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lOB Wednesday, July 20, 2011 Bulletin, Progressive, Record, Reporter
EDITORIAL AND
OPINION
EDITORIAL
Congratulations,
county's ADA plan
a job well done
Plumas County achieved a significant mile-
stone last week. With little fanfare, count, su-
pervisors approved an Americans with Disabili-
ties Act transition plan. More than three years
in the making, the massive document (literally
thousands of pages) outlines what the county
needs to do to make all of its facilities and ser-
vices comply with the federal legislation.
The county paid Gilda Puente Peters Architects
(GPPA) more than $300,000 for the self-evaluation
and transition plan. At the time the supervisors
hired GPPA, they recognized the expenditure as
fiscally painful but necessary. The move came un-
der pressure from local access advocates and the
state attorney general's office. "When I first came
here, I saw this (ADA compliance) as a huge lia-
bility," County Administrative Officer Jack In-
gstad said :at the time. "To spend this kind of mon-
ey for a plan, you really have to convince me it's
needed. I am convinced this is the best invest-
ment the county can make. '
The bad news is it will cost the county more
than $4 million to bring all of its facilities and pro,
grams into ADA compliance. The good news is
that the work can be piecemealed and integrated
into other projects. The work is prioritized ac-
cording to certain criteria, with hazardous condi-
tions taking precedence, followed by those that
denied access and then by places where access
could be enhanced, and finally by areas with mi-
nor code violations. Some improvements, such as
properly adjusted doors, can be made purely by
scheduling them as part of regular maintenance.
Others will be made as part of larger projects. For
example, any time the county does a road project
it has to fix sidewalks. Some improvements -- sig-
nage and painting-- are affordable at a few hun-
dred dollars.
The plan is designed to be a living, defensible
document, and Puente Peters has stressed the im-
portance of monitoring implementation. We can't
urge the county strongly enough to do so. The
ADA plan and the county's outdated general plan
are both examples of the county not keeping up
on essential planning documents and, in failing to
do so, exposing the county to litigation.
The history of the county's approach to ADA
demonstrates what happens when it does not
implement and monitor such plans.
The county paid an outside architect to coo-.. ,
:.: duct an accessibility survey in K99, In follow,g: !
years, the county added facilities, and state and
federal access codes changed. The 1995 survey
was "incomplete and lacking," Facilities Direc-
tor Joe Wilson said. The 1995 plan was never im-
plemented because of a lack of assigned staff and
conflicting opinions among county personnel
about.ADA requirements. This led to "inertia."
In 2006, the state attorney general's office, re-
sponding to citizen complaints, sent a letter to
the county putting it on notice that it must im-
prove is disability access or face legal action.
In most things, it's easier to maintain control
than regain control. It's been an epic -- and ex-
pensive -- undertaking to get this comprehen-
sive ADA plan done. We congratulate Wilson,
his staff and the public works department. We
have a blueprint now; let's use it. And let's not
forget that ultimately, the plan is not about pro-
viding legal cover (although it does do that) but
about providing the 20 percent of Plumas Coun-
ty residents who are disabled full and equal ac-
cess to public facilities and programs. .
A . •
Fea00ng
0000spaper
- Breaking News ....
|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:
Michael Condon
Ruth Ellis
Will Farris
Barbara France
Mona Hill
Susan Cort Johnson
Diana Jorgenson
Feather River
Bulletin
(530) 283-0800
Lassen County
Times
(530) 257-53211
Portola Reporter
(530) 832-4646
Dan McDonald
Pat Shillito
Brian Taylor
Kaylen Taylor
Trish Welsh Taylor
Sam Williams
. Westwood
PinePress
(530) 256-2277
Chester Progressive
(530) 258-3115
Indian Valley
Record
(530) 28427800
1)lease read the bo00:rd packets
MY TURN
DIANA JORGENSON
Staff Writer
djorgenson@plumasnews.com
As I listened to the last Portola City
Council meeting for the second time,
something I do each and every time I at-
tend a public meeting, I was struck, as I
often am, that we had missed the point.
In the hour-plus discussion of the pur-
pose and intent of the Ad Hoc Committee
on Water and Sewer Rates, most of the dis-
cussion centered on a list of questions
brought to City Manager Leslie Tigan sev-
eral days before the council meeting.
Who wrote the questions? There was
discussion of how questions should be de-
rived, discussions of the scientific
method, the Socratic method, even busi-
ness method. Discussion of personality.
Discussions of emotion. How words, pur-
porting to be questions, can sound like ac-
cusations. All very interesting, albeit less
interesting as the clock ticked toward 9
p.m.
And all beside the point. As I listened to
my recording and heard City Manager
Leslie Tigan read off the questions, one by
one, and answer them, I realized that I
could answer all of them myself. OK, not
the inexplicable ones like, "What was the
mindset for formulating these numbers?"
or "Do you feel that inflating the numbers
is a good idea?" (Huh?)
But the real questions, like, Does the
city currently own the Lake Davis Treat-
merit Plant? Is it legal for the city to pay
interim expenses like the coating of the
water tank when the property is legally
owned by someone else? Where did the
figures used for the rate study come from?
How are costs allocated to funds? I could
Where in the
World?
John and Paula Johnson, of Chester, visit their granddaughter Miki and great-grand-
daughter Allyson in Gainesville, Texas. Next time you travel, share where you went
by taking your local newspaper along and including it in a photo. Then e-mail the
photo to smorrow@plumasnews.com. Include your name, contact information and
brief details about your photo. We may publish it as space permits.
answer each and every one of them. I
didn't actually know the percentages of
employee time allocated to each fund,
but I knew where to find the information
among my existing documents and I knew
that their time was, in fact, apportioned.
And how did I know all this? Simply,
by attending City Council meetings. I
was th6re.
And the community members that
submitted these questions; were they
there at this meeting of the full city coun-
cil when "their" committee was on the
agenda? Two of them were.
But I have long since ceased to grieve
that democracy, meant to be participato-
ry, no longer has grass roots. People do
not participate on a regular basis; they
only rise up when they are angry.
I do not blame them. I understand that
simply surviving modem life is so compli-
cated, fast-paced and time-consuming,
there is little energy left over for slogging
through the public process of local gover-
nance.
But what about their elected representa-
tives? If I could answer the questions, why
couldn't they? Where were they? Mayor
Pro Tern Juliana Mark and council mem-
ber William Weaver, the two council
members on the ad hoc committee, had
voted on those agreements and contracts
that answered the questions. They were,
ostensibly, at the same meetings I attend-
ed. They received the same board packets.
Tigan and the other board members re-
iterated several times that all the informa-
tion the community members were re-
questing was in the commissioned rate
study and in the budget. Both Weaver and
Mark should have been able to answer
these questions satisfactorily to the com-
munity members they were working with.
What they did not understand or whatev-
er they disagreed with could then form
the basis for further inquiry.
This is my point: none of those ques-
tions should have ever made it to the
council. Council members Weaver and
Mark, where are you?
I want public inquiry. I respect it. But I
don't want to see its energy dissipated by
frenzied conflict or irritated by ignorance
on the part of elected representatives. We
elect our officials to lead, not follow. You
owe it to your constituency to rad the
studies you vote to commission and to re-
member the contracts you have approved.
If you don't understand something, keep
studying until you get it. If you don't un-
derstand it, how will you explain it to the
people you represent?
Please, elected officials everywhere,
read your board packets. For everybody's
sake.
REMEMBER WHEN
KERI TABORSKI
Historian
75 YEARS AGO ...... 1936
The highest temperature of 1936 was
reached over the weekend when many
parts of Plumas County recorded a temper-
ature of 102 degrees.
50 YEARS AGO ...... 1961
California's 1961-1962 budget includes
$242,970 for major construction at Plumas
Eureka State Park in Johnsville. The
monies will be used to develop 150 camping
units, installation of a water system and
reconstruction of the old Plumas Eureka
stamp mill.
25 YEARS AGO ........ 1986
Chester High School has a new principal,
former vice principal Bob Parks. He is tak-
ing the place of Darold Adamson, retired.
The financially troubled Indian Valley
Hospital in Greenville may be closing the
doors unless a physician is recruited soon
to take the place of Dr. Jonathan Pace who
is leaving to continue his education.
10 YEARS AGO ...... 2010
The Portola High School gymnasium
has been named the Willie A. Tate Memori-
al Gymnasium in honor of the popular
Portola High School teacher and coach
Willie A. Tate, who died suddenly on
April of 2000.
Sin00er offers anthem for our time
EDITOK'S NOTES
DELAINE FRAGNOLI
Managing Editor
dfragnoli@plumasnews.com
It's been several years since I attended
the High Sierra Music Festival. This year,
I had the opportunity to catch a few
shows. The Thursday night grandstand
performance by folk-rocker Gillian Welch
proved the highlight of the holiday week-
end for me.
The performance was particularly sig-
nificant since it came just two days after
the release of Welch's much-anticipated
fifth album, her first in eight years.
After so much waiting, if fans were
expecting a great revelation in the new
album, "The Harrow & the Harvest," they
are apt to be disappointed. What Welch
does deliver in the new Package are the
finely crafted songs, pitch-perfect vocals
and exquisite picking of partner Dave
Rawlings that have marked her career
thus far.
As a word person myself, I appreciate
her care with language. She sure can
write a line: "it's only what I want that
makes me weak." Yeah, no kidding.
The new songs are cut from the same
cloth as her previous work, so much so
that they blended seamlessly as Welch
sprinkled them through her set at High
Sierra. "It's fun to lay new songs on peo-
ple," Welch told the crowd.
The sheer amount of sound Welch and
Rawlings can produce with just two in-
struments and their two voices is impres-.
sive. They proved without a doubt that
sometimes less is more. Restraint can be
radical in an overheated world.
More remarkable was the fact that '
Rawlings had been flat on his back with
food poisoning right up until their set
started. Welch confessed to the audience
that they had a bucket hidden on stage,
just in case ... Rawlings proved the con-
summate professional by delivering an in-
spired performance, the highlight of
which was a rollicking version of "Sweet
Tooth."
The set also included Welch's "Orphan
Girl," which Emmylou Harris covered on
her Grammy award winning "Wrecking
Ball" and an encore of the gospel "I'll Fly
Away." Welch offered a few surprises --
she played a reverb-drenched version of
Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" as
the last song of the night.
Welch has been criticized for being
inauthentic, as if you have to be a coal
miner's daughter to sing bluegrass. She's
also been taken to task for being too dark,
too much of a downer. The new song
"Dark Turn of Mind" seems directed at
those criticisms: "Some girls are blessed
with a dark turn of mind."
Welch meets such detractors head-on
and with humor, referring to her brand of
music as "acoustic slow-chord, downer
folk-rock" at the festival. "Hey, some peo-
ple like downers," she added.
The title of the new album reinforces
the point: there can be no harvesting
without earlier harrowing.
Her performance at High Sierra was
without affectation or a false note. Welch
knows her genre backward and forward,
and she respects it.
That's not to say that her music is
anachronistic or without relevance in to-
day's world.
The emotional high point of her High
Sierra set was the new song "Hard
Times." In the chorus, she vows, "Hard
times ain't gonna rule my mind, no
more." The line suggests that the singer's
mind was previously disturbed, harrowed
perhaps, by bad times, but no longer.
Times may be hard -- and we should ac-
knowledge that -- but we don't have to let
them crush us.
If that's not an anthem for today, then I
don't know what is.