Minutes- August 15, 2019

Draft meeting minutes- August 15, 2019
COBB AREA COUNCIL
PUBLIC MEETING
Thursday August 15, 2019,
Little Red Schoolhouse/Cobb Mountain Lions Club
15780 Bottle Rock Rd., Cobb, CA 95426
CALL TO ORDER at 6:31 (shut down cell phones; sign in please)
Draft MINUTES by Cindy Leonard
PRESENT: Jessica Pyska, Eliot Hurwitz (Chair),  Cindy Leonard (Secretary), Jake Strickler, Cathy McCarthy not present, Frank Lincoln (treasurer) not present
25 people in attendance
Approval of Minutes from July, Jessica moves, Magdalena seconds
SHORT ANNOUNCEMENTS
-Lions Club update: Saturday August 31st square dance, September 1st Labor day biscuits and gravy breakfast
-September 29th Lobster boil catered by St. Helena chefs
-Glenneth announced call for artists for October 26, 27th daytime Open Studio on Cobb 295-6934
-Speaker at New Paradigm College, Pulitzer Prize winning author of “Megafire”.Michael Kodas.  Tickets available online at New Paradigm College
-Laura is doing trivia night again at Black Rock Golf Course on Monday nights.  Thirsty Thursdays is back at Black Rock, too.
-Saturday night bingo will be at Pine Grove.
TREASURER’S REPORT– Frank is out of town, so no financial report at this point. Eliot is suggesting that we put out a donation can to help collect money for maintaining Little Red.
Eliot motions that we approve a purchase of Quickbooks or a similar program to do our accounting. Glenneth moves, Jessica seconds, all in favor
PUBLIC and BOARD COMMENT ON NON-AGENDA ITEMS (3 mins./individual)
Mel reports that there is testing on Wednesday and Saturdays on Channel 9  They are practicing twice a week during these hot months. Radios are available for $30 for two.  The network continues to grow, with 6 new users coming on board. The repeater was installed two months ago has been working well.
Local Fire Season Update – Firewise Community organizing update
-Planning has begun for the October 19th Cobb Resilient. We will have inspection updates, insurance updates, PG&E will speak and we will also have our Firewise Community working lunch. (Cindy promises to fine-tune this part more!) Also updates about the new CERT/LISTOS programs that will be introduced in Lake County soon!
Lake County Fire Season update – Cal Fire Battalion Chief Jake Hannon:
-This summer has been pretty quiet, except the Moose Fire grew to 250 acres but is now 100% contained.  The moisture content of the grasses is higher and that has helped us.
-Amador has a fire that pulled some of our local resources, but they are coming home from that now.
-75% fuel moisture, compared to 60-65% last year has also helped
-Wanting to get together a Prescribed Burn Association. We want community involvement. We will need protective equipment and supplies, but it is good that we are getting the interest and support of Cal Fire. There is more support in the upper echelons for this idea now. Everyone is now recognizing that it is really important to reduce the fuel load. This would happen on private property. They are already looking at Tendai Monastery, and Kelsey Creek drainage area as the first two projects.  If these prescribed burns are successful then hopefully we can do more. (8 or 9 projects)
Community member suggests using conservation burn which can create less smoke.
Also the community is concerned about getting the word out if they are doing a prescribed burn to let all of us know so that we don’t mistake it for a wildfire.
Perhaps OES would allow us to use the emergency alert system to notify us of any prescribed burns.
Lots of prep has to happen around the perimeter before a burn like this is done.
There is a big change now: whenever there is any incident, Cal Fire calls out for lots more equipment than they used to!
Progress on LE-100 inspections: there are about 10 done a week, the dedicated inspectors are ending and the engine crews are doing the inspections.

Supervisor’s Comments: Rob Brown not present
CAC Economic Development Committee reports:
–Village Night report:
~biggest night so far at pizzeria! Renee got good response, Mel said he sold some radios and got good interest, Mtn. High said it was good. Overall it was a good first event! Warm at first, but it cooled down.
~there is talk of wanting to do it again during the holidays, perhaps with caroling and a tree lighting.

Tourism Lake County had a meeting in Cobb working with the new tourism board for Lake County.  They updated them on all the events happening on Cobb. They asked how they could give us support and we said we need more marketing and a representative on their board.
August 24 Blackberry COBBler Festival Plans
-Volunteer list: sign-ups needed!
-All Parking will be on Gifford at the Strickler meadow.  Please try to get the word out.  It is super-important that we have good traffic flow if we ever want to do this event again!! (handicapped parking is available)
-Cindy has keepsake posters for sale for $7, if you want to buy one tonight.
-We are grateful for all of the donations that have come in to make this event happen! Expenses are well over $5,000 (PGE saved the day!)
-Cobbler Contest: Entries accepted from noon til 12:30, judging at 12:45, winner announced at 3:00
-We have about 20 vendors, several of whom were displaced by the Valley Fire. We will have wine, beer, sundaes, kids fun area (by the 6th grade science camp).
Motion to adjourn at 7:28 by Magdalena, seconded Jessica, all in favor