2013 County Innovation Videos & Blogs

Las Pañasquitos Canyon Preserve is a gorgeous place. Contained within its 3,700 acres of open space, the county park offers more than 10 miles of trails for hikers and bicyclists throughout picturesque surroundings. The park also features a historic adobe ranch house that was built in 1823 by the recipients of the first Mexican land grant in San Diego County.  Combining a beautiful natural setting with local history is a great way to spend an afternoon.

Las Pañasquitos is just one of the gems in a San Diego County park system that encompasses approximately 100 parks on more than 45,000 acres of land. These gems are kept shining and open to the public through an extensive and successful County Parks and Recreation Department Volunteer Program.

San Benito County Librarian Nora Conte calls them “magical moments” – those opportunities a parent has to impact their child’s life in a positive way. And she has seen a number of them through the Grow Strong Benito program. Chief Probation Officer Brent Cardall likes to call the program, “Booked in a Different Way,” which really does sum up the intent – and success—of the program.

The program helps rehabilitate first-time drug offenders and intervenes in multi-generational cycles of crime and drug abuse by supporting the literacy and educational success of potential at-risk children. 

Crime doesn’t pay — it costs. Anyone who has ever been a crime victim can tell you that, but so can county sheriffs and probation chiefs who are responsible for keeping track of many of the people who commit crimes in California. They will tell you that it is far more expensive to keep someone in jail than it is to supervise them in the community. The corollary to that is it is far less expensive to help someone so they don’t break the law again, than it is to have to put them back in jail if they do.And if they aren’t committing more crimes, they aren’t creating anymore victims either.

With that in mind, San Bernardino County is at the forefront of a growing trend in criminal justice: meeting the needs of low-risk offenders so they don’t reoffend and get sent back to jail.

Riverside County covers more than 7,000 square miles, and includes some of the most sparsely populated landscape in the state. Keeping a county that big clean isn’t always easy, but Riverside County has a long-running jail inmate work program to pick up trash and maintain the landfills. It helps keep the roadsides clean and the inmates get some much-needed activity.

But a few years ago, Riverside County, like many in the state and across the country, found itself in a very tight budget situation. Money for minor construction and other small projects at the landfills had to be redirected to other priorities — and many of those projects were languishing. That’s when county leaders realized they might just have an untapped asset. What if you could expand the inmate program to include some of these other activities, as well as the typical trash clean up?

Mental illness! For some reason, we are perfectly happy discussing other chronic problems, from diabetes to the heartbreak of psoriasis, but mental illness? Let’s not talk about that right now. And because we don’t want to talk about it many people who suffer from it suffer alone. Mental illness can manifest itself in behavior that is unpleasant at best so many people who have it are estranged from their

In San Joaquin County, they have developed a new model for providing that help, a new way of treating some people with mental illness and supporting them as they get treatment.

“Water water everywhere, nor any drop to drink” complains the Ancient Mariner as he recounts a harrowing voyage at sea. Here in California, on dry land, we too lament our water situation. Like the Mariner, we sometimes run short of clean fresh water for thirsty cities and agricultural crops. And just as often it seems, we have too much water, in the wrong place, all at once. Dealing with a flood can be just as harrowing as going thirsty.

Instead of merely lamenting on that sad fact, the people at the Riverside County Flood Control and Water Conservation District are putting science to work to see if they can reduce storm-water runoff, improve water quality, use less irrigation water and replenish the aquifer at the same time. The District is developing a Low Impact Development (LID) manual for developers, so, they can incorporate Best Management Practices (BMP) to reduce runoff and improve water quality in their project designs.