Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/270994
dents for an additional 0.25 percent, raising the tax to 0.5 percent, with the addi- tional funding going toward street improvements. In his staff report, Crab- tree also asks the council to consider placing an Ad- visory Vote on the ballot, which would ask residents where the money should be allocated. By law a general sales tax raise can not be specif - ically earmarked. To be placed on the bal- lot, the council will need to adopt an ordinance by ma- jority rule, and then pass a resolution by four-fifths vote. Chamber funding In a formal letter the Red Bluff-Tehama County Chamber of Commerce has asked the City Council to lift a cap on the amount of Transient Occupancy Tax revenue the city allocates to the chamber each year. Prior to 2011, the city contributed 16 percent of its TOT revenue to the cham - ber. Since then the city has put a cap of $70,000 annu- ally on its contribution. The request to lift the cap isn't new from the chamber, but the reasoning is. Chamber Chairwoman Darlene Koontz said rais - ing the cap would allow the chamber to host the Craw- dad Festival. "We understand that voting to fund an event such as the Crawdad Fes - tival would be new terri- tory for the council , but be- lieve with your assistance this event will draw tour- ists from throughout the region meeting one of the goals outlined in the agree- ment," Koontz wrote. In his staff report Crab- tree recommends the coun- cil deny the request. He says the requests are made annually in the yearly budget appropriation and would require an estimated $32,500 supplemental ap - propriation which would further reduce the city's general fund. Council From Page 1 anthem. In a competitive junior division, age 10 to 14, Ashtin Lopeman, a 13-year-old op - era singer at Evergreen Middle School, earned first- place honors with a perfor- mance of "La Wally." Ellie Fletcher and Erin Woodward tied for second place after singing "Grav - ity," and "Blown Away," re- spectively. Cadence Kil- lam, who performed "Valse Dramatico" on the piano, earned third-place honors. In the senior division, age 15 to 18, 15-year-old Laurelle Ramsey's skilled effort on the piano earned her the top prize. In second was another pianist, 15-year- old Grant Cottier, and in third was a trio of Miranda Lafferty, Jenna MacDon - ald and Robert Puglisi. The three performed "Praise you in this Storm." The first-place winners will go on to the Exchange Club District Search for Talent contest May 3 at Win River Casino. Mitchell Sauve, the 2013 junior division district win - ner, gave a special guest performance of Ed Sheer- an's "Lego House." The Loosely Strung band also gave a special guest performance. Talent From Page 1 with populations between 50,000 and 500,000 resi- dents — had shorter and/ or shallower job recessions than the national average, more than any other group of county economies," the report said. Shasta, Butte and Trin - ity counties also experi- enced positive indicators in the four categories, but are still finding their way back to pre-recession economic output. Plumas County's economic output rate de - clined from 2012 to 2013. The report, which can be found at naco.org and al- lows users to view county profiles, stated that the housing sector "witnessed the largest increase in re - covery rates between 2012 and 2013 among all the in- dicators analyzed." Among the takeaways from the analysis is that "large counties were at the core of the recession and the recovery," according to the report. "Only 4 percent of the 3,069 county econ - omies, the 122 large econ- omies — in counties with more than 500,000 resi- dents — delivered around 58 percent of the county economies' output (GPD) growth and a similar share of the added jobs over the recovery." The report stated that the recession hit large counties the hardest, but they also were the fastest to recover "in terms of eco - nomic output and jobs." The report stated that by November 2013, the U.S. "was still 1.3 million jobs short of the pre-reces - sion peak and unemploy- ment rates remained above 7 percent." Economy From Page 1 Andre Byik — dAily news Ashtin lopeman, a 13-year-old opera singer who attends evergreen Middle school, performs "la wally" on saturday at the eighth annual exchange Club search for Talent show at the state Theatre for the Arts in red Bluff. lopeman earned first-place honors in the junior division. Pearce: Florence Pearce, 88, of red Bluff died sunday, March 2 at red Bluff Health Care. Arrangements are under the direction of Hoyt-Cole Chapel of the Flowers. Published Tuesday, March 4 in the daily news, red Bluff, Calif. Death notices must be provided by mortuaries to the news department, are published at no charge, and feature only specific basic information about the deceased. Paid obituaries are placed through the Classified advertising department. Paid obituaries may be placed by mortuaries or by families of the deceased and include online publication linked to the newspaper's website. Paid obituaries may be of any length, may run multiple days and offer wide latitude of content, including photos. Death notices By Ben Nuckols The Associated Press WaSHINgToN » On the lat- est snow day in a winter full of them, residents of parts of the South, Mid-Atlantic and Northeast were coping with several inches of snow on top of a layer of slush. With accumulations of 4-to-6 inches in Washing - ton, Monday's storm would have been the largest in the nation's capital in all of last year. But in the seemingly endless winter of 2013-2014, it came 2 ½ weeks after a much bigger storm, and the region settled into a familiar routine of hunkering down. Schools and government offices were closed. Fed - eral workers stayed home. Young adults gathered on the sloppy, slushy National Mall for a semi-organized, afternoon snowball fight. By early afternoon, the snow had stopped. But the region will face yet another challenge: another blast of bitterly cold arctic air. Tem - peratures were expected to dip into the single digits along the Eastern Seaboard on Monday night. That doesn't usually hap - pen after March 1, which is sometimes referred to as the start of "meteorological spring." If the forecast holds, it would be only the third sin - gle-digit day after March 1 in the recorded history of the nation's capital — and the previous two were in 1872 and 1873, according to the National Weather Service. Records were in danger elsewhere, too. In New Jer - sey, nearly 6 inches fell in some areas, which could make it the eighth snowiest winter in the last 120 years. "It's one of the more dis - ruptive winters of the last several decades," New Jer- sey state climatologist Da- vid Robinson said. Federal workers are fa- miliar with the routine. This was the fourth time this winter that the govern- ment has shut down because of weather — the most such closures since the back-to- back "Snowmaggeddon" storms of February 2010. In downtown Washing - ton, the roads were messy but passable, and the snow had stopped by early af- ternoon. The worst con- ditions came during what would have been morning rush hour, but traffic was all but nonexistent. Commuter trains were canceled, Am - trak was on a limited sched- ule, and while the Metro sub- way system stayed open, the massive parking garage at the Springfield, Va., station was nearly empty. Jim Lee, meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service in Ster - ling, Va., noted that every decade in Washington, there are only 6 days with 6-plus inches of snow. "We've had pretty close to two of them this year, al - ready — and winter's not over," Lee said. Tourists, who flock to the nation's capital 365 days a year, were seeking out what - ever activities they could find. In the morning, the Su- preme Court heard oral ar- guments inside a chamber packed with out-of-town visitors and legal wonks. By noon, crowds were grow - ing at the National Air and Space Museum, the only Smithsonian institution that was open Monday. Among them were Russ Watters, 60, of St. Louis, and his 14-year- old son, Seth, who was tour - ing Washington with his 8th- grade class. "We're trying to find stuff that's open, so this is open," Watters said. The group planned to stay on their bus and get drive-by lessons on the city's monuments in the afternoon. Government offices and schools were also closed throughout Delaware, parts of which got 6-plus inches. Further south, there were more problems. The Rich - mond, Va., area got several inches of snow, and Vir- ginia State Police troopers had responded to more than 800 traffic crashes across the state by 3 p.m. Monday. Police reported one fatal weather-related crash south - east of Richmond. G o v e r n o r s d e c l a r e d states of emergency in Vir- ginia and Tennessee, where there were hundreds of traf- fic crashes and tens of thou- sands of power outages. More than 2,800 flights in the United States were canceled as of Monday af - ternoon, according to flight tracking site FlightAware. com. The bulk of the prob- lems were at airports in Washington, New York and Philadelphia. In Texas, hundreds of flights were canceled, offi - cials called for energy con- servation measures, and in- terstates were turned into parking lots extending for miles. North Texas took the brunt of the latest storm. In suburban Falls Church, Va., dozens of pre-teen dare - devils went sledding and snowboarding down a steep hill behind an elementary school. But Maya Luera, 11, was unhappy that the snow day would force the school system to tack another day onto the end of the year. "I'm more of a summer person, so I'd rather have more free time in the sum - mer than the winter," she said. WeaTHer Harsh U.S. winter extends into March THe Free lAnCe-sTAr, AuTuMn PArry — THe AssoCiATed Press levi Hoffman, 13, skies down Hanover st. to his friend's house in Fredericksburg, Va., during the snowstorm on Monday. winter kept its icy hold on much of the country Monday, with snow falling and temperatures dropping as schools and offices closed and people from the south and Mid-Atlantic to northeast reluctantly waited out another storm indoors. By Craig Whitlock The Washington Post A sordid account involving illicit sex in uniform will be aired this week in an austere courtroom at Fort Bragg, N.C., and the results could tip the scales in a high-stakes debate in Con - gress over the future of the military justice system. The defendant, Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair, is accused of carrying on a long affair with a junior officer and sexually assaulting her on two occa - sions, among other crimes. He is only the third Army general to face court- martial in more than a half-century. But after two years of investigation and preparation, the prosecution is in disarray. The Army's lead trial counsel, Lt. Col. William Helixon, abruptly stepped down last month after confiding to su - periors and the general's defense team that he had qualms about the case. The Army scrambled to replace him, attributing his departure to "per - sonal reasons" and saying in court pa- pers that he was in "a state of extreme emotional distress." Meanwhile, the general's lover- turned-accuser — an Army captain 17 years his junior — faces lingering questions about her credibility. Although she has testified that Sin - clair twice forced her to perform oral sex against her will in Afghanistan, she has been unable to recall the ex- act dates and has given conflicting ac- counts to investigators and colleagues. In January, more doubts surfaced when she testified at a pretrial hear- ing that she had stumbled across an old iPhone in her apartment that con- tained messages between her and Sin- clair. Although she testified she had recently found the phone and that it hadn't been turned on in years, ex- perts for both the prosecution and defense said forensic evidence showed that the phone had been used several times late last year, raising questions about the veracity of her account. The Washington Post generally does not identify alleged sexual-assault vic - tims. Sinclair, a married paratrooper and former commander with the sto- ried 82nd Airborne Division, is sched- uled to return to the dock Thursday in a small Fort Bragg courtroom. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges, although his attorneys have acknowl - edged that he had an affair with the captain. The Army has set aside most of the month for the court-martial. The Army's handling of the case is being watched closely in Washington, where the Senate is scheduled to soon consider a major bill that would strip military commanders of their long- standing authority to prosecute sex - ual assaults and other major crimes. The bill, introduced by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is a response to con- cerns that military commanders have systematically failed to deter and po- lice sex abuse in the ranks. Gillibrand has said that a majority of senators favor her proposal, which would give uniformed prosecutors the power to decide whether to press charges. But it is unclear if she has enough votes to surmount procedural obstacles in the Senate. Leaders at the Pentagon have lob - bied fiercely against the bill, arguing that commanders need to retain legal authority to enforce order and disci- pline in their units. Both sides agree that the bill would represent the big- gest changes to military law in de- cades. The prosecution of Sinclair has been seen as a test case of the Ar- my's willingness to hold senior leaders accountable for sex crimes. With the Senate vote expected to be extremely close, any ripples from the Fort Bragg court-martial could easily influence the results. "It's really very unusual that you have a confluence of legislative and po - litical processes like this at the same moment," said Eugene Fidell, a lec- turer in military law at Yale Univer- sity. "It couldn't be clearer that these are interactive and likely to reflect the other." The Fort Bragg case, however, has turned some common political argu - ments about sexual assault in the mil- itary upside down. In the past, advocates for victims of sex crimes in the military have ar- gued that commanders have been too quick to dismiss their accounts of rape and abuse and too reluctant to press charges against fellow officers. Sinclair's lawyers assert that the opposite is true in his case. They said the evidence against him is flimsy but that senior Army leaders are afraid they will be portrayed as covering up for one of their own if they drop the most serious charges. "In a sense, I understand the fear that they have, and that it is driving their lack of doing the right thing, but that is not how the system is supposed to work," said Richard Scheff, a civil - ian attorney who is representing Sin- clair. "It's supposed to be driven by ev- idence and by what is fair and just, not fear." In court filings, Scheff has said that Helixon, the former lead prosecutor, bluntly told him in a Feb. 9 telephone conversation that he had come to the conclusion that the sexual assault charges against the general should be dropped, but senior Army leaders had insisted the case go forward because of "politics and outside pressures." In an interview, Scheff said he was taken aback that a prosecutor would admit such a thing to a defense at - torney. "Was I stunned? Yes, in bold, large font," Scheff said. "He wanted to do the right thing. He's got strong eth- ics and a strong moral compass." Helixon resigned from the case two days later. He did not respond to a re- quest for comment placed through an Army spokesman. In a court filing Friday, the Army acknowledged that Helixon had told his superiors that he thought the sex - ual assault charges against Sinclair should be dismissed for "tactical" rea- sons because they "would be difficult to win at trial." But in the military justice system, prosecutors don't decide whether charges should be pursued or dropped. That's up to senior commanders. And the Army made clear that it would pro - ceed. "There undeniably remain rea- sonable grounds to believe that the ac- cused committed the sexual assault of- fenses," the new prosecutor, Lt. Col. Robert Stelle, said in the court filing. TrIal General's court-martial could shape the future of military justice system "In a sense, I understand the fear that they have, and that it is driving their lack of doing the right thing, but that is not how the system is supposed to work. It's supposed to be driven by evidence and by what is fair and just, not fear." — Richard Scheff, civilian attorney R ed Bluff Simple Cremations & Burial Service Now Offering Eco-Friendly urns at economy friendly prices. 722 Oak Street, Red Bluff, FD Lic. 1931 527-1732 TuesdAy, MArCH 4, 2014 redBluFFdAilynews.CoM | OBITUARIES | 7 a