You Have to Go Thru a Metal Detector... SO, a PLASTIC Whistle Is Required... Wear it around your neck under your Shirt and NO ONE will Know! Remember to Remove the Metal Ring...
Until You Disrupt The Speech... and then Start Shouting! "GET YE HENSE, SATAN" or Whatever Slogans You Want to Say...
I Suppose You would be Arrested for Disturbing the Peace... but It Would Totally Be Worth it! Especially When You Blame Trump During the Trial... or TV News Interviews.
What is that yellow thing in the sky? By George, it’s the sun! Nice to see you, Ol’ Sol. Thanks for giving us a chance to soak up that lovely precipitation. Fingers crossed for more steady rain over the next couple of months. If it could come without the words torrential or flood being used, that would be nice, too. No sense in watching it all flow downstream.
This is great for the dry well folks, who will certainly see a rise in their water levels if this keeps up. The surface water deliveries for ag interests may even be at higher capacity this year, allowing farmers to not pump as much groundwater as in the recent dry past. Let’s recharge, baby!
We’re not out of the woods yet by any means, but the picture is much rosier than we had any right to expect. Shasta Lake is at 52% of capacity and Oroville is at 58%. That’s fantastic with the snowpack we have. And it doesn’t feel like the spigot is going to shut off anytime soon, does it? But what do I know? Donny One-Ball the Donkey is a much better weather forecaster than I and he ain’t talkin’.
Let’s just hope for the best and not waste any more time giving lip service to protecting the groundwater we have. The time has come – and passed – for substantive action. I’m looking at you, Groundwater Sustainability Agency. The Flood Control Conservation District (board of supervisors) will meet on Monday at 11 a.m. in the Board Chambers at 727 Oak St. in Red Bluff.
On the agenda are overviews of the Well Registry Program and the Survey Public Workshop to be held Feb. 8 at 6 p.m. at the Red Bluff Community Center. Public comments (that’s you) will be permitted during the agenda item Monday, so bring your questions at 11 a.m. You may also attend and comment by phone – instructions on the agenda at bit.ly/fcwc01232023.
I have a few questions about the Registry. Why are they asking us for this information when the county has records back to the 1980s? DWR has over 800,000 records statewide on a searchable map. If you can’t find one on there, you can write them and they will send you the info. Why are we paying a consulting firm, megabucks to create the database? Why are landowners footing the bill through a tax disguised as a fee on their property taxes?
The database is not mandated by the state – groundwater sustainability is. The registry is supposed to tell us where and how groundwater is being used. Um, really? Take a drive around the county and look out the window. This is a lengthy project to keep us busy for three years before they have to take any effective action.
This will be the first FCWC meeting for the two new board members, Pati Nolen and Matt Hansen. Water was a focus of both their campaigns, so it will be interesting to hear what they have to say about this. And the way our GSA has handled its responsibilities up until now.
Tuesday will see the second regular board of supervisors meeting of the year and has an ambitious agenda. There will be an update on the Public Authority, which you wouldn’t think would be a big deal, but totally is. Supervisor Carlson has been asking for more information on how it operates forever. That’s what started the whole nightmare of complaints to the Grand Jury and the ultimate exoneration of Carlson.
There’s also an item for the addition of an Information Technology Coordinator. Yes, an IT person. On the surface, it looks like we’re entering the 21st century at last, but that’s not the case. The county wants beloved retired Tax Collector Dana Hollmer in the position, so a job description was created for her. The job will be flown of course, wink wink.
Hollmer earned a small stipend coordinating between the county and our main systems provider, Apex, during her tenure as County Tax Collector. She loved the work and did a great job, but she is not an IT expert. She had no authority to update processes in other departments unless that department head was so inclined.
And guess what? Many of them weren’t so inclined. That’s why our Auditor’s office is still doing county payroll manually. Paper time cards in 2023. It may also be one reason we have no Well Registry in Environmental Health. Related aside – the recently retired directors of those two departments have also been hired back “to help”. Tim Potanovic from EH and former Auditor LeRoy Anderson. How can we miss them if they won’t go away?
Hollmer is not being hired to take our systems to the next level. She is coming to piece back together the systems she left that have been unraveling a bit since her retirement over a year ago. Nobody replaced her, so the tweaks and glitches she took care of have not been happening.
In other words, Hollmer will get us back to where we were before she left. This is not progress, but it will help. Disclaimer – Dana is a good friend of mine and I adore her. She will do a great job and doesn’t want this to be permanent. So…
Let’s start looking for a real IT person or better yet, an IT department. Apex could even supply a person or two to help analyze where processes could be streamlined and develop systems where departmental interface could be improved. Security should be a concern, too, as we learned from the data breach at Social Services where thousands of people’s personal information was exposed. Social Services has its own IT person or people, and a thorough barn door repair must have been performed after that gigantic horse got out.
This is Tehama County settling for less instead of being open to the possibility of a better way. We deserve a bright future. Are we ready to invest in it?
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