Highlights, lowlights from the week’s news | Editorial

For a second straight week, we offer three highlights and one big lowlight.

HIT: Election day is a half-week away, though we understand fully if you’re already over it. Campaigning on Valley’s Edge — Chico measures O and P — dates to last year at this time when referendum organizers mounted their signature drive. Candidates up and down the ballot added to the deluge of mailers and ads.

If you’ve already mailed in your ballot, good for you! That will make Tuesday easier for Butte County Elections officials and volunteers by giving them a head start on counting.

If you haven’t voted, we hope you do. Proposition 1 promises to reshape the state’s mental health system by allocating billions toward housing. The race for the White House seems set, but Californians have four leading prospects for U.S. Senate vying for two spots on the November ballot. Plus, two of the county’s five supervisor seats could change hands.

Primary elections often have low turnout. Early returns support this trend. Until Tuesday night, it’s not too late to make your vote count.

MISS: Government bureaucracy never ceases to befuddle. The Board of Supervisors learned this week that the county is probably out millions of dollars after FEMA retroactively added restrictions to compensating local jurisdictions for housing vulnerable people during the height of COVID.

County Administrative Officer Andy Pickett revealed that FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) likely won’t be providing the full reimbursement for the Project Roomkey program for homeless people “generally over 65 with respiratory conditions and immune or chronic diseases.” FEMA “offered to pay for the rooms so that the people could isolate themselves,” he continued, but “what (FEMA is) saying now is that they could only stay for 20 days and some individuals stayed much longer than that based on different needs.”

So, because county officials didn’t kick out people out of their rooms before the 21st day — three weeks in a multiyear pandemic — the county has to foot the entire $3 million bill.

“We implemented the program with the best information that we had at the time,” Pickett said, “so now it looks like FEMA is going back on their word.”

Hard to argue with that position.

HIT: It may seem odd to put a passing in a positive light, but we were touched by the outpouring of tributes to the late Tom Dauterman after he succumbed to cancer Monday at age 81. Dauterman was a pioneer in the field of agricultural machinery and one of the north state’s most generous philanthropists.

Dauterman started the company that would become Thomas Manufacturing out of a small shop in 1970 and a namesake hydraulics business in 1974. He revolutionized nut-tree harvesting with equipment he designed, even though he wasn’t formally trained as a mechanical engineer. In 2006, he co-founded Northern California National Bank and served on the board until the bank’s sale two years ago.

He and his wife, Sue, formed a charitable foundation that has donated millions to organizations including Enloe Health and the Salvation Army; he also gave his time and resources to support agriculture programs in local high schools and was a 35-year member of the service group Rotary.

Among the tributes he received, City Councilor Tom van Overbeek called Dauterman “a local giant.” We join the salute to his lasting impact.

HIT: Much like an obituary, a blizzard warning hardly ever comes across as good news to the people affected by it. This weekend, though, we’re looking to the snowline with a sense of relief.

The series of winter storms provided a lot of rainfall that filled our rivers, lakes, creeks and streams. Less so, the higher elevations with snow — but the latest flurries should put the snowpack over 100% and leave us good to go supply-wise for the year.

Now, bring on spring!

Hits and misses are compiled by the editorial board.