There are many ways to improve Ukiah, and here are a few:
1) No parking in front yards. No more cars, trucks, boats, broken motorcycles, RVs, dead refrigerators or trailers squatting about. Violators ticketed and towed within 24 hours.
(NOTE: Five year property tax suspension for homeowners who install putting greens in their yards.)
2) A city-wide Dress Code, reading something like this: Within the boundaries of the City of Ukiah, CA, neither residents nor visitors shall wear in public any of the following: Crocs, flannel jammies, baseball caps worn backwards, drooping baggy pants of any sort, man bun hairdo’s, etc etc.
All juveniles are forbidden from wearing hoodies, as are adults with criminal convictions.
After 6 p.m. individuals dining out must wear appropriate clothing: shirts with buttons, shoes of leather or similar product. Hats, helmet and caps forbidden indoors. Women strongly encouraged to not wear muu-muus, t-shirts featuring Disney characters, or white shoes after Labor Day.
(NOTE: Residents may apply for a once-monthly Walmart Waiver, suspending all rules regarding wardrobe, behavior and hygiene.)
3) The city shall remove the pea green panels from second story exterior of the building directly across the street from the County Courthouse, so the golden bricks are once again visible.
The impact will be dramatic as it will match the exterior of Mac Nab’s Menswear.
4) Hire an all-powerful Architecture Czar to oversee and approve citywide structures, refusing those that violate the common, traditional sense of good taste.
The Czar shall be granted broad veto powers to prevent atrocities like the Holiday Inn’s drab motel across from Costco on grounds it resembles 1970s Soviet Union project housing. Ditto for strip malls that pockmark the town.
The Architecture Czar shall review plans intended for the new county courthouse, and demand the design adhere to traditional American courthouses in both style and substance. No appeals shall be allowed of czar rulings.
5) City officials shall strongly suggest the Count of Mendocino abandon its broken, ill-conceived marijuana legalization mess, and instead adopt the best county plan in the state of California; that is, the plan simplest for growers to comply with, and generates adequate tax dollars.
6) Cut pay of the city’s top administrators by 30% beginning January 1, 2023, with an additional 10% cut taking effect on July 1. This will help soothe abrasions endured by taxpaying citizens that the most highly paid people in the city are public “servants.”
The wizards who guide city policies are paid enormous sums (upward of $300,000 yearly) but have yet to solve a single problem Ukiah faces. Such as: the ever-deteriorating Palace Hotel which has lain dead, empty and collapsing for more than 40 years; the dead and empty downtown Post Office, and the homeless squalor spreading like rapidly advancing cancer all over the southern part of the city. Remember: the Burning Bridges Homeless Enabling Center promised the city it would be responsible for security at the facility, but it’s done nothing. Hold those administrators accountable.
7) The city should stop trying to earn profits at the expense of local businesses. The downtown Civic Center was proposed as an “incubator” for small businesses to get on their feet, then transition to market-based renting and leasing.
As it is now, the Civic Center is filled with politicians, tourism promoters and a couple private shops, plus a large entertainment room for the city to rent out. Meanwhile office and retail storefronts around town are boarded up and empty, and the Saturday Afternoon Club, a perfect venue for social events, too often sits empty.
Dark, forlorn shops up and down State and School Streets ought to be rented out by elected representatives like Jared Huffman, Jim Wood and the taxpayer funded Tourist Bureau. The results will be immediate, as Ukiah quickly becomes prettier, busier, wealthier.
City administrators should focus on running the city, not competing with local businesses.
8) An idea that won’t make Ukiah better looking or enhance revenues but will help us feel good about ourselves and our city: Haul tanks of water to the nearby western hills and dump them into small shallow ravines lined with sheets of plastic. Now listen to the applause from wild animals who haven’t had a drink since 2019.
The boys at Granite Construction, Factory Pipe and CalFire could figure something out in half an hour. Right now surveillance cameras show parched, emaciated mountain lions straggling down west side streets and driveways. We can, and should, relieve their misery.
Take food up there while we’re filling tanks. The Hopland Ag extension will know dietary requirements of mountain lions, possums, Monarch butterflies and spotted owls. (Probably flowers for the butterflies, seeds for the owls and three-legged Animal Shelter pit bulls for the carnivores.)
Mother Nature thanks you in advance.
My philosophy professor at UC Santa Cruz told our class that he developed a simple plan during World War II to deal with lethal German U-Boats. They had been decimating military and commercial shipping during the war – “Just drain the Atlantic Ocean.”
Not sure he was serious, one of us [I don’t think it was me] asked “How would you do that!”
“Well”, he said, “now that’s a problem for engineering, not philosophy.”
Are you running for Ukiah Improvement Czar/Tsar Tommy? I have some ideas and we should talk.