LAKEPORT, Calif. – Marie Louise Anderson, 88, of Lakeport and formerly of Fort Bragg, Calif., passed away on Sept. 25, 2016, at St. Helena Hospital.

Born on Jan. 24, 1928, she was predeceased by her parents, Jim and Mary Masolini. She was a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a great-grandmother, a sister, and a friend to many. She will be deeply missed.

Marie attended school in Fort Bragg, where she excelled, and graduated salutatorian. Her father expected she’d marry an Italian, but a good-looking Dane showed up on her 18th birthday and heard Marie playing her accordion. He came back the next day with a locket as a birthday gift; she was in love and they soon married.

Marie was the secretary at the Fort Bragg Lutheran Church and worked for 14 years as secretary to the counselor at Fort Bragg Junior High. She loved cooking and was famous for great meals, especially her risotto and polenta.

She loved holidays and was never happier than when her home was full of friends and family. She loved traveling, especially when she and Don hooked up the Airstream and took off across country. She traveled the world with Don and on one eventful trip, he fulfilled a promise, taking her to the Raffles Hotel in Singapore.

She loved playing her organ and accordion, reading, musicals, shopping and Sunday Packer games. Marie often said that she couldn’t believe that a girl from Fort Bragg could be so lucky.

Survivors include the love of her life, her husband for almost 70 years, Don Anderson; her brother, Leno (Carolyn) Masolini; her children, Joe Anderson (Karen), Mike Anderson (Maribelle) and Donna Rose; her grandchildren, Melanie and Brian (Nikki) Rose, Misty (Donald) Daniels, Myles (Stacey) Anderson, Donnie (Ashley), Jesse, Caden and Drew Anderson. Marie was a loving Nona to 11 great-grandchildren, and she leaves behind numerous friends and relatives.

Friends are invited to celebrate the life of Marie with her family on Oct. 16 at the Lodge at Blue Lakes from 1 to 5 p.m.

The family requests donations in her memory to her favorite charities: American Cancer Society, Attn: Team MargaRelayVille, 1451 Guerneville Road # 220, Santa Rosa, CA, 95403 or the Timberwolf Stadium Fund, P.O. Box 2812, Fort Bragg, CA, 95437.

Arrangements by Chapel of the Lakes Mortuary 707-263-0357 or 707-994-5611, or visit www.chapelofthelakes.com .

SOUTH LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Valley Fire Recovery Chipping Program needs your application.

The Lake County Resource Conservation District has partnered with the Lake County Air Quality Management District to offer chipping of brush, branches and tree trunks up to 10 inches in diameter to owners of small parcels in the Valley Fire Recovery Area.

Unfortunately, because sufficient applications have not been received, the program is in danger of being discontinued.

Please submit your application by Oct. 4 to help keep this program going for your community.

The service is available at no cost to the landowner, who must first cut down the trees, limb them out, and haul woody materials (please no blackberries or poison oak) to the edge of the road.

All owners of small residential parcels (one acre or less) in the Valley Fire Recovery Area are eligible for this free service, with scheduling priority given to those who intend to rebuild.

Properties of up to two acres will be considered as capacity is available, and owners of larger properties may also be able to participate on a cost-sharing basis.

Chipping services outside the recovery area can be provided for a fee.

For more details and to apply, download the application form from www.lakercd.org/lc-rcd-chipper-program.html or contact Lake County Resource Conservation District at 707 262-7089 and leave a message.

For general program information you can also call the Lake County Air Quality Management District at 707-263-7000.

This project is made possible by a generous donation from #LakeCountyRising, a collaborative fundraising effort of the Lake County Winegrape Commission, Winery Association and Wine Alliance.

SACRAMENTO – California Department of Public Health (CDPH) Director and State Public Health Officer Dr. Karen Smith called on the people of California to help reduce the number of mosquitoes by eliminating standing water, especially in areas that have recently had rain and continue to experience warm temperatures.

“Rainy weather can create new breeding grounds for mosquitoes if water is allowed to pool and remain stagnant,” said CDPH Director and State Public Health Officer Dr. Karen Smith. “Mosquito season in California peaks in October, making it critically important that Californians take action to empty even small amounts of water from our gardens and yards.”

To help control mosquitoes, check your yard weekly for water-filled containers. Clean and scrub bird baths and pet watering dishes weekly, and dump the water from dishes under potted plants.

Contact your local vector control agency if you detect unusual numbers of mosquitoes or you are being bitten during the day.

Information about the Lake County Vector Control District can be found at http://www.lcvcd.org/ .

The Aedes aegypti mosquito, an aggressive mosquito that bites during the day, has been detected in 12 California counties. This black-and-white striped mosquito has the potential to transmit Zika and other diseases, such as dengue fever, chikungunya and yellow fever.

While the mosquito is especially active two hours after sunrise and several hours before sunset, it can also bite during the day. These mosquitoes often enter buildings through unscreened windows and doors and bite people indoors.

While there has been no local transmission of Zika in California, as of Sept. 23, 302 travel-associated cases have been reported in the state.

Zika symptoms typically include a fever, rash, joint pain and red eyes. Most people infected with the Zika virus will not have symptoms, but Zika is a major concern in pregnant women because it can cause severe birth defects.

In addition to Zika, West Nile virus, another mosquito-borne illness, continues to concern public health officials.

To prevent mosquito bites, apply repellents containing U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-registered ingredients such as DEET, picaridin, oil of lemon eucalyptus, or IR3535 to exposed skin and/or clothing (as directed on the product label).

During the times mosquitoes are most active you should wear long- sleeve shirts, long pants, socks and shoes. Be sure window and door screens are in good condition to prevent mosquitoes from entering your home.

More information about Aedes aegypti mosquitoes can be found on the CDPH Web site, www.cdph.ca.gov , and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site, www.cdc.gov .

SACRAMENTO – Over the past two years, state Sen. Mike McGuire has chaired four oversight hearings, requested and received a scathing state audit, held countless meetings with foster youth, advocates and families, and today has passed legislation that will become the strongest law in America focused on protecting foster youth from medical professionals who are overprescribing psychotropic medication.

California’s foster care system has become addicted to psych meds – prescribing rates have increased 1400% over the past 15 years – and the problem has impacted thousands of California’s foster youth for more than a decade.

On Thursday, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senator McGuire’s legislation to ensure the state has the ability to monitor the administration of these mind numbing drugs among our state’s foster youth.

SB 1174 establishes a formal, ongoing process for the California Medical Board to responsively review and confidentially investigate psychotropic medication prescription patterns outside the standard of care. And in the worst cases, revoke the medical license of a proven serial over-prescriber.

“This legislation stems from a culture that has developed in our State’s foster care system where excessive prescriptions of psychotropic medication have become the norm and have impacted the lives of thousands of California’s most vulnerable youth, foster kids,” Sen. McGuire said.

“California is now the only state in the nation where a medical professional can lose their license to practice medicine if they are proven to be a serial over-prescriber of these powerful drugs. This bill ensures the state takes a no tolerance approach to over-prescribing and that the Medical Board and Attorney General get the data they need to protect California’s 66,000 foster youth,” McGuire said.

In 2014-15, more than 8,000 complaints were advanced to California’s Medical Board about over-prescribing of medications, but not one complaint came from the California foster care system.

While the Federal Child and Family Services Improvement and Innovation Act of 2011 requires each state to oversee and monitor the use of psychotropic medications, California currently has no requirements to identify those who are over-prescribing medication to foster youth.

The state has no system for evaluating the medical soundness of high rates of prescribing and no way to measure the efficacy of these practices. In fact, the California Medical Board, doesn’t even have the authority to review psych med prescribing patters for foster youth.

McGuire’s bill will change this by establishing a formal, on-going process for the California Medical Board to responsively review and confidentially investigate psychotropic medication prescription patterns among California’s foster youth.

If an over-prescription pattern is discovered, the Medical Board can advance that case to the California Attorney General and pending their confidential investigation, the medical professional’s license can be revoked.

It is simple, without data, the medical board cannot perform their mandated oversight duty. SB 1174 will enable California to implement what is already standard oversight practice in Washington, Illinois and Ohio. These state initiatives have shown a 25 percent decrease in dangerous prescribing practices and have improved the overall prescription frequency for medically acceptable reasons.

Nearly 1 in 4 California foster teens are prescribed psychotropic drugs; of those, nearly 60 percent were prescribed an anti-psychotic – this is the most powerful drug class that is susceptible to damaging side effects.

Thirty-six percent are prescribed multiple medications. Teens in foster care are three and a half times more likely to be prescribed psych medication than their peers who are not in foster care.

“This is unacceptable given that it is the state’s responsibility, as the guardian of these children, to monitor the administration of these drugs and to ensure the health and well-being of foster children. Our state’s foster youth deserve better, including access to proactive and sustained mental health services. When medication does become necessary, we need to create a better system that includes assessment and accountability measures,” McGuire said.

Another accountability measure that McGuire and the Senate Human Services Committee advanced last year was an audit of prescribing patterns of psychotropic prescriptions among foster youth.

The scathing audit, “California’s Foster Care System: The State and Counties Have Failed to Adequately Oversee the Prescription of Psychotropic Mediations to Children in Foster Care,” was released several weeks ago and a formal hearing to present the audit was held Monday.

The audit and hearing were initially scheduled to be released and held in June, however at the last moment the Department of Health Care Services notified the Auditor that it had failed to provide 617 million medical service records that were relevant to the Auditor’s review.

After a two month delay, the audit was finalized and recommended better state oversight of county prescribing patterns to foster youth. One key finding is the need to improve the current system of tracking prescription use which, in many cases, involves a foster parent taking a doctor’s note to the social worker for input into the statewide database.

The auditor found that in many cases, counties weren’t receiving the mandated permissions prior to prescribing these mind-numbing drugs, counties and the state have not been uploading and tracking prescription data and that children were prescribed multiple psychotropic medications, medications in higher dosages and medications without recommended follow up doctor’s visits at significant rates.

The report also identifies a lack of concurrent psychosocial services provided to children who are taking psychotropic medication.

Data in the auditor’s report also shows that more than one-third of all paid psychotropic medications were for anti-psychotic drugs, which pose significant risks for side effects for children. State Auditor Elaine Howle detailed her findings during a hearing at the State Capitol Monday.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County Treasurer and Tax Collector Barbara C. Ringen is pleased to announce that the State Controller’s Property Tax Postponement Program has returned after being suspended by the State Legislature in 2009.

The program allows homeowners who are 62 or older, blind, or have a disability, to defer current-year property taxes on their principal residence if they meet certain criteria including 40 percent equity in the home and an annual household income of $35,500 or less.
 
Applications became available Sept. 1, 2016, and can be found at the Lake County Treasurer & Tax Collector’s Office or online at http://www.sco.ca.gov/ardtax_prop_tax_postponement.html .
 
The State Controller’s Office will begin accepting applications on Oct. 1, 2016, through Feb. 10, 2017.

Funds are limited and applications will be approved on a first-come, first-served basis.
 
The interest rate for taxes postponed is 7 percent per year as compared to 18 percent per year for delinquent taxes.

Repayment under this program becomes due when the homeowner:

· Moves or sells the property;
· Transfers title;
· Defaults on a Senior lien;
· Refinances; Dies; or
· Chooses to obtain a reverse mortgage.
 
For more detailed program information, contact the tax collector’s office at 707-263-2234 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , or the State Controller’s Office toll-free at 800-952-5661, or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – The Lake County International Charter School, or LCICS, is holding its eighth annual Live & Give Celebration and Auction on Saturday, Oct. 22.

The event will take place from 6 to 9:30 p.m. at the Middletown Art Center at 21456 State Highway 175 in Middletown.

The old-fashioned, variety show-inspired theme for this year’s event, “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves,” will feature the sassy, gritty and swingin' live music of popular Sonoma County band Buck-Thrifty, live performances, gypsy fortune tellers, delicious thematic appetizers created by Chic Le Chef Catering, complimentary first glass of beer or wine, and both silent and live auctions.

“We’ve had some incredibly fun events in past years, and this year’s theme may top them all,” said LCICS Director Gwendolyn Maupin-Ahern.

She added, “As a small, public school we rely on the amazing community support to bridge the gap between state funding and the true cost of educating and supporting our children, especially in this year of recovery since the Valley fire. The Live & Give is our biggest annual fundraiser, and we are always amazed and appreciative of the generosity of local businesses and individuals.”

Attendees must be at least 21 years old, and tickets can be pre-purchased for $20 per person at the LCICS office (15850 Armstrong St.), at Chic Le Chef (18983 Hartmann Road, Hidden Valley Lake), online at www.lcics.org , or by calling LCICS at 707-987-3063.

Tickets purchased at the door on the evening of the event will be $25 per person. Additional glasses of wine and beer will be available for purchase.

For more information, or to donate items or gift certificates to the live or silent auctions, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , call 707-987-3063, or go online to www.lcics.org .