Earlier this month, President Barack Obama proposed his final federal budget, recommending total federal expenditures of more than $4.1 trillion, and requiring a deficit of $500 billion. This is for fiscal year 2017, which begins Oct. 1, 2016. Of that amount, he is requesting $4.9 billion for the U.S. Forest Service. While the president’s budget…
Editor: For the past the past few days, persons sitting in front of the Idyllwild Post Office have been collecting signatures for various ballot measures without being able to explain what the ballot measures were for. And the worst part was that people were actually signing the petitions without knowing what they were signing. Is…
Editor: My letter to the editor re: snow visitors did not get written so here, instead, are a few thoughts: 1. I see this issue as “a teachable moment” for our community as it is mostly about how we manage to deal with visitors from a different cultural background. For those from “south of the…
Back in early 2006, we started a news meeting in a local cafe, outside the confines of the office, to plan our weekly news budget. It became a habit and now we hold our news meetings most Wednesday mornings — publicly. The idea was to improve our news coverage through the give-and-take public interchange that…
Topics for the remaining 2016 meetings were discussed at last week’s Mountain Emergency Services Committee session. Kathleen Henderson, the Riverside County emergency services coordinator for the mountain, recommended several subjects familiar to local emergency officials. The March agenda will discuss “vector control” or mosquito habitat. The past two years have seen headlines about infectious diseases…
During the Feb. 9 Riverside County Board of Supervisor’s meeting, Supv. John Tavaglione (2nd District) chastised County Sheriff Stan Sniff. According to the supervisor, he believes the Sheriff’s Department has not been diligently cooperating with the consultants, who have been hired to evaluate the efficiencies of the county’s public safety programs. During his opening comments,…
Water supply and conditions are fine in the Pine Cove Water District, General Manager Jerry Holldber told the directors at the Feb. 11 meeting. “We’re back down on [water] production,” he reported. “Well no. 10 [the district’s monitoring well] has stayed at the same level.” January water production was nearly 20 percent less than a…
One two-vehicle collision occurred on Hill roads during the last week. At 5:28 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 14, Janet Colson, 48, of San Jacinto, was driving her 2010 Mercedes E 350 westbound on Highway 74 just east of the Old Control Road when, according to the California Highway Patrol report, she made an unsafe turning movement….
University of California, Riverside, Assistant Professor of Geophysics Garreth Funning believes the seismic waves from one earthquake could trigger a second earthquake much farther away than previously thought. Funning and his team studied two earthquakes in Pakistan in 1996 using radar imagery and determined that the first quake, a 7.0 magnitude, likely triggered a second…
The County Service Area 38 (Pine Cove) Advisory Committee discussed the need and level for a new parcel fee last week. The current fee of $ 60.90 was initially approved in an August 2004 vote as $50 with an escalation formula. The assessment helped defray the cost of emergency ambulance service, which the Idyllwild Fire…
