Opinion

  I just learned that an old friend of mine passed away. Her name was Cheryl and her family had a cottage on the same road as mine in Bradford, N.H.

  I was closer in age to her two older sisters, but the three of them, my brother Mike and I, and our next-door neighbors John and Mike, were quite the gang of teenagers on Howlett Road in the early ’70s.

  Two of our county’s cornerstone institutions are facing a crisis. And we urge our elected representatives locally and in the state Legislature to do everything in their power to help.

  Seneca Healthcare District and Eastern Plumas Health Care are facing cuts to their respective skilled nursing facilities due to a bill passed in the California Legislature in 2011.

  I enjoyed reading the editorial comments published in the Jan. 30 edition of the local newspapers. They begged the question “Where were the present critiques of the general plan during the last seven years?” which apparently represents the timeframe editors identify under which this document has been in development. I would respectfully correct that timeframe, as it appears the process actually started in 2002.

  Regardless, the question posed is really quite easy to answer: Citizens did participate in the “Your town 20/20 meetings” held in various communities in 2002. Note that these “visioning sessions” were conducted by out-of-county facilitators paid for with grant monies. It was never crystal clear to participants in these “townhall style meetings” that the input collected at these visioning sessions was actually laying the foundation for a county general plan update.

  The recent outcry over wording in the Plumas County General Plan has garnered a lot of attention the past few weeks.

  It came to a head Jan. 17 when a group of concerned citizens from Indian Valley voiced opposition to the plan during a planning commission meeting in Quincy. The Indian Valley Citizens for Private Property Rights argued that the county’s new general plan — which has been years in the making — could lead to a loss of private property rights. They called the plan “Agenda 21 in disguise.”

  Agenda 21 is a document adopted by the United Nations in 1992. It is designed to be a blueprint of how jurisdictions worldwide should move toward sustainable economic growth that simultaneously protects and renews environmental resources.