LOWER LAKE, Calif. – As the community remains in a shelter in place due to COVID-19, many longtime community events are being canceled or postponed, even those that are a few months away.
This week, the Lower Lake Community Action Group announced that it is canceling its annual Lower Lake Daze Parade and Barbecue.
The event, known as “the best little parade around,” is one of the county’s biggest Memorial Day weekend celebrations.
Group member Mike Dean said the event is the group’s main fundraiser, and helps provide money for its scholarship fund.
The nonprofit organization is seeking donations from the community to help continue to fund the scholarship, which benefits Lower Lake High seniors.
Donations can be mailed to the Lower Lake Community Action Group, P.O. Box 614, Lower Lake, CA 95457-0614.
For more information, contact Dean at 707-994-9174.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – General COVID-19 information is widely available, but what are the risks, and what is being done in Lake County?
What can you do to protect your community – your family?
Lake County Public Health Officer Dr. Gary Pace, MD, MPH, wants community members to have the information they need to make the healthiest choices possible.
He also needs the community’s help. Keeping COVID-19 from gaining a foothold in Lake County is a team effort, and everyone needs to do their part.
At 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 31, Dr. Pace will host a virtual town hall meeting live on the county of Lake Facebook page.
Public officials will answer questions and provide valuable updates. Health care and other community partners will be invited to participate as well.
Please send questions to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by Monday, March 30, at noon. Include “COVID-19 Town Hall” in the subject line.
Whether or not the panelists are able to address every question in the live meeting, the public’s input will help guide future information sharing, and community participation is appreciated.
For those who are not Facebook members, video will also be available via the county’s Granicus feed.
Mediacom subscribers can additionally access the COVID-19 Town Hall via channel 8, Lake County PEG TV.
If you still have questions, send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call 707-263-8174 during business hours.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – March 2020 marks a milestone for Community Care’s Senior Information & Assistance Program.
In 2006 the program expanded its service area to include older adults in all of Mendocino and Lake counties.
Each year it has responded to the questions of an average of 384 individuals, and approximately 293 of those annual inquirers have been first-time callers.
Now in its 14th year of speaking with older adults and their loved ones from Point Arena to Clearlake Oaks, Senior Information & Assistance is pleased to report that it has served over 4,000 unique individuals.
Funded through the Area Agency on Aging of Lake & Mendocino Counties, and with the longtime support of the T.R. Eriksen Foundation, Senior Information & Assistance not only offers referrals to callers about available programs and services for older adults, it also checks back with them to see if they were able to make a connection to those supports.
This followup component is one of the things that brings callers back to Community Care months and years later as new needs and questions arise.
To learn more about area resources for adults ages 60 and older, contact Senior Information & Assistance Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. by calling 707-468-5132 or 1-800-510-2020, or visit www.SeniorResourceDirectory.org .
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The Lake County Superior Court said Monday that, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it will continue to have limited operations through May 1.
On March 18, Lake County Public Health Officer Dr. Gary Pace issued a shelter in place order for Lake County that went into effect on March 19 and will remain in effect until at least April 10.
On March 19, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order ordering all Californians to stay at home.
Additionally, on March 23, California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye issued a statewide order suspending all trials for 60 days. It is expected that the chief justice will issue additional statewide orders extending statutory timeframes.
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to escalate and Lake County Superior Court officials said it is apparent that the social distancing and limits on gatherings will remain in place beyond the court’s originally planned closure through April 1.
Court officials said they understand the delicate balance between public safety and the timely administration of justice.
Under Government Code Section 68115, the court has received an emergency order from the Chief Justice to extend statutory timeframes for the filing of papers and the conducting of judicial business for the period of April 2 through May 1. A copy of the order will be posted on the court website.
While the court provides an essential government service, in an effort to comply with the Public Health officer’s order and to protect court users and staff from the spread of COVID-19, the court will remain closed through May 1, 2020, except for services described below.
Beginning April 2 the court will be handling the following critical emergency matters:
– In-custody criminal arraignments; – Juvenile detention hearings; – Preliminary hearings in which time has not been waived; – Ex-parte temporary domestic violence restraining orders; – Ex-parte civil temporary restraining orders, including civil harassment, workplace violence, gun violence and elder abuse; – Ex-parte emergency petitions for temporary conservatorship; – Ex-parte emergency petitions for temporary guardianship; – Ex-parte family code temporary emergency orders; – Ex-parte emergency civil injunction temporary restraining orders; – Ex-parte applications for orders based on stipulation.
Courtrooms
Pursuant to the order of the presiding judge, access to the fourth floor of the courthouse and the courtrooms is restricted to those persons who are required by law to be present for the court proceeding.
The parties, attorneys and witnesses subpoenaed to testify are permitted to attend. No other persons shall be permitted to attend absent a prior order of the court. A copy of the order is posted on the court website.
The Clearlake Branch Courthouse will not have any cases set and will be closed.
Trials and contested hearings
The court will not be conducting any trials or hearings during the closed period of April 2 through May 1.
The trials and hearings currently set to occur during the closed period will be rescheduled by the court to a date after May 1 and notice of the rescheduled date will be mailed to counsel or the self-represented party. This includes small claims, traffic and unlawful detainer court trials set to occur at the Clearlake Branch Courthouse during the closed period.
Current scheduled court dates
All regular court calendars and currently scheduled court dates for the period of April 2 through May 1 will be rescheduled by the court. Notice of the rescheduled date will be mailed to counsel or the self-represented party.
A hearing involving any request for a restraining order set to be heard during the closed period will be rescheduled to a new hearing date after May 1.
Any temporary restraining order or temporary emergency order currently in effect and expiring during the closed period will be ordered extended and shall remain in effect to the rescheduled hearing date.
Department of Child Support Services
All child support hearings scheduled to be heard during the closed period will be reset for the hearing to occur on a date after May 1 and notice of the rescheduled date will be mailed by the court to counsel and parties.
Veterans court and drug court
All matters set to occur in veterans court and drug court during the closed period will be reset to be heard on a date after May 1 and notice of the rescheduled date will be mailed by the court to counsel and parties.
Court clerk’s offices
The court clerk’s offices will remain closed to the public. Court staff will be available by phone.
A drop-box for the emergency matters listed above will be available at both the Lakeport Courthouse (located in the first-floor lobby) and Clearlake Courthouse (accessed from outside the main door) between 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Filings will be accepted by mail or drop-box.
Any temporary emergency order returned from a judge, will be available for pick up after 4 p.m.
All other filings will require a self-addressed stamped envelope if endorsed copies are desired.
Self-Help Center
The Self-Help Center will be closed to the public. Assistance will be provided by phone and email only. No in-person assistance will be provided.
Jurors
If you received a summons to appear for jury service between April 1 and May 1, you are not required to appear. You will be rescheduled and sent a new notice.
As the situation is quickly evolving, the courts will keep the public up to date at www.lake.courts.ca.gov .
Most recently, it began an unprecedented effort to ensure banks, companies and now households have all the money they need by offering to buy unlimited amounts of securities, including bundled student loans and credit card debt. Even at the peak of the financial crisis in 2008, the Fed’s actions were much more limited in scope – as well as speed.
My colleagues and I at the Indiana Business Research Center have been studying the Fed, its actions and the economic impact for over a quarter-century. Here’s a quick primer on the U.S. central bank, how it works and what it’s doing to keep the economy from sinking into depression.
No guarantee of safety
Before Congress created the Federal Reserve System, the safety and soundness of U.S. banks was hardly a sure thing.
Bank runs – when a large number of customers withdraw their deposits simultaneously over concerns of a bank’s solvency – were common, such as during the Gilded Age from 1863 to 1907, when financial crises occurred frequently.
Yet many Americans were uncomfortable with the idea of a powerful central financial authority. Alexander Hamilton’s short-lived First Bank of the United States, which was “dominated by big banking and money interests,” did little to help to allay those concerns.
Without a central bank, it fell to private financiers like John Pierpont Morgan to avert financial crises by infusing their own capital into the economy. Recurring crises like these eventually led more people to believe that monetary policy and banking should be centralized, culminating in the 1913 Federal Reserve Act.
The act said the Fed would handle monetary policy and stimulus, keep banks safe and sound, and make sure the amount of money circulating was appropriate.
While initially successful at limiting bank runs, the Fed failed to prevent the speculative bubble that preceded the Great Depression – and the bankruptcy of nearly 10,000 banks. This led to the Glass-Steagall Act in 1933, which separated commercial and investment banking and created federal deposit insurance to prevent bank runs.
Congress more clearly delineated the Fed’s purpose in 1977, when it passed the Federal Reserve Reform Act and established what became known as the “dual mandate” of maximum employment and stable prices.
It continues to perform other functions in line with its founding purpose, such as identifying and neutralizing risks to the economy, protecting consumers and promoting the soundness of the financial system and individual institutions.
The Fed’s two key tools
The Fed consists of a group of seven economists – collectively known as the Board of Governors – who have two key tools to affect monetary policy. The Board of Governors uses 12 regional banks of the Federal Reserve System to perform banking services.
The most well-known tool is the Fed’s ability to set short-term interest rates. When it lowers rates, the Fed aims to reduce borrowing costs for companies and consumers to encourage more lending and investment, thus stimulating the economy. It raises rates primarily when the economy is strong, when it wants to keep a lid on inflation.
The other key tool is its ability to buy and sell debt securities in open-market operations.
The Fed used this tool for the first time in 1923 ostensibly to stem a recession. By buying Treasury securities from private sellers, it was able to pump more money into the banking system, ensuring there was enough cheap credit for borrowers.
So it turned to its second tool and committed to essentially buy as many securities as necessary to stave off mass layoffs, debt defaults, bankruptcies and depression. This includes buying bundles of investment-grade corporate bonds, student loans and credit card debt for the first time.
As a result, the Fed’s balance sheet, which had fallen below $4 trillion last year, has now swelled to a new record of $4.7 trillion – and could double in size before it’s done, based on the new lending authority it’s being granted by the federal bailout.
LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Lake County Library’s grant-funded Zip Books program that delivers books, large print books and audiobooks to library patrons at home continues to operate during the COVID19 shelter-in-place order.
You must have a Lake County Library card and a Lake County mailing address to order a Zip Book through the Lake County Library.
With your Lake County Library card you can submit Zip Book requests through the Zip Book order form on the library’s website, http://library.lakecountyca.gov , under the “Books and More” tab.
If you don’t have a Lake County Library card, you can apply for a temporary library card number and PIN on the library’s website.
If you have any questions about Zip Books call 707-263-8817 and leave a message or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . An employee will respond to your message.
The library orders the book from Amazon and the book is delivered to your mailing address. During the COVID19 emergency, Amazon deliveries may take a little longer than normal, so have patience.
The Zip Book is also checked out on your library card. When you finish reading your book, please hold it until the library reopens.
Hand-deliver your Zip Book to a library employee, along with any Amazon paperwork that comes with it. Library due dates have been extended and any fines accrued during the shelter in place order will be waived.
Zip Books patrons can request a maximum of five books per month. At present, the Zip Books policy that prevents libraries from ordering books that they already own has been temporarily suspended.
Zip Books is a statewide project of the NorthNet Library System, funded by the California State Library. The Lake County Library has participated in Zip Books since 2015.
Jan Cook is a library technician for the Lake County Library.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – A new nationwide forecast estimates that the COVID-19 pandemic could peak in California in late April and end in the United States in June if strong social distancing measures continue, but that in the meantime most of the country’s states could see their health care systems stretched to the limit.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, an independent global health research organization at the University of Washington School of Medicine, produced the new forecast.
Calling COVID-19 “an extraordinary challenge to US health and the healthcare system,” the institute – or IHME – estimates that demand for ventilators and beds in US hospital intensive care units will far exceed capacity for COVID-19 patients as early as the second week of April.
The institute’s forecast also anticipates that deaths related to the current wave of COVID-19 in the US are likely to persist into July, even if people continue to protect themselves and their communities by strongly adhering to social distancing measures and by taking other precautions advised by public health officials.
IHME’s analysis, based on observed death rates, estimates that over the next four months in the US, approximately 81,000 people will die from the virus. Estimates range between 38,000 and 162,000 US deaths.
The forecast predicts that 41 states will need more ICU beds than they currently have available and that 11 states may need to increase their ICU beds by 50 percent or more to meet patient needs before the current wave of the pandemic ends, a point which is defined as fewer than 10 deaths per day nationwide. The end of the pandemic could occur toward the end of June.
“Our estimated trajectory of COVID-19 deaths assumes continued and uninterrupted vigilance by the general public, hospital and health workers, and government agencies,” said IHME Director Dr. Christopher Murray. “The trajectory of the pandemic will change – and dramatically for the worse – if people ease up on social distancing or relax with other precautions. We encourage everyone to adhere to those precautions to help save lives.”
Nationwide, COVID-19 deaths are forecast to peak at 2,271 per day on April 15. Hospital resource use is expected to peak that same day, with more than 224,000 hospital beds needed, more than 33,000 intensive care unit beds required and more than 26,000 ventilators in use.
In California, where a statewide stay at home order went into effect on March 19, IHME’s forecast estimates that deaths will peak at 100 per day on April 25 and remain there for several days before beginning to decline.
The forecast states that California has a total of 26,654 beds and 1,993 available intensive care beds.
Peak resource use in California will occur on April 26, based on IHME’s forecast, with 10,468 beds needed, and 1,564 ICU beds and 1,252 ventilators required to care for patients. Peak use will persist for several days before dropping off.
Total COVID-19 deaths in California projected through Aug. 4 are estimated to reach approximately 4,306, while total deaths overall are expected to top 6,100, according to IHME’s analysis.
California’s projected number of deaths ranks the state second nationwide, with New York expected to have more than 10,200 deaths overall. Rounding out the projected top five are Texas, 5,847; New Jersey, 4,109; and Michigan, 4,061.
The forecast does not offer an estimate of how many total COVID-19 cases each state could experience, and the analysis does not look at states on a county-by-county level.
As of Sunday night, a tally of reports from public health departments across California conducted by Lake County News put the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in California at approximately 6,345, with deaths numbering 132. The IHME analysis had forecast eight fewer deaths in California on Sunday.
As of the latest information available through the weekend, no positive cases of COVID-19 have so far been confirmed in Lake and nearly a dozen other counties, including Alpine, Del Norte, Lassen, Mariposa, Modoc, Plumas, Sierra, Tehama and Trinity, with Tuolumne reporting a case of a nonresident with the virus being treated in that county, according to those respective counties’ public health departments.
Lake County’s public schools closed on March 16 and Lake County Public Health Officer Dr. Gary Pace issued a countywide shelter in place order that went into effect on March 19, with an additional order days later closing Clear Lake, all county waterways and lodging facilities.
In Lake County, which has a large population of both seniors and veterans, there are a total of 50 hospital beds between Adventist Health Clear Lake Hospital and Sutter Lakeside Hospital, which are both under the “critical access” designation that limits them to 25 beds each.
Dr. Pace said last week that, with state waivers, Sutter Lakeside could increase to 50 beds and Adventist to about 40. Together, the hospitals have 11 ventilators available with access to five more.
Some Bay Area counties are reported to be considering extending their own shelter in place orders.
So far, Dr. Pace has not reported if he plans on extending Lake County’s stay in place order past its initial April 10 end date.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
NORTH COAST, Calif. – California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation officials are searching for two minimum-security inmates who walked away from the California Correctional Center Eel River Conservation Camp in Humboldt County Friday evening.
During an inmate count at around 9:45 p.m. on March 27, staff discovered inmate Derek Barnett, 29 and Noah Wilson, 28 were not in their assigned bunks. A search of the camp buildings and grounds was immediately conducted, officials said.
CDCR said the men were last seen at approximately 8:30 p.m. Friday Both were wearing grey sweatshirts, grey sweat pants and white tennis shoes.
CDCR’s Office of Correctional Safety, Cal Fire, the California Highway Patrol and local law enforcement agencies have been notified and are assisting in the search.
Barnett was assigned as a porter and Wilson was assigned as a cook at the camp, which houses approximately 120 minimum-custody inmates.
CDCR told Lake County News that they are continuing to search for the two inmates, and asking people around the region to be on the lookout.
Barnett is a white male, 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighing 272 pounds with brown eyes, black hair, a mustache and goatee. He was received on Feb. 7, 2019, from Placer County, sentenced to four and eight months for possession of a firearm and vehicle theft. He was scheduled to parole in December.
Wilson is a white male, 5 feet 11 inches tall, weighing 200 pounds with hazel eyes, brown hair, a mustache and goatee, with a tattoo “Damaged” above his right eye. He was received from San Bernardino County on July 9, 2019, sentenced to four years for possession of a controlled substance for sale. He was scheduled to parole in April 2021.
Anyone who sees Barnett or Wilson should contact 911 or law enforcement authorities immediately.
Anyone having information about or knowledge of the location of Barnett or Wilson should contact the CCC watch commander at 530-257-2181, Extension 4173.
As the author of threebooksabout essayist, poet and philosopher Henry David Thoreau, I highly recommend “Walden,” Thoreau’s 1854 account of his time living “alone” in the woods outside Concord, Massachusetts. I qualify “alone” because Thoreau had more company at Walden than in town, and hoed a bean field daily as social theater in full view of passersby on the road.
Published in over 1,000 editions and translated into scores of languages, “Walden” is the scriptural fountainhead of the modern environmental movement, a philosophical treatise on self-reliance and a salient volume of the American literary canon. In his introduction to the Princeton edition, John Updike claims that Thoreau’s masterpiece “contributed most to America’s present sense of itself” during the cultural renaissance of the mid-19th century, yet “risks being as revered and unread as the Bible.”
Another reason to read or reread “Walden” during trying times is that it gushes with sorely needed optimism and is laced with wit. And Thoreau befriends you by writing in the first person.
Reality lies within us
As governments mandate social distancing to protect public health, many readers may be coming to grips with solitude. Thoreau devotes a chapter to it, extolling the virtue of getting to know yourself really well.
“Why should I feel lonely?” he asks, “is not our planet in the Milky Way?” Elsewhere he clarifies the difference between what we need and what we think we need, writing, “My greatest skill has been to want but little.”
“Walden” doesn’t have to be read straight through like a novel. For readers who have previously given up on it, I suggest rebooting in the middle with “The Ponds,” which opens thus: “Sometimes, having had a surfeit of human society and gossip, and worn out all my village friends, I rambled still farther westward than I habitually dwell…” Thoreau then retreats away from the mindless distractions of community life toward an immersion into Nature, with water at its spiritual center.
Next, flip back to the earlier chapter “Where I Lived and What I Lived For.” Here Thoreau invites readers on a downward journey, from the fleeting shallows of their social lives to the solid depths of their individual lives:
“Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality…”
Our brains build that reality – yours, mine, everyone’s – by integrating external sensory signals with internal memories. Thoreau’s point – which is supported by 21st-century cognitive and neuroscience research – is that the real you precedes the social you. Your world is built from the inside of your skull outward, not vice versa.
The elusive simple life
Thoreau’s retreat to Walden Pond is often mistaken for a hermit’s flight deep into the woods. Actually, Thoreau put some distance between himself and his home and village so that he could understand himself and society better. When not in town, he swapped human companionship for the “beneficent society” of Nature for long enough to make “the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant.”
Today mandatory social distancing is wrecking the global economy, based on traditional metrics like gross domestic product and stock prices. Viewed through “Walden,” this wreckage may look like a long-overdue correction for an unsustainable system.
Thoreau feared that the economy he saw was headed in the wrong direction. His opening chapter, “Economy,” is an extended rant against what he viewed as a capitalistic, urbanizing, consumption-driven, fashion-conscious 19th-century New England.
Of his neighbors, Thoreau wrote, “By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book” – meaning the Christian Bible – “laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool’s life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.”
In contrast, his recipe for a good economy is one of “Walden”‘s most famous quotes: “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand.”
That was easier said than done, even for Thoreau. When he conceived “Walden,” he was an unemployed, landless idealist. By the time it was published, he lived in a big house that was heated with Appalachian coal, earning income by manufacturing pulverized graphite and surveying for land developers.
Since then, the world’s population has more than quintupled and developed nations have built a global economy approaching US$100 trillion per year. Human impacts on the planet have become so powerful that scientists have coined the term Anthropocene to describe our current epoch.
Finding perspective in solitude
Some Americans have tried at least halfheartedly to follow “Walden”’s idealistic advice by living deliberately, being more self-reliant and shrinking their planetary footprints. Personally, although I’ve downsized my house, walk to work, fly only for funerals and cook virtually every meal from scratch, in my heart I know I’ve also contributed to the world’s swelling population, burn fracked natural gas and am hopelessly embedded in a consumer economy.
Nevertheless, after several weeks of social distancing, I’m rediscovering the value of two of Thoreau’s key points: Solitude is helping me recalibrate what matters most, and the current economic slowdown offers short-term gains and a long-term message for the planet.
These benefits don’t compensate for the incalculable personal losses and grief that COVID-19 is inflicting worldwide. But they are consolation prizes until things stabilize in the new normal. On my daily solitary walk in the woods, I am mindful of Thoreau’s words: “Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.”
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LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Board of Supervisors will hold a special meeting this week to consider a proposed letter to the governor and to discuss other matters related to the county’s response to COVID-19.
The board will meet virtually beginning at 9 a.m. Tuesday, March 31.
The meeting can be watched live on Channel 8 and online on the county’s Facebook page or at https://countyoflake.legistar.com/Calendar.aspx . Accompanying board documents, the agenda and archived board meeting videos also are available at that link.
Because the meeting will be held virtually, members of the public are asked to submit comments on items to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Please note the agenda item number addressed.
This week’s board meeting is deemed a special one as the board usually does not meet the fifth Tuesday of the month.
At 9:10 a.m., the board will get the latest update on COVID-19 from Lake County Public Health Officer Dr. Gary Pace.
In an untimed item, Supervisor Rob Brown is asking the board to consider sending a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom “suspend all legislation that has been recently introduced or been enacted over the last two years that would been seen as detrimental to many private enterprise jobs,” according to Brown’s memo to the board.
The letter, which can be seen below, asks that the governor “act swiftly to suspend all legislation that has been recently introduced or, has been enacted over the last two years that would be seen as detrimental to many private enterprise jobs. This legislation would include Assembly Bills 36, 40, 673,725, 5, 790, 882, 1332 and Senate Bills 37, 44, 135, 10, 246 and 567.”
It goes on to note, “Much of the workforce and business impacted by these legislative actions have actually been identified by the Governor as essential during this current crisis of COVID-19. Additionally, many local businesses may not qualify for benefits that are being made available to others by our Federal and State representatives.
The letter concludes, “The possibility of losing hundreds of thousands of jobs to the effects of COVID-19, is inevitable. To lose hundreds of thousands more, as a result of legislation that is under your control, is a potential disaster that is avoidable.”
In another untimed item, the board will consider recommended changes in the customary budget procedure for fiscal year 2020-21 recommended and final recommended budget, as well as proposed changes to the board’s annual meeting calendar for 2020.
Specifically, County Administrative Officer Carol Huchingson told the board in a memo for the meeting that her staff must make alternative plans for the coming fiscal year’s budget, with staffing resources “severely limited” due to COVID-19 disaster response.
“Staff met recently with the Auditor-Controller and with department heads to discuss solutions and determined that the best option will be to initiate the budget process by replicating the numbers from Adopted Budget for FY 2019/2020, as a starting point for FY 2020/2021,” Huchingson said.
Huchingson said her office, in conjunction with departments, will make minor adjustments, between April 13 and May 1.
Originally, the recommended budget hearings were calendared for June 10 and 11, with the final budget hearings set for Sept. 15, Huchingson reported.
She said that, due to the COVID-19 health emergency, staff is requesting to move those meetings to June 9 for the recommended budget hearings, with department heads to present their final budget presentations to the board on Sept. 23 and 24 during final recommended budget hearings.
The full agenda is below.
CONSENT AGENDA
5.1: Approve postponement of performance evaluations of board-appointees due to the COVID-19 crisis.
5.2: Approve the continuation of local health emergency related to the 2019 coronavirus (COVID-19) as proclaimed by the Lake County Public Health officer.
5.3: Approve the continuation of a local emergency due to the Mendocino Complex fire incident (River and Ranch fires).
5.4: Approve the continuation of a local emergency due to the Pawnee fire incident.
5.5: Approve continuation of a local emergency due to COVID-19.
5.6: Sitting as the Lake County Sanitation District Board of Directors, approve Amendment No. 1 between Lake County Sanitation District and Brelje & Race Consulting Engineers in the amount of $48,000 and a total contract amount of $405,000 for the Anderson Springs Sewer Project; and authorize the chair to sign.
5.7: Sitting as the Lake County Sanitation District Board of Directors, approve an exception to the Lake County Sewer Use Code Sec. 205, allowing APN No. 050-441-36 to remain on septic system until such time as the system is in need of repair or replacement, at which time the property owner will be required to connect to the public sewer at the owner's expense.
5.8: Request to waive 900-hour limit for extra help Field Technician II Daniella Cazares.
TIMED ITEMS
6.2, 9:06 a.m.: Consideration of continuation of a local health emergency and order prohibiting the endangerment of the community through the unsafe removal, transportation and disposal of fire debris for the Mendocino Complex fire.
6.3, 9:10 a.m.: Consideration of Update on COVID-19.
UNTIMED ITEMS
7.2: Consideration of letter to Gov. Newsom asking to suspend legislation that would affect private enterprise jobs.
7.3: (a) Consideration of recommended changes in customary budget procedure for fiscal year 2020/2021 recommended and final recommended budget; and (b) consideration of changes to the board's annual meeting calendar for 2020.
CLOSED SESSION
8.1: Public employee evaluation: Health Services director.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – What can anyone do right now during the latest in a series of major disruptions in our lives that affect so very many, but act responsibly and curb all activities away from our homes if at all possible.
Somehow, knowing that “this too, shall pass” like all crises doesn't help most of us much when you add up the ripple-effect of the coronavirus: the cost in lives, the damages to businesses and the economy, as well as the losses of the rich threads of community that weave our lives together in 'normal' times.
Without sounding Pollyannaish, what we do have now though is our hope: hope that the mortality rate will soon drop and nature will balance out in the end, keeping our cherished families and friends safe.
We also have an innate ability to feed our inner strength, rather than nourish the triple beasts of dread, panic and fear.
Also, we have one another, and in the land of 21st-century technology many of us possess the ability to stay connected. And that connection is truly a gift.
Previous to the pandemic I was out on Highway 20 heading toward the Bureau of Land Management’s Cache Creek Wilderness Area.
Just before the Redbud Trailhead sign I was treated to a sighting of Lake County's herd of tule elk.
The big beasts were grazing on grasses along with the aquatic plants in the nearby pond.
Elk have been observed munching on manzanita berries, blue oak branches, oak leaves and scrub oak.
Elk avoid humans and will abandon their favorite grazing grounds if people approach too closely.
The elk herds appear to associate with horses, however, as they have been spotted together on different occasions grazing and even galloping along together, along with tossing their heads in concert with horses.
Deer and elk tend to avoid one another and keep to their own kind. I snapped a few photos of the tule elk and noted their scruffy coats, so I contacted Joshua Bush at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and asked him about it.
“Overall their coats look pretty good; they can be much scruffier looking,” Bush said. “You are correct that they are not likely molting into their summer coats because it is too early. The disrupted patches of fur you are seeing are likely from rubbing to remove tick or other bugs and rubbing on vegetation in general."
Our tule elk are a native subspecies to California, which should be called super-elk, since they are the only type which can withstand desert conditions.
Smaller and lighter than their cousins the Roosevelt elk and Rocky Mountain elk, the tule elk's population was around half a million before European contact.
Then, they ranged from the Sierra Nevada hillsides to the Pacific Coast, and north to Shasta along with their southern population extending to Kern County.
After the California gold rush tule elk suffered habitat loss with the introduction of non-native plants.
Elk herds had to compete for food with the range cattle and other livestock that were introduced then.
Along with those devastating elk herd disruptions came unregulated hunting that further wiped out tule elk numbers, bringing them to near-extinction.
Thankfully, tule elk hunting was banned in 1873 by the State Legislature.
In 1874 a game warden, A. C Tibbett happened upon a breeding pair of tule elk on cattle rancher Henry Miller's land in the San Joquin Valley, thereby producing evidence that the elk had not been completely decimated as was the fear.
In the 1970s conservation measures for the tule elk were put into place to protect these stately animals.
Now, elk numbers are estimated at about 5,000 with 22 separate populations.
The growing elk population is a true gift, ours to enjoy.
Kathleen Scavone, M.A., is a retired educator, potter, freelance writer and author of “Anderson Marsh State Historic Park: A Walking History, Prehistory, Flora, and Fauna Tour of a California State Park” and “Native Americans of Lake County.”
Eight and a half years into its grand tour of the solar system, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft was ready for another encounter.
It was Jan. 24, 1986, and soon it would meet the mysterious seventh planet, icy-cold Uranus.
Over the next few hours, Voyager 2 flew within 50,600 miles (81,433 kilometers) of Uranus’ cloud tops, collecting data that revealed two new rings, 11 new moons and temperatures below minus 353 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 214 degrees Celsius). The dataset is still the only up-close measurements we have ever made of the planet.
Three decades later, scientists reinspecting that data found one more secret.
Unbeknownst to the entire space physics community, 34 years ago Voyager 2 flew through a plasmoid, a giant magnetic bubble that may have been whisking Uranus’s atmosphere out to space. The finding, reported in Geophysical Research Letters, raises new questions about the planet’s one-of-a-kind magnetic environment.
A wobbly magnetic oddball
Planetary atmospheres all over the solar system are leaking into space. Hydrogen springs from Venus to join the solar wind, the continuous stream of particles escaping the Sun. Jupiter and Saturn eject globs of their electrically-charged air. Even Earth’s atmosphere leaks. (Don’t worry, it will stick around for another billion years or so.)
The effects are tiny on human timescales, but given long enough, atmospheric escape can fundamentally alter a planet’s fate. For a case in point, look at Mars.
“Mars used to be a wet planet with a thick atmosphere,” said Gina DiBraccio, space physicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and project scientist for the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN mission. “It evolved over time” — 4 billion years of leakage to space — “to become the dry planet we see today.”
Atmospheric escape is driven by a planet’s magnetic field, which can both help and hinder the process. Scientists believe magnetic fields can protect a planet, fending off the atmosphere-stripping blasts of the solar wind. But they can also create opportunities for escape, like the giant globs cut loose from Saturn and Jupiter when magnetic field lines become tangled. Either way, to understand how atmospheres change, scientists pay close attention to magnetism.
That’s one more reason Uranus is such a mystery. Voyager 2’s 1986 flyby revealed just how magnetically weird the planet is.
“The structure, the way that it moves … ,” DiBraccio said, “Uranus is really on its own.”
Unlike any other planet in our solar system, Uranus spins almost perfectly on its side — like a pig on a spit roast — completing a barrel roll once every 17 hours. Its magnetic field axis points 60 degrees away from that spin axis, so as the planet spins, its magnetosphere — the space carved out by its magnetic field — wobbles like a poorly-thrown football. Scientists still don’t know how to model it.
This oddity drew DiBraccio and her coauthor Dan Gershman, a fellow Goddard space physicist, to the project. Both were part of a team working out plans for a new mission to the 'ice giants' Uranus and Neptune, and they were looking for mysteries to solve. Uranus’ strange magnetic field, last measured more than 30 years ago, seemed like a good place to start.
So they downloaded Voyager 2’s magnetometer readings, which monitored the strength and direction of the magnetic fields near Uranus as the spacecraft flew by. With no idea what they’d find, they zoomed in closer than previous studies, plotting a new datapoint every 1.92 seconds. Smooth lines gave way to jagged spikes and dips. And that’s when they saw it: a tiny zigzag with a big story.
“Do you think that could be … a plasmoid?” Gershman asked DiBraccio, catching sight of the squiggle.
Little known at the time of Voyager 2’s flyby, plasmoids have since become recognized as an important way planets lose mass. These giant bubbles of plasma, or electrified gas, pinch off from the end of a planet’s magnetotail — the part of its magnetic field blown back by the Sun like a windsock. With enough time, escaping plasmoids can drain the ions from a planet’s atmosphere, fundamentally changing its composition. They had been observed at Earth and other planets, but no one had detected plasmoids at Uranus — yet.
DiBraccio ran the data through her processing pipeline and the results came back clean. “I think it definitely is,” she said.
The bubble escapes
The plasmoid DiBraccio and Gershman found occupied a mere 60 seconds of Voyager 2’s 45-hour-long flight by Uranus. It appeared as a quick up-down blip in the magnetometer data. “But if you plotted it in 3D, it would look like a cylinder,” Gershman said.
Comparing their results to plasmoids observed at Jupiter, Saturn and Mercury, they estimated a cylindrical shape at least 127,000 miles (204,000 kilometers) long, and up to roughly 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) across. Like all planetary plasmoids, it was full of charged particles — mostly ionized hydrogen, the authors believe.
Readings from inside the plasmoid — as Voyager 2 flew through it — hinted at its origins. Whereas some plasmoids have a twisted internal magnetic field, DiBraccio and Gershman observed smooth, closed magnetic loops. Such loop-like plasmoids are typically formed as a spinning planet flings bits of its atmosphere to space.
“Centrifugal forces take over, and the plasmoid pinches off,” Gershman said. According to their estimates, plasmoids like that one could account for between 15 and 55% of atmospheric mass loss at Uranus, a greater proportion than either Jupiter or Saturn. It may well be the dominant way Uranus sheds its atmosphere to space.
How has plasmoid escape changed Uranus over time? With only one set of observations, it’s hard to say.
“Imagine if one spacecraft just flew through this room and tried to characterize the entire Earth,” DiBraccio said. “Obviously it’s not going to show you anything about what the Sahara or Antarctica is like.”
But the findings help focus new questions about the planet. The remaining mystery is part of the draw. “It’s why I love planetary science,” DiBraccio said. “You’re always going somewhere you don’t really know.”
Miles Hatfield works for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.