Land O'Lakes Plans $88 Million Upgrade

Tulare - Land O’Lakes is asking the redevelopment agency, the city and the county to help pay for major improvements to its downtown Tulare milk plant facilities.

The Minnesota-based company is looking to modernize plant facilities, some of which are 40 years old, says city manager Darrel Pyle. “They were considering modernizing some plants elsewhere but decided to do it in Tulare and we’re very glad they are moving forward here.”

The news could mean closure of some other LOL plants in the future as more capacity moves to the West Coast, according to sources.

The company has estimated the modernization will cost between $65 million and $88 million, according to agreements the City Council and Tulare Redevelopment Agency were to consider this week. LOL facilities are in the downtown Tulare Redevelopment Project Area.

“That would more than double the assessed value of the facility here [which is] at about $54 million,” says Pyle. “Right now the Tulare division is the largest in the Land O’Lakes chain. We like being the flag ship and we want to keep it that way.”

The company is asking local government to rebate a portion of the sales tax and property tax increases the project will generate.

According to the three proposed agreements, LOL would get:

· 50 percent of the county’s share of new property tax revenues the project is expected to generate over the next 25 years. The total is not to exceed $1.15 million. The agreement requires county approval and city officials expect the Board of Supervisors will consider the matter next week.

· 90 percent of the new tax revenues the project generates for the Tulare Redevelopment Agency. An estimate of what that might amount to was not available before deadline.

· 67.5 percent of the sales tax revenue it pays on new equipment purchases. The company is expected to spend not less than $35 million on new equipment, one of the agreements said.

“We think the community’s involvement will mean Tulare will remain the top Land O’Lakes milk plant in the county for another 40 years,” predicts Pyle.

The agreement calls for LOL to continue to employ in excess of 250 workers.

If the agreements are approved, it will not be the first time in recent history that local government has participated in a LOL project.

In 2000, the Redevelopment Agency agreed to give CPI 30 percentor a maximum of $5.5 million of the new property tax revenues that project generated in its first 15 years.

Pyle says discussions have led him to believe LOL needs to bring in new plant equipment that is more efficient and suggests the equipment will save energy as well as cut production costs, which will insure it remains competitive.

The company is anxious to get moving on the major building project and the city plans to expedite the project by jobbing out the plan check process.

A major new investment in LOL’s downtown facilities would come just months after it sold off its Cheese and Protein International (CPI) plant on Paige to Saputo for $216 million.

At the time sources told the Voice that LOL would likely pour some of that money back into its separate downtown facilities  four major processing plants that together are the nation’s largest milk receiving facility in the nation. One plant is largely vacant after Yoplait Yogurt left Tulare in 2004.

State incentives to build new plant capacity have increased in the past year with processors allowed to pay less to dairymen for the raw product based on the increasing cost to manufacture milk products in California. Tulare has another advantage. Large dairies of California offer a more productive atmosphere to expand and improve milk processing facilities vs. Midwest states like Wisconsin and Minnesota, where dairies are smaller and competition in the cheese business is greater.

Sources say it comes down to modernizing the aging Tulare facilities spread out over some 10 blocks of downtown or see future dairy profits dwindle.

Competition in California has heated up with Leprino, California Dairies, Saputo and now perhaps a new player, Blue Ribbon Cheese, each pouring millions into new Central Valley state-of-the-art producing facilities.

Not to be forgotten is LOL’s continuing obligation to process millions of gallons of milk every day from its patrons in an environment where milk production in California is going up in some months by double digit numbers (10 percent in July). The company needs to add capacity to keep up.

The trick for LOL will be to build the new facilities while continuing the process line of milk trucks that come to its front door every day to unload the oceans of milk that just keeps coming.

For Tulare, milk has always been job one and looks like it will continue.

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Tulare, We Did It! Let's Do It Again

Tulare - The turnout for this month’s Tulare Community Blood Drive, held in honor of the 343 New York City fire fighters killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center has organizers talking about replicating the effort next year.

The campaign to collect 343 pints of blood in memory of the firefighters drew 401 people to three Tulare sites and to the Central California Blood Center’s Visalia donor center, said Darla Silvera, donor recruiter for the blood center. She said she had no doubt the collection goal was reached.

“This was so successful and it was so heartfelt that we decided we’re going to follow Sept. 11, even if it falls on a Saturday and Sunday,” Silvera said.

The effort was spearheaded by the Tulare Rotary Club, Manuel Toledo AMVETS Post 56 and the Tulare City Fire Department.

“I don’t know if I have enough superlatives to describe it,” Tulare Mayor Craig Vejvoda, a Rotary Club member, said. “We may have stumbled on something the rest of the nation should know about. It was about the biggest, most successful blood drive the blood center has had.”

Getting more people to donate blood has been an on-going battle in Tulare, where the number of units collected at bi-monthly community blood drives has dropped to between 60 or 70, despite a population that has grown to about 55,000, Silvera said.

“We should be getting 200 [units] every eight weeks easily,” she said.

Blood bank officials and local organizers were thrilled that 102 of the donors—about 25 percent—were first timers, including many high school students.

“It’s very, very special to have that high a number,” Silvera said. “That just shows how many people felt reasons to come out. We had teenagers and people in their 60s and 70s donating for the first time.”

Getting high school students into the habit of donating blood will help blood center efforts tremendously, she said.

The Central California Blood Center is hoping that most of the first-time donors will become regular donors and that one day each community it serves will “totally take care of itself,” covering the amounts used at local hospitals, Silvera said.

When the Rotary Club was discussing how it might increase donations at its bi-monthly community drives, Ken Dodson, a member and a battalion fire chief, suggested tying this month’s drive to the Fire Department’s annual ceremony commemorating the 9-11 tragedy and to include the AMVETS in the campaign.

Rotary member Amy Benton-Hermann came up with a series of dramatic posters that addressed the three common reasons people give for not donating blood: too scared, too busy or too tired.

Benton-Hermann said she worried the posters, which used Sept 11-related photographs, might be “too edgy,” but organizers liked them and received only one complaint. That came from a woman who said she resented what she considered an effort to make her feel guilty.

The goal was not too make people feel guilty, but to give them another perspective, Benton-Hermann said.

Blood donors were given a sticker with the name of one of the 343 fallen firefighters, which several people remarked made their donation seem more personal.

Benton-Hermann said she ran out of time and almost didn’t make the stickers, but she is very glad she did.

“The little less sleep I got made it well worth it,” she said.

When blood drive organizers were planning the event, they learned Andy Isolano, a former New York City firefighter who responded to the Sept. 11 call, was living in Clovis, where he operates the New York Family Deli.

Vejvoda visited him and invited him to attend, which he readily agreed to do.

“My feeling is I can’t do enough for the people here,” Isolano said. “Literally, the people of Fresno and Clovis saved my life.”

For two years he traveled back and forth from New York to Clovis to participate in events in connection with the California Memorial Museum, which Pelco, a security company, erected to honor those killed in the terrorist attacks. He eventually decided to move to the Valley.

A New York firefighter from 1992 to 2003, Isolano said he had just gone off-duty on Sept. 11, 2001, and was still in the firehouse when word that a plane had crashed into the first tower was received.

The first firefighter who died was from his station, he said.

“We got there just as the second tower came down,” he said.

Many blood donors took time to greet Isolano and thank him for serving during that tragedy and for attending the blood drive.

During the Fire Department’s annual Sept. 11 memorial ceremony, Vejvoda said the blood drive was an attempt to say ‘thank you’ to those who served that day and also to those who serve in public safety organizations today and are “willing to go into a building that the rest of us want to come out of.”

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West Nile Claims Life of Betty Munger

Tulare - The deadly West Nile virus has claimed the life of a vibrant Tulare woman noted for her graciousness, love of family and her willingness to help her community in many ways.

Betty Munger, 86, died Sept. 6 at Tulare District Hospital, becoming the first Tulare County resident in 2007 to die from complications associated with the mosquito-borne virus. Nearly 200 West Nile-related deaths had been reported in California as of Sept. 11.

Mrs. Munger’s family took her to the hospital’s emergency room on Aug. 29 with a persistent headache and more aching than what she normally suffered from the arthritis she had had for years.

“I took a look at her and knew something was not right,” her daughter Mary Jane Barwick said.

Mrs. Munger’s condition involved a high fever and encephalitis, a general term that refers to an inflammation of the brain, but it was not until test results came back on Sept. 4 did doctors get confirmation West Nile virus was the cause, said Skip Barwick, Mrs. Munger’s son-in-law.

There is no specific treatment for the virus, which can be especially dangerous to people more than 50 years of age or to those whose immune system has been compromised, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

The Barwicks praised the care Mrs. Munger received at Tulare District Hospital

“My mother was a big advocate for Tulare district and sat on the hospital board for a number of years,” Mary Jane Barwick said. “The care in the emergency room and in the hospital … everyone was just was wonderful.”

Her husband agreed. “We were exceptionally pleased with the quality of care,” he said.

Aside from the arthritis, her mother was generally healthy, Mary Jane Barwick said. “We always said she would live to 110, because her vital organs were in such great shape.”

That the West Nile virus, “of all things,” should strike her mother was a shock to the family, she said.

Mrs. Munger’s death was also a shock to her friends and acquaintances in the community.

“I just thought the world of her,” said Ellen Gorelick, curator and director of the Tulare Historical Museum. “She was just a beautiful woman inside and out, just a beautiful, beautiful lady.”

Mrs. Munger and her husband, Keith, have contributed much to the community, Gorelick added. “They are very generous people.”

Gerry Soults, who knew Mrs. Munger for 77 years, since they were sixth graders at the old Central School, said her friend “quietly volunteered for many worthwhile projects; always her humbleness and graciousness would shine through.”

The Mungers worked to make the Tulare Historical Museum a reality and helped her plan several museum fund raisers during the nine years she served as museum director, Soults said.

Mrs. Munger had an “insatiable artistic eye for beautiful things,” a wonderful sense of humor and was a good and sensitive friend who helped her as she coped with the deaths of two husbands, she said.

Mary Jane Barwick said her mother, who had a teaching credential and whose first assignment was at Pixley Elementary School, was “a big advocate for reading” and would teach adults how. She also would help prepare them to become citizens.

“She did this even when I was in elementary school,” she said. “I remember I would come home from school and they [the students] would be at the table having lessons.”

She was also a member of “Les Petities Amis,” Tulare’s chapter of the Children’s Home Society, for many years. She and her husband also helped fund renovations on the Tulare Union High School Auditorium and were large supporters of the Rotary Foundation and the Salvation Army.

Mrs. Munger worked with her husband after they purchased KCOK radio in 1957 and later when they started KJUG radio, learning to use a computer which in those days took up one whole room, her daughter said. She also traveled with her husband extensively and they were partners with their daughter Christine in a Visalia travel agency.

The Mungers were married in 1944 and would have celebrated their 63 anniversary on Nov. 18.

“They had this wonderful relationship and they would discuss everything,” Mary Jane Barwick said. Her father would often call her mother “Madame Queen,” a term of endearment rendered with “a lot of love and respect,” she said.

In addition to Keith Munger, Betty Munger is survived by three children and their spouses: Christine Munger Rowan and Richard Atherton, Mary Jane and Skip Barwick and Chuck and Suzanne Munger. She is also survived by many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

His mother-in-law was “a classy gal,” Skip Barwick said. “They just don’t make them like that anymore.”

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Elementary API Scores Up; High Schools' Down
Both Districts Analyzing Test Results

Tulare - In the world of academic testing, you never let your guard down.

The Tulare City School District’s overall 2007 Academic Performance Index score jumped 11 points from last year and the Tulare Joint Union High School District’s dropped 14 points, yet both districts are doing the same thing in the aftermath of the state testing.

They are poring over results to determine what is working with students and what is not.

“This needs to be done regardless if scores go up or down,” high school trustee Craig Hamilton said. “It’s like preparing for a football game week after week.”

Sue Ann Hillman, director of curriculum for the elementary district, agreed.

“If you don’t do that, you’re not going to continue to show the growth.”

The situation is very much like having blood work.

“If you don’t use that data, that’s not going to help you do better,” she said.

Trustees from both districts received state API and federal Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP or No Child Left Behind) reports earlier this month during their regular meetings.

'Very, Very Good’

“Our test scores look very, very good,” said John Beck, superintendent of the elementary school district, which saw two of its 13 schools—Cypress and Garden—hit or best the 800-point goal set by the state and a third—Heritage—miss by only one point.

The district’s overall 2007 API score was 739, which was “significantly above the average in the county [688]” and “significantly above the state’s [727] as well,” Philip Pierschbacher, director of funded programs, told trustees.

All but five of the district’s schools met their growth targets with Lincoln School showing the greatest improvement with a 38-point increase, which brought its score up to 726.

Live Oak and Los Tules middle schools and Roosevelt Elementary also saw significant gains as the scores for the two middle schools jumped 29 and 27 points respectively and Roosevelt logged a 23-point gain.

Schools that fell short of their growth targets—which are set by the state—included Maple and Pleasant elementary, with 24- and three-point drops respectively. Wilson Elementary, which saw a one-point gain, Mulcahy Middle School, which recorded a five-point drop, and Cherry Middle School, which gained four points, also failed to hit their targets.

(In discussing the school’s API score later in the meeting, Pierschbacher reminded the parents of a Maple School student that the school’s drop this year comes on the heels of a 92-point gain over the prior two years.)

Trustee Jim Henderson, a former City School District principal, recalled the early years of the API score when scores were in the 500s.

“The growth we have made is absolutely phenomenal,” Henderson said.

Despite the overall gain, the elementary district did not meet federal No Child Left Behind standard and is still what is called a Program Improvement District—a designation that requires it to work with the county to map out an improvement plan.

Meeting the No Child Left Behind standard is not easy. Districts are required to meet specific criteria in each of its significant subgroups and failure to met just one means the standard was not met.

“We met the goal in 32 of 33 areas,” Beck said. “We missed one, but that’s enough to put you into program improvement.”

The elementary district’s eight subgroups are: African American, Asian, Hispanic, White, socio-economic disadvantaged, English learners, students with disabilities and district average.

The one area in which the district failed to meet its goal was in language arts scores for students with disabilities. Only 20.7 percent of the students scored at the proficient or advanced level and the standard is 24 percent.

Beck said the situation is tough for the district to show improvement in this subgroup, because as soon as students show proficiency they are moved out of special classes into a traditional classroom.

Overall, the state also failed to meet the No Child Left Behind standard because of the scores of students with disabilities in one area.

“We mirrored the state exactly,” Hillman said.

Three of the district’s schools are program improvement schools because they previously failed to hit the No Child Left Behind marks. Two of them—Roosevelt and Los Tules—met the targets this year and if they do so one more time, they will leave the program, Beck said.

Mulcahy School—a PI school for five years—did not meet it goals.

The story in the high school district was much different as Tulare Union and Tulare Western, as well as three of the district’s four alternative schools, saw scores drop.

Tulare Union’s score dropped 12 points to 720 and Tulare Western’s took a 15-pint dip to 683.

“Our scores are still good,” Superintendent Howard Berger said, while explaining administrators are hard at work to figure out how to resume an upward trend.

“You have no idea what changed?” trustee Joe Cardoza asked.

Tony Rodriguez, the new assistant superintendent for instruction, said the district has not changed the curriculum.

Cardoza wondered if, perhaps, there was not “enough pumping kids up” for the Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) tests given in the spring.

Berger said the district will study the results of each strand of the STAR test and then go back to teachers with information on where students did well and where they did not and ask what they think happened.

“Then we will begin to get some answers,” Berger said.

Just looking at the raw data, Rodriguez and the principals have already noted that math scores were down and students who took the Algebra test produced lower scores than in the past, he said.

Since the state now wants students to take Algebra in middle school, the drop may be the result of weaker math students taking the test in high school, he said.

The district was also penalized on the science test because the students who have not yet taken science classes got the lowest scores possible, Berger said.

The district will also get data from the state that will show how the students of each teacher performed on the test, which also will be valuable information for helping teachers become more effective, he said.

Berger characterized the test results as a “wake-up call to make sure we’re doing all the things we did [in the past] to help raise scores.”

Like schools in the elementary district, Tulare’s two comprehensive high schools have shown marked improvement since 1999, when the first STAR tests were given. Tulare Union’s API score was 554 that year and Tulare Western’s was 579.

The district’s overall score for 2007 is 679—a 14-point drop from 2006.

Tulare Union and Tulare Western did meet the No Child Left Behind standards, but the district overall did not. This was because it failed to meet all the proficiency criteria in the English learners and students with disabilities subgroups.

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Council to Consider 519-Unit Home Park Plan

Tulare - A 519-unit manufactured housing park proposed for West Tulare barely won Planning Commission support and is expected to go before the City Council for approval on Oct. 2.

Lengthy discussion preceded a series of 4-2 Planning Commission votes supporting general plan and zoning changes and a permit that would allow the houses in a 79 acres park that would be constructed at Bardsley Avenue and West Street.

Opposition to the project surfaced for the first time at the Sept. 10 meeting, where a public hearing that had begun August 20 was resumed. Commissioners had continued the hearing to gather more information and public comment.

“This just sort of freaked me out,” Gemini tract resident Deborah Moody said, describing her reaction to the project.

“Two thousand people—that’s a lot for 79 acres,” Moody said. She expressed concern about the impact on schools, the ability of ambulance and other public safety agencies to respond in a timely manner to residents’ needs and the long-term upkeep of the project.

Schools, Public Safety

Chairman Richard Miller said the Tulare Joint Union High School District was opening a third comprehensive high school in August 2008, which is expected to eliminate the overcrowding at Tulare Western High School. Senior planner Bonnie Simoes also reported the Tulare City [Elementary] School District is actively seeking a new school site in the area.

Battalion Chief Jim Duke said the Tulare Fire Department believes it could respond to emergencies in that area within the four-minute standard. Darlene Mata, spokeswoman for the development, said the police chief also said his department will be able to provide service.

Tulare Realtor and developer Lino Pimentel also spoke out against the project, saying it “is the wrong time and the wrong place” for the endeavor. He owns 30 acres to the north of the proposed development and plans to start building homes soon.

The Tullin Meadows project will hurt his project and is not needed now because of the number of affordable existing homes on the market, Pimentel said. Because the homeowners will lease and not own the land where their homes are, they will have “no real equity” in the project, he also said.

“It may well be a good project in another community,” he said. “Other communities have a different mix [of housing].”

First of its Kind

Proponents said Tullin Meadows would be the first-of-its kind affordable housing project in

The manufactured housing park would be built by the private Tullin Community Development, which includes Tulare physician Dr. Jatinder Chopra and Visalia businessman Frank Serpa, and then sold to Pacific Housing Finance, which would operate, manage and maintain the home park,

Because Pacific Housing is a non-profit organization, it is not interested in “flipping” the project and would strive to maintain low rents, which are estimated to average $300 per month, developers said. They expect to cost of the homes will range from $89,000 to $129,000, plus city impact fees.

The Redevelopment Agency could become involved with the project, but to date developers have made no formal proposal, Redevelopment Director Bob Nance said.

If the project moves ahead, the agency could become involved in one of three ways: provide first-time homebuyer assistance; use housing set-aside money to buy down the cost of the project or a combination of the two, Nance said.

Commission Vice Chairman Jeff Killion, who made the motion to continue the public hearing on Aug. 20, said he had “flip-flopped” in his opinion several times but had finally decided to support it, even though he wished it were a smaller project.

“I think we’ve got to look at the overall community,” Killion said. “We have a demand for properties like this.”

With the on-site management, the project has a better chance of looking good years from know than other types of affordable housing might be, he said.

Chairman Richard Miller and Commissioners Sandi Miller and Richard Nunes voted with Killion in support of the project.

Commissioners Chuck Miguel and Deanne Rocha strongly opposed the project.

The only good thing about the project, Miguel said, is “physically, it’s about as far from my house as you can get” and still be in Tulare.

His research convinced him that if you own a manufactured home on leased property, it will depreciate in value, he said.

“You can’t make improvements if you can’t get equity home loans,” he said, adding later residents will not have any equity to “put into the next step” in the housing market.

His roots are in West Tulare, where he grew up on C Street, and he cannot see putting what amounts to the population of Tipton on 79 acres, he said.

“The west side is not strong enough to experiment with,” he said.

“I don’t think Farmersville would touch it,” he added, responding to the suggestion of other opponents that such a project would be more appropriate in that community.

“I cannot and will not answer for this project in 30 years,” he said.

Rocha agreed.

“I don’t think pulling 500 renters out of rental units and promising them home ownership is going to solve any problems,” she said, adding vacancy rates are increasing daily.

The size of the project also bothered her. “I can’t vote for anything this large,” she said. “If it were half this size, I could consider it.”

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