CONNECTING KIDS AND SUPER HEROES see Page B1
WEDNESDAY August 21, 2019
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New era of Del Norte High football By John Pritchett For The Triplicate
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new era of Del Norte High football begins Aug. 23, when the Warriors head to Hayward to open the season against non-conference foe
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Moreau Catholic. Kickoff is scheduled for 7 p.m. First-year head coach Nick White takes over for the revered Lewis Nova, who closed his third stint running the Del Norte High program
by leading his team to a 9-3 record and the semifinals of the North Coast Section Division 4 playoffs. Two of its three losses were to NCS champion Fortuna. White, a Warrior assistant coach for six
seasons, did not find the cupboard bare. Del Norte returns four starters from a stout offensive line, as well as both starting receivers, plus a senior quarterback who made a dramatic improvement between his sophomore
and junior campaigns. Now a senior, quarterback O.J. Calleja threw for 10 touchdowns last season and ran for seven more. Coaches expect his completion percentage to be much higher than last season’s 42.9%.
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White said he’s been especially pleased with Calleja’s attitude during pre-season practices. “He’s taken a real leadership role,” More Football on Page A2 CAROL HUNGERFORD PUBLISHER
Touchdown! We have more writers on staff
By David Hayes Staff Writer
henever there’s a cheese competition somewhere in the world, it’s a good bet the name Rumiano will be among those acclaimed. The Crescent City business at 511 9th St., in its fourth-generation of ownership, now with Joby Rumiano in charge, has recently added another seven awards to its office walls. Which, frankly, you might expect of Rumiano Cheese Co., which titles itself California’s oldest family-owned cheese factory. Yet the family’s reputation didn’t get its origin in cheese. Rather, it was the milk. Joby Rumiano figures everyone has heard the old tales from their own grandparents or great-grandparents … about the milkman making daily deliveries of fresh milk and taking the empty bottles to recycle. He wonders how many stop to think what happened to that milk supply when it got hot in the dead of summer? “The demand got to be pretty high for milk,” said Rumino. “But what do you do when there’s no demand? “That’s kinda how the whole cheese factory started back in the early 1900s.” The year was 1919 when Italian brothers Richard, Fred and John Rumiano purchased a small dairy in Willows, California, about 300 miles south of Crescent City. They shifted the emphasis on production to making cheese and grew to be the biggest cheese factory in California by the mid1930s. Then, they sold all but two of their facilities
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More Rumiano on Page A8
(Left) Eresto Romero pulls a sample of the curds separating from the churning milk. (Right) Rumiano Cheese Co. is run by third-generation owner Baird (left) and his son Joby Rumiano, now the fourth-generation owner of the Crescent City business. Photos by David Hayes.
ow is it possible that the mornings already are beginning to feel like fall, the trees are turning colors and school is about to start? Throughout, the new owners of your community newspapers since July 1 continue to make progress in establishing a solid foundation for the long-term success of both the Curry Coastal Pilot and the Del Norte Triplicate. On the news side, Jessica Goddard has joined the reporting team in Crescent City. A California native, Jessica brings with her broad experience in website design and maintenance, photography, news writing and event planning. A graduate in journalism from Biola University in La Mirada, Jessica was a prolific writer for The Chimes student newspaper, which sharpened her ability to get to the core of a story on deadline. While attending university, she also worked as a barista. Who wouldn’t hire someone whose resume includes skills in photography, writing, editing … and latte art! Jessica joins David Hayes at The Triplicate, who started his journalism career with the U.S. Navy. More recently, he worked for several years at the Issaquah Press in a suburb of Seattle. For 17 years he had progressive experience as both a reporter and page designer. Dave’s work earned the Issaquah Press multiple awards, including three Washington Newspaper Association More Writers on Page A4
Still no progress seen on Pebble Beach erosion plan C
Staff Report
rescent City Mayor Blake Inscore expressed the shared frustration of the collective City Council when it felt required to vote Monday night for another delay in the Pebble Beach Drive Bank Stabilization Project. “I don’t like the process, I don’t like the risk it puts upon us,” Inscore said. “This project has already almost tripled in cost since it was introduced. “The idea of trying to put the hopes of this project on something that’s going
to happen at the legislative level in Congress, in this state, I think we might as well say this will never get built.” The stabilization project has been in the planning stage since more than 6 inches of rain fell Dec. 14, 2016, causing significant erosion on Pebble Beach Drive, from Preston Island to Sixth Street. The delay for the $3.8-million preliminary engineering portion of the project stemmed from California Department of Transportation (CalTrans) requirements that the city
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receive more than the lone proposal that had been submitted. “Unfortunately, due to nature of that response, CalTrans has requested that we reject all proposals and go out for qualifications again,” Public Works Director Jon Olson told the City Council. “Go through RFQ process and hopefully get more than one proposal next time around.” Meanwhile, said Olsen, time is not on the city’s side. Disaster relief funds from the Federal Highway Administration come with a use-by date.
“We have to be out for construction by October/ November,” said City Manager Eric Wier. “Two months, basically. So we’re not going to make that. “That’s the hard part with these relief funds,” he said, “they only do that two years from the disaster to when you have to be under construction. That’s environmental, that’s design, that’s everything. “They’ve limited the number of time extensions that are approved. Out of 50 time extensions last year, they granted one or two.” One pathway CalTrans
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gave the city was through what it called a geotechnical investigation. Wier said the city went that route, but that was delayed significantly because of the city’s inability to get FAA approval to fly a drone above the site. “This is a very complicated project that requires lots of consultants of different types and a lot of specialty studies,” Olsen said. “The only study finished to date was the geotechnical study, a brief one, a preliminary study with the Del Norte Local Coastal Commission. We’re going
to need a more robust consultant and robust report.” Olsen said the city plans to apply for a time extension before the end of August, but won’t know if the extension is granted until some point in November. “If we were to spend a bunch of money (and) then don’t get the extension, those monies would not be reimbursed,” he said. So the plan now is to go through the request-for-qualifications process one more time, More Erosion on Page A3
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