Goshen - Western Meat Packing Co., a start up firm that has big plans in the central valley for a state-of-the-art slaughter house and meat packing operation in the heart of dairy country, will have a sort of coming out party January 25 at the Goshen Community Services district office.  The meeting begins at 6 p.m.

The company has an option on 55 acres in Goshen and is seeking approvals to begin construction within 6 months, says Bill Hayter of the county’s Redevelopment Agency.  “We think the company is legit,” says Hayter who has worked with consultants for the firm for months.

The purpose of the meeting is to get approvals from the Goshen CSD to hook up to the community sewer system - Visalia’s sewer system - a proposal that has the full blessing of Visalia.  In addition, the company plans to make a presentation on all aspects of the 8 to 5 p.m. operation ranging from concerns over noise, odors, water and traffic impacts.

Hayter says the company plans to build a Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) approved slaughter house - modeled after European prototypes - unlike “any old plant in the state of California,” says Hayter.

The same company was looking in Visalia last year but ended up in Goshen when they found a suitably zoned industrial site, not close to residential areas.  The site is next to the big silos along the rail line.

The large dairy cow population here is the reason the central valley has been targeted, says Hayter.  The huge plant could process as many as 1000 cows a day enabling it to handle much of the slaughter house business in the central valley.

Concern that competitors would look to place road blocks in the way of the big project is the reason why they have kept new of the deal low key, say sources.

New regulations for meat packers in the US will force the upgrading of the meat packing process to high standards in the US given newer operations an advantage, sources say.

Placing such a plant in the middle of dairy country saves transportation costs.

For Goshen a new company can translate into good paying jobs in a town with at least 20% unemployment.

At our deadline this week the State of California had declared a “state of emergency” and will take over the buying of power for residents instead of the two large private utilities who stand on the brink of bankruptcy accumulating a $12 billion debt that the deregulation doesn’t allow to be passed on.  The long awaited rolling blackouts have begun to hit area residents and cities including Tulare and Visalia city government has a mandate to cut 5% to 7% of their power needs.

This week the governor said that quick action was needed just to keep the power flowing and to “bridge a long term solution.”  Wednesday there wasn’t enough power to keep the lights on for thousands of California homes and rolling blackouts - temporary outages - were ordered throughout Fresno and other northern California cities.
There were these developments as well:

• The city released a map of the two areas of Visalia first likely to be subject to rolling blackouts if it comes to that.  The move came as council members urged that the public should know what part of town could be hit first (see page 2).

• Adding to the crisis atmosphere in Visalia was a meeting Thursday a.m. of large industrial users - the chamber roundtable group attended by mayor Don Landers.  Landers heard executives of industry at our industrial park state that the electricity crisis was forcing layoffs at their plants - some caused by the voluntary curtailment programs and some caused by lack of power to Visalia facilities.  On January 18 Landers wrote the Governor that “Today I attended the Visalia Chamber of Commerce Presidents’ Roundtable and listened to a presentation from Mr. Mike Chrisman, the Regional Director for Edison International.  At his presentation and in other similar forums representatives of the IVEX Packaging Corporation, Butler Manufacturing and Frito Lay, Inc. have announced that their production lines are suffering from rolling black-outs to such an extent that they are transferring production out of the state and this may result in substantial workforce reductions.

In addition, when these firms have attempted to utilize generators to provide power to their operations they were threatened with fines by the Air Resources Board.  This is an emergency situation.  Please use your executive authority to call off the regulators who are clearly out of touch and unaware of the nature of this crisis.
In a region such as Tulare County and the South San Joaquin Valley which already faces chronic unemployment figures of 15%, we cannot afford further job losses.  If normalcy is not returned to the energy sector immediately grave consequences will follow.  The health and well-being of our State economy depends upon your action.”

•IVEX West Coast manager Lou Warren says “we’ve been down all morning” and many of the manufacturing plant’s 300 people aren’t coming to work.  “We’re in the same boat as many other Visalia industries,” says Warren, including Imperial Bondware where hundreds work as well.  The companies want to get out of the interruptible program that can leave them dark most of the workday and are petitioning the Governor to waive the rule so they can get back to work.

• The Visalia Chamber will be hosting a caravan to Sacramento Tuesday January 23 to meet with government or with executives form the Visalia industrial park and mayor of Visalia in attendance as well.

• Local Edison official Mike Chrisman warned that a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing for Southern Cal Edison “would pose tremendous uncertainty” for customers because “the court is likely to seize assets and begin selling them off to generate money to pay the creditors.”  A bankruptcy filing can be forced by creditors and a stampede could result.  Just how the maintenance system that brings electricity to customers through Edison’s line would be handled in such a situation could mean the very safety of the public could be at stake if for example technicians and line workers were unsure they had jobs.

• There was an announcement that SCE would be forced to delay routine hook-ups and construction and signal projects here in Tulare County that affect private business and cities would face new delays “there is prospect of waiting 6 months for new meter hook-up,” says Chrisman.

Looking to preserve cash, regional manager Glenn Cardaronella says overtime for employees has been slashed and that the announced loss of jobs will effect the entire system.  This could effect the Ag Tac programs in Tulare.  “It’s not a revenue source,” admits Cardaronella.  Also, SCE has vowed to cut 1850 jobs, including some in Tulare County.

• Those users who had contracts for “interruptible power” were suffering this week including students at COS who found they had to carry candles to sign up for next semester.

• Kings County is looking to get out of their contract because they were signed up for the interruptible program and could not provide essential services.

• Cities considered ways to save electricity turning off night lights for example or asking people not to use sprinklers.  “Water conservation means we can pump less” and that lowers demand, says public works staffer Lew Nelson.
Lights in city offices were dim as the City of Visalia vowed to put in place a standing committee on the energy crisis.

• Mayor Don Landers says he has asked the city manager to “look into cogeneration at the Visalia sewer plant” perhaps using methane to make power.  In addition the city recently invested $1 million in new LED lighting for signals that will cut energy uses by city signals to 10% of what they take right now.  Landers suggests that the situation in the community is dire enough that schools and other public agencies look at what lighting and other uses they could do without right now - lights on tennis courts, for example.

Cardaronella says while the utilities trouble started with the way deregulation was structured in California, it is more complicated than that.  The most important factor is that “we’re paying 30 cents per kilowatt hour for the power we deliver to California but are charging our customers only 6 or 7 cents.”

He says 6 months of this shortfall has brought the big utilities “to this dire situation.”  Creditors will no longer lend them the money to keep buying the electricity setting the stage for the state this week to step in to buy the power.  Then there is the fact that the federal agency charged with regulating power refuses, at least to date, to cap wholesale power costs.  “We’ve told the FERC for six months that we needed some action.”

Then there is the question of relief from the humongous debt the utilities have taken on in order to deliver the power to California customers.  The PUC to date has not granted more than a token relief in future rates but hasn’t said they would allow SCE and PG&E to receive the money they have committed to - the reason why they are close to bankruptcy.  But Cardaronella says a court has given a ruling that would allow the money to be reimbursed.

Responding to criticisms that the utilities should have planned long term contracts to keep power costs low, Cardaronella says the utilities were mandated to buy all their power through the Power Exchange set up under state deregulation.  That set up had a built-in flaw, he says because instead of encouraging the lowest cost for power the system was set up to force the purchase of the highest bid.

To make matters worse, SCE was forced to sell of virtually all their power making capacity with the exception of about 15% of its state generating power.  This put them at the mercy of power merchants who because the state had deregulated, did not have to answer to the CPUC for their actions unlike Edison, he says.  Instead of paying 3 cents per kilowatt hour they began to pay 30 cents per kilowatt hour last summer.

Growth in demand in the state far outpaced supply during the past decade with the utilities banned from investment in new plants and the incentive to build limited because of deregulation.  Meanwhile, California’s economy boomed as did our appetite for electricity.  Added to this equation was the skyrocketing of all energy prices in the past year especially natural gas, the fuel source of choice for making electricity.

Kaweah Delta Water Conservation District is again brokering a possible compromise over the Tulare plan to line 10 miles of canal with concrete - a move east side farmers and residents fear will hurt their own groundwater and the local environment.  This time the effort is being pushed by a Tulare KDWCD board member, Mark Watte whose family has farmed in row crop country for generations, and at least can’t be accused of not having Tulare’s interest at heart.  Mark’s pop helped spearhead the effort to build the new Heritage Complex at the Farm Show.
“I’d say talks between the two sides are re-invigorated,” says Watte who admits “we’ve been down this road before.”

Indeed, the players were starting to get back to the negotiating table this week with the Visalia City Council taking up the litigation issue in closed session.  Visalia sued TID and later settled but has continued to play a role in trying to come up with a suitable, non-lining, alternative.

Other parties include Kaweah Delta Water Conservation District - of which TID is a member - and the POWER group of mostly local property owners who has led the legal crusade against the project.  Last summer the four parties hammered out an apparent agreement that would have halted efforts by TID to begin the lining process only to have them pull out in an 11th hour retreat saying the reimbursement for lost water was not adequate.
They gave the green light to the contractor to begin the concrete work and the new battle on the streets between Tulare and Visalia and the Tulare County Superior Court was joined.  Local opponents lined up next to the access way to the canal and blocked contractor trucks from going on site to start the work beginning with the axing of some oaks - raising the emotional pitch of this front page story battle.

TID lost in multiple court battles and in the court of public opinion.  Now they have California Fish and Game, says the irrigation district might need a streambed alternation permit - if they can get one - to proceed next winter, the only time they can line the canal.  They are caught with their own testimony in a previous case suggesting the canal is a natural streambed, or at least part of it.  The testimony in an earlier case suggested they didn’t even have jurisdiction over the giant oak trees along the canal - the focal point of the battle.

With a reported $4 million spent already and nothing to show for it, the irrigation district has been hearing from some of its members to rethink the district’s long term plan to line.

Watte says the principles outlined last summer that included reimbursement for water lost as it makes its way into the district have been a starting point for new discussions.  “I’d say we are looking at putting down on paper some concepts we can share with each of our boards in February.”

“Sure I’m a Tulare farmer in the Tulare Irrigation District, but I’m looking out for the entire basin.”  He says that “these talks are preliminary, but I’m enthusiastic and hopeful.”

Visalia - It’s a bizarre series of events.

A labor contractor/cold storage owner begins building a 28,000 sq. ft. home modeled after the Palace of Versailles in a quiet residential area of Visalia.  He uses cash to pay for the work that reaches the framing stage.  The 40 ft. tall building stands half finished for months since the businessman can’t collect from a trucking company who has run into a cold storage building he owns, cutting off the electricity and ruining the crop inside.

In the middle of his dream home project he can’t get a loan to complete the building.  Eventually he is forced into bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, next door, the wife of the city’s fire chief becomes a vocal opponent of the project leading a signature gathering effort even before the big looming Palace is built.  Many neighbors oppose this “monster” house.  Her vociferous spirit gets the fire chief in trouble at work.

The landmark palace stands empty for months and in the middle of the night in December it burns down. The fire chief’s home sustains $10,000 in damage as windows shatter and curtains melt scaring his family.  Reporting to the scene of the next door fire, the chief is told the city manager has ordered him not to go on the property - fearing a potential conflict of interest.

But the fire chief fires off an e-mail to all city council members and the city manager expressing his unhappiness over how he was relieved.  Within hours the fire chief is told to clear out his desk.

Jobbing out the investigation to the California Division of Forestry a report is expected to find the fire to be arson - likely a profession job.  There is no power to the site ruling out an electrical spark and accelerant is found by a dog, sources say.

Meanwhile, the very real possibility that like some kind of Ground Hog Day movie scenario will be played out again because of the way the homeowner’s insurance is structured - the only option left for the owner is to rebuild the Palace to the stage it was before the fire.  Now we can see that this is likely to set up a permit fight at a city council meeting with an overflow crowd vowing to recall council members who allow the Palace to be built a second time.  Get the picture?

It’s not a pretty picture for any of the participants.

Carlos Rodriguez has been Visalia's Fire Chief for more than three years coming from the area of Hollister.  But some say he never really fit in here and discussion about him leaving his post had been in the works for a long time.  “I think he lost the confidence of both his boss above and fellow employees below,” says a knowledgeable source.  In addition, Rodriguez says he had submitted his resignation to be effective March 31 well before the fire.

He says the “fire was the last straw” - a comment made to sum up a year of frustration for the chief who feels he was just trying to do his job while protecting his family.  “Steve told me I needed to control my wife, but I felt it was none of his business.”  But he acknowledged the night of the fire when he sent out an angry memo to all council members complaining how he was “escorted out” of the fire scene, “I guess I pissed somebody off.”  In a terse news release from city hall, Rodriguez was released January 5th and Battalion Chief George Sandoval was appointed acting chief.

For Rodriguez the fire set up a dynamic, his job vs. the dedication to his family.  Rodriguez says a building the size of the Palace should be installed with was the victim of the policy meant to protect the general public.”

Rodriguez says he felt he never had the support he needed in the department to add more station staff because of the budget.  He says his push to build a master plan “was scuttled because of the cost factor.”

Rodriguez’s reorganization of the department has been both hailed and decried, a fact that he puts down to “the fact that there are complaints from about 10 percent of the people.”

Rodriguez says he can retire in as little as two years but hopes to get a job someplace, likely in the Bay Area.

For the city manager - who has shown he disdains firing anyone - this has been a painful process too, apparently giving the former chief quite awhile to find a job and wary of new legal tangles coming out of some left field bleacher no one could have ever imagined.  The e-mail memo to his five bosses put the city manager in a position he must have felt had only one solution.  The potential for the issue of conflict grew stronger when Carol Rodriguez interviewed after the fire told reporters that the “fire was my worst nightmare and my biggest fantasy.”

Despite those best efforts Rodriguez says he has now hired an attorney to defend him to insure he is not “blackballed” from the industry.

Meanwhile, the Palace builder Mr. Gilbert Marroquin remains an equally controversial figure - perhaps more of an enigma watching from the media coverage at least.  Unlike Rodriguez he doesn’t give interviews although apparently 20/20 and the rest want to tell his story.

Sources say Mr. Marroquin has a very good chance of collecting the $3 million he is apparently rightfully owned from the semi that took out his Earlimart area cold storage building in 1999 spiraling him into this firestorm of debt.  He is likely to get that money as soon as next month and will be forced to decide whether to collect on his insurance policy by rebuilding the controversial home that now is simply a concrete slab.  Friends from his church - he is a deeply Christian man they say - are trying to talk him out of it.

The city now has a conditional use requirement to build such a home but may be hard pressed to deny Mr. Marroquin a permit since he was legally entitled to build his home before the law changed in Visalia.  So this Taj Mahal may yet rise from the ashes.

Visalia - The Visalia Oaks and City of Visalia are working on a news conference in the next few weeks expected to announce an extension of the lease at Recreation Park.  That would give the city an incentive to do some improvements to the aging park to help bring in more fans, says president of the Oaks, Alain Lillre.

“We’ve heard the rumors we are going to move and as a co-owner I can tell you that it’s news to me.”  This coming baseball season is the final year of the current lease at the city-owned stadium.  But an extension would give hope the Oaks would remain in town beyond 2001.

California League President, Joe Gagliardi, has been working with the City of Reno for the past 1 ½ years and this November the city council voted to put $80,000 into a feasibility study/site analysis for a new Reno stadium.

Gagliardi is quoted in the Reno Gazette-Journal that he would “guarantee” he would bring a Cal League franchise to Reno if a new stadium was built.  Prompting local rumors that Visalia could be that franchise was the fact that Oaks co-owner Alain Lillre “went to listen” to Gagliardi’s presentation in Reno, according to Lillre.

But Lillre downplays the visits.  “We are the Visalia Oaks, period,” suggests Lillre who has co-owned the team with Tom Volpe for only a year. “It’s really up to Visalia if we stay,” he insists.

Gagliardi has been encouraging cities to build new stadiums up and down the West Coast including Visalia.  The projects typically require all or mostly public funds.   Visalia has felt it didn’t have the funds to build a new complex to the tune of $12 million or higher in recent years.  (That’s what they are looking at in Reno for example.)

But city manager Steve Salomon says there are things that can be done at Rec Park especially to provide more parking options.  Those ideas could include some nearby or shuttle parking similar to what is seen in large urban areas.

Some believe that Rec Park’s small amount of seating - often cited as the reason a new stadium is needed - can be fixed.  Planner Greg Collins suggests a look at densely stacked seating seen in some major league ballparks - that would come out into the current Oaks parking lot pushing automobile parking off-site.  “I think there is a chance to build an urban type stadium.”  The price tag for a remake of the existing stadium would be far less than a new complex like the one envisioned out at 198/99 a few years ago.

Salomon suggests there “are lots of things we could do at Rec Park.”  But Lillre suggests that “we’ve always said from day one that Rec Park would not be our long-term choice.”

Reno had a single A team some years ago, but poor attendance and an old ball park prompted the team to relocate.  The Western Baseball League had a team in Reno for a few years but it also left town for Marysville last year.
Gagliardi says about the Reno push that “somebody is finally doing something” about building a new stadium.  Candidates to relocate are clearly Visalia and Stockton - with the lowest attendance in the league last year.

Gagliardi says he expects some word on the Reno stadium decision in February or March.  That could bring some Cal League team to the Nevada city in 2002 or 2003, says a Reno city official.

Visalia - Crime in Visalia dropped 1% in 2000 even as cases of rape nearly doubled from the year before.  Following a national trend, crimes against property, especially burglaries were down while crimes against persons were up nearly 3%.

The big jump in rape cases, 51 last year compared to 26 the year before followed rape reports that averaged in the low 30s in the 1990s.

Vehicle theft was up last year a whopping 26%.  Vehicle theft in Visalia jumped from 394 in 1999 to 496 in 2000.  Auto theft cases in Visalia, like other cities, was higher earlier in the 1990s topping off in 1994 with 818 incidents that year and falling each year recently until 2000.

Regarding auto theft Sergeant Glen Newsom, public information officer for the VPD, says “it’s picked up because it seems to be a trend now mostly for youthful offenders who pick on selected cars like Honda.”

Calls for service in Visalia jumped 4% from 1999 to 84,426.  Calls for service in 1999 were up 7% from ‘98.  The added calls for service prompted the police department last year to add some 113 officers.

In December the quietest day for calls was December 25th, Wednesday appeared to be the busiest day of the week for calls.

Homicides in the city last year were 5, down from 7 the year before.  The police report that in all five cases an arrest was made.

The trend in burglaries in town is a decade best 880 cases.  In the 1990s city figures show the number of burglaries in town consistently over 1000 with 1126 reported in 1993.  Nationwide, property crime rates per 1000 households had fallen steadily since the 1970s from nearly 600 cases per 1000 households to under 200 cases - a two thirds drop.  Burglaries are down in part because “most of the burglaries are done by drug offenders,” says Newsom.  There has been an active push to get these people off the streets either incarcerated under Three Strikes or in a treatment program.

Visalia has adopted “community oriented policing” policies for a number of years.  The policy calls for building partnerships in the community with organizations and residents to attack the root cause of crime.  The policy has been implemented with a number of satellite police officer stations scattered around town and more officers out and about on foot and on bike.

Newsom says “community policing techniques that include the stationing of officer at shopping centers and the additional downtown security program paid for by property owners has helped stem the tide as well.”
Newsom says an emphasis this past year has been in traffic safety.  “We had two tragic cases where cars killed bike riders” and that has prompted more education in the schools.  Regarding pedestrians, the police carried out 3 pedestrian decoy operations in which police officers walking across the cross walks stung drivers who failed to yield.

The high number of rape cases may imply more reporting of the crime although the national statistics suggest only a fraction of rape cases are reported.

Newsom says that “most of the increase shows the public is now more comfortable in reporting rape now.”
In addition the police department has set up special units and the hospital has sexual assault teams in place.  “The people have been more educated and people aren’t as embarrassed,” suggests Newsom.   Research shows that the majority of rape victims know their assailant.