Last Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting was interrupted by a jerk or jerks calling in on-line via zoom several times to make intentionally disruptive racist remarks. The Board clerk quickly cut the zoomer(s) off, but the remarks had their intended shock effect. The practice is called “zoombombing.”
The Washington Post claims that zoombombing has decreased somewhat since 2020 when the pandemic and zooming ramped up. Nowadays there’s more in person meetings and less zooming, but it’s still going on and now it’s reached tiny Mendo’s Supervisors chambers. The Zoom developer claims to have tamped down Zoombombing partly by making its product more difficult for users (and for online harassers) to use. In San Francisco, it has become so bad that Supervisor Aaron Peskin has proposed banning zoom calls and returning exclusively to in-person meetings. Others say the problem can be dealt with by installing a few seconds of time delay to allow such callers to be dropped before the offensive remarks are aired.
Elected Department Heads Assessor Clerk Recorder Katrina Bartolomie and Sheriff Matt Kendall made public comments during public expression, First District Supervisor Candidate complained again that Department Heads shouldn’t have to give their reports during time-limited public expression. Supervisor Dan Gjerde, missed the point again, replying that Department heads can agendize their remarks whenever they like by putting an item on the agenda. But Shattuck was trying to tell the Board that they should agendize regular reports from Department Heads, and they could do that by simply putting a place holder on the agenda for “departmental reports.” Or if they were really serious, they could — gasp! — require monthly reports from the departments. The Board seems tone-deaf to such criticism, which leaves the public to think they have no interest in what their own department heads, elected or appointed, have to say.
Ms. Bartolomie’s report on the status of assessment catch-up was again incomplete and informal. She mostly mentioned the still-lingering reporting and software problems she’s having with the County’s new “Aumentum” software which apparently can’t prorate tax calculations to adjust for new assessments kicking in in the middle of a tax year, among other seemingly simple-to-fix glitches. Of course, they’re “working on it,” but they’ve been saying that for years. As Ms. Bartolomie reported two months ago, they’ve hired some new people and are slogging their way through the parcels. But a clear, organized written “report” on the status is nowhere in sight. And without it the Board and the public remain in the dark on the status of assessment catch-up and corrections.
The Sheriff said he was working on adopting a modified version of Fort Bragg’s Care Response Unit program for countywide application.
There was a long discussion of the Redwood Valley Municipal Advisory Board’s request to be given an opportunity to comment on permit applications in Redwood Valley. As it is, they don’t get any notice nor any formal invitation to comment in their area. But when Planning Director Julia Krog told the Board that running permits by the MAC would convert many permits from “ministerial” (use of a checklist to verify that basic requirements are met) to “discretionary” (subjective evaluation of each application), the Board balked at the time that might add to permit processing. In the end they directed the Planning Department to work with the MAC and develop some “guidelines” that can be applied with a checklist addendum so that ministerial permits remain ministerial.
Several times during the meeting Supervisor Ted Williams off-handedly mentioned that “the County is talking about Chapter 9 now.” Actually, Supervisor Williams is the only person talking about it, not “the County” which he grandly likes to equate himself with. Chapter 9 is part of the state’s bankruptcy code which could put the County under a court appointed “receiver,” and allow the County to postpone or renegotiate debts with vendors and suppliers. Unlike other bankruptcy chapters, Chapter 9 does not involve liquidation of assets. It wouldn’t directly affect county employees, but a receiver could impose staff cuts.
As the unagendized financial discussion rambled on, Supervisor Gjerde tried to explain where he got his $10 or $11 million deficit number for next year. Gjerde said that $7 million is the amount of one-time covid relief money they used to balance this year’s budget, plus he personally believes the County faces a $3 million-plus pension cost increase next year. (Gjerde is on the County’s pension board.) Those pension numbers have not been presented to the Supervisors or the public, however.
Williams correctly noted that the jail expansion cost which is already overrun by more than $10 million and has yet to break ground is likely to continue going up, adding that they haven’t budgeted for the staffing after it opens either. Supervisor Glenn McGourty said he’d spoken to state representatives about the dramatic increase in jail expansion costs, but that those discussions were “a blind alley.”
CEO Darcie Antle said that her “Golden Gate Bridge” departmental review process has identified about $5.5 million so far in potential savings for next year and that another $3 million might be possible. Antle has not said what those “savings” might be. One rumor floating around firefighting circles has it that the County might give the fire districts the money they promised from Measure P (but which is not legally binding), but then they might turn around and reduce other firefighting costs (such as Dispatch) and take that out of the Measure P money, thus producing a “savings” for the County, but not honoring their own resolution to give all the Measure P money to fire districts and the Fire Safe Council.
Gjerde repeated his purely hypothetical example that putting more “houses” on the tax rolls is not only unrealistic, but won’t bring in much new money anytime soon. But the Board still shows no interest, understanding or recognition of problem of unbilled taxes and underassessed structures and parcels which could indeed bring in substantial new revenue.
Supervisor Maureen Mulheren went out of her way to deny that the Board is considering Chapter 9. Supervisor John Haschak agreed, saying that it’s the Board’s job to avoid bankruptcy.
A Cassandra-like Williams insisted that the County’s finances are not showing any major signs of short-term improvement, asking rhetorically what they did to the messenger — i.e., him the blunt teller of great truths. (But who has yet to propose a single specific budget cut.)
The Board asked staff to put an item on an upcoming agenda to discuss the County’s finances. But since this Board has shown no sense of urgency, has a very limited understanding of their own budget, and since nobody objected to Gjerde’s observation that each $1 million savings translates to about ten layoffs, and if history is any guide, the finance discussion won’t be soon, won’t be very productive, and won’t include a discussion of true reserves, tax defaults and tax collection delays, the sale of under-used County properties, or office hour cut backs as were imposed by the hated former CEO Carmel Angelo back during the Great Recession.
Meanwhile, the County employees and their reps have backed off their strike threats and seem content to tread water as inflation erodes their real earnings.
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GOVERNOR GAVIN NEWSOM was on ‘60 Minutes’ last Sunday touting his new “CARE court” idea. The segment included lots of pictures and film of sad homeless tents lining city streets, implying that CARE courts will do something about that obvious problem.
The entire discussion reminded us of Mendo’s Measure B campaign years ago when the voters were told that if they gave tens of millions of additional sales tax dollars to the Mental Health people there would be a noticeable decrease in wandering nut cases on the streets.
Instead, none — zero — of those tens of millions have even gone to “treatment,” much less to the people the voters expected to be helped. Instead all the money has been soaked up by grossly overpriced facilities and the expensive consultants who designed them.
Under the CARE courts at the end of next year, California’s 58 counties will be required to set up new mental health court systems to “address the needs of people with severe mental illness who often languish on the streets.”
Under the state’s timeline, seven counties will have to establish their new courts by Oct. 1, 2023, followed by the remaining 51 counties by December 2024. The pilot counties are San Francisco, San Diego, Orange, Riverside, Stanislaus, Tuolumne and Glenn.
Theoretically, the CARE courts allow family, close friends, first responders and behavioral health workers to submit a petition to the court, signed under penalty of perjury, on behalf of a person with untreated “schizophrenia spectrum” or other “serious” psychotic disorders” that shows why they qualify for CARE Court.
But…
The only rural county on the October 1 deadline list, Glenn County, isn’t anywhere near being ready by October 1. Their webpage on CARE Court simply says, “Glenn County Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment (CARE) Court Program. A new civil court process designed to link individuals who have specific [sic] mental health diagnoses to county behavioral health services, under the oversight of a judge, for up to 24 consecutive months. Includes a clinically-indicated, individualized treatment plan, with supportive services and a dedicated team. Meant as a diversion process to prevent conservatorship or incarceration.” And, “CARE Court Is NOT criminal court; Does NOT include persons with any/all mental health conditions; and is NOT a solution for homelessness.”
A recent CalMatters report on the subject was entitled: “Families have high hopes for Gavin Newsom’s CARE Courts. Providers want to lower expectations.”
Will people who need it get help? “Unless that loved one has a medical diagnosis specific to schizophrenia or some other serious psychotic disorders, the answer was probably not.”
“In reality,” the Director of San Diego’s Behavioral Health Services said, “it’s actually going to be a pretty small program. It’s not going to be this thing that dramatically changes homelessness.”
But it will pump another big pile of cash to the mental health/government bureaucrat industrial complex.
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