Editorial

Let it ring

As Scoutmaster of Healdsburg Troop 21, I’m compelled to respond to the recent statements from the press and members of the community regarding the 4Cs preschool departure. I write this with the hope that despite the inaccurate depiction given in recent articles, Healdsburg’s Troop 21 continues its role in community service, promoting youth leadership and skills development. A reader wrote in last week’s Tribune, “What about the Oath?” I’m happy that she asked about Scouting principles like the Oath and Law.

A “housing crisis” has been declared for all of Sonoma County by elected officials, affordable housing advocates and by the home building and construction industry. Rents and raw building costs have never been higher. Vacancy rates for rentals are almost zero and new housing construction is years behind the actual demand, these leaders tell us.

Ned Thomas

Eat out for Jazz

Thousands of people visited last weekend’s Steelhead Festival at Warm Springs Dam and Lake Sonoma. The people outnumbered the fish — and that has been our problem in the Russian River watershed for the last 60 years. The epic winter runs of spawning steelhead that once numbered over 50,000 are now down to a very few thousand, if that many.

Do you remember the first time you voted in a presidential or other election? Was it for Nixon or Kennedy, Bush or Clinton? Are you old enough to have “liked Ike?” Or, did you become a “none of the above” voter and maybe voted for Eugene McCarthy, Ross Perot or Ralph Nader? Did you “recall” California Governor Gray Davis and vote for the Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger? Who was the last person you supported for county supervisor, city council or the local school board?

In December I went to a Regional Climate Protection Authority presentation at the Healdsburg city council chambers. The RCPA was created in 2009 to improve coordination on climate change issues and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as was mandated by the ten county government’s partnership with the Climate Protection Campaign in 2005. The goal is to reduce county GHG emissions to 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2015. It was the CPC that first championed Sonoma Clean Power in 2004.