Barbara Guggia | Nov 26, 2021 on: PRN Posts

Happy Thanksgiving Soda Canyon Neighbors

As we celebrate Thanksgiving and approach the Christmas holiday season, I am thankful Napa County has begun to take a proactive approach to fire issues. Financial resources are being directed to fire prevention projects from public and privates sources. For example the Atlas Peak AVA has donated substantial resources fuel reduction, fire breaks, and for the installation of an IQ Fire Watch camera. I would like to share with you the following updates regarding fire prevention that will impact Napa Valley and our Soda Canyon Fire Safe Council District.

1. The Board of Supervisors awarded $1 million to the Napa Communities Firewise Foundation for fuel mitigation to be used by June 2021. The Board also awarded $5.4 million for the 2021-2022 fiscal year.
   
2. The Napa Communities Firewise Foundation was successful in obtaining a $5,855,215 grant from CalFire and will be used to reduce hazardous fuels from the five recent large fires over the last four years: Atlas-Lightning, Angwin Glass, Nuns, and Tubbs-Glass. There will be funding available for local fire safe councils’ projects.
   
3. This year the Countywide Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) was completed and developed a wildfire protection plan for the entire county. Regarding Soda Canyon’s CWPP, it was originally written in 2012 and needed to be updated. I have recently received a draft copy from our consultant and anticipate sharing the proposed projects with the Soda Canyon community members in the next few months, receiving feedback, and as a community, setting priorities. We have quite a few hoops to jump through; however, I am hopefully our updated CWPP will be completed by May 2022.
   
4. If you would like to sign up for the free Napa County Chipping program, the last day to sign up this Friday, November 26th. Sign-ups will resume in Spring 2022, sometime around April, dependent upon the weather. If you are interested, you can sign up at the Napa County website:
   https://services.countyofnapa.org/chippingform/
   
5. Senator Bill Dodd has named the Napa Communities Firewise Foundation as the beneficiary of his annual holiday fundraiser on December 3rd and although it is sold out, you can still bid on silent and live auction lots. Check out the information below if you are interested.
   
   REGISTRATION FOR BIDDING:
   If you plan to bid on silent or buy-a-spot auction lots, please register by clicking this link: https://event.auctria.com/5e98a75c-1c61-4421-a215-4e269a807e81/17e79e00ef7811e9a6d4d9143a192aa8
   
   SILENT AUCTION: Once you’re registered to bid, you can bid on silent lots online until the silent auction closes at 7:30pm PST December 3.
   
   LIVE AUCTION: You don’t have to attend the event to bid on live auction lots. Simply complete the attached proxy bidding form and email it back to Sean Dempsey at sean@seandempseynv.com. You must be registered and your bidding representative must be in attendance at the event and must have a bidder number, there are no exceptions.
   
   ADVANCE VIEWING OF LOTS:
   Click this link to preview the lots. The online auction will go live Friday, November 26 at 8AM.
   https://event.auctria.com/5e98a75c-1c61-4421-a215-4e269a807e81/a780d600ec2e11e9ae081db830846aa5
   Alternatively, to access “register to bid” or to “view auction catalog”, visit billdoddholidayparty.com and scroll down to the middle of the landing page.

Thank you for your time and interest and enjoy a safe holiday season,

Barbara Guggia
Soda Canyon Fire Safe Council.