Editorial

Employee Recognition

You could hear some jeers over the polite applause last week when Sonoma County banned new vacation rentals in established residential neighborhoods.

Early in 2013, the new members of the Board of Directors of the Healdsburg Animal Shelter confronted the task of examining the Shelter’s business model and dealing with its continuing operating losses—losses that had severely eroded the Shelter’s financial reserves. In providing the high level of care that the Healdsburg community has come to expect, the Shelter has now exhausted nearly all its operating reserves.  Today we need community support—more than ever in the Shelter’s 53-year history—to keep the Shelter operating and fulfilling its mission.

I want to earn your vote! You and I have the great pleasure to live in Healdsburg where, for over 150 years, people have built a great community, come to each other’s aid when required, and looked forward to an ongoing future of growth and prosperity. I believe we are now at a crossroads. One where your future city leaders will decide whether we can afford to do all the great things we want to do.

Plenty of us like to blame the government for all sorts of

The seasons are changing at this time of the year and some of the changes are more apparent than others. The sun is lower in the sky, mornings are cooler and Daylight Savings Time ends soon. October’s colors are spectacular and the foliage of the trees and vineyards are the most visible reminders of the changing days ahead.

The look could only be described as a smirk. That’s what it was, that’s what struck me to the core like a cold stabbing, sliver thin bolt of ice. The photo in the paper showed the brothers standing at the Boston Marathon. Near a place that would, in a matter of minutes, resemble more a ravaged war zone than a celebratory gathering of runners from around the world realizing their life-long, or annual, dreams.

Once upon a time in America corporations did not enjoy the

California’s state government — which controls nearly all of our