Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Sorted by date Results 301 - 323 of 323
The Tehachapi City Council formally adopted a major update of the municipal zoning code in a 416-page document that incorporates a hybrid of conventional and form-based elements. The document "is a reflection of us," City Manager Greg Garrett told the Council Oct. 20 at its regular meeting at the Wells Education Center. "We are proud of this document," Garrett said. "It tells the story of what we do and how we do it, all the things we pride ourselves in. It tells a really good story." Council...
Applications for the second round of grants to help revitalize the unincorporated East Kern County communities of Mojave, Boron, Rosamond and Old Town Tehachapi are available now and will be awarded in November. A total of $250,000 in grant money will be disbursed this year for façade improvements, signs, painting, landscaping, awnings, fencing, windows and more. With a growing sense of ownership and pride, residents of the those communities have worked with the Kern County Department of...
As local bicyclists and participants in the inaugural GranFondo discover the joys of riding in the Tehachapi area, bike racks are appearing - somewhat slowly - on the landscape. Forde Files offers kudos to the downtown establishments who lead the way, notably KMart, which has a bike rack in front and another in back., presumably for the employees. There are no bike racks to be found anywhere at any of the malls on Tucker Road. Indeed, signs at the malls make it clear that cyclists are not...
Under the guiding hand of trip organizer Marlan Woodside – a member of the Tehachapi Loop Railroad Club and Friends of the Tehachapi Depot who is a dedicated promoter of rail travel – a group of Tehachapi residents on a recent Saturday boarded a Green Line Metrolink double-deck view car in Lancaster to spend the day poking around downtown LA, eating at a classic eatery near an old railroad yard and attending a film, sponsored by the L.A. Conservancy, at the grand Orpheum Theater on Bro...
In asking the Tehachapi City Council to approve the placement of a half-cent sales tax increase on the November ballot, City Manager Greg Garrett said the municipality is not desperate for the money and it's a good time to plan ahead. "We're lean and mean and at some point we need to build capital," Garrett told the Council on Aug. 4, 2014 at the Wells Education Center board room. The members voted 5-0 to place a measure on the November 4, 2014 ballot that would increase city sales tax from 7.5...
School enrollment up – Tehachapi Unified School District (TUSD) Superintendent Susan Andreas-Bervel reported to the district Board of Trustees on Aug. 12, 2014 (the day before school started), that projected student enrollment in the district is up. She said that Cummings Valley Elementary is up three students, Golden Hills elementary is up 14, Tompkins Elementary is up 31, Jacobsen Middle School is up 58, Tehachapi High School is up 86 and Monroe Continuation High School is up 24, for a t...
The Tehachapi Unified School District’s new math text books based on the Common Core standards appear to be well constructed and free of the impediment of incoherence that parents and opponents have discovered in some states. The subject matter is thoughtfully and cleverly linked to other areas of learning and to the broader world. The Environmental Science book for a new high school class of the same name, on the other hand, may disturb some parents who are not comfortable with the activist d...
With a new Inspector of Record (IOR) and new concrete contractor on site, construction on Tehachapi Replacement Acute Care Hospital came roaring back to life the week of July 28 after a several-month slowdown. The construction office bustled with contractors and supervisors poring over plans as new materials appeared throughout the site. "It's been an interesting month," Project Manager Stacey Pray told the Tehachapi Valley Healthcare District Board of Directors on July 30. "We will be getting...
City of Tehachapi budget FY 2014-15 City-wide Revenue $16,991,975 Expenditures $16,799,357 It was with a large measure of pride that Tehachapi City Manager Greg Garrett and Finance Director Hannah Chung presented the 2014-15 fiscal year budget and preliminary five-year budget to the City Council June 23. “The budget is spot on,” Garrett told Forde Files. “We’re very proud to be working for the city of Tehachapi. The entire team, staff and residents are of one accord.” Garrett said the city has...
State takes precedence – On July 7, 2014 the Tehachapi City Council repealed a municipal ordinance it enacted in 2010 prohibiting sex offenders from loitering within 300 feet of any public or private school, park, school bus stop, children's facility or child daycare center. "On April 30, 2014," City Attorney Tom Schroeter wrote in his report to the city, "the City received a letter from California Reform Sex Offender Laws (CRSOL) advising the City of the case of People v Nguyen (2014) 222 CA 4...
The June 27, 2014 official dedication and open house for the new Tehachapi Police Department building on 220 West C St. drew dignitaries and members of the public eager to see the state-of-the-art facility. Retiring Chief of Police Jeff Kermode – who had the task of forming the police department in 2007 when the city chose to establish its own department rather than extending a contract with the Kern County Sheriffs Office – swore in the new chief, Kent Kroeger, whose father Joe pinned on his ba...
Just outside the far eastern edge of Kern County in the northern corner of San Bernardino County, almost in Inyo County, is the unincorporated community of Trona. It was established in 1914 as a company town to mine the rich mineral deposits of the dry lakebed. Searles Valley Minerals owns the industrial operations there. There's nothing shiny and new about Trona; when Hollywood needs a visual and atmosphere of isolation and desolation, it looks to Trona. The community is 89 miles from...
Abernathy Collegiate Charter School, a free public school launched in 2013 amid some community opposition, has come a long way in banishing doubts about its viability. "We've been able to prove ourselves," Principal Shyanne Ledford said. "We have gotten a name for high standards and rigor." Abernathy, which is adding tenth grade to its sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth grades next year, is enrolling students until July 11 for the fall. "There is such significant interest that we may have to...
The sleek, uber-sexy ICON A5 Light Sport Aircraft will be manufactured in Northern California but Tehachapi is where it was born. From 2008 to the present, research and development of the recreational amphibious aircraft has been taking place in relative obscurity inside hangars at Tehachapi Municipal Airport. Now it is ready to meet the world and the A5 is leaving the nest. ICON Aircraft Company officers confirmed on May 14, 2014, that they selected Vacaville as the location for its...
Tehachapi students compete for Space Challenge top honors For two hours on the morning of May 21, the cheers at Tehachapi Municipal Airport were deafening as Tehachapi Unified School District fourth and fifth grade students from all three elementary schools – pressed against a barrier fence a safe distance from the launch pads – urged their home-made rockets upward toward the drifting clouds. It was the annual Intermediate Space Challenge, organized by the Arts, Science and Technology Committee...
Fire! – On June 5, fire fighters from Kern, Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties, LA city, the U.S. Forest Service, and Cal Fire will conduct a nighttime "Brite Lake Helicopter Roundup" to practice loading water at Brite Lake and dropping it on a real fire on Cummings Mountain. "This is a huge thing," Kern Fire Pilot Scott Beck said at the Tehachapi-Cummings County Water District board meeting May 21. "It's an honor to be asked to participate. No one else in the world does this." Campers a...
Tehachapi City Engineer Jay Schlosser and city staff are seeking residents' comments as they work frantically to meet a May 21 deadline to submit applications for state Active Transportation Program grants for non-motorized transportation. If successful, the grants will remedy several major mobility problems and improve safety for children walking to and from school. The projects include a quarter-mile track at Warrior Park, complete with exercise nodules; improvements that will keep students...
Speaker Russell O'Quinn's touching address at the 23rd Annual Kiwanis Prayer Breakfast was a fitting kickoff to the May 1, 2014 National Day of Prayer. O'Quinn shared his experiences as a test pilot and aviation entrepreneur after the participants at the early-morning event enjoyed the professionally catered breakfast by Linda Pettitt and her Mill Street Kitchen crew. The breakfast, attended by civic leaders, featured readings and prayers by pastors Dr. Marvin Slifer of Mountain Bible Church,...
Lawman in the air The Tehachapi Police Department outfoxed several men who thought it was amusing to shine a laser light at a pilot landing at Tehachapi Municipal Airport on the evening of Sunday, May 4. The pilot was temporarily disoriented by exposure to the laser, which bounces around the cabin and creates upheaval. He contacted Tehachapi police. TPD Officer Chris Boston went aloft with the pilot in an attempt to draw the laser. After 20 minutes, the laser again targeted the aircraft. TPD...
Soledad Mountain rises above a sea of wind turbines in Mojave, seen from Oak Creek Road. The barren, rugged mountain harbors veins of gold and silver that individual miners and companies have dug for more than a century. With modern extraction techniques, the Golden Queen Mining Co. Ltd. will commence industrial-scale mining in 2015, providing 140 to 150 jobs. "The Next California Gold Producer," says the company's web site of its Soledad Mountain Project. "The project will use conventional...
Engineers designing the California High-Speed Rail (HSR) must move mountains – and people, houses, roads, orchards and maybe a corral or two. Farmers and residents at ground zero in the first segment of the first HSR track to be under construction – a 29-mile stretch from Madera to Fresno – are faced with the reality that they are expected to get out of the way. In spite of funding difficulties and vociferous opposition to the project, it appears the train has left the depot. The next const...
The 28th Annual Kiwanis Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, May 1, 2014, will feature speaker Russell O’Quinn, an acclaimed test pilot and aircraft designer whose story, “Live Life to the Limit,” is a testimony to the power of a dedicated Christian life. A resident of Cummings Valley, O’Quinn fell in love with airplanes as a youngster, watching them and working as a line boy at Van Nuys Airport. He earned his pilot’s license at age 16 and his parents, who had objected to his flying, “realized...
While opponents believe the California High-Speed Rail (HSR) project to be a wasteful folly, the California High-Speed Rail Authority is moving the project along doggedly in small steps akin to building a cathedral in the Middle Ages, when frequently it took hundreds of years and generations of craftsmen to complete one glorious structure. The Authority is building the massive project in a non-linear manner. The plan includes Improvements at the HSR "bookends" of San Francisco and Los Angeles...
