NEWS ARTICLE ARCHIVE — in chronological order, with pagination below
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Meeting set to study impact of new MLPA
Mendocino County”s proposed new marine protected areas should cause fish populations to flourish, a newly released environmental impact report (EIR) states. The EIR admits the new offshore parks present enforcement challenges and creates the problem of fishermen moving off newly-closed areas to others, but says those negatives will be overridden by the good marine protected…
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FERC opens public comment period
Paperwork fixed, a Southern California development company is finally back on track to get a three-year exclusive wave energy study preliminary permit for the waters off the town of Mendocino. Green Wave Energy Solutions has again proposed an eventual project of 150 to 680 wave energy converters having a total installed capacity of 100 megawatts,…
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FBUSD is generating power
If anybody happened to be watching from space, Fort Bragg Unified School District buildings doubled in size over the past two years and “grew” big clusters of glowing glass panels at every site. The largest alternative energy project in Mendocino Coast history is complete and fully operational, pumping power into every electrical meter in the…
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County sends out RFP to privatize mental health
Could contractors provide better adult mental health services than Mendocino County? How much could the county save by turning treatment of the mentally ill over to nonprofits and medical firms and entering into joint partnerships with private agencies and other governments? Those questions are the subject of a process the county has launched to obtain…
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FBUSD English learners excel
Spanish speakers who can improve their English language skills to be deemed proficient will move to the top of the class in other subjects, Superintendent Don Armstrong told the Fort Bragg Unified School District last week. “Some of our best students by far are found among the English redesignated. They are usually very hard working…
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Tradewinds has new owner while federal issues continue
Court battles continue over Fort Bragg”s Tradewinds motel on South Main Street, even as Scott Feil, the former owner, serves his time in federal prison. Attorneys involved in the case on all sides, have been mum to this newspaper and others who have contacted them. Joshua Eaton, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney in San Francisco…
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County considering privatizing more mental health services
Mendocino County is considering privatizing more of its mental health services. At a Monday meeting the county discussed several options for privatizing mental health services by outsourcing. The details about what is being considered for privatization were delayed and not available by press time Wednesday morning. The county has balanced its mental health branch budget…
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FERC gives wave energy developer one month
The Mendocino Coast”s only wave energy proposal was tasked with a New Year”s resolution by the federal agency in charge — fix the paperwork. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a notice of deficiency to Green Wave Mendocino Wave Park on Dec. 29. The notice requires Green Wave to identify this month how many…
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Scorned foods provide good nutrition at Food Bank
In four years of doing features about the Fort Bragg Food Bank, I”ve made a lot of new friends. There is one I plan to have over for dinner as often I can — cardoon, a new food I have come to love. Cardoon looks like a rough, oversized clump of celery, that”s bitter when…
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Two corporate escapees love their new life at Food Bank
For two key employees of the Fort Bragg Food Bank, July 9 was independence day. That”s the day last summer that Doug Duncan and Jim DiMauro completed their escape from the corporate world and the day both started at the Food Bank. Both men wouldn”t trade the better money they once made for the atmosphere…
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Food Bank provides stories of unemployment, poverty
In modern journalism, covering poverty is generally all about the numbers. One story would be the decline of Mendocino County”s unemployment rate to 9.9 percent October 2011 from 10.2 percent in October 2010. Another news piece, with the opposite message, could be a local impact of the steady growth of the poverty rate since the…
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Volunteers work hard to stretch Food Bank dollars
When I first saw the young man sitting in his car in the Fort Bragg Food Bank parking lot, I had no doubt he was a very unwilling court referral, forced to choose between doing community service at the Food Bank or jail by a judge. He sat bolt upright, listening to his stereo cranked…
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Contradictory legal opinions on Laura”s Law
When they ponder Laura”s Law this month, Mendocino County supervisors must take a side in a passionate split that divides legal minds, as well as advocates, for the mentally ill. If the supervisors vote yes, Laura”s Law (AB 1421) would set up a process where certain officials, and family members of mentally ill people who…
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Coats for dogs and people among many Food Bank extras
The San Francisco Giants are partly responsible for a popular new program at the Fort Bragg Food Bank — sweaters for dogs. Long time Food Bank volunteer Nancy Milano has crocheted about 100 doggie coats, which have been given away to Food Bank clients by Second Chance Rescue. She made many while watching her favorite…
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Exhausted Food Bankers now need Christmas turkeys
Volunteer Shirley Harbour was spending the first of three busy days at the Fort Bragg Food Bank on Monday making fruit cups for the workers with her pal, Nina Pivirotto. Outside, the line extended down South Franklin Street. After a wild and busy Thanksgiving week, the Food Bank still needs more turkeys or hams for…
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Mental Health: Data unavailable, questions remain
A continuing series Andrew Weber had a big smile when he talked about the fact he was turning 21 in 12 days. “I can”t wait,” he said, following last week”s mental health board meeting, when he told his story as an illustration of the community collaboration strategy implemented by Mental Health Director Tom Pinizzotto. Weber”s…
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Season of Sharing: Food Bank”s senior food deliveries bring big smiles
As Allied bombs fell nearby, 14-year-old Ingeborg Hartung was in school learning textile arts. “War should be illegal. Why do young men have to go war for something they don”t understand, and die? for what,?” she says. The Fort Bragg grandmother remembers a Germany where the only soldiers left alive to fight were teenagers. She…
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40-gallon diesel spill results in fines, probation
A 65-year-old Fort Bragg man has pleaded guilty to spilling diesel fuel into the Pacific Ocean on June 12, the largest of about 25 Mendocino County incidents reported to the California Office of Spill Prevention and Response in 2011. Much smaller drips, overflows and other spills in the pint-to-quart range often go unreported and could…
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Food Bank challenges community to give turkeys, more
A homeless man said he needed the box of “executive hair dye” to prepare his beard for his next job interview. A 57-year-old unemployed woman, whose fortunes collapsed along with the economy in 2008, informed the rest of us in the lobby of the Fort Bragg Food Bank that she has never had a gray…
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Howard Wheatley” Allen: How does he do it?
When Mikhail Gorbachev reached for a metaphor to describe how the standoff that threatened the planet for half a century ended, the last Soviet president chose a goose. “During the nuclear arms race, I was given a gift by an American, a little figure of a goose in flight. I still have it at my…
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