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- Written by: Lake County News reports
Newsom’s plan represents the highest level of state school funding in California history, investing an additional $20 billion to support the potential of every California student and make the structural change necessary to reduce barriers while increasing opportunities across the board, including massive investments in K-12 public schools, creating universal Pre-K and college savings accounts for 3.7 million low-income children in public schools.
“We’re doing more than just fully reopening for the upcoming school year, we’re proposing historic investments in public schools to create new opportunities for every student, especially for our neediest students, so that every child can thrive, regardless of their race or zip code,” said Gov. Newsom. “To achieve this goal, we’re going big – targeting $20 billion of investments to transform our public schools, including the creation of universal Pre-K and the establishment of college savings accounts for 3.7 million disadvantaged kids for higher education pursuits or to start their own business.”
Under the California Comeback Plan, the state will make targeted investments of $20 billion into public education to make sure every public school can fundamentally transform into the kind of complete campus every parent would want for their child: before- and after-school instruction, sports and arts, personalized tutoring, nurses and counselors, and nutrition — paired with new preventative behavioral health services for every kid in California.
This includes $3 billion to create thousands of full-service community schools, with wraparound mental health, social and family services; $4 billion over five years to transform the youth behavioral health system to identify and treat behavioral health needs early; and additional billions more toward investments in accelerated learning and our teachers and school staff.
“California kids and young adults need new investments and supports to make up for the burdens they faced over the past year – and even before the pandemic – and Gov. Newsom's California Comeback Plan goes above and beyond to put our students first," said California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly. "By prioritizing the behavioral health needs of our young people – through before- and after-school instruction, behavioral health, social and family services – we can provide the younger generation with unparalleled opportunities to thrive."
To make college more accessible to low-income California kids, the Governor proposes investing $2 billion to seed college savings accounts for vulnerable students currently enrolled in K-12 public schools, including a $500 base deposit for students from low-income families, English learners and foster youth, and a $500 supplemental deposit for foster and homeless youth.
The savings account can be used later in life for higher education or to start their own business. California will also finally achieve universal Pre-K, providing high-quality, free transitional kindergarten to all four-year-olds in California, regardless of income or immigrations status.
The Comeback Plan also adds 100,000 child care slots and subsidies to bring down the cost of child care.
COVID-19 presented a crisis without precedent this century, especially for school communities throughout California and the nation.
As a result, the Newsom Administration said it is investing in a safe return to full in-person instruction for all schools, with $2 billion to implement health and safety measures, including improved ventilation and measures to expand access to vaccines and testing.
This is on top of a historic $6.6 billion investment earlier this year in schools to get local communities the resources they need to reopen safely.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
The board previously approved a drought emergency in 2014.
Before taking up Sheriff Brian Martin’s emergency proclamation, the board heard from Scott De Leon, the Public Works, Water Resources and Community Development director, on drought conditions.
De Leon showed historical precipitation numbers to date for Lake County, which is in the Upper Cache Creek Basin.
The average annual rainfall is 37.45 inches, said De Leon.
For 2021, the rainfall total is 12.28 inches. That’s compared to 12.19 inches in 1976 and 12.46 inches in 1977, 17.98 inches in 2014 and 16.87 inches in 2021. In 2017, the county recorded 53.24 inches of rain, and 45.45 inches in 2019, De Leon said.
De Leon said Clear Lake’s level in 1977 dropped to -3.5 feet Rumsey, the special measure for the lake. In 2014, it was down to -1 foot Rumsey, and as of Tuesday it was 0.7 foot Rumsey.
Well monitoring in the Big Valley Basin has shown dropping groundwater levels. One of the wells De Leon said they monitor is 5 feet below average.
De Leon predicted that Clear Lake will get down to -2.19 feet Rumsey this year.
Due to low water levels, several county-maintained ramps may be closed. De Leon recommended closing the Crystal Lake Way extension ramp in north Lakeport, the Clearlake Avenue extension in Lakeport, Lucerne Harbor Park’s ramp, and the ramps at Keeling Park and Rodman Slough, the latter which will still be open for kayakers.
Frank Costner, general manager of Konocti County Water District in Clearlake, told the board during public comment that his district — the source for which is surface water — is experiencing the effects of the low lake.
As the lake gets lower, the district’s pumps have a harder time pumping water into the treatment plant. Costner said the district is seeking emergency funding to address that issue and for an emergency intertie with the Lower Lake water district, which is served with wells. That way, if they’re no longer able to pump water out to the lake, they can supplement the supply with water from Lower Lake.
He said the board’s acceptance of the drought declaration will help his district and also will assist with messaging throughout the county.
Costner said Konocti County Water District has already implemented the first stage of its water conservation program, which calls for a 20-percent voluntary reduction. Stage two, which is a 25-percent mandatory reduction, should go into effect later this summer.
Sheriff discusses drought emergency proclamation
Following De Leon’s water situation update, Martin presented his drought emergency ratification request to the board.
He said he took the action after holding an April 30 meeting with County Administrative Officer Carol Huchingon, De Leon, Public Services Director Lars Ewing, Auditor-Controller Cathy Saderlund and Special Districts Administrator Scott Harter.
At that meeting, he said De Leon gave a similar presentation, and based on the discussion Martin decided to move forward.
“This is our second drought year with no apparent relief in sight. We anticipate further drought conditions. There’s no good news in the immediate future for any relief from this weather. And what we’re anticipating is that we’re going to have a very slow rolling emergency with this drought, with the impacts to be seen in various ways,” said Martin.
Martin also noted that on Monday Gov. Gavin Newsom expanded his April 21 drought emergency declaration to include 39 additional counties, with Lake being one of them, as Lake County News has reported.
As Costner had said, the proclamation will open up grant and awareness opportunities, Martin explained.
He said the Office of Emergency Services also will start a campaign with www.saveourwater.com.
Martin said he plans on convening meetings as early as Friday with county, city, tribal, fire, agricultural, cannabis and other representatives to discuss strategies and suggestions for handling the drought. He said he’ll report back to the board next week.
“I would hope that our emphasis is on voluntary compliance,” he said. “With every disaster comes opportunities.”
Martin also suggested the county should look at grant opportunities to extend the county’s boat ramps in order to ensure equitable access to Clear Lake.
For people who can’t afford to live on the lake, the only way they can get out and enjoy the water is by way of public boat ramps, he said.
Extending the ramps, Martin said, “would be good for our economy,” and good for people to be able to enjoy what they pay for with their tax dollars.
The county also needs to discuss impacts on households, businesses, agriculture, livestock, recreation and tourism, municipal water supplies and groundwater supplies, Martin said.
At Braito’s Marina, where the sheriff’s Marine Patrol is housed, Martin said it’s getting too shallow to use the majority of the division’s boats, which have been used during wildland fires to save people off the shores of Clearlake in addition to helping stranded boaters.
Martin said the county also needs to pay attention to tribal issues, referring to archaeological crimes that occurred during the last drought when low lake levels exposed artifacts.
Supervisor Jessica Pyska asked Martin to confirm if this was just the beginning of the conversation, with mandates not yet triggered.
Martin said the resolution includes the ability for Public Works, Water Resources and the sheriff to close boat ramps without further authority but doesn’t impose other measures.
Chair Bruno Sabatier said they don’t know if this will be a 2022 and a 2023 drought, and the county needs to think about the matter in the long-term.
Supervisor Tina Scott offered two separate motions. The first was to adopt the resolution proclaiming a declaration of a local emergency due to drought conditions. The second was to approve a resolution proclaiming a local emergency and requesting the governor make available state assistance funding, along with seeking all available forms of federal disaster assistance and relief programs, to include presidential declaration of emergency.
The board unanimously approved both motions.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
On May 4, Caroline Thomas Jacobs, director of the CPUC’s Wildfire Safety Division, issued a revision notice to PG&E outlining the issues.
Jacobs said the Wildfire Safety Division found the “critical issues to be of significant enough importance such that an extension of the three-month statutory deadline is necessary” in order for it to adequately determine that PG&E’s 2021 Wildfire Mitigation Plan Update satisfies the information requirements the division has set forth and that the plan “will sufficiently reduce utility-related wildfire risk and impacts to public safety.”
“PG&E has shown us time and again that it is not protecting its customers. The company’s repeated mistakes led to wildfires in five of the last six years. PG&E’s failures have taken a devastating toll killing more than 120 people. Holding PG&E accountable has never been more urgent,” said Maya Chupkov of the CPUC’s Public Advocates Office.
In April, the CPUC’s Public Advocates Office had recommended the Wildfire Safety Division reject PG&E’s 2021 Wildfire Mitigation Plan until it made immediate changes that include focusing on the riskiest areas, adopting stronger oversight so it can better review its own safety performance and beefing up its inspections.
In a statement released to Lake County News in response to the notice, PG&E said it’s working every day to improve its electric system and reduce wildfire risk around it, that there’s more to do and it’s committed “to doing it the right way.”
“While we largely delivered on our 2020 Wildfire Mitigation Plan, we identified several gaps in our execution that we’ve tackled head-on. We’re focused on resolving those gaps in our 2021 Plan and further improving the quality and consistency of our work,” the company said.
PG&E said the gaps it’s working to resolve include prioritizing enhanced vegetation management work, quality of vegetation management activities and prioritizing the scheduling and execution of asset inspections.
“We are also engaging in discussions with the Wildfire Safety Division on a periodic basis to review many aspects of our wildfire mitigation efforts to ensure timely, thorough and transparent communication,” the company said.
In addition to PG&E, similar revision notices were issued on May 4 by the Wildfire Safety Division to Southern California Edison Company and Bear Valley Electric Service.
Officials said the utilities have 30 days to respond.
In PG&E’s revision notice, it outlines six critical issues that PG&E must remedy with regard to its plan.
They are:
— omission of quantitative targets for reduction in public safety power shut-off scale, scope and frequency;
— inadequate justification of significant changes to high priority circuit segments;
— unacceptable aggregation of system hardening risk-spend efficiencies, meaning, that the company failed to provide detailed costs and other data for mitigations such as covered conductor installation, undergrounding and remote grid work;
— equivocating language in asset inspection quality assurance and quality control process descriptions, with the notice explaining that PG&E continues to use vague and noncommittal language to describe its internal plans to address quality issues related to asset inspections;
— unresolved discrepancies in vegetation management expenditure data and their effect on the wildfire management plan; and
— contradictory reduction in expenditure allocation for critical vegetation management initiatives, noting that the company has significantly reduced its budget allocations “for initiatives considered critical to effective execution of its vegetation management programs.”
Chupkov said many of the concerns raised by the Public Advocates Office were included in the CPUC revision notice.
Referring to the Public Advocates Office as “Cal Advocates,” the notice stated, “The Cal Advocates’ comments provide a litany of examples of oversights in PG&E’s asset inspections, including missed inspections, inability to produce inspection records, and failures to collect complete asset information.”
The document said those oversights include, but are not limited to the following:
— Out of 967 transmission towers in the High Fire-Threat District that were scheduled for climbing inspections in 2020, PG&E failed to conduct any of those climbing inspections before its internal goal of the end of August 2020 and notedly before the critical fall wildfire risk time period.
— As of January 2021, PG&E could not confirm that it had performed intrusive pole inspections within the time frames required by General Order 165 on more than 41,000 poles.
This is the latest challenge PG&E has faced in meeting the CPUC’s expectations for addressing wildfire risks.
In April, after finding PG&E had made insufficient progress in mitigating wildfire risks across its service territory, the CPUC passed a resolution placing the company into step one of the six-step Enhanced Oversight and Enforcement Process.
The commission created that process to hold the company accountable for improving its safety record after it emerged from bankruptcy in 2020.
PG&E said it’s continuing “to evaluate, evolve and refine our approaches to further reduce wildfire risk and get better this year and beyond. We want our customers, stakeholders and the public to know that we are committed to reducing the risk on our system and continuously improving our approaches to make California a better and safer place for our customers and communities.”
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- Written by: Lake County News reports
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The Konocti Fire Lookout is seeking volunteers for the 2021 fire season.
Prospective volunteers are asked to attend an orientation and general meeting at Kelseyville County Park on Sunday, May 16, at 2 p.m.
Once trained, new volunteers will be asked to schedule themselves for either an eight- or four-hour shift at least once a month.
The Forest Fire Lookout Association organizes the Konocti fire watch under the direction of Cal Fire.
The group currently has limited staffing for its lookouts on Wright Peak until May 15, when it will fully open the volunteer lookout services.
Association volunteers have spotted and reported many incidents in the last five years.
For additional information contact Association Director Jim Adams at 707-245-3771.