LAKEPORT— The Lake County Board of Supervisors held their weekly meeting at the Lake County Courthouse and online via zoom. This week the board heard a staffing incentive proposal from Sheriff Brian Martin, they also conducted a discussion of PG&E’s vegetation management programs.
Martin came before the board to propose a few staffing incentives considering the severe shortage his department continues to experience. Martin explained that out of 50 positions, 17 are filled while an additional seven are on leave. Considering the vast responsibilities the Sheriff’s Department faces, from Coroner duties to the correctional facility on top of their “keep the peace” obligations and normal patrols, this understaffing is not acceptable according to Martin.
To remedy this Martin has one deputy trainee in the training academy, six deputies assigned to the jail, three deputies on dispatch and one extra deputy at the courthouse, measures that he said help but are by far not enough. According to Martin, “What this all results to is a reduction in services on the street. It’s had an impact on our patrol. We have not been able to fill our school resource officer position simply because they (school districts) don’t have the people and it’s currently going to have an impact on some of our other specialty assignments including the Roadmap Taskforce and our marijuana investigation and enforcement.”
The Sheriff’s proposal included adding an emergency staff incentive pay, increasing the hiring incentives to $15,000 and $20,000 and creating a retention incentive. The board agreed to revisit this matter next week during budgetary hearings.
Matt Leady, Rich Noonan and Melinda Rivera from PG&E presented on vegetation management programs in the county targeting the tree mortality issue. Leady explained their current program stating, “As part of our ongoing efforts to prevent wildfires, we are conducting annual and additional inspections to remove dead, dying, disease or defective trees that could harm power lines or equipment.” Rivera added “We have completed over 364 line miles so far on our circuits. For 2022 what we had planned was to complete almost 81 miles. Thus far year to date we have completed just over 22 line miles for our work in Lake County, so we still have quite a bit of work to get through.” As described by Rivera the areas that have been part of this program are Lakeport, Cobb, and Middletown and will be the focus for the remainder of this year.
District Five Supervisor Jessica Pyska commented “I’m looking at the map for the enhanced vegetation management and it doesn’t look like that’s including the Soda Bay Corridor and I know we’re experiencing a lot of tree death in that area and our emergency is county wide, we did that in May for the entire county and so I just don’t know why it’s restricted to one area.” Rivera responded “We do understand that tree mortality that the county has been impacted in various areas, not just in Cobb. However when we were initially approached by the county, it was specific to Cobb area and so the exception we made at that time was for Cobb. At this time we’re not offering that kind of exception and offering wood haul for any areas outside of Cobb.”
Home Owner’s Associations alongside Konocti Fire Council members from the Soda Bay Area community voiced their concerns regarding the refusal to remove (wood haul) the downed trees and remaining stumps. For this densely populated, high fire risk area the piled tree trunks pose a dangerous and potentially very costly problem. To address these issues PG&E has provided a phone number and email address to inquire if wood can be removed from your property at treesafety@pge.com and 1-800-564-5080.
The board urged PG&E to expand their scope of their enhanced vegetation management and tree removal services while maintaining their many beneficial partnerships that make this program possible.
Minutes, agendas and video for the Board of Supervisors meetings can be found on the county website lakecountyca.gov.
