LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Board of Supervisors started out its first meeting of 2016 by selecting its new leadership for the year to come.
The board unanimously elected Rob Brown – who served as vice chair in 2015 – to be chair this year, with Jeff Smith to act as vice chair.
Brown was lauded on Tuesday by outgoing Board Chair Anthony Farrington for going above and beyond the call of duty in responding to the Valley fire.
Farrington nominated Brown and Smith to be chair and vice chair, respectively, a motion seconded by Supervisor Jim Comstock and approved 5-0.
Smith then nominated Comstock to be chair of the Lake County Board of Equalization and Supervisor Jim Steele to be vice chair, which the board accepted unanimously.
Regarding the Lake County In-Home Supportive Services Public Authority Board, Brown and Smith were elected to be chair and vice chair, respectively.
In other board business on Tuesday, Carol Huchingson, who is the county's Social Services director as well as the board-appointed fire recovery coordinator, gave the supervisors an update on fire recovery-related activities.
She said some aspects of the recovery – including the debris cleanup – took a break from Christmas Eve through to Monday. Some county staff also were off for the holidays, and so were in the process of regrouping.
Huchingson said county staff currently are gathering data on the use of trucks and heavy equipment for air quality management and future planning for road repairs.
They also are working on a phone survey that's set to start next week. It will ask property owners if they plan to rebuild and what barriers they are facing, and also ask renters about their plans, she said.
Regarding housing issues, she said 21 manufactured housing units from the Federal Emergency Management Agency are in place in the county now. Most are located at Lake Village Estates in Clearlake Oaks, with the rest on private land in the Hidden Valley Lake and Middletown areas.
About 20 renters are still on FEMA's list awaiting the manufactured housing units, Huchingson said, with the bulk of those expected to be placed at Clearlake Resort in Clearlake.
She said the resort owner is still doing utility upgrades that are expected to be done by mid-January, then FEMA has work to do to finalize the installations. It's hoped that renters can move into the units in early February.
Huchingson said that at one point officials were talking about placing up to 40 of the manufactured housing units at Clearlake Resort, but the need for those units is now reported to be a little more than half that amount.
“What this means is that people are finding other options,” Huchingson said, explaining that FEMA also is connecting people with housing rental stock available in the county.
Lake County Public Works is actively preparing for winter storms, monitoring county water levels and working to get sandbags out into the communities, she said.
Huchingson said that so far the debris has been removed from 800 properties and, prior to the holiday break, the teams were working to clear 20 sites a day.
As for rebuilding, the Community Development Department has approved 11 site-built home permits and four permits for manufactured homes, and has 20 plan reviews under way for other rebuilding projects, Huchingson said.
She said Community Development has issued six temporary mobile home or RV permits for private properties in the burn area and 16 new permits for FEMA manufactured housing units.
A mobile laundry facility is expected to be set up soon in Middletown near the Lions Club for fire survivors, she said.
Regarding donations, on March 26 the county's lease expires for the Work Right building in Lakeport, which has been a main distribution site for the outpouring of donations received for fire survivors. Huchingson said over the next few months there will be a push to complete the distribution of those donations.
She said the State Farm Foundation told the county on Christmas Eve that it would donate $10,000 to purchase weather radios for people in the fire area who don't have other means of communication.
A temporary Verizon-owned cell phone tower on wheels that was placed on Cobb Mountain following the fire – and which had been slated to be moved to the Bay Area for the Super Bowl – will remain in the burn area until spring, Huchingson said.
Farrington asked Environmental Health Director Ray Ruminski about conflicting lab results in the required soil testing that comes at the end of the site clearing process, before rebuilding can begin.
Different labs have been giving different results as to arsenic levels, the source of which is primarily pressure treated wood that burned in structures, Ruminski said.
Ruminski said the county and a consultant are working to determine the source of the different numbers, with results expected later this week. He said the testing results have had too large of a range to simply be a statistical anomaly.
Also on Tuesday, the board voted unanimously to continue a proclamation of a local health emergency relating to the Valley fire first passed in September. That proclamation must be revisited every two weeks.
The board followed up by unanimously voting to continue the proclamation of an emergency due to wildlife conditions.
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Supervisors elect Brown as 2016 chair, get fire recovery updates
- Elizabeth Larson
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