San Diego Pride volunteers can now sign up online to assist in a variety of capacities for this year’s 36th annual Pride celebration, scheduled for July 17 and 18.

Volunteers who work a five-hour shift will receive a two-day festival pass, a free meal ticket (per five-hour shift), a 2010 souvenir T-shirt and an invitation to Pride’s annual volunteer appreciation party.

A series of volunteer orientation sessions have been scheduled. The sessions will be held from 7 to 8:30 p.m., April 20 and May 18; and from 10 to 11:30 a.m., April 3 and May 1 – each at the Pride office, 3620 30th St., in North Park.

To register as a volunteer, visit the Pride web site: www.SanDiegoPride.org, and click on the word ‘volunteer.’ For more information, call 619-297-7683.

If you have questions about insurance coverage of HIV treatment, join us at The San Diego LGBT Community Center, 3909 Centre Street, on March 31 at 5:30 p.m. Certified HIV Specialist Jimmy Vesci and insurance specialist Ivy Rooney will discuss the insurance challenges associated with HIV treatment and how best to overcome them. RSVP is required, as dinner will be served. To RSVP contact Carolina Ramos at 619-692-2077, ext 116. Tendremos servicios de traduccion en Espanol.

Stephen Whitburn announced that he will accept no gifts as a county supervisor if he is elected to replace current Supervisor Ron Roberts.

Whitburn seeks to end the practice repeated by various supervisors, in which they accept valuable gifts or take expensive junkets subsidized by the organizations they have funded.

“The link to the current supervisors’ funding practices and the gifts they receive is very obvious,” he said, referring to Roberts’ propensity for funding organizations that have paid for his repeated trips to China. Supervisor Slater has also accepted opera tickets after funding organizations that support the opera.

Whitburn said the only way to ensure that conflicts do not exist is to accept no gifts. “There is a simple solution if our supervisors are willing to give up these lucrative perks,” he said. “Just turn them down. I challenge my opponent to join me in this pledge.”

Whitburn, a Democrat, is challenging Roberts, a Republican, in a district that has a 2-to-1 Democratic registration advantage. Roberts and the four other incumbent supervisors are all Republicans and have all held their seats for more than 15 years.