It isn’t obvious to the naked eye, but the San Joaquin Valley is sinking, and it’s slowly destroying key parts of the agricultural infrastructure as it goes. Each year, as farmers and ranchers pump water from the aquifer underlying the Valley to supply their crops, the water they remove leaves gaps in the miles-deep, sponge-like […]
Emmanuel Hernandez Soto has declared candidacy and will be on the general election ballot this November, running to represent District 4 on the Visalia City Council. After attending College of the Sequoias, he transferred to UC San Diego to obtain his Bachelor of Arts degree in political science. He returned to the Central Valley in […]
Since the end of World War II – when hundreds of thousands of US soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen returned to their homeland and the free secondary education offered to them under the GI Bill – the main emphasis for post-high school education for all students in America has been on building a pathway to […]
The National Guard Bureau and Department of the Air Force held an informational meeting August 10 at the Portuguese Hall in Lemoore about the proposal to locate the F-35A Lightning II and the F-15EX at the Naval Air Station Lemoore (NAS). The National Guard Bureau proposes to beddown one squadron of F-15EX aircraft at two […]
There is no evidence that Hanford City Council members Francisco Ramirez and Art Brieno accepted bribes from a Hanford business owner, according to an August 5 press release from the Kings County Sheriff’s Office. The two council members had been accused of accepting bribes in July 2020 from Richard Aguilar, owner of the Richard Aguilar […]
Tulare Public Cemetery District Trustee Alberto Aguilar has received his second censure from his fellow trustees in a little more than 12 months. The July 28 meeting where Aguilar was censured was punctuated by accusations from Trustee Steve Presant that Aguilar “staged” a vandalized grave site — and the meeting was interrupted six times by […]
Small Valley communities are drying up. The latest town to find itself waterless is Tooleville, east of Exeter on Highway 65. In the middle of July, with temperatures soaring and the intense Valley summer in full swing, residents of the town found the well they rely on was delivering just a dribble where it was […]
Kings County has had the highest number of cases per 10,000 population of all 58 counties in the state since the beginning of the pandemic, according an Coronavirus Weekly Tracker which appeared in the San Jose Mercury News. The data is based on state Department of Health Services statistics. The county had 54,260 cases as […]
Major leadership changes occurred recently in two of the city’s most important departments. Long-time public works director and engineer John Doyel resigned effective August 26. Workload and the lack of staffing in the department played a role in his resignation, the Visalia-Hanford-Lemoore Future has learned. Doyel is on vacation and could not be reached for […]
The Tulare County Sheriff’s Office and the Tulare County District Attorney’s office have been accused of giving preferential treatment to two major political donors, Casey and Morris Tharp, owners of EM Tharp Inc. EM Tharp Inc. is a family owned trucking business operating in Porterville since 1935. Kevin Rooney, of the Hammerschmidt Law Corporation, represents […]