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Off the Record (April 5, 2017)

WE GULLED a coupla April Fools with our mandatory government registration gag, but the April Fool’s prank in San Anselmo had the phones at city hall ringing off the hook. On a prominent vacant building at crossroads known as The Hub, an anonymous wag had erected a professionally-rendered banner that read, “Hooters! Coming Soon!”

RESIDENTIAL POT GROWING?

From the March 21 Board of Supervisors meeting, Marcia Little neatly summed up the dilemma: “My name is Marcia Little. I am here to read a letter from Barbara Mecca who was unable to come because of a family emergency. This is a letter representing Ukiah area rural residential concerns of neighbors. Dear Ms. Brown, Mr. McCowen and Mr. Gjerde: I understand that Mr. Gjerde is standing up for some of his more vocal constituents and is asking to automatically allow commercial growing in residential areas unless people opt out. This is an absurd and insulting proposal which puts an unfair burden on neighborhoods. Cultivation is a business. Businesses are not allowed in residential neighborhoods. There are no retail establishments in our neighborhoods, so how is it possible that you would consider breaking the rules for marijuana growers? Growers call themselves farmers and want to be brought into the category of legal. So it seems reasonable to let them be guided by the rules, and restrictions imposed on legal food farmers. Those rules and restrictions are part of the landscape. Accommodating a business in a residential neighborhood completely overlooks the established rights of non-growing citizens whose quality of life is being drastically changed. The dogs, the smell, the traffic, the environmental changes, the reduced property values are all impacts residents have to deal with in order to allow the establishment of a business where businesses are not allowed. The fact is that commercial cultivation is a business. As such it is not allowed in residential neighborhoods. This discussion has been repeated for months, requesting something now, and again next week and the week after doesn't make the request more justified, it only creates a diversion from the real issue under discussion. Number one: Cultivation is a business. Number two: this particular business effects the quality of life in neighborhoods. And number three: Business is not allowed in residential areas. You and we have listened to the grower's concerns and it seems the board has already agreed to ordinances that stipulate how growers can move into legality. We understand compromises are necessary on both sides. Residents are coming to terms with the new regulations. We're trying to avoid an us and them climate. Although Mr. Gjerde’s proposal is making it harder to maintain that stance. To allow growers to cultivate wherever they choose should not be the County's default position. If they are growing for income it is a business and businesses are out of compliance in residential areas. Prohibition within residential neighborhoods should continue to be the standard. Having the reverse is like stating that citizens will automatically give up their rights to privacy or freedom or safety unless they vote to keep them. That is an absurd notion. Please prohibit commercial marijuana production in residential neighborhoods with the already agreed-upon exceptions for communities that want to use the overlay process. Respectfully, Ukiah Rural area concerned neighborhoods.”

SUPERVISOR GJERDE RESPONDED: “No one is proposing anything in the R-1 zoning district. The only discussion that I am raising and it was the board's direction prior to January or February which was to allow in the R-2 zoning for parcels of two acres or more because there are parcels that are less than two acres, but for parcels that are two acres or more to allow an opportunity for the person to apply for a discretionary permit which could be denied if the neighbors were objecting. What I'm trying to offer later today is a further narrowing of what the board previously supported which would be only indoor and again discretionary, two acres or more, so it takes out a whole bunch of parcels that you are talking about that would not be on the table because there are far fewer R-2 parcels and R-5 parcels that are between two and five acres than there are smaller than that. And again they would only have that opportunity to apply for discretionary permit which could be denied; it is not by right. And the truth is there is no place for people on the coast to go other than the R-2s and the R-5s because they can't grow in the timberland if they are not already there, they can't go into the coastal zone because at that's a four or five-year process to amend the coastal plan, so three out of ten people in this county live on the coast, they do not all live in the coastal zone. We need to do something to address the issue of the economy on the coast, the three out of ten people, who need some way to participate in this industry legally. It's not fair for this board, because we need to rightfully address the concerns of your neighborhood and others, but it's not right for us to address your issue and at the same time deny three out of ten county residents any ability to participate in this economy legally.”

THE LONG AWAITED Medical Cannabis Cultivation Regulation was given final approval last week, and about five weeks before it will take effect, the Mendocino County Department of Agriculture is still struggling to recruit staff to administer the program, a shortfall mainly attributable to the tight housing market.

TWO OUT OF THREE biologist positions essential to the cultivation permitting program are still vacant after half a year of recruitment efforts, said interim agricultural commissioner Diane Curry. Of more than a dozen applicants the department has interviewed since November, none have been able to accept the job because of a lack of available housing in the area, she said.

ONCE THE ORDINANCE takes effect—which is expected by early May, 30 days after it is scheduled for approval by the Board of Supervisors—the department’s “agricultural measurement standards specialists” will review applications for cultivation sites and perform compliance inspections before and during their operation. One of three such positions has been filled by a current employee of the department.

A NEW HIRE from Maryland was supposed to arrive January 13 but could not find a place to live, Curry said. Her deadline to report for duty was extended to February 13 and again to Monday, March 27, but the Ukiah housing market steadfastly refused to yield an available unit for this key civil servant.

THE DA EMPHATICALLY denied last week the persistent rumors that his office is investigating the administration of the 9.31 medical marijuana cultivation program. Emphatic denials from government officials usually mean the rumors are true, but in this case, with this guy, No means No.

YIKES! Look at these repair estimates from Fort Bragg. $192,648 for Bainbridge Park improvements and an engineer's estimate of $117,149 for new stairs at Glass Beach. City staff: "The total cost for design, engineering, and construction of the Glass Beach stairs is estimated at approximately $170,800 - $194,800."

FOR THIS kind of money why not install an escalator to and from Glass Beach and day beds for Bainbridge’s habitues?

BAINBRIDGE PARK. SIGH. Public space all over the land has been ruined by our ever-larger leisure class. Check Alex Thomas Plaza in Ukiah. Wall-to-wall bums. Last time I drove past Bainbridge, drunks and dopeheads, about twenty of them, lounged near the tennis courts. Meanwhile, the graceful little park on the north side of the Grace Hudson Museum in Ukiah has been destroyed. The Grace Hudson people won't admit it, but in their frenzy to bum-proof the space they've ruined it with an alleged, and totally failed, re-creation of a Pomo village.

SURPRISE! Senator Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) and Senator Bill Dodd (D-Napa) have been appointed co-chairs on the Senate Select Committee on California’s Wine Industry. The committee is made up of a bipartisan group of senators from around the state who are charged with overseeing the diverse issues affecting California’s wine industry. “There is a lot happening with California wine and I couldn’t be more excited to join with Senator Dodd and co-chair this important committee in the years to come,” said McGuire. “We’ll be working together and be focused on some of the biggest issues facing the thousands of growers and vintners in the coming months.” California, according to Little Mike, makes 90 percent of all the wine produced in the United States. The California wine industry has an annual economic impact of over $57 billion to the state and creates 325,000 jobs.

MARK SCARAMELLA NOTES: I can’t let McGuire’s preposterous statistics go unchallenged. Sorry. Here I go again: Senator McGuire’s Wine-Institute-generated statistics are as usual irrelevant and meaningless, of course, because most California wine by volume and dollar value is cheap table wine made in the Central Valley by a few giant growers, bottlers and distributors; these second-grade quality numbers have no relevance to Mendo, Sonoma, Lake or Napa counties. McGuire’s “jobs” estimate is a bad joke based mostly on counting underpaid, non-union piece-rate seasonal workers — also mostly in the Central Valley — who work in the vineyards only a few weeks a year pruning and picking, and the rest of the time they must fend for themselves with day labor, social services, pot gardening whatever all while keeping an eye cocked for ICE. In other words, McGuire passes along total bullshit, like almost everything emanating from the wine industry and its office-holding shills. Truth to tell, the government-subsidized wine industry is one of the biggest pesticide and herbicide users in the world and has clearcut and deep-ripped tens of thousands of acres of California’s prime range, wood and grass lands to plant water-guzzling, labor exploiting, fish-killing, overpriced booze monocultures while holding their non-grape neighbors in utter contempt. The timber industry, at its rapacious, short-term profit-taking worst could rightly say, “Trees grow back.” Once land is converted to grapes, it’s gone forever. Whoever called the wine industry “The Blood of Michoacan” was understating the case.

A READER WRITES: “Cold cases. Katlyn Long. If Matson supplied the drug, at the very least, manslaughter is the charge. How hard is that to prove that with a known druggie?

Susan Keegan. What does the autopsy report show? Have you seen it? Where is or are the position or positions of the wounds to the head? Is the doc right or left handed? My friend Joe Kenda (Homicide Hunter) could figure this out in ten minutes. The doc was not particularly remorseful. Guilty, unless proven otherwise. Baumeister. Has anyone looked into the killing of that young man up and around Westport in the mid 80s. (Sutherland?) Did Baumeister live there at that time?

ED REPLY: What all these cases have in common is the connected status of the presumed perps: Matson is the scion of a successful Fort Bragg family; Peter Keegan is a medical doctor with deep roots among liberals in the Ukiah area. Baumeister, however, was never a suspect in the two Westport disappearances or in the murder of the young geologist, Todd Sutherland. The Sutherland murder was the work of a homeless ex-con roaming the Westport area robbing tourist’s cars. Sutherland was looking at some rock formation near the beach when the scumdog walked up on him and shot him to death for the cameras Sutherland was carrying. The killer, locked up for another crime, confessed to the murder.

BAUMEISTER was an employee of a man named James ‘Jimmy’ Denoyer who disappeared the two "missing" Westport men who also worked for him, one of whom was his uncle, the other a long-time resident of the Northcoast. I keep mentioning Baumeister as a likely source of information about Denoyer's activities at the time of the disappearances. Baumeister, born and raised in Comptche, is often arrested for drunk in public. Whether or not the cops have talked to him about his time with Denoyer while he’s in custody or otherwise, I don’t know. If they haven’t, well….

ALL OF THESE CASES occurred during the haphazard reign of DA Meredith Lintott. Let's say Lintott's office did not take on tough cases and leave it at that. DA Eyster does take on tough cases and the prosecution of Keegan, for one, is long overdue.

SUSAN KEEGAN'S forearms were terribly bruised, "defensive bruising," as it's called. The wound(s) to the top of her head that killed her could not have been sustained from a "bathroom fall," as Dr. Keegan calmly explained his wife's death to the two cops who appeared at his door when he called 911 the morning after, long after all traces of Mrs. Keegan's last blood were cleaned up. There is more than enough evidence to indict the doctor, as anyone who watches crime shows will know. We see tough cases worked out all the time by tough, relentless investigators. (Keegan hired a criminal defense attorney within a week of his wife's death and continues to keep one on retainer. Innocent persons don't ordinarily feel a need for a criminal defense lawyer.)

DA EYSTER has put a huge effort into the Keegan case, including a successful subpoena for the Keegan file lied about by Ukiah attorney Norman Rosen. Rosen had claimed he acted as attorney in his dealings with the Keegans and, therefore, whatever information he had about them was protected by the attorney-client privilege laws.

IN FACT, as the subpoenaed file has apparently revealed or it would not have been successfully subpoenaed, Rosen had functioned as family counselor to the Keegans, which is not protected. The file apparently confirms what Mrs. Keegan's friends have known all along, that Peter Keegan had flipped out in the presence of counselor Rosen when Keegan learned that his wife, upon their divorce, would get half of the couple's property, as per California divorce law.

WHY ROSEN did not report Keegan's behavior to the police goes to his character, I suppose, but one would think an officer of the court, let alone a long-time friend of Mrs. Keegan, would want justice for her and would have volunteered the sought-after evidence without forcing the DA to go to a judge for a subpoena.

THE KATLYN LONG CASE was never investigated after Matson lawyered-up with the late Richard Petersen. How did methadone find its way into the body of a non-drug using young woman? Where did it come from? And so on. A cop told me he was certain that Matson "would screw-up again, and we'll get him." Matson remains un-got.

UNFORTUNATELY for the victims and their families, here in Amnesia County, where history starts all over again every morning, there isn't sustained public pressure on the authorities to solve these cases.

JENNIFER POOLE, writing in the March 30 edition of the Willits Weekly, describes a bill proposed by North Coast assemblyman Jim Wood which would "revitalize" the city of Willits and other cities made less traveled by recent highway bypasses. The proposed funding would partially compensate for the loss of tee-routed traffic. Willits anticipated a 35% reduction in sales and gas tax revenues for the upcoming fiscal year based on the bypass-related downtown traffic reduction. And the Willits Chamber of Commerce has said that sales and gas tax revenue losses will range from 20-50% since the bypass opened.

NOT MENTIONED in the Willits Weekly article, however, is how much more the city will have to pay for street maintenance. Willits has assumed responsibility for Main Street, aka Old Highway 101, which previously was maintained by Caltrans. A reduction in traffic on Main Street, aka 101, has been fairly dramatic since the bypass. But there's still a lot downtown traffic as well as traffic exiting Highway 101 for the Coast since the bypass did not include an interchange linking Highway 101 to Highway 20 to Fort Bragg

WILLITS CITY manager Adrienne Moore hopes to use any revitalization money from the state for billboards, broadband upgrades, and sporting venue improvements. No actual dollar estimates were provided, but obviously Willits is not benefiting from the bypass. We assume the Willits Weekly will keep track of Willits City Council budget discussions to see exactly how much negative budget impact the Bypass will cause.

A WILLITS READER puts it all in truer perspective: “Willits is kind of like the republicans (health care) wink, wink…, they had years to prepare for “after the bypass”, but most leaders and others yelled down anyone who dared mention things were going to get weird once Willits got bypassed. Laytonville’s entrepreneur types bought up everything with 101 frontage as soon as CalTrans broke ground, and that turned out pretty good I hear. Yet Willits merchants and others fought with each other over the style of flower boxes, parking and other meaningless bullshit while the years dribbled away…Seems they should have been getting them big signs in the ready. Them signs to put out on The 101. Them signs to get folks to come in to Willits for a 6er and a pack of smokes, but no… they waited till folks business’s tanked and then squalled like kids for money. That politician down south ain’t going to give the Willits money, Trumps revenge will seal that deal. Sorry Willits, like a politico from Mendo once said, “If you think government is here to save you, forget about it, you are on your own.”

THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS routinely approved the large Planning Department fee increases proposed a couple of weeks ago with one minor exception: the cost of a minor administrative coastal development permit which was proposed to increase from about $700 to about $2800 was reduced to about $1700. All the other large fee increases were approved without discussion. Supposedly, these are supposed to reflect the actual cost, so either the previous fees were badly underestimated, or the new ones have been padded to include every imaginable billable service they can because 1) the County has a monopoly and can include whatever they want in the fee calculation, and 2) the increases are far above ordinary inflation. In addition, if anyone has noticed that the service has improved in accordance with the fee increases in the last year, we are not aware of it.

UNRELIABLE MOVIE REVIEW: "Sense of an Ending" held my feeble attention as it descended more and more into pure mawk after promising beginnings, an interesting middle, and then into a giant vat of happy endings. Since most lives don't end particularly well, unless you think spending your last hours hooked up to medical machinery for the purpose of running up your last tab while your family divvies up your stuff — well, only the mentally challenged think in terms of 'happy deaths.' This movie is about some low-intensity trauma experienced at a young age as it rebounds forty or so years later into What the heck really happened? Charlotte Rampling, as she always does, steals this Brit show, which may have been dumbed down for American audiences.

STAN ‘GROUND FLOOR’ MIKLOSE (These days Stan is the proprietor of Down Home Foods in Fort Bragg and a competitive bike rider.)

“SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, 1967, April 6: The Gray Line added a new attraction to its tours of San Francisco — the Haight-Ashbury district, hippie capital of America. They billed it as “the only foreign tour within the continental United States,” and the new scene drew more stares than the Mint, Mission Dolores and Twin Peaks combined. When word spread about the “safari through psychedelphia,” as driver-guide Dee Briggs put it, interest in San Francisco’s other wonders seemed suddenly desultory. Most of the bus passengers had never before seen a live hippie.

“Free love — just living together?” inquired Mrs. James Costanzo of Chicago, aghast. ‘Their parents send money for LSD? Great God!”

“Now, now,” said her husband, a plant superintendent. “Would you want our son to be a hippie?”

“A hippie?! Better he be dead!”

And then, at the fringe of hippieville, the bus stopped and a hush fell over the sightseers as a television crew came aboard with a live hippie — Stan Miklose, in his mid 20s with shoulder length hair, turtleneck black sweater, dark car coat, jeans, western boots. In a well-modulated voice Miklose compared hippies with the college youths who turn Easter week at Fort Lauderdale, Fla., into a nightmare. “The very worst the hippies do is to sit down on the street — not in protest, because that is negative, but in a positive statement of purpose. I could try all day to explain this, but unless you were a hippie you wouldn’t understand.” Miklose was later asked if hippies didn’t resent being sightseen like zoo animals. “It was bound to happen. When someone creates a thing of beauty — an Eiffel Tower, a great painting — the public comes to it. We hippies have created something beautiful.”

NEW POT RULES COVER IMPORTANT GROUND

While we would have preferred the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors to stick to its original goal of giving two years leeway to pot growers who are operating now in residential areas to quit, we are glad that at least the provision is still in the new ordinance. As it stands now, after three years, all commercial pot growing in residential neighborhoods below certain lot sizes must stop.

It is exactly that residential growing that soured so many local folks on marijuana cultivation in Mendocino County and that is where the impact of the smells and crime are most keenly felt.

During the last debate on the ordinance as it was finally introduced officially, Supervisor Dan Gjerde talked his colleagues into extending the two-year grace period to three years, which we think is way too long. What is going to happen in that last year that growers can’t plan for right now and still have two years to get done?

Gjerde said he convinced his constituents in his Fort Bragg district to vote against Measure AF (the failed growers’ giveaway measure on the November ballot) by telling them that the supervisors would be fair in their ordinance and not disturb their apple carts.

We think people voted against Measure AF – by a large margin – because they wanted to make sure the growers had strict rules and got out of their neighborhoods.

Even today, we believe most Mendocino County residents do not care that someone is growing lots of commercial marijuana in the hills of the north county (except that they don’t pay taxes on it and we now know many of them are destroying the environment to do it).

But you cannot take a drive through places like Redwood Valley or Deerwood subdivision without the persistent smell of marijuana floating everywhere.

That’s what voters are hoping this new county ordinance will stop. And giving growers three more years is simply too much. (K.C. Meadows, the Ukiah Daily Journal)

ON LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

(1) It isn’t just a feminized country, it is one addicted to debt and is populated by “I want everything now, because I am Kong…..King consumer.” I was watching a US news show the other day and a commercial came on about debt. Sure there is Credit Karma…accessible by your dumb phone. But Now? Apparently there is an app that will give you an updated credit score every 24 hours!!! I asked my wife if she ever had a credit search done on her and she replied, “Maybe when I bought my first house”. My answer was the same. I don’t think I have ever even wondered about my credit because neither of us will take on debt. Oh well, cell phones don’t work here, either. Can’t have everything I suppose. I would say America lost its way, but that wouldn’t be fair. Western pampered consumers lost their way when they traded in their values and goals for stuff. Trump and other manifestations of greed and ignorance is the obvious result.

(2) I would like to join the party dedicated to getting our house in order. Whichever party that turns out to be should place a high priority on solving the following problem: A few days ago, I learned that Ankeny, Iowa is the fastest-growing city in the US, and that the population of Ankeny is increasing by five people per day. The urban sprawl resulting from all that growth is nothing less than obscene. Now we go back to something my 7th grade geography teacher told our class, during the 1961-62 school year. Our teacher stated, “The richest square mile on earth is just north of Des Moines.” He was not talking about gold, or oil, or diamonds. He was talking about rich farmland. It is a terrible irony that Ankeny, Iowa–that fast-growing city–is also just north of Des Moines. So, some 55 years after our geography teacher told us about it, the richest square mile of farmland on the planet is likely buried under a parking lot, or cheap housing development, or maybe a strip mall. The media celebrate this insane destruction as if it were progress. As a political issue, this so-called “development” is not even on the outer fringe of awareness of any politician that I know of. That must change, if there is to be any decent future for this country. Ankeny is only one of several suburbs around Des Moines that are rapidly expanding onto flat, black-soil farmland. (From Des Moines, Iowa, the sprawl capital of the USA.)

(3) Mr. Trump, what side of the Rio Grande are you going to put the wall on? If you put it on the US side you are ceding the river to Mexico. You can’t put it in the middle of the river. You can’t put it on Mexico’s side. Maybe the river doesn’t get a wall? Maybe we just waste $20 Billion to build a wall on half the border and people continue wading across the river.

(4) My contribution, as someone [Canadian] who actually lives with a single-payer system: I can’t believe it’s taken you guys this long. Yes, I have had some lengthy waits in waiting rooms. Sometimes people have to wait months for important procedures. I even pay medical bills sometimes — not everything is covered (notably my eye doctor; certainly not my dentist). Resources are finite, while demand for health care is potentially infinite; therefore health care will always be rationed. The question is, rationed how? By what mechanism, and with what priorities? By relying on market mechanisms for everything, the U.S. has perpetuated perverse incentives and allowed the extent of fraud, waste and abuse in its system to grow to truly morbid proportions. The corrupt, money-driven system in Washington D.C. is certainly part of the problem as well: the health-care lobby has long been the largest in the nation’s capital, and their investments in compliant legislators are more than handsomely rewarded.

The most significant medical procedure I’ve ever had was an outpatient septoplasty and SMD that greatly improved my breathing both awake and asleep, and hopefully cut my likelihood of heart trouble down the line by quite a bit. I never saw a bill. And no, that’s not “free health care” or a handout, and don’t let people tell you otherwise. I pay for my health care, just through a different mechanism.

Medicare for all: Have at it, people. I wish you all the success in the world.

(5) I know healthcare will not be fixed, not because I am psychic, not because I am some sort of perceptive genius, I am neither. I need to see, and know, only one thing; Whenever the subject comes up, at least half the commentary amounts to pious platitudes about cheeseburgers and cigarettes, and narratives built on the highly dubious proposition that living to be 150 is the norm. As if this were an Episode of The People’s Court, or worse, The Jerry Springer Show. The petty, pointless, vindictiveness of Americans, directed at their own, is staggering. Whatever American nationalism is, it certainly is not love of people.

THE GRANGE WARS continue to rage and, at the Fort Bragg Grange, have become misdemeanor-violent. The Fort Bragg Grange has been broken into, compelling Grange defenders to replace locks, bolt the front door from the inside. Coast Grangers are now staying inside the hall day and night to protect it, as their opponents rattle the doors at night and otherwise attempt to menace the protectors. It is feared that the new California Grange will take it over with the help of old-timers of the Whitesboro Grange and sell it "for the good of the order". To get up to speed on the dispute, see the current two-parter in the AVA, Grange Wars, One, and Grange Wars Two.

https://www.theava.com/archives/66866

https://www.theava.com/archives/67050#21

MORE ON FORT BRAGG GRANGE 'LOCKOUT' & ENSUING BROUHAHA

Dear Friends and followers,

I'm saddened that I have to write this in a public forum. But, I and others, have been accused of some pretty serious acts in the Facebook world by Marrila Freitas Peeler, so I am compelled to set the record straight.

This is in regards to the escalating turmoil at The historic Fort Bragg Grange in Inglenook.

On Monday, March 27th, one of our members was attempting to deliver the grocery order to the historic grange hall. He attempted to unlock the front door with his key and found that the door was unable to move. He went to the north side of the building and found Mr. Donald Peeler and two non-member associates changing the locks on the North coffee room door. When Mr. Donald Peeler, known on Facebook as Donald Ducky, was asked what was going on, our member was told that the building was being taken over and our members were no longer welcome. Our member was in a bit of a bind because of the large amount of perishable groceries, enough to feed 400 or so people at our monthly breakfast, that he had in his van.

Our member told Mr. Donald Peeler that the groceries needed to get into the refrigerators. Mr. Donald Peeler's non-member associates aided our member in putting the groceries away in our memberships refrigerators and then told our member to vacate the premises, which he immediately did. Our board members were notified of the situation and an emergency meeting was called by one member/attorney. (Our member/attorney had also driven by the building and noticed what was going on. He took several pictures of the attempted takeover.)

12 of our membership agreed to go to the building and claim the premises back for the membership. Before going to the building the Sheriff was called and informed of our intent.

Upon arrival at around 7:00pm on March 27 we found that the building was barricaded from the inside with slide bolts the doors so our keys wouldn’t work.

Mr. Donald Peeler arrived on site shortly after our arrival and presented our member attorney with a document stating that our charter and membership was revoked from and organization that we didn't belong to.

We politely asked Mr. Donald Peeler for his key to open the north side coffee room door. He refused. We asked again and he refused again.

We told Mr. Donald Peeler we were going to open the lower south west emergency exit door to regain legal access for the paying membership. He said he was going to call the sheriff if we attempted access and we, the membership, invited him to do so.

We, the membership, proceeded to regain access to the building. Mr. Donald Peeler took my picture and the picture of another member during that process.

Upon gaining access to the building we started undoing the damage as best we could to the doors by Mr. Donald Peeler's and his associates actions.

The commercial steel door that Mr. Peeler gained access to had about $1,200.00 worth of damage to the door itself from his forced entry. The casing and the commercial lock was also damaged by Mr. Peeler while removing it without the proper tools. We have pictures of all of the damage.

The new front entry door was also damaged by the hurried installation of a slide bolt on the inside of the door.

When the Mendocino County Sheriff arrived, Mr. Peeler attempted to have the sheriff side with him by showing him the unofficial, though threatening revocation document. Fortunately, there was an attorney on site and a dozen of the legitimate membership to explain the truth.

In the end Mr. Donald Peeler promised not to attempt such a thing again as he didn't want a restraining order against him which would mean that he would have to forfeit his guns for the duration of the restraining order, and we didn't press charges. He shook hands with our side and the Sheriff left the premises.

Mr. Donald Peeler and Marilla Freitas Peeler stayed in the parking lot for several hours calling others on the phone for reasons only they know.

The attached image shows the conversation going on with the sheriff that was taken by my wife Eileen while I and other members were busy repairing damage done by Mr. Donald Peeler and his associates.

So no matter what is being said about me and other members of the former Fort Bragg Grange, now The Fort Bragg Guild, we are the same organization we have been since 1938. Only the name has change due to a bad decision made by National Grange by revoking the California State Grange Charter that is essential to our existence because they are the umbrella corporation for our nonprofit status. National Grange revoked the charter in 2012 and started this whole mess.

Sincerely,

Bruce Broderick

Member, Fort Bragg Guild

(Courtesy, MendocinoSportsPlus)

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