Lake County public health officer resigns
Last day will likely be in mid-april
ELEARLAKE » Dr. Gary Pace, Lake County’s public health officer, has resigned and will be stepping down from his position in the next couple of months, Clearlake’s city manager said Thursday.
Clearlake City Manager Alan Flora announced Pace’s resignation at the end of the Clearlake City Council meeting, adding that the county would be attempting to recruit a new public health officer over the next couple of months. Pace may remain in the position until sometime in April, Flora said. Further details about his departure were not shared during the meeting, but Pace confirmed his decision in a press release Friday.
Pace noted, “My official last day in the role will likely be in mid-april, and I expect to provide support over a longer period, if needed. The Board (of Supervisors) will discuss a strategy to replace me during this Tuesday’s meeting.”
Pace added that serving
Lake County during the COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most rewarding experiences and greatest challenges of his career, particularly over these past 11 months.
“I have given all I had the capacity to give,” he noted, and added, “I sought to listen to the needs of local residents, and provide safety measures and other health recommendations that best reflected the available science, knowing they would often be widely criticized.”
“While my primary responsibility has been to protect the health of Lake County’s communities, it has been truly heartbreaking to see the many types of consequences that have come for individuals and businesses in the past year,” Pace wrote, noting that he has worked or over 20 years in family medicine, and will be returning to clinical practice in the coming months.
“Now, we stand at an inflection point in our pandemic response. The high boil of the initial crisis has transitioned toward a sustained, long-term-focused response that will require intensive partnership with the State and other organizations in our communities. Our COVID-19 vaccination effort, so key to a return to some kind of ‘normal,’ is still in the early phases, but there is hope supply and distribution will continue to ramp up in the coming months,” Pace noted.
“Overall, he’s been a good partner with the city and we’ve enjoyed working with him,” Flora said. “He’s always been responsive to concerns that we’ve had, so we wish him the best.”
Flora added that in some ways, he wasn’t surprised to hear about Pace’s plan to step down when he first found about it during the weekly meeting of the Lake County Emergency Operations Center (EOC) Thursday morning comprised of county staff and the two city managers who serve as the emergency service managers for the two city jurisdictions. According to Flora, this meeting with local partners has more recently consisted of a smaller contingent of participants.
“In some ways it’s surprising he lasted this long,” said Flora alluding to the mistreatment a number of public health officers have experienced in the nearly year long duration of the pandemic. “A lot of people have said derogatory stuff and made being in that job uncomfortable.”
According to Bruno Sabatier, chair of the BOS, the board was given a heads up to the resignation sometime earlier this week and confirmed that the board will discuss at Tuesday’s meeting how to move forward. “I wouldn’t say that I’m surprised. It is unfortunate that throughout the state Public Health Officers have felt very pressured politically when their position is apolitical,” he said also acknowledging that PHOS have had a stressful and difficult journey in this past year.
“While the board may have pushed back on some of the decisions made by the state’s Public Health guidelines and approach to the pandemic, Dr. Pace has stood strong on his commitment to prioritizing the public health of our communities,” said Sabatier.
Pace’s resignation comes in the wake of the County of Lake’s formation of a new ethics committee designed to help guide the county’s public health department in making decisions about COVID vaccine rollouts.
In other actions, the council voted unanimously to request Community Development Block Grant funding for five projects suggested by city staff, including code enforcement activities, a public safety surveillance camera system, expanded broadband access, a generator system for public works, and planning and design to resolve storm water issues in the city.
A motion was made by Councilman Russ Cremer and seconded by Vice Mayor Russ Perdock. For each project, the city will request that up to $500,000 be awarded.
The council also voted unanimously to declare several city-owned properties as “surplus” land that can be purchased by developers for affordable housing development, as required by state law under Assembly Bill 1486, which was enacted in 2019.
Flora said city staff was working with the League of California Cities and the office of Sen. Mike Mcguire, D-healdsburg, to try to get some modifications to the bill in place.
“Unfortunately, the way the legislation was written, there’s actually, in our opinion, limited local authority to refuse to negotiate with an affordable housing developer; for example, if the property is not zoned for affordable housing development,” Flora said.
The city manager said he wasn’t sure how likely the proposed changes were to be made, but that Clearlake’s voice was definitely being heard. The city is in a much different situation than much of the rest of California, he said.
“One of the frustrations is that here in the city of Clearlake, we don’t have a problem developing affordable housing,” Flora said. “It’s easy. It’s been done for years. In fact, the council’s given direction that we need to put more effort into developing market-rate housing. That’s what’s difficult for us to develop here because of housing values and construction costs.”
A full list of the Clearlake properties deemed as “surplus” can be found on page 50 in the agenda packet.