Editorial

If kids can't read, they can't succeed...this is the motto for

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors took the easy way out last week, cynically agreeing unanimously to require everyone connected to the county – except themselves – to comply with a living wage increase. Requiring county contractors and grant recipients to raise wages to $15 an hour was a fine thing to do, but exempting the county itself was disappointing, and turned the whole affair into an exercise in self-aggrandizement.

In 1985 there were over 350,000 cases of paralytic polio in the world. These were basically all in third world countries, as polio had been eradicated, due to immunization, in the United States and Europe and Asia in the 1970s. For the young people who do not know what polio can do, as it is no longer a threat here, it is a virus that can cause permanent paralysis of major muscle groups, including respiratory muscles leading to death.

I ran into Mike McGuire the other day at the First Annual

In Healdsburg and throughout Sonoma County, issues related to housing have been in the spotlight for many months. The city is keenly aware of our community’s housing needs and has been working hard, alongside our residents, to address these serious housing problems. Providing affordable housing to working families and building government subsidized, affordable housing units continue to be top City Council priorities. Much has been accomplished and a great deal remains to be done.

When the first Earth Day was held on April 22, 1970, Sonoma County was a very different landscape with a very sick Russian River, a deadened Laguna, lead-spewing automobiles, tons of highway litter and a county land use map poised for massive suburban sprawl from Petaluma to Geyserville.

If the people of Healdsburg truly want their children, young families and local workers to be able to rent and buy homes here, then it is time for new initiatives, real action and bigger efforts.