It might come as a surprise to some readers of this space that there were a couple of genuine, if minor, bright spots in Tuesday’s Board of Supervisor meeting.
First, with the appraiser staff now up to six appraisers, progress has been made in correcting and updating property assessments. County Clerk-Recorder-Assessor Katrina Bartolomie told the Board that assessments had gone up by just over 4%. However, apparently, much of that increase was due to corrections of “errors” or mistakes, not actual reassessments. Ms. Bartolomie and CEO Antle were quick to add that even with this positive uptick in assessed values, it will take a significant amount of time before those increased assessments translate to actual tax collection and increased revenue.
Not much, granted, but it’s welcome news.
Ms. Bartolomie also told the Board that the County’s new property tax software system, a multimillion dollar upgrade project purchased years ago and still not working well called “Aumentum,” “cannot generate a report that makes any sense”. … Getting useful reports out of Aumentum is still “a long way down the road,” said Bartolomie, adding for emphasis that she is still waiting for reports which are “still lacking.” “Statistical reporting leaves a lot to be desired,” continued Bartolomie. “We need a print out. There’s no way to find an error until we calculate the assessment on our own, manually.”
She said her office had sent out letters to unassessed owners asking them for property info and they use aerial photos. “It’s not the right way to do it,” she said, “but sometimes it’s all we can do,” adding that supplemental assessment notices asking about possible new or additional structures can be disputed by the property owner and thus will be some time off before the County realizes any revenue from them, if ever. “We have a lot of catch up to do,” concluded Bartolomie.
Possibly offsetting the upturn from corrected assessments, however, Supervisor Ted Williams presented some graphs he had prepared showing basically that while County revenues may be up a few percentage points, costs are increasing more than revenues — at least based on the limited data available.
The other (minor) bright spot coming out of Tuesday’s meeting is that Mendo is now, only ten years after the fact, doing a better job of tracking mental health service effectiveness.
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For the first time since 2013 when the County rashly privatized mental health services, they have made an attempt to report on actual outcomes, not just numbers of clients served, awkward and selective as it may be.
This initial stab at reporting shows that for the more than $22 million Mendo hands over to Camille Schraeder’s Redwood Quality Management Monopoly, 347 people received “services” and 147 of them were “transitioned” to a lower service level while 155 “remained out of services” which presumably means they haven’t needed more services since being “treated” and released. Presumably they were released because of some improvement in their condition, not because they were no longer covered by some form of insurance.
The $22 million doesn’t include some 40 or so additional county employees in the Behavioral Health Department under Director Dr. Jenine Miller.
Only a crass skeptic would do some basic math and calculate that for an average of at least $6400 per “patient” per year at least some of the people “treated” by Redwood Quality Management got better. But then again, for that much money you’d hope that they should show at least some improvement.
But when we look further at the chart we see that 431 people utilized “crisis services” so far this year while only 93 needed such service last year.
Nobody asked about this glaring disparity.
And lastly we see that 694 people (including children and adults) who were getting mental health services did not go into crisis. So that’s 694 local “severe” mental cases who did not flip out this year — whether that’s due to the $6400 spent on them or not is unclear.
The muddy part of this picture is the basic crisis question. Not all crises stem from a mental health problem. When we last reviewed the Crisis Van reports we saw that most of the calls were for more or less sane people who found themselves in a temporary difficult situation: a boyfriend who overdosed, a tragic accident, abrupt job loss, a bad encounter with a friend, family member or co-worker, etc.
In those cases, if they received services — and a number of them refused services — one would expect that once they were helped over the crisis they would “remain out of service” because they only needed help during the crisis, not because they got effective treatment.
Nevertheless, it appears that Ms. Schraeder’s services are doing some good, albeit for a lot of money.
PS. One must deduct from the value of the services the substantial managerial staff and overhead and profit that Redwood Quality Management (or Anchor Health as they are now called) makes for providing the services. According to salary.com, the average RQMC employee makes about $100k per year base salary, plus a more than competitive benefits package. They also seem to be well staffed in management and directors.
For example, on Tuesday alone a small parade of very well dressed RQMC and its subsidiary management personnel stepped to the podium during public expression to glowingly praise their services and say how important they are.
We had Redwood Community Services CEO Victoria Kelly; Tapestry CEO Natalie Shepherd; Dan Anderson, Chief Operating Officer for Anchor Health; Camille Schraeder, Chief Program Officer for Anchor Health — who referred to the people and subsidiaries and subcontractors under her “Administrative Service Organization” umbrella as “my providers”; Carol Livingston, Program Director for Crisis at Redwood Community Services. Jolene Treadaway, newly appointed clinical director of Redwood Community Services, and Paul Davis, Executive Director of the Mendocino Coast Hospitality Center in Fort Bragg.
These people alone who somehow were able to take half a day of their precious time out of their busy schedules to tell the Supes how great a job they’re doing represented over $1 million of the $22 million per year RQMS gets from Mendocino County every year.
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Ukiah Resident Mazie Malone commented on the uptick in mental health service reporting:
“Hahaha. What can I say? No one asks the right questions. These [mental health service] numbers are misleading at the very least. The disparity issue of 431 who utilized crisis services this year as opposed to 93 last year is not part of the mobile crisis unit through County law enforcement and Behavioral health. It is the calls to the crisis line run by RCS, possibly their walk-ins and maybe each time someone goes to the ER for evaluating a person in the throes of a mental illness episode. Maybe it also includes any crisis evaluations at the jail. So it is a very confusing disparity in clients served. Also with mental illness it really needs long term management. So does the transition out mean death, or suicide or maybe moved, jail or loss of insurance? The reason is important! Also it took me a minute …not good with numbers. But 431… crisis calls through RQMC is same number for tapestry new clients…. So all those crisis calls are being referred for counseling and case management to tapestry…. However that does not mean client continues services or follows through.”
ms NOTES: MS. MALONE MAKES A GOOD POINT about the number of people who do not return to the Redwood Quality Management Company’s embraces. If they die by suicide or overdose, they’re not going to be back for service. If they moved out of the area, they won’t be back. If they are imprisoned for one reason or another, they won’t be back for some time. And some may simply have been unhappy with whatever the service was and didn’t come back. “Transitioning” “out of services” is hardly a measure of the value of the service.
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GREAT REDWOOD TRAIL advocates John Haschak and Maureen Mulheren (who sit on the Great Redwood Trail Agency board, appointed by the Supervisors) got more than they bargained for on Tuesday afternoon when what they thought would be a simple 15-minute update and status presentation of their grandiose plans turned out to be an opportunity for several locals to offer their mostly negative opinions of the trail so far. Commenters complaining about anticipated security, fire and personal safety, potential problems facing neighboring land owners and associated liability, operation and maintenance of services (trash, latrines, communications, access, policing bad behavior etc.) and associated costs. A common them from all of them was that it didn’t seem like the Trail People were listening to them and their “concerns.”
Supervisor Ted Williams at first didn’t think Mendo had anything to do with the trail because the state (i.e., State Senator Mike McGuire) is pushing it through. (Never mind that Mendo has two Supervisors on the Trail board and here they were sponsoring a presentation.) Later Williams noted that the meetings he’d attended so far seemed like the “outreach” was merely perfunctory and done just so a bureaucrat could check off a box saying that public input was taken. Williams then began to agree that the public complaints had merit and that the County should at least demand that the state pick up all costs that the County might incur if the trail ever happens because, as Williams repeats at every meeting now, the County is broke.
Ground floor Trail advocate Supervisor Maureen Mulheren deflected all comment saying she understood that there were potential problems, but it was too early for the County or the commenters to do anything because the Trail people are still gathering input and it will all be addressed when the Trail’s “master plan” is rolled out, section by section, maybe next year.
The Trail planners will then proceed to address the problems in whatever way that keeps the Trail planners employed for a couple more decades.
A couple of Ukiah officials said they’ve had very few problems with the small section of trail in Ukiah so far.
The critics were not mollified. Neither were we.
The upside is that the Trail is a pipe dream in most of the rural areas the Trail planners have in mind. They might get a few small segments built here and there, piecemeal, disconnected, and slowly like everything else these days, and in the face of uncooperative neighboring land owners. At present the few miles of Trail in Ukiah allows hikers to enjoy the narrow scenic corridor between the big metal buildings in the industrial area on the north side of town, all the way down along the tracks to Ukiah’s sewage treatment plant and back.
Accordingly, even the Ukiah official who said he supported the Trail admitted that the current trail isn’t the tourist draw the advocates claim it will be.
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Keeping Up With Supervisor Williams:
Williams: “At the June 20, 2023 Mendocino County Board of Supervisors meeting, direction proposed by Supervisor Williams and supported by the full board, revised mental health contracts such that Redwood Quality Management Company will no longer be paid to provide oversight of Redwood Community Services. Mendocino County Behavioral Health & Recovery Services will provide direct oversight. A competitive bidding process will open next year. Williams stressed and his colleagues seem to support structuring the RFPs to invite competition.”
This would be an improvement, theoretically, if it happens, which I doubt. It should have happened years ago. At this late date it is far from implementable. To de-privatize the ASO [Administrative Service Organization] functions now, all these years after CEO Angelo turned the function over to Schraeders, renewed year after year on a no-bid contract, Mendo will have to hire specialized administrators who will be hard to get, presumably people like the highly-paid admin staff now employed by Ms. Schraeder. If Mendo was serious about this they should have had a plan in place before bringing this function back in house. Otherwise they risk returning to the days when the state sent millions of dollars worth of audit-exception bills to the County (years after the fact) demanding the return of large amounts of service reimbursements. This is another example of an oversimplified theoretical proposal that may have merit in the abstract but has not been thought through. Has Dr. Miller submitted a plan on how this will happen and how and when it will work? PS. How’s that lawsuit against Ortner going? Does Mendo really expect to get any money out of that defunct outfit now? Or is it just costly posturing so that Mendo can approach the state with hat in hand asking that they not demand their money back?
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On Saturday we asked on line, “Why did Supervisor Williams help push through an ill-considered and rash consolidation of the Treasurer and Auditor’s offices, an historical separation of functions that provides an essential check on the County’s revenue generation and expense tracking?”
Williams replied: “The board has never forced consolidation of ‘offices.’ We combined two elected department heads, an effort that started in 2007 under a different board. One of these offices ran the pension plan for decades. Soon after I joined the county, I was informed one-third of pensions were in error, from 1979 through 2019. The other department had been unable to produce a balance sheet. I don’t see a history of checks on revenue generation and expense tracking. In fact, record keeping appears to be inline with the public’s jaded perception. Interestingly, the people closest to the money are screaming the loudest about eyes on the problem. ‘There’s nothing to see here, go away.’ We’ll see about that.
ms replies: We could debate Williams’ claim about the missing balance sheet, which wouldn’t be of much help as far as budget management goes anyway. What the Board needs and has never asked for is an effectively annotated department by department montly budget vs. actual report, prepared by the departments on a timely basis, compiled and presented by the CEO’s office each month. An after the fact balance sheet from the Auditor would be nice, but its main value is to verify what the departments have already reported, with an annual estimate of whatever fund-balance carryover there is for reserves/future budgeting.
As far as the office consolidation question goes, the record is quite clear:
December 14, 2021 Agenda Item 5h: “Discussion and Possible Adoption of Ordinance Repealing Mendocino County Code Section 2.16.041, Adding Section 2.16.070and Amending Chapter 2.36 for the Purpose of Consolidating the Offices of the Auditor-Controller and the Treasurer-Tax Collector
Ordinance Summary “This ordinance would repeal, add and amend specified sections of the Mendocino County Code to consolidate the offices of the Auditor-Controller and the Treasurer-Tax Collector into a single office, the Auditor-Controller-Treasurer-Tax Collector, which consolidation would be operative on January 2, 2023. The ordinance also applies updated office qualifications and continuing education requirements to the office of the auditor that are consistent with State law.”
From the Minutes:
Item 5h: “Board Action:Upon motion by Supervisor Williams, seconded by Supervisor McGourty, IT IS ORDERED that the Board of Supervisors adopts ordinance repealing Mendocino County Code Section 2.16.04, adding section 2.16.070 and amending Chapter 2.36 for the purpose of consolidating the Offices of the Auditor-Controller and the Treasurer-Tax Collector; and authorize Chair to sign same. The motion carried by the following vote: Aye: 4 - Supervisor McGourty, Supervisor Mulheren, Supervisor Gjerde and Supervisor Williams No: 1 - Supervisor Haschak.”
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