Life -- and homework -- goes on at El Verano Elementary School, but without principal Maite Iturri, who resigned, suddenly and unexpectedly, shortly before school began. The well-respected Iturri had worked for the district for 25 years. She has taken position with the Petaluma School... Continue

Sunny skies, brown lawns, preemptive power outages. Ah, summer. When the super hot weather returns (from its vacation in Seattle), so will the threat of fire and PG&E’s Public Safety Power Shutoff program. You remember, that’s when the utility-formerly-known-as-bankrupt shuts off power in advance of... Continue

Dominic Foppoli finally stepped down, in un-self-aware disgrace, as mayor of Windsor after being accused of sexual misconduct by at least seven women. One of them was Rachel Hundley, the former Sonoma city councilmember, who said he accosted her at a Sacramento hotel in 2015.... Continue

  What to make of the Sonoma Valley High School’s in-person attendance situation, where about 50 percent of students came back to campus and the other 50 percent is sticking with an all-zoom virtual school day. Today’s topic for metaphysics: Is the class half full... Continue

While we’re busy dealing with a pandemic, there’s another disaster looming on the cloudless horizon, a potential crisis flying under the Doppler: drought. State officials haven’t declared one yet, but two consecutive dry years have created conditions more severe than the brick-in-the-toilet spell of 2013... Continue

The Sonoma Hotel Project, dormant for over two years, is back on the well-worn drawing board. Kenwood Investments submitted plans 10 years ago (!) for the 1.6-acre site on the 100 block of West Napa Street. It’s been a series of stops and starts since... Continue

The housing development planned for the big lot at MacArthur and Broadway in Sonoma was ambitiously dubbed The Gateway, as it promised a striking welcome-point for people entering the city. But now, after the city council has acquiesced to a lawsuit halting the project, it... Continue