At its April 15 meeting, the Fern Valley Water District Board of directors had three items on its agenda. None were major actions, as the Board is in the initial stages of preparing its proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2026-27, which begins July 1. The one item which had monetary consequences was the approval of…...

At its April 14 meeting, the Riverside County Board of Supervisors voted against hiring an outside counsel to defend County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s department in lawsuits with State Attorney General Rob Bonta and the Department of Justice. The Board had met in closed session to hear four litigative issues involving the AG and the Sheriff…....

The Town Crier asked the county about the status of the decaying home on Robin Road. Complaints by neighbors about rodents, missing shingles and siding, and unabated brush, led to visits by Code Enforcement and a notice of condemnation last fall. One question was whether a county ordinance requiring registry and securing of abandoned and…...

Chris Perreault, who created Idyllwild’s downtown Visitor Center in the space provided by Shane Stewart, tells us that volunteers there have been seeing an uptick in tourists. Perreault, who also volunteers at the Idyllwild Area Historical Society Museum, added that the museum has also been seeing more visitors lately. Over the last six months, the…...

Last year we heard that Gary Parton, the creator of Alpenglow Lilac Gardens, was retiring and moving away from Idyllwild. He said then that he hoped the next inhabitants  of the property would continue to care for the lilacs. The house does have new owners now, Scott Simril and Nanette Munro, who rented before purchasing…...

Many components of the federal budget affect life and lives on the Hill. These range from Social Security, and educational grants, to the Department of Agriculture’s San Jacinto District Ranger Station. One of the biggest and most important is funding for wildfire prevention and response. The Forest Service as well as Cal Fire and the…...

Dan Fedrick picks up a Newton’s cradle from the counter at Remember When Toys and gives a quick lesson on the three principles that guide it: inertia, equal and opposite reaction, and conservation of momentum. It’s the kind of object that feels perfectly at home in a store like this — simple, tactile, a little…...

This year, as the Idyllwild Arts Academy celebrates 80 years of arts education in Idyllwild, the Native American Arts program has offered a special season of lectures, an extension of the annual Kabotie Lectures into a four-month series. The culmination of the series will be on Thursday April 16, when members of the Cahuilla Band…...

Last week, President Donald Trump took further action to establish federal control of state processes to vote-by-mail by issuing an Executive Order ordering oversight of citizenship verification of voters. The order involves multiple federal agencies to police vote-by-mail procedures and associated activities though the U.S. Within two days, several lawsuits opposing this action were filed…...