Editorial

As the weather heats up, our thoughts turn to water. As in, where can I hang out on the Russian River? How can I save water in my garden, while still keeping it beautiful? And where can I volunteer to help keep the river and other local waterways clean?

A couple of weeks ago I saw a tiny item in some newspaper or other about a preacher browsing through the book department of a big chain discount store. He noticed that they had placed the Bibles in the “Fiction” section, and he took offense. The store apologized profusely and fell all over itself to right this supposed wrong.

Unless you’ve been closely following Sonoma County happenings, you may not be aware that another local, iconic bridge, the 1915, Parker-through-truss, Lambert Bridge, is in jeopardy of being removed from service. Like our Healdsburg Memorial Bridge, until recently, this bridge had a Caltrans reported structural Inventory Rating (a rating used for federal funding purposes) of zero tons. Its Sufficiency Rating is 4.8 compared to our Memorial Bridge’s Rating of 2 on a scale of 0 to 100. In June of 2013, I became aware of this threat and corresponded with our County Supervisor, Mike McGuire.

Over in Sacramento there’s a new State Legislature with new

The news this week is good. Sonoma County was just rated the eighth healthiest county in California, based on findings in a national survey of 3,000 counties. Good health is always good news.

Hold on to your butts — your cigarette butts, that is. Let’s face it: many smokers litter when discarding their cigarette butts. They are dropped on sidewalks, tossed out the car window, and left on beaches. A cigarette butt is so small, it is easy to feel like we’re really not littering at all. What’s a cigarette butt compared to tossing a bag of fast food wrappers into the street or pouring a can of used oil in the gutter?

Healdsburg’s rental housing market is in crisis. Evictions, 60 day notices and often 20 percent-plus rental increases are occurring daily, the most recent eviction being the 21-unit rental housing on Prentice Drive, with all tenants being evicted for building repairs, and rents going from a range of $850 to $1,400 to $2,100 – a 65 percent rental increase and more in one year. How many rental units and people are in Healdsburg? According to the 2010 housing element statistics there are 4,378 total housing units in Healdsburg. Forty-two percent of them (1,857) are rental units. With an average of three persons per unit, this could represent 5,571 people in our community of 12,000 residents.

Before my head and my heart could accept that the end of a decade might be a good transition time, my body made a point of telling me that the chapter as Farmers’ Market Manager was coming to an end. In June, my back refused to be comfortable in my ‘69 Ford Market Truck, and I had a big epiphany after Epiphanio Juarez offered to purchase the truck. When I handed him the keys a few weeks later, I realized it was not that difficult to let go. And so began a summer and fall of small letting gos, until finally, after the market on Oct. 12, my back just stopped working. Fortunately, the market was beginning to wind down, and we had two well-trained assistants, Carl Hubbell and Teo Tomerlin, to work at the market. Thank you Greta Mesics, David and Sally Hubbell, Leslie Kelley Byrnes, Steve and Cheryl Caletti, and Zack Schwa for your help. And thank you to Ann Carranza for cheerfully managing the Pumpkin Fest and the Arts and Crafts Fair.

By now we’ve all seen the stunning pictures of humpback whales swimming in San Francisco Bay and received in our mailboxes the expensive color brochures touting the benefits of Measure AA. The well-funded proponents of Measure AA would have us believe that $500 million in new taxes will result in a clean and healthy San Francisco Bay for ourselves and future generations.