Editorial

Among other local news this week, we’d like to announce that the Healdsburg Tribune has new owners — more than two dozen in fact. Our new owners are community members and readers just like you. They are individuals and couples who have invested $1,000 to $20,000 with our Direct Public Offer that is funding Sonoma West Publishers’ new vision for quality community journalism.

When I first came to Healdsburg District Hospital in July of 2017, I saw a raised vegetable garden bed outside of the café that desperately needed love. Initially, I considered replacing some of the wood boards but the fixer-upper in me knew the whole structure needed to be rebuilt. It was overgrown with mint, a very prolific and stubborn herb, and low on soil.

There’s a lot of news and circumstances behind Sonoma County’s record-low rate of unemployment, which this week stands at just 2.8 percent. As always, the news is a mix of good and bad.

When “people of color” are talked about in history and media, the predominant picture that’s imagined is a black person being kicked out of a restaurant or a Mexican person being detained for being here illegally.

Founded immediately after the Women’s March in January 2017, Indivisible Healdsburg is celebrating a year of political activism and accomplishment. And, starting with its Jan. 17 general meeting, the group plans to kick off its second year with a range of actions to support progressive candidates in the upcoming mid-term elections.

On Nov. 17, Cal Fire approved a Timber Harvest Plan that will permit aggressive logging in the headwaters of Felta Creek, one of the last remaining native fish habitats in the entire Russian River watershed. Despite more than 130 letters of public concern from school board officers, the local fire department, concerned citizens, ecologists, nonprofit organizations and neighborhood associations, as well as elected officials including county supervisor James Gore and state senator Mike McGuire, Cal Fire gave the green light on THP 17-017 SON “Fox Meadow.”

The Healdsburg City Council is having a discussion on potentially changing the permitted use of hotels in the Downtown and Plaza Commercial Districts at 5 p.m. on Monday, December 4, at city hall.

Healdsburg business owner Lucia Azevedo Fincher made this statement to the Healdsburg City Council on Monday night:

Since its very beginnings, this community has had a very proud tradition of military service. Healdsburg area citizens have stepped forward to serve their country’s military, beginning with the Mexican War when less than two months after the declaration of war on May 13, 1846 local militias supported United States Marines and sailors for the occupation of Sonoma on July 9, 1846 after California had been declared part of the United States. Area residents have served in every major and most of the lesser wars and military deployments since.

In recent months our country has been embroiled in a contentious social and political climate fixated on how fundamentally divided we are. The fire disaster and crisis that has befallen our counties here in northern California transcends political views, prejudices and controversies that pervade news and social media.