Off the Record (March 24, 2024)

NO SIGNIFICANT PERCENTAGE CHANGES with the County Election Team’s latest update.

Mulheren’s small percentage lead over Ukiah challenger Jacob Brown in the Second District Supervisors Race increased to 52-48%. Mulheren has 1,287 to Brown’s 1,191 with about a thousand votes yet to count in that District.

Madeline Cline still has a significant lead in the First District and looks likely to win the seat without a run-off. 

THE SHIELDS REPORT

Hi Everybody,

Nothing worse than somebody talking about their health, so I'm going to keep this short.

It's going to be a while before I'm back to old routines and work. Fortunately, I'm a life-long physical fitness addict. My dad was a P.E. teacher, coach, and history teacher, so we were taught at early ages about the body being the temple of the soul and all that. That's the reason I'm alive right now. I was in remarkable physical condition, even the medical people commented on it. But it's going to take a while for the doctors to continue working on me which sometimes calls for hospitalization.

Anyway, at some point I'll be fixed. But until then I can't do much, it's even difficult handling emails. So please be patient, I will respond to everybody who has sent emails, texts, cards, voicemails, etc. Your words and thoughts of encouragement truly are helping me progress towards recovery.

Once again, I want to thank all my water district co-workers (Tracey, Steve, Jay, Kary, Board members) for stepping up and doing all you're doing, it's so appreciated. And of course, my family (Jayma, Rolo, Jimmy, Maria, John, Nasrin; along with my extended family here in Mendocino County, and all the fans I've heard from everywhere.) It's all unbelievable. Thank You. You're the best.

Jim Shields, Mendocino Observer, Laytonville

HEALTH FOOD

I find a sprout

in my

Margarita

— Don Shanley

* * *

HYDRATION

I find an ice cube

in my

Maker’s Mark

— Mark Scaramella

SOME PEOPLE IN UKIAH think that the Palace Hotel should just be demolished and get it over with, even if it means trying to get the state to pay for it under dubious circumstances and capitulating to the owner’s shady tactics. Ukiah had what everybody said was a workable proposal from Ms. Minal Shankar which would have salvaged whatever could be salvaged from the dilapidated structure — without any taxpayer money. If Mr. Ishwar’s idea (basically demolition by neglect) is pursued all that Ukiah would be left with is a vacant lot (at best). If anyone thinks that some “new business” will magically emerge at the vacant lot, they haven’t looked at the Ukiah downtown commercial real estate market lately. We’re not sure of the finances, of course, but it seems like Mr. Ishwar is banking on having the state pay the demolition cost (through a fishy Guidiville Native American backdoor deal that misrepresents the possible “pollution” under the old hotel as described in detail by our ace reporter Mike Geniella) and then try to make is “investment” back by selling the vacant downtown lot, and then leaving it like that. If Ms. Shankar’s proposal and offer had been taken, Ukiah had a chance of reviving the downtown area, especially since the Courthouse next door will probably be vacated in favor of the new Courthouse over by the tracks. (Another fiasco, but one which AVA readers are probably already familiar with.) It may sound impractical now, but the City should have bought the property out of receivership itself years ago and then they would have had direct control over what happened to that primo piece of downtown real estate, and made a few bucks on it in the bargain by selling it to someone like Ms. Shankar. But that kind of thinking is beyond the “planners” in Ukiah these days.

(Mark Scaramella)

ALTHOUGH SUPERVISOR WILLIAMS told listeners on KZYX Wednesday morning that the Measure P fire services sales tax increment money is “flowing” to fire districts, it still hadn’t flowed over to the Anderson Valley Fire Department as of Wednesday afternoon. Williams implied that the blockage was the districts themselves who Williams said had been pressing the County for some kind of umbrella contract for distribution of Proposition 172, campground Transient Occupancy, and Measure P taxes. (Certainly, no one in Anderson Valley pressed the County for it.) Then he pivoted and said it maybe had to do with former Auditor-Controller Chamise Cubbison (his catch-all scapegoat). AV Fire Chief Andres Avila said he thought the holdup was at the County Counsel’s office which was taking forever to “review” the Evergreen arrangement before the Supervisors finally gave up on it and reverted back to individual contracts for each funding source. The latest preposterous wrinkle is that the County is now requiring a separate “contract” in advance with each fire district for each quarter’s worth of sales tax distribution, and that apparently stems from the County Counsel’s office as well. The tax kicked in on January 1, 2023 and has been accumulating at least a million dollars a quarter ever since, about $43k per quarter of which is supposed to have been sent to the Anderson Valley Fire Department last summer at the latest. So now the AVFD is already due at least $250k just for its share of the revenue so far. The other 19 or 20 Fire Districts are also being shorted for comparable amounts. Now that two of the individual fiscal quarter-sized contracts are finally approved for the AVFD, the money is supposed to be “flowing” soon. This ridiculous blockage may constitute “flowing” to Supervisor Williams. But the County’s far-flung small, underfunded fire and emergency services departments are still in a drought.

(Mark Scaramella)

CARRIE SHATTUCK:

Executive Raises: Before Tuesday’s meeting I contacted three Supervisors, Mulheren, Williams and Haschak expressing my disbelief about these raises being on the Agenda. Seriously, we can’t balance our budget but are going to give raises to some of the highest paid in the County? These two agenda items were subsequently pulled/withdrawn at the beginning of the meeting. Also, take note that on the same agenda the In home Support Services workers are still fighting (for over a year now) to get $20 per hour, which they didn’t get. What a slap in the face. I’m certain these raises for the CEO/Elected will be back before the budget hearings in June. I suggest our Supervisors get some training on how to balance a budget.

BYE, BYE BIG BOXES

Banana Republic and its parent company, Gap, said about 350 stores would close in 2023 and that it would end the year with about 866 stores.

Foot Locker said it would shutter 545 stores nationwide, including 125 of its Champs Sports locations by 2026, as part of a “reset” that includes opening about 300 “new concept” stores, according to Business Insider.

The discount home goods retailer Tuesday Morning Corp. filed for bankruptcy in February and announced it would close 31 of its 37 California stores in February.

In the Feb. 14 bankruptcy filing, Chief Executive Andrew Berger cited “exceedingly burdensome debt.” In a statement, Tuesday Morning said it had secured a $51.5 million debtor-in-possession commitment from Invictus Global Management to support operations during the bankruptcy proceedings.

Home goods and design retailer Z Gallerie offered store-closing sales in October following its parent company, DirectBuy Home Improvement, Inc., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Z Gallerie had a total of five stores in California including Sherman Oaks, Costa Mesa, Encinitas, Corona and Roseville near Sacramento.

A last-ditch effort to save Buy Buy Baby fell apart, and the company announced it would close all its stores in California and across the U.S. as part of its bankrupt parent company’s ongoing liquidation.

CNBC reported that the owner of children’s apparel company Janie and Jack was “eager” to buy the Bed Bath & Beyond chain and keep it running, but could not reach a deal on its value.

The 15 remaining stores in California were scheduled to close as of July, according to the retailer.

Weight loss and management business Jenny Craig announced it would close its doors in May “due to its inability to secure additional funding,” according to internal documents obtained by NBC News.

Jenny Craig had roughly 500 company-owned and franchised locations across the country, including 68 locations in California.

Party City filed for bankruptcy at the beginning of 2023, prompting the go-to party goods retailer to close almost 40 stores nationwide. California is home to the largest number of Party City store locations in the country, and four of its 108 stores in the state are closing.

Downey: 7171 Firestone Blvd.

Lodi: Southwest Plaza, 2350 W. Kettleman Lane

Marina: The Dune on Monterey Bay, 125 General Stillwell Drive

Palmdale: Amargosa Commons, 39451 10 St. W.

“As we take this important step to put our business on stronger financial footing for the future, we are as committed as ever to inspiring joy by making it easy for our customers to create unforgettable memories,” Party City CEO Brad Weston said.

ED NOTE: Not to beat a dead horse, but remember Jimbo wrote about the demise of the big boxes and shopping malls in general back in the early 90’s in “Geography of Nowhere.” Now, more than 30 years later, many suburban shopping malls look like glorified indoor flea markets. The big box/shopping mall as a business model is rapidly dying.

JACOB BROWN (on Supervisor Maureen Mulheren’s meeting on improving communications with veterans):

“The meeting went well. It sounds like they have found a building for AQMD that they are interested in (not a county owned building, so it must be leased). There were many issues discussed but the primary issue was how to get the veterans plugged into the County Veteran Service Office and how to best communicate, coordinate and inform this population in the future. It is something we, as veterans, need to take point on. Hopefully more to come in the near future.”

FOR YOUR FRIENDLY FASCISM files: What's with these extorted introductions at public meetings? You know, “First, if everyone will introduce him or herself beginning with you, Mr. Anderson, you negative son of a bitch, and why the hell are you here anyway?” Then, for the next 20 minutes or so everyone present is compelled to somehow identify themselves. And there's always at least one major chronophage who stupefies everyone in the room with a total bio: “And after I won MVP in the South Valley Little League, I started junior high school in Willits because my dad liked the NA meetings up there better…” There seems to be a floating cadre of professional Mendo meeting-goers who are so boring their only opportunity for a social life are the no-exit venues provided by the county's multitudinous public agencies. The Mendo meeting people live for intro time.

I THINK these mandatory introductions are a management tool to cool out dissent. Requiring these slow rounds of verbal kissy face at meetings whose true purpose is the divvying up of public money makes it just that much harder for the occasional skeptic to lob the necessary turd into the happy face's punch bowl. “Oh, gawd. I can't believe that man said that to all of us Nice People gathered here to do good.” That's the prevailing vibe. And seeing as how more and more of the public's business is conducted during work hours out of view of the public by people paid to be present, the mandatory intros are doubly offensive.

WAFTING IN from cyberspace is this perennially apt question: “Why is it that teachers get Cesar Chavez Day off but farmworkers don't?”

PRIOR TO WW II, people in official places seemed generally aware that the Founding Fathers had taken specific constitutional steps to keep the many varieties of the American Taliban out of government, recognizing that if our Taliban weren't kept on a short political leash, we'd suffer no end of Old World trouble. At the time of the American Revolution the country already had an ominous array of fanatic sects that our aristocratic organizers knew had to be kept religiously (sic) in check, if for no other reason than to protect the hegemony of rich white boys like themselves who had arranged things so only they would run the show. The FF's also knew that if the more primitive types got their onanistic hands on government, it would be that much harder to get a drink and spend evenings out with the babes. The nuts could worship however they wished, the thinking went, so long as they didn't try to force the rest of us to believe that the Angel Moroni had buried golden tablets with the key to the hereafter out in the woods near Wazoo, Illinois and kindred implausibilities. The FF's were smart guys, and their ideas on religion were prescient, weren't they? What's odd about today's influence of the American Taliban is that only a minority of Americans attend church, and an even smaller minority attend regularly. Not that church attendance necessarily correlates with belief systems, and majority of us are still too intimidated by the jihad lobby to admit we think the very notion of a sky god is a lot of bushwah, but very few people will take the Taliban on. 

NOT THAT AMERICA has ever been particularly tolerant of different-ness; I'd say lock-step thinking of all kinds has never been more prevalent than it is now, especially among so-called liberals, the people who once could be counted upon to take up the pivotal beefs of the type we once heard about in Rohnert Park City Council chambers when they wanted to put up a sign about how they loved the Lord. Look around. Are you telling me that there's more of a commitment to freedom from superstition and freedom for all points of view among, say, KZYX employees and supporters, than there is among the Rohnert Park City Council? The Taliban rules everywhere these days, left, right and center.

SHALL THE CIRCLE be unbroken! We ran this filler a few years ago: “A long time ago, I learned that if I don't take a drink before breakfast I can eat only one pancake. If I take a drink, I can eat two pancakes, and I got a feeling this is gonna be a two-pancake day.” That was Bill Hustead, a long-gone cattle rancher in the Badlands of South Dakota, who said that, and lots of other quotable things as well. It turns out that Bill Hustead, Jean Duvigneaud tells me, was Jean's great uncle, about whom Jean wrote so engagingly in the AVA years ago just before the old boy's famous two-pancake-day remark appeared in the same publication.

LAZARUS (Willits): The Measure B funds will likely not end well. I’m sure the Sheriff will get his share and more as the protocols play out. More will be needed for the jail, and Measure B will be the piggybank.

However, the PHF, I feel, will never be built. The County is masterful at not meeting deadlines. This 9mil grant has a drop dead date attached.

The smart money says the County will, for whatever reason, not make that deadline. And will blame anyone, likely an expendable staffer, who is left standing around when the shit flies.

Call me cynical? You bet!

* * *

MAZIE MALONE:

Well, who needs a PHF when the jail is the main housing facility for all the homeless mentally ill addicted folks? ….The PHF is only a brief encounter to subdue and possibly stabilize folks. And let me tell you it does not provide what is necessary, that is how the system works. Take the money, talk crap, pretend we are addressing the issues because we build stuff with your tax dollars and our grand bullshit plan.

Upholding the status quo is going to crush us!

* * *

SUPERVISOR WILLIAMS:

To: Mark Scaramella,

“Yet neither the Supervisors nor the Measure B committee have asked the Sheriff for a staffing plan or budget forecast for the new wing of the jail.…”

I’ve mentioned it several times. Once the wing is complete, it’ll require staffing at a significant cost. Of greater concern, once the wing is complete, the jail will likely be out of compliance.

The county has more mandates than dollars. Fix the revenue crisis, pay off the underfunded pensions, optimize everything else, and the county will still be short. The state has architected a system that works for urban counties. There’s nothing in the design that ensures no-growth rural counties can sustain. We can replace management, replace elected representatives, but the basic math problem will persist. The structure is nonviable. Rural counties like Mendocino fix one problem by creating another.

MARK SCARAMELLA REPLIES: Williams is probably right about fixing one problem to solve another. But that shouldn’t keep him and his colleagues from asking for a staffing and finance plan for the new wing at the jail, a plan to repay Measure B, and a plan for staffing the PHF if and when it is built.

* * *

ADAM GASKA: The County needs to hire a construction project manager to get their building projects built on time especially considering the director of General Services was fired. As time goes on, the cost keeps going up.

MARK SCARAMELLA REPLIES: The County has construction management built into the budget for Jail and the PHF. Its name is “Nacht & Lewis.” If the Board wanted to, they could re-allocate that money to an competent local construction manager. If Gaska is referring to a construction administrator in the General Services office, we doubt that would do anything to help the County “get their building projects built on time.”

JUST A THOUGHT. The Hatch Act makes it illegal for government employees to work for candidates. So what about the CEO's staffer’s advocacy for Cline?

AT THE REDWOOD VALLEY MUNICIPAL ADVISORY COUNCIL MEETING on Wednesday, March 13, 2024:

Sheriff Matt Kendall addressed the recent fentanyl overdose at the County Jail, saying this is a picture of what is going on all over California with regard to fentanyl. This smuggled fentanyl is different from prescription fentanyl. A body scanner is used at the jail to check for contraband, but the amount of fentanyl needed to get high is so tiny that it gets past the scanner. The Sheriff’s Department has obtained a drug detection dog for the jail, and hopefully, the dog can be better at detecting fentanyl than the body scanner. …

. . .

There is a signature-gathering effort for a ballot initiative to increase sentencing for shoplifting, street crimes, and fentanyl sales. Kendall said, “If breaking a law is punishable by a fine, that means that it’s legal for a price.” 

(Monica Huettl, MendoFever.com)

STEPHEN ELLIOTT: About 15 years ago my wife and I cleaned out the lonely little Brooklyn apartment of her late uncle. Charlie was a nice guy, smart, a little eccentric, who had had a career in the lower ends of the typewriter repair, jewelry, and tchotchke trades.

Among his books was a nice old Modern Library hardcover of The Wandering Jew (1844) by Eugene Sue (1804-1857). Last year I read this giant, 1357 small print pages, and it bowled me over. A wild tale, centered in Paris, but with stops far and wide, including Java, India, Siberia, Eastern Europe, and even in America's Rocky Mountains. Animals have a big role, including horse named Jovial, a dog named Spoil-sport, and a black panther named Death.

The wandering Jew himself was a humble cobbler who told Christ, bearing the cross and seeking a moment's rest on the bench outside his shop, “Move on!” A mistake! Not a bad guy, the cobbler, probably just having a bad day, but because of this remark, he was condemned to wander the globe indefinitely and was still wandering in 1832, when the story comes to a climax. The wandering Jew is more a presiding spirit than a major player in the plot. Before he was a writer, Eugene Sue had been a physician in the French navy and he has an old salt's common sense, humanity, humor, eye for detail, and flair for storytelling. He sets forth a nice socialist vision and tosses in a great love story and plenty of kick-ass action. While the book is long, the chapters are short and manageable. Write down names and places on the back of an envelope. The story will grab you!

My edition, oddly, didn't name the translator from the French, but some research and a couple of tells suggest that it was James Fenimore Cooper, of all people. It's a colorful and skilled translation! Fun fact: Eugene V. Debs, most appropriately, was named after Eugene Sue — and the V. in Debs' name is for Victor Hugo, another old left comrade.

PS. In the January 17, 2024 AVA Bruce Anderson described the tattoos on Mike Tyson's muscular arms as depicting Mao and Malcolm X. No, Mao is correct, but the other tattoo is of Arthur Ashe, a much wittier and more original pairing.

H.G. WELLS, author of the famous science fiction story “War of the Worlds,” was a committed socialist who wrote the story with a political purpose. Wells intended his tale of the earthlings’ encounter with technologically advanced aliens as an allegory. His frightened British commoners (New Jerseyites in Orson Welles’s radio adaptation; Americans in the more recent Tom Cruise version) were analogous to the “primitive” peoples of the Canary Islands or the Americas, and his terrifying aliens represented the technologically advanced imperialism of the Europeans. As we identify with the helpless earthlings, Wells wanted us also to sympathize with the natives in Haiti in 1493, or in Australia in 1788, or maybe even in the upper Amazon jungle in the 1990s. Several historians have written about this. We particularly liked an article by Phillip Klass in the a New York Times Book Review piece in 1988. Ironically, in Wells’s story, the aliens are finally done in by microbes, while in reality, disease wiped out the Natives. Wells was probably hoping things would have turned out different during colonialization and the invaders would have suffered from New World diseases. But who’s going to be that picky? 

— ms

ON-LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] It’s really amazing that no matter how many times the phrase “All that decriminalizing them will do will be to free up police, Court, and jail resources to deal with actual criminals” is used to push for loosening drug bans and yet those people never seem to notice there is never any less “serious crime” nor are the courts “freed up”. You know what actually makes for less “serious crime” in reality? Locking up repeat offenders and having an aged population.

[2] I’d spend some time finding supporting data to show that but it’s clear that will not, like presenting data to anti-vaxxers, keep them from repeating their preferred scenarios. People who screw up their lives, or provide the means for others to screw up theirs, say such crap because they want what they want. About ten years from now, a lot of research is going to show the harm to health smoking pot does. Then ten years after that, it’s going to show the harm that ingesting it does. Because it, like tobacco use doesn’t have the same effect on everyone, it takes data collection on a large scale to show clearly any non-catastrophic harm. And, just like tobacco use, those addicted to it will just keep dismissing any negatives.

[3] Remember, you are part of the Universe, and the Universe is a part of you. Get to a dark sky site, see the majesty of the heavens. Get to the forest, get back to nature as much as you can. There is much more to this world than the corruption of politics.

It’s not all gone. Beauty and good still abound. Seek it out, shouldn’t be hard to find,

[4] The majority of Americans alive today were born after 1980, so the whole “There aren’t enough to support the elderly” line is clearly bullshit. More importantly, the majority of Americans never lived in a better country. I remember my dad saying in the late 80s, “This is getting to be a mean, mean country.” He was brought up in a different time, when people cared about each other, and thought it was an outrage for citizens to go unemployed, hungry or homeless.

Those days are long gone.

[5] Remember, you are part of the Universe, and the Universe is a part of you. Get to a dark sky site, see the majesty of the heavens. Get to the forest, get back to nature as much as you can. There is much more to this world than the corruption of politics.

It’s not all gone. Beauty and good still abound. Seek it out, shouldn’t be hard to find.

[6] Well, I don’t know what you think collapse looks like, but the sky has been falling for quite some time now. A new half ton pick-up truck now costs a minimum of 40K. Please go tell a working man that’s fine, just hunky dory. Then tell him his rent, electricity, food, medical costs, paying tons more for EVERYTHING, is just fine too. Not to mention the crazy, diseased social ills all around us. The process of collapse is here, and we’re living it RIGHT NOW. The big black swans may be just around the corner, maybe that’s what you’re waiting for. Me, I’m just grateful it’s not MAD MAX yet…

[7] Trust is the basis of every human relationship, it is step one of every relationship development.

It is simple too, when you say you are going to do something to or with someone, you move heaven and earth to fulfill your commitment. Ultimate trust is when you care more for someone else than yourself, one of Jesus’ prime messages.

So little of this is in evidence today, everything is ME-ME-ME.