Page 295 | Bohemian | Sonoma & Napa Counties

Santa Rosa Offers Relief Grants to Local Musicians

Charlie Swanson

Mar 9, 2021

Santa Rosa Offers Relief Grants to Local Musicians

The City of Santa Rosa is currently accepting applications for its Musician Relief Grants, which will award $2,000 to Santa Rosa musicians facing financial hardship due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

With clubs and venues shut down for a full year this month, many musicians and artists who rely on performing for their income have been devastated financially as the pandemic has rolled from 2020 into 2021.

This Musician Relief Grant program aims to support working musicians in the Santa Rosa arts community by providing funds to assist the musicians in the city who have lost income due to the inability to perform live.

The grant program is run by the City of Santa Rosa Public Art Program in conjunction with the City of Santa Rosa Economic Recovery Task Force. The funding is intended for professional musicians who earn at least part-time income through their career and/or generate income from their music. To be eligible, Santa Rosa-based musicians must be able to demonstrate a sustained commitment to their musical career, must be experiencing financial hardship due to the Covid-19 pandemic and must be at least 18-years-old.

On its website, the city of Santa Rosa writes that “The Musician Relief Grants strives to ensure that musicians across Santa Rosa have access to this relief funding. Eligibility will NOT be affected by gender, race, sexual orientation, age or US resident status. To ensure equitable distribution of funds, we encourage individuals who identify with vulnerable demographics to apply including musicians of color, native and Indigenous musicians, immigrant musicians, disabled musicians, and LGBTQ musicians to apply.”

Musicians who want to apply for the relief grant can go online here. Select the icon for ‘City of Santa Rosa Musician Relief Grants’ and complete the online form. Once submitted, a follow-up email will notify the applicant that their application has been successfully received via the email provided in the online form.

The grant application deadline is end-of-day on Sunday, April 11. Applicants will be notified of their application status in mid to late May.

In addition to local musicians, Santa Rosa is looking for qualified visual artists to design, fabricate and install site-specific public art for one wall of the Fifth Street Parking Garage in downtown Santa Rosa.

A “Call for Artists” is currently on the City of Santa Rosa’s webpage. The city is looking for practicing, professional artists residing in Northern California and Sonoma County artists are encouraged to apply. The total available funding for the project is $20,000 (all inclusive – design and construction) and comes from the City of Santa Rosa Parking Division and the Public Art Fund. The deadline to apply is 5pm on March 15.

On the website, the City of Santa Rosa Public Art Program writes that, “the goal of this completed project is to draw positive attention to and increase the visibility of the Fifth Street Garage, which even regular visitors to the downtown often do not know exists. The art will distinguish the garage from nearby structures, serve as a wayfinding element through identification and draw people to the site. The artwork will improve the aesthetics of the garage as seen from the street and by pedestrians.”

Report: Californians Moving Within State, Not Leaving

Will Carruthers

Mar 8, 2021

Report: Californians Moving Within State, Not Leaving

A report released last week found that warnings about California residents fleeing the state are over-hyped. While it appears that San Francisco residents have left the city at an increased rate, they tend to have moved elsewhere in the Bay Area or the outer reaches of the state, rather than leaving the state, a trend which is consistent with earlier patterns.

“Approximately two-thirds of San Franciscan movers remaining in the Bay Area economic region and nearly 80 percent remaining in the state… This is consistent with pre-pandemic patterns,” states the new report released by the University of California’s California Policy Lab.

“In short, to date the pandemic has not so much propelled people out of California as it has shifted them around within it,” the report, which is based on credit reporting data and may not have captured all of the movers over the past year, concludes.

During the pandemic, the rate of people leaving and moving into the North Bay have both increased significantly. However, the changes in rates of movement are not as high as other parts of the state.

For instance, 5,539 people left Marin County, a 23 percent increase over the 2019 rate, while 4,948 people arrived, a 21 percent increase over the 2019 rate. All told, Marin County experienced 591 net exits, the number of people who arrived subtracted from the number who left. The rate was 44.5 percent higher than in 2019.

In Napa County, 2,619 people left the county, a 14 percent increase over the 2019 rate, and 2326 people arrived, an 11 percent increase over the 2019 rate. Napa County had 293 net exits in 2020, a 21.6 percent increase in rate compared to 2019.

In Sonoma County, 7,002 people left the county, an 11 percent increase over the 2019 rate, and 6,415 people arrived, a seven percent increase over the 2019 rate. Sonoma County had 587 net exits in 2020, a 67.2 percent increase in rate compared to 2019.

All told, the North Bay was less impacted than many other California counties, according to the report. San Francisco experienced a 428.6 percent increase in net exits in 2020 compared to 2019, a trend which caused the city’s sky-high rental market to deflate for the first time in decades.

While it’s too early to tell what this all means, the California Policy Lab report does indicate that the North Bay’s population may look fairly different after the pandemic than it did back in 2019.

CalMatters visualized the findings of the California Policy Lab’s report here.

Solano County Island’s Owner Must Pay $2.8M Fine for Illegal Levee Repairs

Bohemian.com

Mar 8, 2021

Solano County Island’s Owner Must Pay $2.8M Fine for Illegal Levee Repairs

By Kiley Russel, Bay City News Service

A man accused of illegally repairing a levee and damaging sensitive aquatic habitat in the Suisun Marsh is facing a $2.8 million fine following a California appeals court decision last month.

John Sweeney, who ran a kiteboarding club on Point Buckler Island in Solano County after buying it in 2011, must also abide by a cleanup and abatement order that requires him to restore the marshlands and tidal channels damaged during the levee work.

The 39-acre island in Grizzly Bay had previously been used by duck hunters and was surrounded by a levee that had fallen into disrepair, according to documents filed in California’s First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco.

Sweeney wanted to build the earthen berms back up in order to once again promote duck hunting on the island.

Because the levee no longer held back the waters of Grizzly Bay, the island “had long reverted to a tidal marsh due to neglect, abandonment, or the forces of nature,” so any work on the levee would have required authorization from the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board and the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, according to a court filing.

Both agencies issued multiple violations for the levee work and subsequent environmental damage, including the Water Board’s $2.8 million fine and BCDC’s $752,000 fine, both issued in 2016.

Sweeney successfully challenged the agencies’ actions in Solano County Superior Court.

In ruling on behalf of the agencies last month, however, state appeals court Justice Peter Siggins reversed that decision stating, in part, that the island is “critical habitat for Delta smelt and Chinook salmon, and the drainage and diking of the site risked reductions in food and precluded access to tidal channels for foraging.”

Water Board officials said Siggins’ ruling is a major victory for Suisun Marsh, the largest contiguous, brackish marsh on the west coast of North America, and could further strengthen wetlands protections across the state.

“This is an enforcement case with the most positive impact to wetlands we’ve seen in a long, long time, and it stems from the most egregious violation involving a wetland impact we’ve seen in decades,” said Xavier Fernandez, planning division chief with the San Francisco Bay Water Board.

Larry Bazel, Sweeney’s lawyer, said they plan to ask the California Supreme Court to review the appeals court decision.

“John Sweeney is being penalized because the previous owners of the duck club did not repair the levee quickly enough. After some unspecified time, according to the (Water Board), a duck club is no longer a duck club and the owner is prohibited from repairing the levee, even when (as in this case) the land has been a duck club since the 1920s,” Bazel said in an email.

“Point Buckler Club is being penalized for no good reason at all, since it did not participate in the levee repair,” Bazel said.

Neither Sweeney nor the club can afford the fines or the repair work ordered by the Water Board, he said.

Newsom Signs $6.6B School Reopening Package

Bohemian Staff and Contributors

Mar 5, 2021

Newsom Signs $6.6B School Reopening Package

By Eli Walsh, Bay City News Service

Gov. Gavin Newsom and state legislative leaders celebrated the signing Friday of a $6.6 billion legislative package intended to support the statewide reopening of grades K-6 by the end of the month and grades 7-12 in early April.

The package includes $2 billion in grants to support safety measures for students and educators returning to in-person classes, including personal protection equipment, improvements to classroom ventilation and regular coronavirus testing.

The remaining $4.6 billion will fund voluntary learning expansions, including extending the school year into the summer, tutoring to make up for learning lost amid the pandemic and mental health services for students.

“We all recognize how stubborn and challenging this process has been over the last 60-plus days,” Newsom said during a virtual signing ceremony for the legislative package.

The reopening plan comes after months of negotiation between officials in the Newsom administration, state legislators and teachers’ unions over details like required vaccinations and a reopening timeline that all sides agree is safe.

While the package does not require the vaccination of educators before in-person classes resume, state officials have argued they’ve taken steps to ensure there are vaccine doses available to educators who want them.

On Monday, the state began reserving 10 percent of the weekly vaccine shipments sent to local health departments and multi-county health care entities for K-12 educators and child care workers.

Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, framed the legislative package as the first of several steps toward reopening schools and cited his children’s experience with distance learning to underscore the need for schools to reopen.

“I have two children in San Francisco public schools and they’ve been Zooming since last March,” he said. “I’ve seen the effects on them firsthand, whether it is their drop in their desire to learn, their withdrawal, their inability to connect with friends. We’ve seen the devastating effects.”

Ting added that while the San Francisco Unified School District has yet to approve a reopening plan, he is still excited to offer resources from the legislative package to schools in need.

“We’re going to go home to all our districts and beg all our (school) districts to open up, use this money and do everything possible,” he said.

The deal stops short of mandating that all grades return to in-person classes across the state, instead using state funding as an incentive.

The deal requires in-person instruction at public schools to resume for K-2 students and all “high-needs” students in grades K-12—including English language learners, students in the foster care system and unhoused students—by the end of the month.

Non-complying schools would lose 1 percent of their funding per day if they are not open by then.

Once a county is in the red tier of the state’s pandemic reopening system, schools would risk the same penalty if they do not offer in-person instruction to all elementary grade students and students in at least one middle or high school grade level.

State officials noted on Friday that the state’s legislative package is also not contingent on federal funding or the Covid-19 relief bill Congress is currently considering, allowing the state to avoid waiting on political machinations in Washington, D.C., to reopen schools.

“I feel very confident that the resources provided in this (legislation) in combination with those we anticipate from the federal government will provide us the sufficient funds for our classrooms to open safely,” said state Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley.

Schools in at least 35 of the state’s 58 counties have already resumed in-person classes in some form, according to the state.

The state’s school reopening website can be found here.

Napa County is in the Red Tier. What can Reopen?

Will Carruthers

Mar 5, 2021

Napa County is in the Red Tier. What can Reopen?

Coronavirus cases have continued to recede. President Joe Biden said that there will be enough vaccine available for all U.S. adults by the end of May, sooner than previously expected, because of a deal with Johnson & Johnson to boost supply. More than 9 million shots have already been administered in California.

This time, it seems, the reopening of California will be different. Gradual, yes—California, as Gov. Gavin Newsom pointedly noted, isn’t Texas—but lasting. Really.

At least, that’s how officials across the state are framing the progress in the past couple of days.

On Tuesday, state public health officials said that seven counties were moving from the state’s most stringent purple tier to the second most restrictive red tier. It was the most significant easing of restrictions since state leaders abruptly announced that they were lifting stay-at-home orders meant as a kind of “emergency brake” to halt what spiraled into the state’s deadliest surge.

“The fact that we’re moving into new tiers, the fact that we’ve provided billions of dollars in relief checks, speaks for itself,” Newsom, speaking in Palo Alto, said Tuesday at another news conference aimed at drumming up excitement for a long-negotiated deal to bring students back to classrooms after a year of distance learning. (He said later that he planned to sign the bill Friday.)

“Come August, September, we’ll be in a position to safely reopen not only our schools but the vast majority of business sectors as well,” he said.

San Francisco’s mayor, London Breed, told residents in a news conference Tuesday to get in the habit of putting their masks back on as they move about indoor restaurants.

“Because, ultimately, we’re in the red right now,” she said, “but in just a few weeks, we’ll probably, most likely be in the orange.”

Even Barbara Ferrer, director of public health for Los Angeles County — known for her dire warnings as Los Angeles became the epicenter of the winter crisis — struck a somewhat optimistic tone Tuesday in her office’s update.

“LA County is very close to meeting the metric thresholds for the less restrictive red tier,” she said in a statement.

But perhaps you’ve gotten a little fuzzy about what this all means. Here are the answers to your questions:

Which counties are in the red tier now? And how can I find out which tier my county falls under?

There are 16 counties now in the red tier: Del Norte, Modoc, Humboldt, Trinity, Shasta, Lassen, Plumas, Marin, Napa, Yolo, El Dorado, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Mariposa and San Luis Obispo.

Two counties are in the even less restrictive orange tier — Sierra and Alpine — and the rest, including most of the state’s most populous counties, are still in the purple tier, as of Tuesday.

What is allowed in the red tier?

The most significant difference between the purple and red tiers is that in the red tier, restaurants, museums and movie theaters can reopen indoors, at 25 percent capacity or 100 people — whichever is fewer. Gyms can reopen indoors at 10 percent capacity. (In the purple tier, all of those are allowed to operate outdoors only.)

Bars and breweries — businesses that serve alcohol but not food — must remain closed. In both the purple and red tiers, though, wineries can operate outdoors only.

In the purple tier, stores and shopping malls could be open indoors at 25 percent capacity; in the red tier, that can increase to 50 percent.

In the red tier, indoor gatherings are strongly discouraged but allowed, with a maximum of three households.

And masks are still required when you’re not eating or drinking.

What about in the orange and yellow tiers?

Many of the aforementioned places can open indoors at higher capacity, including restaurants, which can be open at half capacity. In the orange tier, bars can reopen outdoors, and smaller amusement parks can also open at 25 percent capacity.

How quickly could even more restrictions be lifted?

Counties fall into different tiers based on their average numbers of new cases per 100,000 residents and their test positivity rates, with some adjustments, so new cases must continue to fall. Officials in each county can opt to keep in place stricter rules than the state allows, as Los Angeles County has done in the past, but given the continuing vaccine rollout—confusing though it may be—that seems less likely now.

While just about 13 percent of the state’s population lives in a county that’s been able to move out of the purple tier, Newsom on Monday hinted that the balance could shift significantly “in the next few weeks.” He said the state was monitoring roughly 17 counties that could have restrictions lifted as early as next week.

Jesse Brewster Sings From the Heart on New Record

Charlie Swanson

Mar 3, 2021

Jesse Brewster Sings From the Heart on New Record

Seasoned North Bay singer-songwriter Jesse Brewster always looked up to his older brother Jim.

“After high school, I wasn’t driven towards any goal, but I was playing guitar,” Brewster says. “He was a big encourager of what I was doing, so I probably wouldn’t be doing it without him.”

When Jim passed away from Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD) when he was 29 and Jesse was 23, the younger Brewster began writing lyrics about the experience, and soon stepped out of the rock & roll–sideman role into that of a solo artist.

Brewster released his first record in 2004, and he’s been going strong ever since. This month, Brewster releases his fifth album, The Lonely Pines, which features 10 tracks of folk- and roots-rock storytelling songs.

The Lonely Pines will be available online and on vinyl on March 5.

Throughout his songwriting career, Brewster has instilled autobiographical lyrics into his character-driven storytelling. In addition to songs inspired by his sibling, Brewster chronicles his own battle with the same disease; including how he received a life-saving kidney transplant from his wife six years ago.

The Lonely Pines is a continuation of that trend, with songs that musically range from acoustic folk to rollicking Americana while lyrically examining Brewster’s past, present and thoughts on the future.

“I’m always trying to get something out there that is cohesive, and the songs luckily were coming,” he says. “So, I followed that vein.”

Some tracks on the album depart from the Americana aesthetic, including the glam rock-infused “Follow It Down,” the saloon song “Bitter Pill” and the Celtic folk-inspired “Amber Kinney.”

“There’s many songs I could have put on the record, but these ones seemed to be ones that all had at least a little bit to do with each other,” he says.

Brewster was still recording the album when the pandemic hit in early 2020, and he was forced to finish the album’s final three tracks in his home studio, playing nearly every instrument himself.

Among those tracks is the song “Close to Home,” a roots-rocker filled with vocal harmonies and jangling guitar riffs, that was written in the first days of Covid-related isolation.

“It’s super-reflective of what everybody was going through in those first days of the pandemic and you didn’t know what was going to happen,” Brewster says.

Originally, “Close to Home” was not going to appear on The Lonely Pines, as it was composed for a grant project.

“You had to write a song, record it, make a video and you could get this grant,” Brewster says. “It’s always fun to be given an assignment, it forces your hand and it’s a good [songwriting] exercise for sure.”

Now a year into isolation, Brewster—who is immunocompromised due to PKD—is not exactly itching to get back on the road, though he is not satisfied with simply streaming his concerts on social media, either.

“I want performances to be an event, not just an expectation,” he says. “What I want to be doing and what I normally would be doing during this time would be getting out there.”