Medicare’s annual open enrollment season is underway, and I want to encourage everyone with Medicare to review their current health and prescription drug coverage.

Open enrollment began Oct. 15 and runs through Dec. 7, 2014. If you want to change your Medicare Advantage or Medicare Part D (prescription drug) plan, this is the time of year to do it. Any new coverage you select will take effect Jan. 1, 2015.

If you have Original (traditional) Medicare and you’re satisfied with it, you don’t need to do anything during open enrollment.

My agency, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, announced recently that the average Medicare Advantage premium for 2015 is projected to be $33.90 monthly. CMS also estimated that the average basic Part D premium in 2015 would be $32 per month.

Since passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, enrollment in Medicare Advantage has increased 42 percent to an all-time high of more than 16 million people. Medicare Advantage premiums, meanwhile, have decreased 6 percent.

The law is also closing the Part D “donut hole,” with more than 8.3 million people saving more than $12 billion on prescription drugs through last July.

Meanwhile, the quality of Medicare Advantage and Part D plans continues to improve. This year, people with Medicare who enroll in such plans will have access to more high-rated, four- and five-star plans than ever before.

About 60 percent of Medicare Advantage enrollees are now in plans earning four or more stars in 2015, compared to an estimated 17 percent in 2009.

Likewise, about 53 percent of Part D enrollees are currently in Part D plans with four or more stars for 2015, compared to 16 percent in 2009.

Medicare plans’ coverage options and costs can change each year, and Medicare beneficiaries should evaluate their current coverage and choices and select the plan that best meets their needs. If you think your current coverage will meet your needs for 2015, you don’t need to change anything.

A variety of resources are available to help you compare your current coverage with new plan offerings for 2015.

You can:

– Visit www.medicare.gov to review plans available in your area, as well as their costs, and enroll in a new plan if you decide to. Open enrollment information is available in Spanish.
– Call 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227) for around-the-clock assistance to find out more about your coverage options. TTY users should call 1-877-486-2048. Counseling is available in a wide variety of languages.
– Review the 2015 Medicare & You handbook. This handbook has been mailed to the homes of people with Medicare and it’s also online at: www.medicare.gov/pubs/pdf/10050.pdf .
– Get free, unbiased, one-on-one counseling from your local State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP).

Local SHIP contact information can be found:

– At www.medicare.gov/contacts/organization-search-criteria.aspx or;
– On the back of the 2015 Medicare & You handbook or;
– By calling Medicare (at 1-800 number above).

People with Medicare who have limited income and resources may qualify for Extra Help to pay for their Part D drug plans. There’s no cost or obligation to apply for Extra Help.

Medicare beneficiaries, family members, or caregivers can apply online at www.socialsecurity.gov/prescriptionhelp or call Social Security at 1-800-772-1213 (TTY users should call 1-800-325-0778) to find out more.

Better quality in Medicare Advantage and Part D plans isn’t the only good news for people with Medicare.

For most seniors who have Original Medicare, the 2015 Part B premium will stay unchanged for a second consecutive year, at $104.90.

This means more of your retirement income and any increase in Social Security benefits will stay in your pocket. The Part B deductible will stay the same as well.

David Sayen is Medicare’s regional administrator for Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, and the Pacific Territories. You can always get answers to your Medicare questions by calling 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227).

My wife and I were drawn to Hidden Valley Lake a few years ago, where we found the great community and amenities we didn’t have in Santa Rosa.

We now find that community sharply divided over our association’s management of those amenities. We’re surrounded by cliques of golfers, non-golfers, movers and shakers, and fiscal frugals.

Some insist we’re a golfing community, which is no longer the case as fewer than 13 percent of us golf on our course, only 6 percent regularly enough to purchase golf memberships.

Others claim we’re more of a working-family community than a golfers’ enclave. However, this view ignores the importance of the golf course in our community.

My wife and I paid a premium for our home on the golf course but are concerned about how it’s managed, along with social shifts that imperil the golf course’s future and our quality of life.

Our golf operation has been subsidized between $419,870 and $694,243 annually over the past nine years. Our director of golf has increased the number of rounds played since 2010 by a third, and we’re now slightly above the national average for 18-hole courses.

But during that same period the number of full golf memberships has declined and last year we saw a substantial increase in the subsidy to the highest it’s ever been.

The golf course is our largest and understandably most expensive amenity to maintain. But our other amenities aren’t maintained to anywhere near the same standard.

This is especially true of our Hidden Valley Lake itself. In www.hvlclarified.org’s “The Quality of Our Lake,” sediment buildup was cited as a longstanding quality issue yet the proposed 2015 budget is the first to identify funds to address it.

It remains to be seen if these funds will survive the board’s final cut in the approved budget.

Additionally, the golf subsidy represents well over 40 percent of the golf course’s operating budget.

Because non-residents pay only 30 percent more to play on our course, association assessments are used to subsidize public play in addition to member play.

Golf is declining in popularity across the country, particularly among younger players. An increasing majority – 86 percent – of Hidden Valley Lake residents are working families and their children.

Although our community has historically attracted golfing retirees it’s unlikely to be the major draw for new residents in the future.

As our baby boomers age out of the sport over the next 15 years, our affordable housing and accessibility to good jobs in Napa and Sonoma counties will continue to attract working class families.

Golf course operating costs are likely to continue climbing, compounded by the ongoing drought. As our demographics shift and our golf population declines, support for the golf subsidy among the members is likely to decline as well.

Future HVLA Board directors face an increasing challenge in justifying the golf subsidy to association members. Maintaining our current golf operations management approach will likely bring HVLA to a breaking point.

As a former director recently told me, our board is obligated to maintain our amenities but they’re not obligated to keep them. If a future majority of directors feel the golf subsidy isn’t justified they simply have to let the members who elected them vote in agreement with them to eliminate all or part of the course.

Our golf course has historically been run as an amenity open to the public. We should start running it as a business and subsidize it only to the minimum required for the benefit of Association members.

This difference may sound trivial but it’s not. The change starts with a golf operations feasibility study. Such a feasibility study was a board agenda item in June, but has since disappeared from the association’s agenda without explanation.

Operating as a business also means developing a business plan, benchmarking with other operations and consulting with industry experts.

The last time the association consulted a golf management expert was in 2008. After only a few hours' visit the board pursued no operational assessment, review of finances or other recommendations.

In “Golfer’s Paradise,” published on www.hvlarising.org , Steven Greenberg cited a reduction to and elimination of golf subsidies made at our sister communities in advocating for a management expert to review our golf operation and offer recommendations.

Hvlclarified.org’s “Apples, Oranges, Lemons” was published as a rebuttal, identifying important differences between us and our sister communities in an attempt to discredit Greenberg. Yet it failed to discredit the validity of his argument that an outside expert might be able to help reduce our subsidy.

The more residents we have golfing and the more often they play, the more revenue generated and the easier it will be to justify a subsidy.

A new player recruitment program could make an impact. Rather than losing our subsidies to operating costs we could invest some in providing free club rentals and beginner lessons to residents, such as the PGA’s Get Golf Ready in 5 Days program.

This could be partnered with an ambassador program to pair our seasoned golfers with rookies and build our community relationships.

Pay-per-hole memberships at off-peak times would allow those of us with limited time to enjoy golf more often and also enhance revenues.

Every evening I look out on an empty course and wish I could pay a few dollars to play the two holes between my house and Mulligan’s to unwind at the end of the day. But I rarely golf because like most working adults in Hidden Valley Lake I don’t have enough time to play 18 or even 9 holes regularly.

As the only 18-hole golf course open to the public in Lake County, the fate of our course has implications for county-wide tourism.

To ensure we can all enjoy and benefit from our golf course well into the future, it’s time for our Board of Directors to show HVLA members they’re serious about increasing member utilization of the golf course, managing the golf subsidy, and maintaining all of our amenities to the same high standard.

Sky Pile is an environmental health & safety consultant and coaches middle school cross country and track in Santa Rosa. He volunteers on Sonoma County’s Community Activity and Nutrition Coalition’s Physical Activity Subcommittee to promote physical activity opportunities throughout the community. Sky holds master’s degrees in kinesiology and public health. He and his wife have lived in Hidden Valley Lake, Calif., since 2011.

Reading isn't just for education. Reading is supposed to be fun!

It just so happens that reading just for the joy of it also has some big educational benefits for students.

The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development found that reading for enjoyment was a more important marker for children’s success in school than their family’s income, education or occupation.

Research done at the Institute for Education in London had similar results. They found that a love of reading was more important for a child’s educational success than having a parent who had attended college.

The study states that, “The combined effect on children's progress of reading books often, going to the library regularly and reading newspapers at 16 was four times greater than the advantage children gained from having a parent with a degree.”

Common Sense Media published a report that found that the percentage of 9 year old children reading for pleasure has dropped 5 percent from 81 percent in 1984 to 76 percent in 2013.

The report shows that older children read for pleasure even less. About half of 17 year old teenagers report reading for pleasure less than twice a year.

This is unfortunate because children who do not develop a love of reading at a young age often miss the benefits of the reading they are assigned in school.

Children can fall behind as they develop the feeling that reading is boring. This leads to less developed language and literacy skills that can harm the child throughout school and their adult life.

The good news is that it only takes one role model to share the joy of reading with a child.

It can be as simple as reading for pleasure yourself, sharing your favorites from childhood, and helping children find the books that match their interests.

Do you have a child in your life you can be a model reader for? Take a field trip to the library!

Find more information about your local library at http://library.lakecountyca.gov/ .

Christopher Veach is the county librarian for Lake County, Calif.

If you’ve been hanging around a school lately you might have heard the term Common Core bandied about.

What is the Common Core?

Put simply, it’s a set of standards that describe what a student should know for each grade level in each subject. 

For example, the Common Core Reading Standards for Literature state that students in third grade should be able to: “Describe characters in a story (e.g., their traits, motivations, or feelings) and explain how their actions contribute to the sequence of events.”

That’s just an example of one of the many standards in each subject.

In 2010, California adopted the Common Core State Standards.

Forty-five states have adopted these same standards, which makes changing schools much easier for students.

The Common Core standards are a major change in education requiring schools to change textbooks, curriculum, and instruction.

So what does the Common Core have to do with the library?

The Common Core is a great for libraries because of the focus the standards put on reading many different types of books.

The standards require students to be able to construct arguments that are supported with evidence.

Students need to be able to find and refer to primary source documents and other resources in all of their subjects, not just in English class.

This means that the library has a role to play in helping students build strong research skills and providing nonfiction materials to support their school work.

Here are a couple of books that Lake County Library system has purchased through a special California State Library program to develop library resources to support the Common Core standards.

Diary of Sallie Hester: A Covered Wagon Girl by Sallie Hester

The Common Core stresses the importance of looking at primary documents. In the subject of history primary documents are texts or other materials created during the time being studied.

This title is a collection of diary entries made by a real girl who was traveling west on the Oregon trial in the mid-1800s.

The book contains the real text of her diary entries, unedited, but with sidebar explanations and timelines to help put her words in context.

Recommended for children in grades fourth to sixth.

Frog and Toad Together by Arnold Lobel

A classic children’s book, this title is listed on the Common Core’s Appendix B, which is a list of texts to use as examples to find material that supports the common core. 

The Frog and Toad series is great for new readers and the books contain simple text and pictures depicting the friendship of Frog and Toad.

Recommended for children in grades first to second.

Curiosity's Mission on Mars: Exploring the Red Planet by Ron Miller

The common core encourages reading in all subjects, including science and math.

This title contains a brief overview of the mission of the mars rover, Curiosity, presented in a way that makes it accessible to students.

The author compares many of Mars' geographical features to Earth to put them in a context that is easy to understand. 

The book also provides the history of missions to Mars and speculates on the possibility of life there.

Moreover, the book can easily be used to demonstrate the scientific process.

Recommended for children in grades seventh and above.

These titles and many more can be found at your local library; check our Web site, www.library.lakecountyca.gov , for hours and availability.

To learn more about the Common Core visit www.corestandards.org .

Christopher Veach is the county librarian for Lake County, Calif.

Geothermal is one of California’s greatest resources – a natural bounty of renewable energy in our own backyard.

It is a renewable resource that has been developed and sustained for half a century.

We need to make sure our regulatory system and contracting practices do not put this valuable and unique resource at risk.

Miles beneath the surface of Lake and Sonoma counties lies what is known as The Geysers, the world’s largest geothermal resource.

Continuously producing clean, reliable power around the clock The Geysers provides enough energy to power a city the size of San Francisco.

Renewables including geothermal, solar, wind and biomass are expected to comprise 33 percent of our energy use by 2020.

As state legislators contemplate increasing this requirement and seek to further reduce carbon emissions to battle climate change there is no doubt we will need existing and new renewable power, like The Geysers.

While geothermal is essential and complimentary to the overall California energy mix, geothermal development has not kept pace with other renewable resources.

Worse, energy agencies predict that utilities’ contracting of geothermal energy will drop significantly within the next few years.

So what’s going on here?

It’s widely acknowledged that the way utilities purchase renewable energy does not take into account all the costs and benefits of competing energy resources.

To date, it’s been about which power producer can provide energy at the lowest cost without considering the costs associated with delivering that resource to consumers or the economic and environmental benefits of a specific resource.

This poses several inherent biases against geothermal power.

First, wind and solar resources produce power intermittently.

At night, or on cloudy or calm days, their reduced output means additional generation is required to fulfill backup energy needs. Geothermal plants, however, produce power predictably and consistently.

Unfortunately, current procurement rules do not take this reliability into account when “scoring” the value of competing renewable resources.

Second, federal tax credits have helped reduce the overall cost of solar and wind energy.

It’s a justifiable policy that I support fully, but it means their costs are subsidized in ways that geothermal cannot match.

Third, geothermal employs more people both during construction and post construction than most other renewable technologies.

The Geysers employs 300 full-time employees and more than 150 contractors who support our local economy. The Geysers also is the largest taxpayer in Sonoma and Lake counties.

Finally, geothermal provides important environmental benefits. The Geysers helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the equivalent of removing 432,000 cars from the road, meaning cleaner air for local towns and cities.

The Geysers efficiently uses wastewater from the city of Santa Rosa and Lake County to generate more energy and solving an environmental problem for those communities.

Yet, absurdly, none of these economic and environmental benefits are valued in the current “scoring process,” putting geothermal energy at a competitive disadvantage.

I am worried about the future of The Geysers. It takes more than $50 million annual investment to sustain a geothermal field its size.

If utility contracting policies remain unchanged, The Geysers may not be able to get the long-term contracts it needs to continue operating at current levels.

This would not only mean less clean power for Northern California, but could also negatively affect the local environment and economy.

It is not good policy to risk the viability of an existing clean energy resource. I want to see The Geysers continue producing clean power for future generations.

Making sure existing and new geothermal power is part of a diverse and sustainable energy mix for the near and long term is a responsibility we all share.

Thompson represents California’s Fifth Congressional District, which includes all or part of Contra Costa, Lake, Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties.

We urge President Obama to take steps to permanently protect the Berryessa Snow Mountain Region by declaring the area a National Monument.

Thanks to a recent designation by President Obama another piece of our country's outdoor legacy will be preserved as the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument in New Mexico.

The designation will preserve irreplaceable archaeological, prehistoric, and cultural sites, while safeguarding outdoor recreation opportunities that are so important for the state.  

The designation, under the Antiquities Act, is the second by President Obama in New Mexico, following the creation of Rio Grande del Norte National Monument last year.

President Obama has recognized areas in California too, adding Point Arena-Stornetta Public Lands to the California Coastal National Monument earlier this year.

The addition of Point Arena-Stornetta Public Lands to the monument provides a boost to the rural coastal economy and the everyday lives of those of know and love the North Coast.  

Across the state protected public lands, like national monuments, help provide outdoor recreation opportunities that generate more than $6 billion for the California economy each year, according to the Outdoor Industry Association.

We've seen time after time that communities flourish and local economies grow when nearby public lands are permanently protected.

After designation, the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument drew 50,000 new visitors in 2013, overall a 40 percent increase in visitation over 2012.  

Closer to home, the counties around Giant Sequoia National Monument saw jobs grow by 11 percent and real personal income rise by 24 percent after the area was protected. That same potential is offered by the Berryessa Snow Mountain region.

Just a short drive from the Bay Area and Sacramento, the area between Lake Berryessa and Snow Mountain provides easily-accessible opportunities to recreate and enjoy the beauty of the outdoors.

Whether it’s hiking to the 80-foot-high Zim Zim waterfall, fly-fishing in Putah Creek, or viewing wildflowers and wildlife, the Berryessa Snow Mountain region offers something for everyone.  

Visitors can take a relaxing horseback ride, spend quality time with family, or experience the adrenaline rush of a white water rafting trip through Cache Creek.

The Berryessa Snow Mountain region is one of the last remaining areas of undisturbed public lands in California, making it an ideal space for people to get outside.  

It's also important for a host of wildlife that calls the area home, from bald eagles, to endangered Pacific Fishers and rare plants.

We're quite proud of this amazing place and our communities that have grown around it. It's an area that deserves to be recognized and permanently protected.  

The benefits of such protection will extend far beyond the land itself to the surrounding areas, bringing new visitors to our towns as they take advantage of new recreation opportunities.  

It's a move that's broadly supported, unlike recent legislative attempts in Congress to undermine the president’s ability to permanently protect special places like Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, Point Arena- Stornetta Public Lands, or Berryessa Snow Mountain.  

These attempts are out of step with public opinion, and attempt to limit one of our nation’s most valuable conservation tools – the Antiquities Act.

Permanently protecting Berryessa Snow Mountain is of course good for the local communities, but we think it will also benefit anyone who is able to come sample our piece of the outdoor wonder California is known for. The door, after all, is always open.

Don Saylor, Linda Seifert and Denise Rushing are supervisors for the California counties of Yolo, Solano and Lake, respectively.