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E
8B Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2011 Bulletin, Progressive, Record, Reporter
EDITORIAL
and OPINION
EDITORIAL
2
"Non-essential county operations are closing to-
day. If you have county business or county ap-
pointments you are advised to call the county de-
partment before leaving home. Most county of-
fices are now closed. A significant winter storm
or hazardous winter weather is occurring, immi-
nent, or likely, and is a threat to life and property.
The CAO (county administrative officer) and
chair of the board have declared the snow day
which permits county employees to head home
for safety reasons."
After reading that message on Plumas County's
website last Thursday, it's clear the management
of this newspaper owes its employees an apology.
We certainly didn't mean to put their lives and
property in danger by not declaring our own
"snow day" and sending them home.
In fact, we'll take it a step further: On behalf of
all the other employers in Plumas County -- the
mills, the grocery stores, the gas stations, mom
and pop businesses, banks, restaurants, repair
shops, trash haulers, insurance agencies and so
on -- who didn't, or couldn't, let their employees
have the day off, we'll be a little presumptuous
here and offer their employees apologies as well.
Clearly, none of us thought we were putting our
employees or their property in harm's way by
having them work.
We don't consider the services our employees
provide the community as "non-essential." Obvi-
ously, if that were the case we wouldn't need
them. Which begs the question: why, in these
times, is the county employing "non-essential"
services at all? Haven't all "non-essential" em-
ployees been laid off by now? We heard from a
number of private businesses and citizens that
felt affronted by the county's snow day for "non-
essential" employees. Businesses long ago shed
any non-essential workers.
Now, we don't blame the county employees for
taking the day off; they did what they were told by
the county administrative officer and board
chairperson.
In defense of those of us callous enough to keep
our worker's Working, we Simply sdw last W iut:s'
day as just another winter's day in picturesoue
Plumas County -- where it has been known to
snow (and burn and flood)!
So, to all of you "essential" employees who
weathered the storm, thanks for doing your job
and helping us keep our doors open.
F e a t h gh i n g
g paper
NG- ws.-
go to plumasnews.com
Michael C. Taborski ............. Publisher
Keri B. Taborski ...Legal Advertising Dept.
Delaine Fragnoli ........ Managing Editor
Alicia Knadler ........ Indian Valley Editor
M. Kate West ............. Chester Editor
Shannon Morrow .......... Sports Editor
Ingrid Burke ................ Copy Editor
Staff writers:
Joshua Sebold Ruth Ellis
Will Farris Brian Taylor
Sam Williams Pat Shillito
Barbara France Christian Young
Susan Cort Johnson Diana Jorgenson
Kayleen Taylor Mona Hill
Feather River Westwood
Bulletin PinePress
(530) 283-0800 (530)256-2277
Lassen County Chester Progressive
Times (530) 258-3115
(530) 257-53211
Indian Valley
Portola Reporter Record
(530) 832-4646 (530) 284-7800
Check
[ PLUMASNEWS.COM
iii i!i
MY TURN
JOSHUA SEBOLD
• Staff Writer
jsebold@plumasnews.com
My Plumas County is a unique place,
not just because of the rural nature of our
communities and the beautiful backdrop of
forested mountaintops and majestic val-
leys but also because of the rare configura-
tion of land ownership.
Here in Plumas an abnormally large pro-
portion of land is owned by some level of
government, while other significant tracts
are owned by a few large private entities
like railroads, logging companies and Pa-
cific Gas and Electric.
For this reason government is perhaps
more of a focus in Plumas than in other
parts of the country, if that's possible right
now.
Covering our local government during
the rise of the tea party movement has
been particularly interesting for me
because of that.
I'm sure readers occasionally pick up
bits and pieces of my thoughts about the
people who work in government in Plumas
by reading my articles, but I figured after
over three years of covering it I should
take a moment to give a more direct im-
pression.
It seems the tea party Came into exis-
tence to fill the need of some people to re-
mind the Republican Party and eventually
the government at large of the conserva-
tive economic principles that various lay-
ers of U.S. government seem to have forgot-
terL
In terms of the recent narrative of na-
tional politics the tea party's sudden rise
has not been surprising but it has been in-
teresting to see how some people have tried
to aim its brand of criticism at local offi-
cials.
This has been particularly surreal for me
as our county government has basically
cut itself in half in recent years in terms of
its number of employees.
Meanwhile local departments have re-
ceived awards for efficiency and sound fi-
nancial management and, despite our
small size, some of our department heads
are known statewide as experts in their
fields or advocates for rural areas.
Salvatore Catalano visited Universal Studios with his 91-year-old sister, 87-year-old
brother and 86-year-old brother. Although they have now lost their mates, all four
siblings enjoyed marriages of 50-plus years. Next time you travel, share where you
went by taking your [ocal newspaper along and including it in a photo. Then e-mail
the photo to smorrow@plumasnews.com.
At a recent audit report presentation an
independent auditor referred to Plumas
County government as "one of the good
ones" in terms of financial management.
As far as I can tell, our local government
couldn't possibly be friendlier to the tea
party cause; in fact, a majority of Board of
Supervisors members have attended tea
party meetings in the last month.
Despite this fact, Plumas County has not
escaped practically constant accusations
and suspicions relating to fiscal manage-
ment and small government philosophy.
Hilariously, Assessor Chuck Leonhardt
faced opposition from a candidate in his
last election who essentially tried to paint'
himself as the "real conservative," ostensi-
bly as opposed to Chuck.
Laughably, this was during a time when
Leonhardt was one of the first members of
the local Economic Recovery Committee,
which spends most of its time writing our
state and federal political representatives,
urging them to help the timber industry
and fight government regulation.
This is a perfect example of the strange
mentality that often finds itself involved in
local political participation by the public.
I am sure there are the occasional em-
ployees in local 8overnment who don't do
the best for the people they serve, who cut
corners and waste funds, but I can almost
guarantee from what I've seen that they
are much rarer than the dedicated people
who truly believe in the value of serving
their fellow citizens.
I would argue that if there is a lJroblem
in Plumas County it certainly isn't that
most local government officials don't be-
lieve in efficiency and sma]l government,
it's that so many people in our small coun-
ty subscribe to the mentality that they
know better than the person next to them.
How often do you hear someone com-
ment that they know how to run a business
better than the person down the street or
that they could do someone else's job bet-
ter?
If you're like me y, ou hear that kind of
talk almost every day.
The trend has become extremely appar-
ent in the area of economic development
recently, where different groups found
themselves battling over the same shrink-
ing pie of,funding and tempers flared.
The largest cause of inefficiency that I
can see in our county is that many people
spendmore time worrying about what
someone else might be doing wrong than
dealing with their own affairs:a
This leaves local politicians in a place
where often they are thinking as much
about what the public will think about how
a decision sounds as they do about how the
decision will actually affect the public.
The reality is that we are in a financial
downturn and the stress of seeing that play
out locally affects us all, but if our only re-
action to that challenge is to spend our
time assuming that things would be a little
See Local, page 10B
l EMEMBER WHEN The ever growing office supply depart-
.................................................................................................................................................. ment of the Feather River Bulletin expand-
• KERI TABORSKI
Historian
75 YEARS AGO ..... 1936
1,000 invitations were mailed this week
by the Plumas County Chamber of Com-
merce to residents of Plumas County to
identify themselves with this organization.
The mailers ask that residents make an in-
vestment in Plumas County's future. Dues
are $3.00 per year or $1.50 per year for
women.
ed this week when E.T. diVecchio of San
Francisco was retained. He is a specialist
in bookkeeping systems and an expert in
filing equipment, typewriter ribbons, car-
bon printed forms, rubber stamps and all
other office supplies and will provide sta-
tionery service locally.
50 YEARS AGO ....... 1961
The Plumas County Historical Society
and the Plumas Ski Club will dedicate a
monument Saturday afternoon in
Johnsville in commemoration of the fact
that it is the birthplace,oflongboard skiing
competition in the western hemisphere.
25 YEARS AGO ....... 1986
The Flood of 1986: In the wake of the re-
cent storm, the Plumas County Assessor's
office reported $5 million of storm damage
to the private sector and up to $22 million
to public agencies.
10 YEARS AGO .......... 2001
Sierra Pacific Industries is closing its
lumber mill in Loyalton, terminating the
jobs of 100. The co-generation plant will re-
main open.
to h rd-worh"
0
MY TURN
ALICIA KNADLER
Indian Valley Editor
aknadler@plumasnews.com
I don't know about you all, but I sure do
appreciate the friends and neighbors who
came-by to check on us during that whop-
per of a snowstorm.
More offers of help came in between
waves of snow, but we laughed then and
thought it was kind of cozy by the fire.
Maybe we were just a little dumbfound-
ed by all the snow. We just sat there and
watched it pile up, smiling at each other
and stoking the fire.
"It's nice just sitting here watching the
fire and not TV," my husband said the
night we were without electricity.
Yes, I thought to myself, it's nice having
a good excuse not to wash the dishes. We
had a bucket outside catching drips offthe
roof for toilet-flushing water. Ah, the sim-
ple life.
But after two days of beingstuck at
home, we began to think maybe we should
have taken those offers.
Right before the second wave, I thought
enough to go dig the car out and move it a
bit closer to the end of the driveway. We
really needed to get out the next day and
drive to a dealership in Reno for a special
part we needed right away.
' Next time something like this happens,
I think I'll just pay for them to ship it and
wait the extra days; my knuckles hurt like
crazy after the drive over there and back
Saturday afternoon. I'm sure the nice
folks at the department of motor vehicles
would understand why I needed an exten-
sion.
i mean, don't we all deserve some snow
days once in a while? The non-essential
county employees were given a snow day
Thursday, albeit at mid-morning break
time. But schoolchildren here were still in
their classrooms.
Then on Friday, the county employees
went back to work, but the kids didn't.
I'm sorry, but this was really a head-
scratcher for me. I bet it was rather spe-
cial, though, for parents who also worked
for the county.
Speaking of county employees, many of
our friends and I shared comments with
each other about how hard they all
wot ked to keep us safe during this bout of
extreme weather.
That goes for the Caltrans workers and
highway patrol officers as well. They real-
ly did an amazing job removing all the
snow and helping those who were unfor-
tunate enough to be on the roads when all
the spinouts and accidents resulted in clo-
sure of the highway.
The volunteer firefighters were great
too, making their way to a structure fire
that ended up being nothing more than a
suspected flue fire. They managed to get
6ut and take care of business while we sat
all comfy and cozy by our fire. So many of
you grabbed up shovels and hit the roads
to check on folks like me, who .were rather
helpless, in a way.
The sheer beauty and complexity of
God's creation never ceases to amaze me
from our vantage point in this little cor-
ner of his world, and times like these re-
mind me the people we know here as
friends and neighbors are pretty awesome
too -- a big, heart-felt kudos to each and
every One of you who was out there work-
ingso hard during the storm.
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