On July 9, Gov. Gavin Newsom held a press conference at McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento about the state’s wildfire preparedness efforts. According to Newsom, there were 628 fires the first week of July in the state of California and 4,112 wildfires from July of last year to July of this year, as of…

Later this month, Riverside County Superior Court Judge Bernard Schwartz will begin making decisions and issuing court orders that will lead to the trial of Robert Pape and Cristin Smith, charged with multiple counts of murder. The two men are charged with the 2006 murders of Jon Hayward, Vicki Friedli, and Vicki’s daughter Becky, who…

At its Aug. 28 meeting, the Riverside County Board of Supervisors approved the request from the Idyllwild Fire Protection District for an advance of its property tax revenue. IFPD requested an advance of $400,000 from the county in May. The advance will be repaid, with interest, in December and January when Riverside County makes its…

Higher fees approved: ambulance, mitigation and permitting In a meeting highlighted with the announcement that the fire chief has resigned (see accompanying story), the Idyllwild Fire Protection District commission also attended to many other business issues and decisions at its March 26 meeting. Besides the usual financial and incident report statistics, Caltrans briefed the commission…