Council members have full docket; will finalize district elections, settle water issues

In other council news, members will hear from Lemoore Fire Chief Bruce German regarding the departments annual report to the city, and likely approve an agreement with Leprino Foods for cost sharing and the lease of the pipeline for discharging water from the town and Leprino Foods.

As discussed in several public hearings held in January and February, councilmembers will likely approve the first reading of an ordinance establishing five new districts in which each councilmember will represent that area's voters. The councilmember must live within the district. Residents will vote for their councilmember.

While Lemoore has never had issues relating to problems of racially polarized voting, communities like Lemoore have been facing legal challenges to their “at-large” forms of voting. Lemoore voters have participated in such city-wide elections since its incorporation in 1902.

A professional demographer drew the district maps with plenty of input from councilmembers and the public. However, the process of moving to districts hasn’t brought much public discussion.

The new voting procedures will begin in November when Mayor Ray Madrigal and Councilmember Jeff Chedester will be up for election. Only voters in their districts will be able to vote.

At their most recent council meeting, council members gave the go-ahead to city staff to proceed with implementing the new voting districts in Lemoore. Councilmembers, after narrowing several district map scenarios down to just two, they settled on map 104, which council members say is probably the best pick for Lemoore. It equally divides the city into five districts with at least one area with a 49 percent Latino concentration.

The public can see Map 104 and the other districts at www.drawlemoore.org.

According to city officials, Leprino Foods has been sending discharge water from its two plants in Lemoore to Westlake Farms, which used the discharged water on crops. The city has been doing this for years. The last contract signed between the two entities was signed in 1996.

In that agreement, Westlake agreed to pay the City $1.50 per acre-foot for the discharge water and would continue accepting water through 2046.

Recently Westlake entered into a partnership with Sandridge Partners, LP. Sandridge and Westlake claimed recently that the quality of the discharge water does not meet the standards required under the 1996 agreement, which had resulted in a dispute between the parties, including the City and Leprino.

Sandridge Partners is a California agricultural entity supplying farming implements and farms thousands of acres. It has a corporate office in Sunnyvale, California. Its primary owner is John Vidovich, who has been buying land in the Central Valley for more than 20 years.  Published reports in the Bakersfield Californian indicate that Vidovich owns about 130,000 acres throughout the valley, including 82,000 acres in Kings County.

Vidovich is well known to Kings County water uses. According to The Californian, he sold rights to more than 14,000-acre-feet a year to the Mojave Water Agency in San Bernardino County for $73 million. It was a permanent water loss to Kings County farmers and water managers.

In their attempt to settle the discharge water dispute, Leprino and Sandridge have agreed to a plan that accepts the water in exchange for “certain promises” including Leprino’s agreement to manage the water and lease land owned by Sandridge, which will become the new discharge property.

The Lemoore Volunteer Fire Department will present its annual report to city council members Tuesday night. The fire department consists of 35 volunteer members, nine of which are certified Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs), 15 hold Firefighter I certificates, and eight members have Firefighter I/II certificates.

German will tell councilmembers that firefighters responded to a total of 1,863 incidents in 2017, an increase of 222 episodes from 2016. 56 of those calls were for fires while there were 546 medical calls. Of the fire events, only nine were related to building fires, while 11 were vehicle fires.

The most significant department response was for canceled/good intent calls, including dispatched calls later canceled: smoke scares, BBQ smoke, steam, fumes mistaken for gas.

German will also tell the council that the fire department held 52 mandatory drill meetings and performed an additional 42 public service activities and training throughout the year.

The LVFD’s budget is $435,041 for the year.