Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
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Stallion Springs welcomes Jon Curry as the new General Manager, for the District. He comes to Stallion with extensive experience having previously worked with the Alpine Forest Park Mutual Water District, California Rural Water Association and the Golden Hills CSD in addition to having worked the past nine years as Public Works Director for the City of Tehachapi. Jon also serves on the Board of Directors of the California Rural Water Association and holds several certifications in water...
Tehachapi lost one of its brightest stars last month. Martin Jay Sussell, whom everyone called Jay, passed away on Jan. 9 after a long illness. Having spent most of his working life in law enforcement (Los Angeles, Gardina, Beverly Hills) and the space tech industry, where he met wife Flo, he kept that energy up when the couple moved to Tehachapi to retire. With friend Geoffrey Braslow he founded VIPS (volunteers in police service) and he remained active in both Tehachapi and Bear Valley...
Off they go... The parade of construction trailers that have been a fixture at the Replacement Tehachapi Critical Access Hospital site at Capital Hills since February, 2013 are being removed as the contractors move on to other jobs. Project Manager SHP Project Development's report to the Jan. 17, 2017 Tehachapi Healthcare District board of directors meeting at 305 S. Robinson St. states that construction is complete. The city of Tehachapi Planning and Building & Safety final inspections are...
Tehachapi Chief of Police Kent Kroeger said the police department has made great progress in 2016 with the opening of the Police Communications Center on July 1 and the formation of the non-profit Tehachapi Police Foundation. "Being in-house has improved our efficiency," Kroeger said of the new communications (dispatch) center at the Dec. 28 Kiwanis Club of Tehachapi meeting at Don Juan's Grill. "We are self-contained and open 24 hours." Until the center opened at the new TPD headquarters at...
Stallion Springs residents held a meeting at noon on Saturday, Jan. 14 to rally against the proposed reduction of staffing at Station 18. The reduction proposed by the Board of Supervisors would reduce the staffing of the facility from three to two firefighters per shift. The reduction would result in a lower success rate on medical calls and CPR due to fatigue, increased costs and difficulty in obtaining insurance for local residents, and reduced effectiveness on containment and suppression of...
Five years of tough negotiating by California legislators has resulted in the inclusion of provisions in a new federal infrastructure Act that will give drought-devastated, environmentally hamstrung Central Valley farmers relief at last. Senate bill 612, the “Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act” (WIIN Act), which the Senate approved 78-21 on Dec. 10, 2016 and President Obama signed on Dec. 16, includes a section devoted specifically to California. The section mandates that wat...
Two snowstorms blanketed the Tehachapi area like holiday bookends a week apart at the tail-end of 2016 -- one starting just before Christmas Eve morning and one on New Year's night, ushering in both festive days on a palette of dazzling white. Rather than being light and dry and forming a winter-long base, the Tehachapi area snow typically is wet and, in the absence of sustained freezing temperatures, melts quickly. According to the weather web site Mountainbase.com, located at Oak Knolls in...
Young person with a goal – Forde Files happened to stop on the way to Albuquerque a month ago and discovered a charming Brigadoon-like place called Ludlow, Calif., a hundred or so miles past Barstow. It consists of a Chevron station, a Dairy Queen, a café and a motel. I checked into the motel at the gas station. About 20 people live in Ludlow. The town is owned by the Harold Knoll family. Employees, mostly young, are bused in from Barstow to work. There's no alcohol sold anywhere in town. It...
The SunSelect hydroponic greenhouse complex in Cummings Valley, which did not exist four years ago, is a high-tech wonder. "It's a world-class facility and one of the most modern greenhouses in the world," SunSelect CEO Reinhold Krahn told the Greater Tehachapi Economic Development Council on Wed., Dec. 7, at the Tehachapi Police Department Community Room. "There are only two other in the world. This is the 3.0 version." The family-owned, British Columbia-based company has an $80 million...
Christmas is coming and it was a busy week in Stallion Springs. Over 120 kids and their parents came to Breakfast with Santa on Saturday, Dec. 3. Santa was kept busy for the three hours he was able to stay in Stallion before heading back to the North Pole. He returned on Dec. 10 for a few hours during the caroling rides to greet the kids that missed him at breakfast. The Caroling Wagon full of residents made six trips around the community singing Christmas songs and celebrating the season....
Retail leakage happens when residents go to Bakersfield or Lancaster/Palmdale to shop instead of shopping in Tehachapi. Tehachapi Economic Development Coordinator Michelle Vance is on a mission to turn that around, to keep the money in Tehachapi and to draw shoppers up the hill to make their purchases. "One hundred fifty-eight million dollars leave our town every year," Vance told the Greater Tehachapi Economic Development Council on Nov. 2 at the Tehachapi Police Department community room....
The tragic events last week that culminated in the death of Sgt. Steve Owen left the community in shock, and those of us with ties to law enforcement reeling. Long before my husband Mike became a wine maker, he was a Deputy Sheriff with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Steve Owen was Mike’s partner when he worked at the Lancaster Sheriff’s Station. Although Mike retired in 1999 due to an on-duty injury, when the call came in last week about Steve’s death, memories I thought were buried forever deep down inside came flooding back. M...
The campaign for two seats on the five-seat Tehachapi City Council is a ferocious one this year as candidates Mary Ann Hester and Ken Hetge battle incumbent councilpersons Ed Grimes and Mayor Pro-tem Kim Nixon in a race in which the fundamental nature and direction of the city is in the balance. The Forde Files spoke to each of the candidates. The Incumbents Kim Nixon – Tehachapi resident for 30 years, age 60. Nixon has served on the Tehachapi City Council for five years and is Mayor pro tem. I...
The East Kern County economic diversification study currently being carried out by the Austin-based TIP Strategies has found that "location quotients" (LQ) by occupation show ratios of high-level jobs per geographical designation above those of the nation, state and Kern County as a whole. "Location quotients by occupation is one of the most exciting findings," TIP senior consultant John Karras said at a presentation to the East Kern Economic Alliance on Sept. 7, 2016 at the Rio Tinto plant...
Guild to the rescue – From the operation of its little thrift shop at 101 West E Street, the Tehachapi Hospital Guild through the years has provided hundreds of thousands of dollars in hard cash to purchase vital hi-tech equipment for the Tehachapi Hospital. Now the Guild has in excess of $675,000 in its bank account, and Adventist Health (soon to be the operator of the new hospital and clinics), with its big purchasing power and resources, doesn't really need those funds for equipment. As the R...
The Tehachapi Lions Club held their last summer backyard meeting of the season on Aug. 18 at the home of President Walt Satalino. The Lions enjoyed lots of good food and camaraderie during the meeting. The Lions are preparing for their upcoming Oct. 9 Apple Drop during the Tehachapi Apple Festival and were very excited to have Sandy Morris from Christmas for Seniors of Kern County as their guest speaker. Morris is a former public relations specialist in the Crime Prevention Unit of the...
What is the name of the new hospital? There's a corporate name and a hospital name. The corporation name is Adventist Health Medical Center Tehachapi Valley. That's who the employees will be working for. The official name of the new hospital (the corporation's dba) is Adventist Health Tehachapi Valley. "We knew it was important to the people of Tehachapi to have 'Tehachapi' be part of the hospital's name," Adventist spokesperson Jimmy Phillips said. The clinics will be Adventist Community Care...
On August 2, Tehachapi celebrated its 6th Annual National Night Out. National Night Out started in 1984 as a way for neighborhoods to take the streets back from violence and gang activity. It was set up in neighborhood block parties as a way for citizens to become more familiar with their local law enforcement. This is Tehachapi's 6th Annual National Night Out. "This year we really just want to have a fun, safe place for the neighbors and the residents of Tehachapi to come together, meet our...
The Tehachapi Police Department and the City of Tehachapi are again hosting its annual "National Night Out" event. National Night Out is a communitybuilding campaign that promotes policecommunity partnerships and neighborhood camaraderie to make our community and neighborhoods safer, better places to live. This year's celebration will be held at Tehachapi's Central Park on Tuesday, August 2, 2016 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., followed by the "Movie in the Park" at 9 p.m. At 8:30 p.m. we will join for...
We've all heard that it's better to give than to receive. There is joy in giving. Some children never get to experience this. Thunder on the Mountain supports a program that gives children a chance to feel the joy of giving. The Shop With a Cop program is an annual event that joins underprivileged children with local law enforcement officers, providing the children with money to shop for Christmas presents. Officers from Tehachapi Police Department, California Highway Patrol, Kern County...
Police Chief Mike Grant reports, the Stallion Springs Police Department assisted the Kern County Sheriff at the Erskine Fire. Two units responded to the Fire on Thursday, June 23 and again on Friday, June 24. The third unit covered calls in the Tehachapi area when needed on June 23, 24, and 25. On June 25 our officer established a command post and called out Kern County Search and Rescue to search for a missing adult female in the Golden Hills area. We also had Stallion Springs CERT on standby...
Fires – Above, a helicopter vacuums up water at Middle Lake in Bear Valley Springs through a snorkel, filling its tank in 45 seconds. Helicopters fitted with buckets scooped up loads in 10 seconds. The helicopters, staged as closely as a minute apart, dropped the water on the Deer Fire, which advanced up the hill from Hwy. 223. Air tankers dropped fire bright red retardant. The blaze started July 1, 2016, covered 1,785 acres and was 93 percent contained by July 6. It threatened homes in BVS and...
At Tehachapi City Council, Police Chief Kent Kroeger introduced Carl Gericke, Ruben Brandon and Darrell Brown, three members of the new Tehachapi Police Foundation Board of Directors. The foundation will be the fundraising arm of the Police Department as there is no current budget for youth, school and other programs. They plan to raise money through various events to fund school safety and anti-bullying programs as well as establish awards like Police Officer of the Year, Volunteer of the Year...
Recently the board members of the newly formed Tehachapi Police Foundation met to sign the documents making the foundation officially a non-profit body. Board member Darrel Brown stated, "Our foundation represents the city as well as our police department. We are in the forefront of the public eye. Our aim is to raise funds above and beyond that which is budgeted. We plan to build and strengthen community youth safety programs and to work with our fine law enforcement Explorer Program. As our...
More Sponsors. More Fun. More Surprises. Cheers to Charity 2016 is shaping up to be the Must-Do Charity Event for the Summer Season! This annual fund raising event, to be held Saturday, August 13 at Aviator Park, has more sponsors, more surprises and more fun planned than ever before! Cheers to Charity benefits local charities and features live music, mouth-watering tapas, scrumptious wines, delicious craft beer ... plus the area’s only offering of skillfully made home-brewed beer. Choice cigars (available for purchase), a silent auction, a cof...