On February 15 of this year Daniel Garibay was fired from the Woodlake Police Department after almost three years of commendable service. He was fired based on 12 counts of misconduct, the principal counts being insubordination and “committing acts that brought discredit to the Department.” According to Garibay’s lawyers, Sarsfield and Melo, the counts of […]
With plans for a new acute-care hospital in downtown Visalia already underway, the Kaweah Delta Health Care District has approved $100 million in additional expansion and upgrades. Included in the long list of construction projects are a new urgent-care facility in northwest Visalia and a doubling of ER beds downtown. “The short of it is […]
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 […]
At the October 6 Tulare County Board of Supervisors meeting, the board voted to declare a local emergency due to widespread and increasing tree mortality in Tulare County. The vote was taken at the request of officials in Fresno, Mariposa, Madera and Tuolumne, who asked Tulare County to join them in their declaration. The combined […]
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 Tulare County Board of Supervisors voted at their October 6 meeting to join with Fresno, Madera, Merced, and Kings Counties to form a Joint Powers Authority (JPA) to apply for water bond money to build Temperance Flat Dam. The JPA will ultimately have 11 members including two from Valley cities, members from two irrigation […]
The whereabouts of Tulare Police Chief Jerry Breckinridge have not been known to the public since May 29. Tulare City Manager Don Dorman announced on June 23 that Breckinridge had been placed on paid administrative leave. Dorman did not explain why the police chief had been put on administrative leave or how long he would […]
Hanford Environmental Action Team (HEAT) won its case against the City of Hanford concerning the Bajun American Properties housing development. HEAT appealed the city’s decision to approve the development’s site plans without an Environmental Impact Review (EIR). The judge decided in a September 22 hearing that HEAT would be given 10 more days from the […]