Columns

I am grateful the governor has pushed back in-school openings. And, I am grateful schools are examining alternative forms of learning. But, in the many plans and proposals I have read about how to return children to the classroom, I have yet to see any mention of increasing teacher or school staff pay, or adding more staff.

This newspaper publisher has long been predisposed to remind his readers that there is no such thing as a free press. It takes money, lots of it, to hire dedicated journalists and buy newsprint, ink and computers to produce news. It cost Sonoma West Publishers just over $1.2 million last year to provide a steady stream of vital and reliable news for the four communities we serve in north and west Sonoma County. And, even with all that, we still lost almost $200,000 at the end of the year. Now, during the pandemic-caused economic shutdown, our financial challenge looks nearly impossible some days. But that’s another story for another day.

Summer is here, a time of harvest and abundance, and Sonoma County truly shines during this season. Go to any open-air farmers market, and beautiful fruits and vegetables abound, in all their color, freshness and glory. 

One day, when I lived in Poland in the early 90s, I was detained by a police officer who pulled me over in the Tatra Mountains for some minor traffic violation. In getting my driver’s license and registration, he decided I needed to be breath tested at the police station. Puzzled, I went along in the back of the police car, tested 0.00 alcohol content, and the entire staff at the station apologized profusely as we got to talking. 

Our lengthening public health crisis will not end until a vaccine is developed and made available to the masses and our pandemic-caused economic recession will not be curtailed without trillions of federal funding for state and local governments, unemployed workers and for small businesses. Everything else is up to us. We can do more than just watch the daily coronavirus test results or just move some restaurant tables onto the sidewalks or close a few streets. 

Editor's Note: This column is from one of the Times' sister publications, Sonoma West Times & News. We thought our readers would be interested in columnist Bob Jones' recollection of the events in Montgomery. 

As Healdsburg continues to tread forward in the era of COVID-19 and the dialogue of racial injustice weighs heavily in our hearts and minds, our community still faces tension and uncertainty when it comes to reopening our schools, supporting our downtown plaza, housing and food insecurity, health and the protection of our city from fires. I look forward to serving our residents and the city of Healdsburg to make sure that we meet these challenges head-on.

Summer is upon us. If you’ve kept a garden or maintained a landscape here in Sonoma County, you know just how thirsty plants can get in the dry season. Luckily, many of the guiding principles for having a water-wise garden in our climate have...

The library has now been operating with curbside pickup for a few weeks and we are happy to report that this system has been working pretty smoothly. Our thanks go out to so many of you who have taken advantage of this new service, both for giving it a try and for working carefully with our safety protocols as we work to ensure the health of the public and our staff. If you haven't given it a try yet, I encourage you to do so and you can read more information online at sonomalibrary.org/curbside. 

There are many victims of the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 — locally, across our nation and globally as well. Just in Sonoma County, there are several kinds of victims, and not all are humans. First, we have had 20 COVID-19 fatalities and over 2,000 positive infections. Thousands of local workers have become unemployed or have lost their jobs. Our Latinx population has suffered by extra measure. Individual businesses and our general economy are being victimized by the enforced closure under public health safety rules. But maybe the most perilous victims are our school children, after only the disease’s deaths.