The Supervisors rubberstamped the huge gift of a gold-plated “Crisis Residential Treatment” building next door to the Schraeders last Tuesday. Nobody actually said “Schraeder” or “Redwood Quality Management Company,” instead referring to the Schraeders as “a good operator” which will operate the new building next door to the Schraeders’ existing operation on Orchard Street in Ukiah. In prior Measure B Committee meetings, they at least had the honesty to refer to the Schraeders as “the odds-on favorite” to get the CRT operator contract.
Measure B Project Manager Alison Bailey told the Board that the building — essentially a glorified motel — will end up costing about $5 million.
The project’s $5 million cost is made up of $500k for the bare land (being paid for out of a state mental health facilities grant), $750k for “design and architecture,” $3.25 million for construction with contingency, and $500k worth of “soft costs” — a construction manager, “building commissioning,” materials testing, plan checks and permits, utility connection fees, and “contingency.”
The CRT as proposed by CEO Angelo’s hand-picked extremely pricy Sacramento architect Nacht & Lewis is essentially a 2000 square foot four-bedroom house. For comparison the most expensive four-bedroom house for sale in Ukiah is about $1 million. It has 4.5 bathrooms and about 2500 square feet. The lowest cost 4 bedroom house in Ukiah is about $500k with the average or typical 4-bedroom house at about $700k.
Asked why the building is so expensive, a Nacht & Lewis rep named Fadness told the Board that it is “not a typical residence.” Oh no, no, no, no. Although, according to Fadness the building “looks like a home and feels like a home,” it has to have “ligature resistance,” and special high durability windows with insulated tempered glass, and stucco outer walls. Fadness also noted that the laundry room needs an expensive exterior door “to avoid bringing contaminated clothing or bedding inside.” Another big expense, Fadness added, will be that “the exterior facing windows will have nice views of fruit trees.” And gosh it’s an undeveloped site (right in the middle of Ukiah) and it needs fire accessibility and utilities. “There’s nothing extravagent about the design,” said Fadness, but it “has to be built to a behavioral health standard.”
This pure bullshit was, of course, swallowed without question by the Supervisors who have consistently been told that to get the $500k grant from the state, the Schraeders’ CRT has to be built in a hurry because of some silly funding deadline the state insists on. So essentially they have to spend millions more on the Schraeders’ psych-motel because otherwise they’d lose (allegedly, but highly unlikely) a $500k grant from the state. By that kind of logic, you should buy a Rolls Royce because they’re offering a $10,000 cash rebate — but the offer expires soon!
Obviously, money is no object when it comes to the Schraeders who are the only “good operator” that would consider bidding on staffing the facility, especially when it’s right next door to their existing operation.
County Mental Health Director Jenine Miller said that operating the facility shouldn’t cost much Measure B money because the services to be provided will be reimbursable by state and a little private insurance.
This of course is a complete betrayal of what the voters for Measure B were told: that the primary purpose of the Measure B money was “to fund improved services, treatment and facilities for persons with behavioral health conditions,” not simply for business as usual next door to the Schraeders.
This Cadillac of a CRT would basically provide no service improvements at all; it’s just a building for the “treatment” of the existing reimbursable “clients.” Insurance/reimbursement only covers persons with “severe” mental illness, not the drug-addled, the “mild to moderate” street nuts, and the addicts and alkies that the voters expected to be removed from the streets for help.
What about the “Psychiatric Facility” promised by Measure B advocates? Ms. Bailey now says that a Psychiatric Health Facility (aka PHF) will end up costing another $20 mil or so just for the facility. (The Kemper Report said firmly that a PHF should cost less than $5 million based on similar facilities in other California counties.)
But nobody involved seems interested in that much larger (and obviouly grotesquely overpriced) project, which has no deadline and won’t even be on anyone’s list of projects until sometime after the CRT is built and operating in 2023. And the PHF will actually cost money to operate since most of its services, should it ever exist, would not be reimbursable. Nor would the PHF be next door to the Schraeders.
By the time the County gets around to even considering a $20 million PHF — there’s no time pressure; the only reason the CRT is getting pushed through is the state’s artificial deadline — a large chunk of the Measure B money will be used up on the gold-plated CRT. If a PHF project is ever even started then planned like the CRT with high-cost architects and designers and planners and project and construction managers, the $20 million or more they’ll spend on building another gold plated facility will leave very little for the “improved services” Measure B was supposed to deliver.
The worst thing is, that antidepressant & antipsychotic drugs cause a host of toxic side effects including brain damage, as shown by their literally shrinking the brain. They are highly addictive, withdrawal symptoms being severe. Millions eventually die from their side effects. Anti-psychotics lower intelligence. You are easy to beat at chess on them. It’s not worth playing when so poisoned. They cause brain fog for years afterwards. The 1st seratonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressant, prozac, occasionally causes suicides & murders. It is a flourine compound. Flourine is a toxic element public water supplies are poisoned with, hardly reducing tooth decay at all. It was 1st added to drinking water at nazi concentration camps to make sure prisoners did not have strength to rebel. Psychiatrists are not called “head shrinkers” or “shrinks” for nothing!
None of this is made up. Some conscientious psychiatrists have written on these things, citing research. But most of them are brainwashed by their training that is corrupted for pharmaceutical manufacturers who make billions from poisoning brains.
Drug companies even commit forced drug abuse on children, since the “New Freedom Initiative” (a phrase that must have been concocted by ad men, like the F-14 “harvest reaper” used to napalm babies since Viet Nam). In the “new freedom initiative”, states are persuaded to allow school nurses to prescribe mind-altering drugs for any student a teacher says exhibits abnormal behavior, like speaking out of turn. In many states, schools do that, even against the parents’ will.
I had brain fog for years after slow withdrawal from such poisons. Then recovered & exceeded my best speed of learning with brain nutrients from natural food stores, with no bad side effects when Twinlab made DMAE + PABA (DiMethylAminoEthanol + ParaAminoBenzoicAcid). Ten drops per day in the morning with coffee. Always dilute. Never use strait. Ten drops contained 100MGs DMAE + 150MGs PABA. Unfortunately, Twinlab does not make it now & DMAE supplements i have found since are made in ignorance of correct dosages & combinations. But that Twinlab product had long lasting effects, even when i did not have it for long periods of time. But at least normally, children don’t need it. The brain makes the most DMAE around age 10 or 11, when most human beings learn easiest & fastest. After that, less & less.
I find PS very helpful to boost intelligence then & now, since some good (phosphatidylAminoethanol complex) formulas are still available. But some neutraceutical manufacturers don’t know what they are doing with dosages. The same goes for amino acids like L-tyrosine & phenlyalanine (only one of those amino acids is needed. The brain coverts one to the other, as needed) And choline bitartrate, a B-vitamin. That is, you are likely to find high dosages like 500MG capsules, but some, like me, experience reduced intelligence at those doses. !00 MGs of those supplements increases intelligence for me. Always dilute. Take with coffee & food. Ginko Biloba improves blood circulation to the brain, an inexpensive mainstay, best thing for my memory, at 60MGs per day.
Vegetarian vitamin B-12 subliguals, especially as methylcobalamin, is one of the best no-otopics (intelligence boosting substances). Within it’s effective dosage range of 500-5000 MCGs (micrograms), it is as safe as vitamin C, in it’s own higher effective dosage range.
Then there’s the herb written of by Chinese Emperor Ma 5000 years ago & since by Herodotus, Moses, the Royal medical Society of Britain & many others, used by Queen Victoria, Benjamin Disraeli & now treatment of choice for post traumatic stress disorder, pediatric epilepsy & cancer. We grow the best organic here. Safer in edibles & drinkables. Side effects mild compared with pharmaceutical poisons!
Search “antidepressants antipsychotics shrink damage brains”.
How far will this go before someone involved in these plans wakes up and slams on the brakes to avoid going over the cliff?
I doubt we’ll see anything as dramatic as going over a cliff. More likely is some kind of detour into some kind of very complex and expensive mobius strip where mental health “services” and their mysterious clients limp along in their unaccountable parallel universe obscured by convenient “privacy” rules and management’s steadfast refusal to provide even minimal reports on effectiveness or results.
A sorry and prolonged saga that only gets increasingly sad.
It certainly provides a strong disincentive to vote for any more special tax measures.
(August 27, 2020)
Having reached the top of the agency, Consumers for Dental Choice could submit scientific studies that someone at the FDA would read. As a result, FDA’s most recent scientific review of amalgam flips FDA’s position on a major issue.
FDA now recognizes evidence that shows once dental amalgam is implanted in the human body, its elemental mercury can convert to toxic methylmercury — the same type of mercury that the FDA warns about in fish.
Furthermore, FDA is starting to recognize the bioaccumulative effect of amalgam’s mercury. With patients exposed to so many sources of mercury — from high-mercury fish in their diets, occupational exposures in their workplaces and waste incinerators emitting mercury in their neighborhoods — the mercury from amalgam could very well be the straw that breaks the camel’s back…
The FDA advisory committee members (November 2019) discussed amalgam among themselves. They recommended that the agency provide information to patients about the risks of dental amalgam, especially for vulnerable populations.
Committee members expressed particular concern about the disproportionate use of amalgam in disadvantaged populations, including communities of color and low-income communities that are already exposed to higher levels of toxins. And many committee members even called for an end to amalgam use:
• Dr. McDiarmid — “I’ll speak for myself and say I think that the evidence is there because we can show an exposure and we know the behavior of these neurotoxicants in the developing brain of children. We really need to think about continuing to just bless this because the evidence isn’t quite there.”
• Dr. Connor — “But it seems like if a product came on the market today that said it’s 50% made with a material we know is highly toxic and we’re only going to use it predominantly in disadvantaged populations, we wouldn’t be having a meeting, you know? FDA would not approve it without a meeting…
Consumers for Dental Choice and its team have made amazing progress toward mercury-free dentistry. But there’s still hard work ahead as Consumers for Dental Choice is breaking barriers that limit consumer access to mercury-free dentistry, forcing federal and state government agencies to be accountable, and mobilizing synergistic campaigns around the world.
(Article excerpts from censored source)