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LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Local officials are continuing to offer assistance through this weekend to Northshore residents cleaning up after a damaging windstorm that occurred Nov. 21 and 22.
The county of Lake reported that opportunities for disposing of storm debris will be available in the Northshore area until Sunday, Dec. 8.
It is very important that the debris be disposed of according to these following guidelines, officials said.
Green waste from downed trees
Residents may drop off green waste at the parking lots of Upper Lake Park, Lucerne Harbor Park, and the parking lot across from Keeling Park.
There is no cost to drop off storm-related green waste at these sites. Park crews will chip the green waste for reuse in the local area parks.
The disposal of any other types of waste at these sites is considered illegal dumping, which may be punishable by a citation and fines. Please limit your disposal to storm-related green waste at these sites.
These sites are scheduled to accept green waste through Sunday, Dec. 8, after which time the normal green waste disposal options and costs will resume at the Lakeport Transfer Station, Eastlake Landfill and Quakenbush.
For Clearlake residents, the city of Clearlake has storm-related green waste drop off at its corporate yard at Airport Road off of Old Highway 53 until mid-January.
The city of Clearlake’s Web site states, “Only tree and brush debris will be accepted and only in the designated area. Dumping of garbage, tires, scrap metal, hazardous materials or other waste will result in the city having to discontinue the service.”
Other storm debris
A dumpster is provided at Northshore Fire Protection District's Nice station for other storm-related debris (not green waste).
Other storm debris may be taken to the Eastlake Landfill or the Lakeport Transfer Station where separate dumpsters are designated for storm debris.
There is no cost to residents for disposal of storm debris in these dumpsters.
This free program will continue through Sunday, Dec. 8.
Household garbage, appliances, tires or household hazardous waste
No household garbage, appliances, tires, or household hazardous waste will be accepted at any of the Northshore dropoff sites.
There are many no- or low-cost opportunities for disposal of these materials through ongoing county programs which include:
- A curbside bulky item pickup for residential curbside customers that allows up to two large items to be picked up per year. Call your hauler for information and to schedule a pickup date.
- Appliances can be delivered at no cost to either the Lakeport Transfer Station or to the recycling yard at the entrance to the landfill near Clearlake.
- Electronics can always be disposed at no cost at the landfill recycling yard or the Lakeport Transfer Station on Soda Bay Road.
- There is currently a tire amnesty program running that allows residents to deliver up to nine passenger or small truck tires at no cost. Residents should be prepared to show proof of residency. No commercial or large tires accepted.
- The county’s next Hazmobile event is scheduled Friday, Dec. 20, and Saturday, Dec. 21, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Kelseyville Lumber.
For more information, check the county’s Web site at www.recycling.co.lake.ca.us or call the county’s Solid Waste Hotline at 263-1980.
LOWER LAKE, Calif. – A vehicle stop conducted by a deputy Monday evening has resulted in one arrest and the seizure of approximately 2 pounds of methamphetamine, the largest amount of the drug confiscated by sheriff's officials in recent history.
Esteban Birelas, 33, of Dixon was arrested as a result of the stop, according to Lt. Steve Brooks of the Lake County Sheriff's Office.
At 5:48 p.m. Monday a patrol deputy was traveling southbound on Highway 29 in the Lower Lake area when he noticed a green pickup traveling in front of him which had damage to the rear license plate, making it unreadable, Brooks said.
The deputy also observed the vehicle cross over the double yellow lines. Brooks said the deputy conducted an enforcement stop in the area of Highway 29 and Murphy Springs Road. As the vehicle slowed down to pull over, the deputy also noticed that one of the brake lights was not working properly.
The driver of the vehicle was identified as Birelas, Brooks said. As the deputy was talking to Birelas, he could smell the odor of marijuana emitting from within the vehicle.
Brooks said Birelas was asked if he had any marijuana in his possession or in the vehicle and Birelas replied, “No, I don’t use drugs. I sometimes smoke cigarettes.” He told the deputy that he drove from Dixon to provide an estimate for some concrete work, but was unable to provide the address.
Birelas provided numerous inconsistent and inaccurate reasons for his presence in Lake County and where he was traveling from, Brooks said.
The deputy advised Birelas that he had a K9 unit responding to his location to conduct a sniff of his vehicle. Birelas said he understood and when asked, gave the deputy consent to search the vehicle, Brooks said.
Birelas asked the deputy what he was searching for and the deputy replied that he wanted to search the vehicle, due to the odor of marijuana. Birelas advised that the residence where the “side job” was located had marijuana growing and the marijuana odor must be coming from his clothes, according to Brooks.
The K9 unit arrived at the location and the deputy deployed his canine partner to conduct a sniff of the exterior of Birelas’ vehicle. Brooks said the canine produced a positive alert to the bed of the pickup, indicating there was the odor of a controlled substance present.
Brooks said the K9 deputy placed his partner in the bed of the pickup and she produced a positive alert to the front portion of the bed, near the cab of the vehicle. Deputies searched the area where the canine alerted and located two quart size zip lock plastic bags, which contained large pieces of a white crystalline substance. The substance was recognized to be methamphetamine.
Birelas was arrested for possessing a controlled substance for sale and the transportation of a controlled substance. He was transported to the Lake County Hill Road Correctional Facility and booked, Brooks said.
The methamphetamine had a total gross weight of approximately 2.035 pounds. This was the largest seizure of methamphetamine by the Lake County Sheriff’s Office in recent history, according to Brooks.
Brooks said the seized methamphetamine reportedly had a street value of $92,000 if it was sold by the gram.
The Sheriff’s Narcotics Task Force can be reached through its anonymous tip line at 707-263-3663.
CLEARLAKE, Calif. – An arrest warrant was issued on Friday for a Bay Area man accused of taking part in a Thanksgiving day home invasion robbery in Clearlake.
The warrant was issued for Reginald Jerome Patillo, 30, of Oakland, according to Sgt. Nick Bennett of the Clearlake Police Department.
Early on Thanksgiving day, Nov. 28, Clearlake Police responded to a report of a home invasion robbery at Lakeview Terrace Apartments, as Lake County News has reported.
Officers arrived to find a male and female who live in the apartment, as well as a male visitor from out of state, had been tied up and robbed by three suspects, two of whom the out-of-state visitor had met on the plane to San Francisco, as he was en route to Lake County, according to police.
The suspects – two males and a female – allegedly stole money, a shotgun, cell phones, a flat screen television, an Xbox and a large amount of processed marijuana, police said.
The investigation by Clearlake Police led to the Bay Area. Patillo was taken into custody and booked on a parole violation the day after the robbery thanks to a collaboration between Clearlake Police and the Berkeley Police Department.
Police said other suspects are being sought.
Based on the initial investigation, evidence and interviews, on Friday a Lake County Superior Court judge issued the arrest warrant for Patillo, with bail set at $1,170,000, Bennett said.
Bennett said the charges against Patillo include armed robbery, burglary, grand theft, terrorist threats, false imprisonment and felon with a firearm.
Anyone with information on this case is encouraged to contact Det. Travis Lenz at 707-994-8251, Extension 315.
While timeshares may help the timeshare owner to enjoy a certain amount of leisure each year, they are a headache for estate planning purposes.
Even though a deeded timeshare is an interest in real property, it is really more of a recurring luxury expense than it is an asset.
Let us consider some issues raised by timeshares: Ongoing maintenance and property tax expenses; hard to sell; sometimes undesired as an inheritance; and how they are transferred at death.
The owner, or the deceased owner’s estate, is liable for all timeshare maintenance fees and real property taxes. These continue after death and can pile up if unpaid; regardless of whether anyone uses the timeshare, your estate remains obligated to pay these expenses. A decedent’s estate will often wish to sell its timeshares.
Unfortunately, timeshares are very difficult to sell. Perhaps the best place to start is with the timeshare company itself.
Sometimes, for a large fee or commission, they can assist in selling an existing timeshare. Otherwise, other possible avenues are to lease the timeshare, cancel the timeshare, or sell the timeshare through a timeshare market.
Aside from leasing, the other options all involve losses. So essentially, the timeshare is more of a luxury expense than an asset.
Timeshares, if they are deeded (as opposed to leased) are real property interests. Accordingly, once the owner dies, just like owning real property, the laws of the state where the timeshare is located control.
If title is held in joint tenancy with right of survivorship, then the surviving joint tenants file an affidavit of death of joint tenant to remove the deceased joint tenant’s name from title.
Alternatively, if title is held in the name of a trust, then the trust controls who inherits the timeshare without probate.
However, if title is held in the deceased owner’s name alone, then a probate may be triggered. This depends on the size of the decedent’s estate, whether the property is in the decedent’s state of residence, and the laws of the state.
In California, if the combined value of the timeshare and any other probate assets belonging to the decedent (excluding real property located outside California) are equal or exceed $150,000, a probate is required.
If the deceased California resident owns a timeshare outside California, it is possible that ancillary probate may be required under the laws of the other state in order to transfer the deeded timeshare – either according to the deceased owner’s will or the laws of intestacy of the state where the deeded property is situated.
To avoid triggering a probate in any state deeded timeshares, just like any other interests in real property, are often transferred into the owner’s living trust, prior to the owner’s death. A living trust can hold all of a person’s real property assets located anywhere in the United States, including timeshares.
Next, the death beneficiaries oftentimes do not even wish to inherit timeshares because of their expenses, including travel to reach their locations.
If, however, there is a willing beneficiary who has the time, money and desire to use the timeshare, then that person could inherit directly from the deceased owner’s trust provided that the timeshare has been transferred to the trustee.
Timeshares are just another reason to hold assets inside one’s living trust and get one’s affairs in order. This in turn will provide a peace of mind more conducive to fully enjoying all those wonderful vacations.
Dennis A. Fordham, attorney (LL.M. tax studies), is a State Bar Certified Specialist in Estate Planning, Probate and Trust Law. His office is at 870 S. Main St., Lakeport, California. Fordham can be reached by e-mail at
Just over a year since launch, NASA's Van Allen Probes mission continues to unravel longstanding mysteries of Earth's high-energy radiation belts that encircle our planet and pose hazards to orbiting satellites and astronauts.
Derived from measurements taken by a University of New Hampshire-led instrument on board the twin spacecraft, the latest discovery reveals that the high-energy particles populating the radiation belts can be accelerated to nearly the speed of light in conjunction with ultra-low frequency electromagnetic waves operating on a planetary scale.
This mode of action, as detailed in a paper recently published in the journal Nature Communications, is analogous to that of a cyclical particle accelerator like the Large Hadron Collider.
However, in this case, the Earth's vast magnetic field, or magnetosphere, which contains the Van Allen belts, revs up drifting electrons to ever-higher speeds as they circle the planet from west to east.
The recent finding comes on the heels of a related discovery – also made by the UNH-led Energetic Particle, Composition, and Thermal Plasma (ECT) instrument suite – showing similar particle acceleration but on a microscopic rather than a planetary scale.
“The acceleration we first reported operates on the scale size of an electron's gyromotion—it is a really local process, maybe only a few hundred meters in size,” noted Harlan Spence, director of the UNH Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, principal scientist for the ECT, and coauthor on the Nature Communications paper. “Now we're seeing this large-scale, global motion involving ultra low-frequency waves pulsing through Earth's magnetosphere and operating across vast distances up to hundreds of thousands of kilometers.”
And, Spence added, in all likelihood both processes are occurring simultaneously to accelerate particles to relativistic speeds.
Understanding the complex dynamics of the particle acceleration will help scientists make better predictions of space weather conditions and, thus, offer better protections to orbiting satellites crucial to modern-day society.
Having twin spacecraft making simultaneous measurements in different regions of nearby space is a key part of the mission as it allows the scientists to look at data separated in both space and time.
“With the Van Allen Probes, I like to think there's no place for these particles to hide because each spacecraft is spinning and 'glimpses' the entire sky with its detector 'eyes', so we're essentially getting a 360-degree view in terms of direction, position, energy, and time,” Spence said.
Added Ian Mann of the University of Alberta and first author of the Nature Communications paper, “People have considered that this acceleration process might be present but we haven't been able to see it clearly until the Van Allen Probes.”
What this provides is the ability to decipher actual changes in the surrounding region rather than encountering something that looks different but may simply be the result of a single-point measurement with a limited perspective.
With the discoveries, scientists are starting to unravel the different pieces of the puzzle for any particular particle event that changes the structure of the radiation belts.
Ultimately they hope to be able to understand the dynamics well enough to actually predict how, collectively, all these different conditions working in tandem make the belts either move in or out, inflate, deflate, change energy, or lose or gain particles.
Says Spence, “What we hope for are those serendipitous occasions when nature has accentuated one process above all others, which allows the spacecraft to really see what's going on. We want to know how the whole system causes one phenomenon or process to dominate or have a lesser influence compared to another one, and we're gaining a much deeper understanding of that.”
State Board of Equalization member George Runner has announced that the California Franchise Tax Board will follow the lead of the Internal Revenue Service and not impose a tax penalty on Californians who have sold their home via a short sale.
In a written response sent to Runner this week, Franchise Tax Board Chief Counsel Jozel Brunett stated, “Since California conforms to the relevant portions of the federal tax law governing the forgiveness of nonrecourse and recourse indebtedness, California would follow the federal treatment for the CCP section 580e transactions.”
“This is welcome news for Californians who have had to short sell their homes this year,” said Runner. “We learned last month they wouldn’t face a federal tax penalty. We now know they won’t face a state tax hit either.”
In a September letter to the Franchise Tax Board’s chief counsel, Runner requested a legal opinion as to the potential tax consequences for a California resident who completes a short sale under existing California law.
Initially, Franchise Tax Board staff indicated they would need guidance from the IRS before providing an answer.
That guidance arrived last month in an IRS letter to Senator Barbara Boxer regarding the expiration of the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act.
The IRS opined that debt forgiveness involving nonrecourse loans held by California homeowners will not be viewed as taxable income.
“We are pleased with the recent clarifications issued by the IRS and the California Franchise Tax Board, which protect distressed homeowners from debt relief income tax associated with a short sale in California,” said California Association of Realtors President Kevin Brown. “Distressed California homeowners can now avoid foreclosure or bankruptcy and can opt for a short sale instead, without incurring federal and state tax liability, even after the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007 expires at the end of this year.”
A legislative effort to extend tax protection for California short sales derailed this year. However, the Franchise Tax Board’s announcement that it will conform with the IRS ensures continued protection for taxpayers without the need for legislation.
Elected in November 2010, George Runner represents more than nine million Californians as a member of the State Board of Equalization. For more information, visit www.boe.ca.gov/Runner .