Fire & Safety
West of Cloverdale, a prescribed burn crosses its lines
Cal Fire calls it the Cooley Fire and lists 40 acres; a second, 500-acre burn on the same ranch was still approved for Saturday.
Latest stories
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Governance
Guerneville: Our hall is falling down
A 2019 engineers' report says Guerneville's 1957 veterans hall will likely be unusable after an earthquake, and the county's new license with the shelter…
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Housing
Sonoma County ends ADU ban on 3,997 lots, 494 in Monte Rio
Sonoma County will stop banning ADUs on 3,997 unincorporated parcels Nov. 5. About half touch high or very high fire hazard land, and half…
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Governance
Sonoma County’s Wohler Bridge will stay closed past Oct. 30 target
Sonoma County now expects to reopen the century-old Wohler Bridge over the Russian River this winter, about a year later than the county first…
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Health
Santa Rosa nursing home on federal list of troubled homes
Federal inspectors found that missed skin checks led to maggots in a resident's toe wound and the amputation of his toe.
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Health
Sonoma County supervisors weigh 9% ambulance rate increase
Sonoma County Fire District had asked for 16.36% and has agreed to cooperate with an independent financial audit. Supervisors take up the 9% increase…
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Education
Lake County leads California in suspending students
Mendocino County tied for fourth in suspensions, and both counties rank near the top of the state for chronic absence.
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Health
Sebastopol elder care home cited for neglect, fire risk
State reports describe a bedridden resident’s pressure injuries, a resident who tried to set a bathroom on fire and missing records for a state…
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Water
Sebastopol weighs $5 million federal loan for Well 4 package
City staff recommend a federal WIFIA loan for Well 4 and two other water projects. The packet lists no interest rate, and staff’s own…
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Water
Vacation Beach dam repair outgrows park district’s staff
The Guerneville park district that owns the broken Vacation Beach summer dam is hiring a project manager as the repair grows, and neighbors have…
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Housing
Lower Russian River rentals top the cap in all 7 zones
County permit records count 188 vacation rentals in seven lower-river zones capped at 5% of homes. Eighteen applicants wait for an opening, the longest…
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Water
Lower Russian River could run at 70 cfs next summer
Sonoma Water wants the state to keep its Lake Mendocino drought index past Nov. 16 and cut the lower river’s minimum flow in a…
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Crime
Guerneville sees fewer deputy patrols as calls hold steady
Sheriff’s data show deputy-initiated activity in Guerneville fell 58% from 2025, while calls from the public stayed flat.
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Governance
Clearlake seeks senior center operator by Dec. 1
Clearlake’s request for proposals sets Dec. 1 for a senior center operator to take over. The council discusses it Thursday. The meal contract belongs…
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Crime
Guerneville downtown safety meeting set for Oct. 14
The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office will meet Guerneville residents 5 to 6 p.m. Oct. 14 at Rio Nido Station on downtown quality-of-life and public-safety…
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Governance
Sonoma County to get $5.5 million for 2017 storm repairs
FEMA approved a $5.5 million reimbursement to Sonoma County for road repairs after the January 2017 winter storms, the county said Oct. 5. The…
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Water
Lake Mendocino ends water year 5 feet lower than 2025
Lake Sonoma ended the year about a foot higher despite 12 inches less rain. Lake Mendocino closed Water Year 2026 holding about 9,100 acre-feet…
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Governance
Lake County adopts budget by unfunding vacant county jobs
Lake County supervisors adopted the 2026-27 budget Oct. 1, a day before the state deadline, by pulling funding from vacant general fund jobs after…
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Community
Guerneville ArtWalk brings brooms, photos and street music
River Arts' First Saturday ArtWalk fills downtown Guerneville from 4 to 7 p.m. Oct. 3 with handmade brooms, photography, ceramics, metal sculptures, a party-hat…
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Environment
Heat advisory covers Sonoma and Napa hills, not valley towns
The National Weather Service put the hills of western Sonoma County and the mountains of Sonoma and Napa counties under a heat advisory from…
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Housing
Fort Bragg delays housing fix as state target nears 5 times
Fort Bragg's council again put off fixing a decades-old conflict over apartments in commercial zones, continuing the hearing to Nov. 9 as the city…
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Governance
Santa Rosa holds $11 million in unspent parks tax money
Santa Rosa ended the last fiscal year with $11.07 million in unspent Measure M parks tax money, about three-quarters of what all nine cities…
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Housing
Napa passes on help for buyers stuck with code violations
Days after Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill to give new homeowners time to fix inherited code violations, Napa County staff sketched a local…
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Water
Clear Lake pact takes effect after a split Lake County vote
The Clear Lake co-management agreement took effect Sept. 11 with all 23 governments signed. Lake County's announcement called the approval four to one; the…
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Wine & Ag
Vintage Premiere Dinner at Robert Mondavi Winery
Robert Mondavi Winery welcomed guests back to its Oakville estate Saturday for its 2026 Vintage Premiere dinner. It was the first edition of the…
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Wine & Ag
At Brassfield, a Lake County estate pushes its chips in while the market pulls back
While much of the California wine business pulls vines and trims payroll, Brassfield Estate Winery has spent the downturn buying land and hiring salespeople,…
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Water
Clearlake Oaks water, sewer bills head 61% higher by 2031
Clearlake Oaks County Water District's five-year rate schedule takes a home's combined water and sewer base bill from $129.11 to $207.63 a month —…
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Water
Clearlake weighs a Clear Lake pact that gained a seventh tribe
The Clearlake City Council takes up the Clear Lake watershed co-management agreement Thursday. The version in front of it lists 23 governments, one more…
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Water
Upper Lake wells still pumping past a 2022 state deadline
State regulators gave the Meadow Pointe water system five years to get off gasoline-contaminated wells. The deadline passed in December 2022. Since 2017, $1.3…
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Fire & Safety
North Bay fuel dryness is headed past the 97th percentile
Bay Area forecasters project Energy Release Component values past the 97th percentile in the North Bay this weekend. No Red Flag Warning is in…
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Governance
Clearlake recruits for a sewer board seat not yet created
The city is taking applications for a public seat on the Lake County Sanitation District board. Supervisors decide Aug. 18 whether the seat exists…
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Business
Napa’s tourism economy broke even last year. Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake lost ground
A new Visit Napa Valley study puts the valley first in its competitive set on familiarity, perception and likelihood to visit. State data covering…
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Crime
Santa Rosa man gets 25 to life in wife’s stabbing death
Tunoa Meo got 25 years to life Friday for stabbing his wife to death in Santa Rosa. The district attorney’s office says Proposition 57…
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Wine & Ag
Sonoma County’s earliest harvest in decades begins
Sonoma County's 2026 winegrape harvest began July 16, nearly two weeks earlier than any start the county's growers association has documented. The crop is…
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Water
Grand jury flagged the pipes in St. Helena. Then a bus hit a hydrant
A Napa County civil grand jury said in June that decades of sediment in the St. Helena water mains had never been assessed and…
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Housing
Lake County lost more than a thousand homes to fire. Nobody will say how many came back.
Lake County gained thousands of residents and lost more than a thousand homes since 2010, nearly all in the 2015 Valley Fire. Eleven years…
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Governance
Petaluma to vote on rejecting all eight grand jury findings
A Sonoma County Civil Grand Jury report says Petaluma let years of animal services failures slide. The city says the jury misread the law.…
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Fire & Safety
Sonoma Developmental Center still out of fire-code compliance
A brush fire this week was the reminder: the state-owned Sonoma Developmental Center campus in Glen Ellen is out of compliance with the county…
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Water
San Pablo Bay floods tonight, and no storm is behind it
A minor coastal flood advisory runs through Thursday. The National Weather Service says 3 to 6 inches of tonight's high tide is sea level…
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Water
Sonoma keeps saying yes to Marin’s Russian River pipeline
Sonoma County's supervisors approved a 15-year water contract with Marin on the consent calendar, with no discussion. The number that mattered — a near-doubling…
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Legal
Sonoma County’s sheriff watchdog keeps its subpoena power
The state Supreme Court won't review the appellate ruling that upheld IOLERO's subpoena power. That ends a two-year fight and clears the Sonoma County…
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Mental Health
Sonoma County jail death follows vote to scrap mental health wing
Hours after supervisors killed the jail's long-planned 72-bed mental health wing and moved its money to a proposed Los Guilicos campus, a man died…
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Water
Who is going to watch the Russian River?
Brenda Adelman spent 45 years watching the Russian River's wastewater permits. Her group folded this spring, and more than 100 boxes of river history…
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Legal
Napa nursing home sold for $6.25M, fentanyl suit pending
Piner's Nursing Home in Napa sold for $6.25 million and rebranded as Napa Community Health Center, even as a civil elder-abuse lawsuit over a…
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Water
St. Helena: where the town’s water comes from
St. Helena's water runs from an 1878 earthen dam built by Chinese laborers in York Canyon to today's Bell Canyon reservoir — a 150-year…
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Legal
Yountville’s French Laundry faces three labor lawsuits
Three former workers have sued the operators of Yountville's French Laundry in Napa County Superior Court since March, alleging unpaid hours, missed breaks and…
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Governance
Sonoma County drops plan to put Measure P update on ballot
Sonoma County supervisors won't ask voters to strengthen Measure P this November, reversing a plan floated two weeks earlier. The county named auditor Matthew…
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Community
Grand jury gives Sonoma’s open-space agency a clean review — and flags a 2031 cliff
The civil grand jury gives Sonoma County's open-space agency a clean review — and flags the 2031 expiration of the tax that funds it.
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Business
Opinion: A quiet scam at the dumps voters own — and pay twice to clean up after
Opinion: Sonoma County's $47 dump fee works as a customer-acquisition strategy for Republic and Recology — and voters pay twice.
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Business
Sonoma’s first Mexican American family winery is in bankruptcy court
Robledo Family Winery, Sonoma's first Mexican American family winery, files for bankruptcy in California wine's worst quarter in years.
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Governance
Yountville’s town manager walked into a performance review. He walked out resigned.
Yountville's town manager walked into a performance review and out of a job — the second city he's left under the same cover story.
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Wine & Ag
Cloverdale’s own water plan says the city doesn’t need the Eel River dams its vice mayor is fighting to save
Cloverdale's vice mayor is lobbying Washington to save the Eel River dams. The city's own water plan says Cloverdale doesn't need them.
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Housing
Appeals court blocks Santa Rosa mobilehome park owners from recouping wildfire-era rent increases
An appeals court bars Santa Rosa mobilehome park owners from recouping wildfire-era rent increases, setting statewide price-gouging precedent.
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Governance
Petaluma mobile home residents say park owners are running a smear campaign against their advocate
Petaluma mobile home residents say park owners hand-delivered a smear dossier against the advocate leading their rent fight.