COBB AREA COUNCIL
PUBLIC MEETING
Thursday July 18, 2024 at 6:30pm
IN-PERSON ONLY with Online Participation Possible
MINUTES (Approved August 15, 2024)
CALLED TO ORDER AT 6:30PM
Chaired by Jake Strickler
ROLL CALL
Present: Chris Nettles, Darlene Warner, Jake Stricker, Joe Schneider
Absent: Cathy McCarthy (on vacation), Mel McMurrin (alternate)
PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
APPROVAL OF AGENDA: Motion by Chris Nettles, 2nd by Darlene Warner. All in favor, Agenda approved.
APPROVAL OF MINUTES: Motion by Chris Nettles, 2nd by Darlene Warner. All in favor, Minutes approved.
Short Announcements
John Wilcox, representing Lake County Civil Grand Jury – presented the Lake County Civil Grand Jury Annual Report, available at the library and on the County’s website: www.countyoflakeca.gov/GrandJury.
Robert Stark – Saturday night is Bingo at the Lions Club. Bar opens at 6:30pm, Bingo starts at 7:30pm. 23rd is an Open House about resiliency centers, sponsored by the Red Cross. 6pm to 8pm with dinner provided at no cost at 5:30pm. On the 26th will be putting on mock resiliency centers for other locations throughout the County.
Inez Weinkus, representing Neighborhood Watch – if you see something, don’t approach, call 9-1-1. There have unfortunately been some local break-ins. Any questions, call Inez at 707-355-1110.
Public and Board Comment on Non-Agenda Items (3 mins./individual)
Comment from Cathy McCarthy read by Darlene Warner: “Maine is beautiful – mountains and lakes; the people are friendly, hard-working community members who are welcoming to visitors. Reminds me of Cobb and why we chose to live here.”
Supervisor’s Comments – Jessica Pyska
Tree Mortality Survey – last month asked for everyone to fill this out and received approximately 35 surveys for the Cobb Area. Need about 70; please complete if you haven’t already. Need Right of Entry to complete project. No cost to landowner. Local Area Plan Advisory Committee (LAPAC) for Cobb Area Plan – appointed 2 members this week, Eliot Hurwitz and Chris Nettles – thank you. A couple more to seat next week. The LAPAC meetings are to happen the beginning of August.
Fire Season Update – Paul Duncan
We are in peak fire season. Currently have 4 Incident Management Teams deployed throughout the State. There are several large fires burning in CA. Air curtain burner is not accepting material yet – going through permit process with the carbonizer that will be located in the same area.
40% of our fires this year are caused by mowing. It is critical to do your work before 10am and not over 90 degrees or on a red-flag day: no mowing or weed-eating, even with a string trimmer. Leaf blowing is okay, preferably with a battery-powered blower. If using gas-powered equipment, please be sure it has a spark arrestor.
County Road Update: Glen March, Director of Public Works, County of Lake
Glen March introduced himself. Impressed with Lake County staff, great group of people in the Public Works Department. Cobb area is having it’s roads paved. The project is out to bid this week with a deadline of August 16th. BOS should have a contract to approve by end of August or first week of September. Project should begin in late September for about a month and a half, with remainder of project being completed in Spring of 2025, no later than May 1st. The project is estimated to take 6 months at a total of 176 working days, and a cost of approximately $7M. Of special concern from the community is Bottle Rock Road: it will not be paved until PGE completes their undergrounding of power lines. Omitted roads are due to water district repairs and PGE undergrounding. May be inconvenienced for a while, please be patient. No culvert repairs are in current plans. Tom Slaight commented and presented pictures of road conditions to Glen. Schedule of roads to be done is generally North to South, schedule to be determined once a contractor has been hired. A list of roads to be paved was provided by Glen March, which is attached and incorporated herewith as ATTACHMENT “A”
Treasurer’s Report – Chris
Presented Treasurer’s Report for July 2024, which is attached and incorporated herewith as ATTACHMENT “B”
Committee Reports (3 minutes/individual)
Firewise Communities – Magdalena, Cindy, Glenneth, David, Laurie
Magdalena Valderama – Programs Director for SSCRA: shoutout to the 5 active community FireWise groups and their leaders: Cindy Leonard, Cathy Blair, Peggy Komichek (?), Richie Bucher, Wendy Collins, David Thiesen, Cathy McCarthy, Magdalena Valderama, Michael Peterson, and Gary Prather. Starting to have conversations about next year’s community wildfire preparation day, which is every May. Distributing information about the different grants, including tree mortality. If you need help with ingress/egress work, you must write to them at SLFSC9@gmail.com. Describe your project and they will schedule a visit to determine if your project qualifies. There is a short Fire Safe Council Defensible Space Survey. Write to Magdalena at magdalenavh@sscra.org.
Communications Committee – Darlene
Finalizing Cobb Alert Net logo before the Cobbler Fest. Reconfigured Ridge repeater. Same number of check-ins. Need more people to step up to group lead, especially for Boggs neighborhood. Preliminary experiments with sharing the Hidden Valley Alerts-only channel with the rest of the County until Konocti/Lake County North gets that functionality. To purchase radios, email Darlene or Mel at cobbalertnet@gmail.com or call Mel 415-302-6896, Mel has the radios on-hand. Little radios cost around $10. GMRS radios cost $35 and up.
Forest Health Committee – Eliot
Received a Federal Grant from the Forest Service for the Community Wildfire Protection Plan. Have had a local preliminary meeting. Submitted on time, waiting to hear back on application. Huge national funding, we got a small piece of it. We must have a plan in place to receive funds. We have a County-wide Community Wildfire Protection Plan in place, this plan will be for Cobb Area forest ecosystem. We are planning to do a project that takes a detailed look at the Cobb area over a 2-year period. This will include an online GIS map, top forestry person to help identify key specific areas and parcels, public workshops, and more.
Economic Development Committee – Chris
Focused on rehabilitating and reviving the ExploreCobbCA.com website intended to showcase Cobb area businesses and improve search engine results with the website and Facebook page. Sally has provided quite a bit of analytics. We have been seeing an increase in the number of impressions – in June we had about 6K impressions, about a 6% increase over last month. We saw about 80 clicks on last report and it’s almost double that this month. The top search terms people are searching for are: “Cobb, CA,” “Cobb Mountain,” and “Blackberry Cobbler Festival.” Last month we had 29 searches for “Blackberry Cobbler Festival,” this month we had 80. Sally is reaching out to many businesses to include on website. If you know of a business that should be included, please email ExploreCobbCA@gmail.com. Sally is reaching out to travel websites and TID/Brian Fisher as well.
Blackberry Cobbler Festival – Cathy
Chirs Nettles – Sally will be doing a press release to the local papers. Within 2 weeks of announcing that vendor booths were available, we were full and could no longer accept any more vendors. Had to turn a few people away and have a wait list as well. Jennifer Gayda is the Chair of the festival this year. The name of the property will be changing from Mountain Meadows Venue to Belmont Pines due to upcoming change in ownership. In the press releases it will be stated “formerly Mountain Meadows.” The festival duration has been extended an hour this year, until 5pm. The weekly committee meeting is held Wednesdays at 6pm at Cobb Mountain Pizza.
Next Meeting: August 15, 2024
Adjourned at 7:36pm
Respectfully Submitted,
Secretary Warner