Sebastian Amaro, an eighth-grade student at NPA in Arcata, seems to be a pretty crack runner. Here’s a Mad River Union story that shows him placing third among all eighth graders at last fall’s Humboldt County Youth Cross Country Championships. Nice job!

But Sebastian is about more than just running. He’s also about making sure all the kids can run if they want to, and to that end he has made it his mission to raise awareness of the Six Rivers Running Club’s Shoe Fund, which buys running shoes for kids whose families might have trouble affording them.

Sebastian recently wrote the Outpost to see if we might partner with him to spread the word about the Shoe Fund, as the deadline for applications this year is coming up soon. The Outpost said that it would be honored to do so.

Take it away, Sebastian:

There is a local shoe fund in Humboldt County called the SRRC shoe fund.

This is primarily for young runners who are struggling to buy running shoes and whose families have lower incomes. The goal is so that these young runners can run for their school or running club, but only K-12th graders are eligible for this.

This application must be filled out by the coach of a running team/club, and they have to email maguro4u@gmail.com for the application, and you must send this in by April 30, but there is no guarantee that your school will get shoes.

If you have any questions about this you can visit the SRRC shoe fund pdf which has all the information.

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Local residents this week are getting knocks on their front doors from clipboard-wielding representatives of a company called SFE Energy, a natural gas supplier whose salespeople often say they can lower your PG&E bills. 

SFE logo

While not quite an out-and-out scam (the company is licensed as a “Core Gas Aggregation Service,” i.e. a third-party supplier, with branches in numerous states across the country), SFE has an abysmal reputation. 

The Better Business Bureau has rescinded its accreditation of the company following a deluge of complaints. In fact, due to the extraordinary volume of reports, the BBB has published a portion of those complaints from people who were convinced to sign up, only to regret it later.

Last year, the Maryland Public Service Commission launched an “enforcement blitz” after receiving a record number of complaints about SFE, according to the Baltimore Sun. 

“The commission’s consumer affairs division had received dozens of complaints against SFE from Jan. 1, 2020, through Sept. 30, 2022, including allegations that SFE used deceptive marketing practices, failed to comply with contracting requirements and enrolled customers without their consent, a practice known as ‘slamming,’” the Sun says.

In January, SFE reached a settlement in the state, requiring it to pay a $150,000 civil penalty and refund $400,000 to certain customers.

SFE sent teams to Humboldt County in 2016 and again in 2018.

Be careful out there, folks, and if you have any elderly neighbors who aren’t online much, maybe warn them, too.

Comes word this morning that someone has enlisted a Cal Poly Humboldt welcome sign to a side in the Israel-Gaza war.

This will certainly help!

Press release from Dave Meserve:

On Saturday, April 13, two days before Tax Day, we conducted the annual Penny Poll at the Arcata Farmers Market. It is usually in front of the US Post Office, but in this electronic age, people rarely mail their tax returns any more. About 165 people voted by distributing ten pennies among ten containers labeled to represent major government programs. By choosing where they want their federal tax dollars to go, they also inform the community about their priorities.

The graph of the Penny Poll votes by Humboldt County taxpayers looks like an inverted image of the federal government priorities. The federal budget allocates over 55% of our discretionary budget tax dollars to the military, and a total of 27% to Education, Health, Environment, Housing and Social Services. This year, people chose to give only 4% to the military and 76% of their taxes to those five programs.

The Penny Poll is carried out every year on tax day, in communities across the country. While results vary slightly from city to city, the Poll consistently shows broad consensus for a federal budget that addresses people’s basic needs, and the environment, rather than pouring funds into war and the military industrial complex.

In just the first few months of 2024, four California hospitals have closed or announced plans to close their maternity wards.

The closures are part of an accelerating trend unfolding across the state, creating maternity care deserts and decreasing access to prenatal care. In the past three years, 29 hospitals stopped delivering babies, according to a CalMatters investigation on maternity ward closures. Nearly 50 obstetrics departments have closed over the past decade.

Now, California lawmakers are trying to slow the trend.

Assemblymember Akilah Weber and Sen. Dave Cortese are pursuing legislation to increase transparency around planned maternity ward closures, potentially giving counties and the state time to intervene.

Weber, a Democrat from La Mesa, wants hospitals to notify the state a year in advance if labor and delivery services are at risk of ending. The measure would also require the state to conduct a community impact report when a hospital indicates that it may lose maternity care.

Cortese, a Democrat from Campbell, wants to increase the public notification requirement of an impending closure from 90 days to 120 days and require the hospital to conduct an analysis of how a closure could increase costs for the county health system, where the next closest maternity wards are located and who is most likely to be affected.

Cortese’s bill would also require increased notification for planned closures of inpatient psychiatric services.

“We cannot continue to just discuss these issues and not implement policies to prevent or mitigate the harms and the continued disparities,” Weber said during an Assembly Health Committee hearing Tuesday.

Groups representing doctors and reproductive health advocates support the measure. Cortese’s bill is supported by nurses and consumer health advocates.

Why are California maternity wards closing?

Ryan Spencer, a lobbyist for the regional chapter of American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists who testified in support of Weber’s measure, said there are often situations during birth where “every minute can be the difference between life and death.”

“What if you are a patient like this and literally had nowhere to go who had to drive hours upon hours to get care? We have to find a way to end this crisis,” Spencer said during his testimony.

Maternity wards are closing for a number of reasons, according to hospital administrators. They cite labor shortages, increasing costs, low reimbursements and declining birth rates.

The California Hospital Association opposes Cortese’s bill and has registered “concerns” about Weber’s. The group argues that neither bill will address the underlying reasons for maternity ward closures and may cause hospitals to terminate services sooner as employees leave and patients look elsewhere for care, said Kirsten Barlow, vice president of policy with the hospital association during a Senate hearing earlier this month.

Current law requires hospitals to notify the public 90 days before a proposed service cut, but doesn’t require additional notification to be given to the state. Weber said that 90 days is “clearly not sufficient for the state to be able to intervene.”

Maternity care deserts emerge

CalMatters found that 12 counties have no hospital delivering babies, including Madera County, where the sudden closure of the county’s only hospital in 2022 spurred a flurry of emergency legislation supporting distressed hospitals.

Madera Community Hospital now is on track to reopen, but without a maternity ward. The company reopening the hospital, American Advanced Management, has indicated that low insurance reimbursement rates factored into its decision to open without labor and delivery.

“Reopening maternity would be like reopening two hospitals at the same time,” Matthew Beehler, chief strategy officer at American Advanced Management, previously told CalMatters.

Still, the bill authors and advocates are adamant that access to maternity care is a necessity. National studies indicate that rates of preterm birth increase and women receive less prenatal care when labor and delivery units shut down, particularly in rural areas. CalMatters found that maternity closures in California disproportionately impact low-income and Latino communities.

“This is really a very simple bill. It doesn’t do much. It creates a public hearing opportunity at the local level to deal with issues that are…absolutely vital to the survival of our constituents,” Cortese said during a Senate Health Committee hearing on his measure.

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Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

For the second year in a row, Democrats yesterday voted down a bill that sought to ban homeless encampments near schools, transit stops and other areas throughout California.

Despite the fact that cities up and down the state are grappling with a proliferation of homeless camps, legislators said they oppose penalizing down-and-out residents who sleep on public property.

“Just because individuals that are unhoused make people uncomfortable does not mean that it should be criminalized. And this bill does that,” said Sen. Aisha Wahab, a Democrat from Fremont and chairperson of the Senate Public Safety Committee. “The penalties will just be added to their already difficult situation of paying for things.”

Senate Bill 1011 stumbled in its first committee hearing, stalling in the Public Safety Committee on a 1-3 vote. The measure by Senate GOP leader Brian Jones and Democratic Sen. Catherine Blakespear, both of the San Diego area, would have made camping within 500 feet of a school, open space or major transit stop a misdemeanor or infraction. It also would have banned camping on public sidewalks if beds were available in local homeless shelters.

After yesterday’s defeat, Jones will continue speaking with committee members to see if there is any way to negotiate a path forward for his bill, spokesperson Nina Krishel said in an email.

Sen. Nancy Skinner, a Democrat from Oakland, said while she appreciates that Californians don’t want to see encampments, she couldn’t support the bill.

“It’s kind of like trying to make a problem invisible versus addressing the core of the problem,” said Skinner, who joined Wahab and Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco, in voting “no.”

More than three dozen people voiced their opposition to the bill during today’s hearing, speaking on behalf of organizations such as the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union California Action.

The bill’s supporters, who numbered far fewer, included the mayor of Vista and a representative from the city of Carlsbad.

The lone “yes” vote came from the committee’s only Republican, Sen. Kelly Seyarto of Murrieta.

“We had a slew of people that came forward to tell us about what we shouldn’t be doing,” he said. “But what the hell should we be doing? Because right now we’re not doing anything.”

Sen. Steven Bradford, a Democrat from Inglewood, abstained.

Wahab granted reconsideration, which means the committee could hear the bill again later this session. But last year, a nearly identical bill met the same fate. SB 31, also introduced by Jones, died in the Senate Public Safety Committee with one “yes” vote, one “no” vote and three abstentions. It also received reconsideration, but was never revived.

This year’s version of the encampment ban had more going for it. Jones found a Democratic co-author and narrowed the bill’s scope. Instead of banning people from camping within 1,000 feet of schools and other locations, the new bill would have banned people from camping within 500 feet.

Jones also was leaning heavily on a new camping ban in San Diego, upon which he said he modeled his bill. The San Diego ordinance, which took effect at the end of July 2023, bans camps near schools, shelters and transit hubs, in parks, and — if shelter beds are available — on public sidewalks. Jones called the ordinance a “success,” a sentiment echoed by San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria.

But a CalMatters investigation paints a more complicated picture. While encampments have drastically decreased in some areas, such as downtown and around certain schools, they are still just as prevalent — in some cases much more so — along the city’s freeways and the banks of its river. Opponents of the ordinance say it displaces people instead of housing them.

And Jones’ bill failed to copy a key piece of San Diego’s approach. When the city started enforcing its encampment ban, it also opened two massive “safe sleeping” sites where about 500 people camp on vacant lots in tents purchased by the city.

Jones’ bill would not have forced cities to set up accommodations for people displaced from encampments, because, he said, there’s no state funding for that.

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

Drucilla Yvonne (Denham) Bussman passed away peacefully on April 10, 2024, with family by her bedside. Drucilla was born May 31, 1950, to Joe and Mary Denham. She was born and raised in Eureka. She graduated from Eureka High School in 1968 and shortly thereafter began her career working for the County of Humboldt — first at the public health department, and then transferring to the planning and building department, where she was a permit technician until her early retirement in 2004.

In 2004, Drucilla had a stroke which left her right side paralyzed and unable to walk. She resided at Timber Ridge in Eureka and then later at Timber Ridge in McKinleyville for the past 20 years. She always had a good spirit and accepted God’s plan for her life with grace and understanding.

Drucilla enjoyed worshiping the lord at Faith Center Four Square Church. She also had a love for shopping. At first catalogs and then moving to online shopping (thanks Stacy!) She also enjoyed watching her programs on TV. Mom loved Netflix.

Drucilla is survived by her two younger brothers Bruce and Brad Denham. The father of her children Charles Bussman, her loving daughters Megan Bussman (Armin Halston) and Mindy Sehon (Cory). She is also survived by the greatest joys in her life, her granddaughters Marina Louise Sehon and Maren Bussman Halston.

Drucilla is preceded in death by her mother, Mary Denham, and sister, Deborah Denham.

The family would like to extend our thanks to Hospice of Humboldt for the exceptional care Drucilla received during her final months.

No services are planned. In remembrance, donations can be made to Hospice of Humboldt or your religious institution of choice.

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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Drusilla Bussman’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here.