Dr. Peter Keegan & Susan Keegan

Mendocino County District Attorney David Eyster said, “No comment” recently when he was asked if the investigation into the untimely and improbable death of Susan Keegan in November of 2010 was ongoing. Eyster’s terse refusal to discuss the status of the case seems to mean that Mrs. Keegan’s unlikely end is indeed a matter of continuing attention by law enforcement. Additional evidence of an ongoing investigation occurred on June 15th of 2011 when the Keegan home was subjected to a forensics raid. The results of the June visit by a team that included outside specialists are not known, but the fact that there was enough preliminary evidence that Mrs. Keegan may not have died the way her husband said she died satisfied a judge that there were grounds for an additional search of the home at 120 Whitmore.

Soon after his wife’s death, Dr. Peter Keegan hired the formidable Ukiah criminal defense attorney, Keith Faulder.

 One of the Ukiah Valley’s most active and popular figures, Mrs. Keegan was a vivacious and active 55 years old when she was found dead in the bathroom of her Whitmore Lane home in South Ukiah.

The shock of the terrible news had no sooner ricocheted through the Ukiah Valley than a unanimous dis­belief set in: Susan Keegan could not have died the way she was said to have died.

By noon Thursday, on the perfect late fall day of November 11th, the most prevalent story of Mrs. Keegan’s death sometime late the previous night or early on the 11th, went like this:

“Susan was drunk and on drugs when she fell in her bathroom, hit her head and died. Her husband, Dr. Peter Keegan, found her about 7:00 in the morning.”

According to sources close to the investigation, a neatly arrayed tableau of the painkiller medication Vicodin, a couple of marijuana roaches and a glass of whiskey were found on Mrs. Keegan’s nightstand. The fatal injury was described as “blunt force trauma to the head.”

Mrs. Keegan had never been seen drunk or seriously impaired, although her circle of close friends knew she smoked marijuana and enjoyed the occasional cocktail. As active as she was in the small community of Ukiah someone certainly would have noticed the telltale signs of uncontrolled substance use — the permanently flushed face and broken veins of hard drinking, the missed appointments, whole days spent incommunicado. Instead, Susan’s friends and family saw the same steady, reliable, prudent woman they’d always seen, rather more matronly in her middle age, but a person whose personal behavior was unchanged over the years.

The only person who would say that Susan Keegan was a clandestine substance abuser was her husband, and he’d only begun saying that to his wife’s best friends and family about the same time he’d told Susan that he wanted out of their 32 years of marriage.

Which was early in October of 2010.

There hadn’t been a word from the doctor about Mrs. Keegan’s sudden descent into dipsomania and indis­criminate pill popping until a month before the doctor found her dead in their shared home. The couple had traveled together that summer, and the people they visited saw nothing amiss in their relationship. Prior to October, the doctor had made no mention of his wife’s alleged dependence on opiates.

Both Keegans were well known in Ukiah, so well known you could say that they were synonymous with the town, the proverbial pillars come to life. Parents of two grown sons, the Keegans had lived in Ukiah for many years. Dr. Keegan had functioned as family doctor “to half the town one time or another,” as a former patient put it, while his wife Susan fashioned a social and professional life that ranged from work as a newspaper reporter, English teacher at Mendocino College, head of the local American Cancer Society, to after-hours commitments to a book club, a singing group, and the area’s amateur theater troupes.

In early October, Mrs. Keegan’s husband of 32 years had told his wife he wanted a divorce. The demand had surprised Mrs. Keegan, but it hadn’t plunged her into the immobilized depression that often paralyzes a spouse caught unawares. Susan wasn’t one for self-pity. She immediately began to plan a new life for herself.

Susan had written a friend, “Things have been bad here, at least for me. It is hard to have a choice made for you, especially one as big as this, and with what seems to me to be no warning.”

Dr. Keegan had had a heart attack the year before his surprise announcement that he wanted out of his marriage. Mrs. Keegan had pushed him to get medical care and urged him to make some lifestyle changes; the doctor told friends he was grateful for his wife’s help and support. But Susan had also told her closest friends that he could be moody, and the couple’s marriage had survived a rough patch of marital turbulence a decade prior. The heart attack seemed to remind Peter of his mortality, and his behavior became more erratic in ways described by the catch phrase “mid-life crisis.” By the last month of Susan’s life, the doctor had become impossible.

Susan told a friend, “Much venom has come my way…. He has these brain stutters from time to time, and this feels very like the others. They are not fun.”

Alarmed at Susan’s accounts of the verbal abuse heaped on her by her husband, himself a heavy pot smoker, at least three of Susan’s close friends offered her the sanctuary of their homes.

“I am feeling,” Susan wrote of her life with Peter, “like he is trying to push me out, so I am not going anywhere. Besides, I have the play [Hamlet at Mendocino College] and there are rehearsals almost every day now, so going away is not going to happen for me….”

Talking about Peter’s calls to family and friends telling them that he was the victim in the relationship, that it was his wife’s descent into alcohol and drugs that had forced him into the divorce courts, Susan had written, “Don’t be surprised if Peter calls you soon. He is very concerned about ‘who knows’ and has already contacted others to get his story in first…this feels very familiar — we’ve been here many times. This time, however, the boys are grown and I don’t feel at all threatened. At some level, he is giving me a very easy out if I want to take it. I am worried about him tho — I don’t believe he really wants a divorce, and I know he would be devas­tated by any divorce settlement. I like the counselor, and she saw Peter years ago. He picked her, and I think he showed himself clearly enough in our first session that she can see a bit of where this is coming from. If after 32 years of marriage he can’t think of anything he likes about me, that says way more about him than it does about me. I am hopeful that she can reach him and find some way to get him to see what he is doing. If not, a divorce would not devastate me. Sometimes it seems like an easy way out. Thanks for offering your place to stay. I am relying on my friends to get me through this, and so far, that is working well. I am sad, angry, feeling betrayed and more, but I don’t feel threatened. I will get through this just fine. I am, however, worried about Peter, who is feeling very alone, abused and unwanted. I don’t know if I can take care of him any longer, but I do think he needs help. Hopefully, the counselor will be able to be his friend.”

Meanwhile, the doctor was telling mutual friends and family that the problem was all Susan, that not only was she drinking heavily and promiscuously popping Vicodin pills, she was denying him access to the marital bed. The suffering husband even complained that Susan hadn’t been leaving his newspapers neatly folded and ready to read when he returned from his two days a week at the Round Valley Health Center in Covelo.

Susan, under the enormous pressure of suddenly being faced with life on her own, had carried on. In the week before she died, she had performed in a Mendocino College production of Hamlet, had hosted a cast party at her home for which she’d done all the cooking, put in an unknown number of hours on her contract job with Breathe California, attended a rehearsal with her vocal group, enjoyed a Tai Chi class, and had even found the time to bring a sick friend a container of turkey soup.

And on the last day of her life, Susan Keegan had attended a 9am art class, and then enjoyed a leisurely lunch with a good friend. By four that afternoon she was driving south on 101 to meet two close friends in Santa Rosa for a working dinner.

The Santa Rosa friends had offered to help Susan assess her looming new financial situation as a divorced, single woman. Susan hadn’t wanted a divorce but her husband was insistent, and now she needed to determine exactly how much money she would have to begin her new life.

At her friends’ Santa Rosa home, Susan had one drink at about 5:30pm. They enjoyed a dinner and then sat down to go over Susan’s finances.

“It was a serious working evening,” one of the friends recalls. “We had that one drink before dinner and that was it. She was tired but focused and engaged. There was nothing about her behavior that was unusual or self-destructive.”

As the friends walked Susan out to her car, Susan commented on their garden. “She’d noticed that the lilies in our pond were still blooming, and she’d said how beautiful they were. A depressed person wouldn’t have noticed.”

It was 9pm when Susan headed back to her home in South Ukiah, a drive of about an hour from Santa Rosa.

The next morning she was dead.

Dr. Keegan told police he’d noticed that “all the lights in her bedroom were on.” When he went into the bathroom adjoining his wife’s room, Susan was on the floor with an apparently lethal gash to the rear of her head. When the police arrived, the doctor told them that his wife had a drinking problem, and that she was also prone to taking Vicodin, an opiate designed for the relief of physical pain. The doctor speculated to police that his wife had probably become so impaired by a combination of the Irish whiskey she preferred and the Vicodin that she’d fallen in her bathroom, hit her head and died.

In other words, at the end of a busy evening in Santa Rosa, and with her usual full day ahead of her the next morning, Mrs. Keegan had arrived home at ten at night to wash down prescription medication with enough alcohol to transform her into a staggering, accidental death.

“I’d never even seen Susan stumble,” says a close friend, “and are you telling me she comes home in the middle of the night and commences to get so loaded she is falling down drunk? And how convenient. She falls hard enough and hits her head in just the right place to kill her.”

The Keegans weren’t sharing a bedroom at that terminal point in their deteriorating relationship. He lived at one end of their modest ranch-style house, she at the other. He said he hadn’t heard any sounds from his wife’s end of the home the previous night.

The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department determined that the injury to Mrs. Keegan’s head could have been sustained by a fall but they were careful to take a blood sample which has still not been made public. Four months is a long time for a toxicology report, and a year after a highly suspicious death is a very long time to complete an investigation into that death.

Mrs. Keegan’s friends are unanimous that she had never been a heavy drinker, although they acknowledge she was a pot smoker and used prescription painkillers periodically. “If she had two drinks in one night that would have been a lot for her,” a friend says. “This lady got up every morning and did things. There was nothing in her everyday behavior that even hinted that she would go home at night and get bombed.”

The only person who claimed Mrs. Keegan was a secret drunk was her husband, and he’d only begun saying that right about the same time he’d begun telling mutual friends that he couldn’t go on living with a person who drank so heavily and used so many narcotics.

Dr. Peter Keegan was much less socially engaged than his wife, but he enjoyed a reputation as a pleasant, affable man who’d become mildly notorious a few years ago as one of the public faces of marijuana on the advocacy end of the issue. For a while he advertised himself as a go-to guy for medical marijuana prescriptions. But he could be volatile. A Ukiah politician remembers the doctor “going completely off at a meeting of the Ukiah Planning Commission when we were discussing an ordinance against backyard grows. He was yelling so loudly people could hear him out in the hall, and came into the chambers to see what was going on.” Dr. Keegan took his marijuana very seriously.

Lately, the doctor has had his own problems. He’d been working at the Round Valley Indian Health Center in Covelo, where a few weeks before his wife’s sudden death, he’d been placed on suspended status because of an error he’d made having to do with an errant prescription, the wrong medicine for a patient unable to safely consume it. Dr. Keegan’s personal physician, Dr. Gary DeCrona of Ukiah, then arranged for Keegan to be placed on state disability, which pays the suspended doctor a portion of his salary while he’s not practicing. Susan wrote to a friend, “His point was that this will greatly reduce spousal support, since he won’t be making his regular salary.” The doctor has since returned to his work in Covelo.

The news of their pending separation had surprised everyone, and over the next few weeks Susan told friends and family that her husband had become more and more verbally abusive. When he learned that his wife was entitled to half their assets in their divorce, the doctor was said to have become even more unpleasant to his wife, worse than unpleasant, “ballistic,” was how Susan described his reaction to a friend.

Apparently, Dr. Keegan hadn’t known that in California the wife gets half.

The couple had been seeing both a marriage counselor and a divorce mediator. At a meeting with the marriage counselor, Susan told close friends the counselor had asked Peter Keegan to name the “good things” about his wife.

The doctor paused and then said he couldn’t think of one.

Susan told another close friend, “He’s doing everything he can to be mean to me and to hurt me. He unrealistically wants this divorce over by Christmas. He wants it all to be over right now. He just can’t wait to be rid of me.”

Another friend remembers becoming worried when Susan told her, “He comes into my room without knocking, he reads my e-mail, he belittles me, and he’s been reading my journals and making fun of the personal things he’s found there.”

Peter could be manic, acquaintances say, but there was never anything manic about Susan. From all accounts she was unvaryingly the same person — sensible and careful, the last person who would suddenly become a clandestine substance abuser.

An attractive woman whose appearance in middle age can fairly be described as sedate without seeming stolid, Susan was adopted as an infant by a New York couple named Ettinger. Her adoptive father survives her as does her birth mother, Jeanne Russo. Always a good student, Susan was a champion debater and briefly attended Radcliffe College. After becoming a couple, Peter Keegan and Susan headed west in the middle 1970s, settling first in the Potrero District of San Francisco, then in Ukiah. Susan subsequently earned a master’s degree in English literature from Sonoma State University. “Always the smartest person in the room,” Susan was a voracious reader, perhaps the single most committed patron of the Ukiah public library who liked to start every morning with the New York Times crossword puzzle.

Susan’s memorial service at Ukiah’s United Methodist Church drew nearly 300 people. Mourners could not help but notice that Doctor Keegan was not among the speakers and had sat on the opposite side of the hall from his two sons. He did not seem sad.

Asked about his behavior, a mutual friend of Peter’s and Susan’s said: “His demeanor? He acted like some guy hosting a dinner party. If he was grieving he was doing it his own way.”

A family member who attended the service asked Peter if he was indeed grieving. He purportedly replied, “I’m not grieving now, I grieved before, when I realized the person I once loved was gone.”

Peter, in the weeks before his wife’s death, had been telling friends things like, “Susan used to be the smartest person I knew, but the drugs destroyed that.” Everyone else, however, said that Susan’s considerable intellectual abilities were as sharp as ever to the day she died.

Immediately after his wife’s death, the doctor seemed almost jubilant. He soon had a personal trainer at the Redwood Health Club in Ukiah, spent many hours bicycling around the Ukiah Valley, took up social danc­ing, and told a friend that “life is much better and improving all the time.”

He also opened a Facebook page on which he wrote that he was a widower “looking for friendship” and “interested in women.” But an acquaintance is quick to point out that anyone joining Facebook answers the same questions about marital status. Still, an on-line post days after your wife of 32 years has died strikes most people as at least unseemly. The doctor’s page was soon revised to portray himself as less available because he is known to be seeing a much younger Ukiah woman.

When Dr. Keegan appeared at the Sheriff’s Department to meet with Sgt. Poma to review the Coroner’s report on his wife’s death, his demeanor was described as “uncooperative and kind of belligerent.”

Some of Susan’s friends and family have pooled their resources to hire their own private investigator. They refuse to believe that Susan’s death was an accident. Susan Keegan was rich in friends, and they aren’t going on. ¥¥

Darryl Cherney & Mary Liz Thompson

 Given the choice, I’d prefer the real Stalinism over the hippie version prevalent on the Northcoast, no better example of which was Monday night’s (April 2nd) Women’s Voices talk program on KZYX, itself, along with KMUD and KPFA on the subject of the Bari Bombing, heavy on neo-Stalinist conversation controls. Most of the locally generated talk programming at KZYX is unlistenable not only because the hosts and hostesses are verbally handicapped, but because the subject matter is often irrelevant to the lives of most people in Mendocino County. You might think that it would occur to station management that a solid hour of tongue-tied people bathing each other in superlatives is not good for the station because it discourages people from listening. And one might also expect it would occur to management that opposing points of view on the air at the same time is good radio because it’s interesting, not to mention the only known way of getting at the truth of things. But KZYX has long been an echo chamber, for­ever home base for the most tedious bores on the North­coast.

As an avid scholar of the ongoing Bari Bombing swin­dle, which is again in the news, and alerted that slo-mo radio was devoting an hour to it Monday night, natch, I tuned in Women’s Voices hosted by Val Muchowski. Guests included Naomi Wagner and a woman named Mary Liz Thompson. Wagner is one of many local leisure class “activists” and soon confirmed that her occupation is indeed “activist” as anointed, Wagner said, by none other than Judi Bari herself. Ms. Thompson, speaking in the muted snarl of an unhappy person, said she was a filmmaker. She and Darryl Cherney have teamed up to produce an hagiographic epic called ‘Who Bombed Judi Bari?’ There was no mention during the painfully inarticulate hour that an honest film by the same name appeared years ago, and the single specific fact that was mentioned by Muchowski, a retired teacher, Muchowski managed to get almost completely wrong. She said that Judi Bari had “belonged” to KZYX. Judi Bari forcefully took over the station one afternoon as an ostensible protest at the station’s firing of Beth Bosk as a talk programmer. (An hilarious event previ­ously described in these pages.) The upshot? Judi Bari took over Bosk’s show.

I knew Judi Bari. She’s since become one of those fig­ures lots of people claim to have known well but did­n’t. The old girl wrote for my paper. Before I made the fatal error of demanding that she tell the truth about what happened to her, she’d call almost every day to discuss this, that and the other thing. I often visited her at String Creek, east of Willits. We were closely allied for about three years. But the instant I publicly said I thought it was time she fessed up, I was non-personed, and was duly denounced by the local lemmings as a sexist, an FBI agent, an enemy of the people, a blah de blah and a blah de blah.

Judi Bari was a person of large gifts, and a person who not only didn’t suffer fools gladly, didn’t suffer them at all, hence her utter contempt for most of her comrades, that amorphous mass heavy on disturbed persons who attach themselves to any dissenting movement, always to the movement’s disadvantage if not death. Briefly, in the Redwood Summer period, Bari did manage to mobilize a brief counter force to the short-term profit-taking that saw distant corporations mowing down Northcoast for­ests, and the jobs that went with them. The woods indus­try itself, as it then functioned on most of the Northcoast, was trapped between the big timber corporations and the Redwood Summer demonstrations. Bari, at least rhetori­cally, supported woods workers, but it was clear to her that her troops, people who don’t have to get up until noon, aren’t going to have much in common with people who are up at five to go out to a hot, dirty, dangerous job that doesn’t pay very well. People who do that kind of work, or any kind of real work, have to be organized from within. She knew that, and we often talked about it but, as she said of her allies, these are the people we have to work with, “And anyway Bruce I’m a hippie, too.” Such were her gifts, though, and her energy, that Red­wood Summer also attracted large numbers of serious people, committed people. And lots of media.

Bari could be ruthless. You were either with her or you were not permitted to participate. Or denounced as an FBI agent. Or whatever other slur it took to get you out of the way. FBI agent was the big one. She called Cherney, the only fool she did suffer, and only suffered him because, after the bombing, because she was stuck with him. Bari called Cherney an “idiot” so many times it could have been his middle name. She’d call me up. “Do you know what The Idiot did today?” I never had to ask which idiot.

It’s clear Bari knew who bombed her, and she was ini­tially so worried that she would be implicated in the event she had her attorney, the late Susan B. Jordan, apply to the FBI for limited immunity from prosecution. The FBI said no immunity because they considered Bari a suspect. But the FBI never followed up on its own sup­position, never seriously investigated the bombing. Why they would deny immunity then do nothing themselves to implicate Bari remains unknown. And why neither they nor the Bari Gang has followed up on the known, published evidence indicates co-dependence — that it appears it is in the mutual interests of the feds and the Bari camp not to solve the case.

I’m ashamed now to admit Bari had me going as one of the many believers in a wider conspiracy against her because I didn’t know her husband or anything about him except what she told me, which was that he’d beat and raped her. Which I didn’t believe because I couldn’t imagine her enduring any kind of mistreatment, let alone sexual assault. I thought I was merely listening to another alienated ex-wife going on about how evil her ex-husband was. Judi Bari’s ex-husband, then as now the biggest elephant in the smallest room ever, was scrupu­lously kept off stage. And he’s still kept off by Cherney and Company as Not A Suspect.

It belatedly dawned on me I was being hustled. The light snapped on at a 1990 neighborhood picnic at String Creek east of Willits, to which I’d driven Bari from a home in Cazadero. She’d been staying at a nurse’s “safe” house high in the Cazadero hills after being released from a rehab hospital in Santa Rosa. She’d asked me to chauffer her because, she said, I was the only person she knew who could be depended on to show up on time. Punctuality being my sole virtue, I showed up on time. She was good company. Smart and funny, and utterly unlike so many of the drear hags of “the movement.” JB, as I called her, was moving to a cabin at remote String Creek perfectly situated for a committed assassin to fin­ish her off. I said to her, “This place isn’t safe. Someone could drive up right to your door and shoot you.” She said, with suspicious flippancy, “If they’re going to get me, they’re going to get me.” I didn’t believe her fatal­ism. She was a person who wanted to live. And I doubly didn’t believe it because her two little girls were often with her at the cabin, and JB was devoted to them way past risking their safety and welfare. I knew then she knew what had happened to her, that she knew she was out of danger, that there would be no more attempts on her life. From there, Steve Talbot produced an honest film called ‘Who Bombed Judi Bari?’ identifying Mike Sweeney, the ex, as the most likely suspect in the attack on his ex-wife, as Judi Bari herself had informed Talbot, then denounced Talbot for including Sweeney’s long history of violent associations in his film.

Of course in certain credulous circles, namely the mil­lions of screwballs who believe 911 was an inside job, the Building 7 paranoids and on through the catalog of crackpot conspiracy-think, all you have to do is invoke the historically villainous FBI and/or corpora­tions, and/or berserk males and/or Christian fundamen­talists and, in this case, you’ll eventually win $4.2 mil­lion in a successful libel suit against individual members of the Oakland Police Department and the FBI. Which is what happened. (Our supervisor, Dan Hamburg, is a Building 7 guy. Naturally he thinks the FBI was com­plicit in the Bari Bombing, which it may well have been but not in the way that Hamburg and his fellow Building 7 intellectuals might understand.)

And now we have a bogus new movie cynically called ‘Who Bombed Judi Bari?,’ but it’s 22 years after the honest documentary under the same title. The phony new ‘Who Bombed Judi Bari?’ film appears at the same time as a timely winning lawsuit to get some bombing-related physical evidence back from the feds that the feds have failed to analyze all these years. And Cherney and Company have never demanded in legal actions that the FBI do its supposed job. I learned about the left over evidence in the Chronicle, that Cherney and Co. will select an “independent” lab to analyze this stuff. Predic­tion: None of this will go anywhere because it is in the mutual interests — financial on the Bari Cult side, pro­fessional on the FBI side — not to find who did it. And even the cult brains think it’s odd that the Bari family never pressured the feds to solve the case. I don’t think that’s odd because I think the family also had a pretty clear idea about what happened.

I’ve often tried to argue the skeptic’s side of the case, and I think I’ve done pretty well where I’ve been allowed to present the obvious questions, but the great speakers-of-truth-to-power have gone all out to shut me down, so assiduous are they that reasonable people wonder what they’re afraid of. One night at a Berkeley bookstore, one of the Bari-Cherney attorneys, Ben Rosenfeld, was hooted at when he tried to refute the dissenting perspec­tive. The Bari Ghouls seemed to have learned that night that it was a lot safer NEVER to debate the case in any kind of public forum before an impartial audience.

It’s a huge irony that the Bari Gang won, of all things, a federal libel case based on the denial of their free speech. Of course it’s the only speech they’ve ever been interested in defending.

* * *

Bill Verick, Redway, writes: “Your remarks about Judi Bari are very interesting. It confirms most of my own experience with her. She was smart and funny, but also ruthless and narcissistic.

“Back when my office was in Redway, Judi called me once. At the Garberville Rodeo Days parade, local dumbasses ran a float with Darryl and Judi hanging in effigy. Even though it happened in Humboldt County, Mendo activists were screaming to sue the float builders. Bari called to ask about the pros­pect. I told her people have a First Amendment right to hang her in effigy and that if she sued them she’d lose and probably have to pay their attorneys fees. Then I asked her if she thought activists should get sued if they hung or burned Charles Hurwitz in effigy. She got it right away and that was the end of that. She thanked me and we spent a little time marveling that Judi’s sister is the New York Times anti-environmental reporter Gina Kolata. I was impressed with how smart, decisive and unsentimental Judi was. She played a deeper and more sophisticated game than she let on or that many of her colleagues wanted to recognize. In a lot of ways Judi reminded of Mac McLeod, the Party organizer who waived the bloody shirt of his murdered comrade to rally strikers at the end of Steinbeck’s great, ‘In Dubious Battle’.”

Judi Knew Mike Bombed Her

by Crawdad Nelson

(Ed note: Darryl Cherney is in the news lately for a hagiographic, and thoroughly dishonest, film he’s made called ‘Who Bombed Judi Bari.’ Steve Talbot, who went on to produce the PBS Frontline series, made an honest film also called ‘Who Bombed Judi Bari?’ It is out of circulation now, unfortunately, but an article by Talbot about the case, along with much other information about it, can be found elsewhere on this website. The following is a comprehensive look at the Bari Bombing by Crawdad Nelson. It first appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser in the Fall of 2002, several months after the completion of the Bari-Cherney civil rights trial at the Federal Building in Oakland.)

* * *

Judi Bari, Oakland, May 1990

When the bomb ripped through Judi Bari’s car in Oakland on May 24, 1990, it not only crippled the late Ms. Bari, but grievously injured the progress of her ostensible cause: unity between immigrant environmentalists and resident working people. Whatever work along these lines she had done came undone as her blindfolded investigation of the case proceeded. Whatever credibility she had helped establish for the cause of saving timber was weakened as she stubbornly deflected the investigation from the suspect in the best position to hurt her, who had not only the means and motivation but also a documented history of domestic violence and destructive behavior. The aggressive, winner-take-all mentality dominant on the front lines of the “timber wars” today is Judi’s true legacy.

The patronizing rhetoric of Earth First! could hardly be more calculated to offend the sensibilities of working people and drives the wedge deeper with each lockdown of newly recruited activists.

What Was The Question Again?

Very early in the official investigation, Bari requested Use Immunity as a condition for helping the FBI find her assassin, which suggests that she had something important to hide. She did not want to help an investigation that might either compromise her or someone else she wanted to protect. Although she ended her days in the midst of a celebrated mission to prove the FBI was at war with her, the much-amended case her legal team brought to trial sought only to prove that individuals working for police agencies had, as policy, worked to defame her and her organization. This suggests that she could not prove the more famous charges, the ones on the bumper stickers, t-shirts and 20-foot banners.

After she had spent the previous two years on the Northcoast deliberately constructing an elaborate reputation as a combative “organizer” seemingly intent on nothing less than freeing the West from the grip of corporate domination and religious fundamentalism, singing songs like “Will the fetus be aborted” while crashing a Ukiah anti-abortion rally; appearing in staged newspaper photos holding a machine gun; and commenting publicly that “desperate times call for desperate measures,” it seems more than disingenuous to shy away from being linked to violent action on the grounds that it was bad publicity. Her book, “Timber Wars,” sought blatantly to capitalize on this hard-earned reputation.

Trial And Error

By the time the trial started and Darryl Cherney was seen telling courtroom bystanders that they had been “bombed” by the FBI, the case had become hopelessly mired in an eternal fund-raising mission based on Bari’s martyrdom, and had strayed permanently a real search for the assassin. Not long after her release from the hospital, Judi moved to a cabin on String Creek Road, a 30-minute drive from Willits over one-lane dirt roads. The place was made for ambush or drive-by convenience. Had she still feared for her life at that time, moving to String Creek would have seemed a suicidal act.

Sweeney Did It

At the Redwood Valley home where Judi resided in 1990, she had a neighbor and land partner, Mike Sweeney, now a public service administrator in Mendocino County, who was also her ex-husband. Journalist Steve Talbot disclosed, as the case went to trial, that Judi had confided to him that Sweeney had “raped, beaten and threatened” her during their marriage. Sensible people keep asking why Sweeney has never been meaningfully investigated. Beyond Bari’s suspiciously defiant interference with the official investigations of him, her supporters, including co-plaintiff Darryl Cherney carry on a program of censorship, intimidation and distraction. They do not want Sweeney investigated.

Not long ago, I attended a presentation by Bruce Anderson, the affable, soft-spoken Boonville editor who has followed the case through his newspaper, the Anderson Valley Advertiser. He has toured, renting halls in Oakland and Garberville recently, but also appearing at Humboldt State University and other venues over the past few years, trying to illuminate some of the basic facts. You have not heard Anderson on local public radio because Cherney and the Bari-ites have kept him off the air at KMUD and KZYX through direct interference and kept discussion of his evidence off the air through secondary interference. The Independent, a Redway newspaper trumpeting free speech, ignored Anderson’s appearance altogether, preferring to focus on massing reggae fans.

Carolyn Swanson, a Garberville journalist, explained how she had been kept off the air because she wanted to discuss the issue in unapproved terms. Andy Caffrey, a longtime Earth First!er with ties to Cherney, described how his relationship with Cherney deteriorated as the case ground on toward trial. Earlier, in newspaper accounts, Caffrey had described being ostracized and rudely treated by the freedom-loving pacifists gathering at the Oakland federal courthouse to “fiddle down” the FBI.

Facts Only Complicate The Bari Legend

This summer, Cherney sunk to a deeper level of cynicism, abstracting a post-trial interview from the excellent series of reports on the trial by Hank Sims which appeared in the AVA during April and May. The interview of juror Mary Nunn was an ironic addendum to the coverage. Nunn apparently believed that she was channeling Bari’s spirit and her convictions helped her hold out for the awards that the jury handed over, against the more reasonable jurors who felt there was little or no proof, despite flamboyant legal representation, and hours of emotional rhetoric that the FBI particularly cared one way or the other Who Bombed Judi Bari.

Unity

If money talks, it’s singing to Judi Bari, and the music reached a crescendo after the bombing. Within the next five years, her rallies had grown from small-time, impromptu debates in front of halted logging trucks to massive ceremonial “civil disobedience” characterized by high profile celebrities and hundreds of altruistic thrill seekers obediently lining up to be arrested and transported by bus to the Humboldt County Jail.

This show of public feeling was used to enrich Maxxam CEO Charles Hurwitz, former Public Enemy #1, in exchange for the headwaters of Yaeger Creek. Unity between working people and environmentalists? We don’t have time for that right now. Would you settle for unity between the credulous middle-class liberal fundraising base and the likes of Julia Butterfly Hill whose allegiance to the long-term health of the Northcoast timber economy is exemplified by her tooling to LA in her new Lexus to bid on a $400,000 house?

Over The Line

I attended one very forgettable 1999 “Memorial Line Crossing” in Carlotta where the Bari-ites planned to stage an uprising culminating in more mass arrests and “negative publicity” for the cruel forces of logging and order. That morning we gathered at the base camp where others were already undergoing intensive training on how best to submit to law enforcement. After an apprehensive few hours at the makeshift settlement of tents and vans, we carpooled with congenial but untamed types to the Fisher Road gate.

Two security guards manned the gate. One of them communicated with other unseen forces. Nothing happened until the free vegan lunch was served. Still waiting for the expected regiments of riot control police, we fidgeted and listened to the speeches.

Eventually those most determined to be arrested slipped over the gate. When nothing happened then, more of the crowd came over the gate, some still eating lunch. Some talked to the guards, hoping possibly to convert them, and in some small way enlarge their consciousness. They were conscious enough to continue doing nothing, an immaculate Zen response to the nothing that was done by a crowd in sweatpants and hiking boots menacing a log deck.

For at least an hour we nervously scanned the approaches, expecting (some, no doubt, hoping) for trouble.

The whole thing broke up peacefully with large group hugs and reaffirmed commitments to something.

What the event lacked in drama it made up for in empty spectacle.

Amendments

I first proposed this article to the Arcata Free Press last summer when I assessed the absence of coverage of the actual bomber behind the Bari-ite smokescreen. Certain elements within that group were helpful, even bringing me to Garberville to see Mr. Anderson speak on the issue — the only opportunity most people would have had to learn anything about this investigation. There is a great deal of evidence pointing at Mike Sweeney, and a large interference ring around him. A Mr. John McCowen, who happens to own the Ukiah building which was Earth First! headquarters in 1990, appeared in Garberville with copied stacks of incoherent letters to the editor which to his way of thinking cleared Sweeney of all suspicion.

For some reason he harassed and interfered with Mr. Anderson throughout the discussion and later pigeonholed me and the AFP representative trying to convince us that it really was an FBI plot to “silence” Judi Bari (which could not, if it was, had failed more spectacularly) and that DNA testing which would which could exonerate Sweeney from suspicion is a violation of his personal freedom when any ex-husband with a violent past and shady associations would be an obvious suspect in a murder attempt on his ex-wife.

Sweeney typically threatens to sue media outlets which mention his name in connection to the bombing, but he never actually sues. McCowen and others attempt to keep all discussion of any alternative solutions to the whodunit out of the press.

When Northcoast Earth First! learned that I was preparing this article they immediately challenged my commitment to First and Fourth amendment constitutional rights. Others whined that Earth First! couldn’t stand any more “bad press” in the same week that complimentary articles about tree sitters appeared in the New York Times.

I hereby invite in the interest of free speech one single piece of evidence to support the FBI theory. I will stack the evidence against Sweeney beside that and let the blind scales of justice decide. ¥¥

Here’s Kerr and Whitney’s supplemental table of wetlands mitigation:

“Mitigation expense for the proposed Willits Bypass Project will be more than $60 million

At almost $60 million, the proposed Willits Bypass estimated mitigation cost has only been calculated for actions related to the US Army Corps of Engineers 404 permit to offset the impact on wetlands. Wetland mitigation costs for the proposed 5.9-mile highway will be over $10 million per mile.

So far, the almost $60 million estimated mitigation cost to offset the impact on wetlands is as follows:

• Mitigation land acquisition, almost 2,000 acres: $16,000,000

• Mitigation construction costs (minus Ryan Creek): $17,850,000

• Ryan Creek Fish Passage Project: $3,000,000

• Mitigation short-term endowment: $11,290,021

• Mitigation long-term endowment: $11,781,165

• Total USACE- related mitigation: $59,921,186

• Wetland mitigation cost per mile (5.9 miles) : $10,170,000

In addition, the project will be required to provide additional funds, yet to be identified, for mitigation with the California Fish and Game Code Section 1602 streambed alteration and Section 2081 incidental take permit, the Regional Water Board Clean Water Act Section 401 certification, and the National Marine Fisheries Service incidental take permit. Total mitigation expense for the proposed Willits Bypass Project will be more than $60 million. (Source: Chapter 13 Financial Assurances, Willits Bypass Project Mitigation and Monitoring Proposal, January 2012, Caltrans.)”

* * *

Add this to the right of way acquisition costs and we’re talking about a huge influx of probably well over $100 million in cash just for land and land rights to a small number of local Willits property owners. Although Kerr and Whitney rightly describe this as “politics,” we can also describe the process as “cash — millions of dollars for Willits landowners” for property which otherwise would have been hard to sell in the local real estate market. This may better explain why transportation officials in charge of this highly questionable project — which is now past the point of no return — so assiduously ignore such trivialities as the unstable geology of the Willits-Little Lake Valley or the much greater need for traffic improvements both in Willits’ well-known hazardous chokepoints and other areas of the state.

• “Hamburg is right to suggest cutting salaries of those over $68,000 and then take a look at shortened workweek so that employees still have a job.” An interesting threshold, $68,000 being the Supervisors’ salary at the time. Hamburg has never expressed support for the shortened workweek the employees voted in favor of in the early phases of contract negotiations. Instead, when crunch time arrived, Hamburg voted to impose a 12.5% pay cut on all SEIU members, a higher pay cut than any other bargaining unit in the County (since reduced to a 10% pay cut without comment from Hamburg). Hamburg also defended keeping the Board salary at $68k per year saying that it “devalued” the position to compare a Supervisors job to a mid-level employee — after voting to impose a 10% cut on everyone else.

• “[Hamburg] agrees with Mark Scaramella, as I do, that the Supervisors are not getting timely information to make decisions. A system of information follow-up needs to be put in place. No other candidate has mentioned this that I have heard.” Nor has Hamburg since being elected.

• “Increasing the preference for any county government contracts to be local is a clear idea to use.” The County’s current local preference credit on County contracts is 5%. In a campaign debate in Fort Bragg, Hamburg suggested raising it to 10%. Not a peep about this from Hamburg since he was elected.

• “Hamburg also understands that our county needs broadband for anyone to do business.” Hamburg has been involved with Mendoccino’s “Broadband Alliance.” But so far, nothing has been accomplished, and no County action has been proposed.

• “Hamburg has also been a strong supporter of the coastal economy, supporting the workers that make a living from the ocean. Once again, he is supporting people’s jobs, not theories devised by the state and feds. ‘We must protect our local crab, urchin and seaweed businesses and all intact fisheries from over-regulation’.” No proposals from Hamburg about “coastal jobs” since being elected. Nothing about urchins or crab fisheries which are the purview of the state and the feds. Although some people collect and sell seaweed,  ”seaweed jobs” don’t exist.

• “Illegal water diversions should not be tolerated. [Hamburg] supports law enforcement and environmental health efforts to prosecute anyone diverting or polluting water. There doesn’t seem to be a system in place to monitor diversions.” And there still isn’t. And Hamburg hasn’t proposed one. And no one has been charged with or prosecuted for “illegal water diversion.”

Mr. Laybourne added: “Disclosure: I am on the Hamburg steering committee.”

“Adding all this up,” Laybourne concluded, “I believe Hamburg will make a solid Supervisor as he recognizes the immediate county budget problems and has some fresh ideas for helping the problems even though the Ukiah Daily Journal seemed to say no thanks. Beyond that, he sees possibilities in how to rebuild our economy and even if it all doesn’t happen, it is the right direction.” “Possibilities”? Combine that with “hope” and you still can’t buy a cup of coffee.

“Even if it all doesn’t happen, it is the right direction.” What about if none of it is even proposed?

CEO Carmel Angelo had strongly recommended that the Board keep the retirees separate from current employees because adding these older employees “could be a risk to the county.” I.e., if these retirees increase the County’s healthcare costs by requiring more healthcare than is predicted, the County would have to absorb a good sized chunk of the cost.

In the watered down version of “blending” that the Board voted for — in which retirees will still have to pay more for health insurance than current employees, but less than if they were in a small insurance pool of their own — staff had estimated that it would increase county healthcare costs by about $239k, money that the County will have to find elsewhere in their already tight budget.

With the blended plan the retiree health insurance rates for the 100 or so retirees are estimated to go down from $922 per month to a somewhat less outrageous $663 per month.

After the vote the County’s dapper healthcare consultant, E. Peter McNamara, Senior Vice President-Municipalities in the San Francisco office of Keenan Associates (California’s largest healthcare brokerage), told the board that he was amazed at the unanimous vote to accommodate the retirees, even a little. “Mendocino County is the only public agency I’ve dealt with which is looking to blend,” said McNamara. “Everyone else is separating.”

To whom it may concern:

This letter is religious in nature. It concerns the City of Ten-Thousand Buddhas (CCTB) located in Talmage, California. Please forward this letter to the government in Talmage.

I have reason to believe that the religious institution, The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, does not provide protection to the surrounding community. Several years ago I attended a religious activity that lasted for a week. While I was there I was told by a female member of the Buddhist order, a Mrs. Chen, that one morning the community at CTTB awoke to find the grounds covered with snakes. Mrs. Chen attributed this invasion to a sinister, spiritual force at work. It is possible this evil force could invade the entire city of Talmage in an attack on CTTB.

My claim is startling but reasonable to a religiously minded person. I fear for the safety of the residents of Talmage.

Sincerely,

Walter Chang

This proposal begins with its executive summary: “The Hendy Woods Community Inc. proposes to create an alternative to park closure by providing volunteers, financial contributions and revenue enhancements sufficient to allow the Department of Parks and Recreation to run Hendy Woods at no net cost to the state general fund. The following paid seasonal positions at Hendy Woods will be replaced by volunteers: two park aides, two maintenance aides, one maintenance assistant. Hendy Woods Community will assist with fee collection, be responsible for trail maintenance, assist with maintenance of structures, provide docent/interpretive services, and will raise funds and provide revenue enhancements sufficient to meet all normal DPR expenses in excess of fees collected at Hendy Woods.”

The proposal goes on to point out that nearly 50,000 visitors annually visit Hendy Woods, contributing significantly to our “tourist dependent community” of 3200 people “If,” in the immortal words of the late Smokey Blattner, “you beat every body out of the bushes.” A number of those 3200 residents are part-time, occasional, hermitic, or on the run from the law. But when polled they unanimously support Hendy Woods being open.

The proposal to assume local responsibility for the park continues: “Within the last five years the very extensive water system has been rehabilitated to the point where it is currently functioning well. The septic leach lines have been recently cleared. A new wheelchair accessible bathroom and shower facilities have recently been completed. With the very minor exception of one outhouse roof in the Day Use area, the campsites, water access points, bathrooms, cabins, visitor center, park access kiosk and other facilities have been well maintained. Eliminating public use of these facilities and allowing these facilities to fall into disrepair would waste this recent investment of state funds.”

“The Anderson Valley Volunteer Fire Department’s principle firefighting water access point for the north end of Anderson Valley, the Valley’s largest population concentration outside of Boonville, is installed inside the park near the RV septic dump station, according to Anderson Valley Fire Captain Roy Laird. It offers a virtually limitless water supply and good pressure for firefighting.”

Among the negative economic impacts that would result from the closure of Hendy Woods are loss of affordable camping, reduced wine sales and loss of jobs at The Valley’s numerous tasting rooms, the end of handy public access to the Navarro River, reduced attendance at local summer events such as the world music festival and the County Fair. [Closure would] “imperil the Anderson Valley Brewing Company’s Beer Fest which is the single largest annual source of money for many nonprofits in the Valley.”

The proposal sums up, “Anderson Valley has demonstrated its commitment to working with the Department of Parks and Recreation to keep Hendy Woods open by sending numerous letters to decision makers, attending a wide variety of events and volunteering to work at the park and raise money. We understand the nature of the commitment we are making and have deliberately avoided plans that do not seem feasible, such as a complete takeover of the park. We are volunteering for duties that we can sustain for at least two years. Volunteers have already signed up to perform the functions we propose to perform. Fundraising is already underway. Anderson Valley is highly motivated to help keep Hendy Woods open.”

The rest of the proposal is formatted as a draft contract from Hendy Woods Community to the Parks Department.

Also included is a likely budget showing current costs and savings that would accrue from local monetary and volunteer contributions. It is not clear how much of the regional parks overhead cost is attributable to Hendy Woods, so those numbers, if they apply, are excluded. Effective fee collection, as Ms. Bailey said, by local volunteers, would produce additional revenues.

For the time being Hendy Woods Community does not expect to solicit cash donations, but to instead rely primarily on pledges from local people, businesses and organizations pending approval of application for nonprofit status.

The CSD’s Budget Committee voted unanimously to recommend to the Community Services District Board that the CSD act as sponsor for the organization until the nonprofit status is approved. If approved by the Board, the CSD would handle the small amounts of donated money associated with the nascent effort to somehow keep Hendy open. Ms. Bailey agreed to prepare basic paperwork for the district to ratify as soon as possible.

“We have ‘support legalization of marijuana’ on both the state and federal lists,” noted McCowen. “I think more appropriate wording might be, ‘support the repeal or modification of federal prohibition,’ which is really the solution. … I think one thing we’ve found out in struggling with this issue is we really need a federal solution…”

Pinches: “Under federal advocacy on page 11 I think it addresses that. It says, Mendocino County supports the regulation, legalization and taxation of marijuana.”

McCowen: “I’m not suggesting changing that last sentence.”

Pinches: “Don’t you think that addresses that?”

McCowen: “No.”

Hamburg: “I’m certainly not going to object to adding the sentence. The difference between having it in there that we support the legalization of marijuana and changing that to –”

McCowen: “Well, how about changing that sentence to ‘support the repeal or modification of federal prohibition’ and then leave the last sentence as it is?”

Hamburg: “And tell me what the difference is between repealing prohibition and legalization? I mean, we can get into the intricacies of how alcohol, the repeal of alcohol prohibition was done state-by-state as opposed to a blanket, but I just – it’s just too technical.”

McCowen: “I think it goes to decriminalization which is a lot more palatable to many more people and less threatening than legalization. I think it states it in a way that is more likely to gain acceptance.”

Hamburg: “I used to be for decriminalization of marijuana as opposed to legalization. But it was just too laborious and confusing to explain to people the difference. And I finally gave up. And I just became in favor of legalization. But I will defer to Supervisor Pinches who might have a comment on this.”

Pinches: “You can change it or leave it the same. The whole problem is here we have 435 people in Congress and not one of them will step forward with our position. We do have an opportunity, however. We are basically right now in a new Congressional district and there will be new people running for Congress here right now between the Golden Gate Bridge and the Oregon border. I think the counties to the north of us, especially, have similar goals. So I think if the counties would get together maybe we could at least have in place a local congressman who will support our position and get done with the nonsense of this whole marijuana industry. We have to get the conversation going back in Washington DC. We have never been able to do that. It’s just been: Oh, legalizing pot — that’s just kinda laughable. We need to have a serious conversation about this issue and I think we need to start out by putting a representative in place who supports the wishes of the North Coast counties.”

Smith, incoherent as always, declared, “I think this comes down to semantics or just personal preference. I think, again, all I’d like to reference is platforms, and the kind of document that I think we’re working with should be, is a general platform piece, so I am very open to whatever the language is, I think any of the suggestions are fine, I’m fine.”

The conversation burbled irrelevantly over and under the head of the pin until it was decided to change Mendocino County’s position to, “Like, whatever,” as everyone slowly realized it didn’t really matter what the wording was, much less what Mendo wants.

In living fact, Congressman Barney Frank has introduced HR 2306 — the Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011. But so far it has only 20 cosponsors, not including Congressman Thompson. HR 1983 — the state’s option approach which a few more congresspeople have signed on to — represents a tiny step toward piecemeal decriminalization, but only for medical marijuana.

It was definitely stupid for me to mutter at the council meeting that the seven protest letters that we received were “not very compelling.” I absolutely own that. It was a comment that could only be correctly interpreted by someone who had seen the letters. So it is not surprising that I’m getting criticized. However, I wish SOMEONE would have wondered, and then asked, “Why would Mari, who we generally know to be a fair, kind, and sensitive person, say something so callus [sic] and dismissive?” If someone had, I would have told them that the seven letters were actually written by only two individuals. One person wrote six letters; one for each of the properties he owns. The second person was at the council meeting. She has never been interested in rational dialogue, no matter what the city council does. Therefore, her letter did not hold a lot of weight with me. There were no other letters from the public.

Mari Rodin

Ukiah City Councilmember

Under the new contract the charges go on forever, or at least for the term of the twenty year contract, which might as well be forever in the current economic climate. The company will also get automatic rate increases equal to 100% of the Consumer Price Index, and 100% of price increases in gas and for the cost of landfill disposal will also be passed through. The current contract only allows increases for 75% of the CPI. The contract also calls for a rate review every five years where the company can ask for additional increases. And if that is still not enough, the company can ask for ‘extraordinary’ increases any time it wants. This major gift to the distant owners of C&S was advertised to Ukiah’s duped public as “stabilizing the rates and protecting the ratepayer.”

Cold Creek Compost, which operates out of Potter Valley and is owned by local guy Martin Mileck, competes with the Ukiah hauler for green waste. Mileck put an offer on the table to accept all green waste, food waste, grease (Ukiah cuisine is heavy on grease), and other unpleasant substances for the bargain price of $16 per ton. The Ukiah hauler, C & S Waste Solutions, is currently obligated to take the Ukiah curbside greenwaste to Cold Creek (for reasons too involved to review here), but takes the rest of the Transfer Station’s green waste to Pacific Recycling Solutions, its wholly owned subsidiary. C & S pays $32 per ton at Mileck’s Cold Creek and $30.00 per ton at PRS. The City Council was clearly uncomfortable that Mileck was offering to accept all the green waste and food waste at a huge cost savings to the ratepayers, but the Council, Red Phil excepted, managed to brush Mileck’s offer aside without a direct response. So instead of slashing the cost to ratepayers and adding food waste to the diversion stream so it can be composted, the Ukiah food waste will be continued to be trucked outtahere and landfilled at the ratepayer’s expense.

Only councilman Phil Baldwin dared to question the wisdom of the contracts or the hurry-up need to move forward with the deal in the face of numerous unanswered questions. At one point Benj Thomas explained how much time he and Mary Anne Landis had spent reviewing the issue, as if their self-alleged effort was sufficient reason by itself for going forward with the new contract. They told Baldwin that he should simply accept their word that it was a good deal. Baldwin, unpersuaded, cast the lone dissenting vote.

The SEIU leadership has issued a call for “regime change,” the updated catchphrase for “throw the bums out.” Three Supes positions will be up for election next year. If SEIU can make a clean sweep, they can get rid of the incumbent supervisors and CEO Carmel Angelo who is being painted as a union busting privatizer from San Diego. Angelo was hired as Health and Human Services director four or five years ago. When the economic collapse kicked in, Angelo moved swiftly to lop HHSA jobs, and was so ruthlessly good at it she was moved into the CEO’s office to whack away at the entire County workforce. She then replaced her hapless boss, Tom “Silent Tom” Mitchell who resigned under pressure not quite two years ago. The County was faced with a chronic structural deficit at the time with expenses routinely outpacing revenues. Angelo immediately got out her combat hatches to attack the budget deficit via layoffs, program cuts and wage concessions, actions that have produced a balanced budget, but have not won Angelo any friends among rank and file workers.

The County and SEIU have charged each other with unfair labor practices, a drama that will play out before the Public Employees Relations Board (PERB). Resolution of the PERB charges promises to be an expensive and long drawn out affair, further bleeding the County, which recently hired Myers Nave, accurately pegged by SEIU as a union busting law firm. The County says it had no choice when SEIU filed an injunction to stop the 12.5% pay cut on a Friday and the County had to respond by the following Monday.

Meanwhile, the County’s economic outlook just got infinitely worse. A recent State Supreme Court case out of Orange County has held that health insurance benefits that were “clearly promised” to retirees, even if they were not part of a collective bargaining agreement, are a vested right that the County must honor. For several decades the County “promised” its employees, in the form of assurances in the employee’s handbook, that County retirees would have paid healthcare for life. Prior to the latest court ruling, the County decided that life ended about two years ago when they cut off the benefit before a crowd of angry white-haired retirees. The unfunded liability for retiree health insurance at the time was pegged at around $130 million and the County had no way to pay for it. If the latest ruling applies to us, and it looks like it does, it means there will likely be more pay cuts and layoffs.

“They tell me that the threat to close the parks is very real. This other issue about ‘we must raise taxes or else,’ could well be there. However, I know that the committee staffers feel that the threat to close these parks is very, very real and they say things like, ‘Well, the politics of this is, you’re cutting back funding for dying AIDS patients or home health care.’ So it’s really hard for them to say, ‘Well, let’s exempt the parks.’ Each of these issues has a fiscal analysis. There are many other things that they are talking about doing that have very bad ramifications in the long run, fiscally. People have told me that the Hendy Woods argument is very compelling however, but we better work hard on Plan B because no matter how compelling we find the argument, you may need to find some private operators or nonprofits who can in fact operate Hendy Woods. We are certainly doing everything we can to identify people like that. But the problem is that that comes with a cost for somebody also. We don’t have all these nonprofits sitting around in Anderson Valley that can just come forward. The question is, Can I identify a single nonprofit in Anderson Valley which has the wherewithal to actually use the new provisions which make it easier for nonprofits to take over state parks? I’m on the board of the Anderson Valley Land Trust. We have a 10-hour a week staffer and a volunteer board and — yikes! As a matter of fact, Anderson Valley had to fight just to keep a deputy sheriff. We had to raise a huge amount of money to rebuild our health center, and then within three months of our health center reopening the State pulled the money for that. We were eligible for stimulus money to rebuild in that building, but we were not eligible for stimulus money to help pay the mortgage with a third of the funding having been eliminated. It just keeps on going. The fairgrounds funding has been eliminated. We are really struggling in our community to keep our basic community resources intact. This Hendy Woods thing came around before we even realized that we had been granted — of 800 applicants nationwide, two were for health centers and one of them was ours in Anderson Valley. Two out of 800. Before we even realized that our Hail Mary pass for the Health Center had been successful this Hendy Woods park closure announcement came along. People in Anderson Valley are swimming as fast as they can. We will keep on going with what we can. But everything I hear is that closing Hendy Woods is a real threat and the last time I looked it was reported that the state was hundreds of millions of dollars behind on revenue projections.”

An indignant Hendy Woods maintenance man at Hendy Woods called last week: “You got some really bad information there about the water system at Hendy Woods State Park,” going on to say that they had recently invested some $40,000 to upgrade the water and the septic system both of which now require minimal maintenance. We informed the caller of what we had actually reported — “[Kathy] Bailey said that as far as she knows the water system at the Park is serviceable so long as it is regularly maintained, which is also the case with the park’s septic system.” But all the caller could reply was, “Well, that’s not what I heard.”

By pure conicidence we spoke with former Hendy Woods Park maintenance man Joe Falanga; it was his agitation (at the risk of his job) that got the water system at Hendy upgraded. Falanga confirmed that, yes indeed, the state had, since Falanga’s transfer to the Sierras, spent something like $40k to upgrade the water system. But now, having made the investment in the water and septic systems, the state plans to close down Hendy Woods and 69 other state parks. Falanga suggested that we check out a recent report circulating among State Parks employees that State Parks Deputy Director Manuel Lopez recently authorized large expenditures — around $600,000 — of accumulated vacation pay to retiring State Parks bigwigs.

Anyhoo, it’s direct-action time. Occupy Hendy Woods kicks off Friday the 11th of November and continues through that Sunday. The event kicks off Friday at 3:00 pm at the front entrance, followed by a potluck dinner at 5:30 and an “Occupy Hendy Camp Out.” Saturday begins with Yoga, followed by teach-ins, lunch, more teach-ins, and dinner at 5:30 followed by entertainment and storytelling. Sunday wraps up with a General Assembly from 10-12 and community clean-up from 12-2.

A request: Can we please keep the hippie rituals to a minimum on the off chance regular people would like to participate?

Any questions should be directed to my office at 501 Low Gap Road, Room 1020 or by calling (707) 463-4371 or (800) 992-5441, when prompted enter 4370, 4371, or 4372.

Susan M. Ranochak

Mendocino Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder

Ukiah

Oversight Committee Chairman Bill Sterling replied: “Dear Mark, Thanks for the article about the Willits experience. The article encourages me to encourage the Anderson Valley Oversight Committee members to attend and participate in our own school board meetings whenever possible. My own experience to date when prioritization of work financed by the bonds has been an agenda item has been that suggestions, questions, observations, and expressions of concern voiced by the likes of [committee member] Doug Elliott, Ric Bonner, George Lee and yours truly have been welcomed as useful and pertinent. I shall let Doug, Ric and George speak for themselves about their sense of what our contributions and impact have been. My own sense is that what the four of us have contributed has made a palpable impact. — Best regards, Bill.”

The Major replied: Dear Mr. Sterling, With all due respect, that’s not ‘my sense’ at all. I see nothing resembling ‘prioritization’ at the school board level or the committee level, other than the obvious ‘elementary school first’ semi-priority. But if there’s something I’m missing, perhaps in the minutes to the School Board meetings or whatever may be going on in the loosely organized ‘superintendent’s committee,’ I’d be happy to change ‘my sense.’ That’s not to say that some of the ongoing architectural work and costing won’t be useful in prioritizing. Prioritizing, however, involves a formal list of options and a numeric ranking while keeping a keen eye on the bottom line of the impact of the top ranked items to stay within available funds. If anything like that has happened, it certainly escaped my attention. My point in forwarding the Willits News piece was to point out that there’s no point spending money on planning for project elements that won’t end up being funded because they are low ranked. Willits Unified has made several errors like that and we should try to avoid them in AV. Thanks for the note. — Mark Scaramella, Committee member, Boonville.”

FR: MENDOCINO COUNTY EXECUTIVE OFFICE

Ukiah, California… October 6, 2011

ASSEMBLYMEMBER WESLEY CHESBRO TO ADDRESS THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS

The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors will receive a presentation by Assemblymember Wesley Chesbro, representing the 1st Assembly District, on October 25. Chesbro is slated to provide an “end of session” legislative wrap-up, share insight into happenings in the State Legislature, and highlight priorities for the 1st Assembly District when the legislature reconvenes in January 2012.

“Hearing from our State elected officials provides invaluable insight into the Sacramento legislative process, now, more important than ever,” stated Board Chair, Kendall Smith, 4th District Supervisor. “The Board is fortunate to have this opportunity to dialogue with Assemblymember Chesbro, to convey our greatest concerns and highest priorities for Mendocino County; he is acutely aware of the challenges faced by rural counties throughout the State, and we are lucky to have him in our corner.”

Chesbro (D-Arcata) has represented the 1st Assembly District since 2009, previously serving as our State Senator from 1998-2006. Chesbro has announced his intent to run for reelection in 2012 in the newly formed 2nd Assembly District, a result of recent legislative redistricting. The public is encouraged to attend all Board of Supervisors meetings. Assemblymember Chesbro is scheduled to speak at approximately 2pm. The Board of Supervisors Chambers is located at 501 Low Gap Road, Ukiah, Ca. For additional information, please contact the Mendocino County Executive Office at 707.463.4441.

Carmel J. Angelo, Chief Executive Officer

The Fort Bragg Advocate-News published a lengthy compilation of accused double-murderer/fugitive Aaron Bassler’s criminal record last week. The clear primary features of Bassler’s criminal history over about 15 years since he graduated from high school involve booze and weapons (DUIs, drunk in public, stolen guns, illegal gun possession, etc.) Most of the charges were plead down to minimal jail sentences, unsupervised probation, or dismissed outright.

Conspicuously missing from the Advocate-News’s otherwise comprehensive criminal history of Mr. Bassler was the name of the judge who presided over these many cases where very little was done about Bassler’s increasingly obvious problems. Since most of the cases were in Ten Mile Court, we can safely assume that the Judge involved was now-retired (and very unlamented) Judge Jonathan Lehan. But nowhere in the Advocate-News review is there any mention of the judge in Bassler’s numerous court appearances, nor any mention of any judge expressing any interest in how previous orders were carried out, why the criminal conduct continued with minimal sanction, or what would be done to actually deal with the problem(s). Instead, we find people (primarily Bassler’s father, but others as well) blaming cops and mental health staff and understaffed programs for not doing their jobs or not taking the Bassler situation seriously. But if Judge Lehan — who may easily be the single largest part of the Bassler problem — had really wanted to address Bassler’s criminal behavior, he had lots of tools at his disposal — none of which are being mentioned by critics of the local criminal justice or mental health systems.

This letter is an informational notice of the US Postal Service’s intent to conduct an Area Mail Processing study of mail processing facilities to determine whether consolidation of some operations is appropriate.

The Postal Service is facing some of the most difficult challenges in its history. The current economic downturn and continued diversion of mail to the internet has led to a dramatic 20% decline in mail volume since 2007. The decline in mail volume has also meant a decline in postal revenue. As a result, today the Postal Service has not only more equipment, personnel and facilities than it needs to process a decreasing amount of mail, but also less revenue than it needs to cover the costs of that large processing and delivery network.

The economic reality demands that the Postal Service reduce its network. Aligning postal facilities and resources with the demand for postal services by consolidating postal operations and placing equipment and employees where needed makes sound business sense. To do otherwise would be fiscally irresponsible.

Information about the AMP study process and the facilities that will be studied is available on www.USPS.com. Public input is being solicited as part of the study process and will be considered in the decision-making process. In communities where the Postal Service’s initial review supports the business case for changing mail processing operations, public meetings will be held. Additional information will be shared by the Postal Service and members of the community will be invited to ask questions and provide feedback. Information about additional opportunities to comment on the AMP studies is available at our website.

On behalf of the Postal Service thank you for the trust you have placed in us over the years to deliver your mail. We appreciate your business and are working harder than ever to position the Postal Service so that we can continue to serve you for many years to come.

Sincerely,

Susan LaChance, Vice President

Consumer and Industry Affairs

Washington DC

To: Mr. Marc [sic] Scaramella

Re: Citizens Advisory Committee on Redistricting

Dear Mr. Scaramella:

On behalf of the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors, please accept our sincere appreciation for your efforts serving on the Mendocino County Citizens Advisory Committee on redistricting. You traveled hundreds of miles and served countless hours in order to fully review redistricting concepts and potential maps consistent with the 2010 census data. You gave generously of your time with great attention to detail.

Again, we sincerely thank you for your dedication and service to Mendocino County.

Regards,

Kendall Smith, Chair,

Mendocino County Board of Supervisors

Ukiah

Funding for libraries has been drying up. It will get worse when state funding goes away entirely next year. Libraries have already had their hours drastically cut to less than three days a week) and there is only one staff member for every 18 volunteers —it’s the volunteers who do much of the heavy lifting for the libraries anymore.

Elliott said that circulation of books in the county is up 18% and there are about 48,000 cardholders and that the library system is vital to the county’s cultural and economic development. She suggested that individual board members and members of the public come forward and endorse the measure, particularly at Fair time next month where the Library’s defenders will maintain a booth. Elliott also pointed out that the new bookmobile is being funded by USDA grant money not library fund money, so don’t be fooled into thinking that they have a lot of money because they’re driving a new bookmobile around. As things stand now if the library measure does not pass, they will have a new bookmobile but no one to drive it.

If passed, Measure A would bring in about $1.3 million a year for libraries only.

The library measure requires a two-thirds yes vote. If approved, the funds would be restricted to maintaining local libraries, restoring open hours at existing locations to 2006/07 levels, expanding library programs for children and adults, expanding outreach to people who cannot come to library branches, and acquiring and replacing library equipment and materials.

* * *

The most discussed agenda item was introduced by the current and former pastors of the Valley Bible Fellowship next door to the old ambulance barn in downtown Boonville where Laura Hamburg and a couple of her friends want to open a medical marijuana dispensary. Pastors Earl Peterman and Dave Kooyers presented the Board with a letter asking the Board to take some kind of action to prevent the dispensary from opening next door to their church.

After summarizing the history of the Church and the services they provide to their parishioners, the pastors, while admitting that the marijuana dispensary partnership has been  polite and sincere in their quest for local acceptance, concluded that they simply oppose the opening of a “dispensary/co-op” in that location or any other location “in the vicinity of a church, library, park, fairgrounds, school or any other place where children or vulnerable adults gather.”

Pastor Kooyers’ letter points out several times that marijuana is a Schedule I federally illegal drug and that it is a federal felony to engage in the distribution of such a controlled substance — “whether from a nicely appointed storefront business or from the trunk of your car, California law notwithstanding.”

Kooyers also says that it is a federal felony to engage in or knowingly rent a facility for such drug distribution.

“Such felonious activity has no business being anywhere near such a sensitive area of a town, the voting/polling place, the Post Office, the neighboring restaurant, and especially immediately next to our facility,” said Kooyers. “It places our children, those we minister to, and our pastors and teachers in a terrible position and damages our ability to be effective.”

Kooyers insisted that as a church with an educational component they have a legal and moral duty to protect their children from harm from various sources. “It is legally and morally incumbent on us that they not be exposed to felonious activities or to the threat of physical harm or to the impression that felonious activities are acceptable behavior.”

Kooyers also noted that current Mendocino County rules require that permitted medical marijuana grows cannot be within 1000 feet of a church, school or youth-oriented facility or residential treatment facility. “If there are such restrictions on growing a green plant,” asked Kooyers, “how much more restrictive should the law be on a place where the finished product is available in condensed quantity?”

Kooyers was also concerned about the potential for crime. “We are unwilling and unable to place either children or any of our congregation or visitors in any kind of jeopardy from anyone who might choose to ‘hit’ the co-op for its perceived cash or pot value. [Kooyers’ emphasis.] A promise that a ‘sophisticated security system’ will be in place or that there will be a ‘small amount of medicine or cash’ on premises provides no comfort. In fact, the necessity for such a security system and safety measures is what troubles us in the first place. Such a business has no basis being located next to a church or fairgrounds. All it takes is one desperate person or group — and we’ve had them in Anderson Valley — to do a stupid thing and bullets could fly right into our facility or a nearby building. People have died in robberies involving a lot less value than will be inside the co-op.”

The pastors continued at considerable length about the dangers to the public and children, and the potential for crime in the area. “This is utterly irresponsible, dangerous and incompatible with the kind of downtown spirit and sense of safety we have historically enjoyed.”

The pastors also said that parents would be uncomfortable bringing their children to church functions if they perceive that there is an increased risk to them stemming from the marijuana dispensary next door.

Nor do they like the message that the dispensaries send. “We are working with former and present substance abusers, including pot smokers,” said Kooyers, “trying to get them to stay away from substances. It is unwise, a tempting reminder, and will be deeply offensive to them to have a ‘cooperative’ selling marijuana right next door. This would harm them and harm our ability to reach, help and support these people in maintaining their recovery.”

The pastors also object to the dispensary being across the street from the Boonville Fairgrounds where community events such as the county fair, funeral services, wedding receptions, Mexican quinceanera parties, could not help but see a pot dispensary right next to a church. “We think a dispensary anywhere near this location sends the wrong signal to thousands and thousands of Fairground visitors and potentially places many of them in danger of various kinds as well as being a potential turnoff to the Fairgrounds.”

The pastors summarized California law prohibiting dispensaries and marijuana co-ops near places where children gather for school or other similar functions. The existence of a dispensary next door, in the opinion of the pastors, might also make it difficult for other businesses to operate in the area because of the proximity to a marijuana co-op or dispensary.

The pastors concluded that the existence of a marijuana dispensary next-door would threaten their very existence, noting that the dispensary is “superfluous — there is no shortage of accessibility to high-grade pot in the area. No patients will be deprived if the co-op is not in that location. They will not increase the legal availability of marijuana to anyone. Its proposed function is easily replaced and easily moved and it simply has not earned the right in our community to encroach upon, displace, nor brunt the effectiveness of the Valley Bible Fellowship which is what its immediate proximity would clearly and harmfully do.”

The pastors’ letter concludes, “The proposed pot selling cooperative is utterly incompatible with our mission and facility use. We think there are very good reasons for substantial distance between a dispensary/co-op and not only us but all similar facilities in Boonville and all of Mendocino County.”

CSD Director Kirk Wilder supported the pastors’ opposition, and was adamantly opposed to the dispensary idea, forthrightly describing medical marijuana as “a bunch of crap” — meaning that he thinks most “medical” marijuana smokers have no real medical condition that pot will help.

During the ensuing discussion, Pastor Kooyers added that the dispensary proposal was “un-neighborly, a poor location, an attractive nuisance to crime, and a serious parking problem.”

Kooyers also told the Board that he believed the County should deny Ms. Hamburg and her partners a business license and that they had appealed to several County officials to do just that. Kooyers also said two years ago he had heard that County staffers advised would-be dispensary applicants that they should not deploy the word “marijuana” on the business license application which, if true, amounts to tax funded deception and subterfuge.

According to the business license application for the Boonville dispensary, the title of Ms. Hamburg’s business would be “Mendocino Generations,” and in the block labeled “Type of merchandise to be sold” the applicant says: “Alternative healing products, jewelry, t-shirts, clothing, stickers, books, periodicals.”

Type of service to be rendered: “Alternative health services, i.e., massage, health consultations, et cetera.”

Description of proposed business: “Consumer cooperative for alternative health services.”

Estimated value of equipment: “$30,000.”

Starting date of business: “August 1, 2011.”

Items to be used in the business: “Computers, point-of-sale system.”

Storage location of supplies equipment and vehicles: “on-site, small storage closet.”

The County’s Planning Department has already signed off on the license, noting that the property is zoned C2-commercial for retail sales and health services. Nowhere on the application does the word “marijuana” appear.

Director Andrea LaCampagne said she admitted to being a NIMBY on the subject. She did not like the idea of a marijuana dispensary near a church or a school.

Director Wilder suggested that letters in opposition to be sent to Ms. Hamburg and to the County officials, including the County Treasurer who has the authority to issue business licenses.

The Board unanimously agreed.

In answer to a question from Director Valerie Hanelt, Pastor Kooyers said they were considering a signature drive in opposition to the dispensary proposal, but that they did not believe it could be done soon enough given the simplicity of obtaining a business license, the only approval necessary at this time because the County has not enacted any pot dispensary rules.

At times the discussion drifted into generic pros and cons of marijuana as opposed to alcohol, but soon returned to the subject at hand which is whether or not the proposed pot dispensary is a good idea at the current location.

In the letter they intend to send to Ms. Hamburg, the Board will offer her an opportunity to speak to them about their opposition to the dispensary plans as currently understood at their next board meeting.

If the prevailing attitude at last Wednesday’s CSD Board meeting was any indication, Good luck with that, Laura.

Last week our Supervisors report was pretty long so we didn’t publish the full dialogue surrounding the motion at the end of the Board of Supervisors meeting to get the Final Environmental Impact Report for the Ukiah Valley Area Plan approved. (And in case any readers didn’t get the reference to “uncooked sausage” — i.e., Otto von Bismark’s quip that “laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.”

But some of us like sausage and some of us even like to see laws being made.

So here’s the full exchange, for those who do.

* * *

Supervisor John McCowen: “I move that rezonings other than areas 25, 29, 32, 37 necessary to meet the housing settlement agreements and the rezonings for the Calpella sewage treatment plant and Grace Hudson school go through the normal process at the landowner’s expense.”

Chair Kendall Smith asked the Clerk to read the motion back.

Clerk: “Motion to rezonings other than 25, 29, 32 and 37 necessary to meet housing agreements and Calpella sewage plant and Grace Hudson school the landowners will be financially responsible.”

Smith: “Sounds a little…”

Supervisor John Pinches: “We’ll need to take out the…”

McCowen: “Will be… I think I said will go through the normal process at the landowner’s expense.”

Pinches: “Will need to pay the applicable fees.”

McCowen: “Right.”

Smith: “And I think UVAP ought to be mentioned there. It ought to say UVAP map areas. So that it stands alone and it’s… it’s… intelligent or it’s clear. As a stand alone item. As an action.”

McCowen: “Why get into that now?”

Supervisor Carre Brown: (Laughs.)

Smith: “Cause it’s going to be a separate little document somewhere. Does the clerk have the language?”

Clerk: “Could you repeat the UVAP portion of the discussion?”

Smith: “Just put UVAP as a preface to the map change areas. 25, 29… and just call it the UVAP areas.”

McCowen: “And then it will be necessary to meet the housing settlement agreement?”

Clerk: “Yes, I have that.”

Brown: “I thought that was in a separate motion.”

McCowen: “Well, I’m saying, except for these, and then I’m identifying the six that were in the separate motion.”

Brown: “I see.”

Smith: “So do we want to begin relative to rezoning for map change areas?”

McCowen: “No.”

Smith: “No?”

Brown: “No.”

Smith: “Ok. So I’d like the clerk to read it then.”

The beleaguered Clerk tried again: “Motion to rezonings other than 25, 29, 32 and 37 necessary to meet the housing settlement agreement which includes the sewage plant, Grace Hudson landowner [sic] school will be, will go through the normal process at the landowner’s expense.”

Smith: “It didn’t say Calpella. It should say Calpella.”

Clerk: “Calpella.”

Brown: “Yes.”

Clerk: “Sewage treatment plant.”

Hamburg: “I think instead of which includes, it should be…”

McCowen: “Should we take a two minute recess?”

Smith: “It’s not, it’s not kinda really being clear. Verbage. It’s not clear.”

Pinches: “Well, we already voted on our previous motion.”

McCowen: “No we haven’t voted yet.”

Smith: “We have.”

McCowen: “And it’s the UVAP map change areas. Numbers.”

Smith: “That’s correct. It is. So let’s take a two-minute break and we can have [County Planning Director] Mr. Gonzalez confer with the clerk…”

Supervisor Dan Hamburg: “And get it written correctly.”

McCowen: “At least get it sequential…”

(Break)

Smith: “We’re going to go to the clerk to read the final motion.”

Clerk: “Motion to direct that the rezonings other than the UVAP map changes 25, 29, 32 and 37 are necessary to meet the housing settlement agreement which includes the Calpella sewage treatment plant site and Grace Hudson school site will go through the normal process at the landowner’s expense.”

Smith: “I believe that’s correct, except the word before necessary should be that. That are, I… You said…”

Clerk: “…the map changes 25, 29, 32 and 37 necessary to meet the housing settlement agreement which includes the Calpella…”

Hamburg: “Are you OK with that, maker of the motion?”

McCowen: “Mm-hmm.”

Hamburg: “Ok?”

McCowen: “Ok.”

Hamburg: “Then I’m ok.”

Smith: “Alright.… Yeah. We had a motion by Supervisor …”

Brown: “McCowen.”

Smith: “by McCowen and seconded by Supervisor Hamburg. So please vote by the button.”

Clerk: “Motion passes with Supervisors Brown and Pinches dissenting.”

Smith: “Ok! That concludes the UVAP discussion.”

]]> http://theava.com/archives/11801/feed 0 http://theava.com/archives/11688 http://theava.com/archives/11688#comments Wed, 03 Aug 2011 21:57:59 +0000 Mark Scaramella http://theava.com/?p=11688 As last week’s meeting wound down, the Supervisors delivered their typically terse, minimally-informative “supervisors reports.”

Pinches sits on the Mendocino Transit Authority Board, but he’s on record that he thinks the MTA is wasting millions of dollars on a completely unnecessary new bus barn with fancy offices for their staff.

“The MTA is going out this month to bid for a $6.25 million bus shed and partial solar panels,” grumbled a clearly frustrated Pinches. “That’s moving forward. That’s all I’m going to say on that at this time.”

McCowen joked, “You got them to scale it back from $22 million.”

Pinches decided he did have more to say: “It’s really ironic, because here we are cutting routes and whatnot because we can’t afford to hire bus drivers or pay for gas or diesel, but yet we’re building an over-$6-million building — actually it will be more when it’s completed — to park the buses under. That’s not the direction I want to see MTA go, but that’s what the majority of the Board does. I think I’m bringing some checks and balances to the situation.”

McCowen: What’s going on with MTA is what’s going on with a lot of other things, and when we’ve lost control over how funding is allocated that’s the result — you wind up with operations being starved and yet there’s a big chunk of money for capital. And the argument is, well, we have to take it because otherwise someone else will, so [throws up his hands]… A return to local control would be welcome where we could make these decisions based on priorities locally.”

Earlier in the meeting Supervisor Pinches had grumbled several times that it seemed to him that the government is spending more money on fish habitat restoration than on children and seniors. (It didn’t help any when, toward the end of the meeting, Supervisor Hamburg described a large, expensive habitat restoration project in the Hopland area.)

Then Supervisor Carre Brown really rubbed it in: “Supervisor Pinches, will you please show everybody what I got you?”

Hamburg: “Oh yeah! What’s that, Johnny?”

Pinches reached for a paper bag near his Supervisor’s podium and reached in, saying, “She got me this cup and she said she’d provide me with the quart of vodka later.” Then Pinches pulled out a hand-made cup from a pottery shop in Ukiah that had some kind of design painted on it.

Smith: “Nice!”

Hamburg: “It’s a Hoyman-Browe!”

Brown: “Show ‘em what’s on it, John.”

Pinches tried unsuccessfully to laugh: “It’s a fish.”

Everybody but Pinches laughed.

Brown: “It’s very timely!”

Pinches quickly figured out a way to appreciate his gift: “You know what? It’s a good fish — it’s dead.”

Brown laughed.

Pinches, seemingly unamused, set the cup at arm’s length away from the rest of his papers.