“This is a critical opportunity for the public to get involved in helping shape our blueprint for the future,” Supervisor Susan Gorin said in a statement released last week. “This will be the guiding document that will help ensure that our future actions reflect a clear sense of purpose. This is the time to be in the room – or the Zoom – where it happens.”

The Strategic Plan is based on five pillars: Healthy and Safe Communities, Organizational Excellence, Climate Action and Resiliency, Racial Equity and Social Justice, and Resilient Infrastructure. The Supervisors expect to approve the finalized plan in February 2021.

More information about the county’s strategic plan is available here.

Information about how to join a meeting is available here. The schedule of upcoming meetings is available below.

Organizational Excellence: Tuesday, November 10; English session from 12pm to 1pm; Spanish-language session from 6pm to 7pm

Climate Action and Resiliency: Friday, November 13; English session from 12pm to 1pm; Spanish session from 6pm to 7pm

Resilient Infrastructure: Monday, November 16; English session from 12pm to 1pm; Spanish session from 6pm to 7pm

Racial Equity and Social Justice: Wednesday, November 18; English session from 12pm to 1pm; Spanish session from 6pm to 7pm

Healthy and Safe Communities: Thursday, November 19; English session from 12pm to 1pm; Spanish session from 6pm to 7pm

The $8 million acquisition of the 44-room Hotel Azura was made through the state’s Project Homekey program, established in June in response to the COVID-19 health emergency.

Officials said the hotel on Healdsburg Avenue would be converted into interim housing for up to 66 individuals when escrow is closed, possibly by next week.

“Adding Hotel Azura into our housing portfolio will give us the opportunity to bring more of our Covid-19 vulnerable individuals who are experiencing homelessness into supportive housing, with a path to permanent housing,” said Supervisor Susan Gorin. “I applaud the state for helping counties pursue housing that truly meets people’s needs, with supportive services and access to grocery stores, medical services and transportation.”

Priority access to the accommodations will go to those who are homeless and are most vulnerable to Covid-19.

Those housed at the hotel will have also receive assistance from the county’s Accessing Coordinated Care to Empower Self Sufficiency Initiative (ACCESS) program that uses county and community programs to provide needed resources.

ACCESS services include primary health care, behavioral health services and support, economic and food assistance, and employment training.

Supervisors on Tuesday also approved the purchase of the Sebastopol Inn in Sebastopol, but that acquisition is pending state approval of funding.

Health officials representing 10 counties and the city of Berkeley advised Bay Area residents against traveling for the holidays this year, cautioning that family gatherings could worsen the spread of Covid-19 in the Bay Area and beyond.

Public health officers from the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Monterey, Napa, San Mateo, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, and Sonoma, and the city of Berkeley signed on to the recommendations. The full list is available in English here and in Spanish here.

Although they are not barring anyone from traveling, the health officers recommend against organizing large gatherings and planning non-necessary trips, including holiday getaways. The officers advise that “in-person gatherings be small, short, stable (no more than three households over an extended period), and outdoors.”

“With cases rising around the country, and continued high levels of COVID-19 here in Sonoma County, we must remain steadfast in our commitment to keep our community safe,” said Dr. Sundari Mase, Sonoma County’s health officer. “The best gift you can give to your families and friends this holiday season is safety. When possible, please celebrate at home with household members and limit travel.”

If individuals do decide to travel or gather to celebrate the holidays, the health officials recommend they follow all of the normal health precautions, including maintaining social distance, wearing a mask as necessary, and washing hands regularly.

The officials strongly recommend that those who do travel self-quarantine for 14 days upon their return home if activities while traveling put them at a higher risk of catching Covid-19.

The first fire, located at 5070 Charmian Drive, involved a two-story home. The occupants contacted the fire department and safely exited the home after being alerted by their neighbors that their roof was on fire.

Fire crews arrived in several minutes, and found the wooden enclosure around the chimney and part of the surrounding roof structure on fire. Firefighters battled the fire from the roof and the exterior of the house, and controlled the fire in approximately 15 minutes.

The damage to the home is estimated to be $100,000, but the occupants of the home were able to remain in the house after the fire.

The second fire, located at 1514 Ronnie Drive, involved a single-story home. The occupants of the home, an elderly couple, noticed the fire from their fireplace had spread to the roof structure.

Fire engines arrived within minutes and assisted the elderly couple out of the home safely.

Crews attacked the fire from the roof and the exterior of the house, and controlled the fire in about 45 minutes.

The house sustained approximately $150,000 in damages, and the elderly couple was displaced.

Seven urban California school districts, including the state’s four largest, have called on Gov. Gavin Newsom to adopt and pay for more stringent, uniform health and safety requirements they say should be in place before bringing students back to school during the pandemic.

“It will take collective action and additional funding to bring students, teachers and staff back to schools in the way that is as safe as possible and sustainable for the long-term,” they said in a Nov. 2 letter organized by Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Austin Beutner and signed by the superintendents of San Diego, Long Beach, Fresno, Santa Ana, Sacramento and Oakland unified school districts. Adopting their recommendations would mark a shift from local control toward more rigorous state control over school reopenings.

None of the districts plan to bring students back to regular classes before January. Of the seven, Los Angeles and Long Beach are in Los Angeles County, which is coded “purple,” the most restricted category on the state’s monitoring list. That indicates high infection rates, prohibiting the reopening of schools until data improve. The other districts are in counties where schools are permitted to reopen, although infection rates in some neighborhoods in Santa Ana, Oakland and Fresno are higher than the county averages.

Sonoma County has remained in the purple tier since the state launched the rating system in August.

Their call for a “Common Standard” of stricter requirements potentially would make it more difficult to bring students back. The letter comes as other districts, including Capistrano Unified, the state’s eighth-largest district, have reopened or have announced dates to resume in-person instruction without implementing some of the lengthy prerequisite conditions the urban districts are seeking the state to impose.

The most urgent need, said San Diego Unified Superintendent Cindy Marten, is expanded virus testing. State guidance from last summer calls for “surveillance” testing teachers and staff in order to identify potential asymptomatic Covid-19 carriers every other month. “We thought it was important to say clearly that this may not be sufficient,” Marten wrote in an email. “Students should also be tested. And testing may need to be more frequent.”

A three-page document spelling out proposed uniform standards calls for free testing for students and staff, and for family members who may have been exposed to someone who tested positive for the coronavirus. Testing should be available at multiple sites within a community, with a turnaround time of 24 to 48 hours for test results, the document says.

Last week, Newsom announced the opening of a $25 million state laboratory, under a partnership with PerkinElmer, a diagnostics company, that plans to process 150,000 tests by March. That, Newsom said, should help districts reopen schools, although he did not call for mandating more extensive school testing.

Newsom has provided districts with $5.3 billion in federal CARES Act funding, plus $620 million in state funding, which he has repeatedly said should be sufficient to reopen schools. And he has insisted that individual school districts should decide when to reopen, based on state and county health department guidance.

But Marten and the other superintendents argue that the CARES Act money is one-time funding, most of which has to be spent by Dec. 31, and districts need sustained funding to keep schools open. “No one is seriously arguing there were sufficient funds in the CARES Act or any other disbursement to cover a robust, statewide testing program,” she wrote.

Calls for Newsom to take a stronger role in reopening schools, particularly collecting and publishing data on school infections and more comprehensive testing protocols, have grown louder. Last week, at a legislative hearing, Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, told Dr. Erica Pan, acting public health officer for the California Department of Public Health, that uniform testing requirements would help school districts settle negotiations with teachers’ unions on reopening.

“If you don’t come out with testing protocols for our state, it puts our districts in a very tough position,” he said.

The superintendents are calling for the state to put in place a data collection system that would enable districts to publish a school “Covid report card” identifying a student cohort infected by the virus in a school.

Districts currently decide how much information to share with parents and the community. The document also says the state should monitor compliance with testing and contact tracing programs.

In a presentation at the hearing, the Legislative Analyst’s Office also called for the state to track and report Covid-19 cases and to help schools respond to outbreaks and conduct contact tracing of family members and others potentially exposed to the virus.

The LAO acknowledged that expanded testing “could add significant costs” that districts had not expected to shoulder.

In an Oct. 15 letter to Newsom and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, the mayors of the state’s 13 largest cities expressed impatience with the pace of school reopenings and called for state officials to take a stronger hand.

“We recognize and acknowledge the serious health concerns of teachers, parents and staff members but are also extremely concerned about the effects of prolonged distance learning and lack of access to in-person classroom resources on our children,” the letter said.

The mayors observed, “We are seeing private and parochial schools open much more quickly, potentially increasing the disparities between well-resourced and under-resourced schools.”

They called on Newsom to direct more testing resources to schools and to establish uniform standards for prioritizing reopening for special education students, young students and students in the highest-poverty areas.

The California Teachers Association praised the seven superintendents’ letter in a statement on Monday. “We’ve been calling for testing educators/school employees and students, along with the necessary safety measures and protocols to be in place at all schools,” said CTA spokeswoman Claudia Briggs. “Glad to hear superintendents agree with us; we are in alignment.”

This article was originally published on EdSource.