From an unbylined water agency meeting summary in last week’s Fort Bragg Advocate:
“County officials ended the update by noting that all of the water district managers ‘agree that another year of drought will present a hardship for the county and require water conservation, proactive management, and other measures’.”
That’s interesting because “conservation” is not on the County’s list of water agency priorities. In fact, nobody at the County level has mentioned or proposed any conservation beyond the self-evident restrictions posed by water shortages and outside agency curtailments.
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In the October 2022 CEO Report, CEO Darcie Antle reports “In an effort to streamline permit review and expedite services, the Building Division has assigned more reviews for smaller projects to field inspectors during office hours. Applications continue to be received for all types of projects; minor planning applications have increased by 70%, which includes Boundary Line Adjustments, Certificate of Compliance, Administrative Permits, and Categorical Exclusions.”
That’s supposed to be worthy of recognition of some kind, we supposed. But the planning department’s own permit status chart shows that they haven’t done much real planning work (depending on what they really mean by some of these terms and numbers). For example they only dealt with 3 new single family homes last month, and 10 in the last three months. No multi-family units (which are supposedly slightly more affordable because of property and infrastructure economies). The backlog (“aging”) is quite large, perhaps due to staffing shortages that nobody seems to care about, beyond stale rhetoric. As the above text says, most of the permits issued and inspections performed were for relatively minor routine things which don’t involve actual buildings.
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Supervisor John Haschak:
“I appreciate the many people who showed up [at a Willits Town Hall meeting on Oct. 9] and Senator McGuire for his accessibility and openness. Senator McGuire is the Senate Majority Leader so we are fortunate to have him as our representative. He certainly gets things done on behalf of Mendocino County.”
“…gets things done on behalf of Mendocino County”? Like what? Haschak concluded his October report with a bold proposal to mitigate the effects of the ongoing drought: “Time to be thinking rain, rain, rain!”
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Governor Newsom’s Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment Act (CARE), aims not to commit anyone or set up conservatorships, but rather to see courts compel those who need it to get help. The homeless can refer themselves to CARE courts under this new law, which starts in Glenn, Orange, Riverside, San Diego, Stanislaus, Tuolumne and San Francisco counties next year (2023) and goes statewide in 2024. Or they can be referred by families, doctors, nurses, psychologists, social workers and others with whom they interact. They also can still refuse to participate. But once evaluated by a CARE court, they will undergo mental health and addiction treatment and receive supervised housing. There is no prison involved, no confinement. Just two years of shelter, a clinical team, a lawyer and a volunteer supporter with whom they can converse regularly.
— Thomas Elias
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AV Community Services District Trustee Larry Mailliard told his colleagues last Wednesday night that he had attended a meeting of the Mendocino County Association of Fire Districts where Piercy Volunteer Fire Department Chief Pat Landergen had attended a recent Great Redwood Trail meeting because his department will end up having first responder responsibilities along the trail if it ever makes it north of Willits. According to Mailliard, Landergen was concerned about security, accidents, medical aids, access difficulties, impacts on neighbors, etc., and concluded, “It’s filled with nightmares!”
That may sound kinda paranoid, but only because we don’t think there will ever be a trail north of Willits, certainly not in our lifetime, just like there was never a train when it was the North Coast Railroad Authority. The Great Redwood Trail is a jobs program for Democratic Party hangers-on who will make more money on plans, consultants, grants, and delays than the old NCRA could ever dream of.
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Contempt Of Employees
Statement to the Board of Supervisors by County Employees Union Representative Patrick Hickey, Tuesday, October 18, 2022:
Mendocino County is at a turning point. County employees had reason to feel optimistic a few years ago when the Board set them on a path to parity and stability. But over the past six months the board has frittered that away. In the coming years, some counties will excel, others will fall behind. The decisions you make, the actions and inactions, will determine if we will thrive or slide into becoming a backwater. You should be working with your employees, not against them. You each pay lip-service to County employees but that doesn't pay the rent. Inaction over time is seen for what it is: contempt. Instead of negotiating in good faith the county administration continues to hide information. Do we have to file charges with the state every time we want to access public information? You have brought in a high-priced San Francisco attorney to negotiate, but you have given him no authority to bargain, even on such glaringly obvious things like agreeing to pay more than the minimum wage. We have provided the board with multiple ideas for identifying funds. Recently we have been identifying areas where the county has been wasting funds. You could ask nearly any employee in the county and they could point to multiple ways that they could save the taxpayers money. But again, we see no action. Just more circular discussions and going-nowhere ad hoc committees. When the county employees look to the board for leadership they see stagnation. Trust your employees to move the county forward. It is a risk that will pay dividends and provide stability and resilience as we move forward.
Supervisor Williams responded:
Just to be open here, I really struggle. I recognize that at almost 9% inflation, not giving a significant COLA is a cut. That's a fact. Yet last year it appears we spent more than what we had coming in and this year we are projected to have $3 million less. My personal take is there needs to be a significant restructuring of the structural deficit. Everything that has been pointed out is true. If we don't keep up we are going to lose workers. We need both more staffing and we need to pay everyone a living wage. I think it's despicable that a county has staff living in cars. I'm with you. It's a question of how do we get there? As one supervisor I cannot initiate a discussion. It will take at least three supervisors to decide if we want to do this and be more open than we have. I think we have a real significant financial problem. I don't think our CEO has been trying to hide anything. Behind the scenes I see her struggling trying to get the information just like I'm trying to get it, just like the negotiation teams on both sides are trying to get it. We have a problem and it's nowhere near as transparent as it should be. Everything we learn is more alarming. These are not excuses. I'm just trying to share some of what I am going through. I want to pay our employees more. I want them to have a living wage. I think that should be the milestone. We need to work backwards and figure out how to get there. Not slip behind. But my colleagues are in the position of we don't have the money, we have $3 million less than last year. Staff is telling me and I tend to believe them that we could give a significant COLA but that would trigger further layoffs. Do we want to go down that path? Do we want to decide that it's more important to have living wages for all if it means an overall reduction in the workforce in the years to come?
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Leif Farr, Shop Steward, Long Time County Mapping/Computer specialist:
The issues surrounding our new contract have been hashed out in many meetings with the negotiating teams. It's kind of disheartening when we are told that, oh yes, we will give you a COLA, but you have to find the money. You have to find extra revenue. Well, we have found extra revenue. I think a really telling situation is when you have unfilled positions — and we brought all this information to the county, we didn't get all the information we needed, but some estimates. But if you look at every year you have several million dollars that you have not spent [on vacant positions]. The tricky part is, what happens when you budget this money, general fund money, and it's not spent, then the following year it goes into special categories, one-time money. So what was general fund money that you didn't spend, becomes this one-time money that you have decided not to spend on salaries. You can point to a lot of things going on around the county. On my coffee break I walk outside here and I see the fantastic parking lot being built out here between General Services and the Administration building. Boy, that sure is one Class A parking lot. What was the priority in spending money on that? As opposed to spending money on employees? That's the kind of thing that is disheartening. So there are avenues. It's also very disheartening to negotiate with a negotiating team that can't make any decisions. First thing off the bat, they say that the county is broke, they have no money. Well, how did they hire you? Right? It's disheartening. I have worked for the county for a long time and it's been awhile since this problem has happened. In the past our employees would sit down with the CEO and the Human Resources Director and negotiate a contract. They did not hire outside firms. They say, this is what it is. And we reach a compromise. But the whole structure of negotiating now is you are talking to people who have no stake in the matter. They will get their paycheck whether we get a contract or not. It's a filter, its diffusion, between the people we really need to negotiate with and our team. There are a lot of problems in the structural negotiating process as well as in the structural part of how we work our budget. I do not think that it's right that every time we come up to the board and ask for a contract, that requires maybe a COLA or some type of increasing monetary value, we are told that we have to find the money. That's not our job, and we don't have the resources or the information to craft a budget for the County. We do our best and we have shown that there are avenues where a modest COLA could be achieved.
Supervisor Ted Williams: “I appreciate your words.”
No other Supervisors commented.
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Julie Beardslee (President of the local SEIU Employees Union):
At Tuesday’s Board of Supervisor’s meeting, Chair Williams said he was worried that if the Board approved a reasonable COLA, it might result in lay-offs. I question who they would lay-off? Staffing levels that are funded out of the General Fund are so low if you laid anyone off there would literally be no one to do the work. County facilities would turn into a ghost town. On the other hand, the people who work in Social Services, Behavioral Health and Public Health are funded by State and Federal money and yes, there is a small contribution the county makes to each position, but those positions actually bring money into the county. So there is no excuse not to have those departments fully staffed. The dithering the CEO’s office and the Board of Supervisors are engaging in is totally unnecessary. And yes, it’s time to put your employees before a new parking lot!
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In terms of sheer dollars, the most conspicuous corruption in Mendocino County is the sweetheart contracts with the Sacramento Architectural/Design outfit Nacht & Lewis, personally arranged by former CEO Carmel Angelo.
N&L has contracts with Mendo for the Jail Expansion project, the Crisis Residential Treatment (CRT) Center and the upcoming Psychiatric Health Facility (PHF), (and perhaps others). In each case, they build in their own costs and “fees” for design and development and construction management into each project which nobody questions, grossly inflating the cost of these already grandiose projects.
For example, here’s the Nacht & Lewis cost breakdown for the CRT & the PHF that was recently presented to the Measure B committee. (There are comparable charges for the grossly overrunning jail expansion project for which Mendo recently had to borrow about $8 million at prevailing interest rates to cover.)
Notice N&L’s huge numbers estimated for various cost categories which are for themselves. These are not competitive bids and nobody questions them as they charge hundreds of dollars per hour — hours and rates for which they also have unilateral control. Why does it cost over $55,000 for “bidding”? Why will it cost over $274k for “schematic design”? Almost $700k for “construction documents”? Etc.
In a normal county, this stuff would go out to bid for hourly rates and/or fixed price contracts, and, at least in part, in-house. How much would, say, a local professional architect like Don Alameida charge for these services and documents? How much would it cost to hire a professional construction manager in Mendo’s facilities department? Nobody knows; nobody cares. Nacht & Lewis writes their own overpriced ticket and then Mendo officials brag when N&L comes in a few thousand dollars below their inflated estimates.
Will the grand jury look into this? Probably not.
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