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The board will meet beginning at 9 a.m. Friday, March 11, in the board chambers on the first floor of the Lake County Courthouse, 255 N. Forbes St., Lakeport.
The meeting can be watched live on Channel 8, online at https://countyoflake.legistar.com/Calendar.aspx and on the county’s Facebook page. Accompanying board documents, the agenda and archived board meeting videos also are available at that link.
To participate in real-time, join the Zoom meeting by clicking this link.
The meeting ID is 947 1450 6557, pass code 450831. The meeting also can be accessed via one tap mobile at +16699006833,,94714506557#,,,,*450831#.
All interested members of the public that do not have internet access or a Mediacom cable subscription are encouraged to call 669-900-6833, and enter the Zoom meeting ID and pass code information above.
To submit a written comment on any agenda item visit https://countyoflake.legistar.com/Calendar.aspx and click on the eComment feature linked to the meeting date. If a comment is submitted after the meeting begins, it may not be read during the meeting but will become a part of the record.
During the meeting, the department heads will provide the 2022 State of the County Report and give an update on progress for the Vision 2028 priorities.
Topics of the report and department heads contributing to them are as follows:
• Consider and promote the well-being and economic resilience of every Lake County resident, community collaboration, investment in our people: Social Services Director Crystal Markytan, Child Support Services Director Gail Woodworth, Behavioral Health Services Director Todd Metcalf, Health Services Director Jonathan Portney, County Librarian Christopher Veach and Registrar of Voters Maria Valadez.
• Enhance public safety — protect our residents, disaster prevention, preparedness and recovery: Sheriff/Office of Emergency Services Director Brian Martin; Chief Probation Officer Rob Howe, Animal Care and Control Director Jonathan Armas, District Attorney Susan Krones and County Counsel Anita Grant.
• Grow our economy, spur job creation, improve our infrastructure, caring for our environment and natural resources: Public Works/Water Resources Director Scott De Leon, Special Districts Administrator Scott Harter, Public Services Director Lars Ewing, Community Development Director Mary Darby, Air Pollution Control Officer Doug Gearhart and Agricultural Commissioner/Sealer of Weights and Measures Katherine Vanderwall.
• Financial and technological advancements: Auditor-Controller-County Clerk Cathy Saderlund, Information Technology Director Shane French, Treasurer-Tax Collector Barbara Ringen, Assessor-Recorder Richard Ford and Chief Deputy County Administrative Officer Stephen Carter.
• People and partnerships: County Administrative Officer Carol Huchingson.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
The City of Clearlake Animal Association also is seeking fosters for the animals waiting to be adopted.
Call the Clearlake Animal Control shelter at 707-273-9440, or email
Visit Clearlake Animal Control on Facebook or on the city’s website.
The following dogs are available for adoption.
‘Terry’
“Terry” is a male shepherd mix with a short brindle coat.
He is dog No. 48443693.
‘Snowball’
“Snowball” is a male American Staffordshire mix terrier with a white coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 49159168.
‘Sassy’
“Sassy” is a female American pit bull mix with a short black coat.
She has been spayed.
She is dog No. 48443128.
‘Fritz’
“Fritz” is a male Australian shepherd mix with a black and white coat.
He is dog No. 49278179.
‘Ebenezer’
“Ebenezer” is a male American pit bull terrier mix with a short tan and white coat.
He is dog No. 49191651.
‘Chai’
“Chai” is a female Alaskan husky mix with a gray and white coat.
She has been spayed.
She is dog No. 49279552.
‘Bear No. 2’
“Bear No. 2” is a male American pit bull mix with a short tan coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 48731556.
‘Bear’
“Bear” is a male Labrador retriever-American pit bull mix with a short charcoal and fawn coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 48443153.
‘Andy’
“Andy” is a male American pit bull mix with a short gray and white coat.
He is dog No. 48995415.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
Zarina Otchkova, owner of WeGrow LLC, filed the appeal with the board on March 2, within the seven-day appeal window.
The project — including growing, processing and distribution operations — would be located on a nine-acre portion of a 309-acre property located at 16750 Herrington Road, 17610 Sandy Road and 19678 Stinson Road in Middletown.
Plans include 34 greenhouses, four drying buildings, a shed, 20 water tanks and privacy fencing.
The project area is located next to Hidden Valley Lake and a number of other smaller subdivisions.
At its meeting on Feb. 24, the Planning Commission voted unanimously to deny the adoption of an initial study and the major use permit, basing those decisions on Community Development Department staff’s conclusion that the project required an environmental impact report.
The commission had approved a previous version of the project in April 2021, but a group of concerned neighbors appealed the decision.
In June 2021, the Board of Supervisors upheld the appeal based on a faulty environmental document, but did so without prejudice, which allowed Otchkova to resubmit the project, which she did later that year.
The newer version of the project included a plan to remove 130 mature blue oak trees, which was one of the key issues for the commission and staff, who concluded that plans to mitigate that tree loss were not sufficient.
The seven-page appeal document, composed primarily of county appeal forms, includes a one-paragraph summary of the reasons for making the appeal.
It states: “Applicant-Appellant WeGrow appeals the Lake County Planning Commission’s February 24, 2022 decision denying its application for a major use permit. Applicant-Appellant’s application was first filed in 2020. All of the requirements for issuance of a major use permit for the Project were and are still met. Indeed, the Community Development Department itself repeatedly and consistently recommended approval of the Project for nearly two years, prior to abruptly changing its mind just weeks before the February 24, 2022 hearing. And, in 2021, the same Project — identical in scope and content — was previously approved by the Planning Commission by a 4-0 vote. Meanwhile, the justification for now denying the permit was based on opinions about the Project advanced by vocal opposition members, rather than based on substantial evidence of a significant environmental impact. The new and different decision was thus arbitrary within the meaning of California law.”
Otchkova’s attorney, Andrew Azarmi of the Dentons law firm in San Francisco, who spoke to the Planning Commission on her behalf at the Feb. 24 meeting, did not respond to Lake County News’ request for further comment on the appeal and the project.
On Wednesday, Lake County News called a phone number with a Phoenix, Arizona, area code given as WeGrow’s primary contact number on the appeal document.
A male who answered the phone but did not identify himself confirmed it was the correct number for WeGrow. He then asked why this reporter was asking questions about the project, refused to answer questions saying he couldn’t discuss it, and added he would speak to the attorney before ending the call.
Neighbor explains concerns
Jesse Cude filed the appeal against the project on behalf of a group of about 170 residents near the project area who oppose it.
“It’s been a group effort, it’s not just me,” he said.
The group’s members live in the Hidden Valley Lake, the Ranchos, Shadow Hills, Rimrock Ranch and Donery Ridge subdivisions.
Otchkova’s property, Cude said, “is literally surrounded by subdivisions,” adding that WeGrow picked the wrong spot for the grow operation.
He said his group hired a law firm and also engaged civil engineer Brian Hall to review the initial study of the project. The review found that while WeGrow had claimed it was removing less than 500 yards of soil for the project, Hall estimated it was actually 128,000 yards of soil that would be removed.
Cude said the review also found significant stormwater runoff that was not addressed in the study and an inadequate power supply — only enough to cover a single residence.
Then there was the matter of the trees. While WeGrow said its project had not changed, Cude said the removal of the 130 blue oaks was not in the previous version of the project.
With all of the project’s significant issues — tree and soil removal, and stormwater — “It’s just too much to overcome,” said Cude.
Cude said the county did not notify him or his group about the appeal. “They didn’t keep us in the loop at all on this,” he said, adding if they hadn’t emailed the county, they wouldn’t have found out about it.
Johanna DeLong, assistant clerk of the Board of Supervisors, said Wednesday that she hadn’t yet received a copy of the appeal in order to schedule it for a hearing before the board.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
Rep. Mike Thompson (CA-05) voted to secure more than $10.8 million in Community Project Funding for California’s Fifth District.
Thompson’s office said Wednesday night that this funding — included in H.R. 2471, the Funding For The People bill — will provide the district’s communities “with the resources they need to build a bright future.”
Included in the funding are two projects for Lake County:
· $450,000 for the Lake County Kelseyville Sidewalk Project to create one continuous sidewalk along the south side of Konocti Road in Kelseyville in order to implement the county’s Safe Routes to School Program.
· $320,000 for the Lake County Full Circle Effluent Pipeline Preliminary Design Report Update. This project would evaluate which of the existing wastewater treatment facilities in the project area would provide source water for the effluent pipeline the planned project features. With technological advances made since the completion of the 2004 Preliminary Design Report, this project will review alternatives for the final use of the treated effluent including geothermal energy production and agriculture irrigation.
“One of my top responsibilities as a member of Congress is to ensure our communities have the resources they need to live health and successful lives — and this year’s spending bill includes every community funding project that I submitted to improve the lives of my constituents,” said Thompson. “This spending bill also includes some of my top priorities to prevent gun violence, research the effects of smoke taint on our vineyards and other agricultural products, increase the federal share of cost for disasters from 75% to at least 90%, and reauthorize the United States Anti-Doping Agency.
The FY2022 funding bill also contains Emergency Supplemental funding for Ukraine and key funding for domestic priorities like Pell Grants, cancer research and more, Thompson said.
“The legislation will also ensure that government agencies have the funding they need to effectively serve the American people throughout the year, helping people get their tax returns, health care, passports and more. It’s past due to deliver a spending bill, and I look forward to seeing the impact of this bill for the people of California’s Fifth District,” he said.
The Funding For The People Act also includes some of Congressman Thompson’s top priorities, including:
· Extending telehealth flexibilities for 150 days beyond the end of the public health emergency.
· The Federal Disaster Cost Share Act to increase the federal share of cost for disasters that occurred in 2020 and 2021 from 75 percent to 90 percent to ease the financial burden on our local governments in the face of wildfires and other disasters.
· Reauthorizing the United States Anti-Doping Agency.
· Increasing funding for the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).
The bipartisan funding bill also includes:
· $13.6 billion in emergency funding for security and humanitarian needs for Ukraine, as Russia wages its brutal war.
· Increasing funding for key domestic priorities, including strengthening Pell Grants and establishing President Biden’s new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health cancer initiative.
· Securing major bipartisan legislation, including reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act and creating new cybersecurity protections to fight against vicious cyberattacks to our infrastructure by Russia and other bad actors.
In addition to Lake County’s projects, the funding amounts for the other projects in California’s Fifth District are as follows:
· $1,840,000 for the Napa County Deer Park/St. Helena Water System. This project would improve water infrastructure and increase on-site water storage at Adventist Health St. Helena Hospital, which owns and operates water storage, treatment, and distribution facilities that provide potable water to approximately 660 residents and hospital facilities.
· $1.8 million for the Napa County Public Safety Radio and Communication upgrade project. This project would fulfill state and federal mandates to improve protection of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in public safety radio communication.
· $1.6 million for the Accessing Coordinated Care and Empowering Self Sufficiency project in Santa Rosa that will allow Sonoma County to expand the existing ACCESS program so the team there can better help vulnerable residents after disasters and other local crises, such as Public Safety Power shut-offs.
· $1 million to create a Permanent Emergency Operations Center for the City of Santa Rosa. This project would improve the speed of response to disasters like wildfires and improved coordination among agencies.
· $1 million for Touro University to make crucial investments in campus improvement that will boost class size, increase the number of health providers on campus and boost health care across the region.
· $1 million for Petaluma Health Center, Inc to renovate the Rohnert Park Health Center site to boost access to care for 5,000 local residents.
· $900,000 for the Vallejo Police Department Community Mobile Mental Health Response Unit. This program will provide trauma-informed mental health response and social services to reduce arrests in Vallejo and better respond to individuals experiencing crises and those with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
· $900,000 for the Contra Costa County Collaborative Care Implementation project to boost both primary and mental and behavioral health care across the county.
The 12-bill government funding package will help middle class families with the cost of living, create American jobs, support the vulnerable and work to help small businesses that are key to the nation's economic future, Thompson’s office reported.
Taken together, Thompson said the funding for California’s Fifth District and the funding increases for critical government programs will reverse decades of disinvestment in our communities and strengthen our nation.
A full summary of the 12 regular appropriations bills is here. A summary of the Ukraine supplemental is here and a one-page fact sheet is here.
“We are excited to partner with West Business Development Center and join the NorCal SBDC network. These partnerships will bring resources closer to Lake County businesses and strengthen the regional economy,“ states Stephanie Ashworth, Lake EDC Board president.
Lake EDC now offers additional client services to Lake County businesses in the form of one-on-one business technical assistance, business start-up assistance and access to capital.
Lake EDC is working on establishing physical offices in Lakeport and Clearlake. Until then, virtual appointments are available anytime, and in person meetings can still be arranged in both Cities.
“We know local businesses have been struggling, not just from the COVID pandemic, the wildfires prior to the pandemic crippled many businesses. We wanted to invest in a program with as many local experts as possible,” said Nicole Flora, Lake EDC’s new executive director. “This is a chance for businesses to get free assistance from experienced business advisors. We have local mentors to help with business basics as well as industry specific issues. We stand ready to help tackle the challenges your business is facing today.”
To learn more about Lake EDC and the Mendo-Lake SBDC program, sign up to attend the Lake County Business Funding Workshop, on March 23 at noon. The webinar will cover the specific types of business assistance available and a panel of local resources for business loans.
Guests can attend in person at the Clearlake City Hall Council Chambers, or via webinar. Sign up here.
Lake County businesses looking for assistance from the Mendo-Lake SBDC can contact them at www.mendosbdc.org/join/ or call 707-263-6217.
People typically think of food as calories, energy and sustenance. However, the latest evidence suggests that food also “talks” to our genome, which is the genetic blueprint that directs the way the body functions down to the cellular level.
This communication between food and genes may affect your health, physiology and longevity. The idea that food delivers important messages to an animal’s genome is the focus of a field known as nutrigenomics. This is a discipline still in its infancy, and many questions remain cloaked in mystery. Yet already, we researchers have learned a great deal about how food components affect the genome.
I am a molecular biologist who researches the interactions among food, genes and brains in the effort to better understand how food messages affect our biology. The efforts of scientists to decipher this transmission of information could one day result in healthier and happier lives for all of us. But until then, nutrigenomics has unmasked at least one important fact: Our relationship with food is far more intimate than we ever imagined.
The interaction of food and genes
If the idea that food can drive biological processes by interacting with the genome sounds astonishing, one need look no further than a beehive to find a proven and perfect example of how this happens. Worker bees labor nonstop, are sterile and live only a few weeks. The queen bee, sitting deep inside the hive, has a life span that lasts for years and a fecundity so potent she gives birth to an entire colony.
And yet, worker and queen bees are genetically identical organisms. They become two different life forms because of the food they eat. The queen bee feasts on royal jelly; worker bees feed on nectar and pollen. Both foods provide energy, but royal jelly has an extra feature: its nutrients can unlock the genetic instructions to create the anatomy and physiology of a queen bee.
So how is food translated into biological instructions? Remember that food is composed of macronutrients. These include carbohydrates – or sugars – proteins and fat. Food also contains micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals. These compounds and their breakdown products can trigger genetic switches that reside in the genome.
Like the switches that control the intensity of the light in your house, genetic switches determine how much of a certain gene product is produced. Royal jelly, for instance, contains compounds that activate genetic controllers to form the queen’s organs and sustain her reproductive ability. In humans and mice, byproducts of the amino acid methionine, which are abundant in meat and fish, are known to influence genetic dials that are important for cell growth and division. And vitamin C plays a role in keeping us healthy by protecting the genome from oxidative damage; it also promotes the function of cellular pathways that can repair the genome if it does get damaged.
Depending on the type of nutritional information, the genetic controls activated and the cell that receives them, the messages in food can influence wellness, disease risk and even life span. But it’s important to note that to date, most of these studies have been conducted in animal models, like bees.
Interestingly, the ability of nutrients to alter the flow of genetic information can span across generations. Studies show that in humans and animals, the diet of grandparents influences the activity of genetic switches and the disease risk and mortality of grandchildren.
Cause and effect
One interesting aspect of thinking of food as a type of biological information is that it gives new meaning to the idea of a food chain. Indeed, if our bodies are influenced by what we have eaten – down to a molecular level – then what the food we consume “ate” also could affect our genome. For example, compared to milk from grass-fed cows, the milk from grain-fed cattle has different amounts and types of fatty acids and vitamins C and A . So when humans drink these different types of milk, their cells also receive different nutritional messages.
Similarly, a human mother’s diet changes the levels of fatty acids as well as vitamins such as B-6, B-12 and folate that are found in her breast milk. This could alter the type of nutritional messages reaching the baby’s own genetic switches, although whether or not this has an effect on the child’s development is, at the moment, unknown.
And, maybe unbeknownst to us, we too are part of this food chain. The food we eat doesn’t tinker with just the genetic switches in our cells, but also with those of the microorganisms living in our guts, skin and mucosa. One striking example: In mice, the breakdown of short-chain fatty acids by gut bacteria alters the levels of serotonin, a brain chemical messenger that regulates mood, anxiety and depression, among other processes.
Food additives and packaging
Added ingredients in food can also alter the flow of genetic information inside cells. Breads and cereals are enriched with folate to prevent birth defects caused by deficiencies of this nutrient. But some scientists hypothesize that high levels of folate in the absence of other naturally occurring micronutrients such as vitamin B-12 could contribute to the higher incidence of colon cancer in Western countries, possibly by affecting the genetic pathways that control growth.
This could also be true with chemicals found in food packaging. Bisphenol A, or BPA, a compound found in plastic, turns on genetic dials in mammals that are critical to development, growth and fertility. For example, some researchers suspect that, in both humans and animal models, BPA influences the age of sexual differentiation and decreases fertility by making genetic switches more likely to turn on.
All of these examples point to the possibility that the genetic information in food could arise not just from its molecular composition – the amino acids, vitamins and the like – but also from the agricultural, environmental and economic policies of a country, or the lack of them.
Scientists have only recently begun decoding these genetic food messages and their role in health and disease. We researchers still don’t know precisely how nutrients act on genetic switches, what their rules of communication are and how the diets of past generations influence their progeny. Many of these studies have so far been done only in animal models, and much remains to be worked out about what the interactions between food and genes mean for humans.
What is clear though, is that unraveling the mysteries of nutrigenomics is likely to empower both present and future societies and generations.
Monica Dus, Assistant Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, University of Michigan
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.