Supes Cave: Vets Office To Return To Observatory

Several dozen local veterans packed last Tuesday morning’s Supervisors meeting again to demand fair treatment.

Supervisor John Haschak tried to cool down the frustrated vets by telling them that he was going to host a meeting at the universally derided Veterans Service Office location on Dora Street on March 14 at 1pm. “Everyone’s invited,” chirped Haschak, “to see the progress that’s been made.”

Haschak didn’t describe the nature of the progress. One vet suggested that the progress was “lipstick on a pig.”

Supervisor Ted Williams said he was still waiting for the “original information the behind decision” to move the Vets office from the welcoming house on Observatory Avenue to the inhospitable offices at the Public/Behavioral Health building on Dora Street. “I side with the veterans,” said Williams. “I need to see the actual documents. I am perplexed as to why I haven’t seen them.”

Supervisor Maureen ‘Mo’ Mulheren said that she was working on upcoming agenda item, admitting, “Some decisions were done rather quickly because of the Air Quality lease.” Mulheren said it would be “appropriate to bring all the information back to the Board and provide it to the public.”

The vets weren’t having it. A parade of vets and their supporters came to the podium to demand that the Vets office simply be put back where it was and that the Air Quality office be moved to the Dora Street offices, or some other equally suitable place.

The main themes the Vets speakers touched on were: We are not going away. You’re numbers don’t add up. There’s no justification for the move. There are better options for Air Quality. Why is this so complicated? You do not respect veterans… All the veteran speakers got nice rounds of applause from the crowd of attendees.

The highlight of vets presentation was, again, clearly the exasperated Vietnam Vet Don Shanley of Philo: 

“I have addressed this board and the CEO before. I am a 50 year-plus resident of Mendocino County. I am also a combat wounded infantry Marine veteran of the Vietnam War. Thank you again for the opportunity to address your unfortunate decision to move the Veterans Service Office to Dora Street from their Observatory location where they had been for 15 years. I first addressed this board back in January. Now 49 days have passed and after numerous requests to staff and this Board, I have received no cost analysis data presented to the CEO and this board prior to the relocation decision. In fact, I was informed that there never has been a cost analysis. Now, here we are today, after being told by Chair Mo [Mulheren] that further discussion could not be on the February 27 agenda because she needed more time, more time to assemble information. She told me in a meeting on February 7 that she would get the relocation agenda item on the March 26 Board agenda. But then changed that to maybe it will have to wait until sometime in April. Burying this agenda item deep in layers of bureaucratic language and attachments, budget deficits, turnarounds, real estate consolidations and potential savings of $100,000, better access, employee safety… Oh please! Burying this agenda item with no timely explanation to the veteran community or County constituents was an ambush. An ambush to add further injury to the veterans' January eviction. An ambush disguised as a unilateral executive decision, hoping no one would notice until after the dozing-off aboard voted to approve this sneaky, deceitful deficit plan in total. The casualties are our veterans and their care and benefits. I simply don't understand why the CEO and this board are so stuck. They all admit they made a mistake. But now they want to stand on a decision with flimsy -- flimsy! -- non sequiturs, still with no understanding or empathy for the veterans. Zero understanding that the Observatory office is the critical tool for the success of the veterans services. No amount of square footage, wall posters, hanging plants, mood tea and macramé are going to transform this spiritless dead zone of the halls of Behavioral Health. The veterans of Mendocino County have paid their dues. They should not suffer the consequences of county fiscal malfeasance. Move VSO back to Observatory and Air Quality to Dora Street. End this senseless war on veterans. Act like caring adults, not children caught with their hands in the cookie jar. As my night patrol pointman, Corporal Howling Longshank would whisper, ‘Hey. Hey. I smell something funny, Lieutenant. Something's not right. And it smells’.”

After the vets remarks Supervisor Williams again asked for the info that had been used to make the relocation decision. He also claimed that the County was working on “hundreds of cost-cutting measures” (few of which have been disclosed and most of those are just versions of “we’re still working on it”) of which the VSO relocation was one. Williams asked, “Is there a compelling reason? This is just creating a fight that does not exist.”

Mulheren called on CEO Darcy Antle who replied, “Yes, we can bring it back later this afternoon under item 4c” (the Deficit Plan item).

Supervisor McGourty suggested that County veterans office staff “should meet with vets on their own turf. We should consider the option of sending them out to their own place.”

One of the VSO reps pointed out that they used to do that but now, because of low staffing, they can no longer do it while still staffing the offices in Ukiah and Fort Bragg.

Hours of closed session later when the “Deficit Plan” agenda item finally arose, which included the proposed ratification of the VSO office move to Dora Street, Board Chair Mulheren immediately asked her colleagues if they agreed to simply move the VSO back to Observatory where they had been and where the vets had demanded. After some perfunctory “they meant well” style remarks about the staff’s botching of the move, it was unanimous. 

The remaining veterans in the audience applauded.

Mulheren then suggested that staff would begin arranging for the VSO to return to their Observatory location at some as yet unspecified date.

It was clear that there never really had been any justification for the move and CEO Antle was unable to provide the rationale she had promised earlier in the meeting. Staff had nothing to offer to defend the move. So there was nothing left to do but rescind the move and find some other, as yet unspecified, space for the Air Quality department.

At one point, Supervisor Haschak, the leading advocate for trying to make a few pathetic cosmetic improvements to the obviously bad idea, seemed like he just woke up after a deep sleep. “If the veterans want to stay in Observatory then they should,” said Haschak as if he was only now hearing the complaints. “We’ve spent lots of staff time for these moves. But if the vets don’t like it, then I’m all for giving them what would best serve their needs.”

He could have said that two months ago.

Two months of unnecessary thrashing around and hard feelings, only to return to where they started. 

The only people who deserve any applause in this fiasco are the veterans themselves. 

Laura Quatrochi of Philo returned to the podium after the Board’s reversal of the Office relocation to ask for some “calendar” information.

CEO Darcy Antle replied: “My estimate would be at least a couple of months and I will report on progress in the CEO report.” Antle who, like her predecessor Carmel Angelo, never commits to any dates for fear that someone — the horror! the horror! — might ask why a target date was missed. Antle told Quatrochi she would “hate to commit to a timeline” because they have to find a new place for the Air Quality Department. 

Quatrochi persisted, asking at least for a target date.

Board Chair Maureen Mulheren jumped in saying, “We need to have the CEO and staff work on it,” adding, “Maybe at the March 12 meeting we can do an update.”

The veterans better prepare for a very long delay. Whenever the CEO or the Board uses phrases like “at least a couple of months,” or “maybe,” you know they’re in no hurry. Now, having finally backed away from the obviously dumb VSO move, they hope the vets will go away simply on the Board’s claim that they already went so far out of their way to give the vets back what they wanted so the vets should leave them alone for a while, a long while. The next thing you know the County Counsel’s office will need to be consulted on the Air Quality re-move, or the phone system will need to be retooled, or gosh while we’re at it, let’s paint the building, or… and dates will get pushed back further and further. The vets should hold their applause and their expressions of gratitude until they are back in the Observatory house and open for business — and not before then.

* * *

Supervisor Glenn McGourty revealed his true allegiance again on Tuesday, showing once more that he has a glaring conflict of interest since he grows grapes using Russian River water that, as a Supervisor and Water Agency official, he has influence over. This time McGourty was commenting irrelevantly on plans to fix a roof problem at the County Ag building. “What we have to remember,” blurted McGourty, “is the Ag Community is the largest tax base in the County, so we [our emphasis] pay a lot of taxes so it’s nice to get something in return for our [our emphasis] money and not have to be paying for everything all the time. And I know that is a feeling of a lot of my fellow agricultural people.” [our emphasis]

“Our money.” Right. McGourty is first and foremost a grape grower, and only a County official as an afterthought. Here he refers to himself and his poor suffering fellow grape growers who make hundreds of millions of dollars selling expensive bottles of wine using minimum wage seasonal Mexican workers to do most of the work with nearly free water for irrigation and frost protection and no pesticide regulation to speak of… But ask them to pay for something that they personally benefit from? Oh boy, the put-upon “ag community,” including the well-paid McGourty who double dips as a grape grower and a top dollar county employee, puts on their hair shirts and whines that they don’t get much in return for their taxes besides their millions and millions of dollars in government subsidized profits.

* * *

In more irrelevant county news, CEO Antle read a weather report to her Board near the end of Tuesday’s meeting. 

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The Ambulance JPA: Just Pay Attorneys

The following $250k agenda item was approved along with dozens of other alleged “routine” items on Tuesday’s Supervisors consent calendar without any discussion:

“3o) Approval of Legal Services Agreement with Hooper, Lundy & Bookman, P.C. in the Amount of $250,000 for Legal Services Regarding Regulatory Issues Related to Negotiation of the Potential Formation of a Joint Powers Authority with Fire Districts to Expand Ambulance Coverage in Remote Areas Effective Upon Full Execution through June 30, 2024.”

Hooper, Lundy & Bookman is a top flight, very expensive national law firm specializing in “health law from every angle” with offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Boston, Denver and Washington DC.

This dubious “Joint Powers Authority” idea has been drifting around County offices for years. In theory it could (emphasis on “could,” nobody really knows) improve billing and revenues for ambulance services and thus, even more unlikely, “expand ambulance coverage.” Nobody has provided any evidence that it will ever do either of those things. Now all of a sudden they are throwing $250,000 at a fancy law firm for open-ended “legal services” associated with this cockamamie idea. 

We looked deeper into the item to see where the $250k is coming from, and found this: “Source of funding: 4016-862189.” 

No further information was provided in the consent calendar item; just this cryptic account number. So we looked at the County’s current budget book and found that Budget Unit 4016 is “Emergency Medical Services (EMS)” which is budgeted at about $1.4 million. 

“Funding for support of fire agencies is budgeted in separate locations,” the budget book opens unhelpfully. “The direct fire agency support payments from [the] Proposition 172 fund are budgeted in BU 1940 - Miscellaneous, while the Fire and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) dispatch contract is budgeted in BU 4016- Emergency Medical Services. The costs of this [emergency dispatch] contract [with CalFire in Willits] are covered with EMS provider payments and General Fund dollars (including a specific allocation of property tax that comes from the former County Service Area, CSA #3). Both the previous Proposition 172 budgeting practice and revised process due to the fire agencies support shift [whatever that is – ms], is further described through the chart and tables on the following page.” 

But of course that “following page” does not mention how the $1.4 million was arrived at, where it comes from, nor the potential JPA. 

On its face, given the grotesque enormity of this off-hand disbursement to outside lawyers with no clear objective, this looks like a blatant, ill-considered waste of $250k. At least it should have been discussed and approved separately by the Board with an eye toward where the money is coming from and what is going to be reduced elsewhere to pay for these “legal services.”

Budget Line Item 862189 is listed as a generic “Professional & Spec Services” sub-account but there’s no separate budget line for “Professional & Spec Services,” within the EMS budget as implied by the “source of funding.”

On page 58 of the budget book there’s a passing reference to the use of the (already over-allocated) PG&E settlement funds for several things including “JPA assessment & implementation.” However, there’s no budgetary estimate of the cost of the “assessment & implementation.”

We can think of several better ways to spend $250k on Mendo’s cash strapped local ambulance services besides vague legal services for yet another dubious Joint Powers Authority. For example, the County could just hand over the $250k to the three ambulance services operating in the unincorporated area of the County (Covelo, Laytonville and Anderson Valley), aka the County Service Area #3. $250k may not be much in the eyes of Hooper, Lundy & Bookman, P.C., but just a third of it, about $83k each, would cover the total operating expenses for our small, rural, mostly volunteer ambulance providers for a year.

This is only the beginning, the so-called “assessment and implementation” of the “potential” formation of the JPA, the camel’s nose in the tent. Once the County takes this first giant step into the JPA quicksand it will be hard to stop throwing more money at it once it gets going, taking years and years of pointless analysis and meetings. 

The Mendocino County Supervisors, proclaiming time and again how broke they are, scrounging around for every penny of extra revenue and expense reduction, blithely approved this giant waste of money without the slightest hesitation, consideration or discussion.