Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
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The Kern County Planning Commission has recommended approval of a 1,876-page Draft Environmental Report (EIR) aimed at streamlining the oil and gas drilling permitting process and improving communication between the people who own the surface of the land and those who own the mineral rights below. The EIR now goes to the Board of Supervisors for final approval. “The state wanted the EIR approved,” Second District Supervisor Zack Scrivner said Wednesday in Tehachapi. “The EIR will be a state...
Wow – Tehachapi is awesome – The Aug. 8 Cheers to Charity event at Veritas (and the entire parking lot) brought in a $26,500 for local nonprofits, including the vital Salvation Army after school community center. The Tehachapi Car Club earned $22,000 at its Aug. 16 Thunder on the Mountain event, distributing all of it to more than a dozen local charities. Tehachapi goes global – An animated Henry Schaeffer, Jr. told the Greater Tehachapi Economic Development Council (GTEDC) -- meeting Oct....
Patients who come to the Tehachapi Replacement Critical Access Hospital for medical care probably won't ponder much about what is inside the walls and ceilings. Just as their own skeleton holds them together, a forest of connected steel studs forms the skeleton upon which all other systems are built. The men responsible for the framing and interior and exterior finishes at the hospital are proud of their work. "I've been doing steel studs since I was a kid," said Dave Rohder, foreman for the...
You need to know about the High Speed Rail – The California High-Speed Rail (HSR) Authority will hold five community open house meetings, Sept. 30 to Oct. 7, 2015, to explain the 75-mile-long Bakersfield to Palmdale section of the project, which is routed through the Tehachapi Mountains and the city. The meetings will be held at Bakersfield (Edison) on Sept. 30, at Tehachapi on Thursday, Oct. 1, Mojave on Oct. 5, Rosamond on Oct. 6 and Lancaster on Oct. 7. The meetings begin at 5:30 p.m. and t...
Working as a team, two Tehachapi natives on the cusp of major professional breakthroughs in the fierce world of international bicycle road racing left 172 other riders behind in the century (100-mile) Tehachapi Gran Fondo Sept. 19, 2015. Cory Lockwood, 27, crossed the line first with a time of 4 hours, 46 minutes, 50 seconds. Dakota Gracey, 26, finished second with a time of 4 hours, 49 minutes, 50 seconds. "We worked as a two-man breakaway," Lockwood said. "Two is faster than one." In road...
The Horse Thief Country Club and Tehachapi Sod Farm will continue using expensive State Water Project water while the California Correctional Institution (CCI) in Cummings Valley cleans up its waste water facility. The two businesses had contracts to purchase most of the waste water from CCI for non-food irrigation (the only use for which the CCI waste water is approved), but delivery via the Tehachapi-Cummings County Water District – already spotty because of CCI computer and staffing p...
When the board of the Arts, Science & Technology Educational Corporation of Tehachapi (AST) started looking for a site for their STEAM Center (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts/Agriculture, Mathematics), their first notion was to rehabilitate the agricultural buildings at Jacobsen Middle School. But the animal stalls and barns proved to be irretrievable. Lack of teachers for the ag program at the then-Tehachapi High School and a drop in membership of the 4-H and Future Farmers of America ha...
The Cummings Valley Protective Association is offering $5,000 – for starters – to a masters or doctoral student who will study the wine-growing environment in that pristine valley. "We will provide funding for a viticulture grad student to do a thesis project on the new and future award-winning vineyards of Tehachapi," said Jo Anne Huckins, president of the association. "We want to encourage people to plant vineyards." The forensic study would explore all the elements that create unique win...
Real estate looking good -- Jim Hutson of the Tehachapi Area Association of Realtors reported to the Greater Tehachapi Economic Development Council on Sept. 2 that in the area Multiple Listing Service there were 281 listings of homes, with 88 in escrow. The number of distressed sales (short sales and foreclosures) is down significantly, at 7 percent. In the last three m onths, 171 homes have sold, with an average of 60 days on the market. The median price of a home is $242,000, up 7 percent...
A new educational hot spot is taking shape in a field on a far corner of the Tehachapi High School campus. An additional resource for the Tehachapi Unified School District, It will be open to all youngsters from public school, public charter schools, private schools and home schoolers. It will be a place where students can explore tech education and “blue collar” training, run a real Space Shuttle cockpit simulator and practice rodeo skills. It’s the STEAM Center, the creation of the non-p...
Using an empty home in Bear Valley Springs in a sting operation, the Contractors State License Board’s fraud team cited nine individuals suspected of violating state contracting laws on Aug. 27, 2015. According to a board press release, the Statewide Investigative Fraud Team (SWIFT) discovered that of the nine individuals, “one had an active $110,000 felony warrant, another was on probation for prior illegal contracting charges, one suspect was driving with a suspended driver license and ano...
Four entrepreneurial Canadian siblings looked for two and a half years to find the right location for their U.S. greenhouse operation. They found it in Cummings Valley in 2013. "My brother was traveling from the coast to Palm Desert when he had lunch at Kohnen's," Edith Gubiotti told Forde Files during a recent tour of the plant. "He thought, 'This looks like a farming community.'" The conditions, she said, turned out to be perfect – proximity to customers, available labor force and ideal l...
Neighbors of Philip Marx Central Park have adopted four carved stump sculptures that the Tehachapi Valley Recreation and Park District ordered removed Aug. 17 for safety reasons. Charles Jones, 30, said he was "devastated" when he saw the tree trimmers cutting the stump carvings, which had become iconic attractions since then-Rec & Park district Manager Gary Opferman commissioned artist Kent Holmgren to create them in 2008. The playful, funny faces emerging from dead and dying trees has...
Stacey As a female in the world of construction, Stacey Pray no longer is an anomaly. "I've been in the business for 30 years and when I started I was always the only woman in the room," she told Forde Files. Today, Pray, founder and president of SHP Project Development of South Pasadena, is one of six women at the top of the construction team that is building the Tehachapi Replacement Critical Access Hospital. Working closely with the construction management services joint venture company...
Due diligence for the proposed affiliation between the Tehachapi Valley Healthcare District and Adventist Health is proceeding – but without the urgency of impending financial disaster or a November ballot deadline. The district board of directors voted 4-0 on August 7 (President Mike Nixon absent) to table the matter of how to word a ballot measure on the affiliation proposal, thus foreclosing the opportunity to place it on the Nov. 3 ballot for voter approval. The board cited the need for m...
The proposed affiliation between the Tehachapi Valley Healthcare District and Adventist Health will not be on the Nov. 3, 2015 ballot. The complex negotiations relating to Adventist's long term lease of district facilities -- including the new hospital that is under construction -- will not be completed in time for the proposal to be presented to voters at the forthcoming general election. The district board of directors voted 4-0 (President Mike Nixon absent) at a special meeting Thursday,...
California Assembly Bill 775, which is nearing a Senate vote and a likely party-line approval (Democrats for, Republicans against), would order all medically licensed pro-life pregnancy centers in the state to post a prominent sign telling clients how to get information on securing abortions. The law also would order non-medical pregnancy centers to post a sign in 48-point type (see sidebar) stating clearly that the facility does not provide medical care. The bill, backed by Planned Parenthood...
As the Tehachapi Critical Access Replacement Hospital moves toward completion, and affiliation with Adventist Health on the horizon, the Tehachapi Valley Healthcare District is re-defining its raison d'être. Once the hospital is leased to Adventist – should the public approve the affiliation on Nov. 4, 2015 – the district board of directors will focus on developing new ways to address community health issues. The district has begun that mission with a Community Health Needs Assessment, pres...
The new Tehachapi Hospital is destined to be more than a building. Architect Stephen Wen of Pasadena has included soothing fountains, a walking labyrinth and a healing garden wrapped in an undulating wall of stone and blocks. The west end of the wall features a cutout that frames the rolling hills of the Loop Ranch for the enjoyment of patients, visitors and staff walking in the garden or dining in the cafeteria (top photo). Photo above, the administration building on the right awaits stone...
Now it gets personal. The California High-Speed Rail (HSR) project that has hovered in the background as a hazy concept cooked up in Sacramento is about to become real for Tehachapi. With heavy construction of the Merced-to-Fresno segment well under way, the Fresno-to-Bakersfield segment in initial stages of development and links to the bookend San Francisco and Los Angeles transportation systems in progress, the California High-Speed Rail Authority is hunkering down to find the right route...
A neon toilet – pressed into service as a fundraising tool for the Tehachapi Parks Foundation – will soon appear mysteriously on local front yards. Residents will be obliged to make a contribution to have it removed and relocated to another front yard. Happily, the resident can say whose yard the toilet will go to next. Craig Janssen announced the campaign at the May 6, 2015 meeting of the Greater Tehachapi Economic Development Council at The Shed restaurant, promptly producing $100 to sta...
Tehachapi's own Maureen Recalde, winner of the world-wide Voice of McDonald's singing competition, will share her Christian testimony and her gift of song at the 2015 Kiwanis Prayer Breakfast, Thursday, May 7 at McMullan Hall, St. Malachy Catholic Church. Recalde, operations manager for the two McDonald's restaurants in Tehachapi, won the Voice of McDonald's in 2012 at Orlando, Fla. before an audience of 25,000. She subsequently has traveled to Europe, South America and Canada to sing. The conte...
By the end of 2015, an old technology coupled with new environmental safeguards will begin to yield up gold and silver that is locked within ancient veins slicing through Soledad Mountain near Mojave. The mountain -- adjacent to Hwy. 14 and looking like a nondescript rocky lump of desert -- has been mined by individuals and companies for a hundred years, but never on such a scale. The Golden Queen Mining Co., LLC, a British Columbia-based company under the leadership of President, CEO and...
Hoover Dam is 35 miles from Las Vegas and a world away in time and substance. The 726-foot (221 m) high dam, begun in 1931 and completed in 1935 during the depths of the Depression, is a monument to human ingenuity, engineering prowess, Art Deco style and teamwork. New structures – visitor accommodations and the soaring Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge that was built to divert Nevada-Arizona traffic from across the top of the dam – have added to the luster of the site as a magne...
'It's a beautiful business.' – Brassard Isabelle Brassard, general manager of the Rio Tinto Boron operations, told the March 5, 2015 meeting of the East Kern Economic Alliance at the Borax Visitor Center that business is good. "Twenty-fourteen was a great year for us," said Brassard, a native of Montreal. "We are doing the right things to keep this business in good shape." The Boron plant produced more than a million pounds of borates, Brassard said, and at the same time decreased water c...
