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Once a thriving resort town, Clearlake Oaks, a small unincorporated community in Lake County, slowly deteriorated over the past few decades and has suffered severely from the economic downturn. In the 1950s and 1960s, Clearlake Oaks was a thriving resort town catering to summer vacationers. But consumer trends changed, and small family resorts and vacation homes soon switched to year-round low-rent housing. The community subsequently suffered from sagging property values, a stagnant economy, and high crime rates. To combat this problem and revitalize the community, the county created the Clearlake Oaks Task Force including animal control, police, probation, and a code enforcement officer all dedicated to serving only Clearlake Oaks; focused on attracting private investment; focused on obtaining non-profit organizations contributions/investments; worked to secure public funds; began an intense marketing campaign; and worked to develop a sense of pride in the community. The effort was financed through a combination of private, not-for-profit, and public funds. Marketing and community outreach was done within existing staffing and budget levels, with a boost from a grant. Since the intense revitalization effort, Clearlake Oaks has seen a stark contrast. It has been visually spruced up. Property values have increased; new businesses are open; and residents now take pride in their community.
Write to Read is a literacy program for those incarcerated at Camp Wilmont Sweeney, a residential facility for non-violent young male offenders. The young men in residence attend regular school classes provided by the Alameda County Office of Education. However, many of these young men are behind in basic reading, writing, and educational skills, which impedes their future ability to find work after release, thus increasing recidivism rates. Write to Read is a literacy program that uses reading and writing as tools to examine social, economic, and political situations in life. It is a cooperative program of the Alameda County Library and Probation Department. Over the course of three, 14- to 16-week sessions, Write to Read provides 50 or more residents with literacy instruction in small groups and in one-on-one tutorials. Students read and study a variety of writing, including poetry, essays, short stories, biographies, and novel. Write to Read gives students opportunities to engage in substantive classroom discourse, which is associated with greater achievement in reading, writing, and the acquisition of content knowledge. Program elements include guest speakers, field trips, and written texts. Students explore issues of personal identity, tolerance, social justice, and more. Pre- and post-assessments indicate that students who complete the program gain on average 7.2 grade levels.
Counties and rate-payers have recently seen garbage fees climb higher and higher. In order to streamline the complicated process of calculating the costs of garbage pickup and disposal, as well as save money, the county created a helpful, new tool. The Refuse Rate Adjustment Methodology automatically calculates the costs associated with garbage pickup each year over a five-year period. This saves the amount of time staff must dedicate to rate adjustments and dramatically reduced the amount of money budgeted for the annual review of the franchise waste haulers. The Rate Adjustment Methodology has saved money for the county and taxpayer, while still providing fair rates to the garbage-hauling company.
StepUP for Youth is a program that matches youth with work experience in growing industries in the private and public sectors. A study suggested that there were six fast-growing economies in the Redwood Coast region that would need entry level workers. The County Workforce Investment Board took steps to build a pipeline of such workers by placing young people, especially at-risk youth, in jobs based on their level of readiness. The program provides training workshops to all youth, regardless of income. In the first summer, 33 youths were matched to jobs; as a result of the success the Departments of Health and Human Services and Probation matched the funding to increase the capacity of the program, allowing for 886 participants this year.
The Eden Area Livability Initiative used community engagement, visioning and strategic planning to improve quality of life in urban unincorporated communities of Alameda County. The initiative is successful because of increased inter-agency coordination, community engagement, and short-term problem-solving with long-term solutions in mind. Meetings identified shared values and potential strategies for realizing those values; further topic-specific meetings generated catalyst projects. Funding came from a California Department of Transportation grant, and in-kind funding from county agencies serving the area. The efficient coordination of services and communication between agencies and communities has led the selection, by community election, of five improvement projects. A by-product of the Initiative is that citizens now have a better understanding of county government and more residents are engaged in decision making.
In an effort to improve the equity of service to communities on the outskirts of the county, the library installed Library-a-Go-Go, the first fully-automated, 24/7 library service in the country. The technology is a vending machine, similar to an ATM machine; it is capable of vending more than 400 books and is linked in real-time to the library account system. The library partnered with Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) to install machines at four stations to bring the library to commuters. Library-a-Go-Go is a cost-saving alternative to opening a new library branch, and allows the county library to serve populations residing a great distance from the local library. The project was funded through a Library Services and Technology Act grant from the California State Librarian.
The Los Angeles Superior Court handles upwards of 10,000 jurors a day, making it a priority to streamline processing. In May 2008, the Juror Online Orientation became the first program in the nation to provide an interactive juror orientation via the Web. The orientation meets two specific challenges: improving juror services and speeding up juror processing. Jurors can complete the training at home and print out a certificate in advance. This allows potential jurors to arrive at court one to two hours later on the initial reporting day. Since its inception, more than 7,000 jurors have been trained. The program has received positive feedback from 97 percent of jurors who completed a survey.
Foreclosure notices in Los Angeles County have skyrocketed 4,800 percent over the past three years alone, more than 37,000 in 2008 alone. The Department of Consumer Affairs quickly responded to try and help people facing the real possibility of losing their homes. The department created the multi-faceted Foreclosure Prevention Project to deal with the rapidly developing crisis. The department trained its employees to offer counseling about the rights of homeowners. The department also developed new Foreclosure Rescue Scam brochures and created a prominent section of its Web site to reach out to county residents. Consumer Affairs also made a concerted effort to enter into the community with events and workshops. The program has saved more than 115 homes, as well as $64 million in restitution for homeowners.
Public Health Community Nursing partnered with private organizations to bring medical care to the homeless. It is challenging for public health nurses to regularly access homeless individuals, impeding the delivery of continuous medical care. The public health officer worked with public and private entities to find solutions: Kaiser Permanente provided volunteer physicians to conduct clinics; public health nurses provided assessment, education, and case management; County Behavioral Health and Medical Services Initiative (indigent health insurance) provided immediate linkage and insurance application assistance; and a private, non-profit provided funding for medications/prescriptions. With this model, Public Health Nursing was able to promote the goals of the mobile clinics, which are to link clients to medical homes and a way to pay for care.
In the face of record unemployment and severely reduced construction as a result of the economic downturn, the county Board of Supervisors formed the Building Industry Association/Riverside County Streamlining Strike Force to act as a catalyst to indentify and enact measures to streamline the planning and permitting process. The Strike Force is a collaboration of a myriad of county agencies, ranging from transportation and planning to county counsel and flood control. The Strike Force systematically reviews and challenges each department to re-assess processes to ensure greater transparency, predictability, cost savings and time reductions. The efficiencies and cost savings as a result of the efforts of the Strike Force assist in the recovery of the local economy.
The Santa Ana River Trail and Parkway Partnership was created in 2005 to finish the 100-mile trail running along the Santa Ana River from the San Bernardino Mountains to the coast of the Pacific Ocean. The project required cooperation across city and county lines since it involves Riverside, Orange and San Bernardino Counties, the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority, the Wildlands Conservancy and 16 cities to finish was what started in 1950. The partnership has thus far been extremely effective in reaching goals including: securing $45 million in state bond funding; completing nine miles of trail; conducting an inventory of missing segments and adopting a five-year work plan; and joining San Bernardino and Riverside Counties in a 19-mile continuous ribbon.
The psychiatric unit at the Riverside County Regional Medical Center has realized a culture shift to achieve 700 percent reduction in the use of seclusion and restraint from 2001 to 2008. Seclusion and restraint is now considered a last resort, as this intervention technique poses safety risks to both staff and patients. The culture change came through education and oversight: staff was trained in Management of Assaultive Behavior, which included de-escalation and early intervention to mitigate the need for restraint techniques. Existing staff, resources and training materials were used with training programs revised to emphasize preventative measures to keep the risk of injury to self and others low to ensure a safe environment. The goal continues to be the total elimination of seclusion and restraint.
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