According to Monica Huettl’s Latest report on the Redwood Valley Municipal Advisory Committee meeting at MendoFever.com, First District Supervisor Glenn McGourty said “he is busy despite the fact that the BOS does not meet in August.”
Busy how?
“McGourty has been working on a proposed noise ordinance.”
A noise ordinance! In other words, there isn’t one.
Back in 2014 when the local wine industry’s infernally loud all night wind machines first cranked up keeping most of the Valley awake through the entire night, lots of people thought the County had a noise ordinance, digging through the County code for the word “decibel” and so forth.
They found what appeared to a noise ordinance with rather strict decibel limits for various zoning categories.
It turns out, as we discovered during our lawsuit, that was just a “zoning rule,” which only applies to proposed projects, and barely if then, in the unlikely event that the Planning Department or a very scrupulous neighbor brings it up.
According to Huettl’s report, McGourty said there were “close to 500 noise complaints to the Sheriff’s Department and Code Enforcement in the past month. Complaints ranged from loud parties, to roosters crowing, to barking dogs.”
500 in a month?! Was that Countywide or just in McGourty’s district?
What happened to those complaints? Apparently nothing, or McGourty wouldn’t be talking about a noise ordinance. And that doesn’t include all the noise nuisances that were not reported, probably more than the ones that were reported.
What about disturbing the peace? Again, as we discovered during our wind fan lawsuit, cops will only cite people for disturbing the peace if they think “malice” is involved. Loud parties, roosters, and dogs barking are usually not intentionally malicious. Nor are wind fans. Although persistent identifiable nuisances can sometimes rise to Disturbing the Peace levels.
McGourty claimed, “We will go through the pathway of administrative citations. An appeal officer will be appointed. We are committed to making the district a good place to live.”
An appeal officer? Meaning what? That when the complaint is ignored the complainer will have an opportunity to “appeal”? Oh, yes, that’s very workable for roosters and barking dogs.
Apparently McGourty thinks that a noise ordinance might only apply to his District. A misconception, of course. Any such ordinance would have to be County-wide.
Would the ordinance cover wind fans? Hah! McGourty is the wine industry’s rep on the Board of Supervisors and he wouldn’t do anything to disturb their peace.
During our 2014 lawsuit then-County Counsel Doug Losak argued, highly speciously, that because wind fans had been used in the 50s for pear growing in the Ukiah Valley, they were thus “grandfathered in” as an allowable ag nuisance. Never mind that the wind fans in question in Anderson Valley were newly installed and were far from Ukiah and far from an exempt existing ag practice. It would have cost us thousands of dollars more to even try to argue this point in court — with a dubious result at best given Judge Henderson’s obvious wine-friendly proclivities.
McGourty said he expects the noise reduction hours will be 10 PM to 7 AM, the hours that the wind fans are at their peak sleep-destroying nuisance value.
McGourty said he’s been working with the Sheriff, Code Enforcement, Planning and Building, and County Counsel to “craft” the noise ordinance.
We’ve seen this kind of empty posturing before. There’s very little chance that any kind of “crafted” noise ordinance will ever even see the light of day, much less come to a vote (remember Supervisor Haschak’s failed attempt to regulate private wells several years ago during the last drought?). Further, the odds that a noise ordinance would include the much more annoying wine wind fans are about the same as the Editor winning the Powerball Jackpot.
But if a noise ordinance is ever passed, however weak, we wonder how many Anderson Valley residents would even file a complaint? The wine industry’s position on the subject — as explained by Navarro Vineyards’ Ted Bennett when the machines were first turned on, is: “Our grapes are more important than your sleep.” So toothless administrative citations or “appeals” issued to grape growers would simply be ignored.
Sleep tight, Anderson Valley — at least until next spring when the wind machines are turned on again.
POINT IN TIME COUNTS
The only time Mendo’s biannual “Point In Time Count” of the County’s homeless population was discussed was at a Supervisors meeting in December of 2015. That discussion, while depressing to anyone trying to actually reduce local homelessness, was at least illuminating about the difficulties and vagaries of the process. The discussion is as relevant today as it was nine years ago. Unfortunately, with the current board of Supervisors, we can’t imagine a comparable discussion: they have demonstrated that they have no interest in it.
In 2015, Anna Shaw, Director of the Coast Hospitality Center told the Supervisors that, “Data from the count is used for pending grant projects that will positively impact local homeless.”
That was at least an honest assessment — if by “positively impact” she was referring to the grants going to the local homeless industrial complex and its many employees. Does anyone think that the tens millions of dollars in grant funding for in this century has had a positive impact on local homelessness?
Sandi Canaday, at the time Mendo’s “Program Administrator for Health and Human Services (HHS) Adult Services and the Chair of the Homeless Services Planning Continuum of Care,” told the Supervisors that the Count theoretically involves tallying people in shelters and transitional housing, plus people staying in places “not meant for human habitation” (streets, cars, bridges, tents, porches, driveways, abandoned buildings, “outdoors,” etc.). The Count does not include “couch surfers” or temporary visitors and family members who come for a visit but never leave.
Paul Davis, who worked for Fort Bragg’s Hospitality House and was Chair of the Point in Time Count committee, explained that the survey form had 40 intrusive questions addressing “service utilization, medical coverage, education history, income, runaway history, pregnancy status, and criminal history.”
It did NOT, however, include any questions as to whether the homeless person was a local or a traveler.
Mr. Davis described the difficulty he and his staff had in getting the lengthy HUD survey forms down to one legal size sheet of paper “to save on printing costs.”
The homeless counters have since converted to a fancy $60,000 cellphone app that the County bought to help the counters count and generate their fancy report.
Mr. Davis admitted that “not every homeless person encountered was individually surveyed. In cases where the counters came across groups of people who didn’t want to participate, they took ‘observational data’ — counts, ethnicity, age range, and, if known, why the people in groups weren’t surveyed.”
Mr. Davis managed the count on the Coast. He sadly noted that, “Our community volunteer trainings were not very well attended.” Plus, on the day of the count (one seemingly random day) ten homeless volunteers who had attended the trainings, didn’t show up for the count.
That bad start only got worse. “In spite of our efforts, when survey groups arrived at known homeless encampments the homeless people were not there in many cases. We were able to conduct only a relative handful of surveys on the day of the count. And our observation of homeless individuals who could not be surveyed did not come close to adding up to the amount of people that our organization has on its roster. There was evidence of recent activity in many of those locations, but not many people to be found. In the days following Count Day we attempted to identify as many street homeless as possible with the help of homeless survey workers, staff from our organization including some of our board members and several community volunteers. Many of the homeless individuals, especially young people ages 18- 24 refused to take the survey and many were agitated and had a lot of skepticism about the idea of being surveyed. In spite of that we were able to deliver approximately 150 surveys [on the Coast]. But that's only about 50 more than the number of people we typically serve.”
Note that 150 forms were “delivered,” not filled out and returned.
In the future Davis said he and his fellow counters would consider random samples from selected locations and extrapolate the number of homeless from their observations. “I'm personally in favor of that,” Davis said. “It might be better suited to us and more cost-effective.” (I.e., less work for the counters.) “And it would give us more accurate and usable data [sic]. Our committee will be discussing that for the next Count.”
Apparently, they did that because, although the 2024 Count presentation says they “counted” 774 homeless people with this note: “the [demographic] data presented reflects responses gathered from 73 unsheltered individuals with a margin of error of 10%.”
Veronica Irwin was Project Manager for Homeless Services at Ford Street Project in Ukiah in 2015.
“57 workers and volunteers participated in the inland count,” said Irwin. “About 175 surveys were completed. We had similar problems, volunteers not showing up for training, then not showing up for the count. We had a number of homeless people signed up to help with surveys, but only three showed up that morning. So a lot of our specific knowledge about the encampments was lost because we did not have those people to go out with us.
“One team went out to known encampments that are extremely remote. But unfortunately they didn't find anyone, even in places that had long established and known encampments. We ran across places where there was obviously an encampment as there were sleeping bags, camp stoves and lots of other camping equipment there, but no one was present.”
When the team went out the night before Count Day to a known encampment in the “Perkins area” (outside Ukiah city limits) “they found a huge encampment and were told they were not welcome there. And they were told to leave immediately. They did their best to get an idea of the number of people that were there but in the best interests of their own safety and out of respect for the people that were there the team quickly left.”
“We experienced a lot more aggression this year directed at volunteers than we have in the past as well as low participation by homeless persons despite the financial incentive [sic — $10 an hour for less than a day, plus $2.50 per survey].”
The total count of homeless for 2015 was 1032. Two years prior it had been 1344. In 2024, it’s now down to less than 800. One big reason the numbers are down is likely related to the collapse of the marijuana industry, not as a result of anything the homeless bureaucracy has done. But obviously nobody really knows. There are too many variables in the counting process to compare one year to any other year.
In 2017 nationally known homeless consultant Robert Marbut counted less than half the point in time count number in his mostly ignored “Marbut report.”
“Overall many of the young people simply refused to be surveyed,” continued Irwin, “and they expressed agitation and skepticism about the surveys.”
Then-Third District Supervisor Tom Woodhouse asked, “Why is the number of chronically homeless down so dramatically?”
Ms. Canaday replied: “We have not changed anything. The questions are provided by HUD specifically for the chronically homeless. It's self reporting. We just ask the questions. I would say probably a big percentage of that reduction is that we overall captured a lot less this year.”
I.e., the reason it was down was they simply didn’t find and count as many.
Supervisor John McCowen was worried that the lower count might translate into lower grant funding: “The count is way down. We're dealing with a very transient population that shifts around frequently. Plus some of the other issues described. I think it's appropriate to look at alternative methodologies but in the meantime what is the potential impact of the reduced count on our ability to receive funding? Will this hurt our chances in securing funding because the count is down? A superficial glance at that could say, Oh, they don't have much of a need any longer because of these reduced numbers? Or is there a way to overcome that?”
Canaday: “We try to capture those who we know where they are and are more visible. But they made an effort to not be visible this year and it was really hard to count them.”
Lizzie Guthrie of MCAVN (Mendocino County AIDS Volunteer Network): “Our group went out the night before. We went to 17 places right here in the Ukiah Valley where there are normally homeless people. I agree with everyone who has spoken. For whatever reason this year it was almost like, Let's all vacate. So we really do have a count that does not include many homeless people that many of our agencies are familiar with. When we would ask them a day or two later why they weren’t there, I won't even say some of the expletives that came back at us about, you know, it's no good, it's not going to help, they just want information — there is a lot of mentally ill people and people who have extreme mental health disorders that were actually the hardest to reach in this endeavor.”
“Those of us who serve those populations feel pretty badly that we were unable to get some information that would have been very very helpful,” continued Ms. Guthrie. “So that overall count — it's my belief that it's not true and that there are many many more, particularly those who are the most vulnerable who were the least likely to be surveyed.”
Two locals who have followed and participated in the Point In Time Count process and the homelessness issue in general in recent years are former First District Supervisor Candidate Adam Gaska of Redwood Valley, and Fourth District Supervisor-Elect Bernie Norvell of Fort Bragg.
Gaska: “The Continuum of Care is a requirement to access HUD and other funding to combat homelessness, improve social welfare, etc. What it ends up being in many cases is a check the box exercise to be prioritized for funding. A bunch of helping professionals, sitting at a meeting, giving updates, not really assessing or evaluating themselves but trying to look busy so they don't get their budget cut. As long as they can file the right forms, smile, sing some kumbaya, and get the people above them at the state and federal level to believe they are doing all that they can, then the checks keep getting signed and everyone is happy. Are the framework and resources available being utilized for maximum impact? Do the stakeholders being represented effectively collaborate to efficiently provide services and effect positive changes? Are the meetings being run well? Is there consensus on policy direction? Are members being assigned tasks? Is progress on objectives being measured? I doubt it. I don't see any documentation to support the notion that progress is being made and things are improving.”
Norvell: “In my opinion the Point In Time count is a worthless tool only used to justify more spending. I’ve participated for the last six years and the way they count is a joke. The process should be refined and only used to count street level homeless. You never get the local versus non-local breakdown because they don’t want you engaging during the count.” Referring to the fancy Point In Time Count report with all its out of context pseudo-data and fancy artificial demographic breakdowns based on a one out of ten sample size, Norvell added, “The Continuum of Care at times reminds me of one of my father’s sayings: ‘If you cannot dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit’.”
SUPERVISOR-ELECT NORVELL on Homelessness in Fort Bragg & Mendocino County
From an interview with Supervisor-Elect Norvell by Ken McCormick of “Ukiah Vagrant Watch…”
Norvell: The Point In Time Count to me is a flawed tool that should not carry any weight. For example Mendocino County Is down 23% from the year before. What most folks do not know are the mulitple definitions of homelessness, each one specific to the type of funding that may be available. Street level homelessness is what most people see and struggle with. We had 40 people Die of overdose that year not including people that are in shelters and in transitional housing that have been placed into permanent housing. My best guess is this makes up most of the 23%. I always tell people to drive around town and tell me if homelessness is better or worse in your community.
Q. Is there a different standard for homeless when enforcing violations, some have been on the street for decades, in front of judges 100's of times, what should be done with these individuals?
Norvell: Norvell: Yes absolutely. CRU [Fort Bragg’s Care Response Unit] gets involved right away and stays involved. Some people are ready for help and others are not. When the law is not allowing us to mandate help we help those that are willing and also do not allow bad behavior and health and safety violations from those who are not. CRU expanded to include Project Right Now or PRN. It is focused on addiction and recovery. We work with probation, the judges, the DA’s office, public defenders and the jail. If someone ends up in jail we reach out and the courts have allowed us to intervene and will sentence them to rehab for day to day credit. The key is they are only released from jail once we’ve secure them a bed in rehab and are then released to CRU who transports them to rehab. No exceptions. This eliminates the offender being released and expected to enroll in rehab on their own. We have found this to be a key to success. We also have a great working relationship with RCS who will respond and intervene when appropriate.
Q. What is your position on no public encampment enforcement; cities with aggressive enforcement claim they have fewer homeless. Do you agree?
Norvell: We are fairly aggressive. I can’t say zero tolerance because there are laws protecting some of this. We do however address them Immediately and with the intention of removing them. My fear has always been, letting them get big and then removing them with a bulldozer and ending up on CNN because of it. Not a good look. The key is intervention when they are found and hooking them up with services to get them off the street. Again, these are people and should be treated as such. With the taxpayers footing the bill they expect them to be addressed and should be.
Full Interview: https://bit.ly/3RDGIBg
MENDO’S ENTITLED TOURISM PROMOTERS CONJURE ANOTHER SCHEME TO FINANCE THEMSELVES
In 2006, the County worked with local lodging and restaurant representatives to form the Mendocino County Lodging Business Improvement District (MCBID) where the County imposes a 1% “assessment” on tourism revenues and then added a 50% match out of the County’s 10% Transient Occupancy (aka “Bed”) Tax. They then turned around and handed it all to the industry’s marketing arm, Visit Mendocino which proceeded to spend it on themselves — at last count they had twelve staffers who allegedly marketed the County to tourists, mostly from the Bay Area and Sacramento.
Not long after the Board of Supervisors reluctantly cut that “matching” funding from “Visit Mendocino” earlier this year due to budget restrictions, the local tourism promoters got to work figuring out a way to replace that funding – and then some. Hey, let’s double it! And expand it!
Accordingly, they now propose to double the 1% assessment, not by simply upping the BID assessment, but by forming a separate, entirely new “district.” In their words, “The Mendocino County Tourism Marketing District (MCTMD) has been developed by local lodging businesses in collaboration with the Mendocino County Tourism Commission, operating as Visit Mendocino County.”
The current “BID” assessment only applies to the unincorporated areas of the County. This new district, the MCTMD, would include the cities as well and would more than double the revenue for Visit Mendocino County by imposing a 2% assessment on every lodging business in the County, raising an estimated $2.3 million a year for the next five years starting in January of 2025. The percentage would increase to 2.5% in the third year bringing in even more.
“Visit Mendocino County will serve as the MCTMD’s Owners’ Association, responsible for managing funds, implementing programs and providing annual reports to the Board of Supervisors.”
If that “managing funds” part is the case, why are they even bothering to ask the County to be involved? Why does the County have to involve itself in yet another “district”?
The County already manages the Business Improvement District for the Tourism promoters. Soon the Supervisors are expected to approve another “district” to siphon off more funds from Medi-Cal for the local Adventist Hospitals. And now they are likely to approve this third “district” as a separate add-on to the BID assessment, simply to route the money back to the tourism industry to sell themselves.
This would put the County’s already overburdened finance staffers smack dab in the middle of three separate complicated collection, tracking and disbursement arrangements for no other reason than to funnel money the businesses collect back to an association of those same businesses.
Mendo already has trouble tracking the many complicated accounts that fund County operations. Why does the County have to be a collection agent for the convenience of the Tourism industry?
Yes, yes. We know the “district” won’t involve general fund dollars (theoretically) and that will certainly be among the arguments that Visit Mendocino will make. They will also claim that their marketing spending will bring more money into the County. Therefore the Supervisors are likely to go along with the idea as a way to replace the funding that Visit Mendocino “lost” when the County’s 50% match was cut.
But putting the County in the middle of these basically private financial arrangements is an unnecessary risk. In time, if the intended recipients of the collected funds dispute the calculations — and they well might; think about the complicated relationship between the City of Ukiah and the Ukiah Valley Sanitation District which blew up into a legal dispute costing both entities millions of dollars in legal costs — untangling the web of who took in how much from whom and what happened to it and who got how much when could put the County in the midst of a costly and long-drawn out legal dispute.
Is the tourism industry incapable of handing their own finances? Can’t they simply organize themselves to finance their own marketing efforts? Is the only way to get everybody to pay to put the County into the middle of it all?
And what the hell is Visit Mendocino going to do with $2 or $3 million dollars a year? Buy more slick ads for Giants games? Bring more food and wine writers up for free wining and dining? Hire more staff? All they can prove is that they spend a lot of money; they can’t prove that their marketing even results in increased tourism revenue. (Tourism is much more a reflection of the northern California economy than it is fancy marketing.)
The prudent thing to do would be to tell the Adventists and the Tourism industry to handle their own marketing finances and not insert the County into a de facto taxation scheme that benefits one business sector while putting the County on the hook for seeing that all the complicated bookkeeping works out as the industry wants it to.
The Visit Mendocino folks know, however, that they can count on this Board of Supervisors to bend over backwards to “help” the tourism industry in their hour of reduced funding, and totally ignore the financial and accounting risks the County will have to assume.
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