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One proven and popular communications strategy is to connect your message to a scheduled event or observance. Like promoting heart disease screening around Valentine’s Day, it’s a strategy we use regularly at CSAC because it helps get your message out to a wider audience. In reviewing the social media posts and videos created during the COVID-19 crisis, I realized we’ve had a remarkable number of regularly-scheduled observances that uniquely relate to current events and California’s counties.

In the last six weeks, CSAC has observed:

• National Doctor’s Day on March 30
• Census Day on April 1

Humboldt County has taken its code enforcement of illegal cannabis grows to new heights – thousands of miles above the Earth to be exact. It’s a state-of-the-art strategy being employed by the County Planning and Building Department to identify unpermitted cannabis cultivations.  Now instead of sending staff into the depths of the 4,000-square-mile county to come across grows that are not in compliance, all it takes is a click of the mouse to review current satellite footage.

When you think about it, county government agencies collect and retain a staggering amount of personal information. From voter registration and marriage licenses, to property tax information, your county knows almost as much about you as the IRS.

On a crisp and clear morning late last year, around 20 volunteer firefighters, landowners and community members gathered on a plot of land outside of the small rural community of Kneeland in Humboldt County. They listened intently to detailed instructions on how to safely burn 20 acres of private property that gradually rises on a hill before them.  The volunteers gathered to learn how to successfully undertake a prescribed burn.

About 15 years ago, while working for the Western Plant Health Association, I testified in support of a project at the Port of San Diego alongside representatives from the Audubon Society, the Teamsters Union and more. It struck me as funny that civil engineering could bring together such diverse groups, and that’s exactly the case in Riverside County’s Southeast Drainage Channel Improvement Project.

“Community Safety, Partners in Service” is the motto of the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department, and this fall I was able to witness first-hand how a small group of deputies lives this motto and mission every day.