LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Lakeport City Council on Tuesday will hold a special meeting with the city planning commission to discuss marijuana rules before holding its regular meeting.
The council and commission will meet beginning at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 3, in the council at Lakeport City Hall, 225 Park St.
The council members and commissioners will hold a joint workshop to review possible amendments to the Lakeport Zoning Ordinance concerning the development of procedures for the allowance of commercial cannabis uses within the city.
The council’s regular meeting will begin at 6 p.m.
During the meeting, the council will present a proclamation designating the month of October 2017 Domestic Violence Awareness Month to representatives of the Lake Family Resource Center.
Police Chief Brad Rasmussen also will introduce new Lakeport Police Officer Casey DeBolt.
Under council business, Public Works Director Doug Grider will take to the council a proposed resolution approving the city’s SB 1 – or Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017 – project list for fiscal year 2017-18, and amending the city budget to account for anticipated Road Maintenance and Rehabilitation Account funds in the amount of $26,923.
Items on the consent agenda – items considered noncontroversial and usually accepted as a slate on one vote – are ordinances; minutes of the regular council meeting on Sept. 19; the Sept. 25 warrant register; adoption of the resolution accepting construction of the Giselman Street Overlay Project by Team Ghilotti Inc. and authorize the filing of the notice of Completion; adoption of a resolution reorganizing the makeup of the Lakeport Economic Advisory Committee; authorization for staff to close portions of N. High Street and Lakeshore Blvd at Sayre Street, conduct traffic controls at other intersections along the route between the 1800 block of N. High St., and the LUSD campuses on Lange Street on Oct. 4, 2017.
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. – A festival filled with German culture, food and wiener dogs will take place in downtown Lakeport this weekend.
Oktoberfest 2017 will take place on three blocks of Main Street on Saturday, Oct. 7.
Oktoberfest is featuring German music from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Beer Garden and on Main Street.
The Clear Lake Clikkers will perform at 11:15 a.m. and 12:15 p.m. featuring dances to German music.
The street dance beginning at 4 p.m. will have the talents of Jimi Z’s band until 7 p.m.
Jimi Z and Golden Gate Meat Co. are again sponsoring a $1,000 cash giveaway with the winners being drawn at 6:30 p.m. at the bandstand on Main Street. Tickets are $5 each or four tickets for $20.
A variety of arts, crafts and food vendors will be staged along Main Street all day. Unique offerings for early holiday gift selections will be found and German food choices as well.
ScramBallz, which was featured at the Lake County Fair, will be on hand with fun for kids and adults.
Also during the day, Oktoberfest offers such fun activities as the doggy costume contest at 1 p.m., open to all breeds with a first place cash price.
A highlight is the World Famous Dachshund Derby Race, open only to dachshunds, sponsored by Rainbow Ag in Lakeport.
A “beer pong” competition sponsored by the Clearlake Club will be held in the intersection of Second and Main streets. Also appearing during the day will be the Amazing Divas.
Oktoberfest costume contests for adults and children will be held at the stage on Main Street between Second and Third streets at 3 p.m. Cash prizes will be awarded to best adult couple, best adult and best child (ages 0 to 12) costumes.
The Oktoberfest official emcee is Bert Hutt a member of the Lake County Chamber Board of Directors is an accomplished thespian/musician who will entertain and inform throughout the day.
Of course an Oktoberfest worth its weight in gold can’t happen without lots of beer, and there will be plenty available.
Tasting tickets will be sold for a large variety of microbrews during the afternoon on Third Street, where domestic beers and wonderful Lake County wines will also be offered for sale. O’Meara Bros. Brewing Co. and Eagle Distributing are sponsors of the beer garden.
ANDERSON SPRINGS, Calif. – Community members and officials from all levels of government gathered in Anderson Springs on Saturday morning to celebrate another significant step forward in the rebuilding of south Lake County after the Valley fire.
State Sen. Mike McGuire hosted the groundbreaking event for the new Anderson Springs wastewater system and the beginning of the process to rebuild dozens of new homes in a ceremony at the Anderson Springs Recreation Center.
Numerous dignitaries from local, state and federal agencies were on hand, including Congressman Mike Thompson, Assemblywoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, Jodi Traversaro of the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services, Cal Fire Northern Region Chief Scott Upton, Lake County Superintendent of Schools Brock Falkenberg, Sheriff Brian Martin, Supervisor Rob Brown, Supervisor Moke Simon, Special Districts Administrator Jan Coppinger, as well as State Water Board staff, Anderson Springs’ homeowners group, and representatives of numerous other groups and agencies that have served in the response and recovery.
The heartfelt event marked another step in Lake County’s ongoing recovery from the Valley fire, which began on the afternoon of Saturday, Sept. 12, 2015.
The third-most damaging fire in California history, the Valley fire that burned more than 76,000 acres and close to 1,300 homes, and resulted in four confirmed fatalities.
Southern Lake County continues to show the ravages of the fire. The hills above the recreation center are gray and dotted with the remains of thousands of still-standing blackened trees, and the rebuilding process across the fire area has been plagued by delays and struggles for survivors.
However, hope and resilience were the themes of the day.
“This morning is truly a milestone event,” said McGuire.
Thanks to the efforts of McGuire and cooperation between the county of Lake, the state of California and the federal government, construction of the $10.5 million new wastewater system is set to begin soon. The Board of Supervisors is expected to award the bid for the project at its Oct. 17 meeting.
The wastewater system will allow 119 homes to be rebuilt that otherwise couldn’t be and will also allow full buildout of the community’s 350 lots, McGuire said.
Another $7.2 million in low- or no-interest CalHome loans will allow dozens of homeowners to rebuild, plus there is another $4.5 million from Housing and Community Development for infrastructure, according to McGuire.
Aguiar-Curry said during the event that she is seeking another $5 million in relief funds for the county.
Anderson Springs – with the exception of a fraction of its homes – was devastated by the Valley fire.
At one point, the fire was burning so fast and hot that it was consuming 48 acres a minute, McGuire said.
“If hell existed on Earth, it was the Valley fire,” he said.
It proved to be one of Lake County’s toughest moments, but McGuire and the many others present on Saturday would agree that the disaster also brought people together and showed the county at its resilient best – neighbors helping each other, strangers reaching out to lend a hand – and creating as significant a story as the fire itself.
The county’s unshakable spirit, said McGuire, is what led to the achievement in efforts to rebuild Anderson Springs, a key achievement in the overall recovery.
He also was quick to acknowledge that the process has been neither easy nor quick, and that there is a lot of work still to be done.
Congressman Mike Thompson said the Valley fire, for all of its devastation, didn’t put a nick in Lake County’s spirit.
He recalled returning from the East Coast to respond to Lake County during the fire. Thompson said he had been at ground zero after Sept. 11, 2001, he’s seen the aftermath of earthquakes and served in Vietnam.
Yet Thompson said there was nothing that could have prepared him for what he saw as he rolled into Middletown, an area he has represented for decades. He found much of it unrecognizable in the immediate wake of the fire. Homes were burned to ash, vehicles were melted, dreams destroyed.
He also called the Anderson Springs wastewater project “a game changer.”
There was abundant praise during the event for local leaders, including Sheriff Brian Martin, who McGuire has dubbed the state’s hardest working sheriff, as well as county supervisors Rob Brown and Moke Simon, all of them having had a presence during the fire.
In the case of Simon, at that point he wasn’t yet a county official, but as tribal chair of the Middletown Rancheria he opened the tribe’s facilities at Twin Pine Casino to help shelter evacuees.
Traversaro, who along with McGuire and Martin took a harrowing ride through the Valley fire in hours after it began, said she’s always inspired by Lake County, where she’s seen not just the community’s resilience and grace but the heroism and leadership of local officials.
Coppinger, who has taken over as the head of Lake County Special District since the fire, said, “I still choke up when I think of that day and this fire,” recounting watching the fire’s smoke plume build from her home at the base of Cobb Mountain.
She said the Anderson Springs wastewater project has been both the most challenging and the most rewarding project of her career.
“This project is actually moving at lightning speed,” she said, noting the comparative speed of government processes.
During the ceremony Aguiar-Curry, McGuire and Thompson also caught Supervisor Brown off guard by presenting him with a plaque for his work in both the Valley and Clayton fires, filling roles that spanned not just his normal job as supervisor but also including everything from directing traffic for evacuees, structure protection, running shelters, coordinating response and, more recently, doing building inspections to help fire survivors get their homes completed.
The ceremony ended with dignitaries and Anderson Springs community members ceremonially tossing shovelfuls of dirt in front of the recreation center to symbolize the new building to come.
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.
Free copies of the Big Read’s “Station Eleven” by Emily St. John Mandel are available at Lake County Library branches and at Big Read events in October while supplies last. See www.lakecountybigread.com to sign up and to learn more about the Big Read in Lake County. Courtesy photo.
LAKEPORT, Calif. – In “Station Eleven,” the Big Read novel by Emily St. John Mandel, physical survival looms large after the Georgia Flu kills billions of people across the world.
Without modern commerce, medical treatment, and transportation, people are on their own for food, medicine and so many other things we take for granted.
All during October the NEA Big Read in Lake County will feature “Station Eleven” by Emily St. John Mandel.
The NEA Big Read is a communitywide reading program where community members are all encouraged to read and discuss the same book.
The public is invited to join the Lake County Library’s Big Read to discuss Mandel’s post-apocalyptic novel that examines life and death, faith and fate, music and drama, arts and technology, and power and control.
The Big Read will highlight the physical side of survival in a series of events covering medical questions, survival skills, and food.
Dr. Karen Tait of the Lake County Public Health Department and Tammy Carter of Sutter Lakeside Hospital tackle medical issues.
On Wednesday, Oct. 11, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at Lakeport Library learn how your local Public Health department detects and takes action to prevent the spread of disease and what everyone can do to help.
Dr. Tait will present this free program. “Surviving the Apocalypse: Fact and Fiction” will be the topic on Saturday, Oct. 28, at 2 p.m. at Lakeport Library when Tammy Carter of Sutter Lakeside Hospital’s Infectious Disease Division helps sort out fact from fiction while discussing the pandemic that forever alters civilization in “Station Eleven.”
In a world without commercially available food, people will need to rely more on wild food than we do.
The culinary program of the Lake County Campus of Woodland College will prepare and sell “survival-camp food,” a delicious venison stew at noon on Tuesday, Oct. 17.
Come for lunch and a presentation featuring “Station Eleven.” A Shakespeare skit and an activity that focuses on “more than survival” will follow lunch.
The campus is located at 15880 Dam Rd. Extension in Clearlake. For information call Pamela Bordisso at 707-995-7914.
To wash down their wild food and avoid diseases found in impure water, people could well turn to brewing their own beer.
Two local breweries, O’Meara Brothers Brewing Co. at 901 Bevins St. in Lakeport and Kelsey Creek Brewing Co. at 3945 Main St. in Kelseyville have created “Station Eleven” brews in honor of the Lake County Big Read.
No longer able to pop into the local store and buy what they need or call the neighborhood repairperson to fix broken things, people would have to relearn old skills to survive.
On Saturday, Oct. 7, will be the Forgotten Skills Fair at the Courthouse Museum from 1 to 5 p.m. 255 N. Main St. in Lakeport.
Local artisans will demonstrate old skills such as spinning yarn, washing clothes on a washboard, butter churning, pottery making, and flint knapping, just like the survivors in “Station Eleven.” This event is free.
Free copies of the book will be available at all four Lake County Library branches and at Big Read events in October while supplies last.
Free versions of “Station Eleven” are available for download on the library’s online catalog as well as print and audio copies.
Learn more about the book selection and planned events, and sign up for the Big Read email updates on the website www.lakecountybigread.com.
Jan Cook is a technician with the Lake County Library.
The replica saber-toothed cat, California's state fossil, at the Courthouse Museum in Lakeport, Calif. Photo by Kathleen Scavone. LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – When we hear of a bear or mountain lion sighting here in Lake County, we get excited – but place yourself firmly in your “time machine” and picture a creature such as the saber-toothed cat of yesteryear.
OK, you'd need to travel back farther than yesteryear – more like 15,000 years, and since the saber-toothed cat, Smilodon fatalis (californicus) was around for about 42 million years, that would have placed the saber-toothed cat in the Eocene epoch to the Pleistocene epoch.
According to E. Breck Parkman, RPA, senior state archaeologist, California State Parks, Bay Area and Sonoma-Mendocino Coast Districts who is an award-winning archaeologist with over 30 years of experience, the area in California's North Bay in the late Pleistocene era was "grander than anything imaginable."
He compares the land then “to the famous Serengeti Plains of East Africa as described in early historic times.”
Parkman hypothesized that a great grassy valley lay where the bay is now located, and that there was an array of grazing wildlife, including mammoth, mastodon, camel, horse, bison and other herbivores.
There were also ferocious predators like saber-tooth cat, short-faced bear, lions and more. The flying exotics, such as huge vultures and condors, cast their shadows over the prairie then, as well.
An information board in the Courthouse Museum where the replica skull of the saber-toothed cat is found, states, "The extinction of the saber-toothed cats may have been related to the decrease of the larger animals on which they preyed. There is some evidence that the mastodon was the favorite meal of some later-day species of the saber-toothed cats; both lasted in North America only until the end of the Pleistocene. Saber-toothed cats are the most famous California Ice Age fossil. Smilodon californicus was one of the last surviving members of the formidable felines called saber-toothed cats."
It is believed that the diet of saber-toothed cats also included other enormous herbivores of the era such as rhinos and elephants, when they would pounce upon their prey's throat or abdomen. Their specially adapted long teeth would then pierce blood vessels to hasten the kill- perfect for stabbing and slicing.
According to California's Department of Conservation, the saber-toothed cat fossil became designated as the state fossil in January of 1974. Information found on their www.CA.gov Web site states, "This species was one of the last surviving members of a long ancestry of formidable felines called saber-toothed cats."
Saber-toothed cats were thought to be about the size of today's African lion, but twice as heavy. Sabertooths had relatively light hind limbs, with muscular, well-built and exceedingly powerful front limbs.
Kathleen Scavone, M.A., is a retired educator, potter, writer and author of “Anderson Marsh State Historic Park: A Walking History, Prehistory, Flora, and Fauna Tour of a California State Park” and “Native Americans of Lake County.” She also formerly wrote for NASA and JPL as one of their “Solar System Ambassadors.” She was selected “Lake County Teacher of the Year, 1998-99” by the Lake County Office of Education, and chosen as one of 10 state finalists the same year by the California Department of Education.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County Animal Care and Control continues to offer a big group of working dogs to new homes this week.
This week’s available dogs include mixes of cattle dog, Chihuahua, Doberman Pinscher, German Shepherd, Labrador Retriever, pit bull and terrier.
Dogs that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are either neutered or spayed, microchipped and, if old enough, given a rabies shot and county license before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.
If you're looking for a new companion, visit the shelter. There are many great pets hoping you'll choose them.
The following dogs at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption (additional dogs on the animal control Web site not listed are still “on hold”).
This female terrier mix is in kennel No. 3, ID No. 8515. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. Terrier mix
This female terrier mix has a short white coat.
She already has been altered.
Shelter staff said she is deaf.
She is being offered for a low adoption fee.
Find her in kennel No. 3, ID No. 8515.
This male Chihuahua is in kennel No. 5, ID No. 8558. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. Male Chihuahua
This male Chihuahua has a short tricolor coat.
He already has been neutered.
He’s in kennel No. 5, ID No. 8558.
This male terrier is in kennel No. 6, ID No. 8573. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. Male terrier
This male terrier has a short brown coat.
He’s in kennel No. 6, ID No. 8573.
This male German Shepherd is in kennel No. 19, ID No. 8551. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. German Shepherd
This male German Shepherd has a long black and tan coat.
He’s in kennel No. 19, ID No. 8551.
This male Doberman Pinscher-cattle dog mix is in kennel No. 26, ID No. 8478. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. Doberman Pinscher-cattle dog
This male Doberman Pinscher-cattle dog mix has a short blue, black, tan and white coat.
He’s in kennel No. 26, ID No. 8478.
This female adult cattle dog is in kennel No. 27, ID No. 8480. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. Female cattle dog
This female adult cattle dog has a short red coat.
She’s in kennel No. 27, ID No. 8480.
This female cattle dog is in kennel No. 28, ID No. 8479. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. Female cattle dog
This female cattle dog has a short black and white coat.
She’s in kennel No. 28, ID No. 8479.
This female cattle dog is in kennel No. 29, ID No. 8464. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. Female cattle dog
This female cattle dog has a short brown coat.
She’s in kennel No. 29, ID No. 8464.
This male cattle dog-hound mix is in kennel No. 31, ID No. 8462. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. Cattle dog-hound mix
This male cattle dog-hound mix has a short gray coat.
He’s in kennel No. 31, ID No. 8462.
This female cattle dog is in kennel No. 32, ID No. 8476. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. Female cattle dog
This female cattle dog has a short red coat.
She’s in kennel No. 32, ID No. 8476.
This female Labrador Retriever in kennel No. 33, ID No. 8477. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. Female Labrador Retriever
This female Labrador Retriever has a short black coat.
She’s in kennel No. 33, ID No. 8477.
Lake County Animal Care and Control is located at 4949 Helbush in Lakeport, next to the Hill Road Correctional Facility.
Office hours are Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday. The shelter is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
For more information call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278.
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.
How to resolve AdBlock issue? 
