Animals matter, too
On 10/5, at 11:08 PM I received a phone call from my neighbor to help with a dog that been hit in the road in front of our homes. That thankfully survived. We went out to help the pet. It looked very good that the little girl would survive. As we were in the process of trying to get if off the road, an oncoming vehicle approached. With flashlights waving, we tried to get said large white pickup to stop or go around. Instead of heading our warning, said truck kept coming, almost hitting us, and ran the poor dog over. Didn’t even stop!
Have we not had enough loss that some unfeeling driver just had to get somewhere in that big of a hurry? At 11 at night?
Sorry to say that this unfeeling driver, who could have stopped to help, just kept on going.
This happened across from the Fire Station on 175. I hope this driver sees this and knows that they have caused a family with kids another great loss.
I have lost a lot of pets in my lifetime, but this was unnecessary, TOTALLY.
Dolores Patrignani, Middletown
The Right Priorities?
In the days following the start of the Valley Fire there are many actions our county board of supervisors could have taken to increase the safety of local residents, like re-activating the warning sirens that were mysteriously disabled in spite of the county’s 2009 Community Wildfire prevention Plan, which called for more sirens and upgrades for older ones within five years. Simple, low cost improvements like staffing the fire lookout on mount Konocti with volunteers or banning activities like mowing after noon have not been considered, so we are left with a dysfunctional warning system that depends entirely on the extremely unreliable reverse 911 phone system that failed almost immediately in the Valley Fire.
However, the BOS was able to perform other tasks in recent days, like giving pay raises to all county staff, including the department heads who failed to do their jobs in the Valley fire. The BOS also managed to give themselves a hefty 10 percent raise without any public outcry, because for the first time ever they quietly changed the process to include themselves with other management personnel, and nowhere in any of the documentation was this change noted or described.
So using the Valley Fire as a distraction and then hiding the facts by using misleading and incomplete information to describe the pay raises, the BOS have managed to put one over on us, in fact they were so good at fooling the public even supervisor Jim Comstock didn’t understand he was voting himself a pay raise until the county CAO Matt Perry corrected him. This is the same BOS which felt everything was going so well in the county this year that they could reduce their meetings by 25 percent, and then tried to steal $20 million dollars from local PG&E rate payers. Our BOS has also hid from us the fact that the county director of the Office of Emergency Services quit three weeks ago, because it underscores what a disaster the county’s response to the Valley fire was.
After the Rocky Fire we knew we were facing unprecedented fire conditions, yet no changes were made to the 2013 Natural Hazards Mitigation Plan that was supposed to protect us, and the entire evacuation plan was tossed aside as soon as the incident began-including the list of people needing assistance to leave their homes. People died because of the dysfunction of county management staff, who all now are enjoying fatter paychecks thanks to our BOS. Before we can move forward and correct the problems we need accountability, and an end to the sleazy, deceptive and self-serving practices of our BOS.
Philip Murphy, Lakeport
Gun “control”
I am old and city bred. I don’t particularly like guns, but I do own one — a single shot that probably could hit a barn door at 50 feet. I also have no problems with others who own/collect guns. I am as unhappy as any about the country’s mass shootings and am fascinated by all the furor about gun control. Makes good copy, but I question what more can be done beyond enforcing the existing laws that prohibit ownership by felons and those with mental issues.
Seems to me there comes a time when the economics of enforcement has to be a consideration. As I understand it, there are almost as many guns in the US as there are people, and some are even registered. I see no feasible way to register all firearms in private hands.
In today’s R-B (10/7) there was a notice of a “gun show” to be held in Ukiah. Many guns will be bought and sold and the transfer of ownership will be documented. As I see it, this is the only way to increase knowledge of who owns what, at least, over time, the data bank of gun ownership will become more up to date. It may be frustrating to some that all gun transfers are not, ever, going to be documented if only because there will always be private sales between unknown owners and unknown buyers.
As a country we had better get used to these shootings. There is no way someone who wants a firearm can be prevented from getting one, there is just too much opportunity. It is going to take a much more vigilant populace to communicate to authorities. Dedicated shooters are (usually) too smart. As far as I can see, arming a teacher probably guarantees the teacher will be the first victim, sad but true.
Guff Worth, Lakeport
