- Elizabeth Larson
- Posted On
Middletown Area Town Hall gets updates, takes board nominations
MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – During its last meeting of 2016, the Middletown Area Town Hall heard from the new District 1 supervisor-elect, got updates on projects and took nominations for its 2017 board.
The meeting took place Dec. 8 at the Middletown Community Center.
Shortly after the start of the meeting, MATH Chair Fletcher Thornton offered his congratulations to Jose “Moke” Simon III, who won the District 1 supervisorial seat in the November election. The final results were confirmed by the county's elections office two days before the meeting.
In addition to being grateful to those who supported him, Simon said he wants to earn the respect of people who didn't cast their vote for him.
“I am proud to be standing where I am today,” said Simon, who promised to work as hard as possible to rebuild the south county in the wake of the wildland fires and to develop it into the jewel it can be.
He offered kind words to the three people who ran against him, including Voris Brumfield and Jim Ryan, who were eliminated in the June primary, and Monica Rosenthal, who ran a close race with Simon in the runoff.
Simon said that the south county's rebuilding is his No. 1 priority.
To Jim Comstock, the retiring District 1 supervisor who he will succeed when he's sworn in next month, Simon said it's an honor to step into his shoes.
“I'm going to be bugging you all the time for advice,” Simon promised Comstock.
Simon said he'll steer his own course and is ready to roll forward.
In other business, MATH Board member Linda Diehl-Darms gave a brief update on her visit to the Cobb Area Council, a new municipal advisory council that was formed earlier this year.
There has been discussion at previous meetings about changing MATH's boundaries to exclude the area now covered by the Cobb group. However, Diehl-Darms said the Cobb council's chair told her that he had spoken to Thornton and that it was not necessary at this time to consider boundary changes.
Diehl-Darms said she subsequently sent out an email to the recently formed bylaws committee that there isn't a problem with boundaries overlapping and that no boundary changes are to be done at this time.
Thornton, however, said there is still a need for the committee to meet to clean up MATH's bylaws, work he expected to have the group start working on soon.
Also at the Dec. 8 meeting, Danielle Matthews Seperas of Calpine gave MATH an update on the community garden project on a Calpine-owned lot next to its Middletown Geothermal Visitor Center.
She said a large tree that sits on the lot, the canopy of which covers part of the proposed garden area, was damaged in the Valley fire. An arborist who examined it proposed that it be taken down, and Calpine's legal department won't OK the garden moving forward until the tree is removed.
The tree was scheduled to be removed the middle of this month, but after a woman at the meeting said the tree should be left in place, Seperas agreed to push back the date of the tree removal.
The group's Dec. 8 meeting also included brief updates on a safety improvement project on a portion of Highway 175 outside of Middletown and an area plan revision.
MATH also took nominations for its 2017 board. Marlene Elder was the only nomination at the meeting, while Thornton and Lisa Kaplan had been nominated at the November meeting.
Thornton said the board election will take place in January when MATH holds its first meeting of the new year.
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