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Capt. James Bauman reported that sheriff’s deputies responded to a residence on Park Point Court in Hidden Valley Lake on Oct. 28 to investigate a reported home invasion and armed robbery.
Upon arrival the victims, Kevin Schosek and Wendy Ferrell, told deputies that they were eating dinner in their living room at about 7:30 p.m. when they heard their back door slam shut, Bauman said. When they turned to see who had entered the house, a man wearing all black with a black ski mask was standing in their living room pointing a semi-automatic pistol at them.
According to Bauman, the suspect told the two not to get up and demanded their money. Schosek threw his wallet to the suspect upon demand and then the suspect took Ferrell’s purse from a kitchen counter. The suspect told the two to “wait 60 seconds before they called 911 or he would kill them” and then retreated back through same door he had entered.
Once the suspect left the house, Schosek went to a balcony to see which way the suspect would flee while Ferrell called 911, Bauman said. Schosek did not see the suspect flee the area once he ran out of the house.
The two victims were unharmed, Bauman added.
Sheriff’s deputies conducted a search for the suspect with the assistance the California Highway Patrol and Hidden Valley Security but he could not be located, Bauman said.
The suspect is believed to be a white male as part of his skin could be seen through the cuts in the ski mask, according to Bauman. The only other description the victims could provide was that he was about 5 feet 9 inches tall and had a thin build.
Anyone with information relating to the home invasion and robbery is requested to call the Lake County Sheriff’s Department Investigations Branch at 262-4200.
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COBB – Operators of the Bottle Rock Power Plant are due to sit down with area residents on Thursday evening and discuss concerns about the plant and its impact on the community.
The meeting will take place beginning at 6 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 30, at the Little Red Schoolhouse on Cobb, 15780 Bottle Rock Road.
Supervisor Rob Brown said he organized a meeting to bring together the community and the power plant's representatives to discuss the plant and make an attempt to work out concerns and differences. Brown has received numerous complaints about the plant, prompting the meeting.
The plant, owned by US Renewables Group of Santa Monica and Carlyle/Riverstone Renewable Energy Infrastructure Fund I, reopened at the end of March 2007, as Lake County News has reported.
The plant originally had been built by the state Department of Water Resources to provide power for its operations.
The 55-megawatt plant, which can power as many as 55,000 homes, was closed in September of 1990 due to lack of steam. When it was reopened in 2007, plant officials said they had successfully reopened seven of the plant's original 10 steam-producing wells, and drilled two new ones.
Since the plant's reopening, neighbors in the area say they've experienced a number of impacts from the plant – including noise levels and handling of what they believe are hazardous materials – that is harming their quality of life and causing environmental concerns.
Larry Bandt, vice president of engineering for Oski Energy, which manages Bottle Rock Power's plant operations, said company representatives will be at the Thursday meeting to hear what the neighbors have to say and offer their own comments.
Bandt said the company has been talking about neighbors regarding their complaints, and have made and effort to work with them since the plant reopened last year.
One of the neighbors complaining about the plant is David Coleman. Coleman, whose great-grandfather settled the area and homesteaded the land where plant is located on Bottle Rock Road, splits his time between Cobb and the Bay Area.
He and other neighbors are particularly concerned about the plant's drill sumps – which collect water and chemicals – and how they're cleaned. Coleman said the operators have been taking the materials from the sumps and letting them dry in a nearby meadow. When he and a neighbor went to look at the situation they were told they were trespassing and informed they needed to make an appointment.
Coleman's concerns are echoed by another neighbor, Hamilton Hess, who owns property about a quarter-mile from the plant. “The most serious problem is the drilling pad and especially the sumps.”
He said the sumps are potentially a “huge cesspool of materials, many of which are toxic.”
While the plant's operators have claimed the sump materials have been tested and are benign, Hess said the neighbors remain skeptical, and have asked the county to require testing by authorized labs and make the information public.
They're also requesting the plant move to sumpless drilling, which uses tanks instead of ponds. “To move to sumpless drilling is state of the art,” Hess said.
Coleman also alleges the plant is responsible for stream alterations and violations of their use permit, and suggested the plant was approved under an outdated environmental document.
Hess added that there has been a great deal of grading and equipment work, which he said has been unpermitted.
However, he added, “We're not faulting them in terms of motivation,” saying that a new operations team has come on board since last November.
Coleman has taken his and fellow neighbors' concerns to the California Energy Commission, Department of Fish and Game, the Office of Emergency Services and the county's Community Development Department, along with approaching the Sierra Club Lake Group.
“It's just a huge, huge mess,” he said.
Coleman claims the plant has used dredged materials for top soil, and garbage and pallets are stacked everywhere.
Recently, however, he said the county and Fish and Game have the plant working on erosion control, and the plant is moving equipment and junk out of the area.
He said the biggest complaint he and his neighbors have concern the compromised sumps, and what is being done with the mud and materials pulled from them.
Coleman questions what might be in those materials. “I think everybody is nervous about that.”
Sound also is an issue. Coleman said at first the plant's operators encouraged the neighbors to call if they had problems. They did call, he said, but they only were only temporarily appeased and nothing was actually done.
“We found out a lot of things were slipping through the cracks,” he said.
He said at least 10 families in the area have expressed problems with the plant, while many more have just resigned themselves to accepting the problems.
Coleman said he's irritated by the difficulties he's had getting state and local agencies to talk to each other regarding the plant, or even to get plant personnel and Fish and Game communicating. “Why am I doing someone else's job without pay?”
He said he's like to see the power plant stop using the sumps. “I've seen the sumps overflowing on numerous occasions.”
Coleman said he is hopeful since the parent company recently sent out an executive to take a look at operations more closely.
“I'm just very dubious about who's going to fix it and how it's going to get done,” he said.
Hess said he believes things are getting better, and he is looking forward to the meeting, which he sees as an opportunity for the neighbors to get their issues resolved.
When asked about the issues the neighbors have with the plant, Brandt said he would wait until the Thursday meeting to respond to them.
For a full account of the plant's reopening, see Lake County News' February 2007 story,
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West (UHW) members will hold the informational picket from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the hospital on Wednesday at the hospital's main campus on Hill Road East.
Also on Wednesday, UHW plans strikes at 10 hospitals around the state, including five belonging to Sutter Health, as Lake County News has reported. The union reported that UHW workers have been in negotiations with Sutter Health for months, and have been without a contract since Sept. 30.
A Sutter Health information sheet on the UHW actions said the strike has “nothing to do with employees who work within some Sutter Health hospitals and everything to do with increasing power, membership and money for UHW.”
Sutter Health states it pays higher-than-average wages to its employees, with medical records clerks receiving an average of $44,336, far above the $28,558 paid by other Northern California hospitals.
Sutter Lakeside Hospital spokesman Mitch Proaps said the union presented its proposals to the hospital in the middle of September, and Sutter Lakeside is now in the midst of answering them.
“I can't really respond to what may or may not be in those proposals,” he said. “I have to respect the negotiations process. We do our negotiations at the table, not through the media.”
Proaps said the hospital and UHW are scheduled to meet to discuss the contract proposals in November.
He said he's not aware of the specific issues the union is using as the reason for the Wednesday event. “They're not at liberty to tell us their motives for the picket.”
Proaps added, however, that it's the hospital's assumption that the picket at Sutter Lakeside is in support of labor actions outside of the area due to where they're at in the negotiations process locally.
Stefanie Edwards, a certified nursing assistant (CNA) and a nursing student who also is a UHW member, said she's worked at the hospital for a little over a year. Currently, Edwards is in the hospital's outpatient unit, where she works on a per-diem basis a few days a week.
The main concern for her is a proposal to have a patient to CNA ratio of 16 to 1. “Even in nursing homes they have more staff per patient.”
Edwards said registered nurses, who normally are in charge of more advanced medical care and passing medications, also are doing more duties like bathing normally assigned to CNAs, and that raises concerns over the quality of patient care.
She added that she's seen staff get fewer work hours since the hospital's change to critical access designation became effective earlier this year. “We've seen them keep only one CNA for the whole med-surge wing.”
Edwards said the hospital had said it would not cut hours or lay off staff due to the designation change, but she and others have experienced drastic hour cuts.
She said the ratio change appeared to have occurred about two or three weeks ago, after the September exit of the hospital's former chief executive officer, Kelly Mather.
Proaps said the hospital's CNA contract was settled some time ago, and the state mandates particular ratios for patient to nurses and caregivers. “We run a hospital here,” he said. “Our main priority is patient care.”
He added that staff hours depend on census numbers, not the critical access designation. “Census has always driven staffing, regardless of what your capacity is.”
The critical access designation limits a hospital's beds to 25. As of Sunday, the hospital's census was 22, with a month-to-date average of 19 and a year-to-date average of 20 patients, said Proaps.
Patients are either being sent to other facilities in Santa Rosa and Ukiah, or being sent home early because of fewer beds, said Edwards. She added that she hasn't seen a larger ratio of people being sent to the skilled facilities, like Evergreen or Lakeport Skilled.
Lakeport Skilled Nursing Administrator Debra Sims said her facility hasn't seen more patients due to the critical access designation. “I can't say it has remarkably increased.”
The facility, which Sims said depends on hospital for patients, has worked “very smoothly” with Sutter Lakeside since the hospital's access change.
The formal contract between the hospital and care facility was never finalized – which Sims said was on Lakeport Skilled's side, with the agreement still in the hands of their legal department. However, they are working with the hospital as if it had been finalized, and they talk with the hospital daily.
Proaps confirmed that a formal, signed bed agreement hasn't been reached with Lakeport Skilled Nursing yet. He said the hospital is working closely with both Lakeport Skilled and Evergreen Lakeport, and the hospital has been impressed by how receptive the facilities have been to Sutter Lakeside's needs.
He said the hospital receives a daily report on bed availability which, between the two facilities, hasn't proved to be an issue. That's one of the areas in which the process has run much more smoothly than anticipated since the critical access conversion.
Proaps said Sutter Lakeside has an “impressively low” vacancy turnover rate, far below Sutter Health's and the state's average.
He also emphasized that the hospital has not reduced its services due to the critical access change, with emergency, intensive care and other important services still very much present.
Proaps said the hospital doesn't plan to take any action regarding the picket. “That's their right and we honor it.”
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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Age: 70
Family: Married 51 years to Judie, mother of five children – three girls, two boys – and five grandsons and one great-granddaughter.
Experience in government and community service: 1993 to 1994, started to volunteer for many different entities for and with the city: Chamber of Commerce, CRC, community cleanup projects, auto abatement, City Code Enforcement Department for nine years, Countywide Parks Advisory Board for six years, president of Vector Control Board for nine-plus years. Appointed to the Clearlake Planning Commission for a total of more than nine years, including four as chairman. Appointed to the City Council in 2006. In more than two years on the council, I have been councilmember, vice mayor and currently am mayor.
Endorsements: Supervisors Ed Robey and Jeff Smith; Mark Cooper, DDS, and Janice Cooper; Clearlake Planning Commission, Chairman Carl Webb, Vice Chair Al Bernal, and Commissioners Bill Perkins, Gina Fortino Dickson and Fred Gaul; Carol Webb; Pamela Bernal; Kathy Perkins; Ruth Gaul; Bob Keil; Terry Stewart; Doug and Arlene Cooper; Anna and Frank McAtee; Andy Peterson; Konocti Unified School District Board of Trustees member Anita Gordon; Lower Lake High School Counselor Amy Osborn; Harriet Rogers; endorsed by many more citizens and community leaders.
1. Explain what you believe a city council member's responsibilities are. How would you fulfill these? What qualifications do you possess that make you a good candidate for office?
Responsibilities: Setting policy through legislation, reviewing and approving the annual budget, selecting a chief administrator, an attorney and a chief of police. Setting the mission and goals for the organization. Explaining and selling programs.
In order to get anything accomplished an elected official must be a good listener, learn to work together in defining and agreeing on mutual goals for the organization. One of the main things not to do is micromanage staff.
I am a good listener and am able to work cooperatively with enough other members of the group to be able to get things accomplished.
2. Explain how your management style would be applied to your position as council member. Are you hands-on or do you set policy and delegate?
My management style as applied to the role of an elected official is directly accountable to constituents. I feel I must constantly balance individual and group demands with the needs of the entire community.
I would prefer to set policy and delegate by adopting legislation making policy. Adjudicating issues and help to establish budgets.
3. Large developments are proposed for Clearlake and surrounding areas, particularly the Provinsalia development near Cache Creek, the Serenity Cove project on the lakeshore and increased commercial development along Highway 53. What is your opinion on these various projects? Are they good for Clearlake? Why or why not? Are there any other developments that you think are either good or bad for the city?
My general answer to this question is YES. Provinsalia development and the Serenity Cove project (this project is under way) have the potential of bringing to our community additional tourists and visitors. This will be economically viable for our city.
Retail center for the county along Highway 53: This retail hub would provide jobs for our citizens and revenues for our city. This project has the potential of bringing in a large sales tax base, which is sorely needed. The city needs to have this economic stability in order to provide for the public safety and other public needs for our city.
I am not award of any other developments on the drawing board, at this time.
4. For several years the Clearlake Police Department's budget has been augmented by the Measure P sales tax approved by voters. Do you support continuing to augment the police department budget? Are there different approaches that you, as a council member, would take when addressing the police department?
I absolutely support continuing with Measures P as part of the police department budget. Additional funding would be nice (additional sales taxes from retail developments) would help, add the necessary officers and at least two K-9 units to our force. The approach I would take as a council member with the police department is working closer with our chief and his reorganized department, which is doing a fine job in community policing.
5. The city's redevelopment plan has two years remaining in its implementation. Updating the plan is being proposed to extend it for another 10 years. Do you support extending redevelopment in Clearlake? Why or why not?
Yes I support the update of the redevelopment plan and extending it another 10 years. This will be good for the city and will add a number of millions of dollars in future years. In conjunction with this update we need to amend and update our general plan which will make the redevelopment plan more viable.
6. In September of 2007, the Clearlake Vision Task Force presented to the council a 60-page report that lays out a vision for the city, from improved infrastructure and public facilities to ways to build the economic base and create a sustainable city. What is your opinion on the value of the report? Do you think its ideas can be achieved? What would you as a council member do to carry the vision forward?
I am very pleased this task force was formed and the 60-page report came from those many meetings. I spent nine years on the Planning Commission asking for this type of document to be brought forward. I am most pleased it finally came to fruition. This vision was accepted by the council and assigned toht e Planning Commission to work with it and carry forward.
7. Some issues that come before the council can be extremely divisive, both among council members and city residents. How would you address clashing opinions when approaching a decision? What experience do you have in working with others when there are no easy answers but a decision has to be made?
In the past two-plus years on the council I have had a number of issues that have been very divisive among both council and residents. I have been involved in openly negotiating a compromise conclusion, which pleased all concerned. My experience in working with others comes from owning my own business for 30 years. I had to listen to others and to compromise.
8. If elected, is there any project or issue you plan to tackle first?
I have a number of items on my wish list – not in this order.
A. Form a Lakeshore Drive Parking District.
B. Continue to clean up Lakeshore Drive.
C. Try and make the senior center more economically viable. Solar – drop ceiling in main room.
D. Expand our economy and create jobs by working toward a retail center complex.
E. Construct a medium-size BMX bike track at Haverty Field.
F. Construct a small playground for little children at Redbud Park.
G. Economic development of Austin site.
H. Assist police department in getting the K-9 program up and running.
I. Continue working with the senior community addressing their issues.
9. Public safety is an important issue in Clearlake. How would you as a council member seek to improve safety and reduce crime in the city's neighborhoods?
I would refer to question No. 4 regarding the police department and Measure P, the new chief and his community policing policies.
10. When you think of Clearlake's future, what do you want the city to look like in 10, 20 and 30 years?
1. Having the lake more accessible to our citizens for their recreation and marinas for public use.
2. Revitalizing Lakeshore Drive.
3. Two good-sized resorts on the water – one possible a timeshare.
4. A pier extending out into the lake with a first-class restaurant and some small gift shops.
5. Transition from a small resort town to a world-class small city.
6. Through a policy of managed growth the city can expand its town center and its stock of housing while building parks and preserving open space.
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Bill Shields
Not a new face in the City Council race
Bill Shields is a longtime resident of Clearlake, age 74, and retired. For many months the city of Clearlake, with a serious shortfall of revenue, has failed to properly examine the city tax base. Without this, all the necessary services that the citizens of Clearlake rely on cannot be provided. By bringing together business owners and taxpayers to take a good look at working together, with new ideas to improve the tax base, we may be able to overcome our consistent lack of revenue. There should be a consistent open-door policy at City Hall with no overuse of closed meetings.
The city of Clearlake has a primary responsibility to maintain a safe and pleasant environment for its citizens by providing efficient, effective public services. The city also should provide a catalyst that involves residents, businesses and service organizations to foster further development of our city.
He said he will work to build a better Clearlake, including building better roads for the city.
Shields is a veteran of the US Air Force and member of the Elks and Moose lodges, and other organizations. He is a community volunteer who is concerned about kids and seniors.
Mission statement
1. When elected to the council, he will push for more detailed examination of our tax base in order to repair our city's finances, along with cutting expenses that waste taxpayer dollars.
2. Water rates in our city are too high and he will look for solutions to this problem.
3. The city of Clearlake should start utilizing solar energy to reduce long-term costs of electricity and heat.
4. He will push for a code advisory committee to begin reform of the city building code.
5. He will seek advice and feedback from the citizens to assist the City Council in finding new ideas to increase the beauty and cleanliness of the city.
6. The redevelopment agency is in debt and he will work to remedy the situation and prevent future bad investments.
Residents of Clearlake have the opportunity to make the sensible choice and elect Bill Shields to the City Council. He will make sure that your tax dollars are wisely spent. He will take a good long look at the many lawsuits against the city of Clearlake that in the past have left a bad impression of the city, its officials and some of its residents.
Bill Shields is about working to make Clearlake a better place now and in the future, and not continuing the bad decisions and bad policies of the past. He will be there for you 24 hours a day at 994-0811, where you can count on your call being returned, or just drop by 4312 Sunset in Clearlake just to talk about the issues or what's bothering you about your community.
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Shortly before 10 p.m. Sunday the Lake County Sheriff's Office received a report that 24-year-old Sean Wesley Levine and a group of friends from the Santa Rosa area had been riding their dirt bikes on both the Mendocino and Lake County sides of Cow Mountain during the day and Levine had become separated from the group, according to Capt. James Bauman.
Bauman said Levine had been last seen at about 4 p.m. in the area of Scotts and Benmore creeks as the group was making their way back to their vehicles on the Mendocino side.
Patrol deputies from both the Lake and Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office searched their respective sides of the Cow Mountain area. Bauman said by 11:30 p.m., when deputies were unable to locate Levine, Lake County Search and Rescue was activated to take over the search.
He said Search and Rescue teams combed the area throughout the night and at about 5:30 a.m. on Monday, Levine’s motorcycle and riding gear were located on the side of the Mendo-Lake Road to Ukiah. The motorcycle was undamaged and empty of fuel.
At around daybreak on Monday morning, a helicopter contracted for searching out illegal marijuana grows was diverted to the area to assist with the search for Levine, said Bauman.
But an air search of the trails connecting to the area the motorcycle was found, numerous phone calls to Lakeport area motels, and an extended search by the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department of the roads from Cow Mountain to Ukiah all resulted in no sign of Levine, Bauman said.
As a result, Bauman said that at about 9:30 a.m. Monday the search for Levine was suspended pending further leads as to his whereabouts.
However, the apparently grim situation ended with Levine walking into the University of California Field Station in Hopland shortly before 4:30 p.m. Monday, said Bauman. The station called the sheriff's dispatch to report Levine's appearance.
Bauman said he called the field station office and spoke to Levin. While hungry and exhausted, Levine was otherwise unharmed.
Officials had suspected Levine had run out of fuel, which Bauman said did, indeed, turn out to be the case.
Levine told Bauman he started walking until it got too dark to see, and then started a small fire on the trail he was on and slept in the wilderness all night.
At daybreak, Levine started walking again along unknown creek beds and trails until he somehow reached Hopland, Bauman said.
Bauman said Levine didn't know where he came out of the recreational area or even what road he found to get to Hopland.
While Levine heard the searching helicopter a couple of times on Monday morning, the helicopter couldn't see him because of the distance, Bauman said.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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