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MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – A former Middletown High School standout has earned her place of honor among cross country runners in the Pacific West Conference.
Alexis Valdovinos of Middletown, a freshman chemistry major and a 2011 Stars of Lake County Award student winner, made her first appearance this week in the PacWest Weekly Top 10 Honor Roll.
She was one of five Dominican women’s cross country runners named to PacWest’s weekly honor roll, which was a school record, according to a report from the San Rafael-based university.
Dominican said the five runners received the recognition following their performances in the Bronco Invitational hosted by Santa Clara University last Saturday.
Led by redshirt junior Ally Rosemond, who placed 53rd overall and first among Dominican competitors, the Penguins represented half of the weekly honors list released by the league media office in Phoenix.
Joining Rosemond in the Top 10 were teammates Valdovinos, Keara Teeter, Renee Dominguez and Kendra Woodglass.
Teeter, a senior biological sciences and art major, finished second on the team behind Rosemond, a psychology major, in the Bronco Invite.
For sophomores Dominguez and Woodglass, it also was the first time they have been selected to the PacWest Weekly Top 10 Honor Roll.
The Penguins’ women’s cross country team concludes its season on Oct. 29 at the PacWest Championships at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix.
For more information on Dominican cross country, visit www.dominicanathletics.com.
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Joseph H. Jeu, director of the Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA), made that point and more in an interview last week amid rising speculation that commissaries could be targeted for cuts under national debt reduction plans being readied by Congress and the Obama administration.
In return for the “$1.3 billion that we get in appropriations support” annually, Jeu said, “we are providing nearly $2.7 billion in savings to patrons.”
That more than “two-for-one return on investment” is “something people don’t think about. It’s really an excellent investment for taxpayers.”
As national debt climbs toward $15 trillion, and politicians confront a crisis decades in the making, talk in Washington is of cutting federal entitlements, like Medicare and Social Security, and slashing future defense budgets.
Commissaries have become part of that conversation, thanks to a long-standing suggestion by the Congressional Budget Office.
CBO says that up to $1.7 billion a year could be saved by ending commissary subsidies, combining base grocery and department stores into a single system and cutting shopper discounts to 5 percent.
The diluted discounts could be eased in part with a new grocery allowance, CBO advises.
Last December the Simpson-Bowles commission on budget reform listed base store consolidation as one of many possible cuts to federal spending.
In August, the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee liked the CBO idea enough to include it in a bill to create another entitlement.
The committee voted to take dollars saved by ending the commissary subsidy and redirect them to the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide health care to veterans and their families who lived on Camp Lejeune, N.C., during an era time when base drinking water was contaminated.
The bill, S 277, still faces procedural challenges before it can be debated and put to a vote by the full Senate.
Commissary advocates fear the committee’s vote alone has made commissaries a reasonable target of savings to achieve higher priorities, like new debt reduction goals.
Defense officials meanwhile are studying ways to achieve $400 billion in budget savings over 10 years as ordered by President Obama earlier this year.
Under a separate deal reached between Obama and Republican congressional leaders this summer, this one as a condition for raising the debt ceiling, a new “super committee” of lawmakers must find at least $1.5 trillion more in debt-cutting initiatives over the decade or automatic cuts of $1.2 trillion, by design, will hit both defense budgets and entitlements hard.
“I don’t want to speculate on what could happen but I have heard the same rumors as you have,” said DeCA Director Jeu.
Commissary patrons are concerned, he said.
Jeu’s senior enlisted advisor, Army Command Sgt. Maj. John M. Gaines Jr., travels often and “gets feedback from a lot of junior members who say ‘Sergeant Major, commissaries are critical to us. We cannot make ends meet without them.’”
Rather than comment on any particular threat to stores or savings, real or perceived, Jeu chooses to explain the value commissaries create for both shoppers and taxpayers, “even in a fiscally constrained environment.”
First, he said, DeCA has a tradition of efficiency that other agencies would do well to emulate. When adjusted for inflation, the $1.3 billion annual appropriation is 40 percent below what DeCA got in 1992, when it was formed through consolidation of service-run grocery store. That’s savings of about $700 million a year to deliver the benefit, Jeu said.
Commissaries shoppers meanwhile save, on average, 31.7 percent over commercial store patrons. The savings likely are less, he conceded, if price comparisons are made only for Walmart or other major discounters.
Even then, Jeu said, “I’m confident our prices [are] much better … It could be 15 percent. It could be 20 percent. Who knows? But it will be much greater savings [overall] than in comparison to Walmart”
But commissaries deliver more than savings. They bring a sense of community, Jeu said.
That was seen anew following some recent natural disasters including the earthquake and tsunami in Japan last March. Shelves in grocery stores outside Misawa Air Base soon were bare of goods.
But commissary shelves were full, Jeu said, with “plenty of bottled water, batteries and all those things. The [deputy wing] commander there sent me an email. He said the commissary had been a ‘bedrock’ of the community. That’s how members view their commissary.”
Likewise this summer, first in response a threatened government shutdown and later, for east coast commissaries, as Hurricane Irene approached their towns, shoppers who feared base stores would be closed for a time rang up record sales ahead of events.
“Military members and retirees truly value the benefit,” said Jeu. Manufacturers and vendors enrich it even more each year with “ancillary support” such as charitable contributions, scholarships, and special events and promotions. DeCA estimated those were worth $244 million in 2010.
Before becoming DeCA director last January, Jeu spent about the first third of his 32 years in government working with Army and Marine Corps commissaries.
He remembers base stores 30 years ago being more like warehouses. They carried about half the number of products being stocked today. None had their own bakery or deli or fresh seafood section.
“Thirty years ago our savings were probably running about 25 percent,” Jeu said.
He credits the larger savings today to a more professional staff. DeCA employees are better trained, armed with better data and have skills to manage categories of items far more efficiently.
“It really is more than a grocery store,” Jeu said. Commissaries “are an integral part of the military’s compensation system. That’s something people are forgetting.”
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A general district election is scheduled to be held on Tuesday, Nov. 8.
At this election, voters who reside within the boundaries of the Mendocino-Lake Community College District, Lakeport Unified School District, Upper Lake High School District and Upper Lake Elementary School District will have the opportunity to elect governing board members for each of the school districts.
In addition to the school districts, voters who reside within the boundaries of the Hidden Valley Lake Community Services District will have the opportunity to elect directors for the District.
New residents of Lake County and registered voters who have moved to a new address, changed their mailing address within the county, or changed their name, that you need to reregister in order to be eligible to vote in the upcoming general district election.
Don't delay – the last day to register to vote for the Nov. 8 general district election is Monday, Oct. 24.
The completed voter registration form must either be personally delivered to the Registrar of Voters Office on or before Oct. 24, or postmarked on or before Oct. 24 and received by mail by the Registrar of Voters Office.
Section 2101 of the California Elections Code states, “A person entitled to register to vote shall be a United States citizen, a resident of California, not in prison or on parole for the conviction of a felony, and at least 18 years of age at the time of the next election.”
Residents may register to vote at the Lake County Registrar of Voters Office, Room 209, at the Lake County Courthouse, 255 N. Forbes St., Lakeport or may phone the Registrar's Office at 707-263-2372 for information.
Registration forms also are available at most local post offices, libraries, senior centers, city offices and chamber of commerce offices.
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Katherine Hawley, 39, was killed when a sedan driven by 37-year-old Humberto De La Torre of Watsonville collided with her motorcycle, according to Det. Randal Dyck, an investigator with the Monterey County Coroner's Office.
De La Torre also died as a result of the crash, Dyck said.
A report from Officer Sarah Jackson of the California Highway Patrol's Santa Cruz area office explained that a CHP officer observed De La Torre's green sedan traveling southbound at a high rate of speed along a stretch of Highway 1 at approximately 4:18 p.m. Sunday.
Jackson said that when the officer attempted to overtake the speeding vehicle, he observed the sedan make unsafe lane changes and drive erratically, eventually colliding head-on with the guard rail in the center divide near Buena Vista Road.
De La Torre allegedly fled the scene with the officer in pursuit. Jackson's report said that near Salinas Road, the sedan sideswiped a white SUV, which left the SUV's adult passenger with minor injuries.
Jackson said that seconds after that first collision De La Torre's sedan collided with Hawley, who was traveling northbound on Highway 1.
She said the pursuing officer did not observe the collision, as he had slowed his own speed due to the reduction in lanes and safety concerns. At the time of the collision, the officer was approximately 600 feet from De La Torre's vehicle.
The crash led to a highway closure as the vehicles were removed from the scene, the CHP reported.
John Jensen contributed to this report.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
UPPER LAKE, Calif. – The California Highway Patrol on Tuesday released the names of a man killed in a Sunday night collision and the woman riding with him.
Taylor Griffin, 40, of Portland, Maine, died in the crash, according to CHP Officer Korey Reynolds.
Riding with Griffin was 43-year-old Carrie Davenport of South Freeport, Maine, Reynolds said.
The Portland Press Herald reported that Griffin – the head of a luxury food import business, The Rogers Collection – was on the West Coast for a business trip, accompanied by Davenport, his company's director of operations and general manager.
Griffin was driving a rented 2012 Corvette westbound on Highway 20 west of Witter Springs Road when he hit an oak tree, according to a CHP report.
Griffin was ejected from the car and died at the scene, the CHP said.
The crash was discovered Monday morning after Davenport called in the crash on her cell phone, officials reported. She later was airlifted to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital with major injuries.
The CHP investigation found that speed was a factor in the crash.
The Portland Press Herald said Griffin had six speeding convictions in Maine since 2004, and had four license suspensions as a result.
Reynolds said Tuesday he did not have information on Davenport's condition.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
Caltrans said Tuesday that the Highway 29 and Hartmann Road intersection near Hidden Valley Lake is scheduled to become a three-way stop on Monday, Oct. 24.
On that day the final striping and stop signs will be installed, and California Highway Patrol officers will be on hand helping to slow traffic, Caltrans said.
The three-way stop signs are intended to reduce the number of collisions which have recently increased at this intersection, according to Caltrans. The most recent fatal crash occurred there on June 23.
Message signs have been placed to warn motorists of the upcoming change, and they will remain
in place for at least a week afterwards to remind motorists of the change, Caltrans said.
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