COVID-19 vaccine appointments open at MyTurn
COVID-19 vaccine appointments have opened for the week on My Turn for the Kern County Fairgrounds’ Mass Vaccination Clinic and the state’s sites in Arvin, Rosamond and Wasco, the county announced Saturday.
Here are the hours for this week:
Kern County Fairgrounds, Wednesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Arvin, 414 4th Ave., Wednesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Wasco, 1202 Poplar Ave., Wednesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Rosamond, 2500 20th St. West, Tuesday through
Saturday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Eligibility is currently limited to health care workers, people 65 years of age or older, education and childcare workers, emergency services workers and food and agriculture workers.
Make an appointment at MyTurn.ca.gov or call 833-422-4255.
Others who are not yet eligible for a vaccine can register on MyTurn now to be notified when they’re eligible to make an appointment.
Users will receive notification that appointments are available and can sign up for both first and second appointments, a county news release said.
The Bakersfield Police Department announced Monday it has taken over the case of missing brothers Orson and Orrin West and is asking anyone who had contact with the boys in the past year to come forward.
Threeyear-old Orson and 4-year-old Orrin have been missing since Dec. 21, when their adoptive parents contacted police saying the boys disappeared from their California City home while playing with sidewalk chalk in the backyard in the late afternoon.
Both the boys’ biological and adoptive families are or have been residents of Bakersfield, according to Sgt. Robert Pair, a Bakersfield Police spokesman.
“The boys predominantly were raised in Bakersfield. Most of their friends and family were in Bakersfield and most of the historical information and interviews are taking place in Bakersfield,” Pair said.
The case was previously being investigated by California City Police Department. Rewards totaling more than $100,000 have been posted for information on the children’s whereabouts.
Pair declined to state what, if any, information investigators have to go on at this point.
He said police are seeking to learn about the boys’ contacts and personalities from those who knew them.
Whether during a doctor’s visit or a trip to the grocery story, investigators want to know how the boys acted, who was around them, who they had relationships with, Pair said.
“Did one like to wander away? Was one shy? Were they super interested in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers?” Pair said. “Even things that seem inconsequential are super important sometimes.”
Anyone with information is asked to call the Secret Witness line at 322-4040.
Meanwhile, the Kern County Black Chamber of Commerce has announced a livestreamed panel discussion at 11 a.m. today featuring a biological cousin of the two boys and two other unnamed guests.
Nick Hill, the chamber’s president and CEO, said the idea is to find some new ways of obtaining information about the boys. The event will be available to watch on the chamber’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts, he said.
“We’re gonna see if we can get some people to call in or tap in on social media with some type of clues or insight,” Hill said.
The tight-knit community of California City, population 14,000, was galvanized by the news of the boys’ disappearance. The city put up $25,000 in reward money and several local businesses and a church also contributed money to encourage anyone with information to come forward. Community members organized prayer vigils and searches for the boys.
“We have posters on every intersection saying where are the boys,” said California City resident Carolinda Fleming.
The monarch butterfly and the mountain lion are complicating the already complex Bakersfield-to-Palmdale portion of California’s high speed rail project.
The High Speed Rail Authority was recently forced to revise environmental impact documents after both creatures became candidates for endangered species lists. The revisions must take place to satisfy the California Environmental Quality Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, which require mitigation efforts for significant environmental impacts.
The HSRA initially published its draft environmental impact statement in February 2020, but subsequently learned the Southern California and Central Coast mountain lion had been advanced to be a candidate for the California Environmental Species Act and the monarch butterfly could
be considered an endangered species under the federal Endangered Species Act but “that listing is precluded by other priorities.”
That meant HSRA had to go back and revise portions of its environmental statement. Unfortunately
for mountain lions and monarch butterflies, the HSRA found that the high speed rail could significantly impact their populations.
However, neither the mountain lion nor the monarch butterfly have been observed in the area along the rail line and HSRA says it will put mitigation measures in place to limit the impacts on the two populations during and after construction of the railway.
“The environmental process is set up so that you’ve got to make everybody aware in the notification process of what the potential impacts are. But just because there’s a potential impact doesn’t mean you can’t build it. It just means you have to mitigate it,” said Rob Ball, deputy director of Kern Council of Governments. “It’s just part of the environmental process. It’s kind of a routine process. There’s a thousand impacts that the high speed rail is going to have.”
Kyle Simerly, a public information officer for HSRA, wrote in an email that the revisions would not add significant cost to the $15.7 billion project, nor would they alter the timeline. He added that HSRA hoped to begin construction as soon as possible, depending on when funds become available.
Without a funding commitment in place, prospects for the project’s completion remain up in the air. Last year, Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, introduced a $32 billion bill in Congress that would dedicate a significant chunk of federal funding to the project. However, the bill did not pass and Costa recently reintroduced the bill in hopes that a new Congress will yield different results.
In the meantime, the public has the opportunity to comment on the updated environmental impact statement. The full report can be found at hsr.ca.gov. It can also be requested by calling 866300-3044 or emailing Bakersfield_ Palmdale@hsr.ca.gov.
Comments may also be submitted to the above email address or by visiting the comment form on HSR’s website.
The Kern County Board of Supervisors voted Feb. 23 to oversee the redrawing of district boundaries this year.
The issue is a fraught topic locally, with a history of voter suppression based around race. Typically done every 10 years after the completion of the nation’s census, Kern County was prematurely forced to redraw district lines in 2018 after the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund filed a lawsuit claiming the county’s supervisorial map violated the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting power of Latino citizens.
A U.S. District Court judge agreed, saying that Latino voters in Kern County had been deprived of the opportunity to elect representatives of their choice. MALDEF had contended the boundary between District 1 and District 4 unlawfully split a Latino community, inside the two larger white populations of the districts.
As a result, supervisors
created a second Latino-majority district, which is now represented by Supervisor David Couch.
Still, they now have to go through the whole process of redistricting once again to account for updated population totals provided by the census. However, due to delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic, supervisors will be in a race against the clock to even meet federal and state deadlines.
“This is going to be a difficult
process and I’m not envying the herculean effort that it’s going to be for the county to undertake,” Supervisor Phillip Peters said during last week’s meeting. “I know that staff is going to spend a lot of time on this and it’s going to be a challenge.”
Each county supervisor represents an area of roughly the same population. District 1 encompasses northeast Kern and Rosedale. District 2 takes
up south Kern. District 3 is composed largely of west and north Bakersfield. District 4 is composed of northwest Kern and Arvin, while District 5 is mostly southeast Bakersfield.
That could soon change, and deciding which communities make up each district has a large influence over political control of the county. On Feb. 23, Supervisor Leticia Perez indicated she hoped the discussion would not get too heated.
“These are complicated issues,” she said. “We will get through them without going to blows, I’m totally confident of that. We might get close, but I think we’ll work it out. There’s enough adults here to do it.”
As it currently stands, Kern County’s districts meet federal Voting Rights Act guidelines, but the census will provide an update on how populations have shifted over the last 10 years, and could force alterations.
Typically completed before the end of the year, the census has been delayed because of COVID-19. While the county would normally have an entire year to go through the map redrawing process, the county does not anticipate receiving census data until Sept. 30.
The final maps must be approved by Nov. 15 to meet the current deadline. If the county fails to keep up with this timeline, the California Supreme Court could take control of local redistricting.
Given the board’s history, the Leadership Counsel for Race, Justice and Accountability,
a community advocacy organization that operates in places such as Lamont and southeast Bakersfield, requested supervisors appoint an independent redistricting commission to “maintain and improve public confidence in local elections.”
Supervisors had the option of appointing an independent commission, assigning an advisory commission or taking control themselves. Due to the truncated nature of this year’s timeline, Supervisor Mike Maggard said the board needed to maintain control.
“If we’re going to meet this deadline, and there is a very important reason to meet these deadlines, we have to be as nimble as we can be,” he said. “With that said, we should be as open and transparent as we can possibly be.”
Supervisors will soon begin with receiving public input on how the new maps should be drawn. The county plans to release a web page soon that will provide updates on redistricting over the next few months.