Bill Swindell

  With an unemployment rate of 3.8 percent for April, the lowest level in Sonoma County in nine years, desperate job recruiters are turning to extreme measures. How extreme? A group of Calistoga employers is holding a job fair in Santa Rosa on Wednesday and offering a shuttle service to attract new hires from Sonoma County. “We’re seeing a huge need to fill this workforce,” said Jessica Taylor, Job Link manager for the Sonoma County Human Services Department. Joanne Sanders, founder of the recruitment firm Bolt Staffing in Sonoma, said the job market is the tightest it has been since […]

Officials at Santa Rosa’s two blood banks welcomed Tuesday’s FDA decision to lift the lifetime ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men, saying it was a move based on science as well as a policy change that many have been advocating. “We’re pleased that the FDA is going in this direction and it is certainly consistent with our position all along,” said Kent Corley, spokesman for the Blood Centers of the Pacific, which serves 50 hospitals from Silicon Valley to the Oregon border and operates a facility in Santa Rosa. “I do believe it is very much predicated in […]