Our Recreation Committee plans to apply for tobacco settlement money to "support park development" at our community space adjacent to the Health Center in Boonville. The Rec committee is also working on plans to improve parking at the site and is considering the addition of a tricycle path. (Tyke racing?) They also intend to put up signs saying that the park is closed at night, which won't prevent the more agile sinners from jumping the fence to, so to speak, jump each other between tokes on the bazooka and long swallows of purple hooters or whatever it is kids drink these days.
To the harrumphing consternation of adults who've long forgotten what it's like when hormones moan their loudest, groups of young people, many generations removed from the days of chaperoned picnic lunches as they now pass directly from little league to debauchery, spend their lusty late local hours on the chaste premises of the Health Center, or next door in the discreet dark of our little public park. It probably would be a good idea for the Health Center, committed as it is to the health and welfare of the entire community, to maintain a brightly lit condom dispenser between it and the ambulance barn rather than erect fences, locked gates and ignored "closed after dark" signs, but then Boonville seems to be going through one of its periodic blue nose periods when public policy defies prevailing realities.
Two people have applied as Teen Center Manager so far, one of whom is the District's General Manager Serina Wallace, who seems like a good candidate to us.
The Recreation Committee is considering taking up the task of producing the local phone directory. Volunteers are being sought to assemble the thing. CSD Director Diane Paget said she'd be interested in coordinating it if she was paid, a bit of mercenary volunteerism that wouldn't seem to stand much chance of being accepted. The directory, incomplete as it is — the ancient dead still appear in its pages although they haven't answered their phones for 25 years — is nevertheless a handy Valley amenity whose updated realization most of us would want to see. In the past, high school kids produced it and sold ads to pay for its production. (With the right team of young people as sales force, hell, I might do the thing myself. No charge.)
Almost $1700 has been donated to the District for the creation of a reward fund for information leading to the arrest of the two local rapists still on the loose, probably in Mexico, but perhaps, as per many rumors, hiding out in a remote pot garden. The District has prepared a draft reward policy. Reward fund money not returned at a donor's request will be held for future rewards, the assumption being that crime remains a local growth industry. Persons wanting to donate to the reward fund can call 895-2020 for information.
The Board expressed its appreciation of Fire Chief Colin Wilson's supervision of the new Philo fire station construction now nearing completion.
Chief Wilson described the firefighter appreciation "Lightning Jam" concert featuring Kris Kristofferson as "quite successful." Something like $58,000 was donated at the concert but so far no funds have been distributed.
Board chair Andrea LaCampagne appointed General Manager Wallace, Mark Scaramella, Diane Paget, Cindy Wilder, and a player to be named later from the Anderson Valley Chamber of Commerce to address downtown improvement and "traffic calming," a broad mandate indeed. Everyone agreed that if improvement proposals affect parking downtown merchants would have to approve them before they were implemented. If local merchants resist parking modification, goes the thinking, downtown improvement would become a dead letter.
Anyone interested in participating in the downtown improvement exercise should attend the first meeting of the downtown improvement ad hoc committee on Wednesday, October 29 at 1pm at the Boonville fire station.
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