CELEBRATING COMMUNITY INSTITUTIONS
PROGRESS 2018 By Rollie Atkinson Sonoma West Publishers Staff rogress for many parts of Sonoma County in 2018 will be defined by recovery and rebuilding after the historic wildfires of October 2017 that destroyed more than 5,000 homes and businesses. Even communities that were not in the direct line of raging fires will continue to be impacted by loss of jobs, a shifting population base and immediate and longer term impacts to the local tax base. For communities such as Cloverdale, Healdsburg, Windsor, Sebastopol and nearby rural areas a test of resiliency will be faced by local governments, nonprofits and volunteer organizations. Many of these community institutions are profiled in this annual Progress edition. Each lay out a local agenda for moving forward on issues such as housing, economic development and protecting their fireimpacted tax base. Local healthcare centers also are profiled here, providing information on important ongoing initiatives such as child wellness, chronic disease prevention and improved primary care access. Some of the institutions included in these pages are private businesses which have gained institutional status due to their longevity or core position in their local business community. There’s also another “community institution” included here, which is our family of local newspapers. Most of these four newspapers (The Healdsburg Tribune, The Cloverdale Reveille, The Windsor Times and Sonoma West Times & News) have been in existence longer than the communities they serve were officially incorporated. The newspapers also are identified as essential institutions because of the ways they support and report on both public agencies and private nonprofits.
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A SPECIAL ANNUAL PUBLICATION OF SONOMA WEST PUBLISHERS • APRIL 26, 2018