In February 2009, Reva Ballreich, widely known as the Lilac Lady of Idyllwild, died, leaving the Hill a legacy of lilac hybrid varietals she created, many of them unnamed. Gary Parton, in taking over Ballreich’s mission of popularizing lilacs, has made it his personal mission to have Idyllwild become known as a lilac tourist destination….
“It’s no longer the little red school house,” said Pamela Jordan, president of the Idyllwild Arts Foundation. Jordan will talk about the student and information-driven bottom-up revolution that is changing educational paradigms in this country and around the world. Jordan is the next speaker in the Idyllwild Community Center Speaker Series and will talk about…
Han Xiao “Helen” Lai, an 11th-grade classical music student at the Idyllwild Arts Academy, is one of 111 semifinalists in the Los Angeles Music Center’s 2016 Spotlight Awards. More than 1,100 performing arts students from Southern California auditioned. This year’s semifinalists come from Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties. The Music Center program, now in…
Fire log The Idyllwild Fire Station did not provide responses for last week. Sheriff’s log The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department Hemet Station responded to the following calls, Sunday to Saturday, Feb. 28 to March 5. Idyllwild • Feb. 28 –– Alarm call, Village Center Dr. Handled by deputy. • Feb. 28 –– Trespassing, West Ridge…
If you don’t enjoy the return to dark mornings in March after daylight saving time resumes, Assemblyman Kansen Chu (D-San Jose) has submitted a bill to eliminate daylight saving from the California lexicon. If Assembly Bill 2496 were enacted, California would remain on Pacific Standard Time throughout the year. Hawaii and Arizona (except for the…
At its House Appropriations hearing, the U.S. Forest Service received a lot of sympathy for the dilemma that the high cost of fire suppression has had on funding for other agency programs. During the hearing, Tom Tidwell, Forest Service chief, stressed, “You can’t budget for wildland fire … We just have to have a different…
In danger of losing more than $1 billion from the federal Medicaid program for California’s Medi-Cal program, the Legislature and Gov. Edmund Brown Jr. agreed on a new package of financing to protect the federal funding, reduce state debt and provide more funds to aid residents with developmental disabilities. The problem was the state tax…
Key tax benefits renewed The Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act, signed into law in December 2015, extended or made permanent a number of tax benefits that had expired at the end of 2014. This means that, as before, eligible taxpayers can claim these benefits on their 2015 returns. Renewed benefits include: • Deduction for…
Hemet Unified School District announced the registration window for the 2016-17 school year Students Achieving in Fun Environments After School and The Zone middle-school programs. Registration opens on Monday, March 14, and closes Friday, April 22. District schools will be closed from March 28 through April 1 for spring recess. The SAFE program operates at…
The Local Control and Accountability Plan was the subject of a lively discussion at Idyllwild School last week. The LCAP is a product of 2013 legislation that changed the method in which the state allocates educational funds. Hemet Unified School District is preparing its third LCAP and has been holding meetings throughout the district to…
