February 17, 2011 08:39 pm
They are the heart of local control.
With their elected boards and largely local funding, Tuolumne County’s fire districts are the essence of taxation with representation. Board members and constituents are often friends or neighbors and, at least ideally, trust and communication prevail.
So you can understand why leaders of a few of our districts are skittish about being part of a joint powers agreement aimed at improving fire protection countywide.
“It’s not going to work,” said Charles Wagner, a Mi-Wuk-Sugar-Pine Fire District board member. “It’s going to be a failure from the get go.”
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February 14, 2011 07:43 pm
Faced with a state budget deficit of $25 billion, Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed cuts are deep, wide and ever closer to home.
Among the most potentially painful here is a plan to slash all state funding from California’s 80 county and district fairs. Yes, the move would save the state $32 million. But it could financially hamstring more than two dozen fairs, including Sonora’s.
If Brown’s cuts are enacted, the Mother Lode Fair would take a $200,000 hit.
Although funding for this year’s July 7-10 fair is safe, beginning in 2012 the event could lose about a third of its $600,000 budget.
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February 10, 2011 08:03 am
As everyone involved with a business, a government agency or even a family knows, setting goals is a lot easier than reaching them.
But if you set the wrong goals — be they unrealistic, impractical or unachievable — all that results is wasted effort.
To Tuolumne County’s credit, it has set reachable, sensible 2011 goals tailored to today’s struggling economy and to our thinly stretched government budgets.
Building out the ambitious Law and Justice Center off Old Wards Ferry Road is not on the list. Nor is purchase of a fleet of new sheriff’s patrol cars or paving Italian Bar Road.
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February 08, 2011 04:05 am
The bad news is that Doug Boyack is hanging up his robe after nearly 20 years on the Tuolumne County Superior Court bench.
The good news is that Boyack is putting that robe back on almost every day, as a state-assigned judge filling his own vacancy. He’ll continue to do so until Gov. Jerry Brown appoints a permanent replacement, and that could be months or even a year away.
Even after that, Judge Boyack may fill in on occasion, both here and in counties around the state.
Yes, after two decades on the bench and another 14 as a prosecutor with the District Attorney’s Office, the 63-year-old jurist deserves a rest. But we’re happy he’s sticking around awhile longer, because this soft-spoken, thoughtful man seems ideally suited to the job.
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February 03, 2011 04:37 am
Some stories hit on a visceral level.
A vandal’s wanton rampage through a hallowed and historic Sonora cemetery or the unconscionable neglect that left a Copperopolis couple’s horses filthy, malnourished and sick, both in the headlines this week, are among them.
We don’t step back and objectively appraise stories like these, slowly forming opinions.
Instead, our reactions are immediate, emotional and powerful: disbelief, revulsion, outrage. Our stomachs turn and blood rushes to our heads as we struggle — and fail — to make sense of what we just read.
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January 31, 2011 10:34 pm
The all-pervasive nature of the ongoing recession and ever-worsening state budget crisis is evidenced by Sonora’s fate.
Historically, the city has been like Switzerland, a fiscal rock seemingly immune to the financial winds that have buffeted the counties, schools and special districts around it. City government has been responsible, conservative and solvent. Look at a graph mapping past municipal income and expenditures, and there’s either no gap or there’s daylight in the form of annual surpluses.
Constituents, in fact, have so trusted the Sonora City Council and staff that they in 2004 voted in a sales tax hike to bolster police and fire protection. And last year, they approved an increase in the city’s hotel-motel tax.
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January 27, 2011 06:54 am
Ninety-eight percent.
That was the most startling statistic to emerge from last week’s Sonora High School Board discussion on student cell phone use.
That, said junior Luke Houghton, is the percentage of students who violate a school rule against texting or otherwise using a cell phone in class. In other words, he said, everybody flouts the rule.
Houghton should know: He’s the student representative on the school board.
“It may be an enforcement issue,” Houghton understated.
It also shows that Trustee Ed Clinite’s concern that using cell phones might be “distracting” to students is more than justified.
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January 16, 2011 09:44 pm
The contrast is stark, even haunting.
Jamestown’s Main Street, target of more than a half million dollars in beautification funds over the past decade, is a showplace. New sidewalks, planter boxes, improved building facades and brick-trimmed intersections are all part of an attractive downtown package.
Locomotive No. 3, gleaming after a million-dollar overhaul, awaits visitors at Railtown 1897 State Historic Park. At Jamestown’s old jail, reclaimed from a Lodi-area theme park and refurbished with funds raised in a communitywide campaign, is a Rocca Park highlight.
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January 14, 2011 03:55 am
Tuolumne County and its employees have taken a very important step in reducing mushrooming retirement costs.
Last week county supervisors approved a pension-reduction agreement with the Deputy Sheriffs Association. This means the county in less than a year has reached such agreements with all its employee bargaining groups.
In fact, Tuolumne is the first valley or foothill county in the Central California area to come to such an understanding with its workers.
“That’s a real accomplishment,” said Supervisor Dick Pland, who joined the unanimous vote approving the DSA agreement. “We may be small compared to valley counties, but our staff came up to the plate and hit a home run.”
The crux of the agreements is creation of a second tier of new employees will not enjoy the high, and costly level of benefits current workers do.
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January 13, 2011 06:47 am
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You’ve heard of Alaska’s Bridge to Nowhere? Well, California has a highway to nowhere.
It’s State Route 59, which begins amid the orchards and alfalfa fields west of Chowchilla, heads north to Merced, then jogs east to Snelling, where it abruptly and unceremoniously, after 34 miles, ends. |
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Opinion 
