Jeff Pelline's Sierra Foothills Report

From the “Friday memo” at the Rood Center:
“Census Data – Redrawing Supervisors Districts: As you are well aware, the 2010 census showed the County at a slow to moderate pace of growth at 7% over the last 10 years. We have taken this data and applied it to your 5 districts. Not surprisingly, because of this growth, it shows a very minor deviation for each of the districts:

District # of blocks Total population Population Deviation Deviation %

1 777 19,395 -358 -1.81%
2 389 19,978 225 1.14%
3 592 20,316 563 2.85%
4 781 20,022 269 1.36%
5 2094 19,055 -698 -3.53%

Total Population 98,766
expected District Population 19,753

We must either reaffirm the existing lines or redraw them no later than your second meeting in October to meet the November 1st deadline. In the interim, we will be posting a map with the census blocks and by district in April for the public’s benefit.

In addition, there will be a public hearing before the final action prior to the November 1st deadline.

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“Pacific Gas and Electric Co. customers afraid of the radiation from the company’s wireless SmartMeter may soon have a choice:

“Accept the device as is. Or ask PG&E to turn off the meter’s transmitter – and pay higher monthly bills as a result. As much as $20 more per month.

“Under pressure from state regulators, PG&E introduced its long-awaited SmartMeter opt-out plan Thursday, designed to answer the fears of people who consider the radiation from cell phones, laptops and other wireless devices to be a health threat. The utility, based in San Francisco, has faced growing protests over the new electricity and gas meters, which PG&E is installing throughout Northern and Central California.”

The rest of the article is here.

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After I visited with some homeless people at the Vet’s Hall last night, I headed home and ran into a guy making this “snowman” in front of the Stonehouse Academy in Nevada City. I smiled, and he waved back with a thumbs up. Thanks to one of my Facebook friends — LeeAnn Brook — for posting the “object d’art” on her page.

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Why don’t I read this on the “hard right, anti-Brown, anti-Obama, pro-McClintock, pro-Logue” blogs in our town?

“Job creation is starting to catch up with other signs that show that California’s recession-battered economy is on the mend,” the L.A. Times reported on Friday.

“In February, the Golden State added nearly 100,000 new jobs, the highest monthly increase since the current record system began in 1990, state officials said Friday. In January, the state reported a revised total of only 700 new jobs that were created.

“The February unemployment rate dropped by two-tenths of a percentage point, to 12.2% from 12.4% in January, the California Economic Development Department reported.

“The increase of 96,500 jobs was the largest month-over-month jump of any state in the nation, the government said. The number of new jobs created in February alone was almost as high as the total created for the previous 11 months, 99,800, the EDD said.”

The rest of the article is here.

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Grass Valley Assistant Finance Director Deborah Sultan is departing for a similar job in the city of Sanger, according to my sources.

The city’s Finance Director already has remained vacant.

City Hall has been trimming its staff to cope with the economic downturn, not filling some positions.

Now might be a good time to follow in Nevada City’s footsteps — finding somebody at a less than full time salary but who has full retirement benefits from decades of work.

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Editor’s note: The “Sweet 16″ NCAA basketball championships always are unpredictable. In this case, Arizona — a Pac 10 school — upset defending national champion Duke on Thursday night, wreaking havoc with workplace betting pools all across America. I’m always rooting for the Pac-10 conference.

“All season, West Coast basketball took a bashing,” according to USA Today.

“Some weeks, the Pacific-10 Conference didn’t even have a team — not one — in the top 25 of polls.

“But the Pac-10 has a team in the Elite Eight now.

“Arizona, the No. 5 seed in the West, thrashed defending NCAA champion Duke 93-77 Thursday night to advance to the regional final Saturday against Connecticut.

“Arizona (30-7) came into the tournament as the Pac-10 champ, and forward Derrick Williams came into the tournament as the Pac-10 player of the year.

“But very few saw this coming, Williams basically turning into Blake Griffin with a career-high 32 points to go with 13 rebounds, and the Wildcats, who didn’t even make the tournament field a year ago, looking like a team that can win it all.”

The rest of the article is here.

Here’s Williams, only a sophomore, in action. (You need to click twice to see the video):

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This letter and headline ran in the Mountain Democrat in Placerville:

“EDITOR:
It is hard to imagine a bigger buster in Congress for the nuclear and oil industries than Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Roseville. At a town hall meeting in El Dorado Hills last month, I heard him vigorously echo the view that atomic reactors produce “clean, cheap and abundant power.”

But that was a month before the start of the nightmarish nuclear disaster unfolding in Japan. Now the question is whether he will reassess his unbridled enthusiasm for atomic power and not tolerate the risk of this state becoming known for another Chernobyl or Fukushima.

Eleven of the more than 100 nuclear power plants in this country are located on top of earthquake faults, including some in California where there have been 10 quakes greater than level 7 in the past century, greater than what many of these plants were built to withstand. Could any of them survive Japan’s recent magnitude 9 earthquake?

And for those atomic plants built right on the Pacific Ocean, were they built to endure a tsunami like the one that brought catastrophic destruction to Japan last week? No.

After his El Dorado Hills talk, I found with a quick check of McClintock’s campaign contributions that the largest source of his support was, you guessed it, from the energy industry.

Now I wonder, is Rep. McClintock ready to ensure that needed steps are promptly taken to protect the public, and will he no longer tolerate billions of federal dollars in subsidies and tax breaks for the energy industry, especially now when times are tough for taxpayers?

KIRK CALLAN SMITH
Placerville”

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Life in the foothills is redolent of my childhood in many ways, right down to the phone tree at school.

There is a “Kermit the Frog” land line near my bed, the closest thing to a “Bat phone” in our house.

When my parents were alive and in declining health, I always dreaded the phone ringing in the middle of the night. We still keep a land line next to the bed for emergencies.

Kermit rang loudly this morning, with the father of my son’s classmate on the other end somewhat loudly relaying that it was a “snow day.” We sprang into action, calling the other parents.

The world of “texting” still has not replaced the phone tree, a reliable system unless the “Sierra cement” snaps the phone lines.

Here’s the Caltrans report, from the internet:

•I-80 [IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA & THE SIERRA NEVADA]
IS CLOSED FROM COLFAX (PLACER CO) TO THE NEVADA STATE LINE – DUE TO ZERO
VISIBILITY

• Hwy. 20 IS CLOSED FROM NEVADA CITY TO THE JCT OF I 80 (NEVADA CO) – DUE TO
ZERO VISIBILITY – MOTORISTS ARE ADVISED TO USE AN ALTERNATE ROUTE -
LOCAL RESIDENTS WITH IDENTIFICATION WILL BE ALLOWED THROUGH

•”Disabled vehicle” in Auburn and elsewhere, according to the California Highway Patrol.

•Lots of power outages in the Bay Area and Central Valley and some minor ones in Nevada City (1-49 people impacted for now), Colfax and Auburn, according to PG&E.

•A video, “Sacramento Valley wakes up to flooding,” is here.

More snow is expected in the foothills on Friday, turning to rain later in the day.

Check the links on the upper right corner of this blog for real-time updates. Enjoy your weekend!

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