SUPERVISOR JOHN HASCHAK told his colleagues last Tuesday that he wants to go back to in-person board meetings. “It’s time to re-open,” the 4th District solon boldly declared.
PREDICTABLY, CEO Angelo objected, saying, “We are working as quickly as we can to get renovations complete. They are almost complete. We expect final changes to be done by the end of March.” Which just happens to be after CEO Angelo’s last meeting. We couldn’t help note that the completion of the long-delayed chamber remodel happens to coincide with Angelo's departure for her lush retirement in San Diego.
“Then we need a new policy in place,” added the CEO to Haschak, presumably referring to some kind of post-covid policy with procedures on how zoom might be combined with face-to-face meetings. “So the soonest we could re-open is in April,” Angelo said, adding that that would be about the same time Public Health Officer Dr. Coren may lift masking requirements.
Supervisor Gjerde was dissatisfied with the CEO’s answer.
“We’ve been hearing this” – (the “we’re remodeling” excuse) — “for a long time. We need an update. We were told it was underway and would be finished sooner, but always seems to be extended.” But Gjerde conceded that zoom saved some drive time and costs for the County's far flung residents — and himself, living an hour and a half from the County seat.
Supervisor Glenn McGourty agreed, but he wanted to hear from public health officer Dr. Coren first. “What about the infection threat to us?,” McGourty asked. “I don’t go out in public much for health concerns.”
Chair Ted Williams didn’t want to argue about the constantly delayed renovation completion date, but asked for a status update on March 15.
CEO Angelo also said the first in-person board meeting should include all five board members. If all five are not on hand, she insisted, “it might be problematic.”
CEO Angelo, in keeping with these anxious times, worried, “I’m concerned about some members of public who are unhappy with the closure and with our health officer. If we do not have all five it may not work. Members of the public might cause some disruption. So the first open meeting we need all five Supes. I don’t think anything else will work. We should not leave staff here with a public who is unhappy with the health officer. I’m worried about staff. Our leaders need to be here for the first meeting. It will reflect poorly on the County if they are not here.”
But “our leaders” will not include CEO Angelo.
Everyone agreed to get a status report on March 15 when they will “look at options, models, policies, and get a presentation from Dr. Coren.”
McGourty said he wanted to “make sure we cover all the bases so there’s minimal risk for health and safety.”
CEO Angelo said she’d make sure a “security person” was included in the March 15 presentation.
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MENDO’S HOUSING SHORTAGE CRISIS was also on Tuesday’s Board agenda. Supervisor Williams opened the discussion by pointing out that “One-off custom homes are not going to solve the housing problem,” adding that the building code now requires that homes more have stuff which adds more and more costs to construction. (And that’s not all that adds to costs — see below.)
(Acting) Planning and Building Director Ignacio ‘Nash’ Gonzalez pointed out (as he has been doing for decades) that the problem is a lack of sewer and water in the unincorporated areas, and that existing water and sewer systems are already at capacity.
GONZALES' statement of the obvious was followed by the usual prolonged free association ramble about infrastructure and grants and zoning and non-profits and partners and seniors and tax sharing and more ad hoc committees and more grants and “being proactive” and “shared infrastructure” and the nascent water agency that is being formed (someday, by a hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of consultant) and a survey of what people want…
Supervisor Williams summed up, “We can be honest by saying that only rich people can build houses now.” (Immutable and forever, thus spake the Good Democrat.)
Then it was back to more pointless free-association: “Zoning barriers, more focus on infrastructure, better planning, more grants, a non-profit just for housing and land acquisition…
Supervisor McGourty suggested that the County should develop “nice communities — planned developments that are nice places to live.”
At this point Williams asked if there was any public comment.
“There is no public comment,” said the Board clerk.
Of course not. What good would it do? These people are completely tone deaf and have no practical ideas at all — no proposals about anything related to housing.
In the end the Supes asked Mr. Gonzalez to “work on it” some more and come back to the Board someday with whatever comments and suggestions he may have.
And that was it.
Some “crisis.”
NOT MENTIONED (just to name a few of the unmentionables): Permit processing delays and high costs; restrictions on corporate owned vacation homes, Supervisor Williams’ (bogus) housing survey; inventorying unincorporated area zip codes for empty buildings with existing water and sewer hookups (both residential & commercial) with an eye toward imposing a vacancy fine on long-term vacant building or streamlined, reduced permit requirements and incentives for remodeling empty buildings for housing; possible sites (including county-owned property) where mobile parks could be established. Commercial building conversion. We could go on. None of that was mentioned.
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MEANWHILE the Norcal real estate market is rapidly getting worse, even for those well-off people Williams was referring to.
According to a recent NorCal real estate report for Marin, Mendocino, Napa, Solano and Sonoma Counties, there were only of 1,051 homes and condominiums for sale in the entire area at the end of January. Inventory is 28% below that of a year ago (1,454) and slightly above the inventory last month (1,046). At times in the past, the inventory of homes for sale in the region has exceeded 10,000. Prices are “spiking,” interest rates are going up, there’s a record low inventory, new listings are selling fast… Homes in Mendo are selling at more than 22% of Original List Price (OLP). In Mendocino County at the end of January there were 187 unsold homes. January saw 40 new sales. In Ukiah there were 31 homes and condominiums for sale at the end of January. There were just eight homes for sale in Hopland and Talmage combined and eight in Redwood Valley/Calpella combined. (Info courtesy, Gerrett Snedaker at winecountrygroup.com)
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Curtis Gets His Big Raise
Predictably, the Supervisors unanimously approved County Counsel Christian Curtis’s giant pay raise Tuesday morning with the costly assistance of a Mr. Jonathan Holtzman, co-founding partner of Renne Public Law Group in San Francisco and boss of Amy Ackerman who together held the Board’s hand through the process to make sure it was handled legally, unlike the December mini-fiasco when it was agendized incorrectly, corrected incorrectly, then postponed while the Board, “out of an abundance of caution,” rescinded the raise and arranged to hire the hundreds-of-dollars-an-hour SF attorneys to tell them what the person getting the big raise should have already told them, but instead screwed up. The new increase comes with a four year contract with more big raises later keyed to inflation.
Supervisor McGourty said Mr. Curtis deserved the raise because “he has a good work ethic,” and he answers his phone, a performance bar that is barely one step above he wakes up in the morning.
Mr. Holtzman spent several costly hours researching what other NorCal County Counsels get and concluded that Mr. Curtis is actually underpaid by comparison. Supervisor Gjerde agreed, saying that other while county employees are getting “median” pay in their respective pay ranges, Mr. Curtis is getting the low end of his range. Not mentioning that Mr. Curtis’s “low end” is now a base pay of $193k with a luxurious benefit package that puts his total cost to the taxpayers at around $330k plus out year increases.
District Attorney David Eyster, who tells anyone who’ll listen that he’s one of the highest rated criminal attorneys in the State (because he is), makes a base pay of about $180k per year. Mr. Curtis has never been rated, and has never asked to be rated, yet he now makes well over what the highly rated DA makes. So we expect it won’t be long before the DA points out to the Supervisors that he does a lot more than answer his phone.
Besides the usual legal requirements and qualifications, the accompanying County Counsel Job Description says that he “is regularly required to sit, use hand to finger, handle, or feel, reach with hands and arms and speak and hear,” and “is occasionally required to stand and walk.”
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CEO & Grand Jury Plot To Take Over Sheriff’s Computers
A Grand Jury report and response now reveals that CEO Angelo’s attempt to take over the Sheriff’s computer system is being further pushed by the County Grand Jury.
The Grand Jury report, released last year, is misleadingly titled “Mendocino County’s Trailing Information Technology.” Besides a considerable collection of computer system analysis, the GJ insists, “Mendocino County can benefit from a consolidated IT [Information Technology] shared services model that allows for greater flexibility in staffing assignments, systems equipment and focus on the IT Initiatives of Mendocino County. Background investigations would continue to be required of IS [Information Services] Staff that support the SO [Sheriff’s Office] systems if they must access DOJ [California Department of Justice] or FBI provided systems. A dotted line responsibility would exist between the Sheriff or Undersheriff and the CIO [Chief Information Officer.”
They also “found” that “The SO IS Department has been allowed to operate separately from the County’s IS department, which is a detriment to efficient delivery of services and cost effectiveness.”
The Grand Jury recommended that “the BOS [Board of Supervisors] establish a consolidated, shared County IT Department responsible for all IT functions under the direction of a Chief Information Officer/Director of Technology by FY 2022 [June 30, 2022]. Any centralized IT staff that support the SO shall receive the requisite background check required by DOJ” — as if a background check of non-law enforcement tech staff is all that’s necessary for the consolidation idea to proceed.
The Grand Jury’s comments regarding other areas of the County’s computer system seem legitimate, if unsurprising, and deserve attention — particularly the one that notes that “[Technology] Project status reporting is not clearly or regularly represented to the public and the BOS, thus leaving them uninformed of IT’s priorities and project initiatives,” an observation that applies to a lot more than just the County’s computer operations.
But the GJ’s inclusion of the CEO’s ill-conceived attempt to take over the Sheriff’s computer system in their computer findings and recommendations undermined the reports usefulness.
In his delayed response — presumably written by his yet to be fully-approved “conflict” attorney Duncan James of Ukiah — the Sheriff pointedly objects to the Grand Jury’s recommendation.
“[State law] clearly indicates the Sheriff by law shall have sole and exclusive authority over his network, data, and computers.”
“There is a point at which the Sheriff must maintain control over physical and virtual security to comply with the law and not compromise his investigations,” adds Mr. James.
“In spite of public representations made by the County Counsel, neither the CEO, Board of Supervisors, County Counsel or his office, have control over Federal and State DOJ connections or the right to access data from the DOJ directly. County Counsel is not the System Control Host or the Agency Head of the Sheriff's Office. … The County Counsel has no permissions to directly access or control the DOJ connection. Only the Sheriff is responsible for compliance of downstream DOJ agencies within the County in addition to Probation, HHSA SIU, and the Superior Court. … There are numerous examples of COUNTY IS employees that: made active threats against the SHERIFF’S IT network, which threatened the integrity of the entire computer and email system; maintain PC’s [personal computers] and other equipment in all locations including the DA, Probation, and Public Defender that was on active felony probation; and, could not have passed the background check required by Federal/State DOJ regulations.”
James then goes into detail with examples of the kinds of problems and compromised security that a consolidated computer system would present. James says that in 2015 an unnnamed Assistant CEO (Kyle Knopp was the Deputy CEO at the time) was “looking around” in confidential law enforcement files and documents.
James also cites a more recent example where emails from the Sheriff to his outside attorney were blocked by County Information Services, presumably at the CEO’s behest during the dispute over whether the Sheriff should be able to hire Duncan James as a legal advisor in his dispute with the CEO and the Supervisors.
“Trusting the confidentiality of the email system to Administrators that do not report directly to the Sheriff is a recipe for failure and abuse,” concludes Mr. James for the Sheriff, adding, “County IS still retains control over the Sheriff’s email system and is thereby able to designate any person it chooses as an ‘Administrator,’ which would grant them access to the Sheriff’s email system; or, install any filters they wished to control the email received by the Sheriff. There is no evidence history will not repeat itself.”
James then provides extensive details about the negative impact that access by unauthorized persons to law enforcement computers and communications would have on open investigations and other law enforcement functions.
The Supervisors could put a stop to this by simply telling the CEO’s office to follow the law and adequately fund and staff the Sheriff’s computers. But so far, like with almost everything else in County affairs, the CEO steers the good ship Mendo, and the Supervisors bumblingly stand by and let it happen. Now it appears that the Grand Jury has climbed on board the CEO’s ship as well.
The Sheriff’s response was delayed for about a year because of the lawsuit between the Sheriff and the Supervisors over the Sheriff’s right to hire his own attorney. County Counsel Christian Curtis admitted he had a conflict of interest with the Sheriff but convinced the Board not to hire the Sheriff’s choice for legal counsel, Duncan James of Ukiah. This resulted in months of legal wrangling. Judge Moorman decided a couple of months ago that a conflict does exist regarding the computer consolidation issue and the Sheriff is entitled to independent counsel, but on procedural grounds Moorman left unresolved whether or not the Sheriff can hire his attorney of choice, Duncan James. We do not know who is paying for the considerable hours Mr. James and his legal staff are racking up for the Sheriff. But to the best of our knowledge, the County has not paid him anything so far.
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