Four candidates have entered the race for the Ward 1 and Ward 2 seats on the College of the Sequoias’ Board of Trustees. Ward 1 candidates are incumbent Bob Aguilar and challenger Louis Lyons. Ward 2 candidates are incumbent Ken Nunes and challenger Kristina Roper.

On Nov. 3, Visalia, Tulare and Three Rivers voters will decide who represents them on the five-member College of the Sequoias Board of Trustees. The election arrives as College of the Sequoias marks its 100th year with a $50 million University Center under construction.

Meet COS Ward 1 Candidates

Incumbent, Bob Aguilar, was appointed to Ward 1 after Greg Sherman vacated his seat in March 2026. Although Aguilar has only been on the board for six months, he has nearly two decades of experience in education and more than 30 years of legal experience.

Aguilar is a COS and UCLA alumnus. He received a Juris Doctor from the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law, and has served as an elementary teacher, high school teacher, assistant principal and principal within the Visalia Unified School District. He has served on various boards, including the Kaweah Delta Hospital Foundation, Ag Advisory Board, Redwood Law and Justice Academy Board and the COS Giant Foundation. Aguilar has also served as a basketball coach for Mt. Whitney High School. He emphasized the influence his late father, Robert Aguilar, has had on him and the resulting three generations of educators in his family.

“It was tied to what we learned as a family through my father and serving, particularly in the educational arena,” Aguilar said. “My daughter’s an educator… This is kind of what we say as Aguilars: this is what we do.”

Louis Lyons is the challenger for Ward 1. Like Aguilar, he is running for the board for the first time. He is a Redwood High School and Fresno State alumnus. He received his law degree from the University of Oregon School of Law and then returned to Visalia, where he has spent the last 15 years at his family’s law practice with a focus on bankruptcy and family law. He is currently the president of his son’s elementary school Parent-Teacher Association, a chairperson for the school’s School Site Council and the board secretary for the Central California Bankruptcy Association.

“College of the Sequoias is the crown jewel of our community, where so many of my friends and neighbors have gone to receive their advanced degrees, vocational training and professional development, and I want to make sure it remains a quality institution of higher education that is affordable for our students,” Lyons wrote.

Ward 1: Why Are They Running?

As a COS alumnus, Aguilar credits COS with jump-starting his postsecondary education. He is a strong believer that education creates opportunities to build a stronger future. He is running to continue his family’s legacy of service and sees the election as an opportunity to “get back in the game” after retiring from education in June 2024.

“I am running for the Ward 1 seat because I believe furthering your education creates more opportunities to build a stronger future. I am a firm believer in public education as I am proof of what it can do for a successful career,” Aguilar wrote.

Lyons, although not a COS alumnus, considers himself a proud product of the Visalia education system. As an attorney, he acts in a fiduciary capacity, safeguarding his clients’ property. He said he would do the same for taxpayers at COS. Lyons is running to give back to his community and preserve the institution as Visalia’s “crown jewel” through three core beliefs.

“(1) the public and students need to know their voices are being heard by the Board; (2) making sure students’ needs are being met, from greater parking availability, to childcare availability to class availability; (3) making sure that all employees are respected and listened to,” Lyons wrote.

Ward 1: Undocumented Students and Flock Cameras

With ICE recently launching a California immigration crackdown, and the presence of ICE being reported in Fresno, including an ICE agent assaulting residents, questions and concerns have been raised about the safety of undocumented students. Some COS faculty have even taken the initiative of helping undocumented students make it to their classes every morning by facilitating a carpooling system. Ward 1 candidates were asked how they would support undocumented students if elected this November.

Aguilar prioritized student safety in his answer, but added the caveat that the institution must remain in compliance with the law. He referenced an incident that occurred at a courthouse while he was working as a defense attorney. According to Aguilar, an ICE agent detained one of his clients while Aguilar was in the middle of speaking with him about his case. Aguilar explained he could not get involved, because he could be arrested for interfering with an officer’s duties.

“So there’s a fine line that you have to be mindful of in how you approach this very delicate, very sensitive issue,” he said.

Lyons’ response on the topic of undocumented students leaned more into the issue of surveillance and affording all students what he called “equal dignity.”

“I just want all students to feel that they are welcome at COS and that they’re not about to be excised from society,” he explained.

While on the topic of surveillance, Lyons made it clear that he is not a fan of the automated license plate readers on the COS campus. His main concern is that COS campus officers are not the only ones with access to the data collected by private companies like Flock.

“This is information that is available to other parties unknown, which is a concern to me, because we don’t just have adult employees and students. We have minors on our campus who are being observed by these cameras, to whom third parties have incredible degrees of access,” Lyons explained.

It’s worth noting that Lyons is not anti-security. He acknowledges the utility of technology as a layer of security.

“I understand that these cameras are incredible tools in the hands of our good law enforcement officers at COS, but I see little reason why we could not simply depend on old-fashioned CCTV cameras instead, that are monitored by our bonded peace officers who are able to respond to criminal activity on the campus,” he said.

Asked about his stance on the Flock cameras on campus, Aguilar deferred to the law and questioned whether there is an expectation of privacy in a public space. For context, the current Flock cameras on campus are aimed at the college’s public parking lots.

“I don’t think there is an expectation of privacy in a public parking lot,” Aguilar said.

Aguilar added that privacy concerns on campus need to be listed and weighed against the law before a decision is made.

“And then it lands where it lands,” he continued. “Is everyone going to be in agreement? Probably not, right?”

Ward 1: Health Care for Part-Time Faculty

Ward 1 candidates differed on whether COS should participate in a state program that reimburses districts for the cost of part-time faculty health insurance.

Aguilar held some reservations when it came to part-time employees getting full-time benefits. He cited his own experience as a business owner and emphasized the cost of providing health care. However, Aguilar said he was open to learning more about the program before taking a stance on the issue.

“As a business owner it was difficult to offer it because of the cost and expense tied to it,” Aguilar said. “…For me I want to know more about the state program and the costs and benefits of that program. So for me to say no or yes, I don’t think it’s fair until I learn more.”

Lyons didn’t share Aguilar’s hesitancy and made his stance clear.

“I think as long as this program exists, I would seek to provide health insurance for our part-time faculty members,” he said.

Lyons believes providing health care to part-time faculty would ensure that COS remains competitive with other institutions that participate in the program. He explained that some part-time faculty may face the decision of staying at COS without health insurance or applying for a position at another institution that provides it. Ultimately, Lyons believes health care is a basic need that must be met by the college.

“Their basic needs, I believe, have to be met. The most basic needs, obviously, being their families’ health care,” he said.

Ward 1: COS Childcare Center and Other Facilities

The possibility of returning on-site childcare to COS has been a topic of discussion among students, faculty and leadership. Both candidates acknowledged that childcare is a legitimate concern for student parents.

Aguilar said he is aware that a childcare center existed at one point at COS, and that his understanding was that it was discontinued and replaced by other forms of childcare support because that was more of an “economic match” with student demand at the time. With that being said, Aguilar said he is open to the process and that it needs to be an informed decision that balances the college’s finances with student demand.

“If the college can meet that demand in some way, then you obviously want to do it,” Aguilar said. “But then you also have to look at it from the perspective of — there’s only so much financing a college has. And so you have to balance and reconcile the demand versus what you have in the funding source to reach the best outcome.”

Lyons’ response also referenced the college’s previous on-site childcare, but his understanding of why the center closed differed from Aguilar’s. According to Lyons, the childcare center was closed due to a mold issue.

The Voice confirmed Lyons’ claim that the COS childcare center was indeed closed because of a mold issue. In fact, a 2011 ABC7 article has Brent Calvin, now COS superintendent/president, on record stating the college did not have the money to get rid of the mold in the daycare. The same article reported that COS had a $2 million deficit at the time, suggesting Aguilar was partially correct about finances playing a role in the permanent closure.

Lyons said COS should look at bringing back the childcare center to help relieve both students and faculty of the cost of childcare, a cost he says has “exploded” over the past decade.

“A lot of young parents do not have access to childcare, and/or if they do, it’s particularly inconvenient. And one of the great things that COS used to provide was an on-campus child development facility where students could drop off their children, attend classes, and then just come and pick them up after they were done. And it was also utilized by faculty members as well,” he said.

A new childcare facility isn’t the only construction Lyons believes should be considered. He also said the college should consider adding a multilevel parking structure to address parking congestion at the Visalia campus. He added that once the new University Center is complete, parking congestion will only get worse.

Meet the COS Ward 2 Candidates

Ken Nunes is the incumbent for the Ward 2 race. He was first elected in 2010 and is seeking his fifth term on the COS Board of Trustees. He has served on the COS Giant Foundation and, with Gerald Benton, former superintendent of Tulare Joint Union High School District, co-chaired the Measure J campaign that funded the Tulare center. Nunes, a certified public accountant, has worked at the same accounting firm since 1974. He brings that financial expertise to a board that, since the recession, has rebuilt the college’s reserves, retired debt, broken ground on multiple construction projects and kept salaries competitive.

“I’ve been around COS for a long time, and I have a passion for it. I’m not just a one-issue person. I see the whole picture,” Nunes said.

Kristina Roper is the challenger for the Ward 2 race. She’s an archaeologist with an anthropology degree from UC Berkeley and a cultural resource management master’s from Sonoma State. She worked for the National Park Service at Yosemite and at Sequoia and Kings Canyon, then went into private practice. From 1995 she taught at Fresno State, Fresno City College, Cabrillo College and, for one semester, a COS class broadcast at Fresno State. She eventually taught full time at Fresno State, where she was an early online instructor, and ran a field school for her last 10 years before retiring in the spring of 2026.

“Stewardship means leaving something better than how you found it. And that’s how I live my life,” Roper said.

Ward 2: Why Are They Running?

For Nunes, running for the Ward 2 seat means finishing a project he helped start: the new $50 million University Center under construction at COS. Nunes was on the board when President Brent Calvin first proposed the plan to the trustees. He believes giving local students the chance to earn a four-year degree from Fresno State without leaving the area is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that he wants to see come to fruition.

“This project is dear to my heart… I’d like to kind of see that come to fruition. That’s kind of my goal,” Nunes explained.

Roper is running on building up COS’s existing trade and certificate programs. From her own teaching experience, she has learned that students’ goals do not always align with a four-year degree. She wants to use her connections with the state and national parks to start a relationship where students can have an entry into employment after completing their programs. She also intends to bring her academic experience to the board. According to Roper, the COS Board of Trustees has never had an academic among its members, with the possible exception of Aguilar.

“They’ve never had an academic on their board,” Roper said. “And I find that perplexing.”

Ward 2: Childcare and Flock Cameras

The Ward 2 candidates were split on the possibility of bringing back an on-site childcare center at COS.

Roper was clear that she would bring back a childcare center. She rejected the idea of simply handing student parents funds and leaving them to figure out childcare on their own.

“I would bring back the childcare center,” Roper said. “We have to have a formal childcare center… for families, people who work, they need that service because it hinders their ability to take classes and to grow.”

Nunes, on the other hand, believes the options currently available to student parents may serve them better than a center on campus. He pointed to a presentation given by COS financial aid staff at the board’s Oct. 12 meeting on childcare options, including Pell grants, work-study and CalWORKs. According to Nunes, the college’s previous childcare center went away “for various reasons, one of which was facility-related.”

“What we found out was that some of these options may be much better than doing childcare on campus,” Nunes said.

Nunes used the example of a student commuting from Farmersville. He explained that a center’s hours may not line up with a student’s schedule, and that care closer to home can be more practical for families.

“It’s much more meaningful if funds are available for that student to have the child being cared for in their local community, where a parent or a grandparent can pick up the child,” he said. “It’s a hot button issue that some folks are raising, but… you have to know what is currently available.”

The candidates were further apart on the Flock cameras on campus. Roper wants them gone.

“I want to see that contract canceled and the Flock cameras removed,” Roper said. “Do we really need to be surveilled 24 hours a day, and that information is then sold?”

Roper also dismissed the argument that the cameras are a matter of campus safety.

“People who argue it’s a safety issue, I think that’s weak. It’s surveillance and it’s profit,” she said.

Unlike the Ward 1 candidates, Nunes did not take a position on the cameras. He said he was not familiar enough with the issue to speak on it, but that he values privacy.

“I’m not well informed on that and haven’t heard much consternation about it,” Nunes said. “I’m all in favor of privacy and not intruding on people’s rights, of course.”

Ward 2: COS Budget and Health Care for Part-Time Faculty

Nunes, a longtime CPA, believes COS’s budget is on the right track. He recalled the college’s financial struggles around 2010, when reserves were low.

“It was a struggle to meet payroll on a monthly basis because we just didn’t have the funds in place to kind of weather the storm,” Nunes said.

Since then, according to Nunes, COS has managed to run surpluses and set money aside for facilities. He gave the example of a new science building at the Hanford campus, a roughly $65 million project. The state approved the project, but COS had to provide 25% of the cost from its own funds to qualify.

“That’s what the budget has allowed us to do: to qualify for projects like that,” he said.

Roper said she still needs to learn more about the budget before proposing changes. She did, however, take issue with how the current board operates.

“I’m not a yes person, and it seems like the current board is very much an old boys club. They say yes to what Brent says,” Roper said. “Except for Connie.” Roper was referring to Ward 4 Trustee Connie Diaz

Like the Ward 1 candidates, the Ward 2 candidates differed on whether COS should participate in the state program that reimburses districts for part-time faculty health insurance.

For Roper, the answer was simple.

“Absolutely. The state is offering it,” she said.

Roper dismissed concerns about the state ending the program in the future. She believes the college should take advantage of the program while it exists.

“If that changes, then we address that then. But meanwhile, they’re paying for it and we’re denying our staff and faculty,” Roper said. “Health care is a human right. It really is.”

Nunes said he is open to the discussion, though he acknowledged that cost is a real factor. He noted that in the private sector, most companies do not offer health insurance to employees who work fewer than 20 hours a week. He also recognized that the public sector is different.

“It’s a dollar issue for sure,” Nunes said. “I’m certainly open to having those discussions… I certainly don’t rule it out.”

When asked about Roper’s argument that the benefit would simply end if the state funding ends, Nunes said the issue is not that black and white. According to Nunes, part-time faculty health insurance was discussed during the last round of contract negotiations. He said the parties could not agree on contract language about what would happen if the state stopped funding the program. He expects the issue to come up again during the next round of negotiations.

“The bridge that we couldn’t cross was that language in itself,” Nunes said, adding, “I could be totally wrong on that.”

Ward 2: Evaluating the COS President and Student Success

The board’s most direct power is over its only employee: the superintendent/president, Brent Calvin. Trustees hire, evaluate and can dismiss the president.

When asked how he would evaluate Calvin and measure his success, Nunes referred to his long history on the board and his experience with previous presidents like Stan Carrizosa. He credits Calvin with leading COS through the pandemic and reaching record enrollment at a time when most colleges were struggling to recover. He also highlighted Calvin’s push for a bond measure in the Visalia-area school facilities improvement district (SFID) to fund the University Center and a new student union, an idea Nunes admitted he thought was “crazy” when Calvin first proposed it.

“That’s, I think, how you measure the work that people do: the ability to lead and go out and get something done,” he said.

Roper’s response focused less on evaluating the president and more on gathering accurate student and faculty data on happiness and performance. She referenced Ward 5 incumbent John Lehn’s statements on the college’s student success rate and questioned how that data is gathered. She said the college never asks students who leave why they left, and that only the students who succeed get mentioned, which she says makes the success rate “not based in reality.”

“They’re not asking all the right people,” Roper explained. “And so we have to identify what’s wrong as well as what’s right, and build on what’s right and fix what’s wrong.”

Ward 2: Keeping Grads in the Valley

When asked how COS can encourage graduates and transfer students to stay in or return to the valley and give back to their community, the Ward 2 candidates had different approaches.

Nunes admitted that the share of COS students who transfer after earning an AA degree is not as high as at some other community colleges in the state, but he believes the University Center will have a positive impact on those numbers. According to Nunes, the opportunity to earn a four-year degree locally will help more students continue their education while staying in the valley.

“If they get their AA degree here, they walk across the street, get their bachelor’s degree,” he said.

Roper, on the other hand, believes COS should address the issue through diversification, by offering more training and programs that lead to well-paying local jobs. Drawing on her background as an anthropologist, she criticized the federal administration’s opposition to DEI and argued that just as species depend on genetic diversity to survive, COS needs to diversify beyond what it currently offers to not only survive a changing world, but thrive in it.

“This is a win-win. Keep people in the valley, keep the talent in the valley. They don’t have to go away to find a job, a career,” she said.

The post COS incumbents and challengers for Ward 1 and 2 face off appeared first on Valley Voice.

On Nov. 3, voters in Hanford will decide who represents them on the five-member College of the Sequoias Board of Trustees. The election arrives as College of the Sequoias marks its 100th year with a $50 million University Center under construction.

Lehn is running on what he says is a decade of record-high student success, robust finances, and new construction. He says he wants to continue to contribute to the progress the college has made over the last decade.

Nava says she entered the race because she believes the board is “out of touch” with the employees and students it serves. She claims Dr. Brent Calvin, College of the Sequoias’ Superintendent/President, said during a meeting that the board had moved away from fully funding employee health insurance so employees would “feel the pain” of rising premiums — one example she cites as a reason to run.

Ward 5 voters will choose between an eight-year trustee who says the college has never been stronger and a challenger who says students still can’t find child care or a bus to class.

Meet the COS Ward 5 Candidates

John Lehn is seeking a third term representing Ward 5 on the College of the Sequoias Board of Trustees. During that time he has served three years as board president and the remaining years as vice president, his current role.

Lehn spent about 42 years with Kings County’s job training office, most of them as its director, and for 25 of those years also served as president of the Kings County Economic Development Corporation, working to bring new businesses to the county and support existing ones. He is a former Hanford City Council member and mayor, and coached youth baseball and soccer for about 20 years.

“Fundamentally, I think experience matters,” he said.

Susie Nava is a first-time candidate and a COS alumna. Born into a military family, she moved to Hanford at two weeks old when her father was stationed at the Naval Air Station Lemoore. She settled in Kings County in 1997, raised her three children in Corcoran, and moved to Hanford in 2021.

She has worked in manufacturing, at a local school district, for First 5 programs in Corcoran and Kettleman City, and as a Kings County case manager. Since 2024 she has worked as a quality assurance specialist for Kings County Behavioral Health overseeing contract and regulatory compliance. She also sits on the board of the California League of City Employees Associations (CLOCEA), which represents Kings County employees.

Nava started at COS as a single mother and earned an associate degree, which she said is the foundation of her career. As a Latina, she said she hopes to show students from similar backgrounds what is possible.

“We need more people like us so our community members can look at us and say if they can do it, I can do it,” she said.

Why Are They Running?

Lehn is running on the college’s record during his tenure, citing what he called “all-time high” student success, stronger finances and a wave of new construction, including a $50 million University Center, a $40 million student union, a $70 million science building in design for the Hanford campus, a $10 million stadium, solar efficiency projects and classroom improvements.

“I am a candidate for re-election because I want to continue contributing to the College’s 100-year tradition of excellence and build upon the progress of the past decade,” Lehn wrote in response to questions from the Valley Voice.

Nava, on the other hand, is framing her candidacy around her own experience as a COS student, emphasizing her understanding of students’ backgrounds, barriers and needs.

“I am running to represent Hanford on the COS Board because I care deeply about ensuring that same opportunity exists for current and future students. Having sat in these same classrooms and faced many of the same challenges our students experience today, I bring not just insight, but empathy and gratitude for what COS provides,” Nava wrote.

Student Success and Gaps in Progress

Asked about potential gaps in student success at COS and how to measure progress, Lehn did not identify specific shortcomings, focusing instead on how progress should be tracked.

“The important measure is not simply whether a gap exists, but whether it is narrowing over time,” he wrote. “I would continue to measure progress through course completion, persistence…and other established student-success measures, with the results disaggregated so that improvements – or continuing gaps – are visible.”

His opponent Nava named transportation and child care as the main barriers to student success.

“On paper, COS is doing amazing…” Nava wrote. “However, I work in the community I am looking to represent, and I have spoken to students, community members, and professors who all have stories about students having to drop classes due to transportation and or childcare issues. It is unfortunate that the same struggles I faced when attending COS in the 1990s are the same barriers that exist today.”

Child care is a deeply personal issue for Nava, who was a single mother while attending COS in the 1990s. She said college leadership has recently discussed and dismissed the need for childcare.

“At the last board meeting, a remark was made by leadership that students don’t need COS to provide child care. That they have family and relatives that can help with that,” she recalled. “To me, as someone who works in the community, who lives in the community, that statement is so out of touch with our residents and the needs of the community.”

Lehn said COS already supports student parents through child care stipends funded by financial aid, county human services programs and state and federal grants, which he said can exceed the cost of care. He mentioned the college operated its own child care center at one point, but students who actually utilized the center were such a small population compared to enrolled students, that the funds were redirected to serve students in other ways.

With that being said, Lehn stated the district is now considering whether to bring a center back.

“We’re in the process of gathering information to evaluate whether or not it makes sense to reinstitute a child care center,” he said.

Competing for Hanford Students

COS isn’t the only community college option for Hanford residents. West Hills College Lemoore sits about 10 miles away, and the candidates were asked why some local students choose it over COS Hanford.

Lehn challenged the premise of the question. He said COS has been over its state-funded enrollment cap for years and remains significantly over it, meaning the college serves more students than the state pays for and keeps adding classes to meet demand.

“We’re serving way more students than the state is providing resources to serve,” Lehn said.

Rather than competing, he said, the two colleges give students more choices, particularly when classes at one college fill up.

“Kings County is blessed to have two community colleges and have options,” he said.

Nava on the other hand, said the Hanford center has been underdeveloped, offering only a limited number of programs on site.

“They have nine classrooms and three programs,” she said, adding that students outside of those programs must travel to other campuses to continue past their general education courses.

Transportation compounds the problem, she said. Nava described meeting a student on the first day of classes who was deciding whether to drop a course because she had borrowed a car to get to campus and wasn’t sure she could do it all semester. She said some students take Uber to early-morning classes because public transit doesn’t run that early, and that some classes end at 9 p.m., after transit stops running.

“People don’t choose Hanford COS because we don’t have the infrastructure to help them access the services, the classes there at their campus,” Nava said. “It doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way.”

Nava said that when she worked as a county case manager, most of her clients chose West Hills for its online classes, support services, and on-campus child care, though she noted that was in 2023 and things may have changed. She called for COS to offer full degrees online.

Health Care for Part-Time Faculty and Union Endorsements

One of the sharpest disagreements between the Ward 5 candidates came on health insurance for part-time faculty at COS. The state of California reimburses community college districts for up to the full cost of health insurance for qualifying part-time faculty, but COS does not participate in the program.

Nava said she supports joining the program and that, if elected, one of her first moves would be to call for a study session on the issue. She said the current board hasn’t looked at the issue and that leadership should be listening to all employees at COS, not just full-time faculty.

“If you have a whole classification of staff saying, ‘Hey, can you look into this?’ and then just closing it down, that’s not working with union leadership. That’s not working with your staff. And that’s not listening to them,” she said.

Lehn said district and union leaders have not reached an agreement on part-time faculty health insurance, but that the district is gathering more information so the board can take up the issue as a discussion item.

“The college made an offer to support the health care for part-time faculty under certain circumstances and the unions didn’t agree to it,” Lehn said.

He said health insurance for part-time workers is uncommon, noting that most industries offer such benefits only to full-time employees. He also warned that the cost could be substantial if the state ends the program and leaves COS to cover it.

“We’re not convinced that the state will, based upon their past record, continue to support that. It’s a significant cost that the district would have to absorb on its own,” Lehn said.

While Lehn cited uncertain state funding, Nava pointed to a different explanation.

During the interview, Nava read aloud the remark she attributed to Calvin, which she said was shared with her during her union endorsement interview.

“[The COS Board of Trustees] want the employee to feel the increase and ensure that they feel the pain of that increase, so they don’t take advantage of having insurance,” she claims Calvin said.

According to Nava, the remark followed negotiations over the district’s most recent insurance increase. In the past, she said, COS fully covered the most basic plan for classified employees.

Nava stated the remark is further evidence that current leadership is out of touch with the constituents it is supposed to serve.

“I’m very well aware when my insurance goes up,” Nava said. “If you pay for insurance, you’re aware. Nobody’s taking advantage of the insurance out here.”

The issue points to a broader question in the race: how each candidate would approach negotiations with the college’s unions.

Nava said she has been a strong union supporter since 2003, when she worked for a Corcoran manufacturer and saw the difference in pay and benefits between its union and non-union plants. She now sits on a union board of directors in Kings County and has been endorsed by six groups and unions, including all three at COS.

“What most unions ask for is to be heard,” she said. “They want a fair wage. They want to feel like they are valued and that they are an integral part of whatever organization that they are working in.”

During the interview, Lehn questioned whether some of the Valley Voice‘s questions came from the unions or his opponent’s supporters.

“It seemed to me the questions that you and I just went over were most likely generated by the union or those that are in support of my opponent,” he said.

The Valley Voice developed its questions internally and from community input, and asked both candidates parallel questions.

Overseeing the President

The board’s most direct power is over its only employee: the superintendent/president, Brent Calvin. Trustees hire, evaluate and can dismiss the president.

Lehn said the board evaluates Calvin on the college’s progress toward the goals in its strategic plan and master plan.

Asked to name a time the board pushed back on or overruled the president, Lehn did not cite one. He said most issues reach the board only after going through the college’s participatory governance process, and that reasonable people working from the same facts usually reach the same conclusions.

“That means that you are aligned, the president understands what the desires of the board are and brings items that are reasonable and consistent with the direction of the board,” Lehn said.

Nava, who has not worked with Calvin, said she has followed him through livestreamed board meetings and described him as likable, knowledgeable and vision-driven. If elected, she said she would start by reviewing the board’s evaluation forms to see what he is being measured on.

But she said comments from college leadership have at times seemed “so out of touch with our community,” and that she would push Calvin to spend more time with vulnerable communities and on campuses that haven’t seen him.

What About the Money?

On the college’s budget, the candidates largely agreed. Both said cuts should not be made for the sake of change and that leadership must remain careful stewards of public funds.

Lehn said employee compensation at COS ranks among the top five community college districts in California and that reserves are strong enough to weather economic downturns without layoffs.

“I support the current allocation of resources. As student needs, enrollment, state funding or economic conditions change, I will support adjustments based on demonstrated need and the priorities established through the college’s integrated planning process,” he wrote.

The post Candidates for COS Board of Trustees Ward 5 talk issues appeared first on Valley Voice.

Commercial air travel could return to the Visalia Municipal Airport after a long 10 years without passenger service. A final decision is still pending, however, and it lies in the hands of the US Department of Transportation (USDOT).

Passenger Flights or Cash?

After the relationship with the last company to carry passengers to Visalia, SeaPort Airlines, ended poorly, the city opted out of subsidized passenger flights at the Visalia Municipal Airport.

Instead, it decided to take a chunk of federal funding to improve and upgrade the airport’s infrastructure.

It has this option thanks to the USDOT’s Essential Air Service (EAS) program, which subsidizes airlines to serve rural or isolated communities. It does this by paying for subsidized air travel or grants for capital improvements. But not both.

“In exchange for $3.7 million, which was a portion of the funding for the subsidy for the EAS program, we signed away 10 years of service,” said Visalia Municipal Airport manager Jody Miller. “We used those funds on airport development, the hangars and stuff. Hangar development, plus kind of general improvements throughout the airfield.”

The decade the city signed away ends on May 1, 2027.

“That 10 years went fast,” Miller said.

With a bigger population of Visalians and a well-maintained airport, the city is considering bringing commercial airlines back. But the USDOT has the final say. It will issue a request for proposals (RFP) late this month or in early November to seek interested passenger carriers, Miller said.

If the city decides to bring air service back, and the candidates who respond to the RFP are worth working with, then the city will send its recommendation to the USDOT; the feds will ultimately pick Visalia’s newest airline.

Miller emphasized that the city won’t have the final say, but its opinion will be taken into serious consideration.

“Ultimately, it is their decision,” he said. “They’ll take our thoughts and everything into account, but at the end of the day, the US Department of Transportation will select the provider, should we as a community decide to go that route.”

Five Airlines Want to Serve Visalia

The city decided to end passenger service at the airport following a less-than-satisfying experience with prior carriers that served the city.

The city and its last airline, SeaPort Airlines, parted ways in 2016; the company ended operations later that year.

The airline before it, Great Lakes Airlines, left Visalia in 2014 after city and federal officials picked SeaPort. City officials cited Great Lakes’ poor service and reliability. Great Lakes later ended operations in 2018.

A shaky business model was only part of the problem, said assistant city manager John Lollis, who wasn’t working at City Hall when the company and city parted ways.

“Great Lakes had terrible service, (and) had asked to be released from its contract. The city asked the DOT to do that,” he said. “The ‘easy button’ came with this new program, which was saying, ‘We’re going to allow up to 10 airports to take an option to go into this grant program.’”

Only 182 airports across the United States are eligible for EAS subsidies, with a significant concentration in Alaska. In California, four airports are eligible: Visalia, Merced, Imperial/El Centro, and Crescent City.

Visalia became the first EAS community nationwide to give up passenger service under the USDOT’s Community Flexibility Pilot Program. Giving up passenger service seemed like the best option in 2016, Lollis said.

“There was frustration and uncertainty with another new provider who hadn’t been here before,” he said. “And then you had the grant opportunity waiting. It was the best decision at the time given that there was just so much uncertainty.”

If it picked another unreliable airline, the city also faced losing its EAS benefits permanently. Federal regulations at the time required an effective airline subsidy of $200 per person or less. City officials were unsure that any airline could generate the passenger traffic required to do that.

Now, the EAS rules have changed, and the maximum subsidy an airline can be paid per passenger in Visalia is $850 in 2027, coming down from $1,000 currently. The USDOT can issue waivers from this policy if required, but there are new restrictions on participation: airports can receive no more than two consecutive waivers in a row, and no more than 10 waivers every 25 years.

In 2026 there’s a lot of renewed interest to service Visalia’s air travel needs.

So far, five airlines have expressed interest in coming to Visalia, according to Miller’s presentation.

All the candidate companies are small carriers hoping to expand: Surf Air, Advanced Air, Boutique Air, Contour Airlines and Flight Level Aviation, which is Fresno-based. Miller said the airlines all understand what the city and the feds expect.

“These are the ones that we have already spoken to,” Miller said. “They reached out to us. Aviation’s a small community. They know what’s going on. They said they’d throw their hat in the ring.”

Any carrier picked to serve Visalia through the EAS program will have to provide a minimum of at least a dozen flights to and from the city. The number of flights could be higher depending on demand.

Miller described the airplanes owned by the five candidate carriers as luxurious.

“I’ve flown for work all sorts of times, and I’ve never seen regional commuter airlines that are this nice,” he said. “You’re getting the charter experience at a commuter airline price.”

Surf Air, Advanced Air, Boutique Air, and Flight Level Aviation would operate nine-seat turboprop aircraft seating nine passengers. Contour Airlines operates 30-seat jet aircraft.

The proposed fares range from $100 to $250 for one-way service. And at least one of the carriers, Boutique Air, has suggested it might build a maintenance center in Visalia as it reestablishes itself on the West Coast.

“With any of the companies, that’s going to be a potential option,” Miller said. “They would establish a presence on the field, create jobs.”

There’s another benefit to the city, one possibly worth millions of dollars in saving on future federally-funded aviation projects. If Visalia Municipal Airport returns to providing passenger service and maintains good standing during the first full year of the program in 2028, then the available USDOT funding would go from 90% to 95%. Currently, Visalia and state funding contribute 5% each in matching funds to receive this federal money. Visalia’s fund-matching requirement would drop to 2.5% after 2028.

Adding passenger service also won’t deter large cargo carriers – like Amazon and FedEx – from building a large presence at Visalia’s airport.

“If anything, it would improve our chances with that,” Miller said. “As the industrial park, as the other things expand, these companies want to have an easy way to get in and out of Visalia. Once that’s there, they’re (cargo carriers) more likely to expand their operations.”

City Will Have 30 Days to Decide

The USDOT RFP should go out within the next 30 days. The list of qualified proposals it receives will then be presented to the city council for its consideration.

“At that point we could present it to (the city) council, we could have open houses at the airport,” Miller said. “We can do different things and get those presentations out there to the community. Where they (citizens) want to go is ultimately going to let us decide who the best partner is for the program.”

Following the period of community input, and with input by an ad hoc airport committee, the council would then present the USDOT with a letter stating local preference. The ad hoc airport committee will include two members of the city council, as well as other city leaders.

Any airline seeking USDOT approval for the EAS program must have a history of reliability of service, agreements with large air carriers (known as interline agreements), city and community preference, a good community marketing plan and a reasonable total proposed compensation.

The USDOT list of qualified respondents could be available as early as December. The city’s outreach should begin shortly after the list is published.

“I’m excited for it to come back,” said council member Brian Poochigian. “Sometimes it is hard to get to connecting airports. I think this will make it a lot more convenient for our residents.”

The post Passenger flights landing soon at Visalia Municipal Airport? appeared first on Valley Voice.

The ballot in November 2026 is no exception. In addition to the full slate of candidates for statewide office from Governor and Legislature, to U.S. Senate and Congress, as well as local officials, the Nov. 3 ballot has 14 statewide propositions.

Those statewide ballot measures include five different taxation propositions as well as several administrative changes to state and local government, including a measure requiring voter identification.

For voters seeking to make sense of this confusing array, relief is on the way.

The League of Women Voters of Tulare County will conduct an information presentation, “The Nov 3 Ballot Propositions – Pros and Cons,” at 6:30 p.m. on October 6 at the Tulare County Office of Education building, 6200 South Mooney Boulevard in Visalia.

“Come find out about what the propositions are, what their fiscal impact might be, and what supporters and detractors are saying about each,” said the League of Women Voters of Tulare County.

Presenters will be from the League of Women Voters, who will use the information from their non-partisan voter guide, 411, and Ballotpedia, to present their information.

Among the propositions:

• A measure that would authorize $11.4 billion in bonds for affordable housing for veterans, younger buyers and low-income buyers.
• A measure that would repeal the prohibition against public funding of election campaigns.
• A proposition that would create a loan program for middle income buyers of new homes.
• A measure that would authorize $8 and funding for research into immunotherapy.m
• The so-called “Billionaires tax,” a one-time 5 percent tax on those whose net worth is more than $1 billion.
• Two other measures that would eliminate the billionaires tax.
• A proposed constitutional amendment that would require a two-thirds majority for local governments to raise taxes.
• A measure that would require community health clinics to spend at least 90% of their revenue on services for patients.

One of the most controversial ballot measures would require voters to present government-issued identification when casting ballots and require election officials to use government data to confirm voter citizenship and report verification rates.

As usual, this list of propositions contains some tricky provisions. For instance, Proposition 40 would enact the one-time 5 percent tax on billionaires. Propositions 41 and 42 would cancel proposition 40 with their own provisions.

The presenters at “The ballot propositions, pros and cons” will explain those provisions to help voters understand how they can cast a vote that does what they intend. They will also explain two other local provisions that are on the November 3 ballot.

Voters will have received their sample ballots by October 6. They can bring those ballots with them to this program and mark how they intend to vote that evening.

Be sure to attend this informative evening to be fully prepared to cast your ballot on November 3.

The forum will be live streamed by the Valley Voice on their Facebook page.

The post Nov 3 Ballot Propositions forum to be held this Tuesday, October 6 appeared first on Valley Voice.

The celebration brought together student-athletes, coaches, families, school and district leaders, and community members to recognize the four VUSD teams representing El Diamante, Golden West, Mt. Whitney, and Redwood high schools.

For the students taking the field this season, the opportunity represents more than learning a new sport.

“Being a part of the first-ever flag football team is not only a huge honor, but also a huge responsibility,” said Bella, an El Diamante student-athlete. “All of the teams here are paving the way for a new generation of young girls, and I hope every young girl sitting in the stands today knows that she is following in the footsteps of strong, determined athletes who dared to take the first step and make  history.”

Girls’ flag football is one of the fastest-growing sports in the United States and is expanding opportunities for female athletes at the high school and collegiate levels. The sport is also scheduled to make its Olympic debut at the 2028 Los Angeles Games.

For Mt. Whitney junior and team captain Kavayah Faulkner, the chance to play came naturally after growing up watching her three brothers play football.

“The second a girl’s flag football opportunity opened up for our school district, I knew I had to be a part of it,” Faulkner said. “What I hope to remember most from this season isn’t just the games, but the great friendships and the incredible team culture we are building together.”

VUSD Athletic Director Dr. Watamura said establishing the new sport required the work and commitment of coaches, athletic staff, school administrators, teachers, families and students.

“When we started this process, we knew there would be challenges,” said Dr. Watamura. “We were building something from the ground up. But what made it possible was the commitment of our coaches, our athletic staff, school administration, teachers, and our entire community. “

The launch also highlighted the broader role athletics can play in helping students feel connected to their schools.

VUSD Board Clerk Walta Gamoian said opportunities like girls’ flag football give students another way to develop leadership, build relationships and discover what they are capable of achieving.

“We know learning doesn’t just happen inside the classroom, it happens all around us, including on the field,” said Gamoian. On the field, students learn to solve problems, to be kind, to encourage each other, take on leadership roles and discover that they’re capable of more than they thought. That is why opportunities like this matter.:

Superintendent Kirk Shrum connected the launch to VUSD’s commitment to empowering students through opportunities both inside and outside the classroom.

“What I’m excited about for all of our students on the field tonight, is that you’re the first,” said Shrum. “You get to set the standard and establish the traditions, and you get to show the girls who come after you what it looks like to be a leader and a competitor.”

The celebration also featured a video message from VUSD alumna and 1964 Olympic competitor Erika Bricker, who shared words of encouragement with the inaugural athletes and reflected on her own experience representing her school, community and country on the Olympic stage.

The four inaugural teams were then recognized before taking the field for the first games of the season.

About Visalia Unified: Visalia Unified School District (VUSD) is the 32nd largest district in California serving over 32,000 students in preschool to adult at 56 locations, including 42 schools and several administrative buildings that house a community library, a family resource center, a bus transportation hub, and much more.

The post VUSD Celebrates Launch of Girls’ Flag Football as Official CIF Sport appeared first on Valley Voice.

“It’s a continued direction towards no accountability…These are steps towards having a secret police.”

Jim Reeves, a former dispatcher for the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office and longtime Visalia watchdog, spoke to the Valley Voice about the quiet expansion of surveillance and privacy-eroding technology inside our local police departments.

Twice in three years, the Visalia City Council has quietly agreed to reduce what residents can see or hear from their own police force.  In December 2022, the city spent $1.8 million on radios that encrypted police radios and scrambled transmissions, cutting off public scanners.

In October 2024, the Visalia City Council voted on $300,000 for a four-year contract with a company called Flock to install automated cameras that would read license plates across the city. Both times, the decisions arrived without a single question asked by the public.

Today, residents can no longer monitor city police traffic, and at least 22 Flock cameras are active or pending in Visalia, part of a larger patchwork of at least three separate Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) networks.

Like the encrypted police radios, Flock cameras have flown under the public’s radar, silently expanding across Tulare and Kings County.

Forty percent reduction in stolen vehicles

The Voice spoke with Visalia Police Chief Jason Salazar and Operations Support Division Captain Andrew Swarthout specifically about Flock cameras and the growing concerns from the public.

One of the concerns making headlines recently involves ALPR technology being prone to error and misreading license plates, leading to innocent civilians being jailed or detained at gunpoint. When asked if Visalia’s Flock cameras might make similar errors, Salazar said there have been no wrongful-stop incidents in Visalia tied to Flock. He said the more likely culprit for wrongful detainments elsewhere is human error.

“Probably what’s more likely to happen is somewhere along the way, there was a human error. Someone that put the data into the system, maybe put a number or a letter wrong in the plate so the wrong plate was entered.”

Salazar explained that alerts from Flock cameras are only one part of the investigative process. Officers aren’t authorized to move on a stop or arrest the moment an alert comes in. Human confirmation is required first.

“The Flock alert is really nothing more than an investigative lead. It says, ‘Hey, the camera detected a license plate that is wanted for whatever reason…’ They then run the license plate themselves, do their own investigation to make sure that the vehicle that they found is actually the vehicle that is wanted.”

Salazar and Swarthout described the system’s effectiveness by citing VPD’s own statistics. According to their data, 2025 saw a 39% reduction in stolen vehicles, which VPD attributes to the Flock cameras it began using in 2024.

“The number of stolen vehicles went way down, and we’re on pace to meet that so far in 2026, where we’ve made arrests in 40% of the stolen vehicle cases,” Salazar said

Wrongful stops aren’t the only concern on residents’ minds. There are also worries about Flock data being misused by law enforcement to stalk people, or accessed by federal agencies to aid in the deportation of undocumented immigrants.

On the question of misuse, Salazar and Swarthout said they run their own internal audit every week to catch it, and that Flock includes a feature that automatically flags suspicious search behavior for Salazar’s review. Officers, dispatchers, and staff must complete training before they’re granted access to Flock data, and every use is logged.

“Date, time, what it was that they were doing, what they searched, everything is tracked,” Salazar said.

When asked whether any agency outside California law enforcement such as ICE or Border Patrol has access to VPD’s Flock data, Salazar was direct:

“We do not share with any federal agencies,” he said. “And in fact, if you’re a law enforcement agency in California, you’re not even allowed to turn on the federal sharing tab in Flock.”

That inability to enable federal sharing is a feature built to prevent the kind of scandals and lawsuits that have already hit other California police departments, several of which have faced legal action or cut ties with Flock entirely after their data was found flowing to agencies outside the state.

California restricts use and sharing of data

Two distinct California laws govern how police departments can use automated license plate readers like Flock’s. The first, Senate Bill 34, codified at California Civil Code sections 1798.90.51 through .90.55, requires any agency operating an ALPR system to provide an opportunity for public comment before implementing the program, publicly post a written usage and privacy policy, and restrict data sharing to “public agencies” within California. It also gives Californians the right to sue if their license plate data is shared improperly.

The second, Senate Bill 54, California’s broader “sanctuary state” statute, codified in Government Code section 7284, restricts the use of state and local law enforcement resources for federal immigration enforcement.

How these two laws apply specifically to ALPR data was left to interpretation for years after they took effect between 2016 and 2018. That changed in October 2023, when the California Department of Justice, under Attorney General Rob Bonta, stated directly in a bulletin that California law enforcement cannot share ALPR data with federal or out-of-state agencies, and that every agency’s usage and privacy policy must be public and transparent.

Visalia Police Department appears compliant on multiple fronts. Salazar says VPD is technically incapable of sharing data outside California even if it wanted to; its usage and privacy policy is posted on the department’s website; and the agency provided an opportunity for public comment at the October 21, 2024 City Council meeting where the Flock contract was approved.

That last point deserves scrutiny. The Flock contract, listed as Item 24-0415 on the Consent Calendar, was one of eleven unrelated items bundled together and approved in a single motion. No presentation was given. No council discussion occurred. And not a single member of the public raised a question about it, perhaps because it was buried among everything else on the Consent Calendar that night.

A similar tactic was used when the Visalia City Council approved encrypting police radios. The encryption item was listed in the consent calendar and approved along with many other unrelated items in one motion.

Is the CHP’s accessing of Visalia’s data monitored?

If Visalia’s Flock camera system has a shadow auditor, it’s Jim Reeves.

Before he was writing about Flock cameras on his website, jimmiejoe.com, Reeves spent 25 years as a dispatcher for the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office. Over the past several months, he’s used that experience to investigate VPD’s use of Flock data through public records requests.

He spoke to the Voice about the cameras’ rollout and was critical of how little transparency accompanied it.

“Flock makes a big thing in their press releases that these cameras were democratically approved, and that’s technically true. But most of it was consent calendar agendas that only the policy nerds really dig into,” he said.

Reeves’ skepticism isn’t limited to how Visalia approved buying Flock cameras in the first place, it extends to what’s happened with the cameras since. Through his own records requests, he obtained audit logs, and what he found puzzled him. The California Highway Patrol, he said, accessed Visalia’s camera data 42,000 times in a single 30-day period, compared to roughly 1,600 inquiries by VPD’s own officers in that same window.

“A CHP officer from Eureka [could be] checking Visalia with no expectation that the car he’s checking has ever been in Visalia. Why does he need to check Visalia’s data?”

The reports he received were also, in his view, disappointingly vague. VPD’s data listed the requesting agency and a reason for each inquiry — the same reason field Salazar referenced — but Reeves said most entries simply read “investigation.”

“It doesn’t say investigation of what,” he said. “Most of the inquiries are just fishing. It’s not investigation.”

He added that the audit itself isn’t public in real time. Records only surface after a public records request, and by then, the data is well out of date. “It’s very delayed,” he said. “So it’s not current data.”

According to Reeves, VPD has since removed the reason field from the public records it releases on Flock inquiries.

Reeves’ own records request, filed in April of this year, also requested any log of inquiries involving  his own license plate. State law generally gives departments 10 days to respond to a records request; it took VPD nearly three months to fulfill his. When the records finally came, his request for information tied to his own plate was denied, citing the department’s own privacy policy.

That experience points to a broader question about the department’s transparency. If records related to Flock cameras are opaque enough that a resident can’t see the reason behind an inquiry, or obtain information about searches involving his own license plate, how transparent is the department?

When asked about Salazar’s assurance that California agencies are structurally unable to enable Flock’s federal-data-sharing setting, Reeves was skeptical that a togglable software setting could reliably hold up against unlawful remote access.

“That can be changed remotely by Flock, whether intentionally or unintentionally,” he said, pointing to an incident at the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office in early 2025, when a “vendor error” reportedly re-enabled data sharing to agencies outside the state, leading to more than 364,000 outside queries before it was caught.

Reeves said he isn’t opposed to ALPR technology itself. What troubles him is who owns and controls the data it generates, which isn’t the VPD or any other local agency.

“It would be different if they were controlled by the local agency, where the data is stored locally, where only the agency has direct access to it,” he said. Leaving that data in the hands of a private company, he said, leaves it vulnerable to breaches and to side-door loopholes federal agencies can use to gain access.

He was also blunt about the broader pattern he sees playing out: “There have been many instances where police have abused the system,” he said. “There are insufficient checks.”

Asked how he felt about radio encryption in tandem with the Flock rollout, Reeves said neither, on its own, alarms him as much as the two together.

“Each one of these things by itself doesn’t seem like much,” he said. “But it’s just a creeping, step by step, into more intrusive monitoring of the public.” It’s a continued pattern, he said, of no accountability and the public kept in the dark about what’s happening in its own city. “These are steps towards having a secret police.”

Not Just Visalia

Visalia PD isn’t the only department in the region using Flock cameras. College of the Sequoias PD, Hanford PD, Dinuba PD, Woodlake PD, and the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office all use the technology as well, though the Voice was not able to secure interviews with those agencies by publication.

Hanford Police Department is scheduled to present its own use of Flock technology at the city’s September 15 City Council meeting. Hanford’s Community Relations Manager Brian Johnson said the meeting is open to everyone and there will be opportunity for public comment.

The flock discussion will be during the study session portion of the meeting, which starts at 4 p.m.

The post Residents take notice of local Flock cameras as company attracts national attention appeared first on Valley Voice.

Aguirre’s family recently received their full briefing on his identification, therefore, additional details on his identification can be shared.

In the summer of 1943, Aguirre was assigned to the 67th Bombardment Squadron (Heavy), 44th Bombardment Group (Heavy), in Libya. On Aug. 16, he was the assistant radio operator aboard a B-24D Liberator bomber on a mission to San Nicola, Italy, near the city of Foggia. That morning, Aguirre’s bomber was one of 25 making an attack on the airfield there. After a successful run, the bombers were targeted by intense, accurate anti-aircraft fire. Aguirre’s bomber was one of nine to go down. With the area around San Nicola under enemy control, it was impossible for Allied forces to search for possible survivors. With no news of Aguirre’s survival and no record of him being captured, the War Department issued a presumptive finding of death on Aug. 17, 1944.

Beginning in 1946, the American Graves Registration Service, the organization tasked with recovering missing American service members in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations, searched for Aguirre, his crewmates, and signs of their plane, but were unsuccessful in finding anything that could be identified as belonging to Aguirre or the plane. Aguirre was declared non-recoverable on Nov. 15, 1950.

In 2019, DPAA historians began researching five sets of unknown remains that had been recovered from the town of Lacedonia, Italy, about 30 miles south-southwest of San Nicola. They had been reported to British Graves Registration personnel in February 1945 and investigated by the AGRS in April 1945. During the investigation, no evidence could be found identifying the remains or the plane that had crashed. AGRS disinterred the remains in Lacedonia and reburied them at the U.S. Military Cemetery Naples. After much research, DPAA historians recommended the five Unknowns be disinterred for scientific comparison to Aguirre and his crew. In June 2022, the Department of Defense and the American Battle Monuments Commission disinterred the five Unknowns and transferred them to the DPAA laboratory for scientific analysis.

To identify Aguirre’s remains, scientists from DPAA used anthropological and dental analysis, as well as circumstantial evidence. Additionally, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used nuclear single nucleotide polymorphism DNA analysis.

Aguirre’s name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at Carthage American Cemetery, an ABMC site in Carthage, Tunisia, along with the others missing from WWII. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.

Aguirre will be buried on Sept. 18, 2026, in his hometown.

For family and funeral information, call the Army Casualty Office at (800) 892-2490.

For additional information on the War Department’s mission to account for Americans who went missing while serving their country, visit the DPAA website at www.dpaa.mil or on social media at www.facebook.com/dodpaa, https://www.linkedin.com/company/dodpaa, https://www.instagram.com/dodpaa/, or https://x.com/dodpaa.

Aguirre’s personnel profile can be viewed at: https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaProfile?id=a0Jt000001EhN2dEAF.

The post Exeter airman accounted for from World War II appeared first on Valley Voice.

“Chief Salazar has led the Visalia Police Department with honor and integrity. We have been blessed by his leadership and his service to this community for over 30 years,” said Mayor Brett Taylor. “He is a great man who loves his family and the City of Visalia. We wish him well and thank him for his three decades of service.”

Born and raised in Porterville, California, Salazar is a graduate of Monache High School and attended the College of Sequoias before receiving his Bachelor of Arts from Mountain State University and his Master of Arts from Fresno Pacific University.

He began his career with the Visalia Police Department in October 1993 as a Community Services Officer, then promoted to the position of Police Officer in June 1996. Throughout his extended career, Salazar served in nearly every division and capacity of the Visalia Police Department before rising to the rank of Police Captain in January 2011. He was named Chief of Police for the Visalia Police Department in June 2015.

Committed to community, building connections and advancing policing in Visalia, and across the state, throughout the 30 plus years of his career, Salazar has served on several boards and committees. He served as the President of the California Police Chiefs Association from 2025 to 2026.

“It has been a true honor to have served this community as part of the Visalia Police Department for the past 33 years and the last 12 as the Chief,” shared Salazar. “I have had the privilege of working alongside some of the finest people I ever have known – both within this department and the Visalia community – doing work that has always had meaning and purpose, for a community that I love. I am incredibly proud of the men and women of the Visalia Police Department and the work they do every day and know that they stand poised and ready for the future.”

With the announcement of Chief Salazar’s retirement at the end of 2026, the City will begin a comprehensive process to select the department’s next leader.

The post Visalia Police Chief Jason Salazar announces his retirement appeared first on Valley Voice.

One, referred to here as Aria – her name has been changed for her privacy – alleges he sexually abused her starting when she was 15.

“Anyone who comes into contact with [Guerrero] will be damaged by him. He needs to be locked up,” Aria said.

On July 31, the Tulare County District Attorney’s Office confirmed it had received Guerrero’s case and assigned it to an attorney for potential prosecution.

“The case has come into our office and has been assigned an attorney,” a member of the DA’s office told the Valley Voice.

The DA’s office said it will conduct a preliminary review before the assigned attorney recommends whether to formally take on the case. No timeline was provided. The office said the process depends on the statutes of limitations involved and the complexity of the charges.

On August 6, a member of Guerrero’s family, who is choosing to remain anonymous, stated that Guerrero is no longer in Tulare and is currently residing in Mexicali, Mexico for his own safety.

On August 7, COS Marketing Director and Public Information Officer Lauren Fishback told the Voice the college has made “meaningful progress” regarding the allegations against Guerrero, but declined to comment on his enrollment status, citing FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which protects student privacy.

“The safety and wellbeing of our students is our top priority, and any allegations or reports are taken very seriously. COS encourages any allegations to be reported through the Tell a Giant process, which creates formal documentation and thorough review of any student or staff misconduct,” Fishback said.

“I Was 15 When This Happened”

Aria is among the latest to come forward with allegations against Guerrero. In 2012, Aria met Guerrero through Facebook: she had just completed middle school. Their friendship turned romantic when she entered her freshman year of high school. Guerrero was 18 at the time.

Aria alleges the abuse began almost immediately with controlling behavior around her physical appearance.

“I was anorexic and bulimic because of him,” she explained. “A majority of the time I remained around 90 lbs. It’s what he liked.”

The abuse only escalated from there.

Aria mentioned an instance when Guerrero allegedly stripped her naked and put his dog’s collar on her. She claims he then used a leash to drag her around the house and insult her, calling her “dirty” and a “whore”.

Aria also stated Guerrero threatened to take her outside so the neighbors could see her naked.

In another instance, Guerrero allegedly forced her to have sex with him and perform sexual acts on himself and others.

Aria described a particularly traumatic incident at a gathering at Guerrero’s home, during which she alleges Guerrero coerced her into a threesome with another adult.

“I was 15 when this happened,” Aria recalled. “He made me do things to her and pushed my head into her private parts and forced me to perform oral sex on her.”

Aria alleges Guerrero used drugs and alcohol to coerce individuals to perform sexual acts, an allegation similarly leveled by others.

Aria additionally claimed that once she became an adult, Guerrero attempted to convince her to initiate a threesome with a student at COS who was a minor at the time. Aria refused.

According to Aria, it was difficult to refuse Guerrero’s demands, because he controlled her social media, would monitor her online usage, and made attempts to isolate her from her friends and family. When she did manage to deny Guerrero, it would result in “consequences.”

Aria said she eventually ended the relationship in 2016.

When asked what made her come forward after all this time, she explained that people started reaching out to her after the “COS Predator” Reddit post gained local attention in June 2026.

Aria stated she attempted to make a formal report with the Tulare Police Department in June. She emailed a personal statement detailing the abuse while she was a minor and left a voicemail with the department. Aria says she never heard back from the Tulare PD.

“I never got justice,” Aria explained. “So even if I can’t get my own justice, maybe other people can.”

The ˆ was able to receive a copy of Aria’s original personal statement she sent to TPD. However, TPD could not be reached for comment by publication, so it is unclear if Aria’s testimony was included in the case handed over to the DA’s office last month.

The Ex-Wife: Guerrero’s Alleged Fantasies

Among the sources who have recently come forward is Guerrero’s ex-wife, who will be referred to as Emily to protect her identity. She claims Guerrero confessed to fantasizing about child rape and desecrating corpses at his workplace(s).

Emily began dating Guerrero in 2018 at the age of 18.

They eventually married in 2021 and relocated to Oregon, where Emily attended university. It was during this period, she said, that she witnessed a side of Guerrero that disturbed and frightened her.

“[Guerrero] told me he wanted to make enough money to go to other countries and rape other children,” Emily said.

Emily said she asked Guerrero how young he meant.

“As young as you can go,” she claims he replied.

On a separate occasion, Emily alleges Guerrero confessed to physically abusing bodies prior to cremation during his time working at a funeral home.

The Voice independently confirmed Guerrero’s employment in the funeral industry. According to his LinkedIn profile, Guerrero worked as a funeral home assistant at a local mortuary and a mortuary transport company between November 2017 and January 2018.

“[Guerrero] said he would brutally beat the bodies and then cremate the bodies because nobody would know,” Emily stated.

Emily also alleges that Guerrero would sexually assault her while she slept.

When she discovered this and attempted to establish a boundary, Guerrero responded by telling her he could “do whatever he wants” because they were together and she was “basically his property.”

An alleged disregard for consent within a relationship was shared by others who spoke to the Voice.

Aria, who was a minor during her relationship with Guerrero, described similar experiences, including waking to find Guerrero sexually assaulting her. Aria also recalled being made to sit in the back seat of his car, which she said Guerrero enforced based on his belief that was where women belonged.

Emily’s also claimed that Guerrero would attempt to coerce other women to participate in a threesome.

“He would try to push me to initiate sex,” Emily said. “And then when I didn’t because I didn’t want to he would go off on me.”

Emily also spoke about Guerrero’s violent tendencies, stating that Guerrero had violently thrown her on the bed on more than one occasion and cut her with a knife once.

“He’s a super dangerous person,” she said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to murder someone one day.”

Perhaps one of the more notable statements Emily made to the Voice is that she claimed Guerrero had discussed creating a cult and sexually assaulting minors – suggesting that the events that took place in the COS creative writing club in 2023 may have been pre-meditated.

Was There Really a Secret Cult?

“The cult wasn’t something that happened, there was no God we worshiped – nothing like that. It was something [Guerrero] had divulged a desire in wanting to begin.”

This is a statement by Samantha — her name has been changed in this article for privacy. She was one of the former members of the COS creative writing club while Guerrero was president in 2023.

According to Samantha, the alleged “cult” never existed. It was just a small circle of club members that Guerrero invited to his parents’ house to have drinks and partake in recreational drugs.

Samantha said she went to these hangouts at Guerrero’s around three or four times. While there weren’t any cult-like activities taking place at these events, Samantha did mention that Guerrero did have fascination with cults.

“He kept saying he wanted us to get tattoos of his sigil design like some sort of branding, he had called our group chat ‘the cult’. He would just generally talk a lot about cults.”

The “sigil design” Samantha referred to is believed to be Guerrero’s authors signature for his pseudonym Jay. H. Cults. According to multiple former club members, this is the sigil that Guerrero was attempting to push onto the club to symbolize his imagined cult.

While the cult may not have manifested for Guerrero, the manipulation and coercion of young students certainly did.

Samantha stated Guerrero lied about his age and that she witnessed him get drunk and attempted to isolate people in his bedroom.

“He would bring people to his room, unbeknownst to them on the basis of trying to hook up with them,” Samantha said. “I only put two and two together when my friends started coming out with what he had done.”

When asked what kind of people Guerrero seemed to target, Samantha said:

“Young alternative women and transgender people who were freshly in college desperately looking for friendship and a collective.”

Where is Cristobal Guerrero? What Happens Next?

According to a family member of Guerrero’s that is choosing to remain anonymous, Guerrero is no longer in Tulare County and is currently hiding in Mexicali, Mexico for his own safety.

This statement contradicts a statement made by Guerrero’s mother who claimed that her son was still residing in their home in Tulare.

Considering Guerrero’s case is now in the hands of an attorney and awaiting potential prosecution in Tulare County, Guerrero being in Mexico could complicate a potential prosecutorial process.

According to Assistant District Attorney Adam Clare, if charges are filed and the case moves forward while Guerrero is in Mexico, they would need to ask the United States Department of Justice to submit an extradition request to Mexico.

“The request would be reviewed by a Judge in Mexico who would rule on the extradition request. If extradition is granted, the defendant would be subject to arrest by Mexican law enforcement and would be transported to California upon their arrest,” Clare stated.

There is no set timeline for this process, but according to Clare, it could take several months or even longer, especially if Guerrero challenges the extradition in Mexican court.

For the time being, the DA office will do what’s called a preliminary review of Guerrero’s case. This involves a prosecutor reviewing the reports and any additional evidence provided. If there is enough evidence, the prosecutor files the appropriate charges, and it goes to court.

Anyone with information about Guerrero can file a report with their local police department. In addition, victims can contact Victim Services main phone number, 559-636-5471 for North County, and 559-701-2020 in South County, including the city of Tulare.

There are advocates available to assist whenever the District Attorney’s Office is open, even before a case has been filed.

If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, support is available 24 hours a day through RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 or rainn.org. Crisis support is also available by texting HOME to 741741

The post Tulare County DA office looking into alleged “COS Predator”, women come forward with new allegations appeared first on Valley Voice.

Bringhurst will tell some of these stories from the book and sign copies during the Downtown First Friday Art Walk at the Brandon-Mitchell Gallery, 117 S. Locust, Visalia, at 6 p.m. on Aug. 7.

In September 2026, Visalia Junior College opened its doors to 63 incoming freshman on the Visalia High School campus (now Redwood). High school teachers taught the classes, and college life was much like high school. Bells announced the beginning and ending of classes, and students were given tardy slips if they were late.

The student body adopted the “Tartars” as their school mascot. Sports teams were quickly created along with music and theater programs.

Important in starting the college were two men whose names are now inscribed on Redwood’s auditorium: the L.J. Williams Theatre in the DeWitt Montgomery Auditorium.

But the high school campus was crowded, and Visalia Schools Superintendent Montgomery promised the college its own campus. High School and College Principal Williams found a remote 55-acre plot of land “far out in the country” on the Visalia-Tulare Highway (now Mooney Blvd.) He came under fire for selecting such a “large site so far outside of town.”

In September 1940 the new campus opened, with an administration/classroom building, gym and two industrial arts buildings designed in the “ultra-modern” Art Deco style.

In 1949, the student body chose a new name. Mineral King, Mount Whitney, Kaweah and Sequoia were considered. Students also chose a new mascot, the Giants, which represented the huge redwood trees in Sequoia National Park and the new college name, College of the Sequoias.

That year, Ivan Crookshanks, principal of Visalia High School, was chosen first president/superintendent/of the college, a job he held for a record 35 years.

The book goes on to record the turbulent 60s, unsettling changes in leadership, the addition of campuses in Hanford and Tulare, and many historic photos.

Bringhurst was a long-time history instructor at the college and has written many books, most about Mormonism. He also wrote “Visalia’s Fabulous Fox” about the history of the Visalia Fox Theatre, published when the theater was restored and reopened in 1999.

Those attending the talk can also view the art show on display by the Kings County Art League.

For more information, call the gallery, which is located in the Center for Spiritual Living, 559 625-2441 or go to www.brandonmitchellgallery.com/gallery

The post Celebrating COS’s 100th anniversary August 7 with book signing telling the college’s history appeared first on Valley Voice.