The Lodi News-Sentinel’s year in review | News

Last spring, City of Lodi staff acknowledged an immediate need to address the homeless crisis in the city, and announced a temporary shelter would be implemented at 712 N. Sacramento St. while the proposed access center to be located there was designed.

The temporary shelter opened in July, with Stockton-based Inner City Action overseeing its operation. In October, city staff said the shelter had received more than 300 referral contacts, transitioned 20 people to the Salvation Army or other programs in San Joaquin County, helped 13 people gain or maintain employment, and connected 13 people with behavioral health resources since doors opened in July.

The access center is slated to open sometime in 2023.

The shelter’s opening came as Lodi homeless population was reported to have 208 unsheltered individuals, an increase of 50% over 2019, according to the San Joaquin County Continuum of Care’s 2022 Point in Time Count.

After four years of planning and development, a “tiny homes” project that will temporarily house homeless individuals on their road to recovery finally opened four front doors in July.

The project will provide four small, modular homes each totaling 500 square feet in size, complete with a kitchen and dining area, one bedroom and accompanying bathroom with a washer and dryer combination.

The units will house formerly homeless individuals who have been referred by local social service organizations, and who will be required to pay rent as they get back on their feet and seek permanent, long-term housing. The project was funded by a $1.25 million Homeless Emergency Aid Program grant awarded to the city in 2018 and a subsequent $336,000 Permanent Local Housing Allocation grant awarded to the city in 2020.

In early September, the city experienced an unprecedented heatwave where temperatures climbed in to the triple digits and caused a set of production relays on one a sub-transmission line to fail at the substation located near Lodi and Guild avenues.

Lodi Electric Utility staff replaced the relays almost immediately, but PG&E was required to approve the repairs, which took the entire day. With one relay down, the city said it was required to shed power, and began implementing one-hour rotating power outages that evening, which lasted 61⁄2 hours. A month later, the Lodi City Council approved partnering with the state to locate, develop, construct and operate a natural gas power plant on Turner Road that would create anywhere between 20 and 48 megawatts of emergency power and be delivered directly into Lodi, rather than be transferred through a third-party system, to ensure another outage doesn’t happen.

the new facility is supposed to be operational by the summer of 2023, and will only be needed until 2028, when PG&E’s Northern San Joaquin 230kV Transmission Project is complete.

Several construction projects in Lodi Unified School District were completed this year, including the Tokay High School gymnasium, the new science building and parking lot at Lodi High School, and the new classrooms at Needham Elementary School.

New classrooms at Lodi High School were opened in February, replacing 27 portable buildings and 34 outdated, substandard classrooms. In addition, the district also provided two new parking lots at the high school.

The district officially opened Tokay High School’s new practice gymnasium and two-story classroom in April.

Nearly half the buildings at Needham Elementary School were demolished in 2020 to make way for a new classroom building, a pre-school room, a new multi-purpose room, kitchen and fitness room, and a new drop-off area on Church Street with new concrete walkways.

The project was completed in October, which also included new electrical mains and upgrades, a new fire alarm system, emergency lighting, a new public address and emergency communication system.

After decades of cramped conditions, the City of Lodi announced it would be moving its animal shelter to a new location.

The city council in May unanimously approved designating a portion of Pixley Park as the home of a new state-of-the art facility.

The proposed shelter, to be located at 1041 Auto Center Drive, will have holding areas for 30 cats and about 27 dogs, as well as larger visiting rooms for prospective pet owners to interact with the animals.

The city expects to break ground this summer. The existing shelter, located at 1345 W. Kettleman Lane, was built in 1958 and is only 2,800 square feet in size. Although it was expanded in 1983, staff said it is undersized, outdated, and does not meet modern requirements for comprehensive animal care.

In August, Delta College announced it would partner with the World of Wonders Science Museum to offer six general education courses for the fall semester.

Five of the six courses — college algebra, reading and composition, psychology, probability/statistics, and reading and composition with support — will be held in the evening hours, Monday through Thursday.

The sixth course — precalculus — will be held in the afternoon. All will be held in the WoW Museum’s classroom, located on the southern end of its 2 N. Sacramento St. location.

Rudy Maggio and Bruce Fry were inducted into the county’s Ag Hall of Fame in October, which honors individuals who have contributed to agriculture and to their community in significant ways.

Maggio, a native Lodian and owner of Oak Ridge Winery,  served on the steering committee that developed the framework for the Lodi-Woodbridge Winegrape Commission, and was a member of the American Vineyard Foundation Board of Directors from 1990 to 1995. He’s also a longtime member of the Lodi District Grape Growers Association, and has supported several wine and agricultural organizations in the state including the San Joaquin Farm Bureau, Wine Institute, the California Association of Winegrape Growers, Zinfandel Advocates and Producers, and the Lodi Association of Wineries.

Fry, a fifth-generation Lodi farmer, was named president of Fry & Son, LLC in 2004.

He was a founding member of the Lodi Rules Sustainable Winegrowing Committee and helped develop the Lodi Rules for Sustainable Winegrowing Certification Standards. Mohr-Fry Ranches was one of the first six growers to certify its vineyards under the program.

He has also served on various agricultural boards and commissions, including the Lodi Winegrape Commission, the California Wine Education Foundation Board, the Lodi District Grape Growers Association, the California Association of Winegrape Growers and the San Joaquin Farm Bureau Federation.

In March, Changing Faces Theater Company opened its permanent home after two years of waiting due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The theater, located at 720 W. Lodi Ave., premiered “In Lieu of Flowers, Send Wine,” written by Lodi native Jacob Inman.

Two new pieces of art were unveiled in Downtown Lodi this year, the first of which commemorates women’s suffrage and its 100th anniversary.

The Lodi Arts Foundation unveiled the “Cycles of Suffrage” mural on the Downtown Parking Structure on Sacramento Street in April.

The mural, painted by local artist Tony Segale, depicts a woman on a bicycle, with one half a Caucasian dressed in a black suffragette dress and hat, and the other half a 21st century woman in cycling attire. Her skin is different shades and colors to represent all women who now have the right to vote.

In December, the Lodi Professional Firefighters unveiled a bronze statue in front of Station 1 on Elm Street to honor fallen comrades Elton “Bud” Grotelueschen, John McMahon Jr., Forrest Eproson and Paul “Jake” Schierling.

Made by Arizona artist Paul Olesniewicz, the statue depicts the uniform of Captain Robert Bussman, though with a generic face. Capt. Steve Bender said the statue is made of hollow bronze, while the plaques are solid bronze and the flagpole is bronze.

After 14 years leading the Lodi Unified School District, superintendent Cathy Nichols-Washer announced her retirement last May.

She said the 2022-23 school year would be her last, and in August, it was announced that assistant superintendent of elementary instruction Neil Young would be her successor.

Young has spent more than 20 years in Lodi Unified as a Vinewood Elementary School teacher and Woodbridge Elementary School principal, among other roles, before making his way to the district office.

His promotion caused some controversy, as many members of the Lodi Education Association thought the district should have hired a new superintendent from another agency.

Just a few week’s after Washer’s announcement, Lodi Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Pat Patrick said he would be stepping down from his post at the end of the year.

Patrick was named president and CEO in 2001, and the organization’s board said that since his appointment, membership had increased by 80%, boasting 850 members businesses as of 2022.

His 21-year leadership role brought numerous changes to the chamber, the board said, which included establishing a wine marketing desk in Shanghai, creating the Lodi Wine Stroll in 2002, developing the Lodi Downtown Farmers Market, and continued leadership of the Lodi Street Faire.

Lodi native JP Doucette, former president of his family’s Acme Saw & Supply, was named Patrick’s successor in September.

guilty in doctor’s murder

The man suspected of coordinating the murder of a prominent Lodi podiatrist he believed was responsible for his wife’s death was convicted in San Joaquin County Superior Court in March.

A jury found 83-year-old Lodi resident Robert Elmo Lee guilty of first-degree murder with a special circumstance of murder for financial gain for his role in the 2018 shooting death of Dr. Thomas Shock.

According to a warrant released by the court in 2018, Lee’s wife Bonnie, who died in 2016, had seen Shock for an ingrown toenail in 2011.

The warrant referred to a complaint filed against Shock to the California Board of Podiatric Medicine regarding his treatment of a patient identified by the initials “B.L.,” and alleged that Shock’s “substandard care” led to part of her foot being amputated in 2012.

Shock was killed in the doorway of his Rivergate home in 2018, and four men, including Lee, were arrested weeks later.

A Lodi orthopedic doctor who was found guilty of defrauding both Medi-Cal and Medicare earlier this year was sentenced to seven years in prison in September.

Between 2012 and 2016, Wisner administered excessive and medically unjustifiable X-rays to his patients at his medical clinic located at 621 S. Ham Lane.

In 2016, representatives from the California Department of Justice’s Division of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse were notified by multiple government offices that Wisner was over-billing the Medi-Cal and Medicare programs for those procedures.

He was found guilty in June.

Amazon announced in June that Lockeford would be among the first communities in the country to receive Prime Air service and get free click-to-backyard drone delivery on thousands of everyday items in one hour or less.

The Internet retail giant began using the drones to deliver packages to Lockeford backyards last week.

Hundreds of farm workers marched into Lodi in August on their way to Sacramento to support a bill they said would ensure safer and easier voting practices for farmworkers during labor union elections.

The United Farm Workers of America began its 24-day, 335-mile “March for the Governor’s Signature” in the city of Delano on Aug. 3.

The goal of the march was to ask Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign AB 1283, also known as the Agricultural Labor Relations Voting Choice Act, which would allow farmworkers to choose whether they want to vote in a physical location, vote by mail, or have a representative deliver their ballot to their local Agricultural Labor Relations Board office.

Gill Medical Center approved

Despite opposition from neighbors and members of the county’s agricultural community, the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors approved the Gill Women’s Medical Center in November, a 42.4-acre health center to be built on the east side of West Lane and 450 feet north of Eight Mile Road that focuses on women’s health and birthing.

The facility would be built in two phases, with the first to include a 36,000-square-foot single story hospital with 12 beds, an emergency room, labor and delivery units, emergent medicine department and outpatient surgery services.

Construction on this first phase would begin in 2024.

The second phase would include a three-story, 140,000-square-foot full service hospital with 100 beds and an emergency helicopter landing area, as well as a two-story, 60,000-square-foot medical office building.

This phase of the project is expected to begin in 2030.

Some $7.28 million in City of Lodi funding will be allocated to the Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services Department, with the bulk to be spent on playground replacement or repairs, parking lot overlays, and Lodi Lake improvements, according to Tuesday’s staff report.

The playground structures at Peterson, Legion and Katzakian parks, which were all installed between 1997 and 2001, will be renovated and upgraded. The Hale park tot lot, installed in 2006, will also be upgraded. A new playground at English Oaks Commons will be installed, and all five projects will total $1.63 million.

The Salas Park parking lot will see overlay improvements to the tune of $1.3 million, and will include repaving and new overhead lights installed, while southside renovation improvements at Lodi Lake will be funded with $2.4 million.

Adventist Health president

Adventist Health named Brooke McCollough the new president at Lodi Memorial Hospital in August.

McCollough had been with Adventist Health Lodi Memorial for since 2007, and was most recently the organization’s operations executive. She replaced interim president Terri Day, who took the role after the departure of Daniel Wolcott in 2020.