EDC Happy with Location, But
Agri-Center Wants Heritage Space

Tulare - Paul Saldana, executive director of the Tulare County Economic Development Corporation, says he has no plans to move his office in the near future.
“All I know is we have a lease and we're very pleased with the lease we have,” Saldana said. “We don't have any interest in leaving.”

However, the International Agri-Center, which leases space to the EDC in the Heritage Complex, has said it would like to move the offices it has in the Agri-Center Administration Building into the Heritage Complex.

“We want to move all of our staff together,” said Jerry Sinift, general manager of the Agri-Center. “We may even swap offices [with the EDC].”

More than half of the paid staff of the Agri-Center is located in the Heritage Complex and Sinift said he has to walk to the complex at least a half dozen times a day.

“I think we'd save a ton of time [by moving],” he said, also noting the chief financial officer is in the complex, but the bookkeeper is in the administration building.

Plaza Park?

The Visalia City Council discussed in closed session last week finding space for the EDC, reportedly in Plaza Park near the Visalia Airport. However, Saldana stressed no decisions have been made and it was premature to say the EDC is going to move.

The city of Tulare is also working with the EDC to find a new home should it move. The EDC has been in Tulare – at first on M Street next to the Civic Affairs Building– for more than a decade.

Sinift said plans are to move the seven or eight employees currently in the administration building into the Heritage Complex to create “more synergy” among the staff.

“It's been a goal of mine for some time, having everybody in the same building,” he said, adding there is no timeline for the move. “I'd like to make it happen any time soon, but we're not kicking them (EDC) out.”

Saldana noted how the EDC not only was the first occupant of the Heritage Complex, but that the EDC helped secure grants and other funding for the complex, which opened about eight years ago.

“We've been here since day one,” said Saldana.

Should the move take place, the administration building may be reconfigured to allow for small meetings, especially during World Ag Expo, Sinift said. The social hall and kitchen would remain unchanged.

---

Couple in Mystery Photo Identified

Tulare - Now we know! Several readers have called or stopped by to identify the couple who was in a photograph Tulare Voice ran on the front page of its April 24 edition.

The photo of a 17-year-old Roy Knott and his future wife, Catherine Dunn, 15, accompanied a story about a young German woman who visited the Tulare area, fulfilling a promise she had made to her grandfather, who was a German prisoner of war here during WW II.

Katja Gaertner said her grandfather, who died in 1996, had an unrealized dream of returning to Tulare County to visit the Tipton farm where he worked and to find the couple whose photo he had kept for decades. She was unable to identify the couple during her short stay.

Everett Knott of Tulare said he learned about the photo and the attempt to identify the man and woman—his parents—from a long-time friend.
“Your mother and dad were in the paper,” the friend told him. “They're in the paper.”

As soon as Edward Knott of Porterville saw the photo, he knew it was his mother and father. “I have the same picture,” he said. His father died in 1990 and his mother now lives in Klamath Falls, Ore. They had 10 children, five of whom continue to live in Tulare County.

Edward Knott said Gaertner's grandfather—Willie Gaertner—must have worked at the T & R Ranch in Lindsay, where his father also lived and worked.

“That would have been the only place they could have met,” he said.
His mother was surprised to learn about the photo when he called her and she told him that she doesn't recall ever meeting Gaertner and doesn't know how he got the photograph.

Roy Knott's brother, Leonard Knott, said he was only about six years old at the time the photo was taken, but can still remember his parents saying not to associate with the prisoners. “But we'd give them fruit or something,” he said. “Quite a few spoke English.”

His brother was the oldest of six boys and he also had six sisters, he said. Roy Knott was drafted into the army in the mid-1940s, son Edward said.
Brandi Smith, a granddaughter of Roy and Catherine Knott, said the photo has caused a lot of excitement among family members, including her 11-year-old daughter Emily.

“My daughter thought this was wonderful that there was a picture of her great-grandparents in Germany and it was taken during World War II,” Smith said. “She plans to take this to school and share it. It's just such a part of history.”

---

COS, Mission Oak
Could One Day Share Stadium

By Steve Pastis

Tulare - Tulare's newest high school—scheduled to open in August—may one day share athletic facilities with College of the Sequoias, which plans to open a campus here in 2012.

Mission Oak High School is situated on the northwest corner of Bardsley Avenue and Oakmore Street, across the street and west of the planned 400-acre COS campus.

“We have an agreement in concept with the Tulare Joint Union High School District that instead of a new high school having to build its own football/track stadium, that we would share that cost and we would build that stadium,” said Dr. Bill Scroggins, COS president. “It would be located on our college.”

The new stadium might be as many as 25 years away, Scroggins said. “Someday, when the school district and the college district have the money to build a sports facility, then we'll work together. How we build it would depend on how much money we have.”

The stadium is on the site plan COS is currently working on because it is part of the college's master plan. The “understanding” about the future stadium makes it easier for the high school district to develop its own plans.

“The agreement in concept enables them to move forward with plans for their additional build-out that doesn't require a footprint for a stadium,” Scroggins said.
Site work for the college campus should begin within the next year and construction on the buildings is expected to start in two years, according to Scroggins.
Phase one will be what Scroggins calls “the heart of the college,” two two-story wings of the central building that will have classrooms, labs, business offices, counseling and library services. Construction on the ag facility will follow.
“We're not anticipating having enough money to build everything in the ag quadrangle initially,” Scroggins said.

“Some of this, of course, depends on if the local bond passes,” he said. “If the local bond doesn't pass, then we will have to wait until we can sell the corner property to do a lot of this.”

COS owns the neighboring 100 acres east of its campus and it plans to sell it to a developer for commercial and residential development. The money would be used to help complete the master plan.

'Win-Win'

Howard Berger, superintendent of the high school district, credited Scroggins for his efforts to bring COS and Tulare high schools together.

“The opportunity for agricultural and shared facilities with the College of the Sequoias is a win-win situation for both of us,” Berger said.

In addition to a shared stadium, the districts also have a memorandum of understanding to discuss moving the high school farm to the college campus.
“It will give our students an opportunity to work closely with the college program,” Berger said. “It will also provide them additional facilities that COS will have that we may not be able to have.”

The college and high school district are discussing other ways they can work together when the Tulare campus opens. They already have education programs underway.
“We currently have some COS classes offered in our other schools,” Berger said. “Some are 'bridge' classes [taught by high school teachers on the high school campus for college credit]. Having the campus in Tulare will provide easier access. We also have some COS classes offered in the evening. We look forward to increasing those offerings.”

Tulare vs. Visalia?

If all goes according to plan, someday Tulare and Visalia college football teams will compete against each other.

“If, by the time we build a sports complex here, the population of the campus is sufficient to qualify as a full college, then it will have its own sports teams, independent of Visalia's,” Scroggins said. “That's eventually what's going to happen.
“When we get this built out, with fine arts and a theater, it will have a full sports complex and a full complement of athletic teams – all of the things that accompany a college,” he said. “At some point, Visalia Community College and Tulare Community College, as part of the Sequoia Community College District, will play each other.”

But first the Tulare campus needs enough students to become accredited.
“The amount of instructional space we will build with this $150 million investment will accommodate about 3,500 students,” he said. “That's when it's fully populated, probably 15 years from now. Thirty-five-hundred students are enough to qualify the college for full accreditation and to have its own sports facilities.”

---

Highway 137 Widening Years Away

By Rick Elkins

Tulare - Despite reports the state is looking at right-away acquisition along State Route 137 between Tulare and Lindsay, officials say the project is still many years down the road.

A public meeting was held in Tulare more than five years ago to look at alternatives for the widening of the busy highway between the two cities, but according to both Caltrans and Ben Giuliani of the Tulare County Association of Governments, there are no plans to proceed with the project.

Caltrans says it wants to make Highway 137 a four-lane road. To accomplish that, it will need to acquire land on either one side of the highway or a little bit on both sides.

Dairyman Joey Fernandes said he has been approached by the state, which he said is looking at taking about 100 feet along the south side of the roadway, which would eliminate his dairy near Road 148.

However, Victor Shaw, project manager with Caltrans, said while the state is working on right-of-ways at this time, any acquisition is at least three years away.
“It's not even funded yet,” he said.

Work on Highway 137 is at the least seven years away, maybe longer, according to Giuliani.

“Right now, it's not on our list of projects in the next 20 years,” he said.
Shaw said there have been no decisions on how the highway will be widened and the public will have a chance to offer input before that is done.

“We're still studying alternatives as to which way the road will be widened,” he said. Plans do call for a four-lane road, “but until we pull together the funding we don't know how that will be done.”

The estimated cost of the project is $15 million, not including right-of-way acquisition, Shaw said.

Giuliani does not expect the widening of Highway 137 to come up for consideration soon as there are several projects ahead of it on various lists. Those include the widening of Mooney Boulevard through Visalia-which is expected to begin in June - and the widening of Highway 198 between Highway 99 and Hanford.

Giuliani is hopeful the county will pick up some extra money since the contract for the Mooney project came in $4.5 million under budget. He said the state Transportation Improvement Program board is recommending that money remain in the county and if that happens, then TCAG will decide which projects will get more funds. He doubted Highway 137 would be one of them.

Besides Highway 198 and Mooney, other major county road projects on the near horizon are: the widening of Road 80 from Goshen Avenue to Avenue 336, and of Plaza Drive between Airport Drive and Goshen; expansion of Houston Avenue from two lanes to four lanes from Lovers Lane to McAuliffe; and the Betty Drive/Highway 99 interchange in Goshen.

Pending projects that are not state funded include the Cartmill Avenue/99 interchange in Tulare and the widening of Demaree (Road 108) between Visalia and Tulare.

---

Council to Review Proposed Budget Friday

Tulare - With a threatening cloud from Sacramento hanging over its head, the City Council is scheduled to spend up to four hours Friday reviewing the city's proposed $138.5 million budget for the 2008-09 fiscal year that begins July 1.

The meeting, which is open to the public, will be held from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the upstairs training room at City Hall, 411 East Kern Ave.

“We are seeing interesting proposals from the [state] administrative analyst's office,” City Manager Darrel Pyle said, referring to the state's attempt to address its multi-billion budget shortfall.

He reported the city budget could see a “$200,000 swing” on just the jail booking fees issue alone, if the state reduces or halts its reimbursements to counties. Counties, he explained, have been told to charge the cities one-half of what they had been charging the state.

“We're working with the county on this,” Pyle said. “We're not going to develop a bad relationship [with each other] because of the state of California.”

Unlike the state, the city is making sure it doesn't develop a “structured deficit,” Pyle said. “We make sure our on-going expenses don't exceed on-going revenues.”
COPS — earmarked for public safety — is one of the state grant programs in jeopardy as the state grapples with a multi-billion dollar budget deficit and if those funds don't come through, it only means the city will have to do without equipment it otherwise would have purchased, Pyle said.

“We've weaned personnel off that program,” he explained. “The growth of [public safety] bodies is coming from Measure I revenues.” The reference is a 2005 voter-approved sales-tax increase which has allowed Tulare to beef up police and fire protection and repair more roads.

The biggest fear on his part is that the state will change the schedule for releasing sales tax and other money owed local governments, so it can hold on to the funds longer and earn interest, Pyle said.

The proposed city budget estimates a $6.6 million reserve fund—up $300,000 from the previous year—which would cover the city's bills for three months in the event this should happen, he said.

If the state would withhold funds longer than that, the city would have to secure a revenue anticipation loan to keep operating, he said.
“We're preparing ourselves for a three-year bumpy ride,” Pyle said. “We have been conservative all the way through [in preparing the budget].”

'Hunting' for Business

The proposed budget includes $38.5 million in general fund revenue, which pays for police, fire, parks, streets and other basic city services.
Included within the total is an estimated $4.2 million in Measure I sales tax money, which the City Council promised voters in 2005 it would spend only on police, fire and road work.

So far Measure I has paid for 34 new police and fire positions and $1.5 million in street work.

Pyle is recommending the council convert two temporary, non-sworn positions in the Police Department to permanent full-time jobs in the 2008-09 fiscal year and consider adding another sworn position in the department.

He also is calling for three additional firefighter/paramedics in the Fire Department, which is gearing up to open a fourth station.

Because sales tax is so crucial to the city, Pyle and the council have made it a priority to “hunt”—in the words of Vice Mayor Phil Vandegrift—for new businesses.

Vandegrift, Councilman Richard Ortega and Pyle spent two full days last week at an international shopping center convention in Las Vegas, talking with companies that might be interested in coming to Preferred Outlets at Tulare, which is undergoing a major expansion, or to other sites.

The group took property owners' conceptual drawings and met with several retailers and development companies, Pyle said.

Some of the sites were in West Tulare, he said, adding Councilman Carlton Jones asked the group to give special attention to the areas west of Highway 99.

The downturn in the economy did not appear to affect the enthusiasm of companies that showed up for the show, which took up 3.2 million square feet of space in the Las Vegas Convention Center, Pyle said.

“If it did, I think it had the reverse impact,” Pyle said. “It heightened the world of economic development.”

---