BUDGET ASSUMPTIONS at all levels of government, at this point in the ongoing and clearly irreversible economic collapse, change from day to day as the bad fiscal news rolls in. Even if the recent budget balancing works temporarily with these stop-gap initiatives, the state faces a renewed deficit commencing July 1st when the new fiscal [...]
With minimal discussion at their meeting of Monday, April 20th, the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors approved nearly all proposed departmental fees, approved them at double, sometimes even triple their present costs.
But our leaders didn’t like the way the garbage fee increases were formatted, and they questioned how such big increases were arrived at. [...]
by Tim Stelloh
In his swift climb up the Northern California financial media ladder, John Sakowicz didn’t just claim to have founded a multi-billion dollar offshore hedge fund. To hear Sakowicz tell it, he’s a man with impeccable Wall Street cred—a man who’s spent much of his life toiling in finance.
“I am a 30-year veteran of Wall Street,” [...]
by Tim Stelloh
John Sakowicz’s columns for the North Bay Bohemian usually concluded with a bio, a sliver of personal history to add authority to hisarguments about the country’s economic crisis: “John Sakowicz is a Sonoma County investor who was a co-founder of a multi-billion dollaroffshore hedge fund Battle Mountain Research Group.”
Since that bio surfaced last year, his [...]
by Freda Moon
There’s not much dispute about what happened on Fort Bragg’s Farrer Lane the night of February 8—the night Aaron Vargas killed Darrell McNeill with a cap and ball .44 caliber black powder revolver.
In this case, almost nobody bothers with the obligatory “alleged” when describing how Vargas knocked on the door of McNeill’s Coachmen Somerset fifth-wheel [...]
Mendocino County is proposing a sweeping new series of dramatically increased user fees. The County thinks it can make a dent in next year’s looming budget deficit, a shortfall estimated at $8 million — or much more.
Even if the increased fees magically became revenue, the County would only get about $1.15 million more in [...]
Of course not.
They got a huge raise less than two years ago. That one boosted their pay from $48,000 to $68,000 a year, three times the average private sector wage in Mendocino County.
But they want more.
Even with the County facing a record-setting budget deficit of at least $8 million, the supervisors, at the [...]
The following is a debate between AVA editor Bruce Anderson and medical marijuana activist Pebbles Trippet…
Pebbles Trippet: Before I could jump on you for calling 4th District Candidate for Supervisor Paula Deeter a “stoner,” Paula had called you on your assumption and you printed a prompt correction (Off The Record, 3/26/08). You praised Paula as [...]
The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors is about give opportunism a bad name. A couple of supervisors, Smith and Colfax, have already chipped away at opportunism’s ever expanding chapters when the two of them indignantly denounced the Grand Jury for revealing that they’d falsely billed the County for several thousand dollars worth of private travel. [...]
