Certain companies and nonprofits that contract with Sonoma County are required to pay their employees a living wage of $18.10 per hour.

On Tuesday, the county Board of Supervisors approved a Living Wage ordinance, not to be confused with the Jan. 1 action in the state Legislature that set a state minimum at $16 an hour.

The law applies to private companies with six or more employees that supply the county with at least $25,000 a year in contracted services and to nonprofits with at least 25 employees that supply more than $50,000 a year.

It applies to the county’s seven veteran’s memorial buildings, among other places. The employee numbers are smaller at the Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport. Matt Brown, spokesperson for the county, said in an email that only one company at the airport would meet the threshold, Apple Spice, since they are a chain.

According to Brown, lessees, service providers and temporary employees at the Sonoma County Fair are subject to the living wage ordinance. Vendors and concessionaires at the fair are exempt.

“An example of a lessee would be the golf course that operates in the center of the racetrack at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds,” said Brown. “A temporary employee is an employee who is hired by the fair to work during the event.”

End of avian flu emergency

The board also voted to end a Proclamation of Local Emergency that was issued Dec. 5 in response to an outbreak of avian flu. The outbreak was first detected at two Sonoma County commercial producers and resulted in the proactive euthanizing of 250,000 birds throughout the state.

The virus affected 11 commercial producers in Sonoma County, where over a million birds were euthanized at a loss of $20 million in bird and egg production, according to county spokesperson Dan Virkstis. 

No avian flu has been detected since Feb. 1. Quarantines have expired, but poultry owners that have detected unusual or suspicious illness or deaths should call the Sick Bird Hotline at (866) 922-BIRD (2473). 

Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.