As expected, nothing much of significance arose at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting.
But first, let’s go back to the Board’s April 23, 2024 Board meeting when Supervisor Ted Williams asked CEO Darcie Antle for a monthly budget vs. actual report: “What would it take to get actual vs. budget, at least for previous years?,” asked Williams.
CEO Antle first whined that the last time they produced such a report “we were criticized,” which was not only patently untrue, but is hardly a reason for not providing the Board with ordinary budget reports. We had asked a few routine questions about variances in some departments, but no criticisms were made.
Antle continued, “That is a report we can generate for prior years.”
Williams didn’t ask about prior “years”; he asked for monthly reports.
Antle: “We’ve had a delay in closing out years. Fiscal year 22-23 is still in draft. I’d say we could go back three to five years prior. We should have it by end of the week.”
Guess what never happened at all, much less “next week.”
Williams also asked for copies of the budgets vs. actual from the departments after Antle had inadvertently blurted out that the Departments keep their own internal budget spreadsheets.
After again (falsely) whining that “we were criticized,” Antle replied that “It’s all about timing. Invoices may be late. … It’s not straightforward. … Property taxes only come in once a year. I’m not afraid to do it. But it causes undue stress on the board. So we pulled it back.”
Ms. Antle, who, before being CEO was former CEO Carmel Angelo’s key budget specialist, clearly has no idea what budget reporting even is.
To recap: All Williams had asked for was ordinary departmental budget reporting and copies of the departmental budget spreadsheets referred to by Antle. Antle’s excuse for not providing them was “it causes undue stress on the Board.”
No one on the Board, including Williams, responded nor denied the claim that ordinary budget reports would cause them “undue stress” as if that’s a perfectly good excuse for not providing such ordinary reports.
Since then, neither Williams nor any other board member has inquired about budget reporting, much less Antle’s pseudo-promise of “next week.” They have however given themselves a big raise claiming that whatever they do, it requires special expertise and, in Supervisor McGourty’s frequently stated opinion is, “Really, really hard.”
Fast forward to Tuesday, the first Board meeting in October.
The board passively accepted an interesting report from Chief Probation Officer Izen Locatelli about the new “pre-trial release program,” a newish screening and review process which everybody hopes will not release dangerous people to the streets. As an aside Mr. Locatelli told the board that he “meets regularly with all nine judges” — just in case you needed a reminder of how many judges Mendo has and why they need their own private $150 million courthouse three long blocks away from supporting departments and the downtown area of the City of Ukiah. The usually rational Locatelli also laughably claimed that those nine judges “are elected officials and everything they do is public.”
Really? When was the last time you heard anything about what the judges do? And when was the last time you voted for a judge who was not running unopposed?
Burn permit fees are going to go up soon, according to the Air Quality Department. At present a typical burn permit costs $19 from Air Quality; they want to increase that fee by 15% a year until they achieve what they call “full cost recovery.” Other fees for prescribed burns and ag burns and so forth will also go up. The Board asked for some more background info when the formal fee increase proposal is submitted. Supervisor Ted Williams asked that consideration be given to a “blanket” burn permit for all residential parcels because he’s worried that increased fees might cause people to avoid permits and avoid doing “fuel reduction” for fire safety. Apparently there are legal niceties that must be explored first. So don’t expect this idea to go anywhere. (Note: The Board of Superviors is also the Board for the Air Quality Management District, so theoretically they might have this authority. But these fees are the lifeblood of the Air Quality District, we expect they’ll come up with some legality that prevents any blanket permits.)
Supervisor John Haschak bragged that the Local Area Formation Commission (LAFCo) Board that he sits on voted to waste $55k to hire a consultant to assess whether Mendo voters would be “amenable” to a designated road tax. This is clearly outside the scope of LAFCo, but it’s a sneaky way to waste $55k that the Board of Supervisors should be doing if it’s really necessary. Since LAFCo’s revenue is sucked out of the County’s many special districts, this $55k will end up being passed along to the various water, fire, cemetery and other special districts. All the supervisors robotically agreed with Supervisor Mulheren’s claim that there’s not enough money for road repairs in the County’s transpo budget. But nobody pointed out that the Board has never — repeat NEVER — asked the Transportation Department for a budget or road fund status report.
Supervisor Haschak thought it would be nice if the new board (as of January of next year) held a “two-day workshop” to blather about priorities and planning. Blathershops (not a blithering idiot Harry Potter character, btw) are a perenial favorite of Mendo officials. So, of course, all four of Haschak’s unthinking colleagues thought two days of Blathershops would be a great idea.
Budget reports, project status reports, road fund status, Measure B spending, revenue shortfalls… Not so much.
Supervisor Glenn McGourty wound up Tuesday’s nearly irrelevant meeting by telling his colleagues that the latest bad wine news was “not worrisome.” (His report left a few things out and confused the issue, so we have annotated it as a public service.)
“I would like to speak a little about the harvesting of wine grapes because I just went through it.”
[Oh, yes. That’s a great reason to talk about wine. McGourty is a small time inland grape grower and former wine advisor for the UC Extension office. He uses surface water from the Russian River to grow his grapes for profit yet he sees no problem being an official making decisions on Russian River water allocations that directly affect his own grape business.]
“This is an interesting time for the wine industry. In a normal year Mendocino County harvests about 55,000 tons of grapes.”
[According to the 2021 Crop Report, the latest available, Mendo produced about 47,000 tons of grapes. In 2020 it was close to 55,000 tons. Perhaps covid affected the grapes.]
“That's enough to fill about 2300 trucks and make about 3 million cases of wine and 30 million bottles individually of wine.”
[And who knows how many winos?]
“That's a pretty good sized industry.”
[The crop report estimated that Mendo’s grapes were worth about $85 million in 2021 and about $82 million in 2020. That number does not include bottled wine sales. If you assume $20 per bottle on average (some is sold wholesale, some is sold at retail in tasting rooms), that’s $20 x 30 million or $600 million.]
“This year there is a lot of fruit…”
[“Fruit” is the insider’s cutesy term for “grapes.” The difference is you can eat “fruit,” but most local grapes are for booze production.]
“…that is unsold because there has been a major contraction in the industry going on due to oversupply, overproduction.”
[The irony of a “contraction” caused by an oversupply was lost on McGourty.]
“So of our 55,000 tons that we normally sell we may be off by about 7,000 tons which is significant and it starts to cut into the income of our county's taxes and payrolls.”
[Apart from the typically awkward phrasing, the impact would only be felt if the price per ton stays the same. As can be seen in the crop report, the value of Mendo’s grape crop went up in 2021 by about $2 million even though it produced about 8,000 fewer tons than the prior year. This shows how artificial the entire grape/wine economy is. A significant variable in the wine economy is storage; lots of wine is “aged” every year. In addition, a lot of wine is re-labeled and sold at lower cost off-label prices, often via discounted wine clubs. But wineries won’t pay as much for “fruit” if they have to re-label it at a discount to unload excess inventory while still maintaining “brand integrity,” i.e., higher prices. Other variables include tax considerations — alcoholic beverage taxes must be paid on stored wine — and storage capacity and costs. Etc.]
“It will be impactful. I see it driving home every day. There's a certain amount of vineyards that have been either abandoned or removed. Mostly the older things.”
[“Older things”? A “certain amount”? Actually, the abandoned or removed vineyards are the ones where the grapes can’t be sold for a minimum price to at least cover costs or growers who don’t have solid contracts with buyers; it has very little to do with the age of the grapevines.]
“Typically, what happens in these cycles which happen about every 10 years, about 50,000 acres have to come out statewide of the 550,000 acres of grapes to sort of balance things.”
[McGourty abruptly switched from tonnage to acres; while trying to be clear, he manages to muddle the grapejuice even more. The contraction process is also called a “shakeout” where the big wine outfits buy the marginal or highly leveraged little ones who can’t sell their grapes for what it costs for their Mexicans to produce them. Therefore these operations can’t make their loan or tax payments and become ripe targets for buyouts. If you assume McGourty’s math of 50,000 abandoned or removed acres out of 550,000 acres statewide, that would mean about 9% of Mendo’s 16,500 acres or almost 1500 acres of grapes are either being abandoned or removed. It will be interesting to see if future crop reports show that.]
“So it's cyclical, about every 10 years. And we are in it right now. What’s — I won't say worrisome — but there are shifts in how people consume alcoholic beverages, especially younger people looking at more cocktails and mixed drinks and things in cans [“looking at” … “things in cans”?] as opposed to the traditional very expensive bottle of Cabernet from Napa Valley which may be losing fashion.”
[We doubt that very many “young people” bought “very expensive bottles of Cabernet from Napa Valley.” Not to mention that this is not Napa County.]
“So since we are a major wine producing county I think you should update your information so that you understand what's going on presently.”
[Got it, Mr. Grape, er, Supervisor. Thanks for the non-worrisome update.]
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