KZYX News

March 21, 2022 — Today is the first day on the job for interim CEO Darcie Antle, whose one-year contract for salary and benefits totaling $338,000 was approved unanimously at last week’s Board of Supervisors meeting. Former CEO Carmel Angelo’s last day on the job was Friday. The board also discussed crafting an ordinance or revitalizing existing rules to regulate water hauling in a way that would...

March 17, 2022 — As of last week, Sherwood Oaks, the only nursing home on the coast, is under new ownership. The buyers, Lucy Xie and Ronald Baldwin, are also the owners of two licensed nursing homes in Hayward, Serenethos Care Center and Saint Anthony Care Center. Although Sherwood Oaks has a license for almost 80 beds, over the past year, the pandemic, a million and a half dollars’ worth of defe...

March 16, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously yesterday to open the chambers to the public on April 19. Remote attendance will continue to be an option, and masking and social distancing will be implemented. Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren pointed out that Mendocino County is now a low-transmission community, with mask mandates lifted at schools and hospital beds now widely avai...

March 15, 2022 — Outgoing CEO Carmel Angelo received accolades from colleagues at the county, state, and congressional levels, as well as some criticism from local gadflies, at her send-off in this morning’s Board of Supervisors meeting. And an agreement with Redwood Community Services to operate the Critical Residential Treatment mental healthcare facility in Ukiah passed narrowly, with Superviso...

Ukiah High School Sophomore Cat Karpov Kinrad and twenty other teens participate in the Restorative Justice Youth Council, a newly implemented program sponsored, in partnership, by Mendocino’s Juvenile Probation Office and the Arbor of Redwood Community Services. The Restorative Justice Youth Council is a youth driven program designed to repair the harm caused to all individuals in juvenile crime...

The 2022 Whale Festival March 12 – April 3, sponsored by the Noyo Center for Marine Science, has a mixture of events that will please families, the science minded and those looking for a little adventure this Spring. Sue Coulter talks about the upcoming activities and gives us some insight into their expansion plans at Noyo Harbor.

A life well lived was enjoyed by Ukiah’s accomplished artist Adele Pruitt, who died late last month at the age of 99. An accomplished painter, art teacher, conservator, restorer, and educational reformer, Pruitt was a respected member of the Mendocino art community whose impressive breadth of work and accomplishments merit recognition. Jayed Scotti, Pruitt’s longtime student and co-worker, remarks...

March 8, 2022—Anna Neumann is well known along the coast for her many leadership roles in the fishing industry. She has taken on a new role as harbormaster at the Noyo Harbor. In this interview she explains the role and challenges of being a harbormaster, how the harbor is funded and her plans for the future.

Mendocino County Public Broadcasting Board President Tom Dow talks with General Manager Marty Durlin about how the station made the decision to purchase a new home, and how how the property at 390 West Clay Street was chosen and financed. This is the first in a series of KZYX Building Reports.

March 7, 2022 — The county indoor mask mandate is now a strong recommendation, though the most recent health order consists largely of reasons residents should follow Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren’s advice to continue masking in indoor spaces. Businesses are still authorized to request that patrons mask up, and Coren expressed confidence in the community’s judgment after years of education...

March 3, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors took up a full slate of cannabis issues at its March 2 special meeting, including fallowing, the tax code, an appeals process for application denials, and the proper uses of a seventeen and a half million dollar state grant, which is supposed to help local growers secure annual state licenses. Supervisors directed County Counsel and cannabis program staff t...

March 2, 2022 — With local mask mandates set to expire by March fifteenth, the Board of Supervisors is preparing to hear an agenda item about opening meetings to the public. And the board took the first step in diversifying its retirement investments, by agreeing to work up a resolution to start investing some of the county’s five million dollar pension fund with Public Agency Retirement Services,...

March1, 2022 — Caspar 500, a timber harvest plan in Jackson Demonstration State Forest, has been the site of a lot of activity that’s neither logging nor protests in the last few days. KZYX Program Director Alicia Bales and reporter Sarah Reith review the events.

February 28, 2022 — Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren delivered an optimistic covid briefing on Friday afternoon, saying that, in spite of a new variant that’s edging its way into the state, he expects to see a significant drop in hospital admissions by the end of March. He may reconsider the county’s universal indoor mask mandate in the next week or so, and he has high hopes for the community...

February 25, 2022 — Members of Ukiah’s Diversity and Equity Committee learned about state and federal programs to pay down utility bills for customers whose accounts fell into arrears during the pandemic. They also heard about existing practices to communicate with people who don’t speak English, and made suggestions for improving communications in general. Committee members also examined a postin...

February 24, 2022 — Trees along the Mendocino and Sonoma coastline have been falling victim to a rogues’ gallery of foes in the last twenty years, according to Chris Lee, a forest pest specialist with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Lee spoke to the Mendocino Coast Audubon Society earlier this week about the many factors that have been decimating the coastal trees, inclu...

Feb 23, 2022 — The Mendocino County Cannabis Program is holding public meetings separate from the Board of Supervisors, where participants can explore the often-confusing minutiae of ever-changing cannabis policy in a venue of their own. February 18 was the first Friday morning meeting, where applicants discussed fallowing permits, or what it means to take a break from cultivating without walking...

February 18, 2022 — As conditions in the ecosystem change, environmentalists and land managers grapple with increasingly difficult questions about what it means to be stewards of the forest and its inhabitants. A team of scientists from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is engaged in a study involving the lethal removal of barred owls, which have been out-competing the iconic and endangered no...

February 22, 2022 — A state regulatory agency rebuffed a local group’s complaint about PG&E cutting around power lines last month. The California Public Utilities Commission told the Redwood Valley Municipal Advisory Council that the work around the powerlines on Road A off of Highway 20 “is not in violation of the rules or regulations of the CPUC,” and that the program reduces the risk of fir...

February 21, 2022 — It was cold and windy at 9am on February 15, at the Ten Mile Courthouse on Franklin Street in Fort Bragg, California, where four activists appeared in court. Six activists in total were “citizens arrested” January 10 in Jackson Demonstration State Forest while protesting the timber harvest plan known as Red Tail. This is the first interaction the protesters have had with law en...

February 16, 2022 — Experts on the Potter Valley Project gave Farm Bureau committee members an update Tuesday night, providing details about flows, preparations for a ballot measure to levy a special tax, and the as-yet scarce information that’s available about what’s next. Devon Jones, the Executive Director of the Mendocino County Farm Bureau, laid the groundwork with some background and up-to-t...

February 15, 2022 — The drought is off to an early start, all around the county. Already, no water is available for agricultural use in Redwood Valley. Fort Bragg has 30% less water than it did this time last year. There is still money available to haul water from Ukiah to the coast again, though a water storage proposal for the town of Mendocino did not get funded with the last round of drought g...

Cindi Jo Willey lives on Point Cabrillo Drive property that has been in her family since the 1870s, when her great great grandparents settled here from Portugal. Through the years, the property has seen many uses. In what was once an auto body and repair shop, Cindi Jo and her husband created her quilt studio, which contains two long arm sewing machines and other sewing equipment, fabric, thread a...

February 11, 2022 – The Russian River serves as muse for Sonoma County artist Richard McDaniel in his latest series entitled The Russian River and its Watershed, on display now through March 18th at Ukiah’s Mendocino College Art Gallery. After years of journeying into sections of the110 mile river, McDaniel creates vibrant oil paintings of scenes and seasons of the Russian River as it flows from i...

February 11, 2022 — Indoor masking orders remain in effect in Mendocino County at least until mid-March, due to strained hospital capacity. Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren said he “stayed up long hours” deciding whether or not to go along with the state in loosening mask requirements. But after meeting with hospital officials, he decided that, although covid case numbers have dropped, relaxin...