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In a very alarming development, it has been discovered that all 13 local tax measures that were reported to have passed after election night on Nov. 3 have instead all failed. The staff at the county’s Registrar of Voters’ office, using new computer equipment, entered all of the ballots into the machines with the wrong edges facing to the left. Hence, instead of the tax measures passing by the required two-thirds majority needed, they all actually were defeated by that amount.

What is FOG? 

Healdsburg Education Foundation (HEF) has worked for more than 30 years to raise funds to ensure that the students of Healdsburg Unified School District (HUSD) receive the education they deserve. Now we invite you to join us as we take this opportunity to imagine what our schools can be and how HEF can continue to help to meet the changing needs of our schools. Distance learning has created challenges, some anticipated and some that we could have never imagined. The gaps we have all worked so hard to close have become wider and our students, teachers and schools need us now more than ever to provide critical resources to navigate these uncharted waters.

100 years ago – November 4, 1920

We are inviting our readers to partake in a short quiz about America as we continue to distill the many outcomes and significances of last week’s elections. To honor the recently deceased TV game show host Alex Trebek, we are patterning the quiz after the Jeopardy format by listing a series of answers that need to be matched with the correct question. (Example: Donald Trump. Who was the 45th president of the United States?)

100 years ago – November 4, 1920

My neighbor is learning to ride her bike with no hands. She’s 9, and we live at opposite ends of a 300-foot lane off a busy residential street. Her family lives at the busy entrance and our family lives at the quiet end, but we see her often, riding her bike or scooter up and down, patient and determined, while her younger brother zooms around in circles, crashing here and there and always getting up.

It is now post-Nov. 3 and we are witnessing what it will take to complete a free, fair and secure election. Most headlines and attention will be focused on the acrimonious presidential contest and we will under-appreciate how much of the rest of the voting is happening without rancor, dispute or distrust.

Somewhere in the week after Nov. 3, in our country and our community, we will reach a deciding moment in our collective lives when a series of major choices will be required. The choice could be, and should be, more than turn left or right, or even just stay the course. It should be a conscious effort to build a new future or to try and claw our way back to a place we felt better regardless of the impact, or more likely find some middle ground.

The following snippets of history are drawn from the pages of the Healdsburg Tribune, the Healdsburg Enterprise and the Sotoyome Scimitar, and are prepared by the volunteers at the Healdsburg Museum & Historical Society.