Last Tuesday, Supervisor Dan Gjerde complained about the allocation of $2.6 million of PG&E settlement money to an “elusive” Joint Powers Authority (JPA) for ambulance services in the inland area of Mendocino County.
“We have rural districts that need subsidies and we have the Ukiah metro area that has more than enough revenue,” Gjerde began. “But the revenues are not being shared in the outlying population areas. Everybody knows there’s surplus revenue in the Ukiah Valley that could be redistributed to Anderson Valley, Laytonville and Covelo which would not require County general fund dollars. It's been almost nine years and this still has not been fixed. We just threw $2.6 million of PG&E settlement money to Coastal Valley [SoCo Emergency Services Administration Agency which already gets $600k a year for whatever they do] expecting them to solve it. It's a critical problem that needs to be solved. Probably an ad hoc committee with two supervisors meeting with two city council members in Ukiah and the city manager and the County CEO and hammering out a deal. No consultants need to be involved. Just negotiating a redistribution of a little bit of those profits to Anderson Valley, Laytonville and Covelo. No general fund subsidy. No $2.6 million to Coastal Valley. And I don't see that $2.6 million on this list” (of funding that could be shifted to cover the deficit).
Gjerde was referring to a list of possible funding re-allocations prepared by the CEO’s budget staff to close the $6.1 budget deficit. The list included a couple of other PG&E settlement allocations which could be redirected to the General Fund, but it did not include the Coastal Valley allocation.
None of Gjerde’s colleagues picked up on the idea and nothing else was said about it. Gjerde did not propose an ad hoc committee. Nobody even suggested that the $2.6 mil be added to the list of funding reallocation options.
The County allocates almost $200k a year to Covelo, Laytonville and Anderson Valley for what they call an ALS assistance grant (Advanced Life Support). But in practice, because of the difficulty of hiring and staffing paramedics in outlying areas, the general lack of funding, and the somewhat lower call volume, the money is used to beef up shift coverage for volunteers.
In theory, a JPA could allow for a fairer allocation of ambulance service revenues which are a crazy-quilt of seemingly arbitrary sources which barely cover expenses: Medi-Cal (about 5¢ on the dollar), MediCare (about 10¢ on the dollar), private insurance, private payments (for those who can afford it), donations, memberships, bake sales, etc. It could also allow rural ambulances to get reimbursed for “hand-off” transports (at present they only get paid if they deliver a patient to a medical facility, but not to another ambulance further transport), and it could make it easier to apply for grants and program funding from state and federal sources.
Gjerde is probably right that if the right officials sat down and ironed out an agreement (which should obviously include reps from Laytonville, Covelo and Anderson Valley), they could get things set-up sooner and save most of $2.6 million being “wasted” on Coastal Valley EMS.
But given the lackadaisical attitudes that prevail in the positions Gjerde mentioned for another ad hoc committee, there’s about as much chance of that happening as the JPA itself.
It’s truly astonishing. Here’s yet another practical way to solve several significant Mendo problems by simply deciding to do it and then doing it, and local leadership isn’t interested in following through.
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At their last meeting of 2022 the Supervisors took some steps to whittle away at the estimated $6.1 million budget deficit for this fiscal year by deferring some facilities spending, re-allocating some as yet unspent PG&E settlement money, drawing down some pension reserves, hoping there’ll be about half a mil carryover from last year, and postponing addressing the $3.6 million Health Plan deficit until early 2023. Along the way, Supervisor Dan Gjerde drew criticism from Supervisor John Haschak when Gjerde said that the Health Plan Deficit was made worse by a few dozen “marginal hypochondriac” employees who caused a spike in the Health Plan costs by their “frenetic and excessive” demands on the County’s health insurance program. Haschak said he resented such characterizations of sick people that the Board doesn’t know anything about. More to come. (Mark Scaramella)
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For another indication of the upside-down priorities of this Board of Supervisors, take Tuesday morning’s discussion of an item to submit another application for California’s equity grant program to help pot growers who say they suffered damages in the past from the “war on drugs.” Previously, County Counsel Christian Curtis had speculated that the state’s pot-grower subsidy program might violate federal prohibitions on pot by handing out the state’s money for pot growing. Nobody agrees with Curtis, not the state, not the DA, not several much more experienced local pot attorneys. Nevertheless, Curtis succeeded in frightening our timid Supervisors, convincing them that they needed another opinion of the state’s program either by paying $25k or so to an outside attorney or, even more pointlessly, asking the State Attorney General if he approved of the state’s program that the state enacted a couple of years ago.
Remember, the item in question was for a grant application, not for handing out any money to pot growers. After about 20 minutes of round and round, it fell to the County’s pot permit program director Kristin Nevedal to point out that this was just a grant application, not any cash handouts.
Everybody finally woke up with a figurative, “Oh never mind.” And the application was approved.
A pointless discussion — but not a colossal waste.
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