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While you and I were busy dodging potholes in the Lakeport roads and praying that our homes and schools don’t burn down due to the city council’s abandonment of the city’s weed abatement program, the city council is now working on the latest chapter of its playbook entitled, “Insensitivity.”
The same city that carried out the early morning shotgun slaughter of the park geese five years ago, with no public input or apparent remorse for killing and wounding the geese that historically call Library Park home, has now set its sights on the downtown business district and its merchants.
During the height of Lakeport’s business and tourist season, the city council has launched a construction project that runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day, closing Main Street, creating dust, disrupting traffic, parking and foot traffic. The Record-Bee reports a 50-percent reduction in business due to the city’s poorly timed project.
This questionable project, which will narrow the street to the detriment of the traveling public, obviously should have been carried out, if at all, in spring or fall, not in the middle of the busiest season of the year.
When they rely on out-of-county consultants to tell them what to do, the city council has again lost track of their purpose to help Lakeport’s businesses and citizens.
While the city government goes about its four-day workweek with a generous paycheck, city businesses struggle to keep their doors open due to the city’s improvident and poorly timed spending that ignores impacts to its citizens.
The insensitivity of the city council and its staff to the businesses and lives of the citizens of Lakeport needs to end.
A city council election is coming up with nomination papers becoming available on July 18 and a deadline for filing on Aug. 12.
Rumor on the street is that city hall is quietly recruiting candidates with pliable minds that will continue to follow the city staff’s “Insensitivity Playbook” and frustrate the voters’ attempts for a more sensitive government.
We need three new candidates that will be responsive to the feelings and needs of the city’s businesses and citizens, curtail spending on unnecessary projects and cut excessive utility rates.
Bob Bridges lives in Lakeport, Calif.
A new USC study debunks the popular belief that electronic cigarettes are merely a substitute for cigarettes among teens. Instead, the study suggests that some teens who never would have smoked cigarettes are now vaping.
E-cigarettes, which entered the U.S. market in 2007, vaporize liquids that may or may not contain nicotine. In 2011, about 1.5 percent of high schoolers had vaped in the past 30 days, according to the National Youth Tobacco Survey. Four years later, that number skyrocketed to 16 percent.
A USC study of 5,490 high school juniors and seniors shows tobacco use among teens in Southern California is on the rise.
In 2014, about 14 percent of 12th-graders said they had either smoked or vaped in the previous 30 days. A decade earlier – before e-cigarettes were sold in the United States – 9 percent of surveyed teens in this age group reported that they had smoked, said Jessica Barrington-Trimis, lead author and a postdoctoral scholar research associate in the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.
“If teenagers who vape are using e-cigarettes instead of cigarettes, we would have expected to see the decline in smoking rates continue through 2014,” Barrington-Trimis said. “But what we've seen is a downward trend in cigarette use from 1995 to 2004 but no further decrease in cigarette smoking rates in 2014. The combined e-cigarette and cigarette use in 2014 far exceeded what we would have expected if teens were simply substituting cigarettes with e-cigarettes. The data suggest that at least some of the teens who are vaping would not have smoked cigarettes.”
The study, published on July 11 in the journal Pediatrics, followed five groups of high schoolers who graduated in 1995, 1998, 2001, 2004 and 2014. Researchers collected the history of tobacco use in an individually administered questionnaire.
Cigarette use is the largest preventable cause of death and disease in the United States. Cigarette smoking kills more than 480,000 Americans annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
“An important question in the rapidly evolving landscape of youth tobacco product use is whether e-cigarettes are replacing cigarettes,” said Rob McConnell, the study's senior author and professor of preventive medicine at Keck Medicine of USC. “However, use of e-cigarettes by youth who would not otherwise have smoked results in exposure to the hazards of inhaled vaporized liquids and flavorings in e-cigarettes and may result in exposure to nicotine that can damage the adolescent brain.”
USC is one of 14 U.S. research institutions that received National Institutes of Health funding to establish the Tobacco Centers of Regulatory Science.
What the numbers suggest
The National Youth Tobacco Survey has reported a long-term decline in teen smoking rates followed by a leveling off between 2014 and 2015.
The USC study found that the number of 12th-graders in Southern California who had smoked in the past 30 days dropped from 19 percent in 1995 to about 9 percent in 2004 and then leveled off, with the rate of smoking just under 8 percent in 2014.
But when cigarettes and e-cigarettes were combined, some 14 percent of high school seniors in 2014 said they had smoked or vaped in the last 30 days.
“Because e-cigarettes are perceived as less harmful and less dangerous than combustible cigarettes, another concern is that teens may be introduced to nicotine use via e-cigarettes,” Barrington-Trimis said. “In California, where smoking rates are among the lowest in the country, the increase in vaping, possibly followed by increases in smoking, could erode the progress that has been made over the last several decades in tobacco control.”
A perilous experiment
In fact, older teens who experiment with electronic cigarettes are six times more likely to try regular cigarettes within about a year when compared to those who have never vaped, reported Barrington-Trimis and her USC colleagues in a study published last month in Pediatrics.
Although some e-liquid providers say their products do not contain nicotine, this industry has not been regulated until just recently.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced plans to regulate all tobacco products – including e-cigarettes, cigars and hookah tobacco – in May.
Last month, California became the second state, behind Hawaii, to raise the age of tobacco purchase – including e-cigarettes – from 18 to 21.
“E-cigarettes may be recruiting a new group of kids to tobacco use,” Barrington-Trimis said. “E-cigarettes may be safer than regular cigarettes for adults who are transitioning from smoking to vaping, but for youth who have never used any other tobacco products, nicotine experimentation could become nicotine addiction.”
The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health National Cancer Institute and the Food and Drug Administration Center for Tobacco Products.
LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Lakeport Senior Activity Center is planning a fundraiser event featuring a prime rib dinner and melodrama on Saturday, July 23, and a matinée performance on Sunday, July 24.
Love, time travel and laughter fuel the melodrama, entitled “It’s About Time.” It was written by Carolyn Burke and is a fundraiser for the senior nutrition programs of the Lakeport and Kelseyville senior centers.
Burke has directed many plays through the years and is excited to help fund the nutrition programs she has come to enjoy.
Living close to the Kelseyville Senior Center, along with many other seniors, she is grateful to have a fresh and balanced meal every day.
The programs are severely underfunded and are only possible by the generous donations and support of the community.
Limited seating tickets are selling fast and are available at the Lakeport Senior Center and Meals on Wheels Thrift Store for $20 or $25 at the door for Saturday, when the performance begins at 5:30 p.m.
Saturday's performance will be accompanied by a choice prime rib three-course dinner.
Tickets for the Sunday performance, which begins at 2 p.m., are $10.
For more information call 707-263-4218.
The Lakeport Senior Activity Center is located at 527 Konocti Ave.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The Lake County Sons In Retirement, or SIR, is opening its September bowling tournament to all.
Not only does this open the tournament to SIRs wives and significant others but it will also allow those who are not familiar with the SIR organization to participate and get to know some of SIR members.
The group's motto is “Making friends for life.”
This is one of the many fun activities sponsored by SIR and, yes, there will be prizes.
The tournament is scheduled for Sept. 17 at the Yokayo Bowl in Ukiah.
The cost is $25 per person.
Check in time is 9 a.m., with the start of the tournament scheduled for 10 a.m.
The alley will be full with 64 participants with four bowlers per lane. However, if enough additional bowlers express an interest, they will entertain a second group if the bowling alley can accommodate them.
If you are interested or have any questions, please call today to reserve a spot. Call the SIR Bowling coordinator, Gary Schurdell, at his home number, 707-263-2911, or at his cell number, 707-367-4713.
CLEARLAKE, Calif. – Firefighters are cleaning up after containing a blaze behind the Redbud Library in Clearlake on Monday afternoon.
The fire was first reported shortly before 3:30 p.m. behind the library, located in the 14000 block of Burns Valley Road.
The Clearlake Police Department had asked people to stay away from the fire area while firefighters were at work, as structures were threatened.
Resources from Lake County Fire and Cal Fire responded, with Cal Fire air attack and airtankers part of the effort.
Radio reports indicated that people at the nearby Highlands Senior Center were ordered to shelter in place, while the Brookside senior living had begun evacuations due to safety protocol.
At around 4:30 p.m., Cal Fire's air attack reported that the fire was one to one and a half acres in size.
A short time later, a report from the scene indicated that forward progress on the fire had been stopped, with one to two hours of mop up anticipated.
The Clearlake Police Department confirmed just before 5 p.m. that the fire was contained.
Police said the area of Burns Valley Road to Bowers Road was closed for a short time while mop up was under way. By 5:15 p.m., the roads were reopened.
A cause has not yet been reported.
Additional details will be posted as they become available.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
LAKEPORT, Calif. – The first half of 2016 has registered strong real estate prices, while the number of sales is down, according to a new report.
The Lake County Association of Realtors reported that the median sales price for single family residential sales for the first six months of 2016 were up 7.5 percent over like sales in the last six months of 2015.
The median sales price for January through June of 2016 was $234,950 compared to a median of $218,500 for July through December of 2015.
The number of sales were down by 17.1 percent when comparing the two time periods.
In the last half of 2015 there were 480 sales versus 398 sales in the first half of 2016. On a year-over-year basis, the first half of 2016 compared to first half of 2015, the number of sales were virtually the same.
There was a 20.5-percent increase in the median sales price when comparing the first half of 2016 to the first half of 2015. The median sales price was $234,950 in 2016 versus a median of $195,000 in 2015.
“After significant gains in pricing and number of sales in the last half of 2015 the market appears to be stabilizing,” said 2016 LCAOR President Erin Woodward. “The last three months of 2015 were much stronger than anticipated and that momentum has carried into 2016 on a more gradual basis.”
The median days on market in the first half of 2016 was 74, down from 91 in the last half of 2015 and also down from 80 days in the first half of 2015.
Financing remained similar between the three periods. Each period reported 32 percent of the deals being financed with cash, between 33.5 and 38.3 percent of the transactions being financed with conventional loans and 10.4 to 15.1 percent using FHA loans.
Other forms of financing were VA loans (7.1 percent in 1H2015, 3.5 percent in 2H2015 and 6 percent in 1H2016) and USDA loans (4.1 percent in 1H2015, 5.8 percent in 2H2015 and 1.5 percent in 1H2016).
The percentage of distressed sales, homes sold for less than what was owed or homes that were foreclosed on, continued to decline from one period to the next.
In the first half of 2015 17.3 percent of the sales were distressed, 12.3 percent in the second half of 2015 and 11.6 percent in the first half of 2016.
LAKE COUNTY NUMBERS AT A GLANCE
January through June 2016
Median price: $234,950
Median days to sell: 74
Units sold: 398
July through December 2015
Median price: $218,500
Median days to sell: 91
Units sold: 480
January through June 2015
Median price: $195,000
Median days to sell: 80
Units sold: 394