Editorial

If last Monday’s city council meeting demonstrated anything about Healdsburg’s housing issues, it was that housing is complicated. Whatever variable you address – land availability, zoning, building regulations, deed restrictions, capital and financing options, unit size, unit price, or AMI (area median income), each is connected to the others.

Recently, there have been concerns expressed about our elementary programs at both Healdsburg Elementary School and Healdsburg Charter School. Over the past few months, we’ve made several decisions to address concerns and create opportunities for all of our students to realize even more academic success.

Among other local news this week, we’d like to announce that the Healdsburg Tribune has new owners — more than two dozen in fact. Our new owners are community members and readers just like you. They are individuals and couples who have invested $1,000 to $20,000 with our Direct Public Offer that is funding Sonoma West Publishers’ new vision for quality community journalism.

When I first came to Healdsburg District Hospital in July of 2017, I saw a raised vegetable garden bed outside of the café that desperately needed love. Initially, I considered replacing some of the wood boards but the fixer-upper in me knew the whole structure needed to be rebuilt. It was overgrown with mint, a very prolific and stubborn herb, and low on soil.

There’s a lot of news and circumstances behind Sonoma County’s record-low rate of unemployment, which this week stands at just 2.8 percent. As always, the news is a mix of good and bad.

When “people of color” are talked about in history and media, the predominant picture that’s imagined is a black person being kicked out of a restaurant or a Mexican person being detained for being here illegally.

Founded immediately after the Women’s March in January 2017, Indivisible Healdsburg is celebrating a year of political activism and accomplishment. And, starting with its Jan. 17 general meeting, the group plans to kick off its second year with a range of actions to support progressive candidates in the upcoming mid-term elections.

On Nov. 17, Cal Fire approved a Timber Harvest Plan that will permit aggressive logging in the headwaters of Felta Creek, one of the last remaining native fish habitats in the entire Russian River watershed. Despite more than 130 letters of public concern from school board officers, the local fire department, concerned citizens, ecologists, nonprofit organizations and neighborhood associations, as well as elected officials including county supervisor James Gore and state senator Mike McGuire, Cal Fire gave the green light on THP 17-017 SON “Fox Meadow.”

The Healdsburg City Council is having a discussion on potentially changing the permitted use of hotels in the Downtown and Plaza Commercial Districts at 5 p.m. on Monday, December 4, at city hall.

Healdsburg business owner Lucia Azevedo Fincher made this statement to the Healdsburg City Council on Monday night: