Ventura County Sheriff's Department

At approximately 1:37 a.m., July 5, 2009, deputies with the Fillmore Police Department responded to a call of a shooting victim in the 1000 block of Wileman St. When they arrived, they found that Rafael Torres 21, a resident of Santa Paula, had suffered a single gunshot to his chest.

Torres was treated at the scene by personnel with the Fillmore Fire Department and American Medical Response and transported to the Ventura County Medical Center, where he remains in critical condition.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Sergeant Hester, with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department’s Major Crimes Unit, or the Ventura County Crime Stoppers.

Ventura County Crime Stoppers will pay up to $1,000 reward for information which leads to the arrest and criminal complaint against the person(s) responsible for this crime. The caller may remain anonymous. The call is not recorded. Call Crime Stoppers at 494-TALK (Thousand Oaks / Moorpark)

For over a year, Fillmore citizens have been lobbying the Fillmore Unified School District (FUSD) to allow public access to the new all-weather track installed at Fillmore High School (FHS). Both the City Council and the School Board had given their approval to the development of a pilot program for community access to the track at specifically scheduled times through a Runners’ Club. A public meeting for interested runners and walkers regarding the formation of the club and the start of the pilot program will be held at the District Office Boardroom (627 Sespe Ave.) on August 3, 2009 at 7 p.m. Assistant Superintendent Mike Bush and Deputy City Manager Bill Bartels expect the club to have access to the track starting in mid-August or late September, depending partly on how the meeting goes.

Two main issues which had to be resolved by City and FUSD staff before the pilot could proceed were supervision and liability. Insurance is part of the liability issue. As early as August 2008, there was an understanding among School Board members that the track had been used by the community in the past, the community would like to continue using the track, and that most of the public advocates were hoping for a compromise that would allow public access to the track without significantly increasing the risk of damages. On Aug 19, 2008, the School Board decided that the public should only have access to the track through the Civic Center Act to limit damages and liabilities. The Act allows organizations to apply at the District for permits specifying dates to use school facilities. A private organization would have been charged a rental fee of $125 per hour for use of the track and field, in addition to the costs of obtaining insurance and paying school employees to supervise running time. At the September 2008 joint City Council-School Board meeting, it was agreed that City and FUSD staff would work out the issues involved before handing the formation of a public running club over to Parks and Recreation. Bartels explained that because the City and FUSD have a Joint Use of Facilities Agreement, the hope is to make the club affordable for its members, the City, and FUSD. CONTINUED »

Enlarge Photo

By July 15, 2009 the sewage flow to the 1955 Wastewater Treatment will be completely redirected to the new Wastewater Recycling Plant. After the week of July 15th the shut down and decommissioning of the old plant will begin. The old plant will likely give us a few odors as a goodbye present.

A sewer treatment plant is a complex organism that lives on the energy in the sewage. As the bacteria, protozoa, and rotifers consume the waste they clean the water. When a treatment plant’s food supply is cut off it dies and begins to stink. To control the odors as much as possible we will feed the plant molasses as a replacement food supply while we take each process off line cleaning and disinfecting each component.

The new wastewater recycling plant was started up on June 18th as we imported 9 tanker truck loads of bacteria from the Wastewater Treatment Plant in Santa Clarita. Then we fed these new bacteria with our Fillmore sewage gradually growing their numbers. For the first week we pumped 90,000 gallons per day of sewage to them and on June 24th we gave them 75% of the sewage from the City. Finally on or about July 15 100% of the sewage flow will be directed to the new plant completely turning off the old plant. CONTINUED »

Ventura County Sheriff's Department

Date & Time: July 6, 2009 12:00 PM

A Verizon telephone outage has affected many Ventura County residents ability to call for help in the
event of an emergency. Cities that are serviced by Verizon include Camarillo, Ojai, Oxnard, Port
Hueneme, Santa Paula, Thousand Oaks and some unincorporated areas of Ventura County.
Officials are encouraging residents that are affected by the outage to utilize the seven-digit numbers to
contact local fire and police departments. Residents without any type of phone service have been advised
to go to their nearest police or fire station to report an emergency.
Local police and fire department phone numbers include:

Police Fire Dispatch
Oxnard 385-7600 385-7740 210-0474 (Emergency Only)
210-0475 (Emergency Only)
210-0476 (Emergency Only)
Port Hueneme 986-6530 389-9710
Santa Paula 525-4474 933-4254 933-4230
Simi Valley 583-6950 389-9710
Ventura City 339-4400 339-4300

Sheriff Fire
Camarillo 388-5100 389-9710
Fillmore 524-2233 524-0586
Lockwood Valley (661) 245-3829 389-9710
Moorpark 532-2700 389-9710
Ojai 646-1414 389-9710
Sheriff’s Headquarters Patrol Station 654-2361 389-9710
Thousand Oaks 494-8200 389-9710
Ventura County of Ventura 654-9511 389-9710

Residents are asked to not test the phone lines or call 911 unless they have an emergency.

The City of Fillmore Fire Department wants to ensure that Fillmore citizens enjoy a safe Fourth of July weekend. Citizens are reminded that “safe & sane” fireworks sold in Fillmore are legal between June 28 12:00pm – July 5 12:00pm. The use of any type of non-approved fireworks is never legal and will result in criminal charges and the potential for a $1000 fine. If you witness any illegal activity please report it! An anonymous tip line has been setup to report violators. Please call 805-524-1500 ext. 350 to report illegal activity.

Below are several safety tips to insure you and your family enjoy a safe Independence Day Celebration.

Fire Safety
If you witness a crime or fire in progress involving illegal fireworks, call your local authorities by dialing 9-1-1.
Only Safe and Sane fireworks bearing the seal of the State Fire Marshal are legal in California. All other fireworks, including altered Safe and Sane fireworks and those that explode or leave the ground are illegal.
Kids should not play with fireworks. Fireworks are intended for use by adults in open spaces with plenty of active supervision for every child present.
Always have a bucket of water on hand to dispose of fireworks and a hose connected to water ready in case of fire.
Fireworks, including sparklers and flares, can cause serious burns as well as blast injuries that can permanently impair vision and hearing. Teach your children what to do if their clothing catches on fire — “stop, drop and roll” — and how to call 9-1-1 in an emergency.

As we prepare to celebrate the 233rd anniversary of the birth of our nation each American should revisit that magnificent document, the Declaration of Independence, that our Founding Fathers created to announce to King George III, to the people of the this great land, and to the entire world that the United States of America was a free and independent country. The Preamble to the Declaration of Independence clearly pronounced: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." The concept of "unalienable rights" is a philosophy that is uniquely American and is proof that the creators of the Declaration of Independence believed in God and believed in the rights bestowed on men by God. The Founding Fathers felt that those rights were so important that no government should deny them. CONTINUED »

Each year in the above charts refers to the test year. For example, standardized tests were taken in Spring 2008 (near the end of the 2007-2008 school year). Growth API scores (in bold) based on those tests were released in August 2008. The scores were adjusted by the California Dept. of Ed. to compensate for changes in the tests themselves and decisions made by the State Board of Ed, so that schools can be ranked. The adjusted scores are the Base API scores (underlined), and 2008’s Base API scores were released in May 2009. In May of 2007, the API Target for 2008 was set. API Scores range from 200 to 1000, and are based on a formula that weighs various standardized tests. The state goal is 800. The Public Schools Accountability Act urges each school to improve its performance each year by 5% of the difference between their Base API and 800, with a minimum target of increasing five points.
Enlarge Photo

In late May 2009, California Department of Education (CDE) released Base Academic Performance Index (API) scores developed primarily from scores on standardized tests taken in Spring 2008. Fillmore Unified School District (FUSD) had received Growth API scores based on the same testing period in August 2008, and at a September School Board Meeting each principal presented his or her school’s Growth API score along with the school’s plans for improvement. The results from the Spring 2009 tests will not be available until August, so no one yet knows whether the interventions worked, but administrators hope that the Sespe and San Cayetano are recovering from last year’s dip in scores. (See chart.)

The API is a measurement developed by the California Department of Education to be the cornerstone of the Public Schools Accountability Act (PSAA), which created an educational accountability system for California public schools. The PSAA’s primary goal is to help schools improve and to measure the academic achievement of all students.

The API score is based on different standardized tests results depending upon which grade-levels the school has, and which factors the State Board of Education (SBE) has decided to include. According to the Education Data Partnership (EDP), the PSAA indicated that "Criteria other than test scores—such as school staff attendance and graduation rates—were supposed to be added. So far the state has only used test score results." The tests vary enough from year to year, that the formula for calculating Base API must be adjusted to compensate for changes in the tests and in what factors are included. For this reason, a Growth API is released in August, but the Base API, which allows schools to compare their scores to previous years’ scores and other schools’ scores, is not released until May. This is a significant lag time for school districts to operate under when trying to adjust programs to improve scores. CONTINUED »