Sunday, July 28, 2019

Liz Writes Life 7-3-19


July 3, 2019

Liz Writes Life

Boy, certainly appreciated the cooler weather this week. I was able to get more weeding and mulching done, before the higher temps hit. There is a three-inch-long zucchini that has stopped growing, but is still firm. I better pick it, because I have found the first few zucchini sometimes stop growing and go mushy. Hope your gardens and flowers are doing well!

POW

Ray Haupt, Dist. 5 Siskiyou Co. Supervisor, shared positive info during the Scott Valley Protect Our Water meeting held last Thursday night. First, The Nature Conservancy has paid Siskiyou Co. $350,000 for potential lost taxes due to the fact that it sold the Shasta Valley Louie Ranch to the CA. Dept. of Fish and Wildlife and it will no longer be private property. Ray said TNC did this as a “good faith effort” during the escrow process. Ray and Michael Kobseff, Siskiyou Co. Supervisor for Dist. 3, have been working on protecting agricultural and water on the Louie ranch throughout TNC’s ownership and its (previous) sale of water rights to CDFW. This $350,000 is a great win for the county!

Budget

The difficult process of getting the county budget to balance was the major supervisors’ agenda item last month. Nearly all departments found their budget was the same as last year or declined a bit. The exception is the sheriff’s dept, which did receive $500,000 more than last year’s budget.

Fuel reduction

Ray explained the county is forging ahead to utilize state and the federal government programs to help reduce fuel loads and fire hazards. The first one -- and newest -- is the Governor’s (Newsom) Forest Task Force, which prioritizes grant-type of money to do hazardous fuels work on private properties. These grant monies come from the carbon credit initiative tax that we pay at the pump for our gas. Surprise!
These projects are for fuel breaks and thinning – specifically to modify fire behavior. Cal-Fire has prioritized these projects throughout the state and Fire Safe Councils are proposing projects. The county is competing state-wide for grants from $200 million that has been designated for fire hazard reduction. One project has been approved in Siskiyou Co. for the state-identified Shastina area.

To help with this project, our county supervisors asked the Siskiyou Fire Safe Council to put together a Fire Safe Plan to model and map potential fire behavior. This information is now filling-in gaps and aiding a new county-wide task force, which brings government fire agencies, private timber industry and Fire Safe Councils together to identify projects. This Siskiyou Task Force held its second meeting last month. Ray is pleased the group is coordinating its various skills, directions and efforts. “We are well organized,” he said.

Then, there is the federal program called the Good Neighbor Authority, which allows the USFS to enter into agreements with state forestry agencies to do critical forest management work.

Under the Good Neighbor Authority legislation is the Master Stewardship Agreement program. Its goal is to achieve land management for the national forest and better interface with private lands and local rural communities to meet hazardous fuels reduction needs. In other words, the county can enter into an agreement with the USFS to get work done, which the county deems high priority. The county must pay 20 percent of the cost of each project and the USFS pays the remaining 80 percent. Yep, this is a huge savings for the county.

What Ray likes about this program is that it is prioritized locally as the county is the lead. As a result, the county is working on agreements with Klamath National Forest. When the program gets going, it will feed itself as the positive income funds will go into future projects. KNF is 63 percent of Siskiyou Co. land base, so there is lots of interface with rural residents and towns.

To avoid pit-falls, Ray asked three-term Tuolumne Co. Supervisor, Randy Handfield, to come to Siskiyou Co. and explain the good, bad and ugly of these fire hazard agreements to those involved in the process. Tuolumne is the only county that has utilized the program and found success. Siskiyou hopes to be next with a bunch of successes.  

Red flag warnings were discussed and Ray said that through CA. Senate Bill 911, power companies will be required to shut-down power during high fire threats. There are two places in Siskiyou that have been identified for the potential need of shutting-off the power and they are the City of Mount Shasta and the Klamath River corridor between Seiad and Beaver Creek, which will also cut power to Happy Camp.

Ray also explained that through state legislation, power companies were mandated to have power mitigation plans and equipment up-grades by June 1, 2019. Hum, that is a lot of power facilities to address. I wonder if that happened?

Election

With the election of Dist. 1 Assemblyman Brian Dahle to the State Senate Dist. 1 seat, in June, there will now be an election to fill his assembly position. And that election will be here in no time. A primary election in the counties of Butte, Lassen, Modoc, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Shasta, Sierra and Siskiyou will be held on Aug. 27, 2019. Yes, that is an unusual time for an election.

I believe the primary election will reduce the candidates to two. Wow, that isn’t much time for candidates to canvas the north state. Then the special election to select the assembly-person will be held Nov. 5, 2019.

So far three people have declared they are running for the assembly seat. All are Republicans. They are Patrick Jones, from Redding; Megan Dahle, of Lassen Co.; and Joseph Turner, also from Lassen Co.

Patrick Jones is a favorite, because of his pro-2nd Amendment stand, outspoken need for forest health management and pension reform. He served two terms on the Redding City Council and as mayor. I have met Patrick and like him.

Megan Dahle is the wife of Brian Dahle. She has served one term as president on the Big Valley Joint Unified School board and is for better funding for public safety and emergency personnel.

Joseph Turner recently resigned from his chairmanship with the Lassen Co. GOP to run for assembly. He is a veteran of the CA. Army National Guard and will fight against excessive taxes and regulations.

Have a good week and try to stay cool!

Liz Bowen began writing ranch and farm news, published in newspapers, in 1976. She is a native of Siskiyou County and lives near Callahan. Columns from the past year can be found at: lizwriteslife.blogspot.com. Call her at 530-467-3515.

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