Uh... Thanks, I guess.

I believe this site has been linked for the first time.  Actually it's a "probationary link" from a blog about the Shafter High boys basketball team.  The author, writing under the name of Shafter's namesake, the General William Rufus Shafter, says that Shafter News is "mostly dedicated to commentary on Shafter-related Bakersfield Californian articles.  Given the dearth of Shafter news online, I'll take it."   

This must have been written before I got into writing essays on education statistics, development, and sales taxes, which are far too boring to be the subject of a Californian article.   Anyway, it's good to know that someone is reading.

Sales Taxes

What could be more interesting? Actually it is pretty interesting. The City of Shafter has been pursuing businesses with the idea of growing their sales tax revenue for a number of years. Not unusual, I am sure. What is unusual is how successful they have been, especially last year. In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2007, the City more than doubled it's sales tax revenue from $3.1 million to $6.4 million. This was without raising the rate. Before that, sales tax revenue had been growing, but much more modestly.  It was at $1.8 million in 2004, $2.1 in 2005, and $3.1 in 2006.  To put this further in perspective, the City's total budget last year was less than $10 million, so nearly 70% of expenditures were covered by sales taxes. By comparison, Bakersfield takes in sales tax revenue that is consistently around 45% of expenditures, covering the rest through property taxes, gas and water fees, etc. This growth is expected to pause this year with sales taxes budgeted at just over $5 million due to slowing economic conditions. The downturn is accentuated by the fact that quite a few Shafter businesses are tied directly to construction.  Still, Shafter is doing pretty well. 

The big push in 2007 seems to have been driven by several number of new openings and expansions. Performance Food Group built and occupied a building near the airport, Scotts Fertilizer opened a new facility employing 30 people, both Bethlehem and Precast Concrete expanded their operations. Formica opened a warehouse operation near 7th Standard employing 20 people. The Target distribution center, which opened in 2002, continued to grow, reaching 800 employees in 2007.  (Note- I don't think that the Target distribution center actually generates sales taxes, though I could be mistaken.)

Taxable sales from these companies were all to other businesses and almost all of them to customers outside of Shafter. The demographics right now simply don't support much of a consumer driven economy.  Moreover, even Shafter's middle class, small as it is, mostly shops for groceries, home improvement supplies, and just about everything else in Bakersfield.  This makes the recent achievements all the more impressive and provides the backdrop to the growth of Bakersfield toward the edge of Shafter and the widening of 7th Standard, which could prove a windfall (the good kind, not like finding a hand) for Shafter.  Retail follows traffic and disposable income.  If current trends continue, 7th Standard will have both in spades.  Retail development on the northern side of 7th Standard would allow the City of Shafter to collect retail sales taxes with minimal infrastructure construction and maintenance.  Not only would the retail taxes from the Shafter middle class stay in the city, but the shopping of Northern Bakersfieldians would also be contributing to the coffers of Shafter.   

What's wild is that the City is already flush.  At the last reporting, Shafter had $25.9 million in unreserved cash.  That's right.  The City of Shafter could operate as it does now for nearly three years with no revenue.  Bakersfield, whose budget is 15 times as large had an unreserved balance of $35.8 million.  

At the Doorstep

I had been working on this post for a while, but the resolution of the water dispute between Shafter and Bakersfield makes it particularly relevant.  

Much has been made of the excesses of the housing market and nothing illustrates overreach like a development abandoned unfinished. With a new article out that Kern County is once again among the leaders in foreclosures, it might seem that the expanding footprint of Bakersfield has been entirely speculator-fueled. The pace of growth in recent years was certainly not sustainable. However, the expansion of Bakersfield toward Shafter is a longer term trend. Compare these two maps of Shafter (Green blip in the upper left hand corner) and Northwest Bakersfield.  Apologies for the low image quality.  The first is from 1990. The green signifies areas with population density greater than 1000 persons per square mile, which any suburb or town easily hits. The tan is basically undeveloped.  The key line here is 7th Standard (running East-West not quite halfway down).  After some disputes, that has become the dividing line between Shafter and Bakersfield.  

In this first map, from 1990, the vast majority of Bakersfield lay to the south of the Kern River.  The northwest had little pockets of development, especially along the 99 and Rosedale Highway (East-West about 3 quarters of the way down)

The bottom map is from 2000.  Look at the growth to the west and the north.  I didn't include all of Bakersfield in this map because the detail would have become even more obscure than it already is, however, the other borders of Bakersfield hardly move.  This is sort of obvious to anyone who has been paying attention, but Bakersfield is taking up land and primarily in the direction of Shafter.  In the time since 2000, the trend has continued and even accelerated with the housing boom.  Bakersfield's growth has pushed up nearly to 7th Standard, which actually isn't all that new.  What is new is that it now is approaching that line with a much wider front - about 5 miles across at it's closest point, from the 99 to Allen Road - than the sliver that approached that line in the past. 

Development is still about a mile away from 7th Standard. Yet, all signs point toward 7th Standard itself becoming a major road and a stimulus to new commercial development in the next decade.  Not only has there been significant residential growth all along the south of the road (with favorable demographics, I might add), but also some new commercial development near the 99.   More importantly, work is under way on an overpass to eliminate the rail crossing near the 99 and I understand that it will be widened to four lanes soon.   Traffic on 7th Standard between Santa Fe and 99 was at 8,700 vehicles per day in 2007, which was up nearly 25% over 2005 counts.  With four lanes, traffic will continue to increase, making it a a draw for commercial development in the vicious/virtuous cycle of traffic-commercial development-more traffic.  

This could have a large impact on Shafter in the future.  For one thing, it seems to play directly into the City of Shafter's tax farming strategy of recent years.  More on that in another post. The other point is that it suggests the possibility of two geographically distinct Shafters. One of the main drivers of growth in the Northwest has been the schools.  Norris in particular has been among the best in Bakersfield for years.  You can see from this map (you have to look hard) that the boundary of Richland School District is actually about half a mile north of Seventh Standard.   A half mile deep, the length of Seventh Standard between 99 and Santa Fe is in Shafter, but in the Norris and Rosedale school districts.  This, not the city line is more likely to be the next stopping point of Bakersfield's northward push and it seems entirely plausible that growth will shift directions there, leaving a little (and relatively wealthy) strip of Shafter that is indistinguishable from Bakersfield, except in address and that is entirely distinct from Shafter as we now know it.  

New Shafter Press Editor

CSUB Isaac Rocha has taken over editorial duties from fellow Cal State alum Melissa Hill.  Rocha has written for several of the Bakersfield Californian's online publications and the CSUB Runner.  Here is a piece he wrote in 1999 about then Shafter High principal of Shafter High, Jaime Quinonez.

Bakersfield Approves Water Deal

The Californian reports that Shafter will buy water from Bakersfield at the rate of $311/acre foot or about 10 cents per 100 gallons.   This should put an end (for now) to the dispute between the two cities over the development of the 7th Standard area.  

Mighty Max Mysteries

The "possible truck" has been found and found to be real. Unfortunately it was not the truck that killed Shafter 17 year old Nancy Medina, but it was "really, really close," according to Capt. Jeff Bell of the Shafter Police Department. You might wonder what it means for a truck to be really close to being the truck that hit someone. Such are the mysteries of the Mighty Max.

Water and the Borderlands

Between Shafter and Bakersfield, that is. According to this article, the Bakersfield City Council will consider whether to ratify an agreement to settle the third of three lawsuits between Shafter and Bakersfield at their meeting on Wednesday.

Shafter had planned to use water from a wastewater treatment plant for farms, freeing up fresher water for new development. But Bakersfield sued, saying Shafter didn't have the right to use that water for development — only Bakersfield does.

Recent agendas of the Shafter City Council do not mention the agreement.

Given that housing starts nationally were at the lowest level they have been since 1991, it may be a while yet before this agreement matters.

If a rabbit's foot brings a little good luck...

The subject of this story about a couple's discovery of a decomposing human hand in a storage shed is odd enough without the unnamed author describing the find as a "windfall."  

The term comes from ripe fruit knocked to the ground by wind, a stroke of luck, apparently, for ladder-worn harvesters.  It has come to refer to any "unexpected, unearned, or sudden gain or advantage."  

Update: 

It seems that Jason Kowtowski doesn't appreciate what great luck it is to stumble upon a human hand.  He has written a longer story sans windfall reference.

How to Have a "Great School District"

Scores from the 2006-07 STAR test of California schools were released on Tuesday. This is major event in the life of local schools. Not only does it effect their status under No Child Left Behind, but the scores are published in the newspaper as a source of public pride and shame. This is intentional. The decade-long movement for standardized testing and school accountability is based on the idea that we should know which schools are doing a good job and which are failing. Jack O'Connell, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, for example, called the tests a “bright light on school performance.”

Test scores are supposed to shine a light on the teachers and administrators. Yet, inevitably, someone will note that some of the light is shining past schools to the demographic profile of their students. Assistant Superintendent for the Kern High School District, Joe Thompson, for example, told the Californian that kids who are poor and learning English tend to bring Kern scores down.

Thompson's point seems reasonable enough, but how much difference do poverty and language make? I took this as an invitation for study and found that they actually matter a great deal of difference, even within Kern County. Have a look at this chart below. The dots are scores from Kern elementary districts on STAR tests (called API Base) in the last three sets of scores plotted by the percentage of students receiving free or reduced lunch. There is a pretty clear relationship here. As the percentage of students that qualify for free or reduced lunch goes up by one, it knocks down the average API by 2 points. On this basis alone, then, we should expect the difference in the scores of Richland (~80% free and reduced lunch) and Fruitvale or Norris (~5%) to be about 150 points. The actual difference is typically just a little more, about 185 points.

Surprisingly, not speaking English isn't quite as powerful a drag on test scores (see the chart below). However, note how few districts with more than a quarter of their students learning English score over 700. Consider too the fact that all of the Kern districts with scores better than 750 in the past three years have had fewer than 15% of their students considered "English Learners."

At the elementary level, differences in Kern district test scores are primarily differences of demography. Poverty alone, measured by participation in the free or reduced lunch program explains almost 70% of the differences in scores, according to a regression model. That is not to say that some schools are not better than others. Most of the districts either consistently outperformed or consistently underperformed a prediction model based on subsidized lunch participation and the percentage of English Learners. Fruitvale and Norris did well by this standard, but so did Delano. Richland was a modest underachiever after taking these factors into account. But these differences are small by comparison. The most direct, though perhaps not the best, way to win test score honor in Kern County seems to be reducing the number of poor, non-English speakers in your schools.