

Fire burns 2,000 acres north of Banning
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The Hathaway Fire, which started Sunday, June 9, could be seen from the San Jacinto Mountains. As of 8 a.m. Tuesday, the fire north of Banning had burned nearly 2,000 acres and was 25 percent contained. It was expected to be fully contained late Tuesday, June 25. Suppression costs have exceeded $800,000. Photo by Bob Haine

Last week, the Riverside County Department of Public Health released its first-ever report on the transgender community in the county. The report is a follow-up from the 2014 report from the Riverside University Health System on the health and wellness of the county’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities. This report highlighted the deficit of…
Riverside County voters and statewide voters concurred on the disposition of the six propositions on the November ballot. Half passed and half were defeated. Voters approved the water quality and bond and the state budget propositions by nearly two to one margins. Also Proposition 47, which would change some criminal sentences to misdemeanors, was approved…
Below are the latest Riverside County election results. The Registrar of Voters thinks about 50,000 more ballots are left to count. This will begin tomorrow. The next results are projected to be posted Friday. The overall results are the same as the initial results. Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack and Supervisor Jeff Stone easily out polled…
Citing California’s five-year drought, Gov. Jerry Brown issued an executive order making some of the state’s temporary water restrictions permanent. Permanently banned are wasteful practices such as hosing off driveways and washing cars with hoses that lack shut-off nozzles. The governor credited Californians with having accomplished significant water conservation, saving 1.3-million-acre-feet of water from June…
Editor’s note: On Sept. 30, former state Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia and current candidate for the state Senate’s 28th District spoke to the Town Crier on a variety of issues from the campaign. This is the second in a two-part interview. The first ran last week and is available here. Role of the Brown Act…
The consultant hired 18 months ago to help Riverside County gain control of its spiraling budget (projected initial deficits of $40 million) reported to the Board of Supervisors last week. And while KPMG has been working with many agencies and especially the county’s internal costs, its major focus has been criminal-justice agencies, which consume nearly…