Mendocino County Today: Friday, Feb. 4, 2022

By AVA News Service on February 4, 2022

HIGH PRESSURE ALOFT will lead to a return of quiet and dry winter weather through the weekend and beyond. Mild temperatures and sunshine across the interior can be expected... while coastal areas see a mix of sun and clouds. (NWS)

48 NEW COVID CASES reported in Mendocino County yesterday afternoon.

AV ELEMENTARY CLOSED TODAY

FROM SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT LOUISE SIMSON: “Unfortunately, this morning the elementary site has no water service and the tanks are drained. For health and safety reasons, students will not come to campus at the elementary site today. It is a staff workday at the elementary site and you will be able to go to the high school or to your home to access restrooms as needed. We need all hands on deck this morning to return students to their parents. Thank you for your flexibility, as we manage this unforeseen situation. Dennis Johnson is working on a contractor for the repair as we speak. School remains in session at the JR/SR high school.”

ED NOTE: A difficult morning for all concerned, and another argument for passage of the pending bond measure to shore up AV Unified's aged facilities. The money will go where it's supposed to go because we're blessed in having an attentive, committed, energetic leader in Ms. Simson to carry out the necessary repairs to both our school sites.

JUST IN FROM AVUSD SUPERINTENDENT SIMSON:

Results came in and all covid testing pools are negative within the whole District!

Dear Anderson Valley Community,

Water has been restored to the elementary site. School will be in session tomorrow. Thank you to everyone for your flexibility and understanding.

Sincerely yours,

Louise Simson

Superintendent

The AV FFA members, Boonville-Anderson Valley FFA, are looking to borrow a bottle fed calf for a petting zoo at the elementary school. They would like to borrow it on Thursday, Feb 24th. They will take very good care of it. If you have one or know of someone in AV that has a calf please let me know.

4 CORDS DRY OAK. $380 A CORD. JERRY 707 684-1923

PG&E SAYS POTTER VALLEY HYDROELECTRIC PLANT MAY BE OFFLINE FOR YEARS

Water diversions from Eel River to Russian River remain substantially reduced

by Justine Frederiksen

The Pacific Gas and Electric Company announced this week that while it plans to restore the hydroelectric plant in Mendocino County called the Potter Valley Project to working order, the repairs could take years to complete.

“During a routine inspection in July of 2021, PG&E discovered a transformer at its Potter Valley powerhouse that did not meet our operating standards (and) the powerhouse has been offline since that time,” states an email the agency sent to stakeholders announcing that the problem would be rectified. “PG&E has completed its evaluation of whether to replace the transformer and concluded it is beneficial to PG&E’s electric generation customers to proceed with the work necessary to return the powerhouse to full operational status.”

As to when those repairs might be completed, the agency explains that “our experience with this kind of work indicates the repairs could be completed in the next couple of years, but we will not know until the detailed engineering is completed later this year.”

Since the hydroelectric plant diverts water from the Eel River in order to conduct electricity, the amount of water that usually flows from the project into the Russian River and Lake Mendocino has been significantly reduced for the past several months.

Several of the water agencies in Mendocino County, as well as the Sonoma County Water Agency and the city of Ukiah, sent letters to PG&E late last year requesting that it divert more water “up to the capacity of the powerplant bypass system, approximately 140 cubic feet per second, (which) will help meet critical water needs in the face of extreme drought conditions.”

When asked Wednesday if the bypass system would be used to increase diversions from the Eel River into the Russian River, PG&E spokesman Paul Moreno said that the agency “feels strongly that the Russian and Eel River interests need to collaborate and deliver a joint request to PG&E for such diversions” since they would have impacts on both watersheds.

“Because PG&E cannot use the annual discretionary diversions for electric generation while the powerhouse is offline, it is inappropriate for PG&E to unilaterally decide and make the diversions requested by SCWA and IWPC,” Moreno wrote, referring to the Sonoma County Water Agency and the Inland Water and Power Commission of Mendocino County, which both requested that the bypass system be used to divert more water, along with the Potter Valley Irrigation District, the Redwood Valley Water District, the Millview, Willow, Calpella and Hopland water districts, as well as the Mendocino County Farm Bureau, the Mendocino County Water Agency and the Russian River Flood Control and Water Conservation Improvement District, and the city of Ukiah. “PG&E has continued to express its full willingness to explore the possibility of making discretionary diversions but feels strongly that the Russian and Eel River interests need to collaborate and deliver a joint request to PG&E for such diversions.

“We understand and empathize with the wants, needs, and valid concerns expressed by stakeholders from both the Russian and Eel watersheds,” Moreno continued. “(And) although we understand consensus may be difficult, we maintain it is critically important for the key watershed stakeholders in both basins to engage in meaningful dialogue on this issue to establish whether a mutually acceptable path forward, consistent with existing license requirements, can be recommended to PG&E.”

Moreno described the amount of water that Lake Mendocino receives from the Potter Valley project as “on average, less than 30 percent (about 70,000 of the 235,000 acre-feet) of the annual inflow to Lake Mendocino. The Potter Valley Project FERC license requires PG&E to deliver approximately 58,000 acre-feet of water to the East Branch Russian River in a normal water year, and approximately 45,000 acre-feet in a dry water year (i.e., the “obligation” water), which will continue consistent with license requirements.

“Since 2007, PG&E has also diverted an annual average of approximately 12,000 acre-feet of ‘discretionary’ water for electric generation to the East Branch Russian River during December through March when conditions (at Lake Pillsbury) allow,” Moreno continued. “This discretionary diversion represents about 17 percent of PG&E’s average annual diversion to the East Branch Russian River, about 5 percent of the overall annual inflow to Lake Mendocino, and about 0.2 percent of the annual flow of the Eel River during that period.”

Also this week, a regional coalition of representatives from Mendocino, Sonoma and Humboldt counties that was preparing to take over operations of the hydroelectric plant announced it is halting its effort to renew the license for the project that PG&E still owns, but has decided not to re-license.

Janet Pauli of the IWPC, which joined with the Sonoma County Water Agency, California Trout, Inc., the County of Humboldt, and the Round Valley Indian Tribes to form the Two-Basin Partnership in 2019, said Wednesday that the coalition did “not come close” to raising the $11- to $15 million required to file for re-licensing, and therefore it reported to FERC that it would be unable to file a license application by the April 14, 2022, deadline.

The Two-Basin Partnership had previously asked FERC to give them until May 22 to file an application, but the request was denied.

In its request, the partnership stated that “in January of 2019, PG&E stated its intent not to seek a new license (for the plant.) That June, parties filed a Notice of Intent and began to pursue relicensing of the plant to implement a Two-Basin Solution. Since that time, the NOI Parties have not been able to secure the funds to undertake studies per the Study Plan Determination, at estimated cost of $18 million for two years. In May, PG&E declined to fund such work.”

Pauli said Wednesday that the future of the Potter Valley Project is very much uncertain, and only “time will tell” whether the coalition’s effort to take over the project can be revived.

JONAH RASKIN: I am talking about my novel Beat Blues San Francisco, 1955 at the SF Public Library, 100 Larkin St. 1-3:30 p.m. on Saturday February 26, 2022. You're welcome. It's a free event.

Saturday, 2/26/2022, 1:00 - 3:30
Latino/Hispanic Meeting Room B
Main Library
100 Larkin Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
Contact Telephone: 415-557-4400
joan.jasper@sfpl.org

HUMBOLDT COUNTY SUPES TO RESUME IN-PERSON MEETINGS MARCH 1

by Isabella Vanderheiden

After nearly two years of meeting remotely due to COVID-related restrictions, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors will return to its chambers for in-person meetings — with a hybrid option for remote viewers — beginning March 1.

Previous attempts to return to in-person meetings have been thwarted, either by surging cases of COVID-19 or technical complications.

The board planned to return to its chambers back in August 2021 but a spike in local hospitalizations and deaths fueled by the delta-variant forced the board to reconsider.

Second District Supervisor Michelle Bushnell asked the board to return to the topic in October and supervisors ultimately agreed to resume in-person meetings at the beginning of the new year or as soon as county staff had implemented the necessary equipment to accommodate hybrid-style meetings.

During Tuesday’s meeting, Clerk of the Board Kathy Hayes said 95% of the necessary sound and video equipment has already been installed.

“The final component to having everything in place and ready to go back in-person meetings — with a hybrid option — is for us to conduct a simple series of mock meetings involving board members so we have the opportunity to train them on how to vote on their electronic devices (because) those votes speak directly into the vote count system,” she said. “…The public will be able to view the timer that (4th District Supervisor and Board Chair Virginia Bass) currently operates, it is built into the ‘Vote Cast’ system.”

New TV monitors have also been installed in place of the old Smartboards and an additional camera has been installed to facilitate better optics during meetings, as noted in the staff report.

“We’re excited about the project. We believe that it’s going to bring our board chambers into the 21st century, so to speak, and the use of ‘Vote Cast’ is going to make it easier for the public to see how board members vote directly on items that are on the board’s agenda,” Hayes added.

“… It’s going to be much easier for members of the public — even if they are present in the chambers — to view voting in real-time, as it happens in the board chambers.”

Hayes recommended the board resume in-person meetings at the first of March, after completing “Vote Cast” training in February.

Bass noted that the new process will “provide more transparency” because the board will vote at the same time as opposed to a roll call vote. “There’s no more switching and figuring out where you’re going to be. You decide, you vote, and we find out at the same time.”

First District Supervisor Rex Bohn thanked county staff for their work and said it’s “going to be a great thing to get back in there and be where we have to be.”

“I think that’s what the people want to see and giving them the option,” he said.

“And especially electronically, I can’t say enough for how much staff has cleaned that up and made it accessible for the public, both our physically disabled public and our open public as a whole and especially for those who that will come in remote.”

Bushnell echoed Bohn’s sentiment and emphasized the importance of having a virtual option for community members who live in the far reaches of the county. “I think it’s super important and allows accessibility to people that are two to two and a half hours away without having to drive that for three minutes of public comment,” she said.

Third District Supervisor Mike Wilson also thanked staff for their hard work but expressed caution.

“We voted to be in the chambers a few times already and things just happen,” he said. “We’re just having to be adaptive and appreciative of everybody and patient, but crossing fingers and hoping that this one is going to be the one.”

Bushnell made a motion to approve the staff’s recommendation which was seconded by Bohn. The motion passed in a unanimous 5-0 vote.

(Courtesy, Eureka Times Standard)

MENDOTHROWBACK: THE BOONVILLE HIGH-ROLLER’S REPORT— KLONDIKE FEVER, PANTHER SKIN, AX STUCK IN HEAD

The “Boonville High-Roller” was the pen name for The Mendocino Dispatch Democrat's correspondent in Anderson Valley. On Friday, February 4, 1898, the High-Roller’s letter gave an overview of the notable event throughout the previous week.

The smell of men curing squirrel bacon was in the air, the High-Roller reported, as multiple Boonville residents prepared for their sojourn into the Klondike with visions of gold. High-Roller said, "if all the people go that are now thinking of it we will not have many towns, not enough to hold an election next fall."

John L. Carlin had already departed for the "gold fields of Alaska", and Geo Lambert and Don McGimsey were planning to leave by mid-February, and the High Roller wished the "the very best luck, hoping they may make a speedy return with cords of their precious metal."

J.R. Wallach made his wife particularly happy after killing a panther on Hiatt's Ranch. He skinned it, presented it to her as a gift, and the word around town High-Roller said was "she seems very proud of it and intends to have it dressed and made into a buggy robe.”

Boonville beauties Miss Minnie Burger and Miss May Hutsell, represented the town at a San Francisco jubilee last week.

William Lambert has returned to town after taking his drove of pigs to Yolo to feed on acorns. High Roller said Lambert "returned home looking fine after his outing."

Reggie Burger got an ax stuck in his head by Mede Windom when the pair were out chopping brush. The ax ended up "cutting a gash about 1 ½ inches in length above the ear." Dr. Thompson used a needle to close the cut and as of publication, "the boy is doing nicely at present,” High-Roller assured.

The "Owl Club" elected officers for the next six months and rounded off the night with an oyster dinner.

High-Roller wished a bundle of Boonville Boys luck as they are heading out to the coast to hustle and make some money in the split lumber business.

Reverend Page is holding his quarterly meetings and J.O. McSpadden's wife is still ill despite being relocated back to Virginia.

William St. John went to Ukiah again for legal business, but High Roller suspects "there must be some other attraction."

Boonville's football team is improving, High-Roller opined. "They will soon be trim to exhibit their manly strength with any team in the county." The team is determined and High-Roller reports "it will take a pretty good team to walk over them."

(Courtesy, Mendofever.com)

HAPPY 78TH CHARLIE MUSSELWHITE

ED NOTES

THAT FIRE at Redway Liquors (HumCo) two afternoon's ago had us worried. Over the years, liquor stores, Redway among them, have been important sales sites for the Boonville weekly. Why the mighty ava sells more copies at liquor stores than book stores is a mystery, but it's a fact. Newspapers have disappeared almost as fast as bookstores and newsstands. (Old timers will remember the wonderful newsstand on Standley directly across the street from the County Courthouse in Ukiah.) The ava is the last paper available in the Anderson Valley. The distributor for all the other papers — the Press Democrat, the Ukiah Daily Journal, the SF Chron, even a few copies of the daily NYT — gave up because he couldn't sell enough of them to pay for the drive over here. Now it's just us. Buy one today for the pure nostalgia of owning a copy of one of the last weeklies, and the only one that is almost entirely a geriatic production.

BEFORE THE INTERNET kicked in to destroy the world by zapping the global brain with negative input, the Boonville weekly enjoyed, in the Anderson Valley, what the experts called “total market penetration.” TMP was calculated by toting up papers sold to the number of Valley mailboxes. The ratio was one reader per box on the assumption each box represented three persons. We also sold more than a hundred papers a week at both the Anderson Valley Market in Boonville and Lemons Market in Philo. The Navarro Store, at its newspaper peak, sold about fifty a week. Twenty years ago, I caught a Boonville kid in the act of reading his community newspaper! These days we sell, on a good week, 30 papers at AV Market, 60 at Lemons, 20 at Navarro. Overall, we still have outlets in SF north to Arcata and all over vast Mendocino County, but many of the outlets we had pre-internet in that same stretch of Northcoast no longer exist, and we've been out of Cloverdale ever since the town's liquor store went out of business. These days we pick up more readers on our website in any one week than we do subscribers to our paper-paper.

ASIDE. Our daily on-line edition has apparently become a county-wide must-read given our booming on-line subscriptions. One daily reader laughed when she said, “Name Withheld told me she reads the free parts of the ava on-line but is afraid to subscribe because she doesn't want you to know that she's reading it.” That hurts. Believe me, I pay zero attention to the on-line ava subscription roster; it's entirely in the capable hands of our web guy, Mike Kalantarian, its creator. I'm sorry we have to charge $25 a year for it, but we think it's not only worth it, we can't afford to work for free and the website itself has its costs.

WE STILL THINK former Supervisor McCowen got a dirty deal from CEO Angelo and his cringing colleagues when he retired. The CEO falsely accused him of stealing county property after which Supervisor Williams knifed McCowen in the back by saying, “John McCowen, I would appreciate it if you would return the keys, the laptop, the iPad, and the iPhone. I don't want to be in the position of having conflict. I appreciate that you served for 12 years with the county, even longer in public service. It's not fair to put the Board in this position that you created. We have to treat everyone, all employees, equally and we would ask any other employee to return public property upon their departure from the county.”

WHICH McCOWEN did not take, the libel being a pure fabrication by the CEO who couldn't tolerate one of five supervisors occasionally opposing her spoon-fed dicta. McCowen should have at least gotten the usual Whereas, as in “Whereas Supervisor McCowen was a dedicated blah blah blah.”

BUT, YOU SAY, Supervisor Carre Brown wasn't buried in Whereases when she retired either. No, she got one better. Carre got a Rifkin! A front page lathering in the Ukiah Daily Journal by Karen Rifkin, Mendocino County's very own Pollyanna.

RESIDENTS of Ornbaun Road have lately become aware that the old June Ranch will be logged. A THP is on file with Lee Susan listed as the forester. (I happen to know Mr. Susan. Good guy who does honest work.) Work will probably commence not later than May. It's been years since I hiked through there, having risked crack shot Janese June not spotting me, but that parcel has been selectively logged before. Lumber prices are quite high at this time, but I'm surprised the buyer, Mr. and Mrs. Burch of Healdsburg, paid nearly five million for the place on the apparent assumption there's that much timber left on it. It's beautiful back there and important to local history as the site of the pioneer Jeans family, Anderson Valley's first black settlers. The remains of the Jeans home are still there, as is a remnant apple orchard. Daniel Jeans cleared the land for Anderson Valley's first school house, now the site of the Anderson Valley Museum preserved as the landmark Little Red School House.

THE JUNE RANCH sold for $4,745,250 before sale expenses. The buyer is a Healdsburg couple, Roger and Michelle Burch, who are primarily in the timber business. The Burch’s own many properties on the Northcoast. One of Burch's spin off companies is Gualala Redwood Timber. There has been a court case going on for at least five years over the Dogwood THP near Gualala. The ICO reports that Dogwood will be logged this week. Friends of Gualala River oppose the project.

A VALLEY old timer put it this way: “Hopefully, the property will be respected and valued by the new owners for its beauty and extensive local history. Time will tell… I thought the Indians would save some of the place from total destruction because it has a huge historic reverence for the tribes that once lived in Boonville (Lemkolil) for thousands of years. The site is registered with the state — Confidential File Santa Rosa CDF and Native American Heritage Commission and local tribal governments all retain copy stating historic sensitivity.”

Buyer: represented by: Jason M Nadeau, Mendo Sotheby's International Realty

Seller: represented by Realtor.com

Size: 827.39 acres

Address: 12950 Ornbaun Road Boonville

Information from: Zillow and appraisal report dated September 26, 2002

Janese June (Jack June's wife), 1/3 partnership owner

Tamar June (Eric June's wife), 1/3 partnership owner

April June-Bento, (Delmar June's daughter)) 1/6 partnership owner

Victoria Ornbaun-Center, 1/6 partnership owner via deed from Delmar June

Description on Zillow: Property Overview - Steeped in history, the ownership of the June Ranch dates back to the late 1800's. Situated just outside of the town of Boonville, in the heart of the Anderson Valley and totals 827 acres. Multiple springs, creeks and river tributaries found on the ranch provide plentiful water throughout. June Ranch's oak-studded foothills run adjacent to some of California's most productive viticultural properties. The vast timber reserves further up in the hills, comprised mostly of Redwood, Douglas Fir, Madrone and Oak, are truly the ranch's most important asset with the large, towering groves of mature Redwoods its most visible and dramatic landmark. The well maintained road system will carry you through every part of the ranch. Current ownership is proud of its long history of well-managed and sensitive timber harvests. With the mixed zoning present on this ranch (forestland, agriculture and residential) the possibilities for a new owner are limitless.

BACKGROUNDER ON THE TIMBER PRACTICES OF THE NEW OWNER: "Battle Heats Up Over Gualala Redwoods" by Will Parrish, 2015

MARSHALL NEWMAN WRITES: This appears to be from the original Van Zandt's, later Tumbling McD Guest Ranch and more recently Wild Iris.

GRAND THEFT BLUNT

On 02/02/2022 at approximately 7:00 AM, a UPD dispatched received a call reporting a vehicle had just been stolen from in front of a residence in the 500 block of Marleen Street. The reporting party/owner of the vehicle advised the vehicle had been left running, in order to warm up, in front of the home. The caller provided a description of the vehicle and its last known direction of travel.

UPD officers responded and began searching the area in an attempt to locate the vehicle. Within 10 minutes of receiving the call, a UPD Detective located the vehicle traveling southbound on Old River Road, near Hopland. The driver of the vehicle changed directions and began traveling northbound on Old River Road, at a high rate of speed. Due to the Detective being in an unmarked vehicle, he maintained sight of the vehicle and provided updated information to other UPD Officers regarding the vehicle’s location. While marked UPD units were responding to the area of Old River Road, the driver of the vehicle abruptly turned into a driveway, within the 11000 block of Old River Road, and stopped the vehicle. A high-risk (Felony) stop was performed and the driver was detained without further incident.

The driver was identified as Bailey F. Blunt, 26, of Fort Bragg.

A search of her person resulted in the discovery of suspected methamphetamine and a methamphetamine pipe. She was found to be on Post Release Community Supervision (PRCS) for a prior violation of taking a vehicle without owner’s consent. Additionally, she was found to have three local Felony warrants for her arrest. Terms of her PRCS included “obey all laws.” She was arrested for Vehicle theft, Possession of a stolen vehicle, Violation of PRCS terms, 11377 HS – Possession of a controlled substance, Possession of paraphernalia and the three Felony warrants. She was subsequently transported to the MCSO Jail for booking. The owner of the stolen vehicle came to scene and took custody of the vehicle. Blunt was not known to the victim.

UPD would like to remind everyone that during this cold weather it is not uncommon for suspects to look for vehicles that are left unattended and running. This presents an opportunity for suspects to commit vehicle thefts. Please exercise vigilance and safety measures to avoid falling victim to opportunist criminals.

(Ukiah Police Presser)

CATCH OF THE DAY, February 3, 2022

GUILLERMINA ALLENDE-IRIARTE, Willits. DUI.

NICOLE ALVAREZ, Yucaipa/Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting.

JAVIER GARCIA, Willits. County parole violation.

DEVLEN GENTRY-MCCULLER, Ukiah. Vandalism, probation revocation.

LATEEFAH GLOVER, Ukiah. Trespassing, disobeying court order, resisting.

JOHN MARKS JR., Ukiah. Domestic battery, probation revocation.

RILEY ROGERSWOOD, Willits. Assault with firearm, shooting at inhabited dwelling, child endangerment.

SEAN SHANNNON, Willits. Domestic battery, disobeying court order, resisting, offenses while on bail, probation revocation.

LEONARD WHIPPLE JR., Covelo. Felon-addict with firearm, prior felony enhancement.

ART & MONEY IN FRISCO TOWN

by Jonah Raskin

In San Francisco, on the half-mile stretch that runs along Montgomery Street from Market to Columbus, there are 14 financial institutions. I know. I have counted them. I walk past those 14 fortress-like buildings at least two days a week on my way from the MUNI stop at Market to my office at 708 Montgomery, where architects do what architects do. 708 also serves as an art gallery. There's another art gallery two-doors down, but galleries are few and far between.

After all, this is the financial district. Banks rather than art galleries dominate the landscape. Their names are: Fidelity, First Republic, Chase, Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, Bank of the West, Bank of America, US Bank, Sterling, CITI, First Bank, Bank of the West, East West Bank, HSBC, Cathay and Wells Fargo, where I have a checking and a savings account.

Art takes a backseat to money in San Francisco, though art and money are also inextricably linked. If you want to buy art by famous artists you have to have money. That was the clear message in January at the Fog Fair at Fort Mason, where, as one reporter observed, "the international art glitterati descended for the seventh annual."

Individual paintings were on sale for $100,000s. In fact, you had to have money just to get into the show and see the art. I was not one of the glitterati. I was just a curious fellow eager to understand what Fog was all about. It proved to be too much for me, too much art for my eyeballs and too many wealthy people wearing expensive clothes and jewelry. I felt more at ease looking at the work of Robert Perkins at Canessa Gallery at 708 Montgomery.

Perkins is a hard working artist who worked his way through art school as a dishwasher, waiter, sommelier and more. He knows the restaurant business from inside out. He also knows that money greases the wheels in the San Francisco art world. He wishes it wasn't so. But he's not a complainer. Nor is he a promoter of his own work. He's an artist not a salesman and definitely not a member of the glitterati.

Watch Perkins, 56, add paint to a brush and apply color to a canvas and you'll likely see him pause, reach for a bottle of beer, imported or local, bring it to his lips and sip. Then he’ll go back to the work in front of him, turn it around and even upside down until he decides which side is up and which side is down. It’s not always immediately apparent.

If the name Robert Perkins doesn’t ring a bell instantly that might be because he has done many different things for a long time. He has also moved back and forth from Mendocino County and Sonoma County to San Francisco, growing grapes, making wine, earning a living as a sommelier and networking in the world of art, food and drink.

Big and burly, Perkins has been painting in the same well-lite San Francisco Studio near the Balboa Park Bart stop for the past 23 years. In that time, he has made hundreds of works of art, exhibited a lot of them, and sold enough to art collectors in the Bay Area to keep him going.

At his new show viewers can appreciate 22 of his paintings in oil, enamel and acrylic. They will likely help his fans understand why he has described his art “as a snake chasing its own tail.” Indeed, it's not clear where a canvas starts and where it ends, and whether it has one center or many.

In 2005, when he formed Skylark Wine Company with his business partner and co-wine maker, John Lancaster, their goal was to make one barrel. One quickly grew to 14. This year the number topped 6,000 cases. At their own vineyard, Perkins and Lancaster harvest a variety of grapes, including Pinot Blanc, Grenache, Syrah and old vine Carignane. Mendocino and Sonoma growers also supply them with grapes they turn into wines that are California renditions of classic European varietals.

"I have often compared the making of art and the making of wine," Perkins tells me. "In a way, a vineyard is a canvas. You have to trust both of them, and yourself." He adds, "My art is organic and so is my wine making, though my canvases look a lot more chaotic than my vineyards." Indeed, by definition a vineyard must be orderly.

Perkins has uncorked and poured more bottles of red and white than the number of canvases he has covered with paint. His art is too unique to be mass-produced.

The title and the concept of the show, "Pushing Paint," come from Sam Tchakalian, one of his mentors at the San Francisco Art Institute. Tchakalian urged students “to move through a mistake, paint over and not become fixated on one part." That’s how Perkins remembers it.

“To succeed as an artist and also as a winemaker,” he tells me, "you have to aim for balance. With grapes you look at the sugar content, the ph and the acid. With art it's the colors, the shapes and the lines."

Wine, art and good food have followed Perkins throughout much of his life. Born in Carmel in 1965, he grew up in the San Diego area, and attended UC Santa Barbara before graduating from the San Francisco Art Institute. As a young painter, he was fortunate to work as an assistant to Richard Diebenkorn, mixing inks. At the end of the day, he took home the inks Diebenkorn didn’t use and applied them to his own canvases.

Perkins also worked at the Anderson Collection in Palo Alto and at several Bay Area print shops, including Crown Point Press and Limestone Press. In San Francisco, he developed an appreciation for fine food and fine wines at Greens, and as a sommelier for 15 years, from 1999 to 2014, at Boulevard restaurant. When the day was done, he went home and painted.

"During an average day at Boulevard, John and I would taste 30 or more bottles of wine and have to choose two or three for the restaurant,” he says. He’s as picky and choosy with his own work.

“At Boulevard, we created long term relationships with owners, winemakers, and vineyard managers,” Perkins says. "They're still intact after all these years."

When he’s away from his studio for long, he can get fidgety. His wife, Kristine, whom he calls his "biggest advocate," reminds him that she married a painter. "Go to the studio," she tells him. He follows her suggestion, even if it's only to clean brushes and move stuff around. Sure enough a painting begins to be born.

Perkins doesn't tell viewers what to see or not to see in his paintings. "If someone looks at one of my pieces and notices a figure, that’s okay with me," he tells me. "I don't like to explain or analyze. Still his works have intriguing titles such as “thoughts rearranged,” and “When did the old nun lose her faith.”

As a sommelier, Perkins took notes and compared them with the notes of others before deciding what wines to choose. That’s too deliberate and systematic a process for the kind of paintings he creates.

He knows that art, like wine, can be an acquired taste, and that while there are hundreds of places to enjoy wine in the Bay Area there don’t seem to be enough galleries to appreciate painting. Almost anyone can walk into one of the financial institutions on Montgomery Street, provided they don't look like they're homeless. To get into Canessa Gallery, you must first make an appointment. That's the way galleries work in San Francisco and that is what makes them a world apart from banks. Money yells. Art whispers.

(Jonah Raskin is the author of Beat Blues, San Francisco, 1955, a novel.)

PHOTOESSAY ON POVERTY IN TULARE COUNTY WINS SF PRESS CLUB AWARD

A photo series about the San Joaquin Valley during the pandemic just won the first place award from the San Francisco Press Club 2021 awards: sfpressclub.org/2021/10/05/the-2021-winners/

"Tulare County During The Pandemic - The Hard Price Of Poverty," by David Bacon: capitalandmain.com/tulare-county-during-pandemic-price-of-poverty-0803

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Sleepy Joe is stumbling into war with Russia. I was watching a documentary about the ‘Great Patriotic War’ and took note of the titanic battles in Eastern Ukraine Sept – Oct 1941, with the Germans destroying two entire Russian armies of 400,000 and 550,000 respectively, at the same time losing 10,000 kia every week. I hope Sleepy Joe realizes the Russian Army is not not the Iraqi army, and they ain’t playing games on the eastern front.

Fred LaValley, stage driver in Mendocino County, c. 1911. Mendocino County Museum Collections.

TRAVELLING WASN'T VERY EASY in Mendocino County in the early 1900s. Can you imagine traveling by wagon or horseback on long mountainous dirt roads?

Art Lemos, who grew up in the town of Mendocino during the 1910s, describes it like this, "There was only one way over here in those days. That would be coming over through Orr Springs Road. That was a long, slow and tortuous ride to come over the mountain on the road. It was very, very, slow."

— Mendocino County Remembered: An Oral History Vol. I

COVID NOT OVER

Editor:

The California Department of Public Health recently announced dangerous guidance allowing asymptomatic health care workers who test positive for COVID-19, or who have been exposed to the virus and are asymptomatic, to return to work immediately without isolation or testing.

The pandemic is not over. We are in the midst of a record-breaking surge of COVID-19 driven by the omicron variant. California is running out of hospital beds, and nurses and other health care workers are reporting extreme levels of moral distress. It is unconscionable to allow infected asymptomatic people to work. I guess the state is accelerating endemic status.

Any health care worker who tests positive for COVID-19 must isolate for at least five days, whether symptomatic or not, or until their tests are negative. Eliminating isolation time and sending infected health care workers to work will guarantee more infections, hospitalizations and deaths.

Hospitals and clinics must provide daily screening for those exposed and recovering from COVID and provide protections like optimal protective equipment and notification to other workers of known exposures.

The health department must rescind this guidance to protect patients and keep nursing colleagues healthy and safe on the front lines.

Robin Sunbeam

Ukiah

CODGER PLANNING MEETING

The Area Agency on Aging (AAA) of Lake & Mendocino Counties PSA 26 will conduct a public hearing to accept comments on the 2020-2024 Area Plan Update. The plan sets forth goals and objectives to address needs of older adults and people with disabilities in Lake and Mendocino Counties.

The AAA is interested in receiving comments from older adults, persons with disabilities, family caregivers, agencies, and advocacy groups serving these individuals, as well as other interested parties.

Copies of the plan’s goals and objectives will be available at the hearing and the entire plan for 2020-2024 can be accessed at: lakecountyca.gov/Assets/Departments/Social+Services/AAA/2020-2024+Area+Plan.pdf

Hearing Date, Time & Location: Thursday, March 10, 2022 at 11:00 am

Via Zoom: lakecounty.zoom.us/j/93460785140?pwd=Nm5Wa0tqZzR5MWE3K0g2RWEzazgzUT09

For more information or to RSVP, please contact AAA at 707-995-3744 or aaa@dss.co.lake.ca.us

POT PERMIT PARTY

The County of Mendocino Cannabis Program will be hosting three webinars in the month of February. Please save the date and watch for our upcoming emails with registration links and details for the following dates:

February 9, 2022 – County of Mendocino Cannabis Program Update

February 16, 2022 – Local Equity Entrepreneur Program Update

February 23, 2022 – Local Jurisdiction Assistance Grant Program Update

Please note that all above referenced webinars will require registration and will take place from 3:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. (PST).

Additionally, if you know of anyone who may not currently be on our Canna Note distribution list please share the following information with them:

To receive updates and information related to the Mendocino Cannabis Program (MCP) please sign up for Canna Notes through the County’s e-notification system. To sign up please go to mendocinocounty.org/community/enotification, then select “Canna Notes” under the “News” section, scroll to the bottom of the page and click submit.

Contemplating Going Full Hippie, Mendocino, 1970

FAIR STUDY TOO SLOW

To State Senator Mike McGuire,

I have been involved in local county fairs all of my life. I have served on the Board of Directors of two local fairs, in Petaluma and Ukiah. I am writing to you about the situation that exists between the Petaluma Fair and the Petaluma city council. The fairgrounds is leased from the City of Petaluma. The lease is running out on December 31, 2023. Long overdue, discussions are being held between the City Council, the Fair Board and the community. A group has been hired to study the issue. However, it is said that it will take them 12 to 18 months to complete their findings. That is approximately six months before the lease terminates. Then the decision process starts.

Of major concern to me are the existing uses of the property that serve the community: i.e., the annual Sonoma-Marin Fair, several private schools, and various community events. This lengthy study is going to make it very difficult for a decision to be made in a timely fashion, so these groups can continue to function.

I ask that your office enter into the long past due discussions between these two parties. I hope you would support renewing the least to the Sonoma-Marin Fair.

Regards,

Bob Dempel

Santa Rosa

UNDERMINING PROP 57

Dear Editor:

I am writing this letter in hopes you will help me inform the voting public just how corrupt the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) really are. This is a case of putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.

Over the last decade the voters in California have passed several bills and and amendments directed at prison reform. In fact voters across the nation let their votes speak loud and clear on what they wanted. “More freedom minded prosecutors and more oversight and accountability of the police.” The problem with that concept is behind these prison walls there is no accountability nor oversight from the public. In fact the District Attorneys Association and the California Supreme Court are of the opinion the voters in this state are incapable of understanding what it is they are voting for so they have overridden Prop 57.

A few years ago the people of this state backed Proposition 57 which allow offenders to receive more good time conduct credits so they would be able to go home to their families sooner. Notwithstanding, 20 years ago the CCPOA and CDCR started calling their protective custody inmates Sensitive Needs Yards (SNYs). That’s where they housed child molesters and rapists. Then they started letting ex-gang members (dropouts) go to those yards too. Today two thirds of the prison population is SNY. The worst of the worst.

Then the voters started passing all the laws to help decrease the prison population and allow nonviolent offenders to do a lot less time. That’s when the CCPOA and CDCR came up with a way to circumvent the will of the people. They created non-designated programming facilities (NDPF) yards where CDCR is trying to force general population inmates to live with and around the very same people I see in the news that the public is protesting to stop their release into their communities. The public does not want to live around these monsters in and around their kids.

A great many of us in prison have wives, mothers, sisters and children and don’t want to live around these monsters either. Yet CCPOA and CDCR are forcing the issue even though they know violence will ensue. It is their ploy to keep these prisons full.

The CCPOA and CDCR are getting around these voter approved initiative by staging gladiator fights using these new NDPF yards as their arenas.

When they move general population to these yards 10 to 15 correctional officers line up against the fence so they can observe the melee. When it’s over the general population inmates are shackled up like animals and lead back into their cages (cells) and punished by being denied voter approved early release. Then 10 or 12 months later they are marched back over so they can be made to fight again. Then they are shackled up again marched back to their cages and again denied voter approved early release.

This is how CCPOA and CDCR are circumventing the voters. Like I said in the beginning the courts, the CCPOA and CDCR think that the voting public is nothing more than a bunch of dumb idiots.

A lot of the inmates who are receiving this treatements have gang affiliated ties. CCPOA and CDCR are aware of this. They are also aware if these men stay on the yards once they are released from prison they are likely to become victims of violence. And their families as well, from the very gangs that CDCR forced them out of. A great many of these are old men who have been in prison for 20-40 years and are just trying to go home.

The CCPOA is also known as the Green Wall. It is a gang made up of prison guards who routinely abuse prisoners then hide behind the shield of qualified immunity which allows them to escape punishment under the very same laws that would send you or me to state prison if we violated them.

It is time we the people stand up and take back the system that was put into place to protect us from rogue law-enforcement officials by abolishing qualified and absolute immunity. Like my mother told me years ago, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If that’s the case then these rogue cops and correctional officers who are purposely breaking the law should be thrown into prison as well.

In September 2020 District Court Judge Claudia Wilkin for the Northern District of California ordered CDCR to start making their correctional officers wear body cameras at RJ Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego because of the abuse by correctional officers against disabled prisoners, a direct violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The reason I am telling you this is to shine some light on this country’s dark secrets when it comes to the penal system. It is a form of slavery condoned through the 13th amendment of the United States Constitution ratified after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. It gives the state authority to force people who have been convicted of crime into servitude as a means of punishment without any intervention from the courts.

It is the courts who refuse to get involved in the way prisoners are treated behind these walls. It allows the correctional officers to get very sadistic and violent without any fear of retribution because they are seldom held accountable.

Charles Statler

Soledad

CAN NEWSOM FIX LEGAL CANNABIS PROBLEMS?

by Alexei Koseff

When California voters legalized marijuana for recreational use in November 2016, it was also a victory for Gavin Newsom, who spent months traveling the state as the face of the campaign. At an election night party at a San Francisco nightclub, the then-lieutenant governor celebrated this “point of pride,” telling attendees that Califo rnia had sent a “message powerfully to the rest of the nation.”

It was an important resume-building moment for Newsom, already deep into his first run for governor, who during decades in office has put himself at the forefront of political change. In a profile in Billboard magazine a few months later, he acknowledged that his legacy and that of Proposition 64, the legalization measure, were now tied together:

“Put it this way: Everything that goes wrong, you’re looking at the poster child.”

Five years later, Newsom is governor, and farmers, dispensary owners and other advocates are calling on him to rescue a legal market they say has been pushed to the brink of collapse by a steep drop in prices — and the inattention of a man who was once its most prominent proponent.

“He championed our message and he rode our coattails all the way to the top,” said Michael “Mikey” Steinmetz, co-founder of Flow Cannabis Co., a manufacturer and distributor. “We feel that he has turned his back in some capacity.”

The cannabis industry’s appeal for help is aggressively aimed at the heap of taxes that put it at a disadvantage with the robust illicit market in California. Steinmetz has proposed a boycott of the state’s cultivation tax unless there is financial relief in the upcoming state budget.

Newsom expressed support for taking unspecified steps to “stabilize the market” while unveiling his budget proposal on Jan. 10, but he seems unlikely to embrace radical changes to the system he put his name on with Prop. 64. No plan has yet materialized, and his office declined to make him available for an interview.

“It is an oversimplification to say that tax reduction will solve all of the industry’s problems,” Nicole Elliott, director of Newsom’s Department of Cannabis Control, told CalMatters. “It’s just a vast oversimplification of the number of variables that impact the health of the legal market and that support or foster illegal activity. It is not tax alone.”

Newsom once stood, cautiously, at the forefront of the legalization movement in California. He declared at the time that he was not “pro-marijuana” — he says he has never tried it — but “vehemently anti-prohibition.”

As lieutenant governor, he formed a blue ribbon commission on marijuana policy, which issued a report in 2015 warning that legalization would be a “process that unfolds over many years requiring sustained attention to implementation.” Prop. 64 followed the next year, pitched by Newsom more as an opportunity for social justice — to erase the damage of a drug war that had disproportionately targeted Blacks and Latinos — than for new tax revenue.

After 57% of California voters approved the measure, his focus has shifted to issues including health care, homelessness and early childhood education. In his first three years as governor, Newsom rarely discussed marijuana policy publicly, even before the coronavirus pandemic response consumed his administration.

That silence has disappointed many in the cannabis industry who expected he would continue to lead on the issue.

Some steps are viewed positively — consolidating the state’s three separate cannabis licensing programs into a single department and, in what was perhaps an industry-saving move, declaring marijuana dispensaries and delivery services an essential business that could remain open during the pandemic.

But there is widespread frustration with Newsom’s inaction on the problems preventing the licensed system from competing as a viable alternative to the dominant illicit market. Legal sales in California reached $4.4 billion in 2020, according to the industry publication MJBizDaily, while experts estimate that illegal sales could be at least twice as much.

Those problems are not entirely Newsom’s creation.

Long before legalization, the Emerald Triangle of Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties established itself as the base of marijuana cultivation for the entire country, making the transition to a regulated system uniquely challenging in California. Many long-standing farmers have been reluctant to make the jump. And despite a stated intent to give small growers a five-year head start, regulations on acreage limits adopted before Newsom became governor, though not over his opposition, opened the door for investors to link parcels into megafarms and flood the market with their crop.

Prop. 64 requires local governments to opt in, so recreational sales are still blocked in about two-thirds of jurisdictions, including some large cities such as Bakersfield and Anaheim. There are 866 licensed dispensaries in California, along with 374 licensed marijuana delivery businesses. That’s just a fraction of the number per capita in other states where cannabis is legal, including Oregon, Washington, Colorado and even Oklahoma. Growers and distributors say they have fewer shops where to sell their products now than when only medical marijuana was legal and licensing for dispensaries was looser.

In addition, taxes — stacked by state and local authorities for growing, distributing and selling — raise the price of legal marijuana by as much as 50% for consumers.

Industry advocates argue that the Newsom administration has not done nearly enough to lower costs for licensed businesses, or to expand the legal market.

“He’s responsible for setting the agenda for what’s important in the state,” said Imelda Walavalkar, chief executive officer of Pure Beauty, an “environmentally conscious” marijuana brand that has indoor growing and production facilities in Sacramento. “It doesn’t seem like a super priority for them.”

The state, for instance, has not ramped up pressure or incentives to persuade reluctant communities to permit recreational marijuana sales. Social equity programs started by some cities and counties to diversify the industry with more people of color, formerly incarcerated people and residents of neighborhoods with historically disproportionate marijuana arrest rates are taking years to get off the ground.

Last year, Newsom vetoed the industry’s priority legislation, which would have authorized billboard advertising on California freeways, citing the need to protect children from exposure to marijuana.

Walavalkar said a vicious cycle of competition — with venture capital-backed businesses that can afford to operate at a loss to gain market share and licensed growers who continue to divert some of their crop to the illegal market to subsidize their operations — has driven prices in a race to the bottom.

“There’s just not a big margin left, no matter how you slice it or how slimmed down you are,” she said.

The situation has reached a breaking point in recent months for growers including Ingrid Tsong, who runs Beija Flor Farms in Mendocino County with her husband, Jonathan Wentzel. Prices have fallen so far that their business is now losing money, and the couple is unsure they can afford to plant a crop this year.

“It is like end of days here. We do not know,” Tsong said. “I can’t find my way through this morass.”

Tsong said she and Wentzel were skeptical of Prop. 64, because they believe it lacked sufficient protections for the well-established industry of small cannabis farmers that has long existed on the margins in California. Still, after it passed, they stepped forward to license their operation.

The combination of high taxes and fees and an acreage cap for their farm, an oversupply of marijuana on the legal market and few places to sell it, has squeezed them from all directions. Tsong said their crop last fall cost about $460 per pound to produce, a third of that from California’s cultivation tax for growers. But wholesale prices have dropped to about $300 per pound in recent weeks, compared to as much as $800 per pound at the same time last year.

The couple has already dipped into savings to stay afloat, Tsong said. Because cannabis is still illegal under federal law, they do not have access to bank loans or agricultural aid programs available to other farmers, leaving them without the capital they need to front the cost of production at the start of a new season.

While Beija Flor Farms, which harvests a piece of property that has been in Wentzel’s family through several generations of growing cannabis, is better positioned to survive than many small operations in the Emerald Triangle, the financial hit of sitting out a year is still difficult for Tsong to fathom. The couple has already pulled from their savings.

A decision looms, as Tsong and Wentzel will need to start preparing to put plants in the ground in May. Their calculation could change if the market turns around or the state takes quick action on relief for the cannabis industry — Tsong is hoping some of the state’s $21 billion discretionary surplus can go to a tax rebate for small farmers — but even a scaled-backed crop feels like a risk.

“It doesn’t seem smart to try again given the brick wall we’re facing,” Tsong said. “If we farm this year, it honestly might just be a labor of love.”

Three days after Newsom’s pronouncement about stabilizing the market, dozens of small growers from the Emerald Triangle, social equity license holders and other activists gathered on the steps of the Capitol to demand an end to what they deemed the “war on drugs 2.0.”

Johnny Casali brought a cannabis plant, from a strain named for his mother, from his Humboldt County farm and set it next to the podium as he railed against the overtaxation that he said was destroying the legal market. Dispensary owners, shut out of traditional banking, shared their struggles with frequent break-ins by thieves who know they have cash on hand.

Attendees lingered after the speeches ended, enjoying a joint in the sun and waiting for a turn to talk to state Sen. Steven Bradford, who spoke at the event in solidarity.

As bill ideas circulate at the Capitol, lawmakers are poised to take up the cannabis industry’s cause this session. Bradford told CalMatters that, besides an overhaul of the tax structure, the Legislature could address prohibitive start-up costs for marijuana businesses, such as extensive environmental reviews or a requirement in many communities that dispensary owners have a storefront rented before they can even apply for a license to open.

Sen. Steven Bradford has taken at least $1.1 million from the Labor sector since he was elected to the legislature. That represents 22% of his total campaign contributions.

“We’re, in essence, enabling the illegal market to continue right now,” the Gardena Democrat said. “That’s who’s winning this battle.”

What the industry really wants is broad tax relief. At the Capitol rally, farmers urged the state to eliminate the cultivation tax, which recently increased to more than $10 per ounce, or switch from a flat rate to a percentage of the price. Social equity license holders asked for a suspension of the 15% excise tax, to give their businesses a greater opportunity to establish a foothold.

Kika Keith, whose dispensary Gorilla Rx Wellness was one of the first licensed through Los Angeles’ social equity program, said campaign promises that Prop. 64 would provide redemption for communities hurt by the drug war proved to be a “Trojan horse.”

She slammed regulators for prioritizing bringing the existing cannabis market, which is predominantly controlled by white-owned businesses, into compliance. Assistance for entrepreneurs from disadvantaged backgrounds, including $55 million in grants from the state for social equity licensing programs, has been slow to reach those it was meant to help, she said.

“You give us this opportunity and then you let us swim with sharks, because you don’t provide any protections,” Keith said. “This is a state of emergency for Black and brown community members who have given up everything to be a part of this industry.”

It’s a complicated political puzzle for Newsom, who said at his budget press conference that he would “look at tax policy.” Any changes need to account for the impact on revenue, he said — an estimated $595 million in the 2022-23 budget to help fund child care slots, environmental cleanup programs and impaired driving prevention efforts.

The governor also said it’s “my goal to get these municipalities to wake up to the opportunities to get rid of the illegal market” and “to provide support and a regulatory framework for the legal market,” but did not offer any details. Tension over local control is a frequent issue at the Capitol, and there may be little appetite to dramatically curtail the rights of cities under Prop. 64.

Elliott, his top cannabis adviser, said the administration might be inclined to pursue changes that make it easier to comply with the legal cannabis system by addressing the “pain points” for operators. such as the fact that they must prepay some of their taxes on products they have not even sold. Newsom’s approach will depend on what proposals emerge from the Legislature, she said, because they will need to work together to reach the two-thirds vote threshold required of any tax measure.

“Everything’s a trade-off,” Elliott said. “It will be challenging to have anything but revenue neutrality because there are stakeholders who care about that revenue.”

Those include law enforcement organizations and unions that represent programs funded by the revenue. Public health groups also worry lowering the cost will encourage more marijuana use.

Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University who served on the steering committee of Newsom’s blue ribbon commission, said the legalization framework of Prop. 64 was more corporate-friendly than the panel’s recommendations. He said the state should crack down on the illicit market by stepping up enforcement against unlicensed operators, rather than giving incentives to cannabis businesses.

“That’s more sensible than messing with taxes,” he said.

It’s a sensitive subject in an industry that is still grappling with the legacy and the trauma of the war on drugs. While some licensed growers and dispensary owners do believe the consequences are too low to discourage those operating illegally, others argue that large-scale enforcement would be fruitless against an illicit market that is so pervasive.

Steinmetz, whose Flow Cannabis Co. has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs over the past few years as it has struggled to compete, called it “a game of whack-a-mole.”

Law enforcement is unable to stay on top of illegal marijuana farms, especially on public lands, which steal precious water and raise the risk of devastating wildfires. Unlicensed dispensaries, even when they are shut down, often soon pop up in a new location.

Casali, whose family started growing cannabis in Humboldt County in the mid-1970s, was arrested on illegal cultivation charges in 1992 and served eight years in federal prison. Unlike many of his peers, he opted to apply for a license for his Huckleberry Hill Farms after Prop. 64 because he was tired of a life in the shadows, running from helicopters and special agents.

Now he worries that legalization also means the end for the small farmers like him who built California into a marijuana powerhouse.

“The people who created the system truly do not understand what we went through,” Casali said. “We’re the ones who helped create a multibillion-dollar industry and now you don’t want us.”

(CalMatters.org)

POT SEIZURES 2021

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s (CDFW) cannabis enforcement program has released year-end numbers for the 2021 calendar year.

CDFW investigates illegal cannabis cultivation operations to uncover and curtail operations that result in significant environmental damage. Some of the most serious environmental issues involve unauthorized streambed alterations with water diversions, habitat destruction, illegal use of pesticides and poaching. CDFW does not typically investigate water theft but will assist county law enforcement partners in such investigations as needed.

“Illegal operators who are trying to bypass the legal system are a threat to California’s fish and wildlife resources, and a detriment to those legally cultivating cannabis,” said David Bess, CDFW Deputy Director and Chief of the Law Enforcement Division. “Our wildlife officers did an exceptional job in providing public safety alongside our federal, state and county partners and I could not be prouder of their dedication and commitment to protecting the environment. Our year-end numbers are a testament to all their hard work throughout the year.”

Some of the year’s notable accomplishments include:

2.6 million illegal cannabis plants eradicated
487,270 lbs. of illegal cannabis flower destroyed
1,125 search warrants served
794 firearms seized
32,230 lbs. of trash removed from public lands
404 illegal water diversions removed

*Numbers reflect all operations where CDFW was either the lead agency or in a support role.

According to statistics from the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) program, illegal cannabis cultivation continues to move away from public land operations to private property. In 2018, the ratio of illegal activity was approximately 80 percent on public lands and 20 percent on private property. The number of illegal cannabis grows on public lands has continued to decrease steadily over the last few years and in 2021, the DOJ’s CAMP program cited less than 30 percent of illegal cultivation activity on public lands.

Today, CDFW has 68 dedicated cannabis enforcement officers who work with county, state and federal partners to combat illegal cultivation activity.

CDFW encourages the public to report environmental crimes such as water pollution and poaching to the CalTIP hotline by calling (888) 334-2258 or by texting information to “TIP411” (847411).

* * *

AN ON-LINE COMMENT:

Something stinks here… Back in October the numbers were less than half of these numbers :

October 17,2021-“California Attorney General Rob Bonta today announced the eradication of nearly 1.2 million illegally cultivated marijuana plants and the seizure of more than 180,000 pounds of illegally processed marijuana as part of the California Department of Justice’s annual Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) program. Over the course of this year’s 13-week season, the multi-agency campaign conducted 491 operations, recovering 165 weapons and removing more than 67,000 pounds of cultivation infrastructure, including dams, water lines, and containers of toxic chemicals. Operating across 26 counties, CAMP teams eradicated grows on both public and private lands, including in the Los Padres National Forest, the Cleveland National Forest; the San Bernardino National Forest, the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, the Klamath National Forest, the Sierra National Forest, and the Sequoia National Forest. “

https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bonta-announces-eradication-more-one-million-marijuana-plants

I call BS!

‘NOT WHAT I SIGNED UP FOR!’

by Mary Callahan

In her written comments to utility regulators, one Santa Rosa woman was emphatic, saying, she “WOULD NOT HAVE PURCHASED ROOFTOP SOLAR WITHOUT THE CURRENT INCENTIVES.”

Another Santa Rosa resident wrote, “We are retired persons who invested in good faith that the state will support and protect forward thinking …”

And a Sebastopol man told the California Public Utilities Commission -- the agency typically referred to as CPUC -- it is “incredibly incredulous to claim that the CPUC is on the public’s side.”

They and hundreds of other Californians are in fight mode over a proposal introduced in December that would gut the incentives — $180 a month or more for some individual users — that have helped persuade residents and business owners to install nearly 1.3 million rooftop solar systems over the past 15 years.

The plan, which is pending before the commission, would potentially upend the solar power trade and jeopardize progress toward California’s ambitious renewable energy goals, critics say.

It is, one leading solar advocate said, a cynical stab by investor-owned electric utilities at “killing solar in the name of the poor.”

However, supporters of the proposal say reform is needed to ensure everyone connected to the electrical grid pays for the costs of maintaining it. Those costs, they say, are currently shouldered disproportionately by poorer households, fixed-income seniors and others who have been left out of the solar energy revolution.

Rooftop solar power has historically been adopted at higher rates by homeowners in the upper income ranks, excluding many renters and lower-wage earners ― though that’s improving.

Those who obtain their power directly from utilities, the argument goes, are stuck paying an estimated $3.4 billion a year for things like transmission infrastructure, wildfire mitigation and discounted electricity rates offered to those with the lowest incomes.

That means, in effect, that those with less money are subsidizing solar power adopters who are, on average, better off.

‘An equity issue’

Right now, conventional consumers pay about $250 a year toward upkeep of the grid. It is a charge that solar payers do not pay, according to supporters of the plan.

By 2030, those costs are projected to reach $550 a year, according to Kathy Fairbanks, a spokeswoman for Affordable Clean Energy for All, a coalition funded by California’s major electrical providers.

“This is an equity issue,” said Fairbanks, who speaks for PG&E and other utilities on the issue.

A decision that could change the equation is in the hands of the five-member CPUC, an appointed, independent panel whose regulatory purview is generally not the stuff of broad public interest.

“This proposal is preposterous. Citizens have heavily invested in solar energy for the benefit of the planet. Amortizing this cost will take years, and hiking the tariff for solar energy investors is a punch in their face and discourages other potential users.”

But this issue has generated more ink and outrage than anyone might have expected.

Hundreds of people have weighed in with the CPUC in recent weeks, including more than 500 who have submitted written comments online. Another 455 were queued up on the phone to make oral comments when the commission started its regular Jan. 27 meeting, though only about 328 were able to hang on long enough to speak by the time the session ended more than seven hours later.

“This proposal is preposterous,” one Mendocino County woman wrote to the commission, echoing the general tone of the comments.

“Citizens have heavily invested in solar energy for the benefit of the planet. Amortizing this cost will take years, and hiking the tariff for solar energy investors is a punch in their face and discourages other potential users.”

Conflicting visions

It is a high-stakes battle.

On one side is the state’s major investor-owned energy utilities, including PG&E, and the large union representing its workers.

On the other are some 60,000 independent solar power installers around the state, many of them working for small, family-run businesses now threatened by the proposal, which was released Dec. 13. It is expected to appear on the commission’s most recent agenda, though it’s been postponed.

California Solar Adopter Income Distributions, 2019

Under $50,000 — 12%

$50,000 to $100,000 — 29%

$100,000 to $150,000 — 24%

$150,000 to $200,000 — 14%

$200,000 to $250,000 — 8%

Greater than $250,000 — 12%

Source: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

There is plainly self-interest involved, as well as conflicting visions for California’s future: One with a grid-centered, utility-controlled energy structure or one that is decentralized, democratic and more resilient.

The topic also has mobilized well-organized, sometimes unexpected allies on both sides — disrupting the usual harmony between some social justice and environmental interests, for example.

And those alliances may continue to shift as parties wade through complex economic analyses and mixed predictions about consumer behavior if what one Los Angeles Times columnist called “lavish” incentives for solar adopters disappear.

“The goal isn’t to punish early solar adopters,” wrote one high-profile supporter of the plan, Severin Borenstein, faculty director at the U.C. Berkeley Haas School of Business’ Energy Institute.

Instead, it is to “correct the policy path we are on in which the only people left paying for the grid — the grid that all of us are going to be using for a long time — will be renters and low-income customers.”

Unusual alliances

The utilities-funded Affordable Clean Energy for All coalition has 114 diverse member organizations ranging from local chambers of commerce to taxpayer groups, senior citizen and conservation groups, and nonprofit agencies serving disadvantaged and communities of color.

It also includes the giant and powerful union, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

The National Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and the American Association of Retired Persons, or AARP, also back reform of the long-standing practice known as net metering, which allows solar users to sell the excess power they generate back to the grid.

Both sides in the debate have academics, editorials and studies backing their positions and predicting dire consequences should the other side prevail.

Consumers, renewable energy advocates, solar installers and others opposed to the idea are incensed by a plan they believe will slow adoption of systems that capture power from the sun. They say it will turn back the clock on efforts to address climate change in the Golden State.

They contend supporters use flawed analyses that understate the value of customer power generation and plays into utilities’ self-interest in maintaining a large, centralized transmission system that generates more profit as it grows.

“This is just another case of the big guys — the investor-owned utilities — fighting for themselves and hurting people who have invested or want to invest in solar panels,” former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote in the New York Times. It was Schwarzenegger who, in 2006, established the state’s goal of building 1 million rooftop systems.

Fighting for the old ways?

Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of the California Solar & Storage Association, described it as “a battle of the titans … fighting for the old ways of doing this,” supported by a revolving door of utility executives, commission members and staff, and analysts who circulate within the same orbit.

A maturing industry has reduced the cost of rooftop solar, allowing increasing numbers of middle-income households that are able to participate. At the same time, investor-owned utility rates are skyrocketing, and wildfires and public safety shutdowns underscore the need to build resilience and independence into the grid, Del Chiaro and others said.

A move to radically cut incentives now would raise barriers to all but the wealthiest, critics say. It would also gut the industry, which employs more than 60,000 people statewide, and decrease rooftop solar installations by 80% or more.

“It would be like hitting a brick wall overnight, once it gets implemented,” said Keith Kruetzfeldt, president of Santa Rosa-based Suntegrity Solar. “I’m hopeful there’s some compromise that’s in between that allows for a healthy solar market going forward, but I think reality is whatever they come up with is going to have a real impact.”

The proposed regulation is the latest iteration of what started in 1995 as net energy metering, known by some in the industry as NEM.

Those who installed photovoltaic panels on their rooftops were billed for the difference between how much electricity they used and how much they generated and fed back to the grid. Solar users were credited at the retail rate at which utilities would sell the electricity to others customers.

Since peak usage across the grid typically occurs in the afternoon, electric rates were highest then, allowing those who gained power from the sun to benefit under the 1995 scheme. Rates were lower at night, when consumer demand was less, so solar users paid less after the sun went down when they had to draw from the grid.

Early adopters could invest in rooftop panels — at a cost, for example, of $30,000, though it’s highly variable — and with credits and rebates, bank on recouping their investment in far fewer than the 20 years their net metering structure was guaranteed.

In 2016, the utility commission made adjustments, adopting NEM 2.0. It was prompted in part by 2013 legislation requiring periodic reviews to ensure balance between the costs and benefits of sustained solar energy growth across all grid users.

New charges added

Under the new version, lower electrical rates were applied to the daily time periods during which solar users were most likely to be credited for surplus power, and higher rates were in play when they were more likely to need to buy electrons, reducing their financial advantage.

A new grid-connection fee between $75 and $150 and other monthly charges were added, as well.

The CPUC says that’s still well below what it costs utilities to serve them, however.

The latest proposal includes new monthly fees averaging $58 per household, or about $700 a year, for those who install solar panels.

It also would cut the value of surplus electrons by at least 80% and adopt a rate structure that asks solar users to pay more for power at night in hopes they’ll invest in solar-storage batteries that would facilitate transition to electrification and reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

Supporters say the scheme better reflects the true value of surplus rooftop solar energy compared to other forms of renewable energy like wind, or large solar farms, where solar power can be generated for a fraction of the cost.

Critics argue that associated transmission costs invalidate that argument — that the real expense is addiction to a large, centralized grid whose maintenance and construction allows utilities to reap guaranteed profits. Since deregulation, they can’t profit from the sale of electricity, but return-on-investment in infrastructure is guaranteed.

The plan also includes a $600 million equity fund to help lower income communities access solar power generation, but it eliminates incentives that currently make it possible for many people to afford solar power. That, critics say, will raise financial barriers to all but the very wealthiest or those that qualify for low-income help.

That means shutting out the people in the middle who have been driven to solar by skyrocketing electric costs, said Kruetzfeldt, the Santa Rosa solar company president. “The vast majority of our customer base is solid middle class,” he said.

Many consumers already equipped with solar panels also feel betrayed by provisions in the new rules, which would shorten the 20-year time frame under which they enjoy favorable rates for excess power they sell to the grid.

Many took out home loans or used the gains from selling large homes to downsize for retirement.

“This was not the deal I signed up for,” Brian Babbitt, of Santa Rosa, wrote to the commission. “… There has to be a better plan than this.”

Solar industry representatives said they knew when work began on NEM 3.0 that the formula would be tipped further against them, and many said they’re OK with that.

It’s the degree to which they feel it overturns all appeal for adopting solar they can’t fathom.

“We understand the current policy is really good for solar customers,” said Dylan Mathias, co-owner of First Response Solar in Sebastopol, with his brother, Chaz, and a second-generation rooftop solar installer.

“We knew it was going be scaled back a little bit,” he said. “But to go from where we’re at to putting almost every solar company out of business if the current one were to go through, it was a pretty good shock.”

Many point to similar shifts in Nevada and other states that went too far, driving out solar businesses, requiring reform that’s just now getting solar installation back on its feet.

“The industry collapsed,” said Jeff Mathias, owner and chief financial officer at Synergy Solar & Electrical Systems in Sebastopol.

Del Chiaro said part of the problem is the rapid escalation of electricity rates, due in no small part to wildfire liability and maintenance that should have been done in the past. Site-centered solar reduces overall rates, meanwhile, but reduces the need to expand the grid, she said.

“We don’t have to keep having the value of our product go up and up and up in order to keep seeing value,” she said. “We don’t necessarily have to be tied to their inability to control costs.”

‘It doesn’t make sense’

But the drastic rate reduction, without a transition period, would simply turn consumers away and prove disastrous to the industry.

The new plan “is literally just slashing it to a point where it doesn’t make sense for anybody to go solar,” Jeff Mathias said.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, who appointed two new commission members, including its president, at the end of last year, in part to replace the author of the pending proposal. The governor concedes it still needs “some work,” though precisely what that means is unclear.

But an extension of the public comment period after its December release made an anticipated Jan. 27 vote impossible.

It has not yet been scheduled on a future agenda, which many believe means it’s being modified somehow.

Anna Baney of Rohnert Park said those driven by conscience “to do something about climate change” will bear the burden of that choice if no changes are made.

“How do we expect to achieve 100% clean energy if we are slowing down progress in the name of progress?” she wrote to the CPUC.

“Our future,” wrote Santa Rosa commenter Daniel Dycus, “is one of microgrids where neighbors cannot only share a cup of sugar but also share valuable electricity. These small microgrids can include whole neighborhoods where we can provide power to each other for each other.

“This tax proposal goes against everything this great state stands for. Don’t let PG&E off the hook, blow up our homes, ravage our state with wildfires and punish our efforts to bring power to where it belongs, with the people.”

(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

THE VOLL BECKONS, CRAIG

Enlightenment in Brahman~

As I sit here looking out of the front window at Local Flavors coffee shop on Redwood Drive in sunny Garberville, California, the social security money is incoming now, so therefore, I am able to leave here and go somewhere else to do something else on fragile planet earth.

As I have said before, the Earth First! video archive digitization project is finished, and stored for safety in the cloud. I have previously stated the importance of this needing to be done, which is why I am here in Garberville, CA and have used my savings to help finance the effort. Hopefully, this is appreciated, and if not, I don't know what to say to anybody other than to ask why are you on the planet earth at all! Sorry for the biting remark, but this is getting crazy, okay?? And it ain't my sanity which we are talking about.

If you are also Brahman identified (i.e. identified with that which is prior to consciousness), I ask you to assist me in moving on from Garberville, CA to my next highest good on the planet earth.

Thank you very much.

Craig Louis Stehr

Email: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com

21 Comments

Eric Sunswheat February 4, 2022

Brahman is a Vedic Sanskrit word, and it is conceptualized in Hinduism, states Paul Deussen, as the “creative principle which lies realized in the whole world”.
Brahman is a key concept found in the Vedas, and it is extensively discussed in the early Upanishads. The Vedas conceptualize Brahman as the Cosmic Principle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahman

—>. February 03, 2022
Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh USA (HSS) is a nonprofit organization that encourages the Hindu American community to practice, preserve and advance the religion’s ideals and values. According to the Pew Research Center, only 2 percent of California’s population have practiced Hinduism in the last 10 years. …

Sashittal re-emphasized that the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh is a U.S.- based volunteer-based nonprofit organization with social, educational and cultural emphases.. …

Venkata Manish Maramreddy, a Woodcreek High School sophomore, touched on the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh’s dedication to community service. Maramreddy said that he has volunteered with the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh on numerous occasions, including donating more than 2,000 face masks to local hospitals and first responders.

“The HSS gives service to all and is irrespective of faith, gender and race,” Maramreddy said. …. Venu Mallesara, a Roseville Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh chapter volunteer, said that many community members appreciate the organization.

“Roseville and 250-plus communities across the U.S. have witnessed our contribution in making this a better place to live,” Mallesara said. “The overwhelming support we get from the community and civic bodies across the country, despite the continuous effort of our adversaries, speaks for itself.”
https://goldcountrymedia.com/news/214494/hindu-community-members-advocate-for-hss/

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Kirk Vodopals February 4, 2022

There’s a sticker on a newspaper stand in front of the Fort Bragg post office that says “Grow Broke”. Seems apt for the current stat of the weed industry. All the Green Rushers and Corporate Bureaucrats piled into an already saturated industry. Everybody knows it’s over the hill. I never saw so much weed grown as I did in 2016. Every ding dong who owned land in my neighborhood got a hold of some of their shadiest associates and threw up some plastic. And boom, oversaturation. Then they scattered like cockroaches. Presumably to Lake County. Race to the bottom. Gavin ain’t going to solve diddly squat

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- Betsy Cawn February 5, 2022
  
  “Presumably to Lake County.” Yes, the county of Lake is overrun by marijuana madness under the misdirection of the Board of Supervisors who have accepted the environmental losses (by legal and illegal grows) as the cost of doing business, as long as the excise taxes on sales are rushing through the veins of the administration. The obvious impacts of their intoxication can be seen in their proposed plan to spend $12.5M anticipated to be received from the American Recovery Act Plan, with not one penny for public health and safety programs — remarked upon, rather unexpectedly, by the Lake County Sheriff himself.
  
  A huge backlash is on its way on this side of the Cow, as numbers of legit “industry” operators prepare to launch an armada of lawsuits in response to expected revisions of the County’s commercial cannabis ordinance, and the questionable alliance of some Supervisors to the “industry” that is threatening fragile ecosystems and community investment in the fundamental goods and services that sustain them is being re-examined by more conservative community activists.
  
  Overshadowing that socio-economic tizzy is the latest arrival of major wildfire threats: the massive tree “die-offs” besetting the inland coastal range of southern Mendocino National Forest and extending as far south as northern Napa County. To date the Lake County Board of Supervisors has been complacently ignoring the scale of impacts on long-known wildfire threatened communities on the slopes of Mt. Konocti and Cobb Mountain (identified in the 2009 Community Wildfire Protection Plan that the current BoS does not acknowledge as their responsibility). Removing dead and dying 100-foot tall potential torches — with possible “ember casts” of many miles (such as we experienced here in 2015) — is ballyhooed on Facebook by the District 5 Supervisor, but not defined for action planning yet in the Lake County Fire Safe Council (they’re still “discussing” whether or not to form a separate 501c3) and certainly not on the agenda for our Board of Supervisors this coming Tuesday.
  
  Reply
Eric Sunswheat February 4, 2022

RE: Voll Motel Craig
—> Brahman is a Vedic Sanskrit word, and it is conceptualized in Hinduism, states Paul Deussen, as the “creative principle which lies realized in the whole world”. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahman

—>. February 03, 2022 
Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh USA (HSS) is a nonprofit organization that encourages the Hindu American community to practice, preserve and advance the religion’s ideals and values. According to the Pew Research Center, only 2 percent of California’s population have practiced Hinduism in the last 10 years.

“Roseville and 250-plus communities across the U.S. have witnessed our contribution in making this a better place to live,” Mallesara said. “The overwhelming support we get from the community and civic bodies across the country, despite the continuous effort of our adversaries, speaks for itself.” 
https://goldcountrymedia.com/news/214494/hindu-community-members-advocate-for-hss/

Reply
George Hollister February 4, 2022

Government has a tendency to too often make matters worse, and that is the case with cannabis. The cannabis black market created by government was the first mistake, and the convoluted policies that followed have never been good, and often have made the situation worse. The market, free of government interference, will eventually sort itself out. And then, hopefully, we can regulate, and deal with pot like any other legal mind altering drug.

My guess is the days of water trucks, compost trucks, migrant trimmers, outlaw gangs, black market economy related violence, high remote land prices, and trespass growing will all eventually be in our rearview mirror. What a relief that will be.

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- Harvey Reading February 4, 2022
  
  It won’t matter what happens regarding Mendo dope. People get all they want from other sources. The Midwest, Canada, and Mexico come to mind immediately. The swollen-headed headed emerald triangle crowd won’t be missed, any more than Wyoming livestock farmers would be. Enjoy your pipe dreams of local importance.
  
  Reply
Joe February 4, 2022

I didn’t see the AVA on the free speech firing line.

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Joe February 4, 2022

Everyone got suckered into the grid tie solar systems and now they are regretting it. Go offgrid and be your own utility.

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Katy Tahja February 4, 2022

So surprising to see my father-in-law 80 years ago as I scrolled down…where do you find photos I’m not even sure the family has?

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Harvey Reading February 4, 2022

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/02/04/i-remember-wmds-iraq-reporter-calls-out-us-official-russian-intel-claims

Deja vu all over again…

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Harvey Reading February 4, 2022

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/04/the-american-experiment-is-a-savage-nightmare/

Another one for all you brain-dead flag-wavers…

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Joe February 4, 2022

Reporter from inside Donbass gives the other side of the story;

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- Harvey Reading February 4, 2022
  
  Who is that clown?
  
  Reply
Marmon February 4, 2022

RE: BIDEN’S PLAN FOR COMBATTING INFLATION

So Joey, in his speech today, basically stated that the high cost of gas and groceries could be offset with free childcare under his “Build Back Better Bill”. What will the rest of us do who don’t have children in the home and/or are on fixed incomes?

Marmon

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- Harvey Reading February 4, 2022
  
  You could stand to lose a few pounds.
  
  Nothing lyin’ Biden, or most economists for that matter, can be believed. Where’s the $15/hour minimum wage? Biden could stop inflation in a second…by locking away, or executing, all the greedy kaputalists. What they are selling has NOT become more valuable, but the scum know they can babble about “supply and demand” and invisible hands to justify raising prices. People dumb enough to believe it get what they deserve.
  
  Reply
  - Marmon February 4, 2022
    
    RE: LIVING ON THE EDGE
    
    Your right Harv, I could stand to lose about 40 pounds, I’m working on it. However, starvation diets are not recommended by most of the medical society. I’m doing the exercise thing right now while enjoying good meals. I get a Senior Basket each month from Redwood Community Food Bank that really helps along with shopping at the Dollar Tree and Gross Out (Grocery Outlet) for various products.
    
    I’ve parked my Lexus, Mustang, and 65 Chevy C-10 and took out non opts at DMV, I’m riding my O5 Harley Electra Glide for most of my travelling, 25 miles to the gallon in town up to 40 on the Highway. Rain or Shine.
    
    So far my mortgage payments are on time each month and my PG&E bill is manageable since I installed a nice little wood stove and cut my own firewood.
    
    If things keep going the way they have been going I may need to reconsider and if my current status as is going to be substainable.
    
    Marmon
    
    Reply
- George Hollister February 4, 2022
  
  What will the rest of us do? Go into the childcare business.
  
  Reply
Craig Stehr February 4, 2022

Thanking the AVA for being willing to allow me to post messages, in regard to my ridiculous impossible social situation in postmodern California. I would love to return to the Voll Motel in Ukiah. At present, I’ve got about $1300 in the bank with food stamps incoming Feb. 8th. How about if the Cannabis Industry (which is directly responsible for my facing homelessness beyond the situation in Garberville, because I am not welcome to return to the residence in Redwood Valley where I successfully lived for over one year, because the cannabis trimmers do not want me there) set me up for one month at the Voll Motel? P.S. I have informed Savings Bank of Mendocino County this morning that I will NOT send them any further messages survival related. They informed me that I could contact law enforcement and/or social services myself to get help with my ridiculous impossible situation in postmodern California. I do not have any law enforcement nor social service connections. How about if postmodern California help me with this? Telephone messages are being received c/o Andy Caffrey at (213) 842-3082. I’d like to leave Garberville, CA as soon as possible. I wish to be taken into custody for my protection, and placed into a senior shelter, residence, or whatever I can get other than a jail cell. At this point, I do not care where I go anymore or what I will do next. Dualistically speaking, whatever God wants is just fine with me. The good news is that some day I am leaving this world forever, and I am taking nothing here with me.
Signed, Craig Louis Stehr Email: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com PayPal.me/craiglouisstehr

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- Professor Cosmos February 4, 2022
  
  The only immediate possibilities are “sro” units in an urban area:
  https://www.yelp.com/search?find_desc=sro+housing&find_loc=Oakland%2C+CA
  Reading the mixed reviews, there are issues: small space, noise, maybe bed bugs, etc.
  I’m not aware of weekly or monthly rate residential motels in Ukiah. The reviews for Voll do indicate that they have long term residents but I suspect it costs more than a sro unit elsewhere.
  Ukiah is showing regressive signs of more people on the streets, including seniors. There are voucher and rent subsidy programs here but with long waiting lists.
  
  Reply
Marmon February 4, 2022

I’m thinking I may have to come out of full retirement and go back into the consultant business. Mask addiction is going to be a tough cookie for most liberals to have to break.

Marmon

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Betsy Cawn February 5, 2022

Mask addiction? When the only down-to-earth capability we have to protect ourselves is refraining from exposure to microbial infectious disease transmitters that are airborne and masks are just about the only thing we have as individuals — especially low-income individuals (who cannot afford “personal protective equipment” of the medical-grade types), what else do you recommend? You might as well offer your assistance to those of us who are “hooked” on eating food and getting medical/dental care to prevent chronic diseases with almost no real help available from the gluttonous insurance and “health care” industries. Should we get brain retraining to revert to the “herd immunity” mentality? Maybe you could rent a room to Craig or let him pitch a tent in your backyard, to improve your income.

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Mendocino County Today: Friday, Feb. 4, 2022

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