News

Details

Written by: DENNIS FORDHAM

Published: 30 May 2020

Many of my clients want to remain in their homes for as long as they are mentally and physically able to do so.

Nowadays, with the pandemic, people who avoid going into a residential care facility, such as an assisted living or a skilled nursing home, are much less likely to get COVID-19 and other communicable illnesses that spread easily in senior living facilities.

This reality motivates seniors to consider the option of remaining at home as long as possible.

If assistance is required with their activities of daily living then they want such assistance to be provided at home so long as it is feasible.

Preparation for such in-home care includes planning around one’s present and anticipated personal care needs, financial needs and estate planning documents.

A long-term personal care plan is needed. Personal care entails a wide variety of needs: Bathing, toileting, dressing, walking, meals, doctor visits, shopping, household chores, banking, and paying household bills.

Some people rely on family members or friends who live with them to take care of these many activities.

Being proactive helps: Ask your health care provider to recommend any improvements to your household environment to facilitate your personal care. Consider hiring a traveling nurse to make an in-home evaluation.

For example, does your bathroom need to be fitted with grab bars? Do you need a wheelchair ramp to your door? Consider engaging an emergency 24 hour/seven-day service to assist you at the push of a button on a pendant you wear around your neck.

Do you have someone to make routine welfare checks to see you are well? Do you have someone to take you grocery shopping or to do shopping for you? Do you have meals on wheels? Do you need in-home care services to assist you with your activities of daily living? Are the people you trust acting in your best interest?

Personal care planning also involves having an advance health care directive, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, waiver, and possibly even a physician’s order regarding life-sustaining treatment.

The advance health care directive allows you to say how you want to be treated, how you don’t want to be treated, and whom you want as your agent to make health care decisions for you when you cannot make them yourself.

Advance health care directives come in a wide variety of types, such as the California Medical Association advance health care directive, the California Statutory advance health care directive and a wide variety of attorney drafted directives.

Advance health care directive forms are available at your physician’s office, local hospital, Hospice, attorney, online and many stationary stores.

Any long-term personal care plan needs to factor how the expenses are to be paid. A budget needs to be planned and financial planning needs to be done to make sure that there is adequate money. There are certain financial planners – eldercare financial planners – who specialize in financial planning for senior citizens.

The attorney who does the legal estate planning needs to know what personal care and financial planning are in place in order to draft estate planning documents that take the same into consideration.

The estate planning documents need to provide authority and guidance for others – such as agents or a trustee – to act in furtherance of the personal care plan and the budget.

Specifically, the power of attorney would need to say the agent is to pay for and to hire certain types of services related to providing in home care and to modifying the house to make it suitable.

It would also authorize the agent to hire financial advisors to assist in the financial planning. That agent would then be able to utilize retirement funds and other assets held outside of a trust to pay for such expenses.

Likewise, the trust would also need to speak to these same issues to allow the trustee to utilize trust assets in furtherance of these same objectives.

Putting a plan together involves accessing different resources to meet different needs. The Lake and Mendocino County Area Agency on Aging has put together a useful Resource Directory for Older Adults. The Area Agency on Aging can be reached at 800-510-2020 or 707-468-5132, or visit it online at www.lakecountyca.gov/Page9118.aspx .

Dennis A. Fordham, attorney, is a State Bar-Certified Specialist in estate planning, probate and trust law. His office is at 870 S. Main St., Lakeport, Calif. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.and 707-263-3235.

Details

Written by: Karen Fox and Lina Tran

Published: 30 May 2020

On May 29, a family of sunspots — dark spots that freckle the face of the sun, representing areas of complex magnetic fields — sported the biggest solar flare since October 2017.

Although the sunspots are not yet visible (they will soon rotate into view over the left limb of the Sun), NASA spacecraft spotted the flares high above them.

The flares were too weak to pass the threshold at which NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center (which is the U.S. government's official source for space weather forecasts, watches, warnings and alerts) provides alerts.

But after several months of very few sunspots and little solar activity, scientists and space weather forecasters are keeping their eye on this new cluster to see whether they grow or quickly disappear.

The sunspots may well be harbingers of the Sun's solar cycle ramping up and becoming more active.

Or, they may not. It will be a few more months before we know for sure.

As the sun moves through its natural 11-year cycle, in which its activity rises and falls, sunspots rise and fall in number, too. NASA and NOAA track sunspots in order to determine, and predict, the progress of the solar cycle — and ultimately, solar activity.

Currently, scientists are paying close attention to the sunspot number as it's key to determining the dates of solar minimum, which is the official start of Solar Cycle 25.

This new sunspot activity could be a sign that the sun is possibly revving up to the new cycle and has passed through minimum.

However, it takes at least six months of solar observations and sunspot-counting after a minimum to know when it's occurred. Because that minimum is defined by the lowest number of sunspots in a cycle, scientists need to see the numbers consistently rising before they can determine when exactly they were at the bottom.

That means solar minimum is an instance only recognizable in hindsight: It could take six to 12 months after the fact to confirm when minimum has actually passed.

This is partly because our star is extremely variable. Just because the sunspot numbers go up or down in a given month doesn't mean it won't reverse course the next month, only to go back again the month after that. So, scientists need long-term data to build a picture of the sun’s overall trends through the solar cycle.

Commonly, that means the number we use to compare any given month is the average sunspot number from six months both backward and forward in time — meaning that right now, we can confidently characterize what October 2019 looks like compared to the months before it (there were definitely fewer sunspots!), but not yet what November looks like compared to that.

On May 29, at 3:24 a.m. EST, a relatively small M-class solar flare blazed from these sunspots. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation.

Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however — when intense enough — they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.

The intensity of this flare was below the threshold that could affect geomagnetic space and below the threshold for NOAA to create an alert.

Nonetheless, it was the first M-class flare since October 2017 — and scientists will be watching to see if the Sun is indeed beginning to wake up.

Karen Fox and Lina Tran work for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Details

Written by: Elizabeth Larson

Published: 29 May 2020

LAKEPORT, Calif. – During a special Wednesday evening meeting, the Lakeport City Council unanimously approved the purchase of one of two pieces of property key to the development of a new lakefront park.

In the 4-0 vote, with Councilwoman Mireya Turner being absent, the council approved the acquisition of 810 N. Main St. from the Hotaling family for $50,000.

The property, which is one and a half acres in size, is landlocked. It is located on the lakeshore next to the former Natural High School property, located at 800 N. Main St. and owned by the Lakeport Unified School District.

During the 20-minute Wednesday meeting, Assistant City Manager Kevin Ingram explained that the property is part of the lakefront park plan.

In February, the city of Lakeport was awarded a $5.9 million grant from the state in order to develop the new lakefront park, as Lake County News has reported. That grant covers not only the purchase price of the property but the full cost of the park development.

Ingram said the city and the property owners have been in negotiations for about a year and it had been in escrow for some time.

The resolution for acceptance of the purchase said the city agreed to purchase the property for $50,000 in April of 2019.

Ingram said the purchase has been “a bit of a puzzle” due to so many people being involved. The grant deed lists approximately 11 Hotaling family members.

Some of the family members have recently passed away. Ingram said one of those included the family member who had been doing the negotiations with the city.

“We’ve very excited to get this done. It’s an important piece of the lakefront park plan,” said Ingram, explaining that the lakefront promenade that’s part of the proposed park – which also was included in a larger plan to develop the city’s lakeshore – will stretch across the Hotaling property.

During the discussion, Councilman Kenny Parlet was critical of the sellers.

While the purchase price is now $50,000, Parlet said at one point the family had agreed to donate the property to the city.

He said the sellers are taking advantage of the people of Lakeport. “I wonder how they can sleep at night.”

Councilman Tim Barnes said that while he understood Parlet’s comments and echoed them to a degree, the property is still a very integral piece for the lakefront park project. “We need this to complete the long-term deal.”

When Mayor George Spurr called for a motion, Barnes, Parlet and Councilwoman Stacey Mattina all offered to make the motion, with Parlet seconding and the council voting 4-0.

After the meeting, Ingram told Lake County News that approval of the purchase is “a huge step forward,” for the park project.

Hotaling property the focus of ongoing negotiations

City documents show that the city had been in negotiations with George Hotaling most recently going back to the fall of 2017.

However, the city has previously negotiated with the family over the property, with city documents showing closed session discussions stretching back as far as April of 2008. It was at about that time that the city had wanted to bundle the former Natural High site and the city owned-Dutch Harbor property for a massive lakefront hotel project.

In an interview with Lake County News following Wednesday’s special meeting, Ingram described aspects of the complex negotiations over the small property.

“Originally we were working on a donation and then they got an offer,” he said, adding that he didn't know who made the offer for the land.

After that offer fell through, the city returned to negotiations, once again seeking the donation of the property, Ingram said. However, at that point, the Hotaling family wanted to sell and not donate the land, believing that the offer Illustrated that the property had value.

Complicating the matter further was the death of two of the family members during recent negotiations. “That didn’t help the process,” Ingram said.

Former Natural High property purchase soon to be settled

With the city receiving the state grant earlier this year, it is under a tight timeline to get the project developed. The state requires that the park must be developed and open to the public in 2022.

The next step is just around the corner. At its meeting on Tuesday, June 2, the council will consider adopting a resolution accepting acquisition of 800 N. Main St. and authorize City Manager Marget Silveira to execute the necessary documents. Ingram said that property already is in escrow.

Because that property is owned by the Lakeport Unified School District, it was required to go through certain state-mandated processes in order to be sold, including the required step of declaring the property surplus.

“Both of these sites came with their own complications,” said Ingram, adding that they are now coming together cleanly and they shouldn't hold up the grant in any way.

In a closed session held during a special council meeting on April 13, the former Natural High property purchase was discussed. Ingram said the council came out of the closed session with no reportable action.

Lakeport Unified Superintendent Jill Falconer told Lake County News that the school board held a closed session at its April 15 meeting, during which it accepted the city's purchase offer for the property.

“We sold the property for $660,000 with a second agreement to allow us to use the buildings as storage for up to a year. Additionally, the city contributed to the cost of our attorney fees for advising us on the process to sell surplus public property and drawing up the documents,” Falconer said.

With the complicated purchase aspects of the park development now nearly complete, Ingram said the city is moving forward on other key work. “It’s going really well.”

He said Wednesday was the deadline for design firms to submit proposals to convert the conceptual plan for the lakefront park, developed following a series of public meetings held last year ahead of the city’s grant application, into a fully engineered plan that can be put out for construction bids.

“We have 13 proposals from design firms to review,” Ingram said, adding that it was "pretty exciting.”

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.