News

When Sebastopol city Councilmembers Diana Rich and Neysa Hinton first chose the newest honoree for the Locals Who Make a Difference program, they didn’t realize he was the son of the current honoree. His last name is different so they didn’t make the connection. All they saw was a promising young man who spent a lot of time helping his community.

Most restaurants in west county have been eking out a living doing take-out since they were forced to close on March 17 to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. But like the rest of the county, restaurants are opening up. On May 22, a county health order allowed restaurants to resume outdoor dining. On June 4, the county announced that restaurants could resume indoor dining as well.

On Tuesday, May 19, an attorney for the mother of David Glen Ward, the 52-year-old man who died in a bizarre interaction with sheriff’s deputies at the end of December, has filed suit against the two sheriff’s deputies involved, a Sebastopol police officer who was on the scene, the county of Sonoma and Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Essick.

There are not many career options where you can get paid to scare the living daylights out of people, however, one Sonoma County Halloween tradition employs a slew of actors each season to provide customers with hair-raising scares.

Those who walk by Byron Gibbs Park in Healdsburg can expect to see a bright new addition — a mural depicting an ombre rainbow is being put up on a stretch of patch-painted fence near Poppy Hill Drive this weekend, from June 26 to June 30.

Town of Windsor staff will be at the Farmers Market by the Town Green from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Sunday to ask community members for input on two projects: the Windsor Resilience Plan and the Old Redwood Highway Corridor Enhancement Plan.

Sonoma County’s new marijuana regulations remain an imperfect work in progress, county officials conceded last week.

Susan Leibovitz Steinman from Oakland has a sculpture on the Geyserville Sculpture Trail. “Cartwheels” is created out of a salvaged grocery cart, bicycle wheels, pipe clamps, river stones and metal mesh. It seems to be precariously balanced, yet is not and speaks of limited, conflicted mobility. The cart filled with river stones gives it balance and weight, securing it in place. It’s a loose metaphor for the importance of nature in securing a balanced center for everyone in modern life.

State and county officials have come up with a new cooperative plan to solve Russian River pollution problems caused by substandard septic systems, homeless camps and river recreational users.