Press release from the Klamath National Forest:

The Klamath National Forest has completed the April 1st snow surveys. These measurements are a part of the statewide California Cooperative Snow Survey program, which helps the State forecast the quantity of water available for agriculture, power generation, recreation, and stream flow releases later in the year.

Winter continued strong all through March. There were many snowfall events; and when snow did fall, it stayed in place and helped build up the local snowpack. The end result is an amount of snow that hasn’t been seen in years and quite welcome after the lows of the previous year. According to measurements taken for the April survey, the snowpack is at 178% of the historic average snow height (snow depth) and at 163% of the historic Snow Water Equivalent (“SWE”, measure of water content) across all survey points (see results table).

The Box Camp site was unable to be surveyed this year. An attempt was made, but due to high snow load, the route proved to be overly technical and difficult for snowmobiles to access. However, even without the datapoint, it is clear that it would have joined the other sites as well above the long-term April average.

April 1st is an important date for surveying snow because early April is historically when the snowpack is at its maximum; and this date has the greatest weight when the State forecasts annual water availability. To gain additional data for April, three extra locations are added to the surveys for this month to supplement the usual five Scott River watershed snow measurement sites. Of these, Etna Mountain and Box Camp are also in the Scott River drainage, and Wolford Cabin is within the Trinity River basin. These additional sites are generally considered too remote or difficult to access on a monthly basis.

Snow surveys are conducted monthly during the winter and spring months (February through May). Forest Service employees travel to established sites in the headwaters of the Scott River watershed to take measurements. The newest measuring site at Scott Mountain has been monitored for over thirty-five years; the oldest site at Middle Boulder has been monitored for over seventy years. Some sites are located close to Forest roads with good access, while others require hours of travel by snowshoe and/or snowmobile.

The height of snow and SWE are measured by a snow sampling tube with a cutter end that is driven through the snowpack, measuring depth. The snow core is then weighed to determine the water content (SWE). The information is forwarded to the State of California, where the data is compiled with other snow depth reports and becomes part of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys program. The data is managed by the California Department of Water Resources; more information is available on their website at http://cdec.water.ca.gov/snow/current/snow/index.html.

How long has it been since you’ve thought about the Humboldt County Auditor-Controller’s Office?

If you were an engaged citizen at this time last year, or even the year before that, chances are you would have thought about it a lot more frequently than you do now! The previous regime of Auditor-Controller Karen Paz Dominguez was a seemingly never-ending whirlwind of recrimination and controversy, and there was rarely a day when someone wasn’t accusing her, or she wasn’t accusing someone, of dark, nefarious deeds. While all this was going on, the state began to knock on our door, telling us that paperwork that was required from the office wasn’t actually being filed, putting all sorts of funding sources in jeopardy. 

Former acting auditor-controller Cheryl Dillingham handily defeated Paz Dominguez in the June 2022 election, and took over the office shortly afterward. Since then, the amount of news emanating from the office dropped precipitously to pre-Paz Dominguez levels.

So how’s it going, Cheryl Dillingham? Video above, transcript below.

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JOHN KENNEDY O’CONNOR:

Well, welcome to another Humboldt Conversation. I’m really thrilled to say we’re here today with Cheryl Dillingham, who is the Auditor Controller for the County of Humboldt, a position she’s been in now for just about coming up to a year.

CHERYL DILLINGHAM:

Nine months.

O’CONNOR:

Nine months, I’m sorry. Now, Cheryl, about this time last year, the Auditor-Controller was in the news every single day, which probably shouldn’t have been the case. How have things changed behind the scenes? Because now we’re not really hearing so much about the job, which is probably a good thing.

CHERYL DILLINGHAM:

Well, we’ve been working really hard in the auditor-controller’s office. I was really pleased that the staff are just amazing, and I’ve hired new folks that are really amazing too, and we’ve been working really hard to get everything done and to meet all the deadlines and communicating and working with everybody to serve the residents of Humboldt County the best we can.

O’CONNOR:

Because that was one of the challenges, I think: There was so much controversy around the role. Now although you ran for office and you were elected, you did actually have to step in at very short notice as interim controller. That must have been a very daunting situation for you.

DILLINGHAM:

It took me a little by surprise. And it was much quicker than I had anticipated. I was interim auditor-controller three and a half years previously. And I was surprised by a couple of things. First off, there was only one person still working in the office that was working in the office when I was there three and a half years ago, which is a pretty significant turnover. And it felt like there was a lot more work than there had been, that things had changed a lot more in three and a half years than I think they had in the previous 10, 20 years. And that’s probably good enough. And I’d lost all the people that knew how to do property taxes. So I spent the first few months just dealing with property tax apportionments and getting those done, because they’re very important, because that gets the money to your local special district schools, cities, and all of those people.

O’CONNOR:

Now during your campaign you talked about fiscal controls and the need to actually enhance them. So what processes and changes have you been able to put in place to restore the calm and order to the office?

DILLINGHAM:

So I’m going to start by saying it wasn’t that bad. There are actually really good controls in place. The one area where I felt like there was the biggest deficit was reconciliations. So we’ve implemented daily cash reconciliations, bank reconciliations, outstanding check reconciliations, and a lot of that sort of thing. And we’ve caught up on the backlog, and we’re pretty current on doing that. So that was the biggest change. But overall, staff has really good internal controls, and they’re doing their job really well.

O’CONNOR:

Now, one of the things you’ve already touched on — when you took over there was a backlog of delinquent fiscal reporting. What’s the situation now?

DILLINGHAM:

So we closed, so this is really sort of, this is daunting. We have, we are just getting ready to start the audit for fiscal year 2021. We will then be going straight into doing the audit for 21-22. We’re currently in fiscal year 22-23 and we’re starting the budget process for 23-24. That is a lot of years and sometimes my head just spins around when I’m trying to figure out which year I’m working on and I’m talking to people. But we’re trying to keep staff, like staff, some staff work mostly on current and then so to try to keep the, so you know which year you’re in. But we’re, I anticipate that we will be completely caught up and have our audit for fiscal year 2022-23 completed on schedule.

O’CONNOR:

Now there were a number of funds and grants that were available to the county from the state for things like infrastructure improvements that could not move forward due to the delinquent reporting. Is the county in better shape now in the eyes of the state?

DILLINGHAM:

The state recognizes that we’re making progress. We’re still behind on the deadlines, and I don’t believe we’re losing any funding, but I do think we still have some that is gonna be a little delayed in getting out. When we get the fiscal year 2020-21 audit done, which we think will be the end of June, I think that’ll make things a lot better. 

O’CONNOR:

So have you rebuilt relationships with the state and city bodies that had lost faith in the department under your leadership under your predecessor?

DILLINGHAM:

Communication, communication. So staff has been working really hard to communicate. We’ve had a couple of times where the state has called and said, where’s your such and such report? And we all look around and we’re like, I didn’t know we had to do that. We’re real honest. We’re like, oh, we’re so sorry. We’re just getting caught up to speed. We will get that to you next week. And so they’ve been very accommodating and are always happy just to hear us say, we’ll get it done. And we’ve been pretty quick about turning around anything that we discover. We’ve got a really good calendar going now of all the reports that we have to do. I’ve been working with local finance officers with the cities to get a local group going where we’ll get together and have peer discussions and have some local folks come and give us some presentations and get that group going. And I’ve now got staff that specifically works with special districts and cities so that they have a person they can call and develop a relationship with.

O’CONNOR:

That sounds like a great idea. Now one of the things — you’ve already mentioned it actually, you identified it during your campaign — was the need to recruit staff for your team. So have you now filled all of the available slots?

DILLINGHAM:

So the department has 19 positions. I have hired seven people since I started. Five of those are permanent and two of those are extra help. I still have a recruitment going right now for two positions. I’ve had one person leave since I started. She got a promotion, better job. It was good for her. So I have interviews for that job next week, and then I have another recruitment for the deputy, which is the second in command in the office that will be starting, the recruitment just ended. And so that’s kind of where we’re at with that. So that’s a lot of people, and they’re all getting up to speed. They’re doing a great job.

O’CONNOR:

Good to know. Now you also talked about the need to better harness technology to streamline processes to improve functionality. Have you been able to make any progress in that area?

DILLINGHAM:

This one’s an interesting one. So my first comment is, we’ve only got so many resources and really we’re just trying to get things done. So we’re constantly prioritizing and deciding what we have to work on, and implementing technology, honestly, it’s not easy. So that’s phase two. We figure when we get caught up, we’ll implement new technology.

We’ve got some great ideas. We’ve got requests for projects to do more workflow. Departments are really supportive of that. So we’re working on it, but it’s probably something that we’ll really start getting into about a year from now.

The other thing that’s just been interesting is, there’s just a lot of things that weren’t working. So some of the challenges with getting the audits done and some of those things were simply the reports that you needed to do it didn’t work. So we’ve gotten those fixed. The financial transactions report, which is the report we do for the state that was really delinquent, that was another, the reports didn’t work. We’ve got those fixed. So we’ve got reports now that basically just produce all the information that you need to plug it into the boxes in the report. Then the budget schedules also were another one that just didn’t quite work right and we’ve got those fixed.

So that is implementing technology, but it’s not quite as … I was looking more for things like workflow and reducing duplication of effort and that sort of thing, which we will be doing. I was going to say that.

O’CONNOR:

I was going to say — that’s something for the future.

DILLINGHAM:

Yep.

O’CONNOR:

Well Cheryl, it’s great that the Auditor-Controller is not the daily news story in Humboldt or Eureka every day as it was this time last year. So congratulations on that, you’ve obviously made an enormous amount of progress. Anything else you want to share with our Humboldt Today viewers?

DILLINGHAM:

I just want to thank my auditor-controller team and say that they’re a really amazing group of people and I felt that they had gotten, the last couple of years has been really hard on them and I just want to thank them for their dedication and they do a really good job of supporting. The auditor-controller’s office is like the last inch of service delivery for the citizens of Humboldt County. So, you may have economic development, working really hard to get a loan to make to a local business, and if we don’t cut that check at that point in time when it needs to be done, then the whole thing can just fall apart. And so, you know, our team does a really good job of helping, you know, get services out to the citizens. 

O’CONNOR:

It’s a very important cog in the wheel but it’s one that probably people don’t appreciate and don’t hear about. And of course when they were hearing about it, it was for all the wrong reasons.

DILLINGHAM:

It would be nice to have it be heard about for good reason.

O’CONNOR:

Well, I think we’re hopefully doing that with this message today. Okay. Cheryl, it’s been a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for joining us for a Humboldt Conversation and join us for another Humboldt Conversation very soon.

In less than 10 weeks, by July 1, California’s Reparations Task Force is set to deliver final recommendations to the Legislature for how the state can begin to undo 300 years of harm from slavery and racism.

With the clock winding down, two key questions remain unanswered: How much would the proposed reparations cost? And will the Legislature support the recommendations of the task force?

The first-in-the-nation task force was appointed in 2020 to study whether and how the state government should issue reparations for residents who are descendants of enslaved persons.

At a task force meeting March 29 and 30, state Sen. Steven Bradford, a Democrat representing Gardena, said it will be an “uphill fight” to get the Legislature to seriously engage with the recommendations.

Some new data is bearing that out.

Back in 2020, 12 legislators voted against the law that created the reparations task force, while 58 lawmakers voted in favor of it.

Recently, in an informal emailed poll of the 80 Assemblymembers by CalMatters, just three legislators stated their support for the task force’s years-long effort. The rest did not respond.

Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, a Democrat from Inglewood, said she “strongly supports monetary reparations for the descendants of formerly enslaved people and believes the Legislature would support the final recommendations from the Task Force.”

Assemblymember Damon Connolly, a Democrat from San Rafael (near San Francisco), said he also supports reparations and the task force’s preliminary recommendations, which he said are long overdue.

“These recommendations are the culmination of collaboration between experts who understand the scope and legacy of how racism and disenfranchisement have had long-term socioeconomic impacts on California’s African-American communities,” he said in a statement. “This report contains recommendations that are common-sense and comprehensive — changes that should have been considered long ago.”

Heavy lifting

Assemblymember David Alvarez, a Democrat from San Diego, noted the historic work of the task force but stopped short of saying he supports the preliminary recommendations.

“I appreciate the work the Reparations Task Force has done,” he said. “The Task Force is led by well-respected members of the African American community who have taken the time to study and discuss these historical effects over the last two years. Once the Task Force concludes their meetings and releases a final report with recommendations, I will review the complete findings.”

Bradford and Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer, a Democrat from Los Angeles, are both on the task force.

Bradford described the heavy lifting that remains to be done to get the Legislature to approve reparations. He highlighted a prior failed effort last session to get a constitutional amendment outlawing involuntary servitude placed on the California ballot.

“Something as simple as removing that from our state constitution, where other states have, and we couldn’t even do that,” he said.

(Opponents of that measure noted that removing the language that allows involuntary servitude from Calilfornia’s constitution would result in tens of millions of dollars in extra state cost because prisoners would have to be paid for their work during incarceration.)

So far, news coverage of the reparations task force’s work has largely focused on what dollar amount the task force might recommend the state pay descendants of formerly enslaved people.

The figure that went around the world recently was $800 billion. But many news reports confused that number, saying it was a recommendation for reparations payouts when it actually was a partial estimation of financial losses that economists said Black people experienced over decades of inequalities.

Dollars “least important”

So far, the task force has yet to vote on specific dollar amounts at its meetings.

“We did not, at this last hearing, arrive at a single dollar figure. We’re not there yet,” said Cheryl Grills, a task force member and clinical psychologist. Grills is also a founding member of Community Coalition, which does outreach work in South L.A. communities.

The news media’s preoccupation with a final dollar figure has become a point of frustration, task force members said. The task force and its experts have produced thousands of pages of documentation, data and research into various categories of injustice — everything from encounters with the criminal justice system to barriers to homeownership.

“We want to make sure that this is presented out in a way that does not reinforce the preoccupation with a dollar figure, which is the least important piece of this,” said Grills.

“It’s important, but it’s the least important in terms of being able to get to a point in our country’s history and in California’s history where we recognize that the harm cuts across multiple areas and domains and that the repair needs to align with that.

“It’s really unfortunate. I’m actually sad to see that our news media is not able to nuance better. It’s almost like, ‘What’s going to be sensational’ as opposed to what’s important.”

The task force at its March 29 meeting decided that descendants of American slaves in California would have at least two pathways for claiming compensation for the injustices and legacy of chattel slavery.

Two options

One of those avenues would be a baseline amount that would potentially apply to all descendants of American slaves who meet a California residency requirement. That compensation would be for the general community harm and legacy of slavery as well as the state’s role in perpetuating racism. The amount has not been decided.

The other route would be people applying for redress for specific injustices experienced under one of five categories outlined in a 40-page report compiled by economists working with the state Department of Justice.

Those five categories of harm include health, disproportionate mass incarceration and over-policing, housing discrimination, unjust property taken by eminent domain and the devaluation of Black-owned businesses.

Those category payments would be in addition to or instead of baseline compensation, task force members said.

Task force members do not appear to agree about whether or not the group should decide on a dollar figure recommendation to the Legislature. In an interview with CalMatters last week, Jones-Sawyer said the dollar amount would be up to the Legislature and governor to decide, while other task force members said the exact figure hasn’t been decided on yet.

The panel’s chair, Kamilah Moore, told KCRA, a television station in Sacramento, that it’s up to the state Legislature to ascribe a dollar amount, based on methodology economists recommended and which the task force approved.

“The task force is pretty much done regarding the compensation component. Our task was to create a methodology for calculation for various forms of compensation that correspond with our findings,” she told the station.

Hearts and minds

Jones-Sawyer said he agrees with Bradford that task force members have their work cut out for them. But he stressed the impact the task force’s interim report may have on “changing hearts and minds.”

“Any legislation is difficult. Period,” said Jones-Sawyer. “Some obviously are easier than others, but all of them require a lot of work.

“As I’ve spoken to individuals who didn’t even understand why we wanted to do this, there have been a few who have read the report and it was eye-opening for them,” he added. “For people who read the interim report, to hear them say ‘I didn’t know’ was probably the most gratifying thing I could hear.”

Jones-Sawyer said one of the most important recommendations from the report “doesn’t cost a dime” — an apology letter from the state of California.

“I think that one is as important as the others,” he said.

“Our history has been so buried, so erased, so denied, I think that is an essential element of our mission.”
— Donald Tamaki, lawyer and reparations task force member from San Francisco

The task force decided at its last set of meetings that California should issue a formal apology “for the perpetration of gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity on African slaves and their descendants.”

Donald Tamaki, a task force member and lawyer from San Francisco, said apologizing would acknowledge lost and often untold history.

“Our history has been so buried, so erased, so denied, I think that is an essential element of our mission,” he said.

Jones-Sawyer said he believes Gov. Gavin Newsom is taking the reparations responsibility seriously.

“I think the governor will do an excellent job in showing that he’s sincere about it, and that he believes in the apology that comes out of the state of California,” said Jones-Sawyer.

A divided public

Support for the reparations movement is pouring in from outside organizations. Tamaki and Grills have been reaching out to organizations throughout California, asking them to endorse the task force’s work. In a few weeks, endorsements grew from 30 to more than 130 organizations.

However a few people who phoned into the task force meetings during the public comment periods took on an angry tone.

Some callers and emailers said they might move out of California if Black people are paid reparations. Support and opposition among published emails to the task force were close — at least 104 expressed support for some form of reparations for Black residents while at least 93 said they were against it.

Many of the skeptics questioned whether other oppressed groups should get reparations.

“The most problematic issue is that California was not a slave state in the first place,” an email reads. “Many ethnic groups have been discriminated against in California — Indians, Asians, Latinos, LGBTQ+. If you open reparations to one group, you must do the same for all discriminated groups.” The writer’s name was redacted.

According to the task force’s interim report, despite California entering the Union in 1850 as a free state, its early state government supported slavery. In 1852, California passed and enforced a fugitive slave law that was harsher than the federal fugitive slave law and made the state more hospitable to slavery than other states, the report states.

Adding to that, in the latter 1850s, the California Supreme Court upheld the rights of an enslaver to retain ownership of Archy Lee, a 19-year-old Black man Charles Stovall took to California from Mississippi. The justices decided in Stovall’s favor because he had a persistent illness and had not known California’s laws, the task force reported.

“Many ethnic groups have been discriminated against in California — Indians, Asians, Latinos, LGBTQ+.”
— author redacted

Listening sessions

Nationally, views on reparations in general vary widely by race. A 2021 Pew Research Center study found 3 in 10 U.S. adults say descendants of people enslaved in the United States should be repaid in some way, such as with land or money. About 7 in 10 (68%) say these descendants should not be repaid, the study found.

Broken down by race, 77% of Black Americans support reparations, compared to 18% of white Americans.

The next set of task force meetings is scheduled to start May 6 in the East Bay Area. So far, an exact location has not been publicized.

In addition to task force meetings, some community groups, including the Coalition for a Just and Equitable California, are holding listening sessions about reparations across California. There will be a town hall in Riverside on April 21 involving Moore and a listening session in San Diego on April 29 with Montgomery-Steppe.

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

For months California disability and labor advocates have been attempting to preserve statewide masking requirements in health care settings.

But with the sunset of one of the last remaining COVID-19 mandates, they say people who are the most vulnerable to severe illness now have to make an “impossible choice” — risk getting the virus at a doctor’s office, or avoid necessary health care.

On April 3, the California Department of Public Health ended masking and vaccination requirements in high-risk settings, including health care facilities, jails, prisons and emergency homeless shelters.

Now, instead of statewide rules, it’s up to local health departments and individual facilities to decide whether to mandate masks. The department says it gave facilities a month of lead time to develop those internal policies. California’s three-year state of emergency ended in February.

But Raia Small, an organizer with Senior and Disability Action, said the department’s announcement that it was going to end masking requirements came as a shock. She said the group met with top department officials multiple times, as recently as January, and was told there was “no plan to stop masking requirements in health care.”

“I emailed them and let them know how upset we were, especially since we had been in communication with them and this came out with no warning,” Small said. “They haven’t responded.”

Other groups, including the California Nurses Association and Disability Rights California, have also been vocal in their opposition to the state’s new policy, or lack thereof. People with disabilities or chronic health conditions face higher risk of COVID-19 complications and interact with the health system more frequently than average, they say.

Elizabeth Zambelli, a San Francisco resident, is one such patient. She has multiple health conditions and is on medication that suppresses her immune system. Typically, Zambelli spends several days a month at the doctor’s office or in the hospital.

“I’m not going to go in unless it’s an emergency because I’m at risk for complications from COVID,” Zambelli said.

Nurses and other health care workers also have no choice but to risk exposure. They have raised alarms about their safety throughout the pandemic, including access to masks and testing, and say this latest change is a “failure” of public health officials.

“They are supposed to be protecting the public. For them to abandon the standards is counterproductive,” said Zenei Triunfo-Cortez, co-president of the California Nurses Association and National Nurses Organizing Committee.

Following federal guidelines

State epidemiologist Dr. Erica Pan told CalMatters “strong statewide consistency” was crucial in the early days of the pandemic when severe disease and death rates were high and little was known about the virus. But today, she said many things have changed, including vaccination and herd immunity levels, the behavior of different viral variants and the reliability of certain data like unreported over-the-counter tests, making standardized statewide requirements less workable.

“Now, there just is such a variability …in geography, local transmission, the types of patients people are seeing, the needs of the facility, the ventilation of the facility. So I think those are all considerations that are really hard to standardize statewide,” Pan said in an interview Monday with CalMatters..

The state health department is basing its current guidance for masking in health care facilities on the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-19 Community Levels.

The CDC guidelines “strongly recommend” wearing masks during periods of high transmission, but do not offer guidance for health departments or employers to institute masking requirements. A scientific summary describing how the CDC developed its Community Levels indicator notes that masks are primarily intended to prevent infectious people from spreading COVID-19 to others while offering some protection to the wearer, meaning they are most effective in high-risk settings when everyone is masked. The summary does highlight, however, that new strains of the virus are less likely to cause severe illness, making relaxed guidelines more feasible.

The only remaining statewide COVID-19 protocol is a five-day isolation period, down from 10 days, if someone tests positive for the virus but has improving symptoms.

“I’m not going to go in unless it’s an emergency because I’m at risk for complications from COVID.”
— Elizabeth Zambelli, San Francisco resident and immunocompromised patient

Pan said health systems wanted more autonomy over internal infection control procedures, which is typical for other respiratory diseases such as the flu. For example, during flu season many facilities require unvaccinated employees to wear masks.

“Health care facilities know exactly where their most vulnerable populations are and they can really customize their plans,” Pan told CalMatters. “And that’s what we have heard has been happening actually, that a lot of systems have updated some requirements in their facilities.”

But that’s exactly what vulnerable patients like Zambelli say is the problem. She has tried talking to her health care team about requiring universal masking at their facilities but has been told that they are following state and local guidelines.

“That’s why it’s really important for CDPH, San Francisco public health and other departments to be the ones to set this policy,” Zambelli said. “It’s terrible to put people in a position where people have to ration care because they have to decide if they can safely access that health care.”

A hodgepodge of masking rules

Most counties and health care facilities such as hospitals have been swift to follow the state’s lead, with the five largest health systems dropping mask mandates for employees and patients except in instances where local health departments have retained mask requirements. Sutter Health, University of California Health and Dignity Health all told CalMatters masks are “strongly recommended” but not required in most instances, in keeping with state and local policy. Kaiser Permanente and Providence did not respond to questions but updates to their websites indicate masking has been dropped.

Los Angeles and San Francisco counties have the strictest local requirements, with health workers of all types still required to wear masks. Alameda and Contra Costa counties are requiring masks in nursing homes, and Santa Clara County announced masks will be required next winter, when respiratory virus transmission is high.

Advocates said they are particularly frustrated that the state has not created or published criteria that would trigger new masking orders. The state Department of Public Health has shied away from setting such thresholds since the state’s controversial and confusing multi-tiered pandemic recovery plan ended in July 2021.

“We wanted a timeline or a metric for changing the requirement — cases are at this level or test positivity is at a certain level. They refused to give any kind of scientifically based guidelines,” said Small, with Senior and Disability Action.

Pan said the state health department learned from its “incredibly complex” pandemic recovery plan that tying policies to thresholds for cases or transmissions does not always reflect the actual impact on a local hospital’s capacity. As more testing has shifted to non-reportable over-the-counter tests, data that could be used for benchmarks has also become less reliable.

“It’s challenging to come up with something that we can say ‘This particular data is going to absolutely have the best correlation with what the impact is in this hospital, for example, or in this community,’” Pan said.

Future state policies will be based on the COVID-19 SMARTER plan, which was released in February 2022, the public health department said. The plan lays out preparedness and response actions, such as maintaining a stockpile of masks and vaccines, but does not include indicators to trigger action.

If the state is going to rely on a “do-it-yourself public health approach,” it needs to tell the public about any COVID outbreaks at facilities and publish information about facility policies, said Dr. Noha Aboelata.

According to CDC data, all counties in California, and most of the country, have low transmission levels. However, cases are likely undercounted, with average testing rates in California reaching lows not seen since the early days of the pandemic when testing was severely limited by supply and laboratory capacity.

“When you look at the number of hospitalizations per day, we were doing better one year ago than we are right now. So there’s no data-driven rationale,” said Dr. Noha Aboelata, CEO of Roots Community Health Center in Oakland.

The most recent state data shows the 14-day daily average for COVID-19 hospitalizations is more than 1,600, compared to about 1,300 at the same time last year.

Aboelata said if the state is going to rely on a “do-it-yourself public health approach,” it needs to tell the public about any COVID outbreaks at facilities and publish information about facility policies. Aboelata said she would not refer vulnerable patients to providers who are not enforcing masking, especially since health care providers have a responsibility to keep patients safe and incorporate new science into their practice. The Roots clinic will continue to require universal masking.

“When we learned about blood-borne pathogens, we wore gloves. Gloves suck, they’re uncomfortable, some people are allergic to them, and you can’t feel what you want to feel,” Aboelata said. “They’re not awesome, but we do it…I think we need to do the same thing here.”

Beth Kenny, a patient in Alameda, said the termination of masking requirements is “devastating.” Kenny has Crohn’s disease, which requires monthly drug infusions that suppress the immune system. Kenny is enrolled in an internal Kaiser Permanente study on the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine and said the data shows their body isn’t able to produce protective antibodies.

They are trying to switch insurance providers to get treatment at a county facility that still requires masking, but that would cost an additional $1,000-plus per month.

“It’s hard to feel like there’s any value in my life in these policies,” Kenny said. “I feel pretty devastated, pretty alone, and gaslit by our political leaders and public health leaders.”

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Heather Athlyn Petersen of Eureka passed away on March 17, 2023 due to complications from breast cancer. She was 36 years old.

Heather was born on November 15, 1986 in Eureka, the younger of two daughters born to Michael and Melinda Petersen. She was named after her great grandmother, Athlyn. She attended Ridgewood Elementary School, Cutten Elementary School, Winship Junior High School, and Eureka High School, graduating in 2004. She and her older sister, Nicole, were close and grew up exploring the redwood forest near their home in Cutten and camped often with family. Heather loved basketball and played many years in the Hoopsters recreational basketball league. Every Friday when she was a child, Heather went to her grandparents’ home in Eureka, and when her grandparents moved to Willow Creek in 1995, she loved to spend school breaks with them, playing in the backyard and walking to the nearby Trinity River. She enjoyed playing video games and cooking. She created a chicken, broccoli, and rice dish that continues to be a family favorite and loved making pineapple upside down cake. She had a wonderful sense of humor and loved watching stand-up comedy specials. She was a beautiful girl and loved doing her and her friends’ hair and make-up. Every summer when Heather was a teenager, she would fly to Las Vegas to stay with her Aunt Kari and her cousins, David, Kara, and Danielle. She enjoyed traveling and went on cruises to Mexico, Canada, Catalina Island, and Disneyland with family. She had many close friends, but her best friend throughout her life was her next door neighbor, Sasha.

In 2014, Heather graduated with her cosmetology license from Frederick and Charles Beauty School in Eureka. Soon after, she got a job as a Hair Stylist at Regis Salon at the Bayshore Mall. She adored her dog, a Chiweenie named JuJu Bee, and never went anywhere without her. She loved teasing and spending time with her nephew and niece, Josiah and Daphne.

In 2019, Heather gave birth to her pride and joy, her beautiful little girl, Farrah Elaine. She named her after her mom, Melinda Elaine, who she was incredibly close. She doted on Farrah, playing games with her, doing her hair, and buying her the cutest clothes to wear. She would set up a kiddie pool in the backyard on warm days so Farrah could cool off and swim. They would bake cupcakes together, she taught Farrah how to ride her bike, and she would always play along when Farrah would cook imaginary food for her in her play kitchen. They loved dancing together to Baby Shark, The Floor is Lava, and the Freeze Dance Song. In December 2021, Heather was diagnosed with stage 4 inflammatory breast cancer (triple negative). She endured multiple rounds of chemotherapy and radiation treatments over the next year, but tried to continue living as normally as she could, continuing to go out and visit with her family and closest friends. She didn’t tell many people about her diagnosis as she never wanted anyone to worry. She passed away peacefully at home with her parents by her side.

Heather was always the life of the party and made many friends throughout the years. She was a very sweet, affectionate child who grew into an incredibly loving, kind, and hilarious adult. She would always go out of her way to help anyone who needed it, and always made people laugh. She was full of life and always made whoever she was with feel important and cared for. She touched so many lives, and she will be missed more than she ever could have known.

Heather is preceded in death by her grandparents, Dennis and Lorna Petersen, her grandfather, Charles Nichols, her step-grandfather, Jack Armstrong, her great grandmother, Athlyn Lawson, her uncle, Martin Nichols, and her best friend, Sasha Peters.

She is survived by her parents, Michael and Melinda Petersen, her daughter, Farrah Elaine Petersen-Log, and her sister, Nicole Petersen-Log (Joseph). She is also survived by her grandmother, Kathlyn Nichols, her nephew and niece, Josiah and Daphne Log, and numerous aunts, uncles, and cousins.

The family wishes to thank the exceptional staff at Hospice of Humboldt for their kindness and continuous care over the past few months. Per Heather’s request, no celebration of life will be held, but please feel free to share your memories of her at www.lostcoastoutpost.com.

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Larry Benjamin Fleek
October 9, 1958 - February 14, 2023

After an emergency trip to the hospital where it was discovered that he had an inoperable mass on his brain and was in rapidly declining health, Larry went on to Heaven to be reunited with many loved ones.

A lifelong native of Eureka, Larry grew up enjoying trips to the beach and to local rivers and lakes with family and friends. A highlight in the summertime was camping at Willow Creek, or Trinity and Ruth Lakes where skiing, hiking, and family and friend time around the campfire were daily musts. On hikes, he will be remembered for never being able to pass a rotted log without giving it a good kick for firewood gathering, then running to get away from angry bees! Yahtzee, Monopoly and card games at the camp table often went on late into the night after a round or two (or three!) of s’mores.

Except for several years during his teens living in Georgia with his family, Larry attended all local schools and graduated from Eureka High School in 1977. Many of his friends date back to his elementary days at Cutten School, then Winship Junior High and Eureka High School. Larry worked alongside his dad, Jim Fleek, at Pacific Saw & Knife in Eureka for many years. He was also employed at Mad River Hospital in Arcata and was a residential house painter who took pride in the details, no matter the time it took to finish a job.

Larry will be remembered for the days of joy he had with his family, especially his nieces and nephews who always looked forward to spending time with “Uncle Bubba/Bubs.” Adventures near and far were always filled with fun and laughter! Getting to attend the sporting events of his stepchildren Krista, Kara and Colt when they were young were also happy times for Larry. As a lifelong San Francisco Giants fan, he rarely missed listening to a game on the radio or seeing it live on TV, especially when his mom was watching along with him and loudly rooting on “their Giants”!

Preceded in death by his loving parents Jim and Darlene Fleek and sister Nancy, Larry is survived by siblings Randy, Cindy, and Kathy; nieces and nephews Jennifer, Kim, Marissa, Kelsey, Holly, Sean, Cody, and Karrie; as well as great-nieces and great-nephews Aiden, Giselle, Connor, Dillon, Devin, Deon, Evangeline, Savannah, Aubree, and Annabelle; and great-great niece, Shawnie. He was dearly loved and will be greatly missed by all.

No services are planned at this time. Please think of Larry whenever you’re watching a sunset at the beach, enjoying a warm day at a lake, or walking in the quiet of a redwood forest. And remember to hug the ones you love as often as you can for life may be shorter than you think.

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Bruce V. Bacchetti
June 12, 1939 - March 23, 2023

Bruce Bacchetti was born on June 12, 1939, in Eureka. He passed away peacefully, in his home on March 26, 2023. He was a family man and a hard worker.

When he was nine years old, he started working for the Times-Standard, delivering newspapers to the neighborhoods. He worked hard and retired after a long 50-year career with the Times-Standard.

When he was not working, he could be found in his yard. He enjoyed gardening and cutting firewood at the local lumber mill. He met many people and impacted many lives with his cheery and bright personality. He was not just a hardworking individual; he was also a family man. He was a husband, father, grandfather and papa.

He met his wife, Beverly Bacchetti, in Eureka. He loved his wife and family with all his heart. He married his wife at the young age of 18 years old and remained married for 60 years until his wife passed away in 2019. He had three children, Teressa, Brian and Michael Bacchetti. He was also an amazing grandfather to his two grandchildren, Kristen Peruchin, and Melinda Marshall. His favorite role in life was being a papa to his four great grandchildren — Anthony, Ashlynn, Alijah and Arlina.

He was an amazing man and will be greatly missed by all.

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