Jeff Pelline's Sierra Foothills Report

Too much hoopla is being made of the “Tax Day Tea Parties” on April 15. It’s a classic example of “playing to the crowd,” without thinking enough. If you dig a little, you find California has among the lowest property tax rates in the nation. One study is here. The same goes for our county, [...]

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Whenever I drive by the now-stalled Walgreens project in Burger Basin, I wonder how badly the City of Grass Valley got duped by the builder. Beyond the painful delay, enough of a disappointment, did the city require a “surety bond“? In the construction trade, a performance, or surety bond, is routinely requested. It helps ensure [...]

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We enjoy watching local government meetings on NCTV: It’s a valuable and expanding public benefit. We pay for it, mind you: through a monthly charge on our Comcast cable television bill. Check out the line item on your bill next time. But some of the programming is truly God-awful: Take the show, “Grass Valley News,” [...]

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After closing in January as a full-fledged school and now operating as a “home school,” Sierra Christian School in Nevada City plans to rebuild and grow into a K-12 school. This time around, the approach seems decidedly more fundamentalist. “The situation in public schools got progressively more hostile toward God, with the passage of gay [...]

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Here’s an economic bright spot: Sierra College has won a $500,000 grant to draw local students to technical careers. There’s nothing like people with skills in science, technology, engineering and math to help sustain and fuel our area’s economic growth. Among other high schools, Nevada Union High is teaming up with Sierra College to offer [...]

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Some time ago, KNCO radio rolled out a “new and improved” Web site that offered high hopes. But I’ve been losing interest. Sometimes when I look, KNCO.com hasn’t been updated for hours — or even days. Today is a good example: The last local story is dated April 3 at 6:15 p.m., but today is [...]

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You may not have heard yet, but census canvassing got underway here on Sunday, putting people to work and verifying addresses in the first major effort of its kind since 2000. Census workers will be visiting every home in the county in the next two months to update address lists and maps for the U.S. [...]

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A $7 billion deal for IBM to buy Sun Microsystems collapsed over the weekend, reversing the stock market’s 4-week rally. I can’t imagine why Sun’s board wouldn’t have embraced an acquisition at twice the price of where its stock has been trading. Sun has struggled for years. This reminds me of Yahoo’s board rejecting a [...]

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The Union has a sweet package on the Grass Valley Group in Monday’s paper, pegged to the 50th birthday. It’s more of a P.R. approach than many journalists would take, given that the company is *up for sale* and video-hardware makers are *struggling* with a new business model, not just the recession. None of this [...]

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