Jim Steele is a former Lake County Supervisor in District 3 on the County's North Shore. He is a retired State Water Quality Scientist, Registered Professional Forester, Endangered Species and Water Rights Consultant and has taught graduate level courses as an adjunct professor at Cal-State University, Sacramento. Currently, Jim is on the State authorized Blue Ribbon Committee. He also serves on the technical sub-committee along with other scientists from universities and various agencies. The purpose of the Committee is to review lake science and county economics with a mission of providing recommendations to the State Legislature for future financial support.
We need information. The old Lucerne grade school building on Country Club Drive is set up to support the citizens of Lucerne as a Senior Center. This venerable building was built circa 1930 and received its first students a couple of years later. The local School District operated the building until it became obsolete and declared the building surplus. They gave it away many years later to operate as a community center to avoid ongoing upkeep. The present operators are a 501(c)3 Benefit Corporation 100% composed of hard working volunteers.
I propose that these Municipal Advisory Councils are an effective way for county government to engage citizens in the unincorporated areas and the activities of these councils should have public funding for legitimate purposes such as opinion polling, site rental, sound amplification, public activities and signs to name a few.
Between 2015 and 2019 Lake County had 8 fire emergencies declared with thousands of properties and lives impacted. Over 60% of the county burned during that period but the main towns and cities were protected by the statewide major fire response consisting of aircraft and engine crews totaling thousands of staff from several states. One […]
Mistakenly named in 1850 for eel-like lamprey, the Eel River begins its 196 mile journey in Northern Lake County interrupted by the 138 foot Scott Dam forming Lake Pillsbury. Up to 84,000 acre feet of water running down the southern flank of 6,740 foot Bald Mountain is pooled here like a headwaters lake. The lake […]
The Important Fire Driven Community Conversation One of the elements essential to a rural county is community conversation. Fire conditions, insurance options, public transportation, economic development, and a myriad of topics keep both the neighborhood and the lone family at the end of the road informed and engaged. Our widespread rural community is made up […]
California areas are often known by their negative news profile. Economic struggles, crime, welfare statistics, and disasters make easy headlines. But counties can also be described by their natural resources, housing costs, transportation corridors, position near trading partners and commodity production. For Lake County, even that doesn’t tell the whole story. Rural, isolated but just […]
Evidence of long ago wildfires sweeping the Artic left behind a charcoal soil layer documenting events of three million years ago; give or take a few. Temperatures might have been 20F higher than today and thick forests spread further to the North. It looks like we’re in for a repeat, as this past year Artic […]
One center piece for ecological studies is the cycle of life, cycle of fire or any number of cycles found in the natural environment. A cycle can be fairly short such as the 10 day life cycle of a house fly to several hundred years for a natural forest. I recently attended a Forester’s Conference […]
