Tulareans Could Face Higher
Garbage, Water Rates

Tulare - In addition to higher gas and food prices, Tulare residents could face higher garbage and water rates before the end of summer.

The city is preparing 21,000 notices to let property owners and customers know the Board of Public Utility is considering recommendations to raise garbage/street sweeping rates 5 percent in each of the next three fiscal years and increase water bills 7 percent in the 2008-09 fiscal year.

The notice, which Public Works Director Lew Nelson said will cost nearly $30,000 to print and mail, is required under Proposition 218, which gives voters the right to accept or reject local tax or rate increases.

A hearing on the proposed increases is scheduled for the board's Aug. 21 meeting. A protest of 50 percent plus one of the affected property owners can halt the increases.

Nelson said the three consecutive garbage rate increases are proposed even though the city still does not know why the fund continues to operate at a deficit. A 15 percent increase over the past three years was suppose to address that but didn't.
When the city switched to a new billing and record system, an attempt was made to discover if the deficit is on the residential side of operations or the commercial side but the effort ran into a “glitch,” possibly a coding problem, Nelson said.

“The bottom line is we still don't have an answer,” he said.

The typical single-family resident pays $19 a month for garbage pickup and street sweeping, an amount Nelson said would increase to $19.95 the first year of a rate hike, $20.95 the second year; and $22 the third.

Also on the Utility Board's agenda is a proposed 7 percent increase for water, which will go into a fund to purchase excess water for re-charge basins during wet years.

The city and the Tulare Irrigation District purchased two years ago a plum orchard northeast of town, where a 10,000-acre-foot ponding basin will go. The city is continuing to pay the TID $250,000 a year to buy a second 10,000-acre-foot site, Nelson said.

The goal is to purchase excess water in the wet years to protect the water table in the dry ones, he said.

No increase in the sewer rate is proposed.

---

School Districts Avoid
Drastic Budget Cutbacks

Tulare - One by one Tulare area school districts are adopting 2008-09 budgets and, despite expected cutbacks from Sacramento, most administrators contacted appear confident their districts will survive for at least one year without major layoffs or other drastic measures.

The Governor's May revisal of the state's proposed 2008-09 budget is not as hard on schools as the original plan released in January, but nevertheless calls for:

• Withholding the June allocation of school funds until September, which school analysts say will help the state's cash flow and interest earnings while having the opposite effect on districts.
• No cost of living increase for schools, even though local administrators report they are facing higher food, fuel and supply costs.
• No increase in the revenue limit—the amount districts per average daily attendance. The original proposal called for a 2.4 percent decrease.
• No deferred maintenance match.

School districts will not know exactly what they are facing in terms of cutbacks until the Governor and Legislature agree on a budget.

“My feeling is the state's going to have to come up with a budget by October,” said John Caudle, assistant superintendent for business for the Tulare County Office of Education.

Meanwhile, districts must have their budgets to Caudle by the end of this month and once he has seen them he will have a better picture of the impacts.
What he knows for certain is districts are trimming their budgets, he said. “If costs have gone up, you'll have to cut something else.”

Class Size

Some schools, including the Tulare City School District and Sundale Union Elementary, are increasing class sizes to keep their revenues and expenses on an even keel.

Both Tulare City and Sundale will continue class-size reduction measures in grades kindergarten through third, which means the maximum number in those grades will be 20 students.

Sundale, which currently has 27 to 28 students in fourth through eighth grades, will allow that number to grow to 30, Superintendent Terri Rufert said. “We'd like to keep our classes around 28, but 30's not bad.”

Tulare City has decided grades four to eight will have at least 30 students, but no more than the 33 maximum allowed under the district's current contract with its teachers, Superintendent John Beck has said.

Rupert said other belt-tightening measures at Sundale include not filling non-certificated positions that have become vacant and limiting classes to one field trip a year, instead of two or three.

“I did cut supplies about 10 percent and we're going to delay our new textbooks adoptions as long as the state allows us to,” she added. “We're also going to cut back on sending teachers out to conferences.”

Books and Supplies

The Tulare Joint Union High School District adopted a $41.9 million budget on June 12 that was balanced in large part by reducing the books, supplies and equipment budget by about 20 percent or $671,661 less than this year's projected expenditures.

The district's travel and conference budget—a much smaller budget-- also was cut 20 percent for an estimated $21,000 savings.

Although the district is negotiating contracts with both certificated and classified employees, the budget included no salary increases.

Business manager Vivian Hamilton said the budget reflects a “worst case scenario” and does not reflect changes the Governor announced in May, because the district's proposed budget was already being published when those changes were announced.

Should the final state budget send the district's adopted budget out of balance, increasing the average class size to 23 students—up from 22.1—will be “the balancing factor,” Hamilton said.

With the opening of a third comprehensive high school, the budget reflects the hiring of eight new certificated employees and the equivalent of 20 fulltime classified workers, she said.

More Students

Increased enrollments this year will help cushion the proposed 2008-09 revenue reductions, because more students mean more money.

Kerry Beauchaine, superintendent for Oak Valley Union Elementary, said the only reason his district will weather the storm relatively unscathed is last year's spike gain of 30 students in average daily attendance.

The district's proposed $2.35 million budget reflects no lay-offs or increases in class sizes, but does include an extra combination class, which the district doesn't like to do, Beauchaine said.

“We have a healthy reserve and obviously we want to keep it there, so we'll be fiscally prudent and conservative in spending until California can get its act together,” he said.

Superintendent Michael Salcido said Tipton Elementary School also gained nearly 30 students this year, which helps the district's budget situation.
The district adopted a $5.1 million budget, which it balanced by dipping into its “healthy reserve,” Salcido said.

The school is adding another fifth grade teacher, which will allow it to decrease the average class size in grades four through eight to roughly 22 students. Class-size reduction measures will remain in effect for kindergarten through third grades, where 20 students is the maximum, he said.

“We feel very lucky, very fortunate,” he said. “We can keep the pace up at least three or four more years.”

---

Baradat Retires After 33 Years

Tulare - Ray Baradat, whose job for more than three decades involved rounding up truant high school students and taking them back to class, is retiring as the Tulare Joint Union High School District's attendance officer.

Baradat—who students at one time called “Baretta,” after the popular 1970s television detective show, because of the fatigue jacket he is fond of wearing — joined the district in 1974 and worked eight years as an attendance aide at Tulare Union before becoming district attendance officer.

Although most of his student encounters were negative — he wanted kids n school and they didn't want to go — those who know him said he maintained a professional attitude throughout it all.

“As the principal at Tulare Union and then superintendent, I never heard any student or parent complain about the way he talked with kids, treated kids or dealt with kids,” Superintendent Howard Berger said. “He treated them always in a very respectful, professional manner.”

Shirley Holguin, who worked with Baradat for 24 years before she retired, said he was “very caring, very hardworking” and “was just very good at rounding up kids who weren't in school. He had a real special effect on kids—and not only on kids”
Holguin and Berger also said Baradat helped in areas other than attendance, including technology.

Built Bridges

Baradat had a good working relationship with the Tulare Police Department, a fact Chief Roger Hill said helped lay the groundwork for the Police on Campus program, which has been in effect for several years.

“He built great bridges between the district and the Police Department,” Hill said.
Baradat, who had offices at both Tulare Union and Tulare Western and also was a member of the security team on both campuses, said he could always count on police officers to show up whenever he called for help with truant students or with campus fights.

Minutes before he was interviewed for this story, for example, he called in a potential fight that was brewing and several officers came to the Tulare Western campus, which remained calm as a result.

Years ago he might have handled something like that alone, but with the advent of gangs in the mid-to-late 1980s, Baradat said students became more violent.
He recalled precisely what “cured me of getting involved by myself.” A fight had broken out on O Street between Inyo Avenue and the alley near Tulare Union and Police Comdr. Tom Luttrell had stopped to break it up, Baradat said. The kids then turned on him, kicking Luttrell in the head.

“They knocked him completely unconscious,” said Baradat, who had run to the scene from campus. “I later heard one kid involved say, 'I didn't know it was a cop; I thought it was a teacher.”

During his career, he has confiscated seven handguns from students, most of whom just wanted to show them off, he said.

He recalls one particularly disturbing incident in which a boy took a automatic weapon to summer school in his back pack and was showing it off to other students when the teacher was not looking.

“Nobody turned him in,” Baradat said, adding school officials only became aware of the gun at the end of the day when a parent reported what her child had seen.

‘Unreal’

An equally disturbing incident happened at Tulare Union several years ago before school, when a passenger in a car driving by fired three shots as students stood in the parking lot.

Student reaction was “unreal,” Baradat said. “A lot of the kids ran to the street.”
When a kid on a bicycle shot a student in the leg near Tulare Western a few years later, Baradat said he was nearby at Maple Melody and tried to give chase in an automobile, but had to stop for a vice principal that had commandeered a bicycle and was trying to chase down the assailant herself. Police later arrested the suspect.
“I never got hurt on the job,” Baradat said. “I did get knocked down a couple times.”

He is retiring now because he is almost 66 and “it's just time.” He also wants to spend more time with his music — for which he has a tremendous passion.
He and his group, The Charades, played almost every weekend in places throughout California from 1974 to about 1992, Baradat said. “We only play two, three or four times a year now.”

Baradat is a Tulare native and 1960 graduate of Tulare Union High School. He owned a paint store in downtown Tulare before he sold it in 1963 and took a job in Hanford. He was drafted in 1964 and served one year in Vietnam with the military police. When he returned in 1966 he worked at a Visalia department store for three years and then at Tulare Pipe and Electric until he was hired by the school district.
Baradat's wife, Sandra, has a beauty shop in Visalia, and his son, Ray Jr. is a recreational supervisor with the Tulare Recreation, Parks and Library Department. Baradat will work a few hours a week for the district after he retires, but not in area of truancy or attendance, he said.

---

Tulare Water Situation Good
New Meters Expected to Help Conservation

By Rick Elkins

Tulare - Water levels in the Tulare's 27 wells have dropped, but water Superintendent Dan Boggs said he believes the city will continue to meet demands this summer.

While water levels are probably 20 feet lower than they were last August, the fact all residential users now have water meters could reduce the demand a little bit this summer, Boggs said, adding it is too early to assess the impact the meters are having on water conservation.

“We haven't had them long enough to analyze that yet,” he said. “We'll need a few months.”

The average depth of water in the wells is about 180 feet, the lowest it has ever been, Boggs said. In Visalia, the water table is on average 102 feet deep, the deepest it has been.

Two consecutive dry years are taking their toll on the underground aquifer as evident by winter water levels that did not rise as they normally do.

“During winter months the water levels will come up because not as much water is used and we shut off some of our wells.” Boggs said.

The city has been lowering the boles in its wells and Boggs said they had to lower two of its 27 wells this spring.

“For right now we're in fair shape,” he said. “We'll get through the summer. I don't know what farmers will do when they begin pumping [to irrigate crops].”

The worst month is July, when usage is at its highest and wells hit their lowest level, he said. “We've done some speculation and calculated how the wells dropped last year and we should be OK.”

It costs the city $7,000 to $10,000 to lower well and a new well can run as much as $800,000.

Meters

The city turned on the 16,000 water meters equipped with radio transmitters for all users in March. Before then, much of the city was not metered and residents paid a flat fee for water. Now, residents pay a flat fee up to 9,000 gallons used in a month, then 54 cents for every 1,000 gallons used above that.

Boggs said residents probably saw a decrease in their bills (the base fee is less than the old flat fee) in the winter months, but now that the rain has gone the meter is turning a little faster.

“We've had several calls saying, 'Hey, we don't use that much water here,'” said Boggs. “We always seem to find a leaking faucet or toilet. They (users) are becoming more aware of what can make that bill go up.” he said.

While residents will see higher bills the next three to four months, they should save more money in the winter than they spend extra in the summer, Boggs said.
When a person does call, the city will go out and not only test the meter, they will also look for leaks in faucets and toilets that might be causing the meter to run. “We try to help,” Boggs said.

He encouraged residents to check their own meters to see if they are losing water. On every meter there are numbers at the top which represent the gallons of water used. Below that there is a dial that turns when water is being used. If a person has turned off all the water on his property and the dial is still turning, then there is a leak somewhere costing them money, explained Boggs.

Conservation

The city continues to encourage people to follow the watering rules to conserve additional water.

Residents are given three days a week to water. Even addresses can water on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays; odd addresses on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. No watering is allowed on Mondays. Open hoses and over irrigation are both violations of the city code and violators can be fined.

Residents are allowed to water only before 10 a.m. and after 6 p.m. during the summer.

“We have a patrol that goes out in the mornings to look for water violators,” Boggs said. “If caught, we issue a warning. The third warning within 12 months you get a court date. The fine starts at $50 and goes up at $50 increments.”

Watering schedules help keep water pressure up throughout the city.

“We need to keep our water pressure up for our fire system,” Boggs said. “In the summer months all the wells are pumping and the pressure can go down during certain hours,” he said.

---