By Richard Barker Special to the Town Crier I arrived at Eduardo Santiago’s house to find him hunched over his kitchen table pounding down shots of what turned out to be Lemon Lily tea. “I just picked this up at Merkaba’s and it’s delicious,” he said. “Join me; we can drown our sorrows together.”…
At the recent Town Hall meeting of fire chiefs and at the last Mountain Area Safety Taskforce meeting, important questions were raised about local fire abatement, particularly of vacant properties. Cal Fire and Riverside County Fire Chief John Hawkins established a private-public committee to investigate and recommend improvements to facilitate fire abatement here. The Mountain…
It was recently learned that on Dec. 1, 2013, Karen Lynne Epperly-Sundsten, 49, of Fern Valley was arrested on charges of embezzlement. Charges filed were grand theft and forgery, with statutory sentencing enhancements of (1) fraud and embezzlement and (2) taking, damaging or destroying property of more than $65,000 in value. The victim was Community…
California’s Board of Forestry has released a draft report describing the collection and use of the Fire Prevention fee applied to structures within State Responsibility Areas. Since the state began collecting the fees in 2011-12, nearly $150 million has been received. Revenues have averaged nearly $75 million in each of the first two years. Cal…
By J.P. Crumrine News Editor Current Hemet Unified School District Board President Paul Bakkom, who represents the Anza area, has chosen to retire after one term. The other three directors — Vic Scavarda, Area 1 (Idyllwild) and “Ross” Valenzuela and Joe Wojcik, Area 3 (Hemet) — whose terms expire this December have all filed…
For nearly a century teaching and learning have been major activities in and around Idyllwild. Among the schools and camps responsible, one of the most interesting was the Desert Sun School, which for 44 years occupied the campus that now houses Astrocamp. “Desert Sun” seems an odd name for an institution nestled in a mountain…
Harold Wherry and his 6-piece Blue Breeze Band return to the Idyllwild Summer Concert Series with their distinctive vocal harmonies and happening horn section, sampling the best of Motown, R&B, soul, funk jazz and blues. Taking the stage at 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 14, Wherry’s established ensemble plays the kind of smooth and visceral music…
Raises for top Riverside County officials were on the agenda for the Board of Supervisors Aug. 5 meeting. The board considered increases for themselves as well as the other elected county officials — assessor/county clerk/recorder, auditor-controller, district attorney, sheriff/coroner and treasurer/tax collector. State law authorizes each county’s supervisors to set their own compensation. The Riverside…
A fairly new term in wildfire policy is “Fire Adapted Communities.” Important fire organizations have placed a new emphasis on this concept over the last few years and I think it leads us all in the right direction regarding the challenge of wildfire. To begin with, by referring to adaptation, the term leads us to…
