The Kings County Superior Court will shutter the doors of courthouses in Avenal and Corcoran on December 18. Staff from the two locations will be reassigned to the Hanford Courthouse, and all court business will be conducted there after that date. The closures, the result of years of funding shortfalls in the state budget, are […]
The City of Tulare and the Cal Water Company say a group of chemical manufacturers spent decades contaminating local groundwater with a dangerous, cancer-causing pollutant, and now they’re looking to make the alleged polluters clean up their mess. Lawyers for the City of Tulare could be in court as soon as February 8 to take […]
The state of Mooney Grove Park seems to have become a hot potato no one in county government wants to handle for fear of being burned. The number of public complaints about the declining state of the county-maintained park – where benches lie broken, ponds are choked with decay, and trees are dying, if not […]
Authorities have closed the books on half a dozen unsolved murders in Tulare County dating back as far as 1980, and the man responsible will spend the rest of his life behind bars. On October 6, Jose Manuel Martinez, 53, also known as the Black Hand or El Mano Negro, plead guilty in Tulare County […]
The Central Valley has a slavery problem of which most residents are unaware. It is a center for human trafficking, much of it focused on the sex trade, but now an effort is underway in Tulare County to change that. Centrally located in the state with an entrenched criminal element and a high population of […]
By an interesting quirk of fate, two statistics regarding Tulare County are nearly identical: About 20% of the county’s land is taken up by national parks, and almost 20% of the students fail to graduate high school. While these statistics seemingly have little to do with each other, at least one local educator thinks there […]
Music fans can expect a heavier rock-n-roll groove at the second annual Tastemaker Festival on Saturday, October 17 says Aaron Gomes, head of the Sound N Vision Foundation, the organization behind the event. “We built a show that was more of a vibe,” Gomes said of the event at Visalia Rawhide Stadium. “There’s a connective […]
Hanford is getting a much-needed new fire station and part of Hidden Valley Park will not have to be sold to fund it. At a study session held September 15, Hanford City Council directed its staff to put together a construction plan for a third station the fire department needs to decrease its response times. Construction […]
The first results from the newly-adopted state proficiency tests are in, and there’s plenty of room for improvement locally and across the state. Results for the entire area of Tulare County were less than encouraging, with 67% of the 60,596 students tested not meeting the English language arts and literature standard. A whopping 78% tested […]
With the city facing a major deficit with no way to cover the gap, the Lindsay City Council is considering a gamble that could see them clear of red ink. Facing budget shortfalls on the order of $450,000 annually for the foreseeable future, the city has already been forced to send home its workforce two […]