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County Notes (November 25, 2021)

The Supervisors unanimously approved the appointment of an LA law firm for the Sheriff on Monday, despite the fact that the Sheriff wasn’t even in the County at the time, nor has Judge Moorman ruled on the Sheriff’s pending request. Undersheriff Darren Brewster suggested that the item be postponed for a week so that the Sheriff could be on hand, but he was ignored.

Brewster also reminded the Board that approving the LA firm would “look like an end-around the court.” County Counsel Christian Curtis said that the action was simply a matter of following through on the Board’s previous position that they intended to appoint someone other than Duncan James of Ukiah. 

During the discussion a number of new questions and permutations of this already contorted issue arose:

Why did they proceed when Sheriff wasn’t even in town and the Judge hasn’t even released her ruling?

Since we know the Sheriff will not accept any attorney other than Duncan James, who pays for Duncan James? Will Judge Moorman order the County to pay for an attorney the Board has rejected?

Will Kendall’s principle attorney, Mr. McMullen of the Duncan James firm, file an injunction to stop the appointment of the Board’s preferred firm?

Will the Board appeal Judge Moorman’s ruling if Curtis doesn’t like it?

As several supervisors whimsically mentioned but didn’t pursue, will the Board attempt to address the underlying issues with specific agenda items? So far there seems to be some vague interest in that, but nobody’s been specific.

Tune in next week when Sheriff Kendall returns from an out-of-state family visit to find out what happens in this curiouser and curiouser non-issue drama. 

Stumbling Forward

The Board of Supervisors meeting last Tuesday included picking an attorney for the Sheriff (one that the Sheriff doesn’t want and won’t use); combining the offices of Treasurer-Tax Collector and Auditor-Controller; adopting a resolution calling for a moratorium on logging in state-owned Jackson Demonstration State Forest (without actually using the word moratorium); and the latest “strategic plan” update. The unifying theme (if there was one) was to confirm the ineptitude of the current Board.

The Supes (some would say dupes in this case) approved County Counsel’s recommendation to hire outside legal counsel to advise the Sheriff on conflicts that County Counsel helped create. The conflict exists because the Supes underfunded the Sheriff’s Office, threatened to bill the Sheriff when he inevitably goes over budget for ordinary law enforcement services and attempting to merge the Sheriff’s computer system with the County’s general purpose computer. 

The Supes moved to introduce an ordinance combining the two key financial offices of the County — Treasurer/Tax Collector and Auditor-Controller — despite admitting that they (the Supes) had only a cursory understanding of the qualifications and functions of the offices or the advantages and disadvantages of combining them. The Board previously directed that the issue of consolidation come back for an informational discussion. Instead, County Counsel presented an ordinance abolishing the two independently elected offices and combining them into one elected office. It was clear the Supes lacked sufficient information to make an informed decision but County Counsel said they needed to act before the end of the year because once the filing period for the offices opens (early next year) it'll be too late to make the change. Which underlines the rushed nature of the decision. Instead of giving the Supes enough info to make an informed decision, County Counsel (and the CEO) manipulated the Supes into acting without the info.

Treasurer-Tax Collector Shari Schapmire and Interim Auditor-Controller Chemise Cubbison each spoke forcefully on the risks involved. Schapmire (who is well respected as a conscientious public servant) emphasized that these are both small offices with heavy workloads and multiple specialized functions. Because the functions do not overlap and require separate special skills she did not believe any efficiencies would be realized by combining the offices.

Schapmire and Cubbison reminded the Supes that the two offices (and the Assessor-Clerk Recorder) were in the midst of implementing a new property tax system. Cubbison said her staff had been working overtime and without vacations for a year in an effort to keep up with implementing the new property tax system on top of the already heavy workload.

Supervisor Williams said he was looking to Supervisor Gjerde to see if they should introduce the consolidation ordinance or instead create a Director of Finance (a change which would need voter approval). Gjerde didn’t take the bait and no further mention was made of the Director of Finance position. Following the recent cannabis expansion fiasco it’s clear the voters won’t approve anything put on the ballot by these Supervisors. Williams pushed ahead anyway with a motion to move forward with consolidation followed by the usual back and forth without bothering to see if there was a second to the motion.

Supervisor Mulheren wanted to know what the qualifications were for the new elected positions. After some fumbling around County Counsel found the applicable qualifications or positions held, anyone of which would suffice. Supervisors McGourty and Haschak asked for more information prior to taking final action next month. McCourty and Mulheren went out of their way to assure “Shari” [Schapmire] and “Chemise” [Cubbison] that they really did care about their points of view — just not enough to heed them.

Mulheren said she knew they both felt they had not been consulted (which they hadn’t – no one bothered at any time to ask either them what the pros and cons of consolidation might be). Mulheren suggested “an ad hoc or some type of committee” as an after the fact way to hear from their previously un-consulted financial experts. McGourty finally brought the charade to a close by seconding the motion to proceed with “readings” (steps toward June’s ballot). Which passed unanimously.

The Board also unanimously adopted a resolution on Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF) calling on the State to incorporate science into the management plan of the state-owned forest to make sure the goals of the plan align with the State’s climate action agenda. Supervisor Williams went out of his way to say the resolution did not call for a moratorium on logging. Supervisor Gjerde, the co-sponsor, agreed. Making them the only two people in the room who claimed the resolution did not call for a outright moratorium.

The wording of the resolution made it clear that the only scientific response to climate change was to simply stop commercial logging of the forest. Various professionals associated with JDSF, including a rep from the University of California Extension Service (McGourty’s go-to source for advice) called in via Zoom to say the resolution misrepresented the forest management plan. Instead of being out of step with the Governor’s “30-30 plan” (protect 30% of State lands by 2030) the UC guy said the JDSF forest plan was being used by the Governor to inform the 30-30 plan.

Similar to the financial department consolidation plan, it was clear the Supes lacked the background and information to make an informed decision on the resolution. So of course they adopted it. Unanimously. But with weasel-worded language calling for the Board to work closely with Cal-fire and be “involved” with the Jackson Advisory Group. 

On the Consent Calendar was the latest dog and pony presentation on the Strategic Plan (which is strategic in name only). The Board hired a couple of wine and cheese style consultants from Sonoma County for $75,000 plus travel to develop the plan which consists of four strategic priorities. The “cornerstone” priority around which all others revolve is “An Effective Government Organization” (which is unable to produce monthly budget reports).

The consultants boldly proposed “A Safe and Healthy County, A Prepared & Resilient County, and A Thriving Economy.” It’s a great, if generic, wish list but Supervisor Williams (always willing to pop other’s balloons, even while floating his own) was quick to question how the County would come up with the money to finance all the “actionable” goals identified as part of the strategic priorities. He called for the Executive Office to prepare estimates of the financing involved for each vague item, “rounded to the nearest $10 million, in five year increments if they wish, the specifics don’t matter.” Especially since the Executive Office is so far incapable of producing those monthly budget reports.

The next step, now that the Strategic Plan has been drafted by the consultants, will be to hold some kind of online town hall to hear from the public before final adoption in January. The consultants have been meeting with selected groups of county employees and department heads (and individually with the Supervisors). Which means the public input will be too little, too late to really change anything — if there is any; nobody seems to be paying attention to this crap anyway. But won’t matter because once the plan is adopted it will go on the shelf to collect dust alongside all the other expensive plans paid for by the County but never implemented.

Mendo’s $5 million crisis house

Mendo’s Mental Health Director Dr. Jenine Miller is very proud of the new $5 million-plus four-bedroom house on Orchard Lane next door to the Schraeder’s social services octopus headquarters which is almost ready for occupancy using Measure B money. Supervisor Glenn McGourty praised Ms. Miller and her staff for the acquisition (and non-use) of the old Jehovah’s Witness church as a training center along with the $5 million gift to Ms. Schraeder as proof that Mendo is spending the Measure B money oh-so effectively and not sitting idly by doing nothing like everybody else knows they are. (The only “work” that was done was the contractor who built the $1 million house for $5 million.) The project’s $5 million cost included $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.”

If this simple and grossly overpriced project is an example of Mendo’s capabilities, we will never have the Psychiatric Health Facility that Measure B was supposed to finance. 

Dr. Miller spent almost half an hour describing the Schraeder’s new house, which is supposed to be able to house up to maybe eight mental health clients, and their big upcoming “Grand Opening” (which we’re sure they will issue a press release touting).

But when it was time to discuss the status of the Psychiatric Health Facility, all we got from Dr. Miller was: 

“We are in the process of finalizing the feasibility study, and, uh, um, they are doing really well on that. We are definitely looking at that study coming back, probably January, the second or third meeting in January for that feasibility study. We have been looking at Whitmore Lane and and if we had to purchase another vacant lot what that would look like to really give you that ability to evaluate whether Whitmore is the place and what those costs will look like. So it’s been going well and, um, so we are looking at that and looking at the study being available at the third meeting in January and you should have the feasibility of Whitmore Lane for you.”

Repetitive reports have become Dr. Miller’s specialty. This repetitive report is essentially the same as the last time Ms. Miller reported it, albeit without the January meeting mention. It’s funny how Dr. Miller can recycle the same information time and again and call it an “update.” For months Dr. Miller has been issuing “updates” saying that they’ve hired one person for the crisis van and are trying to recuit or transfer another one — instead of simply saying, “Nothing to report,” or “No progress.” But then, Supervisor McGourty might not be so giddy and defensive about complaints that five years after Measure B was passed the only people who have been helped are the well-paid careerists being paid to slow-walk the process at the highest possible cost and the few dozen genuine crisis patients that the one crisis van has responded to.

And that “feasibility study” for the PHF? If it costs Mendo/Measure B $5 million to build a plain four-bedroom house to simple commercial standards, what do you think a 16 bed facility built to hospital standards will cost — if it’s ever built at all?

Ad Hoc Committees: Where Issues Go To Die

In a reply to a skeptical facebook inquiry recently Supervisor Ted Williams:said that the Supervisors have “about 28” ad hoc committees, adding that they “do not have authority, beyond bringing an idea forward in a properly noticed, public meeting of the full board.”

“About 28”? When the ad hoc committees were reviewed in September there were 16. 

https://www.mendocinocounty.org/home/showpublisheddocument/42413/637545957137100000

Now, only two months later there are “about 28”?

“Board Rule 31. Ad Hoc Committees — Ad hoc committees may be formed by Chair directive or Board action and shall include prescribed duties and membership of the committee. Status reports from ad hoc committees shall be made to the Board at each regular meeting. Ad hoc committees are encouraged to conclude their business at the end of each calendar year but may be extended at the recommendation of the committee and approval of the Board. The Chief Executive Officer/Clerk of the Board will maintain a current index of ad hoc committees and their purpose.” 

When this board assigns ad hoc committees nothing resembling “prescribed duties” are specified other than a vague topic. That’s the primary reason for the current ad hoc committee bloat. Most of these committees are formed whimsically at the Board meetings with very little thought given to them. They appear to be a convenient way to “table” an issue and pretend that something is being done when very little is being done. Of the first 16 listed on the County’s website, there have been no required “status reports” at “regular meetings.” If the Supervisors were serious, they’d have a much more specific method for assigning ad hoc committees and at least follow their own rule by setting target compleition dates and providing written status reports. As it is, ad hoc committees have become a substitute for board action and the fact that there are “about 28” of them is a clear indication of how little any of them are doing. It’s amusing that the last time they reviewed the ad hoc committees the only status report they provided was that they are “active.” A more accurate status would be “passive.”

Delving For Realizations

“Item 5c on Tuesday’s Superviosrs Agenda began: “Discussion and Possible Action Regarding Presentation of First Quarter Budget Report on the Status of County Departmental Spending.” A couple of paragraphs later the agenda item added, “The First Quarter report includes a budget update of County department budgets for FY 2021-22 from July 1, 2021 through September 30, 2021.”

Ever hopeful, we plunged into the reams of jargonized budget filler, boilerplate, charts, tables, graphs, documents, slides and miscellaneous attachments expecting to finally find an actual “update of County department budgets for FY 2021-22 from July 1, 2021 through September 30, 2021.”

But as usual, it wasn’t to be. The promise of deparmental budget info turned out to be another fizzle. There’s nothing of the sort in all the budget materials stuck onto the agenda item.

But they were right when they said that the budget presentation would cover, “Update on budget process, legislative update, Human Resources, Capital Improvements, Disaster Recovery, and one-time carry forward fund requests for departmental adjustments.” But all that gibberish provided not one bit of departmental budget status.

Undaunted, we plowed on, wondering if there was any actual information at all in the budget materials. Indeed, there were a few info nuggets, albeit negative. 

“Between July 1, 2021 and September 30, 2021, Human Resources received 268 staffing requests, conducted 129 recruitments, received and screened 1164 applications, conducted 69 examinations, and prepared 159 certifications. During this time period, the County hired 48 new employees and had 69 employment terminations.”

If our math is right, that’s a net loss of 21 people in just three months, despite conducting 129 recruitments, less than half of the staffing requests. We knew that Mendo’s labor pool was shallow, but this is worse than even we thought.

The bad personnel news continued: “As of September 30, 2021, there were 376 vacant positions, with active recruitments to fill 237 positions. Based on positions being actively recruited, the countywide recruitment rate is 16.2%, while the overall vacancy rate is 25.6%. The majority of positions in the recruitment process are in Social Services (93), Sheriff’s Department (27), and Public Health (18).” 

Social Services is chronically understaffed so that’s not news. And the Sheriff’s vacancy rate, while depressing, is also not news. But now, in the middle of a pandemic, we see that there are a whopping 18 vacancies in the relatively small public health department.

Funny, the Supervisors expressed no interest in these staffing problems. Maybe that’s because the info was buried in so much other meaningless junk.

From the PowerPoint budget attachment we were told that 

“The final carryforward amount for FY 2020-21 is $4,477,855.” 

Well of course! If you don’t hire for funded positions, you’re going to have a huge carryforward from last year. But what about what’s not getting done? Nobody was interested.

But Mendo got a good chunk of Biden bucks: “Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act Funded $8,966,905 in FY 2020-21; $7,212,551 was used on County operational expenses; $3,941,547 of the County operational expenses was for housing and alternate care site needs.”

Another attachment reported that “The per capita income in Mendocino County is $29,752 and median household income is $53,8412…”

The Supervisors pay themselves $84k plus generous benefits, well over three times what the average Mendolander makes, most of whom get no benefits of any kind. This means that half of Mendo makes under $30k a year. (California’s minimum wage is now $14 an hour, or in annual terms about $29k per year. In other words almost half of Mendo doesn’t even make the equivalent of the annual minimum wage.

“… home-buyers in Mendocino County need a minimum qualifying income of $68,700. … In order not to be cost-burdened [sic], a household should not pay more than 30 to 35 percent of its income towards rental costs. The median rent numbers reveals that households in Mendocino County would need to earn at least $34,956 in annual income to afford a studio and at least $80,892 for a four bedroom house, without being cost-burdened.”

Right. Very keen insight. If you’re not making the minimum wage, you’re probably “cost-burdened.”

But despite the $4.5 million carryover, “the cost of the Jail expansion estimated cost over run, now totals $6,450,000 [which Mendo, not the state, must come up with]. While the County has a carryforward from FY 2020-21, the full impact of fire damages, drought, and COVID-19 related services and expenses are still not fully realized.” 

In fact, it appears that a lot more than that is “not fully realized.”

In the CEO’s report for last week there’s a very long and ever-growing list of “in process” board directives. The Board giving the directives never asks about them after they’re given, which kind of undermines the title of the list.

For example, last June the Board “directed” the Executive Office to “work with Department Heads in developing suggestions for one time expenses that will reduce ongoing expenses.” 

Nothing. No suggestions have been made. (Nobody asked us; we have quite a promising list, but it’d be a waste of our time to even mention them.)

Despite the Board’s recent backpedaling on the idea of taking over the Sheriff’s computer system and folding it into the County’s overall system, according to the directives list, back in March the Board adopted “A Resolution Adopting a New Classification - Director of Information Services. (Chief Information Officer), Salary No. 6298; and Amending the Position Allocation Table as Follows: Budget Unit 1960, Add 1.0 FTE Director of Information Services (Chief Information Officer) (Sponsor: Human Resources).” And it was the “general consensus of the Board to: Direct staff to look into the titles of both the ‘Information Services’ department and the proposed ‘Chief Information Officer’ position and see if a switch in titles to include ‘Information Technology’ would be less misleading.”

Has this resolution and directive been withdrawn in light of the Sheriff’s objections to the attempted takeover of his computer operation? No. the status lists this directive as “In Process.”

Also in March the Board ordered staff to “Conduct an annual independent audit of Measure B Funds.” This “annual” requirement of the Measure itself (originally passed back in 2017) has never been done despite well over $5 million having been spent on a $1 million house for crisis residential treatment. 

And just in case we weren’t asleep yet, the agenda assemblers (certainly not the Supervisors) added this baby to Monday’s agenda: 

“The [$80k] Strategic Planning facilitators [consultants] will update the Board on the accomplishments [sic] of the July 2021-January 2022 planning process. The facilitators and Task Force have met four times, delving into the specific input received from Department Heads, employee small groups, members of the Board of Supervisors and the Chief Executive Officer. The facilitators will share the points of convergence at this point and the plan for the next stage of input-focus groups with community groups and key informant interviews with local leaders.”

Only an $80-grand consultant from Sonoma County would “delve” into “points of convergence.”

While the supervisors busy themselves with strategic planning bs and a growing backlog of directives and ad hoc committees, their finance staff continues to refuse to provide basic budget info, the County is losing more people than they’re hiring, and the average Mendolander is lucky to “realize” the minimum wage.

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