.

Bartlett also wanted to teach his students to compose music as well as play and had Nixon and another student

try their hand at composing.

“It turned out my piece was pretty good for being an eighth grader,” Nixon said. “I conducted the school orchestra in my own piece at the spring concert and I was very taken by this experience. It was quite a soul-inspiring experience for me.”

Nixon, who had started out playing the bass drums in the middle school orchestra, switched to the clarinet because of Bartlett.

By time he reached high school, Nixon, who was only 12 years old, was eager to learn more about music theory but couldn't find anybody to teach him harmony, so he went to the public library where he found a rudimentary harmony book.

“I proceeded to do all the exercises and to teach myself,” he said.

And, of course, he continued practicing the clarinet.

“When I was a senior, I got first chair in the all-state orchestra,” he said. “It paid off in my opinion.”

He attended summer school in Pacific Grove from 1934-1938, playing with the band and orchestra. It was here he met Frank Mancini, a clarinetist with the John Philip Sousa Band, who was later to become Nixon's teacher and mentor at Modesto Junior College, where he enrolled following graduation.

College Years

While at Modesto College, Nixon composed a piece for a woodwind quartet which won a national contest for junior college music students. He was strongly encouraged by his music theory teacher and the principal adjudicator for the contest, Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, to attend the University of California, Berkeley.

At Cal, he enrolled in the composition program and was allowed to attend graduate seminars led by English composer Arthur Bliss (Nixon said he was “Sir Arthur” yet) and Swiss-Jewish composer Ernest Bloch, two musicians who were especially influential in his career.

During World War II, Nixon enlisted with the Navy and after a stint on a ship that patrolled the entrance to the harbor near Casablanca, he become involved with more dangerous exercises in Italy, France, Panama Canal, Japan and Pearl Harbor.

“I almost got killed four times in war,” he said. “It was a broadening experience…I went in there as a boy, but came out a man.”

He said the war experience had no influence on his music.

“I was just lucky I didn't get injured or killed, because it was very hazardous duty,” he said, explaining that he was involved with clearing underwater mines.

 He remained in the Naval Reserve for 12 years following his discharge from active duty.

Return Home

When he returned to Tulare, Nixon worked for his father at Leggett's Department Store in downtown Tulare. While here he conducted the United Methodist Church choir, which he said “was the best in town.”

He was home for about 1 ½ years when his father became ill and sold the department store.

“I wasn't ready to take it [the store] on,” Nixon said. “He thought it was better for me to do music, so I went to Berkeley to do graduate work.” He earned his master's degree and later his doctorate from Cal.

He taught at Modesto Junior College from 1951 to 1959 and in the fall of 1960 joined the Music Department at San Francisco State.

Nixon composed music throughout his teaching career and has continued to do so in retirement.

His career includes many highlights, but one that stands out for him was meeting Josef Krips, who conducted the San Francisco Symphony from xxxx to xxxx.

Krips conducted the premiere of two of his works—“Viola Concerto and “Mooney's Grove Suite.”

In an essay he wrote for the 2007 collection “Composers on Composing for Band,” Nixon found Krips “most encouraging.” He was a conservative musician “who favored 'real music' and mine seemed real to him,” he said.

“I suppose one of the nicest things that happened with my band music was the University of Michigan took the first piece I wrote for band to Russia,” he said, adding the band was the leading university band in the country at that time.

“This carried a lot of wallop,” he said. “It helped tremendously. It established me in the band world as one of the leading composers for bands.”

Bicentennial Celebration

Nixon helped to write and arrange music for the American Bicentennial celebration in 1976.

Bill Ingram, who nominated Nixon to the Tulare Union Hall of Fame, was director of the high school's band at that time. He recalled the J.C. Penney company assembled a collection of American musical compositions that was distributed without cost to 30,000 school and musical organizations. One of the pieces was Nixon's “Music for a Civic Celebration.”

“It said Roger A. Nixon, graduate of Tulare Union High School,” Ingram said. “I couldn't find anybody who ever heard of him. After I read about him and started learning more about him, I found out his music is played all over the world. I couldn't believe it.”

An accident aboard a ship crossing the English Channel almost put an end to his composing career in 1987, Nixon said.

He struck his head on a chandelier and the impact triggered a serious viral infection that caused him to lose his hearing in his left ear and permanently impaired his balance.

Left with a constant and infuriating ringing in his ear, he could not compose for several years.

“Then a glorious thing happened,” Nixon said.  He went to a concert by the San Francisco Choral Artists for whom he had written music before his accident.

“I sat in just the right place in the church, where I could get the full sound of the choir in my good ear,” Nixon said. “I was sitting there quietly in the church, so my blood pressure went to normal and the tinnitus calmed down…it just sounded like angels from heaven and it was glorious.”

California Experience

Realizing it was possible to hear again if all the elements and ambience were right, he went back to composing.

A good body of Nixon's work reflects the California experience.

He wrote a centennial piece for the city of Modesto called “Festival Fanfare -March,” which captures the pageantry of the Tournament of Roses Parade and other California festivals, is often performed by military bands, Nixon said.

 That piece, along with “California Jubilee,” “Fiesta Del Pacifico” and “Chamarita!” –which reflects the imagery and joyful spirit of the Holy Ghost celebrations held each year in Portuguese-American communities throughout California - are included in a 1997 recording featuring Nixon's music as played by the U.S. Air Force Band of the West.

Performing Nixon's works is not for the faint of heart, Ingram said.

“His music is tough, but it's good. It takes a well-rehearsed group to play his music.”

That's why university honor bands or wind ensembles are more likely to play his work than high school bands, Ingram said.

Nixon and his wife, Nancy, live in San Mateo and he continues to write music.

“I'm 86 years old and I'm slowing down, so I've been trying to get a good music idea for the last two years and I'm not satisfied with what my guardian angel has provided,” Nixon said. “I have groups who will play my music if I write it.”

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Tulare Leaders Praise Gang Summit

by Rick Elkins

Tulare - Tulare officials were both concerned and pleased with last week's Tulare County Gang Summit.

The Summit brought leaders from throughout the county together to address the growing gang problem that seems to be out of control.

(See more on the summit in today's Valley Voice.)

“It was informative,” said Tulare Vice-Mayor Phil Vandegrift, admitting the problem is huge. “I feel overwhelmed. It's a scarier situation that any of us even want to believe. It's a total breakdown in our social mores.”

Tulare Sgt. Bryan Moore, who heads up the Police Department's gang unit, said the city has between 600 and 700 validated gang members. He said while northern [norteno] gang membership has remained steady, southern [sureno] gang numbers are rising.

Police are seeing an increase in crime, but it is not directly related to gangs, Moore said. He reported two of the city's six homicides this year were gang related.

He was pleased with the summit.

Up to Date

“It seemed like it was very up to date. It seemed like people were interested,” he said, adding any solution “is going to have to start with the family and the community.”

The department's crime unit consists of two supervising officers and six patrol officers who conduct one or two gang suppression details a month, but work the streets and neighborhoods every day.

“We have to stay on top of it. We have to have a rapport – which my folks do – with the people in the community,” he said.

The theme of the summit was intervention, getting to young people before they fall into the throes of gang life.

“With any intervention, we're going to have to get to these people when they are much younger, said Vandegrift, who attended the summit along with Mayor Craig Vejvoda and Council members Carlton Jones and Richard Ortega.

John Beck, superintendent of Tulare City Schools, was impressed by the summit, especially the number of people (1,600) who attended.

Action Needed

“I thought it was a good first step, bringing people together, to get the dialogue started,” said Beck, adding the turnout shows the need for action.

Vandegrift agreed:

“We admitted we have a problem. The focus was intervention. The trick is how we get these kids to stay away from gangs. I think yesterday [last Thursday] was pretty much an eye opener. It's sure not just Visalia's problem or Tulare County's problem, it's a community problem.”

Both men said there are already many groups, including the schools that are intervening and making a difference. Vandegrift said the trick now is how to get the agencies to work together and be more effective.

Beck said city schools are seeing more and more gang signs, but no significant rise in problems.

“It's something we deal with on a regular basis. The more informed we can be, the more we can inform parents and teachers, the better,” he said.

Beck added he has seen children getting involved in gangs earlier and earlier and that strictly enforcing the dress code has helped to minimize problems. However, it mostly shows up in the middle schools. Beck said they are seeing children with the same gang ties of their brothers and sisters when they went through the elementary schools years ago.

Hiding Gang Ties

He added that the children are now trying to hide their ties to gangs.

“They've become more sophisticated. They don't show their gang affiliation as much,” he said, adding staff will look at binders, book covers, anything that they might use to show their gang ties, a tactic stressed by Wayne Sakamoto of the San Diego Office of Education.

Mike Leoni, head of Tulare County Youth Services Bureau, said he thought the summit was good, especially the presentations, but hopes to see an effort to reach youth and those already involved in gangs.

Vandegrift agreed the schools, police and many others are doing good work, but more is needed.

“We need to be more informative. The community needs to not be afraid to call if they see suspicious activity. We need to unite the public to be more observant,” he said.

Tulare County District Attorney Phil Cline spoke of dead zones, neighborhoods where the gangs have taken control.

“If we can help stop that [gangs getting control] right now, that's important. We can enable people by making their neighborhoods safe,” said the vice mayor.

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