BEFORE WE SAY FAREWELL to CEO Angelo we should also note how much money she stands to make off of Mendocino’s precarious pension fund. We know of two ways to calculate pensions for County employees which Ms. Angelo’s contract says she’s qualifed to benefit from.
The first method is 2.5% of final salary for each year worked.
That would mean .025 x $220,000 x 30 = $165,000 per year pension.
The second method comes from California Government Code which says that “the fraction of one-fiftieth of the member’s final compensation set forth opposite the member’s age at retirement, taken to the preceding completed quarter year, in the following table [of age multipliers] multiplied by the number of years of current service or years of current and prior service with which the member is entitled to be credited at retirement, but in no event shall the total retirement allowance exceed the member’s final compensation.”
The table says that since Ms. Angelo is 65 or older the factor is 1.3093
$220,000 / 50 = $440
and $440 x 30 x 1.3093 = $172,800 per year
Essentially, CEO Angelo stands to gross around $170k per year from Mendocino County in perpetuity, although since she worked for Mendocino County for 12 of her 30 years employment, it’s possible that some percentage of that $170k will come from San Diego County’s pension fund. We are unable to find any applicable data on that score.
According to Transparent California for 2020, that $170k pension is still more than any other County employee.
We briefly thought that CEO Angelo might try applying for some kind of stress disability retirement claim based on the AVA’s frequent stress-inducing criticism. But as far as we can tell, unless the disability is the direct cause of the retirement, it cannot make someone eligible for a disability pension.
Supervisor Williams’ Cynical Housing Poll
Close political observers know what a “push poll” is. A politician hires a pr firm to design a questionnaire not to garner the opinions of a sampling of voters, but to deliver a message. For example, if a Republican gubernatorial candidate wanted to do a push poll about Gavin Newsom he or she would ask a question like, “Do you approve of Governor Newsom having fancy expensive dinners with his wealthy political cronies without masks during a time when he was ordering Californians to wear masks to protect them from covid?” Obviously, the results of such polls are irrelevant, the purpose is to tell the pollees that the poller a) is just as bothered by the situation as the pollee is and b) hammer home the point that is built into the question.
Mendo hasn’t seen many push polls lately because local political races are shallow popularity/personality contests which assume that most local voters either don’t follow the issues or don’t particularly care.
So when Supervisor Ted Williams conducted his own un-publicized on-line housing poll late last year, nobody, including Supervisor Williams, paid much attention to it.
He introduced the poll as: “Mendocino County Housing Survey to guide Supervisor Ted Williams in advocating for public interest. I'd like to understand where and how you want housing development to change.”
In January, Supervisor Williams released the “results” of his poll, demonstrating that it had nothing to do with Supervisor Williams wanting to know what his constituents thought about Mendo’s chronic housing shortage, but instead to signal to the few people who responded that he really really cares about Mendo's ever-growing housing problem — even though he has no idea what to do about it.
Question 1 from the Supervisor’s poll was: “Does Mendocino County need more housing?”
The Supervisor really needs to ask his constituents this question? Result: An astonishing 15 of the 326 responders actually said, “No.” (Since it was an on-line anonymous poll, perhaps 15 people from Norway voted. Or maybe Deerwood. We don’t know.)
Williams said, “The Regional Housing Needs Assessment for 2019-2027 estimates the number of new units required to meet demand: 9 in Point Arena, 137 in Fort Bragg, 111 in Willits, 239 in Ukiah and 1349 in Unincorporated (outside of the four cities). How many of these (total) units would you support being developed within your zip code?”
No results were provided for this irrelevant question. There will never be anything close to 1349 [sic] new housing units in the unincorporated areas of Mendocino County.
For the next question Williams blandly noted, “Housing unit costs are largely beyond the control of local government,” trying to claim that he and his colleagues are “largely” off the hook.
Maybe the Supervisor hasn’t applied for a construction permit lately. Mendo permits are not only exorbitantly expensive, but they involve reams of contradictory paperwork, nit-picky delays and extra construction requirements that are “largely” within the “control of local government.”
Williams went on to tell poll takers that “California Building Code requirements, labor and materials are significant factors beyond our control. One variable we can control is land use. Higher density developments can be constructed at a lower unit cost than custom homes, often leveraging shared infrastructure. Do you support higher density through small parcel subdivisions within your zip code?”
First, Williams only mentioned “land use” as something “we can control.” Because in reality, No “we” can’t. Plus, he left out several other “variables.” (See below.) As if whether anyone “supports” higher density has anything to do with local housing stock. Of course most responders (80%) did support it. Duh.
Next Williams asked, “Single Family Homes have been the thrust of our housing unit strategy, especially in the unincorporated. Do you support multi-family residential alternatives to single family homes within your zip code?”
Please. Mendo has no “housing unit strategy,” much less any “thrust.” (More like parry.) Again, most responders “support” multi-family alternatives — although a better question might be, “Would you live in one?”
Williams then asked, “Water is a growing concern throughout the county. Without new reservoirs and water systems, do you support additional housing units within your zip code?”
Of course, Williams and the rest of the Board have no idea, much less interest in, what to do about “new reservoirs or water systems,” despite the ongoing “extreme drought.” Nevertheless, over 60% of responders optimistically said, “Yes.”
Williams finally got around to a good question, not that the answer will have any effect on the Supervisor: “Many believe the conversion of housing stock to vacation home rentals has impacted the availability of workforce housing. I sit on a newly formed ad-hoc committee with Supervisor Gjerde to review and propose changes. I recognize stricter regulation of vacation homes alone will not solve our housing shortage, but it could help. Do you support limiting vacation rentals to resident-occupied parcels, effectively preventing companies from converting housing stock to lodging units?”
I.e., like Sonoma County already does? Golly, how many responders would be against this? Turns out 65 were, probably the people who own non-resident-occupied parcels.
Also, by asking about “stricter regulation,” Williams implies that there is already some “strict” regulation. We are not aware of any regulation, much less “strict” regulation.
Supervisor Williams wanted to know what people thought about the 10% bed tax, but he asked it in a way that distorts the question: “The Transient Occupancy Tax (bed tax) is currently 10%. Would you support a greater levy on vacation rentals to disincentivize?”
Even so, more than 60% favored “a greater levy” as long it’s on those those “transient occupiers,” and not on them.
“Market rate housing units are built by private industry,” Williams boldly declared, continuing, “Developers cease new construction when local wages are insufficient to support return on investment. Do you believe our housing shortage is the result of a low wage crisis?”
We only know of one project in the history of Mendocino County where a developer “ceased construction” on a housing project, and that one, Garden’s Gate, south of Ukiah, after originally being first proposed in 2005, was finally “ceased” in 2009 because Mendo took years and years to process the required traffic study (among many others) and by the time it was done, the market had collapsed and the developer, Chris Stone, gave up after spending over $200,000 on permits and EIR requirements, and moved to Brazil.
The still pending north-Ukiah Lovers Lane project for another couple hundred cookie cutter market-rate mid-priced homes proposed by Chico Developer Douglas Guillon in 2019 is also in Mendo-Limbo. (Last we heard there were unaddressed water quantity problems.) This question obviously confused responders because about 43% said “Yes,” and 57% said “No.”
Williams wrapped up his poll by asking, “Which best describes your preference for growth within your zip code?
“Maintain character / limit growth (22%)
Or
“Re-envision / facilitate housing needs”(78%)
That was the end of the poll. Clearly, respondents want the Supervisor to get busy “re-envisioning and facilitating,” but so far since the big reveal of the poll results in January, we haven’t seen any re-envisioning, facilitating, wondering, considering, dreaming, musing, wishing, hoping, praying, thinking or anything else from his and Supervisor Gjerde’s ad hoc housing committee or the Board. By the way, that presumably important ad hoc Committee was appointed on November 17, 2021, more than four months ago. Nothing so far, poll or no poll. But the committee’s assignment was only to “work on” the “housing crisis,” not to propose anything. And, as usual, no report back dates were mentioned in the committee’s formation order.
If Williams really cared about Mendo’s housing shortage he’d immediately ask for an inventory of empty buildings in Mendocino County by zip code (like Fort Bragg recently did) with an assessment of what it might take to house people in them; order County Counsel to propose a version of Sonoma County’s existing corporate airBnB restrictions for immediate implementation, look into obstacles and locations for trailer parks, especially on county-owned land, and ask their nearly dormant “drought task force” to get off their asses and develop some near term water supply and storage projects, especially for Williams’ Fifth District constituents.
Giant Pay Raise For County Counsel Christian Curtis Re-Proposed by Supervisor Williams.
Agenda Item 5b, March 1, 2022:
“Approval of Employment Agreement Between the County of Mendocino and Christian M. Curtis to Serve as County Counsel for the Term of May 19, 2020 through May 18, 2024, Including Compensation and Benefits Effective March 6, 2022in the Amount of Three Hundred Twenty-Seven Thousand One Hundred and Forty-One Dollars ($327,141.00)/Annually [including benefits] (Sponsor: Supervisor Williams)”
According to the attached proposed salary agreement Curtis’s base salary would increase to $193,266 per year. The last time the raise was proposed back in December for $$192,136, County Counsel Curtis mistakenly put it on the consent calendar and then the Board mistakenly tried to correct it later in the meeting resulting in our Brown Act violation notice which, after the County conceded was valid, postposed Curtis’s raise. When the Brown Act violation was acknowledged, the County hired a $375 per hour San Francisco attorney named Amy Ackerman, to first handle the Brown Act complaint and response, then to prepare this new raise proposal.
To Summarize: the County’s top (non-law enforcement) lawyer who is responsible for giving Brown Act training to other County officials violated the Brown Act in agendizing his own exorbitant raise, then when the violation was noted, the County hired an expensive Brown Act attorney to re-propose the raise because the person they propose to give the raise to was not trusted to properly re-agendize his own raise. Note also that the County Counsel’s office, which is running substantially over-budget for this point in the fiscal year, was ordered to pay for outside counsel for the Sheriff regarding a conflict of interest which prevented him from advising the Sheriff in regards to an illegal attempt to combine the Sheriff’s computer with the County’s computer, has incurred hundreds of thousands of dollars in outside legal fees to defend the County in wrongful termination cases, and has produced only two published opinions for the Supervisors in his two years as County Counsel. (He may have produced more, but the County Counsel’s office says they are not at liberty to say if others have been written due to attorney-client privilege.) The only reason offered for the raise the last time it came up was that Mr. Curtis’s salary wasn’t sufficiently high enough above his Assistant County Counsel’s salary. Apparently because they’ve obtained that $375 per hour outside attorney, last December’s proposed dubious provision to connect the County Counsel’s salary to 15% above his own subordinate’s salary in perpetuity is not in this current proposal. The “department fiscal review” of this particular agenda item is signed by one Christian Curtis, County Counsel. The cost of the raise is of course unbudgeted, but Supervisor Williams’s agenda item — the same supervisor who frequently questions certain expenditures by asking what has to be reduced elsewhere to cover them — only says, “Department will work with EO Budget Team if a budget adjustment is needed.” Although Sheriff Kendall was threatened with personal liability for overrunning his budget, no one has ever mentioned applying that same standard to the substantial overrun being incurred by the County Counsel’s office, an overrun which will be increased by the approval of this obviously unwarranted raise. (Mark Scaramella)
Supervisor Williams also wants to discuss “multi-family housing” in unincorporated Mendocino County on Tuesday.
Item 5c) “Discussion and Possible Action Including Approval of Direction to Staff to 1) Determine Public Interest in Increased Housing, 2) Determine Where They Want It, 3) Determine Whether They Will Accept High-Density Multi-family Structures, and 4) Propose General Plan Updates Necessary to Realize Private Industry Development. (Sponsor: Supervisor Williams)”
This item, of course, will go nowhere, but the discussion might be interesting nonetheless.
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