SANTA ROSA — The last bell at Hilliard Comstock Middle School rang Friday, ending 54 years on West Steele Lane and closing one more campus in a Santa Rosa City Schools cost-cutting drive that district leaders describe as the deepest financial reckoning in their more than 100-year history. Comstock, which opened in January 1972 and…
Category: Local Government & Politics
Coverage of Sonoma County government, city councils, county supervisors, elections, public policy, and civic affairs.
Lake County: $4.9 million from state, all on Route 29
The California Transportation Commission’s $4.9 million allocation for Lake County all goes to state Route 29, including $3 million for a new turn lane near Twin Lakes and $1.9 million for safety upgrades from Middletown to Lower Lake.
Hidden recording in a Davis living room:
Jones threatens to sue Thompson over attack ad Two and a half weeks before California’s June 2 primary, Eric Jones’ campaign sayssomeone secretly recorded a small house event in Davis — and that Rep. Mike Thomp-son’s campaign is now using the audio in an attack ad. A reportedly secret recording and a new attack ad…
City of Santa Rosa photo
Santa Rosa City Attorney Teresa Stricker resigns; council names interim June 2
Santa Rosa City Attorney Teresa L. Stricker told the city Saturday she is stepping down on Tuesday, June 2, citing “new professional opportunities.” The City Council, which holds the appointment, plans to name an interim replacement at the same June 2 meeting. The departure had not been picked up anywhere outside the city’s own Civic…
Grand jury gives Sonoma’s open-space agency a clean review — and flags a 2031 cliff
A Sonoma County Civil Grand Jury report released Sunday May 10 says the agency that has spent 35 years buying up farmland and open space across the county is, by and large, doing the job voters paid it to do. The report’s title — “It’s On Their Website!” — is the jury’s broad answer to…
Hall Winery in Napa Valley. Roger Coryell/Wine Country Daily
Napa’s wine and farm workers can’t afford to live in Napa anymore. A new study puts a number on it.
Napa Valley runs on immigrants. Its wineries, restaurants, hotels and farms all do. What a new report makes plain is that more and more of those workers can no longer afford to live in the county where they work — and a growing share have left altogether. The Migration Policy Institute, a Washington research group,…
Courtesy Bodega Bay Fire
Bodega residents to get update Thursday on fire station lease talks
The nonprofit that owns Bodega’s fire station has called a special meeting Thursday night to brief local residents on lease talks with Gold Ridge Fire Protection District, the agency that staffs the station and runs calls in this rural coastal corner of Sonoma County. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. at McCaughey Hall in downtown Bodega….
Opinion: A quiet scam at the dumps voters own — and pay twice to clean up after
By design, Sonoma County’s $47 dump fee is a customer-acquisition strategy for Republic and Recology When I moved to West County twelve years ago, dropping a load of yard trimmings at the Pocket Canyon transfer station cost $7. Today the minimum charge for the same vehicle, at the same gate, is $47. The per-ton rate…
Yountville’s town manager walked into a performance review. He walked out resigned.
Yountville is the second city he’s left under the same cover story. The math on his exit doesn’t match a voluntary resignation — and the project he built is on the May 7 council agenda without him. YOUNTVILLE — At 3 p.m. on Wednesday, April 29, the Yountville Town Council went into closed session. The…
Permit Sonoma’s code-enforcement reckoning
Three lawsuits, fresh allegations from residents and a $2.2 million reform pitch all arrive at the Board of Supervisors at once A speaker at Tuesday’s Sonoma County Board of Supervisors meeting told the room about the day Esteban Diaz had a heart attack on the floor of a Sonoma County courtroom. An ambulance was called….