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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
New Mayor David Claffey took the gavel for the first time on Thursday night, leading the meeting, which ran under 45 minutes. Joyce Overton will serve as Claffey’s vice mayor this year.
Claffey started off the meeting with honoring outgoing Mayor Russ Perdock, noting that he believes 2023 was one fo Clearlake’s most successful years.
He also offered a proclamation declaring January 2024 as Human Trafficking Awareness Month. The presentation to the annual Breakfast with Santa volunteers was held over to a future meeting.
The main part of the meeting was approving a series of annual appointments.
Claffey recommended to the council that Overton remain the city representative to the quarterly CalCities Redwood Empire division business meetings — which includes representing the city and voting at the division legislative committee meetings — with himself as the alternate. The council approved that recommendation unanimously.
The council also approved a lengthy list of regular appointments, all of which Claffey suggested keeping the same as in 2023.
However, he said the ad hoc committee to advise on the Burns Valley Sports Complex project was not on the list, and he asked for Council members Russell Cremer and Dirk Slooten to remain on that committee.
City Manager Alan Flora asked for the council to make appointments to two additional committees in partnership with the Elem Indian Colony, which recently reached an agreement with the city for a new travel center. One will be for advising on a community benefit fund and the second will be for the city and tribe to meet quarterly to discuss and work through issues that arise.
Claffey said he and Perdock would sit on those two committees with the tribe.
Flora said there needs to be a lot of energy to deal with water issues and he asked for an ad hoc committee with two council members to work with staff. Claffey, who acknowledged it’s a very important issue, appointed Slooten and Perdock to that committee.
Claffey wanted to appoint two regular members, rather than just one, so the city’s traffic safety committee. His choices were Overton, the current member, and Perdock, the current alternate.
City Clerk Melissa Swanson said that committee was created by adoption of a resolution, so that will need to be brought back for council approve at the next meeting.
Slooten moved to approve Claffey’s appointments, which the council accepted 5-0.
In other news, Flora reported on a new mixed income project near the senior center which is nearing completion and has a temporary certificate of occupancy. He said it has 79 affordable units and one manager’s unit, and already 54 occupant applicants have been approved, with other units in process.
Flora said the move-in date is Jan. 20, and they expect 100% occupancy the following day. A ribbon cutting is expected sometime in February or early March.
In other updates, Flora said the city narrowly missed getting another Clean California grant through Caltrans, an issue he attributed to a mapping algorithm that made it appear that Clearlake is not as economically challenged as it is.
He said the city is preparing for the environmental analysis for the airport development project, with various contracts for the study expected to come to the council at an upcoming meeting.
Flora also said the city hall renovations are nearly complete. In July, city administration and staff moved out of city hall and over to the Lake County Campus of Woodland Community College while the work was underway. The police department remained in place and City Council meetings continued in the chambers.
He said staff was moving back into city hall and was pleased to be back.
Regarding the city’s request to be involved in the Golden State Water Co. rate case, Flora said the California Public Utilities Commission notified the city that the filing has been accepted.
Claffey moved to closed session at 6:42 p.m. in order to hold a confidential discussion with legal counsel to discuss a liability claim filed by June Linet Cejavasquez and two cases of anticipated litigation.
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- Written by: Lake County News reports
The California Highway Patrol will give the public an inside look at its live-in training facility with this month’s release of the new reality series, “Cadets.”
Premiering Jan. 17 on the CHP’s YouTube page, the nine-part docuseries focuses on a cadet class navigating the six-month journey through the CHP Academy on the way to becoming officers.
The release of “Cadets” is part of the CHP’s ongoing, multi-year recruitment campaign to recruit and hire 1,000 officers.
A trailer for the series, produced entirely by CHP staff, is available above.
“‘Cadets’ is not just a series; it’s a testament to the CHP’s commitment to excellence, diversity, and the relentless pursuit of transforming individuals from all walks of life into dedicated officers ready to serve the community,” said CHP Commissioner Sean Duryee. “We are excited to offer a start-to-finish look inside our Academy as future law enforcement officers are brought to life.”
Viewers will “ride along” with nine cadets as they overcome physical and mental adversity throughout the journey to earning their badge and becoming a CHP officer.
The audience will also hear firsthand from the cadets as they speak candidly about their experience.
“By sharing their experiences, in their own words, we hope to inspire more service-minded individuals to follow in their footsteps and join us for a rewarding career in law enforcement,” Duryee added.
If you are interested in an exciting career that offers diversity, challenges and opportunities, the CHP invites you to apply to become a part of its professional organization.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
CLEARLAKE, Calif. — Clearlake Animal Control has several new dogs among those waiting to be adopted.
The Clearlake Animal Control website lists 38 adoptable dogs.
The adoptable dogs include “Panther,” a male mastiff mix with a black coat.
There also is “Turbo,” a male Belgian malinois mix.
The shelter is located at 6820 Old Highway 53. It’s open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
For more information, call the shelter at 707-762-6227, email
This week’s adoptable dogs are featured below.
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- Written by: Charles J. Russo, University of Dayton
If a school board member has a social media account, would it be wrong for them to block someone and delete their comments? That’s a question the Supreme Court has decided to take up after public officials, including two school board members, blocked constituents from seeing their accounts or removed critical comments.
At stake is what constitutes state action – or action taken in an official governmental capacity – on social media. Under the First Amendment, officials engaging in state action cannot restrict individuals’ freedom of speech and expression.
A ruling in the case, likely to come in spring or early summer 2024, could have broad implications for American society, where nearly three-fourths of the population use social media in their daily lives. The ruling could also establish whether social media accounts of public officials should be treated as personal or governmental.
In a joint oral argument, the Supreme Court heard two separate cases on the matter, including the one involving school board members, in late October 2023. Interestingly, lower courts reached opposite outcomes, prompting the question of whether a post on a personal social media page can be considered state action.
The school board case
Beginning around 2014, two school board candidates in the Poway Unified School District in San Diego created Facebook and Twitter, now X, pages as part of their campaigns for office. They continued to use them after they were elected to communicate with residents and seek their input.
In 2017, the school board members blocked a couple with children in the district from commenting on their pages. Christopher and Kimberly Garnier repeatedly posted criticism on those pages over such issues as the board members’ handling of race relations in the district and alleged financial wrongdoing by the then-superintendent. The Garniers responded to being blocked by filing a lawsuit.
In the resulting case, O'Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit affirmed that the two school board members violated the Garniers’ First Amendment rights to free speech and expression. The court rejected the board members’ claims that their accounts were private because they were not controlled by their boards and their posts were not directly related to their official duties.
The 9th Circuit judges made three points in ruling that the board members violated the First Amendment. First, the pages identified the board members as government officials and displayed their titles prominently. Second, the social media accounts provided information about school activities. And third, the board members solicited constituent input about school matters on the social media pages in question.
However, the court concluded that the board members were not liable for monetary damages. This is because at the time the school board members blocked the Garniers, no court had yet established whether the First Amendment applies to public officials’ speech in the context of social media. It was – and remains – a new frontier in the law.
Critical comments over COVID-19
Conversely, in a similar case in Port Huron, Michigan, the 6th Circuit made the opposite ruling.
Years before he was appointed city manager in 2014, a man named James Freed created a personal Facebook page that he eventually made public when he reached the limit of “friends” allowed on Facebook. Once in office, he used the page for both personal and professional reasons, posting updates about his family as well as policies he was working to implement. During the pandemic, constituent Kevin Lindke posted on Freed’s page, criticizing his handling of the public health crisis. Freed deleted Lindke’s comments and blocked him from the page. Lindke sued.
In Lindke v. Freed, the 6th Circuit affirmed that Freed did not violate the First Amendment in deleting and blocking Lindke’s comments. And like the 9th Circuit in O'Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier, the court concluded that people’s First Amendment rights to comment on public officials’ social media pages had not yet been established.
The 6th Circuit ruled that Freed posted on his social media page as a private citizen, rather than as a governmental official. The court determined this for three reasons. First, no state law required him to run a social media page. Second, state funds and resources were not used to run the page. And third, the page belonged to Freed as an individual, rather than to the office of city manager – unlike the @POTUS page on X, for example. Therefore, the court concluded that the postings did not constitute state action subject to the First Amendment.
In April 2023, the Supreme Court agreed to intervene in both cases.
The future of the cases
Both cases not only have consequences for citizens’ First Amendment rights but also for social media companies and users. The Court may decide whether social media platforms such as Facebook and X can be liable for allowing a public official to block private citizens from commenting on their accounts.
These cases might also establish rules and standards about how public officials can control their social media accounts and the role of the courts in these disputes.
In a brief supporting the city manager in Lindke v. Freed, the U.S. Department of Justice basically argued that if the government neither owns nor controls the personal social media accounts of public officials, their behavior on the platforms “will rarely be found to be state action.”
The DOJ added that preventing public officials from blocking some messages might make them less willing to speak out about important issues. They warned that this could reduce, rather than enhance, free speech and discourse on matters of public interest, whether in schools or other agencies.
On the other hand, organizations such as the ACLU argue that allowing public officials to restrict comments on social media would be detrimental to democracy by limiting free speech.
“The upshot of the government officials’ argument is that they should have a constitutional blank check to silence or retaliate against their constituents for expressing disfavored viewpoints on social media,” the ACLU wrote about the two cases. “This would give officials a way to short-circuit our most fundamental First Amendment protections.”
Depending on how the court rules, social media may be headed into a new era of who can access and comment on the accounts of public officials.
Charles J. Russo, Joseph Panzer Chair in Education and Research Professor of Law, University of Dayton
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
