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Opinion
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- Written by: Lorrie Gray
First of all, Michelle Scully. When she called me in early December to ask if some local entities could hold a fundraiser for us, I was flabbergasted. For all who know me, speechlessness is not my normal reaction.
She explained that the Lake County Winegrape Commission and its members, Colleen Rentsch of Seely Farm Stand, Lake County Walnut and Scully Packing wanted to fill boxes with organic walnuts, comice pears, Pink Lady apples and wine from Lake County and sell them to raise funds for our programs.
I agreed that this sounded like a wonderful idea, and we would see if there was a response. We set a price, and they all agreed to furnish up to 100 boxes.
The response was phenomenal! When the final tally was done, we sold every box we prepared, and still had people asking for more. Between box sales and outright donations, a total of $4,766 was raised. A gigantic thank you to everyone involved, from the donors to the purchasers.
Additional kudos go to Umpqua Bank for allowing us to use their parking lot as our distribution point. On a cold, windy, slightly damp day we met with buyers and gave them the boxes. One of the bank managers took pity on Michelle, Tammy Alakszay and I and brought us hot coffee in Umpqua travel mugs. We really do appreciate all of the help from Umpqua.
We also must thank the Lake County Office of Education for the loan of the Easy-up for the day, which provided some shelter from the elements.
Many thanks to the crew who helped pack the boxes. Patrick Scully ran quality control on the pears, Michelle on the apples, Sally Evans and Mary Beth Woodward polished and packed apples, Michelle and I added wine and walnuts, and Tammy Alakszay finished with letters, labels, box lids, and taped them shut. It took all of us working together to produce the final product, which was fabulous.
Heartfelt thanks go to Six Sigma Winery, Wildhurst Winery, Brassfield Winery, Round River Farm, Shannon Gunier, Lake County Walnuts, Patrick and Michelle Scully, Scully Packing, Seely Farm Stand, and all of the Hunger Task Force members for their generosity and support. The funds will be put to good use for our community garden projects, canning lessons, and helping feed those who need some help from those of us who have enough and want to donate to those of us who do not.
Lorrie Gray is a member of the Lake County Hunger Task Force. She lives in Kelseyville, Calif.
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- Written by: Nelson Strasser
How can that be? He was always hated by racists, but he became an enemy of the government when he turned against the war in Vietnam. That is why his speech from the Riverside Church condemning the war is rarely played on the media or in history classes. His image has been sanitized. This is a slander on his memory.
Here is a sample of his words, as profound and fitting today as they were in the 1960s:
“A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, 'This way of settling differences is not just.' This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
What has changed? We are still spending 57 cents of every dollar on the Pentagon. We are shooting third world peoples as if they were objects in a computer game, young men are coming back damaged physically and mentally, and we are coming closer to spiritual death.
Nelson Strasser lives in Kelseyville, Calif.
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- Written by: Miguel Lanigan
However, it only speaks to the “boards.”
Scroll down the list and get into the full time departments, centers, agencies, authorities, bureaus, centers, councils, units and commissions, and attach a dollar value to them, and one finds that a million here, a million there soon it adds up to real serious money … money the state doesn't have.
Miguel Lanigan lives in Clearlake Oaks, Calif.
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- Written by: Lake County News Reports
The main dispute was the change that requires resident boat owners to obtain an annual $10. sticker for each boat they own and use on the lake. Non-resident boats are required to pay $10. for a sticker good for a month of lake usage – if they return to the lake in another month they must buy another sticker.
Several local owners of multiple boats complained that the change requires them to pay excessive amounts (e.g., $50. for five boats) and face the burden of keeping current stickers on their fleet. (The previous ordinance provided free stickers with no expiration date.) I can almost understand the concern of those that whined about the new rules. I am now required to buy four or five (what boats are required to have stickers does need some clarification) stickers annually.
However, the BOS in this case should have just noted the public input with sympathy and moved on. Instead they reacted to the small number of comments and requested that Water Resources Director Scott De Leon provide a plan for fleet rates or maximum costs per address (e.g., someone with six boats would only have to pay for three of the six stickers required). This greatly complicates the simple sticker distribution model the county uses where they sell stickers for a reduced amount to a small number of vendors (e.g. a bait shop) that then resells for the full $10 to cover their expenses.
Scott, who holds arguably the most critical position in the county as director of Water Resources, must work on a solution to this trivial issue in addition to his day job of managing the critical parts of the mussel protection effort, manage the weed and algae effort, and ensure that the lake and water resources in the county remain viable. The BOS could easily have spared him this latest task.
A more prudent path would have been to push back on those who complained while stating we have to move forward at this time and explaining future plans to get all in the county (in addition to boat owners) contributing to fund this effort. Everyone in the county of Lake will suffer economical loss (including further erosion of property values, less demand for property, much reduced tourism, etc.) should the mussels get through to our lakes.
All of the county is at risk as is the state, so ultimately the burden should be shared by more than the boat owners. Such funding plans are being considered for all lake management efforts including weeds and algae. The BOS is aware of all of this and yet they let themselves again be herded by a few comments from the public.
Only Supervisor Jeff Smith had meaningful comments independent of public input. Supervisor Anthony Farrington used the occasion for his often-repeated sermon on highway choke points, again not relevant to the topic at hand.
The residents complained this time, maybe next meeting the non-residents will complain and again send the BOS in a different direction.
The BOS needs to show tough love when it comes to their main tasks of protecting our lake, our economy and our way of life.
The BOS first heard of this mussel risk six years ago, they knew about it in great detail three years ago. The BOS should be engaged with Sacramento to get a statewide mussel plan in place. They need to be pro-active and not just responsive to the latest complaint.
Ed Calkins lives in Kelseyville, Calif.