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The Sebastopol City Council has been talking about hiring an economic development director/community vitality specialist for more than a year and slated $40,000 for the half-time position. At the last city council meeting on May 5, it was announced that rather than hiring an individual, city staff opted to engage a company called CoMission, headed by former Sebastopol Mayor Craig Litwin.

An extended parade meandered throughout Cloverdale on Friday night, Oct. 30. Dubbed the Spooky Cloverdale Crawl, the parade was organized with the goal of being more COVID-19-conscious, so folks could head from their house to the nearest parade route street and watch the floats go by as kids collect candy. 

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 10

In November 2018, voters of the Monte Rio Fire District passed a parcel tax to support the fire district. In the intervening months, it was discovered that there was an error in the way those parcels were identified. The creators of the parcel tax measure had meant to exclude low-value parcels (575 of them) from the parcel tax. It turns out that didn’t happen, and many landowners got surprisingly large bills in October. Michele McDonell, the writer of one of the adjacent letters, said her family’s parcel tax bill for low-value parcels alone was over $10,000.

Tax set to sunset in 2023; if approved, user utility tax would be in place until repealed by voters

CalFire is once again requiring burn permits for any outdoor open burning in local state responsibility areas. Burn permits are available to residents in Sonoma, Napa, Solano, Yolo and Colusa counties and are required as of May 1.

With the snip of a red ribbon with a pair of giant scissors in August 2016, it was preordained what the first sentence of Healdsburg’s Mel Amato’s obituary would contain, whenever that time would come. Amato was the man who almost singlehandedly saved Healdsburg’s Memorial Bridge from demolition by Caltrans, deploying all of his engineering prowess to repudiate a cadre of Caltrans engineers and prove the historic landmark was worthy of preservation. The Ohio native lived his last two decades in Healdsburg contributing to many community and local historical causes. He died on Nov. 16 at the age of 86.

Dave Kiff, a Healdsburg resident with more than 40 years of experience in state and local government, has been named director of the county’s new Homelessness Services Division within the Department of Health Services (DHS).  In June, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors approved moving...

County remains off the governor’s watch list for now