Friday update 9-18-2020

There are a lot of clean cars in Winters this week.  Thanks to the Winters Fire Department, Winters Police Department and Kona Ice, people were able to get their cars washed and raise money for fire victims on Sunday September 13, 2020.  Good job by all the Fire, Police and Kona people, and good job to all the folks that came and got their cars washed.  Once again, the community spirit in Winters has provided for those in need.

Tuesday night the City Council recognized the service of Dan Maguire and Carol Scianna to the City of Winters.  We had hoped to have a party, but, you know…..COVID…. Do we need to say more?

We also received a presentation from Kate Laddish and Elaine Roberts Musser on Emergency preparedness and Evacuation Planning for Vulnerable Populations.   This included a copy of the Recommendations to the Yolo County Supervisors on January 28, 2020.  You can find the report here  https://www.cityofwinters.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/2020_0915CityCouncilPacket.pdf   The report starts on page 47.

We also received an update and information on how various emergency alerts are sent out by Dana Carey with Yolo County OES.  I would encourage everyone to sign up for the alert system at www.yolo-alert.org and put ALL your phone numbers and addresses into the system for the best coverage possible for the alerting system within Yolo County.  To view an evacuation map, go to www.evacuate.yolocounty.org for the map, you can put in your address and it will tell you your evacuation zone.

John Donlevy gave us a BIG list of projects that he and everyone else at City Hall is working on or needs to work on in the coming months and years.  Hopefully this will help our new City Manager see what a great cooperative team of people are working here at City Hall as we all work together on this project list.

Excitement is in the air about the receipt of the Grant for the Winters Senior Center.  We are getting lots of questions of what the next step is and when that will happen.  The next step is that the City of Winters needs to enter into a contract for the Grant with the State of California.  That typically takes 4-6 weeks to get the contract into the hands of City Staff, so we are still waiting on that.  Once the contract is signed by both parties, we are ready to put the project out to bid.  This means it will be advertised for builders to review the plans and provide the City with a bid on constructing the project.  Once that happens, we will review all the bids and award and contract for construction and construction can begin.  It is a process that is determined by State and Federal guidelines since they are providing the bulk of the money for the project.  We have to follow the rules, and in the end, we will have a beautiful facility for the Senior population of our City.

We have received notification from the Sacramento-Yolo Mosquito Vector Control District that invasive (meaning not native to California) mosquitos have been found in Winters.  I know with all the smoke in the air we haven’t been doing a lot of outdoor activities, but, we need to be sure that we eliminate standing water to minimize the mosquitos.  Ground mosquito control treatments did take place this morning and will take place again on Monday 9-21-2020 between 2am and 5am.  If you would like to sign up for mosquito control notifications you can do so here https://www.fightthebite.net/services/spray-notifications/

Yolo County is launching a Small Business Grant Program today with the launch of the website for information and the grant application period begins on September 28, 2020 at 9 AM.  The website for the program is www.yolocounty.org/small-business-grant

You can email questions to SBGprogram@yolocounty.org.

Seems like I put a lot of links into this week’s update, but, hopefully it will provide good information for everyone.

Have a good weekend

Shelly Gunby
Interim City Manager
Director of Financial Management