THE DA has charged Wilson L. Tubbs III, also known as Josh Tubbs, with child abuse resulting in death, according to spokesman Mike Geniella, a charge of murder. According to DA spokesman Mike Geniella, “ Police were summoned to the Mendocino Coast District Hospital at 1:11 p.m. Dec. 2 for a report that the 5-month-old girl had been physically abused, and learned that the infant had arrived at the hospital in respiratory distress and with bruises on her face and skull, according to the FBPD. She was flown to the Oakland Children's Hospital by REACH helicopter because of the nature of her injuries. Tubbs told police he had stepped away into another room while changing the baby's diaper the night before, when he heard the baby crying and came back to find her lying on the floor with the changing pad on top of her, according to the FBPD. He allegedly told officers he thought his large dog may have run past the changing table and knocked the changing pad and the baby onto the hardwood floor, and that the infant got a bump on her forehead from the fall. But a Dec. 4 examination at Oakland Children's hospital revealed the infant had two skull fractures and bruises on her face and head, according to the Fort Bragg Police Department. The doctor, a child abuse specialist, told police that in her opinion the infant had been physically abused, and “in no way could the fall from the changing pad have caused the injury as reported by Wilson Tubbs,” according to an FBPD statement. The doctor also reported the baby had no brain function at the time. On Dec. 5, the hospital reported to the FBPD that the infant had died from her injuries. The FBPD continued to investigate with help from DA's Office, which sent investigators to re-interview Tubbs Saturday. Tubbs reportedly told the investigators he got upset with the baby and had slapped and shaken the girl forcefully, causing her injuries. The case was presented to the DA's Office for review Monday, when the complaint was filed and a warrant was issued for Tubbs' arrest. Officers found Tubbs at 4:50pm Monday in the 1000 block of Oak Street and arrested him. He was booked at the Mendocino County Jail on $500,000 bail. The baby was not living with her parents, and had been placed by Child Protective Services with family members who apparently included Tubbs.”
THIS IS THE KIND of news no one wants to read, and it also begs major questions, assuming Tubbs is guilty. Did CPS thoroughly check him out before they turned the baby over to the Tubbs family? Was the infant turned over to Tubbs simply because it was easier than placing her in foster care? Did CPS know that Tubbs had a meth arrest in his recent history? it's never been possible in this County to hold CPS accountable for their blunders, and their blunders have had major human consequences. (One case I wrote about still angers me. The level of pure incompetence and straight-up racism in that one was absolutely shocking.) The juvenile court judge is supposed to evaluate CPS's job performance, but my experience in writing about custody cases over the years has been that CPS, thanks to the judge, never suffers the consequences of their mistakes, and that some of the actual “workers” are so goddammed stupid and insensitive the thought that they're intervening in people's lives would scare the bejeezus out of the general public if the general public knew. Which is why the general public doesn't know — “confidentiality” protects the child, you see. And you can't communicate directly with his or her majesty the judge because, you see, that's “ex parte” or informal and, if permitted, might divert his or her holiness from their ability to be just and fair. Meantime, all out class warfare against people wholly unable to defend themselves. Because CPS deals almost exclusively with the poor and the doomed, they're allowed to do their work in the dark. But, but, but what are you saying here, Mr. Negative? Are you saying that our juvenile judges let them slide? Yup, that's been my experience. Maybe CPS is smarter and more humane than they were ten years ago but I doubt it.
I ALWAYS THINK of Dostoevsky's Father Zossima when I hear of crimes against children, as Zossima assures a grieving mother that when children die they are awarded a special place in heaven beside God's throne, which may have been of some consolation to 19th century Russian peasants but in a case like the Tubbs matter most of us are thinking more along the lines of a quick bullet to the back of the man's head.
WRITING to the Mendo List Serve, Supervisor Hamburg, reports of the Supes meeting Monday, December 10th: “The Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 yesterday to uphold the Mendocino Historical Review Board's rejection of State Parks' plan to install three iron ranger and accompanying signs on Heeser Drive along the Mendocino Headlands. State Parks will now take their case to the California Coastal Commission.”
“THE BOARD,” Hamburg said, “also heard Mendocino Redwood Company's presentation regarding the merits of their 80 year Habitat Conservation Plan. This plan has been in the works for 10 years and we are now within the window of an 88-day comment period. Meetings will be held tonight in Ukiah (Fairgrounds) and tomorrow night in Fort Bragg (CV Starr Center) regarding the Plan. Only one person, Mike Kalantarian of Rancho Navarro, spoke on the plan, stating his concerns about the company's heavy use of herbicides in their “hack and squirt” approach to eliminating tan oaks. Rixanne Wehren and Kathy Bailey weighed in to me with their concerns regarding the short period for public input, and the restrictions on public comment on THPs for the duration of the Plan (i.e., if approved, 80 YEARS). Background information on the HCP is available on the BOS website.”
THE BOONVILLE NEWSPAPER, distributed on Wednesdays, has reached San Francisco and Sacramento on two consecutive Fridays. It must be the Christmas crush, but even a Michigan subscriber said he got last week's paper on Saturday.
SERIOUSLY, what pops into your head when you hear the word, 'Norway?' I immediately think of hyper-tidy people who enjoy an array of social benefits Americans can't even imagine. Ditto for Sweden, Denmark and even into Finland and Latvia — the whole Scando-package. So, what does Norway do Monday? They give the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union, themselves, basically. It was laughable enough that they gave the thing to Kissinger and Obama, but the European Union, a collection of international arms dealers nearly on the scale of US?
JEFF COSTELLO chips in this comment: “Judging from this morning's NPR, California republicans are learning to say “Latino community” instead of spics, greasers, wetbacks and beaners. These are hard lessons for some people. You may recall Lyndon Johnson's efforts to say “negro.” Closest he could get was — somewhat famously — 'niggra.'“
OUR SUPERVISORS, as you must know by now, have retained outside counsel in reaction to a federal subpoena for records having to do with Mendocino County's now abandoned zip-tie program, via which growers bought local permission to produce devil weed. We agree entirely with KC Meadows of the Ukiah Daily Journal that, well, here's KC: “We (at the Ukiah Daily Journal) are at a loss to understand why the Mendocino County supervisors feel it is necessary to spend thousands of tax dollars to hire an outside attorney (or attorneys) to work out the county's response to a federal subpoena for the county's medical marijuana zip tie and permit records. To begin with, we were under the impression that the county pays its brand new County Counsel Tom Parker a healthy six-figure salary because he has a law degree and knows something about handling the county's legal affairs. Furthermore, Parker heads an office of more and also highly paid attorneys. Parker was not here when the county enacted its medical marijuana programs, nor was he among those subpoenaed for information, so we hope not to hear any excuses about conflicts of interest or the possibility of having to testify to anything. The county did not need to go behind closed doors (and should not have) to discuss a) whether to hire outside attorneys to handle this matter or b) what the feds might or might not be up to in issuing the subpoena, or c) whether or not to hand the information over. This county is the witness, not the defendant, in a court action. No need for all this secrecy. No one knows why the U.S. Attorney's office has convened a federal grand jury and why that grand jury wants to know how much money this county has collected in fees for 'permitting' marijuana cultivation, who has paid those fees, where the money is, and how the fee system was implemented. The Daily Journal has contacted the U.S. Attorney's Office, the regional FBI office, the DEA, and the federal court in San Francisco and no one is talking about what's behind all this. Supervisor Dan Hamburg says he thinks the feds want to claim the money we've collected from pot growers, several hundred thousand dollars. The reason he might think that, is because the feds want to have the bank account numbers wherever money has been deposited. There is another possible explanation, which is that the feds think there is something fishy in the balance sheets — in which case the county has a good reason to hand the financial info over immediately and find out if that's true. Or, the feds may have reason to believe that there is a larger nationwide or international criminal element hiding among the county's permittees, in which case, again, the county should cooperate. But since the county's only decision thus far is simply, give the info, give some of the info, or don't give the info, why do we need an outside attorney to help us? Why aren't we at least first requesting help from the California Attorney General's office before coughing up local tax dollars. After all, medical marijuana is legal under state law. And, this and every other California county is an arm of the state. The county, we assume, has nothing to hide about its good faith efforts to put into place a program that tried to manage, to the best of its ability, a marijuana cultivation explosion in the name of medicinal herb. We understand that handing over the names of growers with county zip ties, or cooperative cultivation permits might discourage future cooperation with voluntary regulation efforts. But all the people who signed up knew this was a possibility. And, if the county feels it must protect its local growers, why not just provide the financial info and see if the feds really, really want the rest? Federal courts have, we believe, protected the names of state-permitted medical marijuana growers under laws protecting the personal privacy of patients. At any rate, since the county made its decision in secret, it has not provided the public with a good reason to hire an outside attorney. If there is one, we'd like to hear it.”
A READER WRITES on the same subject, that is the decision by the Mendocino County Supervisors to resist the federal subpoenas for records of the County's aborted pot licensing program: “Really? Hiring an outside counsel for advice on a federal grand jury subpoena? For what purpose? The feds have the authority to do what they're doing. Pot ordinance followers waived their disclosure rights. So why are we going to spend thousands of dollars on this? Also, UDJ story sez lawyers have offered to do pro bono. Again, really? Then turn to the want ad section, and check out job postings for a new MTA general manager, a Human Resources benefits administrator and a new administrative assistant in the county executive office. Combined we're looking at combined salaries in excess of $200,000 per year. Where's all of this money coming from?”
THIS ONE SOUNDS bogus, but given the pure number of free range pervs roaming around out there, it may have happened. According to Ukiah Unified School District Superintendent Deb Kubin, in a letter sent to parents Tuesday, a 7-year-old girl, a student at Yokayo Elementary School, reported that while she was walking home after school headed north on Dora Street, a man asked her to “go with him to the store.” The kid said no, and the guy allegedly grabbed and threatened the child, but she says she broke away and ran to her home down the street. According to Ukiah Police Department Captain Justin Wyatt, the girl described the man as “a dark male, unknown race, wearing white shorts, white Van's shoes, a black hat with green money signs all over it and a red brim.” As if that outfit weren't vivid enough, the little girl said her would-be abductor wore “a red and white striped shirt that had a brown horse image on the front with a heart above it.” But nobody saw anybody dressed like that in the afternoon panorama of central Ukiah, and nobody saw an oddly clad weirdo try to grab a child, and Dora Street is teeming with people (and weirdos) round-the-clock likely to see something as startling as that.
FOR THE RANDOM shut-in who just might have the weird desire to donate his input to MCOG on their phoney baloney Vision Mendocino 2030 project,” here’s the link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Visionmendocino2030.
THE FIRST TIME I paid close attention to Dave Brubeck’s music was after a friend gave me a copy of vibraphonist Emil Richards’ album, “A New Time Element” in the early 60s on which Richards played well known pop standards to non-standard beats. Georgy Girl was set to 5/4 time. Havah Nagilah was set to 9/8 time. Etc. One of Richards’ best re-arrangements was his reverse version of Dave Brubeck’s famous “Take Five” — done in 4/4 time! Amazingly, Richards’ version sounded weird even though it was in standard time. I had worked for weeks to come up with an abbreviated 5/4 version of Take 5 myself and I knew its basic non-standard 5/4 time signature (1-2-3, 1-2). So hearing it in 4/4 time was downright fascinating. And even harder to play, although it should have been easier. That was just a small example of how effective Brubeck had been in establishing unusual time signatures in the minds of jazz listeners of the late 50s and early 60s. It was genuinely ground-breaking. I was reminded of this odd memory by hearing of Dave Brubeck’s death Wednesday at the age of 92. Looking back now on Brubeck’s prodigious output, one is struck by how he — almost single-handedly — was able to popularize tunes with offbeat rhythms and odd time signatures in a music world that had been stuck in 4/4 and 3/4 since before J.S. Bach. Right off, I can recall such fascinating tunes as Blue Rondo A La Turk, It’s a Raggy Waltz, Three To Get Ready, Unsquare Dance, etc. Brubeck didn’t overplay either. He didn’t show off, didn’t jive off into rarefied unlistenable musical territory that only other jazz players could understand. Instead he relied on clever tempos, surprising short riffs, cuts, and understated harmonies and melodies which appealed to a broader audience, while at the same time demanding that they pay attention to the music via the near-eastern-ish timings that require you to think and listen carefully before just tapping your toe. Another impressive aspect of Brubeck’s compositions and performances was the way he incorporated classical elements. (If you don't hear a good bit of Mozart in Blue Rondo, you need to listen more carefully.) In a way he was also out of synch with the times when he assembled one of the first highly popular mixed race jazz groups in the late 50s and early 60s with ultra-cool (when “cool” actually meant cool, calm, collected, confident, easy-if-you-know-what-you’re-doing, cool) jazz bassist Eugene Wright — who was more important to establishing the foundations of those off-beat tempos than most listeners realize. There will be plenty of conventional obituaries and remembrances of Dave Brubeck, his life and his impressive jazz legacy. But personally, I’ll always appreciate the way Dave Brubeck demonstrated how rewarding it is to take a serious but unconventional approach to music — and life. (Mark Scaramella)
MENDO SUPERVISORS Dan Hamburg and John McCowen have invited Mendocino Redwood Company President and Chief Forester Mike Jani and Forest Operations Manager John Ramaley to make a presentation on the Mendocino Redwood Company’s Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) and related documents that are currently available for public comment and review. HCPs are intended to provide landscape-wide, long term plans for forest stewardship and production. Approval of the proposed HCP, a Natural Communities Conservation Plan (NCCP) and the associated Timber Management Plan will authorize the take of protected species incidental to otherwise lawful timber operations over the 80-year life of the HCP. The stated intent is to create mature, multi-storied forests using selection harvesting while maintaining old-growth trees and facilitating habitat development for rare, threatened and endangered species. The plans project increases in stocking over the 80-year period from a current level of 13,500 to 29,000 board feet per acre while improving habitat for protected fish and wildlife species and reducing the amount of sedimentation entering streams. The plans also project increased conifer inventory and thus, increased forest productivity. Public meetings on the referenced plans will be held at the following dates, times and locations: (1) December 11, 2012, 7pm to 9pm, Redwood Empire Fair Fine Arts Building, 1055 N. State Street, Ukiah, CA; and (2) December 12, 2012, 7pm to 9pm, C.V. Starr Center, 300 S. Lincoln St., Fort Bragg, CA. Comments may be submitted in writing to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection before 5:00 PM, February 21, 2013.
MRC’S PRESENTATION TO THE BOARD of Supervisors is a very simplified overview of a very complex, long-term document in which MRC uses 16 full-color Power Point slides (the primary ones are shown below) to convince the public that their logging plans for the next 80 years will be positive and problem free. It does not address pesticide use, or provide any specifics about logging plans, sediment reduction or other activities in MRC’s vast Mendocino County holdings. The discussion is “information only” — the Board of Supervisors will take public input but does not plan to make any decisions on the subject. MRC's reps can be reached at: Mike Jani, President & Chief Forester, (707) 463-5114 — mjani@mendoco.com. John Ramaley, Forest Operations Manager, (707) 463-5129 – jramaley@mendoco.com
WE'VE OFTEN COMPLAINED about pro forma press releases out of the DA's office calling for letters to the parole board to keep this or that guy in prison. These press releases can be wildly unfair to people who've done their time and are unlikely to re-offend. Sometimes the automatic press releases are a kind of prose lynch mob, as in the repeat case of Mark Sprinkle. Sprinkle got 45-to-life for 90 seconds of sexual touching. The crime consisted of a bizarre episode where three young girls, two of them already experienced floozes, voluntarily took their clothes off in Sprink's car. They testified to that basic fact and seemed truthful in their testimony about what ensued. Which was a fast round of vaginal pats and breast chucks. Sprinkle says he didn't even do that, and turned down a 3-5 deal if he would plead out. What we know for sure is he didn't rape, murder or otherwise coerce the three innocents. He touched them inappropriately, as Mendolib describes everything from bad table manners to mass murder. Assuming Sprinkle touched the girls, and given the voluntary circumstances of the touching, should he die in prison? He's been locked up for almost 17 years now, and he was a guy who was always employed on the outside but also a guy the local cops found highly irritating because he was always around trouble, always around tweekers and, of course, used tweek himself. But if we doled out life sentences to everyone who lived the low life probably half the American population, at his point in our plummeting society, would be behind bars. Every time Sprinkle comes up for parole the DA gets out a press release than makes Sprinkle sound like some playground molesto-lurk, and every time Sprinkle goes before the parole board he says he didn't do it. And the parole board says, “Well, Mr. Sprinkle, you show no remorse for your crime and you will continue to sleep three high in the gym at Mule Creek at a cost to California taxpayers of $40,000 a year.” When punishment is out of all proportion to the crime alleged there's no justice, and Sprinkle has been on the receiving end of a disproportionate sentence for going on twenty years now, his doom sealed by the utterly insane pursuit of him by Mendo prosecutor Beth Norman, who recently claimed she was still so afraid of Sprinkle she feared being in the same room with him for his most recent parole hearing. Please. She's always struck me as a person afraid of exactly nothing, but a prosecutor who's afraid of criminals? Sprinkle's about as menacing as a bag of marshmallows.
THEN THERE ARE GUYS who really ought to be sequestered for long periods of time, maybe until the end of their days, guys like Cameron Whitlock of Point Arena. “Mendocino County prosecutors are asking for public support in their bid to oppose parole for a Point Arena man serving a life sentence for the 1990 killing of a well-known coast contractor Wallace Herbert Kuntz. Cameron Whitlock, who is serving a life sentence, is seeking parole at a hearing scheduled for Jan. 16 at Solano State Prison in Vacaville. He was last denied parole in 2008 by the state Board of Prison Terms. Whitlock was convicted by a Mendocino County Superior Court jury in May, 1990 of second-degree murder, robbery and vehicle theft. District Attorney David Eyster described the killing of contractor Kuntz as 'tragic and senseless.' Kuntz was married and the father of two children at the time of his death 22 years ago. Kuntz was at a construction site on the Point Arena Indian Reservation when he was killed. Investigators said Kuntz was sitting in his pickup truck getting ready to drive home when Whitlock walked up to the driver’s side window and shot him in the head. Whitlock then climbed into the truck and shot Kuntz again, investigators said. Whitlock drove the victim’s truck with the body still inside about two miles, then pulled over and dragged the victim’s body from the vehicle, according to trial testimony. Whitlock covered Kuntz’ body with brush, and set it on fire. Eyster said in cases like Whitlock’s, the state prison board by law must consider public sentiment. (Public sentiment? How about public safety?) 'We’re asking the public to join us in voicing opposition to parole for Whitlock,' said Eyster. Individual letters of opposition should be sent by Dec. 18 to the District Attorney’s Office, P.O. Box 1000, Ukiah, Ca. 95482.”
EVEN WHITLOCK, assuming he is found genuinely remorseful, which I hear he isn't, ought to get a fair shot at parole. But the way the system works is that the people best placed to evaluate this or that guy's rehab are the people who see him and work with him everyday. But the opinions of these people are routinely overridden by parole boards and hometown politicians who want to be seen as “tough on crime.” I know lots of prisoners and lots of people who have been prisoners, among them quite a number of tough guys, and every single one of them will tell you that about twenty percent of inmates should be locked permanently away, but the other eighty percent do not present an ongoing menace to society.
SANTA CRUZ COUNTY’S Public Health Department is almost gloating about how they chose to handle medical marijuana Prop 215 cards as compared to the problems Mendo has encountered from the recent federal subpoena demanding Mendocino County's pot records. According to an article in the Santa Cruz Sentinel — “Santa Cruz County handling of medical pot records praised” — by Jason Hoppin, Santa Cruz’s public health staffers “anticipated just such a scenario. For years, Santa Cruz County has purposely kept similar patient information in the dark. In fact, if federal prosecutors ever came knocking at the door of the Santa Cruz Health Department, they're not going to find anything but empty file cabinets. ‘We don't have anything on file to subpoena,’ said Laurie Lang, a county health spokeswoman. Since the county began issuing official medical marijuana identification cards in 2005, more than 1,100 have been issued. That number includes 207 during the past fiscal year, a number that dropped sharply from 358 the prior year. But the process here is very different from other counties, including Santa Clara County. While health officials here verify patient prescriptions and review applications, all the paperwork is handed back to the patient once the card is issued. Lang said the county has never been hit with a federal subpoena, and any legal inquiries end quickly after the county lays out its absence of records. Ben Rice, a local attorney who works closely with the county's medical marijuana industry, praised that approach. ‘That's not what Santa Clara and other counties are doing,’ Rice said. ‘That's why our county was brilliant.’ The Mendocino County subpoena apparently was issued in October and only recently revealed. The US Attorney's Office in San Francisco on Friday would neither confirm nor deny one had been issued, but Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman recently revealed an ongoing investigation into a now-canceled county permitting scheme.” … “While medical marijuana identifications are not needed to obtain pot, Rice said he advises clients to take their prescriptions to the county to make it official. He said those ID cards offer an added layer of legal protection, saying he's noticed police are being trained to ask detainees whether they have one. Santa Cruz County Counsel Dana McRae said she is waiting for the California Supreme Court to decide a Riverside case involving a total ban on dispensaries before the county's long-delayed regulations move forward. ‘The goal of the Board (of Supervisors) is to make sure that medical marijuana patients have access to their medicine,’ McRae said, saying there were no reports of patients being denied while the moratorium is in place. ‘Therefore, we're willing to wait until the California Supreme Court gives us the green light’.”
MAN BEATER OF THE WEEK: Presenting Ms. Teresa Martha Diaz, 33, arrested in Covelo for “battery against a person defendant had dating, engagement or domestic relationship” with or to. Bail set at a mere $10,000 an amount that usually indicates that the arresting officer didn't think it was all that big a deal. But given the givens of what he found at Ms. Diaz's address it was probably best for all concerned that he haul her off. I like her face, the resoluteness of it. I'd peg her for an honest person probably hooked up with a no good bum, of whom Mendocino County seems to have more than its share. The picture I get is a drunk fat guy in a wife-beater singlet sprawled out on a grungy couch who's insulting Ms. Diaz just for the heck of it, provoking her because he's already seen all the Love Boat re-runs and can't think of anything else he can do to amuse himself. She finally hears enough and slaps the lout. And he, no gentleman, calls the cops on her. Innocent, your honor! Next!
FOOD TIP for city people and travelers from the north — Cafe Europa on California between 5th and 6th Avenue, San Francisco. Unpretentious, inexpensive, very good. They advertise themselves as “European comfort food.” I had no idea what that meant, but it turned out to be a lot of things I recognized from Russian novels, although the young guy who owns the place said he was Lithuanian, not Russian, a distinction he was careful to make in the way people with strong national identities make those distinctions. (I certainly wouldn't want to be confused with a Canadian or a paid-up subscriber to the Press Democrat.) Soon as he'd set me straight I vaguely remembered that the Liths, as they are not called, were very happy to see the end of the Russians, as were many Russians. Back to the food. I had a large and very good steak and fries for 17 bucks, a meal I'd never associated with Eastern Europe, but the Liths sure have it down judging from the one they served me. On another visit I had beef stroganoff, which was also very good in a large serving. Also on the menu we find goulash and red borscht. Communist soup? Nope. The beets they make it with makes it red. All this and a range of very good beers. Great little place, and highly recommended by the AVA's roving gourmands. Closed Mondays. Open Tuesday through Friday 5:30-10pm, Saturdays and Sundays noon to 10pm.”
UKIAH’S OWN Tommy Wayne Kramer's new book, “Teach Your Dog to Shoplift: A Tommy Wayne Kramer Collection” is now available at both Mulligan Books and the Mendocino Book Company for $17. Most of the stories in the book were originally published in the Ukiah Daily Journal, where the TWK's must-read Sunday column “Assignment: Ukiah” has appeared since 2007. The author, Tom Hine, has written under the TWK byline for many years. The book jacket describes him as a “Bitter critic marooned in a Stepford land of feeble-minded New Agers, all slaves to yoga this, hybrid that and organic everything.” The columns illustrate TWK's “venomous response to the comfortable local class of elitist professionals, except when he's writing sentimental slush about his dead dog or describing his adventures driving drunk, avoiding hugs and advising teens of the benefits of smoking cigarettes.” Saucy is located at 108 West Standley Street. This guy and his book are the perfect antidotes to this county's oppressively prevalent pieties and personalities, a perfect stocking stuffer for the prig in your life.
(UP TO) $125K TO A NAPA COMPANY FOR THIS? (From a consent calendar item on Tuesday Board of Supervisors meeting): “Contractor shall provide, 24-hour a day, seven-days a week, on-call drivers to transport Behavioral Health and Recovery Services clients from Mendocino County to out-of-county mental health facilities, and scheduled transportation from out-of-county to Mendocino County. Contractor shall develop a system that accepts referrals from Mendocino County Health and Human Services Agency (HHSA) Behavioral Health and Recovery Services (BHRS) Psychiatric Emergency Services (PES) staff, provides coordination, supervision and scheduling for this service, and dispatches drivers to locations within Mendocino County and throughout Northern California.”
THE AGENDA'S SUMMARY EXPLAINS: “The HHSA Behavioral Health and Recovery Services (BHRS) is mandated to provide transportation services for BHRS clients to and from out-of-county facilities and to other essential appointments. This contract will provide on-call drivers and administrative operations. Services will be provided 24-hours a day, 365-days a year. Contractor will provide vehicles, fuel, and maintenance responsibility. The alternative transportation method is to use ambulance service, at a greater expense. This contract will run from October 1, 2012 through June 30, 2013.
BY THE LOOKS of their website, Black Talon doesn't exactly look like they'd be particularly comforting to a crazy person, and you mean to say no one in Mendo can provide this simple taxi service?
SGT. BARNEY'S STRANGE PURCHASE (from another consent calendar item): “The Emergency Management Performance Grant (EMPG) funds for FY 2011 were programmed to purchase numerous equipment items to enhance the Emergency Services capabilities within the County. Some of the equipment originally budgeted for are no longer needed or projects did not reach anticipated costs. These funds were reprogrammed. The FY 11 EMPG grant was extended with funds reprogrammed to purchase a Side Scanning Sonar system for the Sheriff's Patrol Boat and a VHF Radio System to replace an existing radio system that will not meet narrow banding requirements as outlined by the FCC. This request is to add the VHF radio system ($2500) and the Side Scanning Sonar System ($3000) to the list of fixed assets. According to Wikipedia: Side Scanning Sonar is used to create an image of large areas of the sea floor and to detect debris items and other obstructions on the seafloor. What are they going to do? Look for dead bodies at the bottom of Lake Mendocino? Or Noyo Harbor? This grant spending is getting pretty ridiculous.
RUMORS OUT OF UKIAH say an “A-List celebrity,” female type, will soon appear in Mendocino County to agitate for Mendo against the feds’ attempt to subpoena the County's pot records. Not sure what an A-List celeb is but we're not surprised that the issue has begun to attract major outside attention of the David vs. Goliath variety.
SPEAKING OF DEVIL WEED, according to a story in the current Rolling Stone Magazine — “Reefer Sadness” — it's Vice-President Joe Biden's fanatical opposition to any loosening of the pot laws that drives the Obama Administration's futile zero tolerance stance.
WHILE WE'RE in the neighborhood of drugs and derangement, darned if there wasn't a twenty dollar bill in the mail last week from none other than the legendary Captain Fathom, repayment of a loan, the Captain's note said. Then we hear from Norm deVall that the Captain mailed Norm a hundred dollar money order, also repayment of the dough Norm fronted the Captain in his many hours of need. When the Captain stays in port he's a delightful guy, but when he puts out to sea Mendocino County summons All Hands On Deck.
EVER WONDER WHY those security camera photos of bank robbers are so blurry? Gwen Hastings of the Lost Coast Outpost writes to explain to the people who can understand the explanation: “The reason the video extracted image is so shitty is that most of the banks are still on analog NTSC 380-600 line technology being converted to digital not more modern 720P or 1080P digital sensors with WDR/HDR features along with global shutter (allows straight lines to be straight). The video cams which allow this range about 1500.00 on up to about 3000.00 per cam at present and mostly used for computer vision/video analytics automated inspection, license plate recognition systems etc., i.e., cams which have rolling shutters are available for about half that in either resolution but in fast moving action straight lines won’t be, well, straight — and that extrapolates to lettering on apparel and license plates. (By the way, 30 cams at 720P is a very staggering load to a 100mbs switch and a fair load to a gigabyte switch to say nothing of the specialized high speed storage to store the incoming video. 1080P x 30 is an insane load (think fiber optics).) You want the best cams? Any of the recently built plush casinos have those kinds of cameras mentioned above. The good and expensive ones, that is. You would think banks are more profitable after the bailout — but bank robbers are a lot more rare than casual cheats and rip-offs at casino tables evidently. PS. After market Photoshop filters which allow summing of extracted video frames allow one to increase the apparent dynamic range and brightness/contrast of the image.”
SPORTS CHAT. Kobe Bryant said the other day that when he and his teammates went to see the new movie, ‘Lincoln,’ Steve Nash fell asleep and two guys were surprised by the film's ending. They didn't know Lincoln had been assassinated.
THEN THERE'S THE beleaguered Colin Kaepernick, 49er quarterback and, obviously a huge talent in the tradition of the Niner's great quarterbacks Joe Montana and Steve Young. He's just a kid, but a kid whose every move on and off the football field is under total surveillance by millions, and now his birth mother — no mention of his birth father — pops up to say she wants to “be part of his life.” Or some other Dr. Phil-like cliché, our reactions to every human thing that happens to us being pre-prepared for us by media. We react to it all the way we've seen the stars react to it all, hence statements from thousands of crime victims like, “We are glad he's been arrested so now we can have closure.” Closure. As if tragedy ends or can end. The dilemmas for Kaepernick are plural. Birth Mom doesn't seem to be a nut. She's a registered nurse with a job, and she's raising an eight-year-old, apparently by herself, an indication she's been unlucky in love at least twice. Maybe Birth Son could meet her some place for a quick thank you. “Hey, nice to meet you and thanks for the gift of life. You seem like a nice lady and all, but I don't know you and I gotta get back to the weight room.” Maybe Birth Mom's after a cut of Birth Son's dough, and one has to wonder if her son had turned out to be a freeway killer awaiting resumption of state executions at San Quentin if Birth Mom would be as interested in Birth Son. Which doesn't seem like fair speculation, but one wonders about these things, doesn't one? But Kaepernick, if he ignores her, might come off as hard-hearted, although he was adopted as an infant and has zero memory of, or connection to, Birth Mom beyond that original umbilical. If I were him I think I'd stick with the people who raised me, my real parents who, in this case, clearly raised me to be a good person. It would seem to be a betrayal of Mr. and Mrs. Kaepernick if Birth Mom were now invited to function as third parent.
THE SMART TRAIN boondoggle rumbles dumbly on with the news that SMART wants $6.6 million more to buy additional train cars, an astounding request considering that the first train is not scheduled to run until 2016, if then. So, like, why more cars for a railroad that hasn't happened yet? The line is supposed to eventually stretch from Cloverdale to Larkspur and, as we know, is a pet project and a sort of employment programs for the Northcoast branch of the Democratic Party, hence the odds against it ever running anywhere.
MSG. You've all seen the signs in the windows of Chinese restaurants. Or some Chinese restaurants anyway, particularly in those neighborhoods where the chemo-phobes are more likely to roam. “No MSG,” the window notices assure the fastidious.
SO, THE OTHER DAY, I'm joined for lunch at a Chinese restaurant on Clement called Happy Garden by two meat eaters and a vegan — three meat eaters including me. Happy Garden is a no-frills joint popular with Chinese who come there for authentic old country dishes, many of which are advertised in Chinese on the walls of the place. There's an English-language menu for Roundeyes, of course, but the more exotic concoctions, exotic to non-Chinese, are posted in the mother tongue.
THE FASTIDIOUS have problems with the Garden because its housekeeping standards don't seem high priority. The ancient, once green baize rug is a canvas for the million meals of yesterday. Take it up, get a calligrapher to scroll something inscrutable on it — “Green frog rides the old tiger” — frame it, you could sell it to SFMOMA.
THREE OF US order Mongolian beef, which is the best in the City and only six bucks, and it comes with rice. At high-end restaurants you'd pay $15 a plate for a smaller serving and no rice. At the Garden, $15 stuffs two people, and everything they do at the Garden is excellent-o!
THE VEGETARIAN of course quizzes the waiter as to what's good but pure on the menu. There ensues a two-party discussion of what constitutes seafood, which finally concludes with a group consensus that fish is seafood, as is the seafood soup the vegetarian orders that contains shrimp, crab, scallops, and Pier 39. Whatever, so long as the ingredients come from the water and don't include…
“MSG?” the vegan asks the waiter. “You want some?” the waiter asks back. The vegan shrinks in terror. “Oh, god, no. No MSG! Do you use MSG here?” The waiter says, “Of course. Our customers want. Make food taste better.” The vegan, a stricken look on her face, absorbed the bad news. She stared at the waiter as if he might be trying to kill her. “It's very bad for you,” the vegan informed the waiter. “Maybe,” he says. “Very expensive, too. Fifty pounds, eighty dollars. No MSG save us money, but customers want.”
THE BIG ITEMS on Tuesday’s Supes agenda are all continuations of matters The Leadership has hashed out before: a new retirement tier that’s supposed to save pension money someday, for instance, (but which is already highly prescribed by a new state law called PEPRA, the Public Employees Pension Reform Act. So the only thing to discuss locally is how and when it will be implemented. Will the County’s annual pension contribution be reduced? Not much and not for a while. The earliest anticipated savings is for 2018, if then.
THE BOARD will also discuss “Williamson Act Subvention,” basically how much the state will reimburse the County for lost property tax after a rancher promises to keep his land in agriculture rather than develop it and gets a tax break for doing it. (The Williamson Act allows ranchers to get tax breaks for simply promising not to sell their land to developers, no matter how unlikely that prospect may be.) In recent years the state has cut back reimbursements to counties. But lately there’s a new, even more complicated law that allows limited reimbursements under certain conditions, the primary condition probably being the state of the rancher's personal relationship with his state representatives.
THE OTHER MAJOR discussion for Tuesday is Supervisor Dan Hamburg’s pet project, the PACE program (Property Assessed Clean Energy). If implemented the program would create a county-wide finance assessment district allowing commercial (not residential — mortgage holders don’t like the idea because it means the government gets paid its taxes before the mortgage holder does) property owners to finance renewable energy and energy saving improvements through a voluntary assessment on their property tax bills. In theory, commercial property owners benefit by avoiding the upfront installation cost, eliminating concerns that they will sell the property before recovering the investment from utility bill savings. It’s a very complex arrangement that’s supposed to be a win-win-win in the end. Basically, it’s a just another way to finance solar systems or energy efficiency retrofits, where the County (through a third-party money-management outfit) would loan the money for the energy improvement which is paid back through property tax bills. Hamburg likes it because of the potential “green” benefits and because it might translate to more business for local renewable energy outfits. But the arrangements are so complex (and tailored to each property owner's assessment and loan value) that whole companies have sprung up to manage the “districts” and the properties that participate. If done right, Hamburg’s expectations may well prove helpful. But this is Mendocino County and lots of these arcane financing schemes — the Williamson Act, Brooktrails and the Teeter Plan, school bonds, pension obligation bonds/refinancing, etc. — have a way of backfiring and going south when things don’t turn out as planned. Making matters worse, the County would have to turn over the whole program to a “vendor” with the staff and financial expertise to manage it — and once that happens the county will be stuck with and highly dependent on that vendor, come hell or high water. On Tuesday, the General Services staff will report back on the status of a request for proposals to potentially recruit a PACE management vendor.
PUT US DOWN as NO ON PACE. If these were good ideas — and the idea of financing energy-saving systems with future savings is a good idea — (or if banks made reasonable loans anymore) banks or PG&E would already be doing it (like they used to, actually). Getting local government involved in what sounds like a helpful — but complicated and unproven — program just because banks and lenders won’t do it is a bad idea. Let the people who are in the business of loaning money loan the money — not the County.
OAKY JOE'S 2013 CALENDAR is out, a collector's item for sure, and one sure to live on among Mendocino County arcania, if that's the word, as long as there are collectors and local history troves. Mr. Joe, as many of us know, is a legendary pot grower and, it seems, catnip to the young ladies who grace his calendar, bud babes to be sexist about it. The beauties, however, share pictorial billing with a thriving marijuana plants, presumably Joe's. I was dependent on Joe's 2012 calendar all year, right up until December when I tardily realized that December's dates were wrong which, you might say, is to be expected from a guy who very much enjoys his product. When Joe stopped in the other day with a couple of his 2013 calendars for us, he insisted they were free because we're veterans, and whatever money he makes from his calendars goes to veterans. We insisted he take a twenty because he's gone to a lot trouble to create these things and he's done an excellent job on them. I think the calendars are totally boffo, and I'm not a grower or a toker, or even a person who thinks marijuana is particularly beneficial except to people with specific medical conditions. Every time I say I think dope makes people dumb and slow, which is my opinion of it, all my pot friends get mad at me, so I won't say that until next time I say it. Joe himself said he wasn't sure where people could buy the calendars yet, but I'll bet the County's bookstores would sell them. Myself, I'm looking to buy about five more for Christmas gifts, if I can only get in touch with him to find out where.
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