The year 2024 ended with President Donald Trump getting elected for a second term and President Jimmy Carter’s passing at 100 years old.
Now that’s a study in contrast.
And pat yourself on the back for surviving the longest election season in history, or at least it felt that way. All the friends you have who don’t read or watch the news? Well, now you know why.
Internationally, the biggest surprise of 2024 was the fall of the Syrian regime. As aides waited in the Presidential Palace for dictator Bashar al-Assad to make a televised address to the Syrian people that he was ready to share power, they had no idea he had slipped out of the country to Russia hours before.
Gaza has been obliterated, Ukraine is still being invaded by Russia, and Iran is about to run out of natural gas. The country had to halt all major industry so their citizens didn’t freeze to death in their homes, all of this interestingly contributed to Bashar’s fall.
Back here in the ‘ol USA, I didn’t think I would be watching much college football after the disintegration of PAC 12. So, don’t tell anyone, but the realignment of the conferences made for a pretty exciting year.
The number one song of 2024 according to my daughter is Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso and the best grossing movie was Inside Out 2, but my vote for best movie of the year goes to The Substance – that by the way was never shown in Visalia.
Highlights of my 2024 were using my daughter’s flight benefits working for Alaska Airlines and flying to Philadelphia in September to crash the Presidential Debate. I was hedging my bets that they would open it up to an audience, (they didn’t) and if not I could talk my way into the Spin Room (I couldn’t.)
It was still the best debate I have ever seen (“They are eating the dogs”) and the best drink afterwards at the Four Seasons’ SkyHigh bar. To top it off, while sitting at the bar I ran into the architect for Porterville’s new court house — small world!
Locally, a wide range of issues made it into Valley Voice’s top stories from the usual — politics — to the unusual, a clandestine BMX track that had gone undetected for ten years in Visalia.
The following were the Valley Voice’s top fourteen stories of 2024:
A system used by Fresno-based Educational Employees Credit Union (EECU) to negotiate checks malfunctioned overnight July 16-17, causing multiple instances of checks being debited twice against customers’ accounts.
Among the HPD officers accused of targeting their fellow officers with race-based abuse is the department’s former chief Parker Sever, who left his position in October to move to Utah with his family, according to local press reports.
The plaintiff in the first suit was former officer Jason Stingley; the plaintiff in the second case was current officer Det. Patrick Jurdon.
Stingley is African American, and Jurdon is of European descent. Named defendants in Stingley’s suit are Sever, retired Cpl. Jeff Davis and Cpt. Stephanie Huddleston. Sever is also named as defendant in the case brought by Jurdon, along with Cpl. Gabriel Jimenez, Lt. James Lutz, Cpt. Karl Anderson and Lt. James Edlund.
While Huddleston, Lutz and Edlund are accused only of creating a hostile work environment when reacting to complaints from Stingley and Jurdon about racist and illegal conduct of their fellow officers, the other named defendants – including former HPD chief Sever – all allegedly participated in overt racism.
Five civil lawsuits from July to October of this year were filed against Toor Farming – and there may be more to come. Four are for breach of contract ranging from $145,000 to $460,000 and a fifth lawsuit alleges fraud claiming damages of $15 million.
The Visalia Navigation Center, the city’s first low-barrier homeless shelter and resource center, opened its doors at 10 a.m. on Friday, October 4. It’s a grand opening years in the making.
“TC Hope were the ones who got it started, and we couldn’t have gotten it started without the land Self Help donated. We wouldn’t have been able to build the building without them” said Mary-Alice Escarsega-Fechner, director of CSET.
The Tulare Lake has a national appeal as readers were intrigued by the mythical former lake that used to be the largest body of water west of the Mississippi.
Pa’ashi or “big water,” as Tulare Lake is still known by the Tachi Yokuts, has disappeared and returned many times in the 175 years since the Gold Rush drew thousands of Europeans to this side of the Sierra Nevada. For millennia, the lake had covered thousands of square miles of the Valley floor.
Then in 1898, it disappeared for the first time. It wasn’t prolonged drought that did in Tulare Lake; it was farming. The largely forgotten history of how waterways that filled Tulare Lake were diverted to convert the rich land beneath it into prime acreage for growing. Draining Pa’ashi, a University of Colorado-trained hydrologist said, is where the Valley’s water and poverty woes really began.
On March 25, the City of Visalia’s Code Enforcement department bulldozed the jumps and closed the BMX track that was called Little Forest Trails by the riders.
Leslie Caviglia, Visalia’s City Manager, told the Voice that a local group running a bike park on a piece of city land presented a liability. Once the city found out it was there, she said they had no other options but to level the jumps. The parcel was protected riparian land with mature oak trees, she added.
Given the outpouring of interest in BMX and the city’s willingness to “look at all options,” the Little Forest Trails closure could lead to a newer and better bike park – and a boost to Visalia. The day after leveling the jumps the city set up a webpage to get feedback from BMX riders on how to move forward. Caviglia said that 157 people had left comments.
“I was a little girl who really didn’t fit in and when I found BMX I fell in love. At 15 I turned professional and at 19 I made my first Olympic team,” said Olympian BMX racer Brooke Crain — but she had to drive to Hanford, Lemoore, or Fresno every night to practice.
“Having something in my home town during my professional career was never an option for me,” said Crain.
The next eight most widely read articles for 2024 were:
- Convicted murder accomplice has sentenced reduced, is released
- Visalia Council adds big fines for selfish parking, illegal dumping
- Former key officials sue City of Lindsay, claiming corruption
- Beloved landmark in downtown Visalia to be removed
- Traffic change coming to major Visalia thoroughfare
- Adventist Health Tulare to temporarily pause obstetrics services, according to internal memo
- Groundbreaking held for new Mearle’s Drive-In & Theater
- Mudslinging and dirty politics – including accusations of racial bias – descend on South Valley’s politics
As we make our New Year’s resolutions and dream about all the possibilities that 2025 holds, the Valley Voice would like to wish all our readers a Happy New Year, and fabulous 2025!