A FEDERAL TASK FORCE raided the Potter Valley family property of Mendocino County Under-Sheriff Randy Johnson last Thursday (October 11th). The raid team included DEA, FBI and IRS agents who are said to have confiscated some 500 marijuana plants.
THE FEDS seal their search warrants and, in this case, only grudgingly admitted they'd been in the Potter Valley area where the raid took place not far from Highway 20. It's been clear for some time that the feds have operated independently of local law enforcement, tacit admission that the feds don't trust the locals on the marijuana issue. A federal attorney had warned the Mendo Board of Supervisors that local officials would be held personally liable if Mendocino County proceeded with a plan to essentially license backyard grows for as many as 99 plants. The Mendocino limit presently is 25 plants per parcel but the fed policy remains Zero Tolerance.
THE JOHNSON FAMILY'S property is an old resort they've converted to rentals with individual cabins rented to persons with medical marijuana cards. Under-Sheriff Johnson's father and brother live on the premises while Johnson himself lives on an adjacent parcel. The property is owned by Johnson's father.
CAPTAIN JOHNSON has long been viewed as pot-friendly. He was responsible for Mendocino County's aborted medical marijuana permit program and even testified for men arrested in Sonoma County for transporting medicinal marijuana from Mendocino County to dispensaries in the Bay Area. Like most Mendocino County officials, Johnson supports decriminalization strategies which would generate some income for the County from its number one export crop.
SHERIFF TOM ALLMAN said Tuesday morning that he would be surprised if Captain Johnson had anything to do with marijuana. Allman, of course, like all Mendocino County officials, simply tries to enforce the marijuana laws as best he can in an impossible context of large-scale grows everywhere in Mendocino County. One would think the feds would be more interested in pursuing the criminal grows rather than pursue an obvious vendetta against local authorities.
A BIG WIN FOR JOHN McKELLER is also a big win for the motorists of Mendocino County. McKeller lives on Greenwood Road. You may recall that it was the sunny Sunday morning of May 6th when McKeller set out for his regular yoga session in Ukiah in his black Dodge Durango, the kind of vehicle viewed by law enforcement as a rolling felony. But McKeller is a law-abiding citizen, not a felon. He just likes Durangos.
THAT DAY McKeller knew there was an abalone checkpoint at the Boonville Fairgrounds so he rolled his tinted windows all the way down for easy viewing and proceeded within the posted speed limits through Philo, picking up lawful speed as he approached the Indian Creek Bridge.
“WHICH,” McKeller recalls, “is when a CHP cruiser whipped around and pulled me over at the driveway to KZYX. As the officer walked up to my window I released my seatbelt. The cop said I was driving without a seatbelt, but how could he even see my seatbelt driving the other direction at that redwood grove at the bridge? It’s the darkest stretch of road this side of Navarro. And besides I was wearing my seat belt.”
THE CHP OFFICER was the infamous Officer Babcock, something of a legend on the South Coast for eagle-eyed seat belt violations real, but many South Coast people insist, often imagined by the zealous Babcock. There were so many complaints about Babcock from South Coast residents that he was transferred inland to work out of the CHP's Ukiah office.
BACK IN PHILO that bright day in May, Babcock had proceeded to write McKeller a seatbelt ticket. An incredulous McKeller was astounded he was getting a ticket for an offense he had not committed. He soon visited the CHP office in Ukiah where he asked if he could look at the video of his alleged infraction, and was surprised that the duty officer immediately handed it to him.
“THERE IT WAS RIGHT ON TAPE,” McKeller says. “It shows everything — the officer doing a u-turn to catch up with me and me unhooking my seat belt as he walks up to my window.”
McKELLER'S next stop was Judge Nadel’s courtroom. “You have it on tape?” the judge laughed. “Yes, I do your honor,” McKeller said, “and here it is.” At the end of the viewing, the judge said, “I’m putting this over until Tuesday the 9th of October at 11am. “I’m going to bring the officer in and make him explain this one,” she said.
ON THE 9th of October, which was last Tuesday, Officer Babcock and McKeller both appeared in Judge Nadel's courtroom. “I couldn't get my video to work so I ended up showing it on judge's laptop. I hadn't heard the audio before. The audio goes on just as Babcock is pulling me over. He's unloading his f-bombs all over the place. As he's following behind me, the whole courtroom hears him saying, “What a fuckin' moron. Why didn't he fuckin' pull over right there. That would have been fuckin' perfect.”
SO, NOW THERE'S the video that clearly shows McKeller, his vehicle at a full halt at the KZYX driveway, unhooking his seatbelt as Officer Babcock walks up to McKeller's Durango with Officer Babcock spraying the Indian Creek neighborhood with f-bombs.
OFFICER BABCOCK didn't know about the video, and certainly didn't know McKeller had a copy which had just now been played in court.
AUDIO-VISUALS BE DAMNED! Babcock stuck to his false story that McKeller not only didn't have his seat belt on he'd crossed the yellow highway divider line. However, the video clearly, unmistakably, irrefutably shows the fully seat-belted McKeller not crossing the line. And wearing his seatbelt.
JUDGE NADL said she'd seen enough as Officer Babcock launches into a laughable spiel about how his own camera “can't see everything” and how he saw what he saw and that he properly ticketed McKeller for not wearing his seatbelt.
“ON TAPE,” McKeller says, you can see that Babcock is a quarter mile away from me when he starts turning around saying that he saw my belt off. My video shows everything and now we have the audio to go with it.”
JUDGE NADEL finds for McKeller. Officer Babcock slams his chair into the table and stomps out of the courtroom, behavior that would have caused lots of judges to bring him back into the courtroom to threaten him with contempt if he didn't apologize for his behavior.
McKELLER says he will file a formal complaint against Babcock.
I TAKE IT ALL BACK. John Sawyer is a candidate for the Santa Rosa City Council. He used to own Sawyer's Newsstand back in the days when print still reigned and lots of people still read newspapers. When print publications began to disappear because the Gizmo Generations have been genetically altered to communicate only in tweets, grunts and groans, Sawyer closed his business, owing us some money as he departed. I wrote to him. He wrote to me. And thereupon commenced a confusion which I am perfectly willing to assume responsibility for, especially after speaking with John who, clutching an olive branch and waving a check, called Boonville Monday to un-confuse. John is an honorable person, and I regret having insulted him as a deadbeat. Elect Sawyer to the Santa Rosa City Council.
THE MENDOCINO COAST HUMANE SOCIETY has for years now been the personal fiefdom of a merrily authoritarian fellow called Jerry Karabensh. He's stuffed the Society's board of directors with automatic YES votes for whatever Karabensh determines the Society, a mass membership non-profit charity, should do. Jerry the K bought his Society dominance with big donations of cash, always the surest Mendo path to instant influence, and has run the whole show going on a decade now.
KARABENSH has condescended to convene the Society's first “open” meeting in nearly ten years this Thursday, October 18, 5:30PM - 7 or 7:30pm, depending on Jer's interpretation of the clock face. Interested person are required to submit questions for the board one week in advance while Jer and his captive board of directors retain the following three response options: 1. Answer the questions at the meeting 2. Answer questions later or 3. Not answer them at all.
THE PESKY PUBLIC can make presentations up to 5 minutes with, of course, Jer choosing whom to call on.
THE BODY found last week in a burned home on the Greenfield Ranch (Redwood Valley) has been identified through dental records as that of James Collins Courtney, 66. There is no evidence of foul play, but the official results of the forensic autopsy conducted on October 5, 2012 are pending blood alcohol and toxicology analysis.
MANBEATER OF THE WEEK, Kristin Schmith. Ms. Schmith, 5'8” and 130 pounds, has previously come to the attention of the Ukiah Police Department over traffic incidents. But it isn't as if her traffic priors necessarily indicate a propensity to throw a roundhouse or two at her love interest, but one of those priors found Kristin the passenger of a guy so drunk he didn't know who was driving, him or Kristin.
ON MONDAY September 5th, 2011, people heard cries for help coming from a home on Babcock Lane, Fort Bragg, the last mortal sounds of a man named Jason Blackshear. James Kester, about 40 and recently of Boonville, has been arrested for Blackshear's murder, which has been subsequently described as a two-stage event with stage one consisting of Kester throttling Blackshear with his bare hands then finishing him off with a garrotte. The two were acquaintances. Kester is a veteran of the state prison system. (I remember Jimmy and his brothers as little kids in Boonville before, as I recall, the family moved to Point Arena. Pleasant little guys, and what a shock it is when a person one recalls as a child without sin suddenly reappears as an adult accused of the ultimate sin.)
THEN KESTER HIMSELF WROTE: “Please sir help me by posting my cry for help in the AVA for a few weeks to come as my life is in the hands of this county's judicial system and Linda Thompson. Thank you kindly. I am writing in regards to what the Mendocino County Sheriffs office has told you (I imagine). It says Jason cried for help. Wrong, ladies and gentlemen. I screamed for help after my ribs were caved in with a blunt instrument. During that fight for my life many times I thought: This is it. My life is over! As Jason would not stop. Linda Thompson is my attorney. I am fighting for my life still in a battle that I not only can't afford but lack the knowledge to defend myself. Please people of my hometown, help me. I need funds for a lawyer — any and all donations would help. Fair is fair. I'm asking for “any and all”! I am not a murderer as anyone who knows me knows and my family cannot afford the means for a private attorney. It took me over three weeks to get medical attention and x-rays. As for proof of my side of this, as of this day six witnesses have still not been interviewed, 25 days after the incident. I have a history of petty crime from my childhood days and to show anyone I had retired from that mischief it's been 11 years since my last felony. This past year I got myself off parole and had a job in the town of Mendocino. My biggest crime is “self-medication.” People see my ink from my past and condemn me. I'm grasping at straws. I could use some friends. I could use the community here in Mendocino where I grew up. Someone please put it on facebook or make it on a myspace-page. Donations have to be brought to 951 Low Gap Road in Ukiah. My birthday is 8-16-70. A# is 52817. Please folks, 5¢ or $5 for a good attorney who goes by our state laws and regulations. Even visits and letters are welcome. As moral support, love and understanding helps too. I am still that pleasant little redhead. This system has taken my adult life. But I know and believe in the people of this county where I was raised. I need your friendship and prayers. I believe all of you folks can throw me a life raft or you could hold my head under water. I hope and pray I am not as alone as I feel right now. I have told authorities from the start exactly what happened during this nightmare. I have an extensive record for evading cops when I'm guilty. But I stayed right where it happened because I am not guilty of murder. I need sufficient support from you all to prove self-defense. My public defender, Linda Thompson, has spent a total of less than 10 minutes speaking to me. My preliminary hearing is set for October 4 and my defense is what you all are reading so far. Please help me! Sincerely, James Kester A#52817. 951 Low Gap Road. Ukiah, CA 95482
BRUCE McEWEN WROTE ON October 19, 2011: “In response to defendant James Kester's recent letter to the AVA with his side of the charges against him, Kester didn't tell the half of Jason Blackshear's story. For seven months I lived on the streets of Fort Bragg, and existed in constant concern fear of the whereabouts and doings of Mr. Blackshear. One day, I came face to face with Aaron Bassler while trying to avoid Blackshear. Aaron stabbed his forefinger into my breastbone and said, “What are you doing here?”
“I work for a newspaper on Boonville.”
“Then you get over to Boonville and don't you come back.”
Which I did. I always go where I'm told.
As for you, Mr. Kester, do you remember the day you confronted me on the corner of Redwood and Franklin? Do you remember your words?
Nah, me neither.
Jason Blackshear was a low down, mean son of a biscuit, and hardly a tear will fall in his wake. But you, Jimmy, were no prince either.
Let me put it this way, bro: The Cottrells, old Onion Head and his brother, they got two birds with one stone — you and Jason — and they never had to lift a finger.”
FAST FORWARD TO OCTOBER of 2012. JAMES KESTER, 41, is described as a “transient” in the Press Democrat although he was born and raised in Boonville and, out of prison, always made his home in Mendocino County. He now faces 30 years to life in prison after his Wednesday conviction for the second-degree murder of Jason Blackshear, 42, in Blackshear's Fort Bragg home on September of 2011. Kester claimed self defense, but the prosecution successfully maintained Blackshear was already unconscious when Kester strangled him to death. Blackshear, at the time of his death, had a restraining order against Kester which, in theory, was supposed to keep Kester away from him. James Kester never was a big, strong guy, and I have a hard time thinking of him as someone capable of choking another guy of any size to death. Or wanting to. He told me some months ago that Blackshear was the aggressor and that they'd had each other in mutual chokeholds when Blackshear finally collapsed, that it had been him or Blackshear. But the DA said Kester had choked Blackshear out then garrotted him on into eternity. Since Kester was “defended” by the incompetent Public Defender, Linda Thompson, he was found guilty long before he went on trial.
FROM THE SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT: “Nearly 200 pounds of marijuana and more than 30 plants were seized at two Ukiah residences Wednesday, the Ukiah Police Department reported. According to the UPD, the Mendocino Major Crimes Task Force, the County of Mendocino Marijuana Eradication Team and other agencies served a search warrant on a home in the 1700 block of Low Gap Road shortly before 8 a.m. Oct. 10. When officers arrived a man reportedly fled a structure and escaped capture, leaving behind a loaded pistol. Officers then located 12 outdoor plants and evidence that at least 80 plants had recently been harvested. Inside the building, officers reportedly located more than 100 pounds of partially manicured marijuana and about 95 pounds of manicured marijuana, as well as items used to weigh and process the drug. Celso Ceja, 43, was located inside a residence on the property and told officers that the structure was used by his cousin, Miguel C. Lopez, 43. Ceja was arrested on suspicion of maintaining a location for drug distribution and for possessing firearms during the commission of a felony. Several firearms were also located inside the residence. The investigation then continued to a residence in the 1600 block of Woodlawn Terrace, where another 25 marijuana plants were reportedly found outside. The residents there reported that Lopez allowed them to live there rent-free if they posted their medical marijuana recommendation. Lopez is currently being sought by the UPD for suspicion of cultivating and possessing marijuana for sale.” (The 1700 block of Low Gap is almost the front yard of the Mendocino County Sheriff's Department.)
ONE POST OFFICE MAN, a certain Mr. Johnson based in Daly City, has devoted himself to expediting the AVA, if “expediting” is the word for simply getting the AVA delivered in a reasonable number of days. But Mr. Johnson has indeed expedited the paper to the SF Bay Area where it now reaches homes, bookstores and DeLauer's Newstand by Saturday, and for that we're grateful. Used to be, though, that a paper dispatched from Boonville on Wednesday afternoon was annoying a Frisco reader by Thursday noon, East Coast readers by Saturday — Monday at the latest. Anymore, readers beyond NorCal are lucky to the get the paper a month after Jan The Mail Lady hauls it from Boonville to Cloverdale from where, likely as not, our national dispatch disappears. The Post Office is slowly but inexorably confining us to the NorCal rez, although they're still charging us like we're getting the speedy delivery of yesteryear. We've talked with UPS about the possibility of them taking over long-distance delivery but we don't have quite the volume to make it financially doable. If we were Building 7-Grassy Knoll-oriented we might think we were the victim of a conspiracy. But we're really just one more pebble in an avalanche of mass civil dysfunction in a society that allows its ruling circles to disencumber itself of public services. It is a conspiracy of sorts of a small number of THEM vs. a large number of US who believe government has crucial functions other than long distance drone murders of medieval Mohammedans. Republicans specifically have made it impossible for the Post Office to operate with what used to be its remarkable efficiency; they've rigged the PO's funding in a way designed to destroy it, their master plan being to eliminate ALL government services. I'm surprised they haven't called the Post Office an entitlement, but that could be next.
THE JUST RELEASED California “School Quality Snapshot” is based on the latest Academic Performance tests. It shows that both the education system in California as well as the students that system allegedly instructs are dismal failures, especially in schools which are said to have a high percentage of “socioeconomically disadvantaged” kids, which in Mendocino County means most schools.
UKIAH UNIFIED is already hailing the scores as a huge triumph simply because its scores are up a couple of points, rising from dismal to miasmal.
ACCORDING to the California Department of Education website the “School Quality Snapshots” … “display a broad series of data that can be used to help inform parents and policy leaders about the success of each school.” In Mendocino County it’s more like “the failure of each school.”
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. The “snapshots” are just fancy statistical charts and graphs which don’t really “help” inform anybody. Other than the basic school demographics, the academic assessments are so crude that they’re nearly meaningless as comparisons and only confirm what we already know about most schools in Mendocino County: They’re not very good and Covelo and Point Arena are among the worst schools in the state if not the country — in spite of the educational system’s multi-year attempts to raise them — “program improvement,” — i.e., chronically bad — status. Even with a fairly low enrollment of 118 and special attention from the County Office of Education the educational establishment is unable to do anything to improve the academic performance of Covelo students, which continues to decline asymptotically toward zero.
THE DISPARITY between science and math scores at individual schools is downright strange. You’d think that they’d both go up or down more or less together and that higher math scores would translate to higher science scores and vice versa. But no, at least not in Mendocino County, making the entire test regime seem suspicious. Anderson Valley Elementary’s very low science scores combined with average-decent math scores particularly doesn’t make sense. (Of course, these are all comparative and subjective, so a given math score clearly doesn’t necessarily mean that the kids can actually do the math.) Point Arena’s and Covelo’s math scores are so far below average that one must assume that most of those high school kids can’t even do the most basic arithmetic.
BUT MATH SCORES at most Mendo schools are well below average. Even at Mendocino High School on the Coast the “socioeconomically disadvantaged” percentage is pretty high (at 36%), showing that Mendocino is a very poor county. Assuming that the percentage of students meeting UC entry standards is a better measure of high school student performance than academic performance comparisons, we find that Mendo’s presumably best public school, Mendocino High, has only 50% meeting the standard while all the rest are well below the state average.
HERE’S A SUMMARY of the “snapshots” for a few Mendo-area schools —
Anderson Valley Elementary (K-6)
State Rank: 2 (a low rank one step up from the bottom)
Enrollment: 283.
Percent Hispanic: 79%
Percent English Learners: 71%
Socioeconomically disadvantaged: 73%
Percent White: 20%
Percent Black: 1%
English Language proficiency: slight improvement over prior years, slightly below state average at about 48%.
Math: Slight decline over prior years, same as state average at about 52%.
Science: Significant decline over prior years. Well below state average at about 16% (compared to state average of 60%).
Below average suspension/expulsion rate.
Anderson Valley High School
State Rank: 8 (a comparatively high rank because, it seems, Boonville kids juice up on smart pills as they grow older)
Enrollment: 252.
Percent Hispanic: 78%
Percent White: 22%
Percent Black: 0%
Percent English Learners: 52%
Socioeconomically disadvantaged: 73%
English Language proficiency: slight improvement over prior years, slightly below 58% state average at about 48%.
Math: Slight decline over previous years, same as state average at about 52%.
Science: Slight decline over prior years. Well below state average at about 60%.
About 12% of graduates meet UC entry requirements compared to 40% state average.
History, social science, English slightly above state average.
Average class size: 12.
Below average suspension/expulsion rate.
Point Arena High School
State Rank: 2 (a very low rank)
Enrollment: 171.
Percent Hispanic: 35%
Percent White: 55%
Percent Black: 1%
Percent Native American: 9%
Percent English Learners: 29%
Socioeconomically disadvantaged: 61%
English Language proficiency: slight decline over prior years, well below 58% state average at about 35%.
Math: About same as prior years, dramatically below 52% state average at about 12%.
Science: Significant improvement over prior years. Almost up to 60% state average at about 58%.
About 12% of graduates meet UC entry requirements compared to 40% state average.
History, social science scores down dramatically from prior years and well below state average. English scores slightly below state average.
Average class size: 14.
Below average suspension/expulsion rate.
Mendocino High School
State Rank: 10 (the highest rank)
Enrollment: 168.
Percent Hispanic: 12%
Percent White: 76%
Percent Black: 1%
Percent Native American: 6%
Percent English Learners: 1%
Socioeconomically disadvantaged: 36%
English Language proficiency: slight decline over prior years, above 58% state average at about 65%.
Math: Down dramatically from prior year, below 52% state average at about 22%.
Science: Slight improvement over prior years. Well above 60% state average at about 80%.
About 55% of graduates meet UC entry requirements compared to 40% state average.
History, social science scores about the same as prior years and above state average. English scores not reported.
Average class size: 12.
Below average suspension/expulsion rate.
Ukiah High School
State Rank: 4 (below average)
Enrollment: 1636.
Percent Hispanic: 36%
Percent White: 52%
Percent Black: 1%
Percent Native American: 6%
Percent English Learners: 26%
Socioeconomically disadvantaged: 55%
English Language proficiency: About the same as prior years, below 58% state average at about 45%.
Math: About the same as prior years, well below 52% state average at about 48%.
Science: Slight improvement over prior years. Below 60% state average at about 80%.
About 20% of graduates meet UC entry requirements compared to 40% state average.
History, social science scores about the same as prior years and above state average. English scores not reported.
Average class size: 24.
Very high suspension/expulsion rate (about four times state average of about 10%).
Round Valley High School
State Rank: 1 (the lowest rank)
Enrollment: 118.
Percent Hispanic: 10%
Percent White: 24%
Percent Black: 2%
Percent Native American: 64%
Percent English Learners: 3%
Socioeconomically disadvantaged: 94%
English Language proficiency: continuing decline, dramatically below 58% state average at about 10%.
Math: About the same as prior years, dramatically below the 52% state average at about 2%.
Science: Better than prior years but still well below 60% state average at about 23%.
About 5% of graduates meet UC entry requirements compared to 40% state average.
History, social science scores are down from prior years and well below 50% state average at about 10%. English scores went from 22% two years ago to 100% last year and 75% this year, meaning that the numbers have no use whatsoever.
Average class size: 15.
Very high suspension/expulsion rate, over 40%.
SO, CLASS, why such dismal academic results for Mendocino County? Lots of reasons, beginning with the collapse of shared social norms coinciding with the disappearance of intact families, coinciding with the advent of a of popular culture that's so stupid it's evil coinciding with the ongoing collapse of the entire society in which millions of children spend their formative years in pathological circumstances.
AND THEN THERE'S school administrators. Looking around Mendo at school bosses we find people at the power levers who aren't merely ill-equipped to begin to re-install effective instruction in a radically deteriorated social context, they're incapable of it.
HANDY CASE in point: A reader passes along a highlighted message from the superintendent of the Ukiah schools, Debbie Kubin, who says she's going to.....and we'll pause here while you slip into your cliché armor..... “build relationships....by working together and collaborating (sic); collaboration is also one of the four 21st century learning skills; the other three are: critical thinking, communication, and creativity.” And on Deb goes for a thousand more words of absolute gibberish, garnished with huge slabs of nuzzle butter for her board of trustees, the Savings Bank and, understandably, the Ukiah Police Department upon whom Ukiah High School depends for order. And ol' Deb is an intellectual put alongside Paul Tichinin, superintendent of all of Mendocino County's schools.
THE UPSHOT of edu-feebs running public schools is the abandonment of public schools by a large swathe of the American public. In Ukiah, parents opt for charter or alternative schools. In Frisco, every ethnic group that can afford it sends their kids to private and parochial schools. Lots of parents home school everywhere in the land.
GIVE US MORE or we'll blow up your neighborhood: PG&E wants customers to pay more than half the cost of its roughly $2.2 billion pipeline upgrades, some 84% of costs of its multi-year effort to inspect and replace pipelines whose safety was cast into doubt by the 2010 natural-gas explosion and fire in San Bruno that killed eight people. But Friday's draft ruling by administrative law Judge Maribeth Bushey would mean customers would have to pay about 55% of the $2.18 billion sum. The judge's draft ruling, which must go before the five-member state Public Utilities Commission for approval, says PG&E should pay a larger chunk of the cost than it proposed because the company's mismanagement allowed its natural-gas pipeline system to deteriorate. And its system deteriorated because it pays nice dividends to its shareholders and big salaries to its execs because it doesn't function as a public utility. And it doesn't function as a public utility because the PUC is stuffed with its advocates, not the public's.
ZINGER OF THE WEEK. Independent Coast Observer reporter Lisa Walters captured a great one last week in her coverage of the special meeting convened to recruit a replacement for retiring South Coast Fire Chief Leighton Nelson.
AMONG THE SIX applicants for the position is current assistant chief Gregg Warner. Warner has a small group of supporters who include fire captain Kirk Mason and his wife Kelly. Mrs. Mason also happens to sit on the South Coast Fire District Board of Directors.
THE MEETING got interesting when Chief Nelson stood to accuse Warner and his wife, along with the Masons and a man named Brent Klopfer, of trying to have him fired. “Do you want someone like that running your fire department?” Nelson asked the stunned board of directors.
NELSON said that Mrs. Mason had “orchestrated a coup” against him at “one of her jewelry parties.”
THE MASONS denied they'd plotted against Nelson. Mrs. Mason said her only objection was that Chief Nelson was paid too much. “I just care about the taxpayers of this district,” Mrs. Mason insisted.
CHIEF NELSON was being paid about $74k a year plus benefits. Last February Mrs. Nelson complained publicly that Nelson “has been gone a lot and he’s still getting his full salary and benefits without constraints.”
ON TUESDAY, October 16, The Board of Supervisors will hold an “off-site meeting” in Fort Bragg. Among the items on the agenda is the Mendocino Town Plan which hasn’t been updated for about 20 years, although several abortive attempts have been to update it, each disappearing in flames over the Pacific. The beef is always all about rentals. One self-interested group or another inevitably arises to dispute the County’s numbers and each other’s facts on which units are in which category of rental. The village of Mendocino is also burdened by the highest percentage of all-purpose experts per capita of any community in Mendocino County, each of them specializing in intransigence.
THE COUNTY has a vested interest in updating the Mendocino Town Plan because every nickel in bed tax from commercial rentals goes into the County’s depleted General Fund. Properly classifying the rentals and then figuring out a way to fully collect the bed tax starts the arguments.
IS IT REALLY necessary to collect bed tax when a homeowner occasionally rents a room to a friend? Or does that homeowner just happen to have 300 friends staying over every year?
THIS TIME AROUND, the County is hoping that former Planning Chief Roger Mobley, who has been hired as a consultant just to deal with the Town Plan, can negotiate the rental-unit briar patch in a way that satisfies the interested parties.
THE FANCIFUL stated object of the Mendocino Town Plan? “A primary goal… is to preserve the historical character of the town and maintain the residential community. The policies contained within the Town Plan focus on maintaining a ‘balance’ between residential, commercial, and visitor-serving uses. Planning and Building Services’ staff have conducted a series of three public outreach meetings to discuss issues addressed within the current Town Plan, as well as learn any new issues that may have arisen in the 20 years since adoption that may be addressed in the update. Since the last Board of Supervisors update on this process, a draft revised Mendocino Town Plan has been completed and an additional public outreach meeting scheduled for October 25, 2012.”
FIRST OFF, Mendocino bears zero reference to the mill town it was for a hundred years, and if you see a kid under the age of ten he's either a tourist or he lives east of Highway One. It's not a town in any known sense of the term but a kind of theme park mall.
ANYWAY, there's no mention in the Board packet of the all-important list of rental units that usually accompanies the Town Plan update. And that’s been the major point of contention. To have any reasonable chance of getting the updated Town Plan approved by the Board of Supervisors, villagers will have to find a way to agree on something that can be presented to the Board that resembles agreement. Otherwise, the update will stall yet again.
ALSO AT THEIR TUESDAY MEETING in Fort Bragg the Board of Supervisors will consider the claim of Mr. David Kyle Miller for $3 million. The claim is based on a Willits incident in late March of 2012. Miller, via an attorney, claims that “The Sheriff of Mendocino through his employees failed to exercise discretion to determine whether David Miller, who was in their custody, was mentally ill, and failed to summon medical care for Mr. Miller when they knew or should have known he was irrational and in need of immediate medical care, and released Mr. Miller from jail knowing he was irrational and in need of medical care. As a result, Mr. Miller, while a pedestrian, was struck by an automobile in Willits on March 31, 2012 causing brain injury.”
THIS CLAIM was filed September 20, 2012, by personal injury attorney Philip C. Snell of Novato.
ACCORDING to the Sheriff's Booking Log, Mr. Miller, age 30, city of origin “San Antonio,” was booked into the Mendocino County Jail on March 28 after having been arrested by the Fort Bragg Police for “refusing or failing to leave land, real property, or structure of another, not open to the public.” Bail was set at $5,000.
THE FORT BRAGG CITY COUNCIL also rejected a similar claim filed by Mr. Snell for Mr. Miller at their meeting of Tuesday, Oct. 9, saying that the City of Fort Bragg had no liability in the incident. Which it clearly doesn't.
THE WILLITS NEWS reported that the accident which injured Miller occurred at about 11pm on Saturday, March 31 when Michael Ruiz, 23, accidentally struck Miller as Miller, clad in dark clothing, apparently walked in the roadway on a dark, wet and windy night. No charges were filed against Ruiz.
A LOT is left out here. If bail was set at $5,000 someone posted it, perhaps Miller himself. The County Jail releases people all the time who seem at least reasonably capable of caring for themselves long enough to get down Low Gap Road and resume drinking and drugging themselves into psychotic public behavior. If this guy was in Raving Lunatic mode at the County Jail he wouldn't have been released. Case in point: My old friend Peter Sears, who occasionally goes off his rocker, once seemed like he'd been stabilized by a sojourn at the County lock-up, but as soon as he got out the door, Pete threw off his clothes and ran down Low Gap in his birthday suit. He was soon restrained and returned for another stay, having been free for maybe ten minutes. Most people understand how hard it can be to tell who's nuts and who isn't. (cf Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan) There are people in this County holding public office who are objectively 5150, but they aren't sprinting nude down the street or otherwise causing the kind of upset that would get them locked up. It's always a matter of degree.
JEFFREY ST. CLAIR WRITES: “Forget the conspiracy theories involving bodies on train tracks, Ron Brown and the Rose Law Firm, here are the real Bill Clinton murders (quote from the Los Angeles Times): ‘The injectable steroid implicated in the meningitis cases, for example, was shipped to nearly two dozen states and used to treat up to 14,000 patients with back or neck pain. This has been possible in part because of provisions of the 1997 Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act, which allowed compounding pharmacies to avoid the levels of testing and other standards required of regular pharmaceutical firms. Court decisions further tied the FDA's hands’.”
“I DO NOT APPROVE of public instruction in sexual relations. When I teach my children to avoid the Devil I don't begin by giving them a letter of introduction to him and his crowd. I hope that a cure for syphilis will never be discovered. It is God's punishment for nastiness. Take it away and there will be more nastiness, and it will be necessary to emasculate our children to keep them clean.” — T.S. Eliot's father, 1914
Stan Anderson: Republicans to Meet in Ukiah — The Mendocino County Republican Central Committee will meet Saturday, October 20, 2012, 10:00 AM – 12:00 Noon at the Henny Penny Restaurant, 697 S. Orchard Ave (corner of Gobbi), Ukiah. For further information contact: Stan Anderson, 707-321-2592.
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