LAKEPORT, Calif. — Get ready for a magical winter experience as the Rotary Club of Lakeport proudly presents the Lakeport Blizzard, a festive event set to transform Library Park's Gazebo into a winter wonderland on Thursday, Dec. 14, and Thursday, Dec. 21, at 6 p.m., weather permitting.
While Lakeport may not be known for its snowy landscapes, the Rotary Club is set to defy expectations and create a winter spectacle that will delight attendees of all ages.
The Lakeport Blizzard promises a joyful and enchanting atmosphere, offering residents and visitors a unique opportunity to experience the magic of the season.
"We're thrilled to bring the Lakeport Blizzard to our community," said Rotary President Mark Lipps. "This event is our way of spreading holiday cheer and creating a festive environment for families to come together and celebrate. It's a free event, open to everyone, and we encourage the community to join us for this special experience."
Attendees can expect the chance to witness the Gazebo transformed into a snowy spectacle, complete with lights and music. The event will feature holiday music, hot cocoa (provided by the Lakeport Fire Department), and of course, falling “snow.”
The Rotary Club of Lakeport is dedicated to serving the community, and the Lakeport Blizzard is just one example of their commitment to spreading joy and building connections among residents.
The event is made possible through the generous support of local sponsors and volunteers who share in the spirit of community and holiday celebrations.
As the sun sets over Library Park, organizers said the Lakeport Blizzard will bring a touch of winter magic to Lakeport, proving that even in a place where snow is a rare sight, the community can come together to create a Blizzard of holiday joy.
For more information about the Lakeport Blizzard and other Rotary Club of Lakeport events, please go to their website.
With an increase of xylazine in the nation’s illegal drug supply, the California Department of Public Health is continuing to reach out to Californians to educate the public about xylazine and its potential harms to health.
“Xylazine is a powerful sedative commonly known as ‘tranq’ or ‘tranq dope’ and has been linked to an increasing number of overdose deaths nationwide,” said CDPH Director and State Public Health Officer, Dr. Tomás Aragón. “While current data suggests that xylazine is relatively uncommon in California’s drug supply at this time, we are taking steps to reach our local partners, community-based organizations, healthcare providers, and all Californians to warn them of this evolving situation."
On Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom also announced new legislation to prevent the illicit use and trafficking of xylazine.
Xylazine is a new and emerging issue in California. However, the drug supply is unpredictable, and state officials are concerned that xylazine may eventually become more common in California, increasing instances of fatal overdose, potentially dangerous periods of unconsciousness, and serious skin infections.
To educate Californians on xylazine and the dangers it presents, CDPH has developed several resources — including flyers and fact sheets — to share with local agencies, community-based organizations, and partners. These resources are available on CDPH’s dedicated xylazine page.
In addition, CDPH has issued guidance to healthcare facilities and providers (All Facilities Letter 23-35) on how to support patients who may have been exposed. These practices include informing clinicians on when to suspect xylazine exposure, how to manage symptoms of withdrawal in patients, how to treat xylazine-associated wounds, and how to properly provide follow-up care.
CDPH has already issued several alerts to local partners, including a March letter to local health officers, an issue brief and a June health alert.
Xylazine is a powerful sedative intended for animals as a pain reliever. It is not safe for humans and can cause drowsiness, amnesia, serious skin wounds and can also slow breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure to dangerously low levels.
Xylazine is almost exclusively combined with fentanyl, an opioid, often without the knowledge of those who use these drugs. Taking fentanyl or xylazine in combination with other central nervous system depressants, like alcohol or benzodiazepines such as Valium or Xanax, increases the risk of life-threatening overdose. If a xylazine overdose is suspected, experts recommend giving the opioid reversal agent naloxone, providing rescue breathing if needed, and calling 911.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The Lake County Sheriff’s Office said it is investigating a break-in earlier this month at Lower Lake High School that resulted in thousands of dollars worth of equipment being stolen.
Much of the equipment has been recovered and one arrest has been made, the agency said.
On Nov. 19, deputies responded to Lower Lake High School regarding a possible burglary of items from school vehicles, said sheriff’s public information officer Lauren Berlinn.
Berlinn said Deputy Chase Reynolds spoke with a school maintenance worker who said he arrived at the school at around 7:30 a.m. and saw the chain locking the gate surrounding the maintenance yard had been cut, five maintenance vehicles were tampered with, and several power tools and fuel were stolen.
The estimated total loss of tools was valued at over $8,000, Berlinn said.
The maintenance worker reviewed surveillance camera footage from the weekend and saw two males enter the maintenance yard at midnight on Nov. 19, siphon gasoline out of the school maintenance vehicles and remove tools from the vehicles. Berlinn said the suspects returned two hours later and stole additional tools from the vehicles.
The surveillance footage caught the suspects leaving the school in a green Honda Civic with distinct features, according to Berlinn’s report.
Deputies searched the Clearlake area and, with the assistance of Clearlake Police Department Officers, located the vehicle in Clearlake, Berlinn said.
Deputies contacted the driver and determined they were on searchable probation out of Lake County. Berlinn said the driver was suspected of being one of the suspects by Deputy Reynolds, as they were wearing similar clothing as seen in the surveillance video.
Per the driver’s probation status, Deputy Reynolds searched the vehicle. Deputy Reynolds located and recovered several of the stolen tools and items used to siphon fuel, Berlinn said.
Deputy Reynolds arrested the driver, identified as Johnny Richard Caldwell, 23, and drove him to his residence in Clearlake to conduct a further probation search, which resulted in the recovery of approximately $8,700 worth of power tools, hand tools, power tool accessories, and school laptops, according to Berlinn.
Berlinn said the items recovered were positively identified as belonging to the school as they were all engraved with unique identifying information. Lower Lake High School officials confirmed the recovered items were those stolen from the school.
This investigation is ongoing. Anyone with information should contact Deputy Reynolds via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
CLEARLAKE, Calif. — Clearlake Animal Control has more than three dozen dogs awaiting their new families as the holidays approach.
The Clearlake Animal Control website lists 41 adoptable dogs.
Available to a new home is “Ophelia,” a female pit bull terrier with a brown and tan coat.
This week’s adoptable dogs also include “Jupiter,” a male German shepherd mix with a tricolor coat.
The shelter is located at 6820 Old Highway 53. It’s open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
For more information, call the shelter at 707-762-6227, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., visit Clearlake Animal Control on Facebook or on the city’s website.
This week’s adoptable dogs are featured below.
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.
This week a Southern California judge issued a ruling upholding Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara’s order that the FAIR Plan offer homeowners a more comprehensive homeowners’ insurance policy option.
The ruling by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Curtis A. Kin, issued on Nov. 27, is consistent with a 2021 ruling by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mary Strobel upholding the commissioner’s authority.
Following that ruling, Commissioner Lara issued an Amended Order 2021-2 to the FAIR Plan.
Judge Kin denied the FAIR Plan’s request to vacate his amended order, upholding the commissioner’s ability to order additional coverages including accidental discharge or overflow of water or steam; premises liability; incidental workers’ compensation; theft; falling objects; weight of ice, snow, or sleet; freezing; and loss of use, including coverage for additional living expenses and fair rental value.
These are typically included in a standard comprehensive homeowners policy, but not offered under the FAIR Plan’s limited fire policy.
FAIR Plan policyholders who want additional coverage must purchase a separate difference in conditions, or DIC, policy offered by a private insurance company.
Judge Kin wrote that “the prohibitive cost of DIC policies and confusion about what DIC policies cover supports the Commissioner’s desire to have an expanded policy as an option for homeowners, in furtherance of the goal of assuring stability in the property insurance market.”
“This ruling is a win for homeowners and an essential part of our ongoing strategy during this unprecedented time in our state. It upholds my authority to implement measures that enhance the availability and affordability of insurance coverages for consumers. While we continue to pursue long-term insurance solutions to safeguard Californians from climate change, it’s essential that homeowners have a strong short-term option in the California FAIR Plan,” said Lara.
“Requiring Californians to purchase separate insurance policies only results in higher costs and greater confusion, leaving them on the hook for uninsured damage from a winter storm or burst pipe. Many FAIR Plan policyholders are seniors or families who cannot afford to pay these unexpected costs out-of-pocket. The sooner that the FAIR Plan can offer a more comprehensive policy option, the better for many Californians. This ruling is a step forward in achieving a balanced and robust insurance market that meets the needs of Californians. I will continue to put the needs of California’s insurance consumers first through a sustainable insurance marketplace that serves all consumers,” Lara added.
The FAIR Plan is California’s “insurer of last resort,” offering a bare-bones residential policy that covers fire and smoke damage but forces homeowners to purchase an additional policy at an increased cost to have coverage for liability, water damage and other common perils.
Many FAIR Plan policyholders do not, and cannot, purchase a difference in conditions policy, increasing the coverage gap for vulnerable communities.
Modernizing the FAIR Plan to meet Californians’ coverage needs is a key goal of Commissioner Lara’s Sustainable Insurance Strategy, which he announced in September.
The FAIR Plan has approximately 330,000 residential policies in the state as of September 2023, according to its data.
According to Department of Insurance data, approximately 40% of FAIR Plan policyholders insuring an owner-occupied dwelling do not have a DIC policy, leaving them uninsured for winter storm damage and other common losses.
In 2022, the FAIR Plan insured approximately 270,000 residential policies. About 200,000 of these policies insured an owner-occupied dwelling, constituting roughly 3.1% of the state’s homeowners’ market.
As of September 2023, FAIR Plan has shown growth exceeding 20% over last year.
LAKEPORT, Calif. — The Lakeport Police Department is planning a December meeting regarding the agency’s use of military equipment.
In compliance with Assembly Bill 481 (2021 Chiu), the department has scheduled a community engagement meeting at 1:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 28, in the council chambers at Lakeport City Hall, 225 Park St.
The meeting, open to any member of the public, will be for the purpose of discussion, including a question-and-answer session, regarding its annual military equipment report.
For more information, contact the Lakeport Police Department at 707-263-5491.
Adults who faced adversity during childhood were significantly more likely to die from or be hospitalized because of COVID-19. That’s the key finding of my team’s recent study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
The study of 150,000 adults in the United Kingdom found those reporting the most childhood trauma had a 25% greater likelihood of death associated with COVID-19, as well as a 22% increase in hospitalization after contracting COVID-19. These figures held up even after accounting for demographics and health conditions.
Childhood trauma includes physical, emotional or sexual abuse, neglect, household dysfunction and what many call “toxic stress.”
Our study relied on the UK Biobank, a large biomedical database with more than 500,000 volunteers ages 40 to 69 throughout the United Kingdom. Close to one-third of those volunteers provided information about their childhood. Our team took that data and then searched medical records for participants who died or were hospitalized because of COVID-19. Though more research is needed, these initial results highlight the lasting impacts of childhood stress and the need to provide psychological support early on to mitigate lifelong health risks.
Why it matters
COVID-19 had killed nearly 7 million people worldwide as of November 2023. This underscores the importance of understanding all of the risk factors leading to pandemic-related hospitalization and death.
Prior research has examined the demographic risk factors for COVID-19, including age, race, ethnicity, income and education. But this is the first study to link childhood experiences to adult COVID-19 outcomes.
The striking findings of the study suggest that early childhood trauma should be added to the list of risk factors for illness – not only for COVID-19 but perhaps for other diseases as well.
The study also suggests that communities disproportionately affected by adversity and trauma may be particularly vulnerable to negative health outcomes. This includes communities where there are high levels of neighborhood violence, stress and poverty.
What other research is being done
Our research was prompted by a growing body of work that has found an association between adverse childhood experiences and health problems in adulthood. Adults experiencing significant childhood abuse have an increased risk for chronic conditions, including heart disease, lung disease, cancer and premature death.
Researchers are still trying to understand how childhood adversity contributes to negative health outcomes in adulthood. It could be primarily biological in nature. For instance, adversity has been linked to excess inflammation. Inflammation is normally a protective response from the body, triggered by harmful stimuli such as pathogens, damaged cells or toxins. However, excessive inflammation is related to strokes, heart attacks and other health conditions and can lead to more negative COVID-19 outcomes.
In contrast, the links between early adversity and poorer health could be behavioral in nature. Adversity is associated with having less money or education as an adult. These factors could, in turn, be associated with less access to and subpar medical care. Studies have shown that people with lower incomes and lower-paying jobs were exposed to COVID-19 in the workplace more often. Adversity is also associated with depression and challenges to emotion regulation. This in turn could result in downstream changes in biology and behavior.
What’s next
Our team plans to continue investigating large population studies – that is, at least 30,000 to 50,000 participants – to determine whether adverse childhood experiences relate to other health outcomes, like long COVID.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that learning more about how childhood trauma becomes embedded in the body could inform our understanding of possible interventions and long-term health outcomes, including those potentially connected to COVID-19.
The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.
Drug overdose deaths in the United States continue to rise.
Overdoses claimed more than 112,000 American lives from May 2022 to May 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a 37% increase compared with the 12-month period ending in May 2020.
The vast majority of those who died were adults. But drug overdoses are killing young Americans in unprecedented numbers: The monthly total rose from 31 in July 2019 to 87 in May 2021, the period with the most recent data.
As a scholar of substance use who focuses on patterns that vary between age groups, I’m struck by how adolescents’ overdose deaths differ from adults’ in terms of gender, race and ethnicity and the drugs causing these fatalities.
These differences mean that the groups considered to be at high risk and the strategies needed to prevent overdoses in adolescents should not be the same as for adults.
Fentanyl on its own is the key culprit in adolescent overdoses. For teens, 84% of fatal overdoses involved fentanyl, and 56% of all overdoses involved only fentanyl.
Fentanyl is among the most potent opioids available. It’s estimated to be roughly 100 times more potent than morphine – a very strong opioid typically used in hospital settings. Teens and tweens usually have little tolerance to opioids because they often have not been exposed to them before, and fentanyl’s high potency makes them more likely to overdose.
Many adolescents accidentally take fentanyl when they ingest counterfeit pills that they believe are prescription opioids or stimulants, or other illicit drugs that are laced with the drug.
Only 1 in 10 teens and tweens who died from a drug overdose had a history of treatment for a substance use problem, and only 1 in 7 had ever experienced a prior nonfatal overdose. Adolescents who fatally overdose do not necessarily show the warning signs generally expected beforehand, such as problems with alcohol or other drugs or prior substance use treatment.
This pattern underscores the importance that all parents proactively talk with their children about substance use by the time they are 12 years old.
Having naloxone available can also be important. It prevents fentanyl and other opioids from causing an overdose by blocking access to opioid receptors in the brain. This potentially lifesaving drug is easy to use, but the cost of the over-the-counter version, which can exceed $50 for two doses, makes it out of reach for some of the people who need it most.
Think of naloxone like car insurance: You don’t want to use it, but it’s important to have in case something goes wrong.
Even if your child never tries an illicit drug, they may be able to intervene and save a friend who overdoses. Everyone should know the signs of an opioid overdose – they include shallow or no breathing, problems staying conscious, and cold, clammy skin – and be ready to intervene when they see someone of any age who appears to be experiencing one.
For this reason and many others, such as the rising rates of adolescent depression, I recommend that all adults – whether caregivers or other people in an adolescent’s life – check in on their mental health regularly and recommend or seek treatment for any concerns as early as possible.
As part of the state’s multi-pronged plan to address the opioid and overdose epidemic, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday announced proposed new legislation to increase penalties for the illicit trafficking of the drug xylazine, also known as “tranq."
Xylazine — an animal tranquilizer with no approved human use — is increasingly being found in the illicit drug supply, and has been linked to rising overdose deaths across the country.
The legislation would make xylazine a controlled substance, but exempt legitimate veterinary use, making illicit trafficking of xylazine subject to increased criminal penalties while maintaining veterinarians’ access to the drug for approved use in animals.
“Tranq poses a unique and devastating challenge in our fight against the overdose epidemic,” Newsom said. “Although California is not yet seeing tranq at the same rates as other parts of the country, this legislation will help the state stay ahead and curb dealers and traffickers, while we work to provide treatment and resources for those struggling with addiction and substance abuse.”
Xylazine-related deaths are increasing drastically in every region in the nation, more than tripling from 2020 to 2021, with the northeast seeing deaths jump from 631 to 1,281, and the west seeing them jump from 4 to 34. Xylazine can cause severe wounds and necrosis, and can lead to amputation.
Xylazine alone is not an opioid, but it is often mixed with fentanyl. When a xylazine overdose is suspected, health experts recommend administering the opioid reversal agent naloxone.
Key additional actions
The California Department of Public Health sent an All Facilities Letter notifying facilities and clinicians of the emergence of xylazine in the U.S. illicit drug supply, and what actions clinicians should take to keep patients safe.
The California State Board of Pharmacy and the California Veterinary Medical Board issued an alert and reminder to licensees that xylazine is subject to dangerous drugs laws, including highlighting that Board of Pharmacy licensees must keep records of dangerous drugs for at least three years.
These actions build on the Governor’s Master Plan for Tackling the Fentanyl and Opioid Crisis, which includes an expansion of CalGuard-supported operations that last year led to a 594% increase in seized fentanyl and historic levels of funding — $1 billion statewide — to crack down on the crisis, assist those struggling with substance use and increase prevention efforts. Specifically on xylazine, the state has been working with the public, and with health care partners, clinicians, and veterinarians, to proactively raise awareness of the issue and the threat it poses.
The data cover 467,891 positions and nearly $23.31 billion in wages at employers including public school districts, charter schools, and county offices of education.
While cities, counties, and special districts are required to report salary and benefits data to the State Controller, K-12 education employers are voluntary reporters for the purposes of GCC.
The State Controller’s Office requested data from 1,899 education employers, 424 of whom filed compliant reports.
Another 1,310 K-12 education employers did not file salary data reports, while 165 filed reports that were incomplete or did not comply with reporting guidelines.
In Lake County, the following districts responded:
Kelseyville Unified: 334 employees; total wages, $15,189,689; total retirement and health contribution, $5,897,483.
Lake County Office of Education: 223 employees; total wages, $8,157,199; total retirement and health contribution, $3,116,184.
Lakeport Unified: 300 employees; total wages, $10,807,997; total retirement and health contribution, $4,028,647.
Upper Lake Unified: 173 employees; total wages, $7,439,431; total retirement and health contribution, $2,832,128.
Districts that did not file were Konocti Unified, Lucerne Elementary School District and Middletown Unified.
The top 10 paid educators in Lake County, based on the available reporting, are as follows:
1. Upper Lake Unified superintendent: total wages, $347,151; total retirement and health contribution, $62,478. 2. Kelseyville Unified superintendent: Total wages, $229,775; total retirement and health contribution, $50,919. 3. Lake County superintendent of schools: Total wages, $198,790; total retirement and health contribution, $51,240. 4. Lakeport Unified director of maintenance, operations and transportation: Total wages, $179,935; total retirement and health contribution, $35,264. 5. Upper Lake Unified assistant superintendent: Total wages, $172,776; total retirement and health contribution, $48,147. 6. Upper Lake Unified assistant superintendent: Total wages, $162,666; total retirement and health contribution, $46,999. 7. Upper Lake Unified chief building official: Total wages, $152,249; total retirement and health contribution, $54,206. 8. Lake County Office of Education, senior director of school and district support: Total wages, $152,388; total retirement and health contribution, $36,255. 9. Upper Lake Unified, principal: Total wages, $149,361; total retirement and health contribution, $44,452. 10. Upper Lake Unified, principal: Total wages, $147,997; total retirement and health contribution, $42,713.
As the chief fiscal officer of California, Controller Cohen is responsible for accountability and disbursement of the state’s financial resources.
The controller has independent auditing authority over government agencies that spend state funds.
Cohen is a member of numerous financing authorities, and fiscal and financial oversight entities including the Franchise Tax Board. She also serves on the boards for the nation’s two largest public pension funds.
Follow the Controller on X at @CAController and on Facebook at California State Controller’s Office.
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA — The Yuba Community College District Board of Trustees will hold a special meeting this week during which it will hold a discussion about Woodland Community College’s Lake County Campus.
The special board meeting and board retreat will begin at 10 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 30, at Yuba College, 2088 N. Beale Road, Building 300-Flavors, Marysville.
Members of the public may attend the meeting virtually.
The meeting Zoom link is https://yccd-edu.zoom.us/j/81873478535. The call-in number is 1 669 900 6833; the Zoom meeting ID is 818 7347 8535.
After the lunch break, the board will have a follow-up discussion on Woodland Community College and its Lake County Campus, which was the focus of a great deal of public comment at the board’s Nov. 9 meeting in Clearlake.
Community members — including former and current students and educators — told the board that they believe Woodland College’s leadership has been purposefully starving the Lake County Campus of the resources needed to survive.
Also on Thursday, the board will conduct its 2022-23 self evaluation before holding a performance evaluation of Chancellor Dr. Shouan Pan.
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. — Lake County’s emergency shelter for homeless individuals is transitioning to a new managing organization that will have it open around the clock year-round.
Redwood Community Services, based in Ukiah, will now operate the shelter, located in the former juvenile hall facility at 1111 Whalen Way in north Lakeport.
During its Nov. 14 meeting, the Board of Supervisors approved the new shelter contract between the Lake County Behavioral Health Services Department — acting as the lead administrative entity for the Lake County Continuum of Care — and Redwood Community Services Inc.
Redwood Community Services will receive $2,417,489.64 for fiscal years 2023 to 2026 to operate the shelter. The contract runs from Dec. 1 to June 30, 2026, unless terminated earlier.
The group also runs the Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center in Ukiah.
The contract requires Redwood Community Services to meet expected targets including providing 35 beds, serving 300 people with the proposed funding and reaching 200 people through street outreach, having 88 homeless persons exiting the program or project to permanent housing, 50 households with increased monthly income and a minimum of 12% of the total funding to be spent on youth.
Earlier in the same meeting, the board approved continuing its emergency proclamation declaring a shelter crisis in the county of Lake.
Behavioral Health Director Elise Jones said the shelter had been operating on an interim basis by a group called the Blue Horizons Foundation.
Jones said there had been a long history of those who have operated the shelter in recent years.
She did not go into detail about those previous operators, but they include Elijah House, an Oroville-based nonprofit that first received the county contract to run an emergency COVID-19 shelter at the juvenile hall facility in July 2020 and operated it for two years.
At that time, Elijah House was out of compliance with state reporting rules for nonprofits, and throughout the time it held the contract it remained out of compliance. In February, the California Attorney General’s Office suspended Elijah House’s nonprofit registration for failure to bring its reporting current.
After Elijah House abruptly left in the summer of 2022, the shelter was closed until Sunrise Special Services Foundation reached an agreement to reopen it in February. Sunrise continued to operate the shelter, with its contract extended, until Blue Horizons took over earlier this fall.
Besides the change in operator, Jones told the board that the biggest difference in this new shelter contract is that it is a transition from overnight to 24/7.
Jones said the funding from the Continuum of Care is front-loaded and will be reduced over time as Redwood Community Services rolls out the enhanced care management benefit and the medical respite benefit, “which will ultimately be the long term sustainability for the shelter.”
She said Redwood Community Services will have co-located services there that will bill through Medi-Cal and sustain that shelter. “They have a history of doing that type of programming in Mendocino County, so happy to say we’re not a pilot in that.”
Supervisor Bruno Sabatier, who attended via Zoom as he was at the California State Association of Counties meeting in Alameda County, said the new contract also involves some case management compared to the previous contract.
“I think that is a huge adjustment to ensure that we are moving people along and not just keeping them in a shelter,” said Sabatier, adding that having case management will be crucial to what those individuals need.
He reported that the chair of the Continuum of Care and another executive committee member are part of Redwood Community Services and so took no part in the request for proposals process or the selection, avoiding meetings or recusing when the matters were discussed.
Sage Wolf, Redwood Community Services’ director of integrated health, said that in November 2019 they transitioned the Ukiah shelter from overnight to 24/7.
Wolf pointed out that there are differences between Ukiah’s Building Bridges shelter and Lakeport, including the fact that Building Bridges is in the city of Ukiah and more centrally located, so it’s open to the public during the day. It’s both an emergency shelter and a drop-in center.
Lake County’s shelter is not centrally placed and has separate, private rooms, unlike the congregate space with room for 50 beds at Ukiah, said Wolf, adding that they will use policies established for the Ukiah center as the basis of how they will operate Lake County’s shelter.
Supervisor Michael Green said he visited the Ukiah shelter the previous day and spent two hours asking Wolf questions.
While he expressed confidence in their policies, and thinks the situation will be light years ahead of where the county has been, he said there is the need to drill down into the immense liability the shelter carries and make sure to parse the county’s and the operator’s responsibilities. The shortcomings of the juvenile hall facility have fallen primarily on the county.
“I don’t personally think today’s contract is adequate to all those questions but I'm not going to oppose it on that basis today. I’m just going to invite future iterations to get a little more granular,” Green said.
Wolf thanked the county, Behavioral Health and the Continuum of Care for the opportunity to run the Lakeport shelter. “It is a high risk operation,” Wolf said, adding that the people they are targeting for service are some of the most vulnerable community members.
“We are experienced in running that kind of shelter and working with this population,” and aware of the kind of risks that are involved, but can’t have a plan in place for everything that can happen, Wolf said.
“We are really adept and responsive at being able to quickly identify potential risks and then when risks happen be able to respond as quickly as possible to what’s happening,” Wolf added.
Wolf said the collaboration is already in place to support the shelter, and that will be key. “None of us can address homelessness by ourselves. We need to do it as a community.”
Lakeport Police Chief Brad Rasmussen said his agency and the city of Lakeport support the contract, explaining that many unhoused individuals from Lakeport use the shelter’s services.
“It has been critical over the past year to have that available,” said Rasmussen, who also is running for Green’s supervisorial seat in 2024.
Rasmussen said the one gap they saw was that the shelter was not 24/7, which will be covered in the new contract. He said he believed it would be a huge improvement and benefit.
He thanked Behavioral Health and community partners, Redwood Community Services, the Board of Supervisors and county administrative staff who have worked hard over the past year to keep shelter services going. Rasmuseen said the shelter is critical to the unhoused and has a huge impact on the community as a whole if those services aren’t available.
Wolf explained how Medi-Cal funding will support emergency shelter beds for those coming out of hospital, jail, rehab and mental health treatment, adding it’s for individuals who need somewhere soft to land to stabilize. Lake County’s shelter won’t, however, have medical respite on site.
That Medi-Cal funding will partially support the shelter in years two and three, and also will partially support it if they find funding to go past 2026. Wolf explained that they have to braid a lot of multiple funding streams to keep it going, and that there hasn’t been one consistent funding stream to keep a shelter going unless it’s a very small shelter.
Wolf said that one of the tasks they have in front of them over the next two and a half to three years is to identify some of those other funding streams.
“There are some competitive grants that we could apply for in coordination and collaboration with the community to bring in additional dollars to support the shelter after this contract expires,” she said, adding that she wanted to make sure everyone is on the same page as they look to the future.
Vice Chair Moke Simon, who ran the meeting as Board Chair Jessica Pyska also was at the California State Association of Counties, thanked Wolf for coming to the meeting.
“The funding is No. 1,” said Simon, noting it’s a focus of the Governor’s Office and will be a collaboration going forward.
Green moved to approve the $2.4 million contract, with the board voting 4-0.
“All right, we’ve got a 24 hour shelter. Good job everyone,” Simon said.
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.