KZYX News

February 11, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors approved a social media services contract with Liz Barney this week, with Supervisors Dan Gjerde and Ted Williams dissenting. The board also unanimously approved an ordinance providing for the abatement of hazardous vegetation and combustible material to reduce fire hazards. Another unanimous vote updated Measure H, the 2004 voter-approved initiative to...

February 10, 2021 — A covid-19 outbreak at a Ukiah nursing home has infected eighteen people, according to Bekkie Emery, of the county’s Department Operations Center. The outbreak was identified at Mountain View Assisted Living and Memory Care on Saturday. Twelve residents and six staff have tested positive, and another staff member is considered a close contact and is in quarantine. Alyson Bailey...

2/9/21 — The Dungeness crab season is off to a pitiful start this year. Some crabbers pulled their gear out and threw the towel in just one day into the season. However, scientists, seasoned crabbers, and even those new to the business all say that is to be expected — the crab fishery has a very cyclical nature. Some years bring in plentiful crabs and subsequently, money. Others, not so much. This...

February 8, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors is scheduled to revisit an agreement with a social media contractor whose activity on the right-wing website Parler caused a stir in December. Late last year, the sheriff’s request to approve a three year contract with Liz Barney for social media, web design and training, appeared on the board’s agenda. It came out on facebook that Barney had a Parler ac...

February 4, 2021 — School districts in Mendocino County have the option to start the reopening process, though a lot of uncertainty remains. We’ll hear from a teachers union representatives and school superintendents, for a look at the planning regionally and locally.

February 3, 2021 — Mari Rodin will be sworn into the Ukiah City Council at tonight’s meeting, where she’ll start serving out the remaining two years of Maureen Mulheren’s term. Mulheren was elected to the second district supervisor seat, which Rodin also wanted, and started that position early last month. At an hour and a half special meeting last week, the city council heard from Rodin and seven...

2/2/2021 — As we all know, it’s not unusual for the rainy season to start out relatively, well, un-rainy, and then for the state to get hit with a big storm — though not quite like this one. “This storm definitely has more water in it because of climate change,” explained Michael Wehner, a senior scientist who studies extreme weather events and their relationship to climate change at the Lawrence...

February 1, 2021 — An inmate of the Mendocino County jail died yesterday morning at the Ukiah Valley Medical Center. And a new health order will allow schools to begin the process of re-opening to in-person instruction for students in kindergarten through sixth grade.

Jan 29, 2021 — A renewed interest in using the old Howard Hospital in Willits as a psychiatric health facility revived community outcry and intimations of NIMBYism. The half-cent mental health sales tax enacted by Measure B has been in effect for about three of its five years. So far, a little over twenty one and a half million dollars have been collected. Some of the money has been used to purcha...

January 28, 2021 — People all over the county are still feeling the effects of Tuesday’s storm, which took out trees and crushed structures and cars. As of this afternoon, customers in almost every community are still without power, with Willits the hardest hit at 3,434 customers in the dark. Redwood Valley is next, with 1,728, then Laytonville and Covelo, with 1,321 and 1,256 respectively. Most o...

January 28, 2021 — Neighbors of an apartment building that will soon be dedicated to housing homeless people or those at risk of homelessness chimed in with ideas and concerns at a virtual town hall last night. The former Best Western Inn on Orchard Street in Ukiah is now part of Project Homekey, a state-funded program to renovate former motel rooms into small studio apartments. Megan van Sant, a...

January 27, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors agreed unanimously to move ahead with soil testing for a $35 million state-funded water and sewer project in Boonville yesterday, over objections from the Fair Board. And Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren reported that 11,000 people in Mendocino County have been vaccinated, including 70% of school staff. Four nursing homes have been vaccinated by phar...

January 26, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors took a significant step in rejiggering the cannabis codes yesterday, voting 4-1 to send a proposal more closely aligned with the state’s land use laws along to the Planning Commission. The board also voted unanimously to direct the Department of Transportation to continue working on a pilot program to create a benefit zone in Brooktrails, allowing the ne...

The Noyo River, Pudding Creek, the Navarro. These are just some of the rivers that flow through Mendocino County. Starting from their headwaters in the chaparral hills, they wind down valleys of redwoods and pour out into the Pacific ocean. The rivers running through our county are some of the last left that still host wild California Central Coast Coho. Central Coast Coho, also referred to as CCC...

1/22/21 -- In the final days of a presidency with a propensity for environmental deregulation, the Trump administration tucked some final rollbacks under its belt. The administration opened conservation lands in California and Utah to development, loosened standards on home heating equipment and, most notably to the North Coast, reduced protected habitat for the infamous northern spotted owl by on...

January 22, 2021 — The progress of the vaccine rollout has been one of confusion, changing directives, vaccine hesitancy, conspiracy theories, and a mad rush for available shots, followed by resentment on the part of those who thought they might have had a chance, if they’d been looking at the right Facebook page at the right moment, or if they were on the right mailing list or if they worked for...

Jim Culp talks to a frustrated elder, as well as Supervisor Ted Williams, Mendocino Coast Clinic Executive Director Lucresha Renteria, and Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren, about why the vaccine isn't readily available.

Private landowner David Hull handed off 188 acres of land in the western hills above Ukiah to the city to use for conservation, recreation, and fire management.

January 19, 2021 — The Ukiah Unified School District, the largest in the county, met last week for an update on distance learning and the governor’s not-yet finalized proposal to partially reopen schools by mid-February. The California Safe Schools for All plan is an incentive program that would give schools grants to bring kids back into the classroom. And a letter signed by sixteen local doctors...

January 14, 2021 — Vaccination efforts on the coast are ramping up, with two clinics for firefighters and EMS workers plus a clinic tomorrow at the Fort Bragg high school for all the educators who want it. The hospital is putting together a list of patients who are eligible for a vaccine and will be the first to hear about it as soon as it arrives. The Mendocino Coast Clinics will be using 300 dos...

January 15, 2021 — Local community clinics have started vaccinations this week, and are reaching out to the elderly and people whose jobs put them at greater risk of exposure. Lucresha Renteria, the director of the Mendocino Coast Clinics, worked to get vaccines for today’s vaccination at Fort Bragg high school. Next week, she plans to put together lists of veterinarians, dental workers, and food...

January 14, 2021 — The governor is seeking early action from the legislature that would provide grants to incentivize local school districts to start reopening for in-person instruction as early as February 15, starting with kids in pre-K through second grade. Students from third to sixth grade would start a month later. Schools would need an agreement with the unions and a strategy for complying...

January 13, 2021 — Hundreds of people lined up at the Redwood Empire Fairgrounds in Ukiah this morning, in hopes of getting one of the 400 covid vaccines that were available. The line started at the gates and wound around the parking lot past the RV park. The crowd consisted of workers in the food and ag sectors, caregivers, first responders, and dozens of elderly people who had been waiting in a...

1/11/2021 - Last water year was the third driest on record in the upper Russian River watershed. In downtown San Francisco, the 2020 calendar year was the second driest since record keeping began in 1850, and forecasts are showing a dry January on the horizon. Needless to say, we may be barreling towards drought in 2021, which could lead to curtailments in water use like we saw in 2014. That year,...

January 11, 2021 — Last Monday, Public Health, Adventist Health Ukiah Valley, and the City of Ukiah administered 830 doses of the Moderna vaccine that were at risk of losing viability after a freezer failure at the hospital. They did it in about two hours, and had to turn people away. Not everybody who wanted one got it, but sometimes it helps to make a little bit of noise, as Anthony Adams, a law...