Creative financing directly from Sonoma County may soon help local home and business owners add solar and other energy-efficiency improvements to their properties.

County Supervisors have scheduled their public hearing on the proposal for 9:30 am on Tuesday March 24.

 The vast majority of the projects expected to get funding through the Sonoma County Energy Independence Program will be retrofits of existing structures. The program will also fund installation of tankless water heaters, such as the one described below.

Sonoma County has not been spared by the national economic recession, but economist Steve Cochrane says its effects should be less severe here, with recovery underway by this time next year.

Even though unemployment is up for Sonoma County, and other economic indicators reflect the local effects of the global recession, Cochrane says that, so far at least, our area is weathering the downturn better than many other regions.
     
It will likely take most of the next 12 months for the Sonoma County housing market to stabilize, Cochrane predicts, with joblessness following a similar arc back toward more acceptible levels late this year and in early 2010.

 

Cochran also conducts research for the Sonoma County Innovation Council , which has recently released its own economic forecast, viewable here.

The Sonoma County Economic Development Board hosted the 6^th annual State of the County breakfast Wednesday morning, with Supervisor Paul Kelley delivering the centerpiece address. KRCB was there to record and bring you his talk.

Supervisor Paul Kelley

An early businessman named John Bagley may have been the most prominent citizen of the town that became Guerneville, but as Schubert relates,  Bagley chose to name it for one of his friends and business partners, rather than himself.

Before the train came out the Russian River from the Santa Rosa plain, some Guerneville area entrepreneurs tried using the river itself as a transportation corridor, but as John Schubert relates, that proved to be a short-lived experiment.

John Schubert,  is a Russian River historian and board member for the Sonoma County Historical Society as well as the Russian River Historical Society. His  Guerneville Early Days: A History of the Lower Russian River, covers the history of Guerneville up to 1910.

Schubert's self-published book received the 1999 Campbell Augustus Menefee Scholastic Award.

As logging cleared more and more land along the lower Russian River, some astute local businessmen came up with a plan to maximize their resources, by selling vacation homes in the area.

A common feature of these vacation homes was a wraparound porch, which John Schubert explains was far more practical when they were built than now.