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Written by: Lake County News Reports

Published: 16 April 2009

LAKE COUNTY – Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) this week announced it made property tax payments totaling more than $116 million to the 49 counties in which it operates, as well as more than $151 million in franchise fees and surcharges to local jurisdictions.

The property tax amounts represent full and timely payment of property taxes due for the period from January 1 to June 30, 2009,the company reported.

Lake County will receive a property tax payment form PG&E in the amount of $465,488.39. Neighboring counties received the following amounts: Colusa, $590,298.91; Glenn, $429,108.75; Mendocino, $760,564.92; Napa, $1,096,917.16; Sonoma, $3,364,088.44; and Yolo County, $1,227,034.25.

San Luis Obispo County received the most property tax money from PG&E of any county, with $12,580,786.14, while Lassen County, with $39,170.52, received the least in payments.

The company’s tax payments to counties for tax year 2008-09 increased by more than $19 million over the tax payments made one year ago. This was a result of an increase in assessments due to PG&E’s infrastructure investments and an overall increase in tax rates.

This week PG&E also paid franchise fees and franchise fee surcharges to the 48 counties and 244 California cities in which it operates.

The 2008 payments total about $62 million for gas and about $89 million for electric service. This represents an increase of more than $11 million above the previous year, including more than $5.2 million to cities and counties in the North Coast region.

Local jurisdictions received the following amounts for electric services: city of Clearlake – $115,869.46; Lakeport – $33,628.97; unincorporated Lake County, $406,132.63.

A franchise fee is a percentage of gross receipts that PG&E pays cities and counties for the right to use public streets to run gas and electric service.

The franchise fee surcharge is a percentage of the transportation and energy costs to customers choosing to buy their energy from third parties. PG&E collects the surcharges and passes them to cities and counties.

“PG&E’s payment of franchise fees and property taxes is a stable source of revenue local governments can count on during tight budgetary times,” said Nancy E. McFadden, PG&E’s senior vice president of public affairs. “In recent weeks PG&E paid more than $267 million in franchise fees and property taxes. These payments support important services including police and fire protection, education, public health and environmental services.”

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Written by: Elizabeth Larson

Published: 15 April 2009

 

 

Editor's note: The following story recounts a reenacted fatal crash scene, with staged rescue and arrests. No students were actually harmed, killed or arrested.

LAKEPORT – Dylan Rose is a bit of a cut up, and used to getting laughs from his fellow students at Clear Lake High School.

But no one was laughing when, during third period class on Wednesday, the grim reaper strode into classroom 119, his sickle looming in his hand, and plucked the 16-year-old junior out of class.

“I usually cover up things with laughter but I felt like crying,” Rose said.

An obituary for the teen was then read, describing his death in a fatal auto collision – along with two other teens – which was caused by alcohol. A red rose was left in his seat.

Rose was among 21 students pulled from classes – symbolic for being taken too early from their lives – and kept segregated from fellow students for the rest of the school day as part of the Every 15 Minutes program. The program takes its name from the statistic that a young person dies every 15 minutes from an alcohol-related incident.

Alexandra Wiggs, 17, a senior and a student coordinator for this year's Every 15 Minutes program at Clear Lake High, helped create the list of student casualties – along with fellow student coordinator Martin Diaz – in her work with the program over the last several months. She saw firsthand the reactions of her fellow students.

“I've gone into a lot of classrooms this morning, and I've seen a lot of disbelief, I've seen a lot of crying,” Wiggs said.

Diaz said they chose students of different backgrounds to serve as the mock casualties. Not all of the obituaries recounted deaths in DUI collisions; one student, said Diaz, was portrayed as having become drunk and drowned in a swimming pool.

Only the students working on the program in various capacities – either as coordinators or “casualties” – knew the Every 15 Minutes program was taking place on the school beginning on Wednesday. So Wiggs said it was a surprise to everyone.

 

 

 

 

 

The element of surprise is important to the program, which hammers home the message of how quickly, and unexpectedly, young lives can be lost when alcohol and vehicles mix.

The last time the two-day program was held at Clear Lake High was 2005. It's scheduled every four years so that every student experiences the program at least once in their high school career. This year's event was coordinated by Dale Stoebe and Jarvis Leishman, officers with the Lakeport Police Department.

Student casualties continued to be pulled out of classes all day, but the day's main event was held just before the lunch hour – a reenactment of a fatal two-car collision, staged on Hartley Street, which runs behind the high school.

Hundreds of students watched as police and fire department personnel responded to the scene, where three classmates were trapped in the crumpled cars.

The grim reaper hovered nearby, running his hand over the blade of his sickle, as firefighters pulled the teens from the cars, using saws and axes.

Several of the “living dead” – including Rose and fellow students who had been pulled out of class earlier in the day – looked on, their faces painted with heavy white makeup, their eyes ringed in black.

One of the mock collision victims was reported to be dead at the scene. Two others were listed as critical, with one of them suffering an amputated hand in the staged crash.

A fourth student was arrested for driving under the influence, and was taken to the jail and processed as he would be in the case of a real arrest.

A Lake County Sheriff's unit showed up to do coroner duties. Two coroners documented the scene, examining the body of the mock casualty, covered in a bright yellow sheet, while a sheriff's chaplain looked on. Chapel of the Lakes Mortuary later came to transport the body.

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the staged collision victims was transported via Lakeport Fire ambulance to Sutter Lakeside Hospital's emergency room, where they were pronounced dead. REACH air ambulance landed at the school's football field and transported another victim to Sutter Lakeside also, where that student became the third “fatal” of the day.

Death notification teams were later dispatched to contact the parents of the students involved in the staged collision.

What followed was a painful 24 hours, in which parents and children, and friends and classmates, were separated.

The students spent the night away from home at the local National Guard armory, where Wiggs said they'll have team building exercises. There also will be the heart-wrenching work of writing goodbye letters to their families.

The separation will end with a Thursday morning assembly, where a mock funeral will be held, and some of those goodbye letters will be shared, both by students and parents. Guest speakers at the event will include Josh and Laura Farris, California Highway Patrol Officer Adam Garcia, Sheriff Rod Mitchell, Clear Lake High Principal Steve Gentry, Lakeport Police Chief Kevin Burke and Leishman.

Afterward, parents, friends and the “living dead” will be reunited in an emotional gathering. In a sense, it's a second chance for those who have experienced a degree of loss in a temporary, but still traumatic, setting.

Leishman said the Every 15 Minutes presentation at Clear Lake High is the result of eight months of planning. A 15-member committee guided the effort, which was assisted by 30 law enforcement officers and 20 fire personnel.

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Details

Written by: Elizabeth Larson

Published: 14 April 2009

 

 

 

LOWER LAKE – On Tuesday evening, the Konocti Unified School District hosted a celebration of the new Lower Lake High School gym, a massive state-of-the-art facility that embodies the community's willingness to invest in a vision of better facilities for its children. {sidebar id=139}

The new building – which provides the largest indoor event space in the county – has been open to events since January, but Tuesday marked the gym's official dedication and ribbon-cutting.

District Board President Mary Silva wielded the ceremonial big pair of scissors as other board members held a ribbon in front of the main entrance.

The accomplishment inspired one board member, Carolynn Jarrett, to call Konocti Unified “the little district that could.”

Measure G, an $18 million bond voters passed with 71.6 percent approval in 2004, provided some of the funds for the $9.5 million gym, which officials said came in $750,000 under budget but took a little longer than expected to complete, with about 16 months between groundbreaking and it being open for use.

Cliff Lantz, who retired last year from his post as district assistant superintendent, said the district put together about $40 million in bond funding, modernization funds, developers fees, Clearlake redevelopment funds and state grant funds to carry out districtwide facilities improvements. The bonds were originally supposed to be sold in three rounds but the higher property assessments at the time allows them to sell the bonds in two sales.

Lantz, a member of the management team that helped guide the project in its initial stages, said those funds paid to remodel classrooms and multipurpose rooms at each of the district's school campuses – Lower Lake High didn't get a new multipurpose room because it got the new gym – and build new libraries at each school.

Lower Lake High's gym is the capstone in the series of projects.

Lantz said that $1 million still remains in the form of funds to be reimbursed by the state. When the district eventually receives that money, Lantz said the old Lower Lake High gym will be modernized to include a fitness room, and the school's old auto shop will be renovated and turned into a wrestling room.

During the ceremony, attended by about 250 people, Superintendent Dr. Bill MacDougall said the new gym is a testament to community involvement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Last year I asked a group of students what they liked best about Lake County and Clearlake,” he said.

Their answer: “In Clearlake, we help our own.”

MacDougall thanked the district's board members, local dignitaries and leaders, parents and students for their work to make the gym a reality.

Silva told the crowd, “This is such a great day.”

In the five years since the district decided to build the gym, it's faced numerous obstacles, including recent budget cuts, she said.

“Our district and community chose to invest in the future of our schools,” said Silva, noting that it's amazing what can be accomplished when people work together.

Silva said the district's schools exist and thrive out of hope for a brighter future for the community's children.

Former Superintendent Dr. Louise Nan said that dreams, when brought out into the daylight, become visions.

She noted that Tuesday was the 81^st anniversary of the dedication of Lower Lake High School.

Nan said the district's board started the project after deciding that the children deserved better than what they had.

“I love you Lower Lake,” she said. “Enjoy what you have.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marty Udy, the school's athletic director, called the gym “something the kids can take pride in,” and said he's seeing them take care of the building.

It's also a point of pride, said Udy, to have a facility that is the envy of other schools.

Lower Lake High Principal Jeff Dixon – who called himself the luckiest principal on earth – noted the gym's use not just as an athletic facility but also as a great performance space, and the school's drama and music students proved Dixon right with several songs and skits. The school's jazz band even played a composition of Dixon's called “Play Ball,” to celebrate the building's sports use.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lower Lake Elementary's “Confused Souls” band also rocked the house, with second grader Gabrielle Murray singing a solo and fifth grader and singer Megan Smith, 10, of Lower Lake leading the bad through numbers that included “Twist and Shout,” a song she suggested that “some of you might have heard of.”

After the ceremony, Associated Student Body members offered tours of the facility as the band continued to play on.

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