RoundUp: Turkey trot
Gratitude, changes to Sebastopol's emergency planning efforts, letter to the editor, the return of police logs, and more
Something to be thankful for
I’ve felt for years that Thanksgiving, a national celebration of the concept of gratitude, is being trampled by the juggernaut of the Christmas season, which used to start the day after Thanksgiving but now seems to start in, like, July. This year, Sebastopol Hardware put up their Christmas tent before Halloween.
Anyway before the memory of this Thanksgiving fades beneath an avalanche of candy canes, I wanted to say that Dale and I are feeling particularly thankful this Thanksgiving weekend because so many of you heeded his call to become paid subscribers. We hit the magic 1,000 paid subscriber mark this weekend. Thank you.
Diary of a Kidney Donor: Thanksgiving
Cynthia McReynolds and Wee Simpla celebrated Thanksgiving together with their partners. “All four of us are still glowing with amazement at the profound threshold that we crossed just two weeks and two days ago,” writes Cynthia.
Changes to local emergency preparedness efforts
At the November 19th City Council meeting, as the last item on the agenda of a nearly four-and-a-half-hour meeting, the decision was made to transfer management of the two emergency preparedness programs (and its website sebastopolready.org) to the Gravenstein Health Action Coalition (GHAC). In practical terms, the decision meant that the contract for Skip Jirrels, the Public Safety Outreach Coordinator for the City of Sebastopol, was moved from the City to GHAC and funded for the rest of the fiscal year.
Under Sebastopol Fire Department, Jirrels had pushed efforts to self-organize for emergency preparedness. Former Fire Chief Bill Braga started the program years ago to help provide an alternative system of support for citizens if and when the fire department was overwhelmed during an emergency.
One program, originally called Map Your Neighborhood after a national program, is now called simply Meet Your Neighbors (MYN). It encourages people in Sebastopol’s neighborhoods to organize in groups that could respond in the event of an emergency such as an evacuation. In particular, this would help neighbors understand who might be most vulnerable and how to help them. Practically speaking, sharing information such as the location of the gas cutoff switch in a house could be useful for your neighbors to know, if you were away during an emergency.
The other program involves radio communications, which may be the only available option for communications during an extreme emergency where land lines and cell phones don’t work. The Sebastopol Neighborhood Communications Unit (SNCU) is a volunteer group who have one of three types of radios:
FRS - inexpensive walkie-talkies that are short range
GMRS - a medium-range radio that requires an FCC license to transmit but no test
HAM - a longer distance radio that requires passing a test to obtain an FCC amateur radio license.
Without going into technical details, the idea is that anyone with a walkie-talkie should be able to communicate with someone in their neighborhood who has a GMRS radio, and that person could relay a message to a hub — Sebastopol is divided up into four zones with a fifth zone for those outside the City. For instance, I am the GMRS hub operator for Zone 1. Any hub could receive and relay messages to other hubs and also relay a high priority message using HAM radio to a fire or police department.
The real goal of these programs is to enable neighbors to help neighbors try to handle problems, if possible, at the neighborhood level. Getting neighbors to solve problems in a neighborhood or with the next nearest neighborhood can reduce the volume of emergency calls to police and fire departments, which have only limited capacity to respond — e.g. one can expect that calls to 911 will get a busy signal.
At a meeting last Tuesday of members of MYN and SNCU, Skip Jirrels talked in positive terms about the change that the city council approved. He explained that the neighborhood preparedness program is outside the parameters of the pending consolidation of the Sebastopol Fire Department and the Gold Ridge Fire District. He added that both the City Council and GHAC worked together to keep the MYN Program supported and functioning. “A lot of details still need to be worked out in the coming months,” said Jirrels.
Jirrels said the GHAC considers this program a priority. GHAC will want to see it explicitly extend out into the West County. Because funding came from the City, MYN and SNCU focused primarily on organizing neighborhoods within Sebastopol’s borders, but they welcomed others outside the city. About half of its current participants are located outside Sebastopol.
SNCU holds a monthly radio check-in on the first Monday of the month at 7 pm. The December check-in will take place on Monday, December 2 at 7 pm on Channel 17. If you have an FRS or GRMS radio, please consider checking in this month. If you’d like to get involved, visit the Sebastopol Ready website.
Letter to the editor: What forced deportation could bring
Thanks to everyone who wrote Letters to the Editor during the election. We’d like to continue this feature, but that depends on readers actually writing letters to the editor. We’ll start what we hope will be a regular feature with a letter we received recently from Sebastopol newcomer David Bolt, a retired journalist and author of "The Digital Divide.”
Editor: As plans to implement Donald Trump’s proposal to forcibly deport millions of immigrants begin to take shape, we here in Sonoma County should be clear-eyed about what this means for us.
As a point of national reference, we know that from 1929 to the 1950s, authorities forcibly repatriated more than two million people of Mexican ancestry. With Trump vowing to deport many more than that today, it is safe to say that here in Sonoma County—where we have an estimated 25,000-38,000 undocumented immigrants—the impacts will be severe.
For starters, our state and county lawmakers could well be pitted against their federal counterparts. We also know from past experience that mass deportation will result in considerable economic upheaval, not least labor shortages and increases in food prices, affecting us all.
The Trump claim that only criminals will be deported fails the history test: mass deportations have always swept up far more than the targeted populations. For instance, more than one million of those repatriated in the 20th Century were born in the U.S.
For these and many other reasons, state and county leaders deserve our support and encouragement as they contemplate how best to resist Trump’s plans.
Dave Bolt
Sebastopol
Correction
This isn’t really a correction, but I learned after the fact that the Not So Open Mic, which features only women performers, welcomes men in the audience. It’s only the mic that’s women-only. So if you’re a guy, and you were thinking, ‘Darn, I’d really like to see that,” the organizers wanted me to tell you that you’d be welcome.
Sebastopol Police Logs, Nov. 4-24
The following are crimes excerpted from Sebastopol Police Department daily crime log entries and listed at the time the alleged violation was reported.
MONDAY
12:04 a.m. Battery on a person (misdemeanor) at Gravenstein Highway North and Danmar Drive. Investigation suspended, leads exhausted.
TUESDAY
2:40 p.m. Possession of less than 28.5 grams of marijuana by someone under 18 years old at North Main Street and Healdsburg Avenue. Suspect arrested.
4:55 p.m. Possession of obscene matter involving a minor in a sexual act (felony) at Laguna Park Way and McKinley Street. Pending further investigation.
WEDNESDAY
3:11 p.m. Forgery, theft of more than $950 under false pretenses from an elderly dependent adult, and grand theft (felonies) at Bodega Avenue and Robinson Road. Charges unfounded.
8:55 p.m. Assault involving throwing acid or a similar corrosive substance, battery with serious bodily injury (felonies) and possession of a narcotic controlled substance (misdemeanor) at Valley View Court and Bodega Avenue. Suspect arrested.
SATURDAY
9:40 a.m. Shoplifting, intimidation by challenging to fight in a public place, and disorderly conduct involving alcohol (misdemeanors) at Gravenstein Highway North and Hurlbut Avenue. Suspect arrested.
5:51 p.m. Violation of post release community supervision (felony), possession of unlawful paraphernalia. and obstruction of a peace officer (misdemeanors) at South Main Street and Bodega Avenue. Suspect arrested.
MONDAY
11:39 a.m. Grand theft from a building, first degree burglary, and breaking and entering (felonies) at Hutchins Avenue and Gravenstein Highway South. No disposition reported.
WEDNESDAY
11:52 a.m. Child abuse with the possibility of causing great bodily injury or death, and battery with serious bodily injury (felonies) at Gravenstein Highway North and Hurlbut Avenue. Investigation suspended, leads exhausted.
THURSDAY
4:32 p.m. Hit and run with property damage at South Main and Burnett streets. Referred to District Attorney for review.
MONDAY
5:37 p.m. Child abuse with the possibility of causing great bodily injury or death (misdemeanor) at Florence and Bodega avenues. Referred to District Attorney for review.
TUESDAY
6:35 a.m. Served a misdemeanor arrest warrant for an outside agency at Willow Street and Jewell Avenue. Suspect arrested.
WEDNESDAY
9:49 a.m. Violation of probation (misdemeanor) at Gravenstein Highway North and Hurlbut Avenue. Referred to District Attorney for review.
SATURDAY
10:54 a.m. Served a misdemeanor arrest warrant for an outside agency at South Main and Burnett streets. Suspect arrested.
SUNDAY
12:47 p.m. Second degree burglary with breaking and entering (felony) at Sebastopol Avenue and Morris Street. Investigation suspended, leads exhausted.
OTHER POLICE ACTION
The Sebastopol Police Department also recorded 318 other events requiring police action during the period, such as lost animals, assisting citizens, parking violations, foot patrol, traffic hazards and reckless driving.
The Week of November 23-30
Visit our website, SebastopolTimes.com, for any of the stories you might have missed this week.
While we reached our November goal of 1000 subscribers, we still need to grow the number of paid subscribers who support local news.
