Tuesday's Board of Supervisors meeting ended with an adjournment in memory of Environmental Health Department employee Elisa Escandon, who recently lost her battle with cancer. She was a spokesperson for the County's marrow donor registry drive.
Photo Courtesy: San Diego State University
San Diego State University will host a San Diego County Day with discounted tickets and a free fair for County employees at the Aztecs’ Oct. 18 football game against Hawaii.
Tickets are just $5 for employees and their family members. You can grab the discounted SDSU football tickets online with coupon code Aztec. (When visiting the website, you may get a pop-up window you need to close before proceeding.)
The game kicks off against the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors at 7:30 p.m. at Qualcomm Stadium. The fair, with rides and activities for kids, will be in parking lot sections C1 and D1 prior to the game from 5 to 7 p.m. Parking is $10.
To get you pumped up for the game, join Supervisor Ron Roberts as the San Diego State Marching Aztecs, spirit squad and cheerleaders make a special visit to the County Operations Center on Wednesday, Oct. 1. The crew will be drumming up excitement from noon to 1 p.m. You can also purchase tickets with cash at this time. Roberts and fellow supervisors Greg Cox and Bill Horn – all SDSU grads – are expected to attend the game.
For those that can’t make it to the game, you can watch the action and look for your colleagues in the stands on CBS Sports Network.
Photo Courtesy: San Diego State University
Fall into a healthy fitness routine next month with cardio classes, free weights and personal training sessions. For the month of October, registration fees to all YMCA locations will be waived for County employees—$50 for a standard membership or $100 for a Plus membership.
The YMCA of San Diego County has facilities throughout the county from Otay Mesa West to Oceanside and downtown to Santee. The Y also has programs for the entire family, including fitness class, swim lessons, sports leagues, camps and child care.
Membership fees ranges from $33 to $49 per month for a single adult, and $50 to $81 for a family. Rates for Membership Plus, which gives you access to all of the County Y facilities, is $53 for a single adult, $59 for a one parent family and $84 for a family. For additional information on rates or for information on financial assistance, visit ymca.org.
To be eligible, you must be a current County employee and sign up for regular or PLUS memberships between Oct. 1 and Oct. 31.
Sarah Rafi, with HHSA, attended training on “Risk Awareness, Violence Prevention & Crisis Response” and posted the posters from the training on her office’s bulletin board.
The Safety Selfie contest ends soon, but there is still time to submit a photo. You could help keep the workplace safe and get a chance to win one of five Kindle Fires.
Participating is easy. Take a selfie that shows you supporting workplace safety. Then email that photo to lossprev@sdcounty.ca.gov. Make sure to include your name and how the selfie relates to safety in your email. Check out a few of the pictures already submitted below.
The deadline is Sept. 30. Winners will be selected at random in October.
Read the full rules of the contest on InSite.
Hhere are some simple things that you do to help reduce your chances of getting injured at work – and if you come across them, might be perfect for your own Safety Selfie:
Please check out the Work Safe/Stay Healthy page for more information about safety and injury prevention.
Dingiswayo Baker, with Department of Animal Services, fixed a floor mat.
Ana Daugherty, Continuous Quality Improvement Policy Analyst with North Inland Child Welfare Services, makes sure making sure that doors and doorways are clear of any obstructions.
Aida Pratt, with the North County Regional Gang Task Force, found and reported a loose piece of carpet. It has since been fixed.
Monica Reed, a Human Services Specialist with NCFRC, picks up tripping hazard on the bathroom floor.
Yelena “Leena” Smithson fixed several workplace hazards and then donned safety gear for a selfie.
John Hull grew up immersed in music – he was making noise on the drums at age 5, slapping the bass guitar in high school and strumming his six-string at Missouri State, where he was awarded a music scholarship. But the Missouri native knew after just a year and a half of college that teaching music wasn’t for him.
“Music was my passion. It’s what I loved doing. But with a music degree, all you can do is teach. And I wanted to keep music my passion. So I chose a career on the opposite spectrum,” Hull said.
A friend convinced Hull to take a criminal justice class and he was hooked. He worked as an intern in the Midwest at a probation department which opened the door for his future: San Diego County’s Probation Department.
Ironically, though, it was music that brought him out west in 2004.
“I wanted to get my feet wet in the musical community,” Hull said. “I worked as a program coordinator with YMCA youth at the time, which gave me time for small tours and vacations… I met all of my band members and started playing at almost every coffee shop and music venue in San Diego.”
Hull followed in the footsteps of San Diego favorites like Jason Mraz and Jewel, filling their local haunts with his tunes. His very first show was at Lestat’s West, on Adams Avenue in Normal Heights – a venue he occasionally still stops by and plays at.
But playing live music wasn’t quite the substantial career. Hull wanted something that would provide him with stability. He didn’t want to be crashing on couches for the long-term.
“Having something to fall back on was instilled in me from a very young age. It’s important,” Hull said. “Everyone should have something to fall back on.”
So in January of 2007, Hull started working for the Probation Department, specifically in institutions. And for the past two years, he’s been a Deputy Probation Officer monitoring offenders that became the County’s responsibility under AB109, the California Public Safety Realignment Act.
It’s certainly not the same as picking up your instrument and putting on a show, but Hull loves it just the same.
“Every musician has to have a day job and I just have to really enjoy my day job,” he said. “From day one working for the County, I say, ‘I get paid to do this?’
And Friday, Sept. 19, Hull gets to combine both his passions, sharing his talent with co-workers at a lunchtime concert at the Waterfront Park at the CAC. The singer/songwriter, whose sound might be described as a blending of Jason Mraz and Adam Levine, will be playing acoustic melodies from his latest album, Shades of Gray, from noon-1 p.m.
Of course, if you can’t make it, Hull shows off his skills every Friday downtown at The Tipsy Crow from 8-10 p.m. Bring your song requests.
“It’s one of those fun gigs where I get to interact with the crowd and it really builds your stage presence,” Hull said. “I’ve always stressed to engage the crowd and Tipsy Crow is definitely one of those places I get to do that.”
For the future, Hull looks forward to continuing offering a positive outlook for offenders and working on a new album, with a funkier, more electronic sound to it.
“I would enjoy making a song for a television show and then it sells and I could actually make roots here in San Diego!” Hull said. “But I’m happy and I love my job. Every day is something different.”
For a sample of Hull’s music he’ll be performing Friday, check out the video below.
The Registrar of Voters is looking for a few good County employees to staff the polls for the Nov. 4 Gubernatorial General Election. Yes, it’s that time already. Poll worker training begins in a matter of weeks and ballots for military and overseas voters go out on Sept. 20 so election season is already under way.
The Registrar is looking first to you, County employees, because of your sense of civic duty, your desire to excel and because you serve the public on a daily basis and that skill carries over naturally to working the polls. Overall, some 5,000 poll workers are needed for 1,432 polling places in the County. In return for your long day of service, you will receive a stipend ranging from $75 to $175 depending on the assignment, and you may be eligible to use paid leave to be a poll worker.
Bilingual speakers are in particular demand and receive an additional $15 if they’re assigned to give language assistance to voters. The Registrar’s office is required by federal law to provide bilingual speakers and voting materials to voters who speak Spanish, Filipino, Vietnamese and Chinese. A survey by the University of California, Berkeley also showed a need for speakers of Khmer, Japanese, Korean and Hindi at several precincts, so the Registrar is recruiting bilingual poll workers in those languages too.
Poll workers must be U.S. citizens who are registered to vote in California or have been lawfully admitted for permanent residence here. You must provide your own transportation to the assigned polling location, have access to the Internet for online training and attend a two-hour class.
It’s easy to apply, and if you have any questions, you can read these FAQs or call (858) 694-3419 or email: Jean.Vukotich@sdcounty.ca.gov.
Often over-the-counter pain medication is not enough to curb the pain of a migraine. People who suffer from these debilitating headaches have tried a change in diet, eye drops, yoga, meditations, Botox and even surgery to lessen the frequency and intensity of migraines.
Get help finding relief for your migraine—attend the County’s next lunch and learn session to know how to manage the pain. The Pain Management – Migraine information session will be held noon to 1 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 17 in Room 124 at 5530 Overland Dr. at the County Operations Center.
An estimated 28 million people in the U.S. experience migraine headaches each year. They are usually described as an intense, throbbing or pounding headache. The pain may be localized in one temple, the forehead, around the eyes or at the back of the head.
Wellness Coordinator William Erese said this lunch and learn presentation will provide information on the various triggers that cause migraines and offer suggestions on how to treat them.
The class will be taught by Tere Filer, MS, MPH, a fitness and wellness educator.
To register for the free lunch and learn, log into LMS and search for the class by title "Wellness 2014 Lunch and Learn: Pain Management - Migraine - COC."
We’re showing a fresh face to the world today. The County’s website has a new look and some new features to make it more useful to the people we serve.
First off – the address. We’re now using SanDiegoCounty.gov and have built that in as the title on the site. The address the County has long used, sdcounty.ca.gov, will still work, so there’s no immediate need to change any links or bookmarks out there. But the new name should be easier for the public to remember. And SanDiegoCounty.gov applies only to the website. Email addresses are staying as they are.
The biggest change is that the site was designed to display much better on smartphones. The sections of a page will resize and re-stack to fit the screen, with a lot less pinching and zooming. If you look at the site on your desktop then your phone, you’ll see the menu collapses into a single button. Getting everything on the site to adjust smoothly from desktop to phone will take continued effort, but we’re in much better shape to reach customers where they now expect to get things done: on their mobile devices.
One of the most important tools on any website is the search, and we've made a couple improvements to ours. If you start typing something in the search box, after a few letters you'll see it give a few suggestions of most common results. There’s also some work on the back end that will match specific pages to certain phrases, making much better search results. These features should also continue to get better with time.
From the County's home page, you'll see a new addition to the site, a section called SDCountyInFocus. It compiles in one location reports, maps, look-up tools, facts and figures on the gamut of County services and activities.
Those are a few of the highlights. There’s still a little work going on in the transition, so – pardon our dust, so to speak, if you come across any. But welcome to the new SanDiegoCounty.gov.
Linda Feeley with Agriculture, Weights and Measures
Seasonal flu vaccines are now available to County employees! County Operations Center employees were the first to line up for the free shot on Tuesday.
All employees are encouraged to take advantage of this benefit. Your appointing authority may approve reasonable County time for employees to receive their flu shots. To be eligible to receive your free flu shot, you will need to present your County ID.
The 2014 Flu Shot Schedule is available on the County Wellness website. No appointment is necessary.
Susan Esqueda, Jody Bumhoffer and Leah Samaniego with the Registrar of Voters
Christine Grove 
It’s back-to-school season! And if that has you thinking about lifelong learning or career advancement, know that there are tuition discounts available to you. National University and the University of Phoenix now offer tuition rate cuts to County employees.
National University
County employees are eligible for 15 percent off tuition and a waiver of the application fee at National University.
The San Diego-based university is a non-profit with five schools and one college: School of Business and Management, School of Education, School of Engineering, Technology and Media, School of Health and Human Services, School of Professional Studies and the College of Letters and Sciences.
National University offers classes online and at 45 locations, including in Carlsbad, La Mesa, Rancho Bernardo and Chula Vista. Enrollment is year-round. The school has more than 100 undergraduate and graduate degrees and 23 teacher credential programs.
University of Phoenix
County employees are eligible for a 10 percent tuition reduction when enrolling in any degree program, certificate program or individual course at the University of Phoenix. Prospective students can call (866) 354-1800 or visit phoenix.edu/countyofsd to learn more.
Existing students can also take advantage of the discount by logging into eCampus, selecting the Account tab and clicking on the Employer/Tribal Benefits Program link.
University of Phoenix offers more than 100 degree programs, associate’s, bachelor’s and post-graduate programs. Courses are offered online or at classroom locations, including in downtown San Diego, Kearny Mesa, Chula Vista and San Marcos.
Also remember that you may be eligible for the County’s tuition reimbursement program for courses at accredited colleges and universities.
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