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FRIDAY Salisbury Gives Lift NOVEMBER 22, 2013 LosMo Volleyball Education Breaking news at: www.redbluffdailynews.com See Page 7A SPORTS 1B DAILY NEWS RED BLUFF Sunny 66/42 Weather forecast 10A TEHAMA COUNTY DAILY 50¢ T H E V O I C E O F T E H A M A C O U NTY S I N C E 1 8 8 5 Teachers turn out against superintendent By RICH GREENE DN Staff Writer The Red Bluff Joint Union High School District Teachers Association formally presented its vote of no confidence in Superintendent Lisa Escobar's leadership at Wednesday's Board of Trustees meeting. "At a time when change is happening in the educational field today, such as Common Core, Local Control Funding and Professional Learning Communities, the top-down management style of Superintendent Escobar is ineffective," Association President Steve Piffero said. "This style of leader- To read an extended list of feedback by the Red Bluff Joint Union High School District Teachers Association visit redbluffdailynews.com. ship does not work well in the field of education where collaboration, trust and mutual respect should be the norm." The union's complaints are that Escobar has made changes Daily News photo by Rich Greene The Red Bluff Joint Union High School District Board of Trustees meeting was heavily attended Wednesday as the teachers union announced its vote of no confidence in the leadership of Superintendent Lisa Escobar. Switch blade that are not good for students, that she is not an effective collaborator or communicator, has been inconsistent with her decisions and has not supported what the teachers do well. The meeting had been moved to the school's library conference room to handle a larger crowd, but the new venue wasn't large enough to hold the crowd of teachers that lined the back walls and spilled into the hallway. Despite the large show of support, outside of Piffero's prepared statement and one parent, no one else spoke during City's reserve to drop to $62,000 By RICH GREENE Work starts to replace historic theater's blade and marquee DN Staff Writer The city of Red Bluff's General Fund is projected to dwindle down to just around $62,000 by the end of June 2015. That was the message from Finance Director Sandy Ryan at Tuesday night's City Council meeting during a presentation that showed the city's fund balance would drop by $677,159 over the next two years if spending policies weren't changed. City Manager Richard Crabtree requested the city's Budget Committee meet in January to begin discussion on how to tackle the problem. "We can't keep spending $300,000 more a year than we're taking in," he said. By RICH GREENE DN Staff Writer Red Bluff's skyline is in for a shiny, new change that recalls the city's past. Work started Thursday on replacing the State Theatre's blade and marquee as workers began work to take down the existing blade and engineers examined the structure. The State Theatre for the Arts is spending around $75,000 to restore the blade and marquee to its original look — complete with neon lights. The project should take about three months to complete, weather permitting — as it wasn't for portions of Thursday. Work was postponed due to high winds. "We feel like it will let the public know we're back and we're here to stay," the organization's president Bill Cornelius said. The group received a $65,000 grant from the Shasta Regional Community Foundation for the project. Cornelius said his See TEACHERS, page 9A See CITY, page 9A State offers relief to truckers Daily News photo by Chip Thompson Work began Thursday on a restoration project to restore the State Theatre's blade and marquee. The 3-month project will include restoring the neon lights that once glowed downtown. group hopes to replicate the success Redding had in its restoration of the Cascade Theatre — and that a revamped theater would revitalize the downtown business district. Earlier this month the State Theatre for the Arts See BLADE, page 9A The California Air Resources Board recently announced that it will provide relief to truckers working to meet state deadlines for upgrades to their aging diesel fleets. The change comes following letters from the Tehama County Air Pollution Control District and other rural air districts seeking various changes in the mandate, said district controller Alan Abbs. The relief is detailed in a regulatory advisory which recognizes good faith efforts of fleets to meet upcoming compliance deadlines. The advisory also provides early access to planned regulatory changes to be considered by the Board in April 2014. The move comes as larger fleets are required under the Statewide Truck and Bus Regulation to complete the upgrade for most of their trucks with diesel particulate filters by Jan. 1, 2014, and as smaller fleets are just beginning to undertake similar actions. "The Air Resources Board is implementing new, flexible compliance options for truck owners who show they have made good faith efforts to comply with the regulation before Jan. 1, 2014, and is providing additional time for many fleets to complete their clean-up efforts," said ARB Executive Officer Richard Corey. "These changes will help businesses meet the clean-up requirements in a way that will not compromise the health bene- See TRUCKERS, page 9A Calif. health exchange upholds policy cancelations SACRAMENTO (AP) — The board overseeing California's health insurance exchange voted unanimously Thursday to stick with its current year-end deadline of phasing out more than 1 million individual health insurance policies that fail to meet requirements of the federal health care overhaul, turning aside a plea by President Barack Obama to let those policies continue. In voting 5-0, Covered California board members said allowing the older polices to continue would undermine the new insurance marketplaces. Those 7 5 8 5 5 1 6 9 0 0 1 9 policies are being ended because they do meet the more extensive requirements for essential benefits under the federal Affordable Care Act. ''There's no way to make the federal law work without this transition to ACA-compliant plans,'' board member Susan Kennedy said. ''Delaying the transition isn't going to help anyone; it just delays the problems. I actually think that it's going to make a bad situation worse if we complicate it further.'' The state insurance commissioner has said that 1.1 million Californians are receiving notices that their current individual health insurance policies will be discontinued in 2014, a deadline previously agreed to by the exchange and insurers. Nearly 220,000 policies will be extended until March because the companies failed to meet regulatory deadlines for notifying policy holders. The cancellations have angered some policy holders, many of whom will see their monthly premiums and deductibles rise sharply under new plans. They also fly in the face of promises Obama made repeatedly when he said people who liked their current health insurance policies could keep them under his health insurance reforms. The president has since backtracked and has asked states to allow insurance companies to extend those older policies. But many insurance companies oppose extending the policies, saying doing so would undermine the new markets being set up under Obama's law. They also said they did not have enough time to rebuild policies they already had discontinued. Officials described myriad complications if the board had agreed to modify the existing policy cancellation contract Covered California has with insurers, including how much premiums could rise, whether consumers might be subject to two deductibles in one year and the tight timeline in which to make a decision, with the end of the year quickly approaching. Insurance companies would need to notify customers that they were re-offering the old plans and process customer payments before Dec. 31. Charles Bacchi, executive vice president of the California Association of Health Plans, said higher premiums for some consumers are inevitable, ''whether it's today, whether it's three months from now or whether it's next year.'' But he said a delay in the policy cancellations was unnecessary because California's marketplace website is operating pretty much as planned. ''Because of that option, because people can buy coverage and it's working, we think that we should continue this transition of folks into ACA-compliant policies,'' he said. No matter what action the board had taken Thursday, Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee said the state cannot force any insurance companies to extend their already expired plans. Because of the confusion over cancellations, the board on Thursday also extended the deadline to purchase an insurance policy for coverage to start in the new year, from Dec. 15 to Dec. 23. The deadline to make the first payment on that policy was extended four days, to Jan. 5. California is the latest state to respond to the president's about-face on the policy cancellations. The response to Obama's plea for an extension of those See POLICY, page 9A