Ten teenagers from Santa Rosa, California-based Community Action Partners explore the impact of the national economic crisis on our local communities.  These young "citizen journalists" explore a wide range of topics such as housing, food, and unemployment, and meet many individuals facing these unprecedented challenges.

Watch Monday Night at 7:30 p.m. on KRCB-TV

Charges and countercharges are mounting in the run-up to next week’s union representation election at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital.

Father Ray Decker (right) , who is active with the Catholic Scholars for Worker Justice group, says that while he and other clergy are pressing Memorial Hospital to take a more Christian stance toward the union organizing efforts of their workforce, they have no illusions about who they are actually speaking to.

Katy Hillenmeyer, spokeswoman for St. Joseph Health Care of Sonoma County, which operates Memorial Hospital, says the impartiality of the new Fair Election Oversight Commission is open to question, as some members have clear ties to one of the competing unions.

Wages and workplace issues are part of the debate in the union representation vote, says telemetry technician Nancy Timberlake, a 24-year Memorial Hospital employee. But the biggest single issue for her is job security.

Back before the economy contracted, Sonoma County supervisors convened an Innovation Council to plan for local job growth. That effort has begun to bear fruit, but is now facing budgetary uncertainly of its own.

In just a couple of years, the Sonoma County Innovation Council has moved quickly to analyze the local economy and develop a strategic plan for growth over the next decade. Council co-chair Cynthia Murray (left) , Executive Director of the North Bay Leadership Council, notes that this process was undertaken before the current economic downturn kicked in.

You can read the Innovation Council's full report here.

Small businesses in America could be an important engine to help drive economic recovery, according to a local advocacy group, but they need more help than they are currently getting from the federal Small Business Administration.

Chris Gunn, Communications Director for the American Small Business League  in Petaluma says the Obama economic team does not appear to recognize the importance of small businesses to the US economy any more than their predecessors  in the Bush Administration did.

Given the considerable number of small businesses in the country, Chris Gunn says they could be a formidable political force, if they came together to press for policies that would benefit them as a group.

One change at the SBA under the Obama administration has been the installation of Karen Mills (left)  as the agency’s new director. But Gunn is not convinced she genuinely has the interests of the nation’s smaller business owners at the forefront.