By Donna Westfall – January 15, 2019 – With the New Year, I asked Supervisor Bob Berkowitz if he had a list of his top three priorities to share with the community to get us through the next two years. He came back with his top 10 priorities. Here’s his first five:
1.) Funding for Last Chance Grade. Ask to testify before the House of Representatives Infrastructure and transportation committee about what the impact of closure of Hwy 101 would do to our community. Continue to bring our case to Washington, D.C. and state legislators.
2.) Broadband. Press for state and federal assistance to bring Broadband to rural areas. In our county, we need to bring the ability to communicate effectively to all areas of our county.
3.) Opioid addiction. Work with the Rx Safe Del Norte Coalition Committee and the Yurok tribe to evelop effective and workable solutions to the Opioid epidemic. And assist them in obtaining federal funds just passed by congress H.R. 6.
We discussed this for a few minutes because I had just attended the PTSD meeting held weekly at the VA Hall. I learned that vets that had been on oxycodone were being cut down or having their drug totally eliminated and instead in their place being given Fentanyl. Fentanyl landed one of them in the hospital. With his prior prescription, he could manage his pain due to a shattered leg from the war. Fentanyl addiction is particularly dangerous because the drug is a very potent, highly-addictive opioid. What genius came up with this latest horror of “helping” with the opioid crisis? Vets like him were being restricted to 30 pills a day when they may need twice as many, or switched to a more dangerous drug.
4.) Tsunami Early Warning. Pressing the state for tsunami early warning system that will complete the Calfiornia Earthquake early warning system. begin an information program so every person knows the exit routes to take when warned about a tsunami.
5.) Blight. Continue to support clean up programs like “take a bite out of blight” which utilizes partnerships between volunteers, private businesses, and government to end blighted areas in our county.
END OF PART 1
You should ask this question to all of the supervisors so that we can learn their objectives and priorities for 2019.
Donna this is a great list that Bob Berkowitz gave to you ! I really feel that he and Rodger are the 2 best people on the board and I won’t go into the reasons right now but this is a Great List and sill tell you the Number one item on his list is the most. Important If they don’t address and fix Last Chance Grade you might as well kiss the City of Crescent City GOOD BYE if they don’t fix it soon it will fall down the mountain and fall into the OCEAN and then guess what it wii take 6 hours to make the drive and get here, Bob is constantly working on this on this problem And what we need is millions of dollars to fix this road so we need some one like Bob Berkowitz and Roger Gitlin to talk to the right people in Washington maybe even Trump to tell them about the seriousness of this situation!