Supervisor Susan Gorin has announced the appointees for the North Valley Municipal Advisory Council, an official body that will hold public meetings and make nonbinding recommendations to the County Board of Supervisors on matters of import to the communities of Kenwood, Glen Ellen and Eldridge. Chaired by Arthur Dawson, the writer, historian and ecologist, its members are: Daymon Doss, vice chair; Kate Eagles; Melissa Dowling; Vicki Handron; Jed Cooper; Mark Newhouser; Matthew Dickey; and Angela Nardo-Morgan…Since Eldrige and the Sonoma Developmental Center are one in the same, the NVMAC’s purview suggests it will have input on the future of the SDC campus. Then again, (with the State watching with a landlord’s eye), there’s already a SDC Public Advisory Team — a citizen panel appointed in January. That group will advise on what the heck to do with the 945-acre property. As formed, the group’s meetings will be held in private. But with 15 members, it sounds like at least a two-screen Zoom call.
There’s outdoor dining, and then there’s Sonoma Plaza, which the City has made available to approved restaurants, suffering from pinched capacity due to the pandemic protocols, to set up space and service for up to 32 people. (Seated at the correct social distance, of course). The first to take advantage is girl and the fig, with Sunday brunch. Cocktails, too, if you’d like… Impromptu blind wine tasting: pull your mask over your eyes before sipping.
You’re not paranoid, that really is a helicopter following you. PG&E has started low-flying (100 feet) copter checks of its power lines. The survey is also somehow a way to “improve our Public Safety and Power Shutdown program by making events smaller in size and shorter in length.” A PSPS, as all will remember from candle shopping last October, is how the utility pre-fights fires.
The Sonoma Community Health Center will end Covid-19 testing on July 31. It had deployed its dental staff to assist the medical side, explains Cheryl Johnson. “Now that we are re-opening our dental clinic for limited services, the dental staff will be resuming their normal roles.” The availability of testing kits, and the length of (third-party) processing also “influenced our decision to ramp down and then close the testing sites.” The drive-up service has been offered free. Testing started May 20 and was extended once, past an initial July 1 date. Johnson said 75 people a week were projected; it turned out to average 90 a day.
Used to be, somebody asked ‘how are you doing,’ you’d answer ‘good’ or even ‘great.’ Now, even a resigned ‘hanging in there’ is hard to muster. During Covid, ‘meh’ is the new ‘fine.’
— Val Robichaud, page3@sonomasun.com
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