November 23, 2010 10:37 am
Here are a couple of questions that may have crossed voters’ minds during the two weeks between the election and Nov. 16, when Tuolumne County’s last ballots were counted and its tightest races were finally decided.
• How come it takes our elections office one night to count more than 20,000 votes and nearly two weeks to tally another 3,800 ballots that were either dropped off at polling places on election day or raised some eligibility questions and were classified “provisional”?
• Is there any way to speed the process, thus sparing candidates, the backers of bond measures and the interested public long days of suspense and anxiety?
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November 23, 2010 10:29 am
With a key assist from cooler and wetter than average late spring and summer weather, Tuolumne and Calaveras county residents and firefighters did a good job keeping losses to a minimum during the 2010 fire season.
Now the challenge, through preparation and vigilance, is to keep the numbers low in the years to come.
Cal Fire’s Tuolumne-Calaveras Ranger Unit reported that only 582 acres burned during the 2010 fire season, which stretched from late May until Nov. 1.
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November 11, 2010 05:03 am
It’s time for the post-election edition of Bravos & Barbs, The Union Democrat’s occasional compendium of the good, the bad and, sometimes, the ugly in the Mother Lode.
As usual, far more of our residents deserve bravos than we have the time or space to list. You heroes and Samaritans know who you are, as do your friends, neighbors — which probably means a lot more than recognition in this space.
Our barbs found a few targets among the unworthy, but others — they know who they are, and so do what friends they have left — escaped their notice. But their time will come.
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November 07, 2010 10:26 pm
What if they threw a revolution and nobody came?
Well, voters threw one across the nation, and California didn’t come.
While anti-incumbent, anti-Democratic fever raged to the east, Golden State voters returned sitting politicians to office by the score — and most were Democrats.
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November 03, 2010 03:05 am
The Tuolumne County Library has been the focus of controversy lately, as a since-removed political display in the entryway triggered a partisan dustup.
But turn the corner and there’s something all political parties can agree on: the refurbished children’s library, spectacularly highlighted by artist Tracy Knopf’s wall-to-wall and ceiling-to-floor mural.
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October 25, 2010 03:14 am
Some would be tempted to dismiss last week’s Sonora Planning Commission rejection of a proposed winter-weather homeless shelter for men at the Red Church Parish Hall as short-sighted, insensitive and parochial.
Others might see the commission’s unanimous decision as the final word on the community’s homeless problem. And a few might be relieved, thinking that this uncomfortable, difficult issue won’t be aired again in public any time soon.
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October 18, 2010 05:00 pm
The Board of Supervisors has reached a balanced and needed compromise with its amendments to Tuolumne County’s affordable housing rules.
To their credit, supervisors earlier this month resisted building industry pleas to totally scrap the two-year-old inclusionary ordinance or put it on indefinite hold. As originally adopted, the law requires developers of 10 or more lots to make 10 percent of the homes they build affordable by families earning the county’s median income or less.
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October 15, 2010 02:44 am
Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown, as anyone who has heard their gubernatorial debates can attest, agree on very little.
So it is telling that they have this in common: Both will vote against Proposition 23, which would suspend a 2006 law (AB 32) aimed at reducing California greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels within a decade.
Assembly Bill 32 is a major concern to many Californians. After implementation, it’s expected to cause an increase in energy costs for consumers and businesses.
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October 12, 2010 08:22 pm
California’s Nov. 2 ballot, as usual, is packed with initiatives put to a vote via petition campaign. With armies of circulators stationed at shopping centers around the state, gathering the more than 400,000 signatures necessary to qualify a petition for the ballot is just not that difficult.
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October 05, 2010 08:21 pm
No, it’s not a good time to be asking voters for money.
But for two of Tuolumne County’s school districts, it is a necessary time. With budgets stretched to the breaking point, the schools have no way to pay for needed campus maintenance and improvements. Help from the taxpayers is essential.
Measures G and H, before Summerville High School and Sonora Elementary School district voters on Nov. 2, deserve passage.
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Opinion 
