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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
The council will meet at 5 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16, in the council chambers at Clearlake City Hall, 14050 Olympic Drive, for the midyear budget workshop before the regular portion of the meeting begins at 6 p.m.
The meeting will be broadcast live on the city's YouTube channel or the Lake County PEGTV YouTube Channel. Community members also can participate via Zoom or can attend in person.
The agenda can be found here.
Comments and questions can be submitted in writing for City Council consideration by sending them to City Clerk Melissa Swanson at
To give the council adequate time to review your questions and comments, please submit your written comments before 4 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16.
Each public comment emailed to the city clerk will be read aloud by the mayor or a member of staff for up to three minutes or will be displayed on a screen. Public comment emails and town hall public comment submissions that are received after the beginning of the meeting will not be included in the record.
Following the council’s midyear budget workshop at 5 p.m., it will convene for the regular meeting, during which it will hear a presentation on February's adoptable dogs, present a proclamation declaring February 2023 as Black History Month and receive the Clearlake Police Department’s annual report.
Under council business, council members will consider approving an application to the county for direct sale of various tax defaulted properties for up to $150,000.
They also will consider a resolution approving, authorizing and directing the execution of a joint exercise of powers agreement among the cities of Clearlake and Lakeport, and the county of Lake to form the Lake County Recreation Agency, with two council members to be appointed to serve on the agency’s board.
In other business, the council will consider updates to its norms and procedures and hold the first reading of an ordinance amending the municipal code relating to the method of service for property maintenance, nuisance and vehicle abatement.
On the meeting's consent agenda — items that are considered routine in nature and usually adopted on a single vote — are warrants; authorization of an amendment of design contract for the senior center project with California Engineering Co. in the amount of $10,594.61; minutes of the Jan. 11 Lake County Vector Control District Board meeting; minutes of the meetings on Dec. 1 and 8, 2022, and Jan. 5, 2023; approval of a professional services contract with SSA Landscape Architects for the Burns Valley Sports Complex Project; continuation of authorization to implement and utilize teleconference accessibility to conduct public meetings pursuant to Assembly Bill 361; authorization of job description for management analyst and placement into salary schedule; adoption of third amendment to the FY 2022-23 Budget (Resolution 2022-44) for midyear adjustments.
The council also will hold a closed session following the public portion of the meeting to discuss negotiations for a property at 14709 Palmer Ave.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
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- Written by: LAKE COUNTY NEWS REPORTS
The Lucerne community meeting will take place at 6 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16, in the multipurpose room at Lucerne Elementary School, 3351 Country Club Drive.
The meeting also will be available via Zoom.
The meeting ID is 857 2312 7967, the passcode is 13931.
Kurt McKelvey, who has served as chair of the Lucerne Area Town Hall, will moderate the meeting.
The Board of Supervisors have yet to make new appointments to LATH. In response to questions about the delay in the appointments from both Lake County News and McKelvey, Supervisor EJ Crandell has not given a reason for why no action has been taken.
Those appointments, or the lack of them, will be an item for discussion at the Thursday meeting.
Another agenda topic will be the needed bridge repair on Foothill Drive, between Dunston Drive and Robinson Road.
They also are scheduled to discuss a petition to the Board of Supervisors regarding the Lucerne Area Town Hall’s Resolution A0004, passed in December, condemning the Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians’ proposal to use the Lucerne Hotel for housing for homeless youth and young adults.
Other discussion items include the formation of a community service district for Lucerne and the larger Northshore area and additional topics community members recommend pertaining to the community of Lucerne.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
CLEARLAKE, Calif. — On Thursday, the Lake County NAACP branch bestowed a unique honor on a local business.
NAACP Board members, led by Rick Mayo, the branch president and co-founder, presented Lamont Kucer and Andrew Pierson of Foods, Etc. in Clearlake with a Silver Life membership plaque.
Mayo was joined by Bessie Bell, branch treasurer and Legal Redress Chair; Lynette Kirkwood, branch executive member; Aqeela Markowski, life member and past president; David D. Smith, the Cal-Hawaii NAACP State Conference Area director; Ida Johnson, Cal-Hawaii NAACP State Conference assistant secretary; James Black, NAACP member; Greta Zeit, NAACP Lake County Branch secretary; and Andrew Kucer, Lamont Kucer’s father.
Not in attendance was Dennis Darling, Foods, Etc.’s founder, who was out of town.
The NAACP credited Foods, Etc.’s record of embracing diversity in its hiring and community practices.
Mayo said Foods, Etc. is the NAACP branch’s only life membership business organization, but they have other businesses that are members, including Lakeview Market in Lucerne and the Red and White Market in Clearlake Oaks.
He said there also are 29 total life members of the branch.
Bell, who said she’s been shopping at the store since 1979, pointed out how the store hires young people who are still in school, giving them an opportunity to have a job. And she pointed to their welcoming of people of all ethnic backgrounds.
“They don’t care who you are,” she said, and they treat people kindly and are responsible.
She said they are grateful for the business’ service. “This is a good store.”
“We’re happy to help and to be part of it for the next 30 years,” Lamont Kucer said.
Johnson, whose father, Gilbert P. Gray, worked with Mayo to found the local branch in 1982 as well as the branch in Santa Rosa, where he was a respected community member, said the work of the NAACP takes place at the local level, noting the local members are the “worker bees” and inviting people to take part.
“The work starts here,” she said.
The event took place just days ahead of the NAACP’s anniversary on Sunday.
The organization was founded on Feb. 12, 1909, the 100th anniversary of the birth of President Abraham Lincoln.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
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- Written by: LAKE COUNTY NEWS REPORTS
The bill would create a framework for evaluating wildfire mitigation investments taken by state, federal and private actors and better coordinate utility wildfire mitigation efforts across California to increase the overall effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of wildfire related investments.
“With this cycle of heavy rains and prolonged droughts, we cannot take our eyes off of the risks that major wildfires present to communities across the state,” Sen. Dodd said. “Wildfires don’t respect county lines or utility service areas, so we need a coordinated and comprehensive approach to keeping California safe. We’ve made a lot of progress in recent years, but climate change continues to compound challenges and underscores the need for us to be thoughtful about how we do the most good, as quickly as possible, with our investments.”
Catastrophic wildfires impose enormous costs on the state of California and its residents.
In the aftermath of the Camp fire, Sen. Dodd co-authored AB 1054, which created a framework for electric utilities to evaluate their wildfire risk and plan for their wildfire mitigation investments and activities, overseen by the Office of Electric Infrastructure Safety within the California Natural Resources Agency.
More recently, the California Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force, a multiagency effort to identify needs and develop strategies to better manage wildfire risk, has produced plans to better manage wildfire risk.
Current spending on utility wildfire mitigation exceeds $10 billion per year while state budget wildfire expenditures have grown to $1.3 billion over two years.
Meanwhile the U.S. Forest Service recently announced major wildfire mitigation investments in California and other western states wildfire mitigation activities that will total $930 million.
No framework exists to evaluate how these multiple activities will interact and might be coordinated to maximize their effectiveness and cost-effectiveness.
The Wildfire Mitigation Planning Act would require the Office of Electric Infrastructure Safety to prepare a Wildfire Risk Mitigation Planning Framework every three years to quantify the potential benefits of actions taken by state and private actors to reduce wildfire risk.
The bill then requires that the Office of Electric Infrastructure Safety prepare a wildfire risk baseline and forecast on statewide baseline wildfire risk and risk mitigation potential over the next one to 10 years.
It would also mandate an annual wildfire mitigation scenarios report quantifying actual risk reduction from all actors and investments within the State of California.
Finally, Dodd’s measure empowers the Office of Electric Infrastructure Safety to coordinate utility spending with this planning framework in order to maximize the effectiveness of all investments related to wildfires being made within the State of California.
"Preventing catastrophic wildfire requires strong coordination between all of our investments,” said Michael Wara, interim policy director of the Sustainability Accelerator at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and director of Climate and Energy Policy Program and Senior Research Scholar at the Woods Institute for the Environment. “Building on current efforts, this bill would create a planning structure to maximize the effectiveness of California's work to reduce the impacts of wildfire. As California spends more to prevent catastrophic wildfire, we should also make sure that these investments go as far as possible in keeping residents safe. This bill creates a planning structure that does just that and ensures that all our efforts are well coordinated."
The act, also known as Senate Bill 436, is expected to receive its first committee hearing and vote next month.