News

LOWER LAKE, Calif. – Congressman Mike Thompson will hold “Coffee with our Congressman” on Tuesday, July 30.

The event will take place from 3 to 4:30 p.m. at the Lower Lake Coffee N Cream Cafe, 16205 Main St.

All constituents of California’s Fifth Congressional District are invited to attend. Constituents can RSVP at https://bit.ly/2Srio5A or by calling 707-226-9898.

Thompson represents California’s Fifth Congressional District, which includes all or part of Contra Costa, Lake, Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties.

NORTH COAST, Calif. – The Bureau of Land Management Ukiah Field Office and partners from the off-highway vehicle community invite the public to celebrate the reopening of the South Cow Mountain OHV Management Area on Saturday, July 27.

Everyone is welcome to come out to this free, family friendly celebration.

The South Cow Mountain OHV Management area has been extensively restored since the Mendocino Complex fire ignited last summer and burned more than 459,000 acres.

Approximately 80 miles of trails have reopened, while work continues on more than 13 miles of trails.

“The OHV community has really rallied to help the BLM repair trails, fix culverts and install new signage to be able to reopen South Cow Mountain OHV Management Area to the public,” said Ukiah Field Manager Amanda James. “We couldn’t have done it so quickly without the help of the dedicated volunteers, and this is a great way for everyone to be able to celebrate their hard work.”

Activities kick off at 8 a.m. at the Westside Staging Area with a certified dirt bike and side-by-side training for new riders, offered by the OHV clubs for kids and adults. Please contact Matt Mattison at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to register for the certified training.

There also will be a barbecue and potluck lunch, raffle, educational booths and outdoor games. The barbecue and potluck lunch and raffle will start at 1 p.m. at the Red Mountain Campground, where the BLM will host “Leave No Trace,” “TREAD Lightly!” and trail etiquette booths and outdoor games from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Camping at the Red Mountain Campground is on a first-come, first-serve basis. The South Cow Mountain OHV Management Area will remain open to the public during the event.

Co-sponsors for the event include the BLM, 707 Trail Riders, Black Diamond 4x4 Club, California Recreation Alliance, Cody Cares, Marin County Motorcycle Association, McBride Racing, Mendocino 4x4 Club, NorCal 4WD Club Coalition, North Bay Motorcycle Club, Post Wildfire OHV Recovery Alliance, Santa Rosa 4x4 Club, Valley Climbers Motorcycle Club and Wine Country Rock Crawlers.

The South Cow Mountain OHV Management Area encompasses roughly 23,000 acres of public lands challenging motorcyclists, all-terrain vehicle drivers and four-wheel drive enthusiasts. Click here for more information and directions to the South Cow Mountain OHV Management Area.

For specific questions, or reasonable accommodations to participate, please call the Ukiah Field Office at 707-468-4000.

NICE, Calif. – The discovery on Tuesday morning of a sinkhole that developed underneath a portion of the bridge that crosses the Rodman Slough has temporarily closed the Nice-Lucerne Cutoff.

The Lake County Department of Public Works announced the road closure shortly before noon on Tuesday, with the Lake County Sheriff’s Office sending out a Nixle alert to community members at that time.

Road Superintendent Lyle Swartz told Lake County News that he went to the cutoff on Tuesday morning and found what he described as a “big cavern” that had developed under the entire road on the edge of the platform on the bridge’s west side.

Swartz said Clear Lake’s flooding earlier this year is responsible for this latest road issue.

He said the high water got underneath the bridge footings and washed out all the fill material that had been located against the abutments.

Basically, everyone was driving over about only a foot of asphalt and nobody knew it – that is, until the hole appeared, he said.

“We caught it just in time,” Swartz said. “Nobody got hurt.”

He said it took a few hours to get Public Works crews to the scene and close the road.

On Tuesday afternoon, there were four holes on the platform that Swartz said were the result of jackhammering into the bridge to fill the bigger hole underneath. The largest of those holes measured about 2 feet wide.

Swartz said a cement truck brought five yards of two-sack slurry and used the jackhammered holes to insert the new material.

He explained that two sack slurry doesn’t have big rock and only contains two bags of cement, thus the name. It’s the kind of material used for culverts and is easier to dig out.

Public Works crews will finish patching the holes and picking up the signs, and by 4 p.m. Wednesday the road should be reopened, he said.

Later this year, once the lake level recedes, county crews will dig in deeper around the bridge footings and pour new cement to protect the footings. Swartz said they want to dig the footings deeper so the lake can’t get underneath them.

“We may not have to disturb this then,” he said of the newly poured slurry.

The repairs later in the year won’t require another road closure, Swartz said.

In his 38 years with the county, Swartz has seen plenty of floods and fires, and dealt with the necessary repairs to keep roads open.

The Nice-Lucerne Cutoff was last closed for emergency road repairs in February 2017, after water crossed the road and did damage during that year’s winter flooding, as Lake County News reported. At that time, the roadway was closed for nearly a week and a half.

Swartz said people get upset when the Nice-Lucerne Cutoff is closed. He joked that people aren’t as mad about closing the Golden Gate Bridge.

That’s probably due to the amount of traffic the road sees daily.

Public Works Director Scott De Leon estimated that the average traffic on that road is 8,000 vehicles per day.

“It’s one of the highest traveled roads in the county,” he said.

De Leon said the Nice-Lucerne Cutoff, Bottle Rock Road and Scotts Valley Road are the three main arterial roads in the county based on average daily traffic counts.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – Community members who have ideas about how to improve transportation along 11th Street in Lakeport are asked to take part in an ongoing study looking at measures that will benefit bikes, pedestrians, buses and forms of travel besides vehicles.

The Lake Area Planning Council is working with W-Trans, in partnership with the city of Lakeport, to conduct the 11th Street Corridor Multi-Modal Engineered Feasibility Study.

W-Trans and the council also are working on a plan for the Highway 20 corridor between Nice and Glenhaven, as Lake County News has reported.

The work is paid for by Sustainable Communities Planning Grants from Caltrans, said John Speka of the Lake Area Planning Council.

Speka said that program is just for planning grants, not capital construction costs.

The 11th Street corridor is one of the main entrances into Lakeport. It’s busy with vehicles, is narrow, has no bike lanes, is closely bordered on both sides by homes, does not have sidewalks on both sides of the road and, in some cases, sidewalks are extremely narrow and have utility poles in the middle of them.

The plan calls for analyzing transportation alternatives on the roadway, in a study area that has the Highway 29 freeway as the west boundary, North Main Street as the east boundary, with Clear Lake Avenue the northern boundary and extending to Seventh and Pool streets to North Main Street as the southern boundary.

“The product of this study is intended to provide several options to improve multi-modal access through the constrained Eleventh Street corridor,” the request for proposals for the plan explains. That document goes on to state, “Ultimately, the goal of the project is to enable Project Study Reports to be prepared from its products (engineered feasibility).”

Among the project objectives are utilizing the existing right-of-way on the 11th Street corridor to provide multimodal access along the corridor, minimizing adjacent land uses, improving pedestrian safety by planning for improvements, providing a bicycle route through the corridor that connects Scotts Valley Road and Highway 29 with Main Street and the city’s downtown, improving access to public transit and identifying a preferred location for an intersection/junction at 11th Street with a planned collector street that will provide future access to the Corridor from northern residential neighborhoods and Alden Avenue, according to planning documents.

Barry Bergman of W-Trans said the plan will analyze the area’s obvious constraints and topography, will look at accommodating different modes of transportation and will result in a concept design.

Public meetings on the planning began this spring, as Lake County News has reported.

Bergman said the most common input was lack of sidewalks and utility poles blocking them, noting that the existing sidewalks are pretty narrow.

“The utility poles make it that much more difficult, especially for people in wheelchairs,” he said.

Now, they’re reaching out to ask the community to give input on an online map, which will be the focus of public outreach over the coming month as they prepare to draft a plan that will undergo further public vetting.

Bergman said they want more community input before doing the design work. As they gather that information they’re also talking to city staff, analyzing collision and traffic data, and putting all of that together to apply it to the eventual recommendations.

Cayla McDonell of the Lake Area Planning Council said the council is doing community engagement and outreach.

She said the city and the council recently sent out fliers that talk about the project with a link to the Wikimaps interactive mapping tool, with posts also being made on Web sites and social media.

McDonell said they also are finalizing surveys of business and property owners. She said she will be calling and reaching out to businesses along 11th Street and some immediately adjacent or those on perpendicular streets, and then sending out to them the survey link to a separate online survey for property owners.

Bergman added that getting such input from business owners is critical to the study.

McDonell said she will be at two upcoming events, National Night Out in Lakeport on Tuesday, Aug. 6, and at the Lake County Fair on Aug. 31 or Sept. 1.

She said they haven’t yet determined the dates for the next community input event, which is expected to take place toward the end of the year.

Bergman said they are tentatively looking at having more public meetings in October, before the holidays, to ask for input on the three alternatives they are working on, with input from city staff and stakeholders. That input will help flesh the recommendations out further.

Dalene Whitlock, a principal of W-Trans, said at that point people will get to weigh in on their preferences on the alternatives.

That additional input, said Bergman, will help further define what specific things to include in the planning and will influence what, eventually, comes out in the preliminary designs.

He said the alternative with the most public support won’t necessarily be selected, as they have to look at if it will work. Right-of-way and other issues will have to be analyzed before making a final decision.

“We’re really just coming up with facility recommendations,” he said.

Because this is a planning grant, Bergman said the matter of building a project is still to be determined, and that this is a process.

How it’s ultimately funded is going to be based on the opportunities that arise and piecing different funding together, Bergman said.

Speka said there are a couple of potential sources for future funding, including Caltrans’ Active Transportation Program, which funds projects for nonmotorized transportation, like bikes and walking.

He said one of the main goals of the planning project is to be ready to apply for those types of grants, which cycle through every two years.

Similarly, the Highway 20 project now under way would be looking at similar grants, Speka said.

Both planning projects are on a similar timeline, Speka said, with the Lake Area Planning Council expected to get the final drafts and consider their approval in the spring.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Clearlake’s city manager reported that local sales tax revenues are slipping, new businesses are coming on line and efforts are still under way to develop a regional shopping center in the city.

City Manager Alan Flora gave the update to the Clearlake City Council at its July 11 meeting, a day after he met with a sales tax consultant.

“The snapshot is, growth here in Lake County and including the city of Clearlake is very slight,” he said.

He said the areas where they are seeing the most significant drops are in retail and auto sales, which impact the city’s two transactions and use taxes – Measure P, for police, and Measure V, for the roads.

New businesses have helped prop up the city’s sales tax revenue, said Flora.

He said the new businesses having the most impact include Big 5 and Tractor Supply. This past quarter was the first time the city received sales tax reporting from Tractor Supply, and while the specifics are confidential, Flora said Tractor Supply has moved well toward the top of sales tax producers in the city.

Another new business having a big impact is the Clearlake Growth Fund, a delivery only cannabis dispensary on Ogulin Canyon Road. Flora said the company has moved into the top 10 in the city’s sales tax producers, which excludes the development fee they’ve been paying the city.

Flora also provided an update on the former Pearce Field airport property at the request council members.

On April 11, the council had directed Flora to sign a letter of intent with Village Investment Partners, led by Barry Johnson and John Glikbarg, which is interested in purchasing and developing the 27-acre property, as Lake County News has reported. The letter of intent is in effect for six months.

Flora said he got an update from the firm in the hours before the council meeting.

He said the company is hesitant to publicly release the names of the companies they are targeting as occupants of the center.

Village Investment Partners is negotiating with the previous developer who had proposed a project on the property to get that firm’s work product to help them move forward, Flora said.

For the Pearce Landing project, as it’s now being called, Flora said Village Investment Partners is looking at home improvement stores and has made contact with regional players as a backup option if larger national chains don’t show interest.

“We’re halfway through the six-month process at this point,” said Flora.

He said the Village Investment Partners leadership has indicated that they are optimistic that in late August or early September there will be site visit with some of the retailers they are working to recruit.

In the meantime, Flora said the firm is recommending that the city begin the process to construct road improvements, including a connection between 18th Avenue to Old Highway 53, which gives credibility to the project.

Flora said the city has held off on putting in a design for those road improvements that could impact how the airport property is developed.

He added that staff recommended that the city hold off on working on that road project until there is more clarity on what the Pearce Landing project looks like.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – When Shakespeare at the Lake stages its fourth annual production beginning this weekend, audiences will be treated to a very modern take on one of the Bard’s classic plays.

The free performances run Saturday, July 27, and Sunday, July 28, in Lakeport at Library Park, and Friday, Aug. 2, Saturday, Aug. 3, and Sunday, Aug. 4 in Clearlake’s Austin Park.

All shows start at 6:30 p.m. and it is recommended that you bring a beach chair or blanket. Food, beverages, and wine will be for sale.

Director John Tomlinson has added a bit of a twist to this year’s Shakespeare at the Lake production.

For modern audiences, “The Taming of the Shrew” is considered one of Shakespeare's problem plays. It can be considered misogynistic and offensive. Many actors and directors try to find an underlying motivation for Petruchio’s actions to bring balance to the show, but Tomlinson is trying another approach. He has decided to gender swap the roles.

The male parts are all played by actresses and the female parts are all played by actors. Now, there’s no cross-dressing in this production, it’s simply a swapping of the lines in order to examine how the words come across when spoken to the opposite gender for whom they were meant and to see how the dynamics of a relationship might change based on choice of words.

Laura Barnes plays the traditionally male lead, Petruchio. A longtime member and former board member of the Lake County Theatre Co., she appeared in the first Shakespeare production and produced last year’s play.

“Gender norms and beliefs are definitely challenged in this play,” she said. “As a cast, we had several great conversations about what we think it means to be ‘male’ and ‘female’ and how to portray masculine qualities as a female and vice-versa.”

She added, “This has been a very fun role for me. Historically, I tend to be cast as ‘the girl next door’ character, so Petruchio, a strong, bold, masculine role, is a refreshing change and a welcome challenge. I have enjoyed playing this part – so different from all the others I've played – immensely. It is a hoot to be the one wielding all the power. And there is so much humor in this show, too. We laugh a lot.”

The female lead, Katherina, is played by Zack Jordan. This is his third show with LCTC and his second year with Shakespeare at the Lake. He found his preparation for the role to be no different for his role than that for other roles.

“I learn the lines and scenes, I see how my character responds to others, their relationships and then build off that,” said Jordan. “The most challenging is having to understand what Shakespeare is saying. I think anything in regard to Shakespeare is difficult to really capture what he is meaning with the lines he wrote, and then trying to adapt that so the audience can understand it.”

He added, “I’m having a wonderful time playing Petruchio’s wife and working closely with Laura and how our characters are. And this is my second time working with John so I knew what to expect and how to work with that. Overall it’s been a pretty exciting experience!”

Barnes also had praise for Tomlinson and Jordan, “This is the first time in several years I've been in one of John's plays. I enjoy his style of directing. He allows the actors to make a lot of choices and add their own flavor to the roles. He has the big picture in mind and leaves it to us to fill in the details. This is a fun cast with several experienced performers. Zack (Kate) has been easy to work with and I feel like we are figuring out our characters and their relationship well together.”

For more information visit www.LCTC.us .