Off the Record 10/26/2024

NEW HIRES AT SHERIFF’S OFFICE

Sheriff Matt Kendall introduced the Sheriff’s Office’s newest Community Services Officer, Tristin Milani, at a ceremony this morning. Tristin comes from Mendocino County roots, and we are thankful he will be serving the community in which he grew up. The Sheriff also welcomed lateral Deputy Sheriff Steven Diaz and returning Deputy Sheriff Christopher D’Orazio. Both were sworn in this morning in the presence of loved ones and Sheriff’s Office staff.

If you are noticing a pattern, we are too! Peace officers with law enforcement experience are choosing the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office. For this we are very grateful and hope to continue becoming a destination agency for experienced peace officers.

Please join Sheriff Kendall in congratulating and welcoming our new and returning personnel to the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office.

MIKE GENIELLA:

Mendocino County is no stranger to police misconduct cases. High-profile examples dominated local headlines in 2022-2023. Law enforcement officials, including the county's District Attorney, largely stayed mum. A new statewide investigative series suggests why. There was far more than the public had learned about police misconduct and how cases locally were handled behind closed doors. The City of Ukiah, for example, refused to turn over documents relating to so-called private agreements detailed in the new investigative report.

“This is the secret system that covers up police misconduct — and ensures problem officers can get hired again

The Police Officer’s Career was in peril. Twenty-five years ago, Hossep ‘Joe’ Ourjanian’s supervisors at the Los Angeles County Office of Public Safety accused him of “flagrant” misconduct. They said he had pretended to attend military training to skip work. They had already decided he should be fired when they learned of another allegation: Ourjanian’s girlfriend said he had grabbed her and pulled her hair while she held their infant son.

But then Los Angeles County did something remarkable: The county agreed to hide evidence that Ourjanian allegedly lied to dodge work in exchange for his promise to go without a fight. Records documenting the county’s finding of misconduct would be removed from his personnel file and their very existence would be kept secret. His firing would be rescinded. If any future employer asked, the county agreed to say only that he had resigned ‘indicating personal reasons’.” …

Here's the link to the series, published by the San Francisco Chronicle with reporting by the University of California Berkeley's Investigative Reporting Program:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2024/police-clean-record-agreements

MENDOCINO COUNTY has a higher clearance rate for violent crimes than state averages. Of the four major violent felony categories for which data is collected at the State Justice Department (Homicide, Forcible Rape, Robbery, and Aggravated Assault), Mendo has cleared (i.e., arrested or otherwise resolved) well over half of them compared to statewide averages which are generally under half (and declining in recent years). Mendo is running well above statewide averages for property crimes as well, including arson. According to state data (as reported by Mendocino County) arsons in Mendocino County are down in the last three years (averaging 10 per year) as compared to the three years prior (averaging 23 per year) and a higher percentage were cleared in those last three years (averaging just over 50% which is very good because arsons tend to be the hardest serious crimes to clear and can be an indicator of law enforement effectiveness). Mendo cleared about half of its reported homicides in the last ten years. The only violent crime category where Mendo reported below state average clearance rates was Forcible Rape (state average around 30-40%; Mendo average around 10-30%). Mendo was better than state averages in robbery clearance rates and aggravated assaults. Among property crimes Mendo cleared only 10-18% of vehicle thefts, but that was still better than state averages which were seldom over 10% over the last ten years.

(Mark Scaramella)

EARTH FIRST! on the Northcoast went under when Judi Bari died in 1997. There are still young people around who identify with the amorphous group, and EF!, complete with vaguely musical yowling they call “gaia-billy” still sits in trees in Oregon.

I RECALL a totally right-on tree sit at the perimeter of U.C. Berkeley’s Memorial Stadium, where “direct action” protesters had climbed into the trees trying to stop the football program from erecting a sooper dooper field house, i.e., a jock Taj Mahal, where there was a stand of old growth trees. The field house got built, the tree sitters got arrested, the trees survive only in old newspaper photographs.

MEMORIAL STADIUM sits right on top of the Hayward Fault. It won’t survive The Next Big One. If environmentalists will just be patient Gaia will reclaim the whole complex.

ONE OF THE MULTI-TALENTED BARI'S gifts was her organizational ability in keeping the direct action gang on task, a task she went about ruthlessly. They were either at her feet or she was at their throat. (An ethnic generalization first applied to Germans.) She also controlled the money. She, or one of her half-dozen surrogates, opened the mail. If Bari didn’t like you, you didn’t get any money from the several front groups she controlled, among them Trees Foundation, the utterly bogus Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters, or Redwood Summer Justice Project, and who knows what other alleged non-profits from which a very small group of Bari-ites are probably still extracting regular hunks of cash donated in good faith by the duped.

THE TREES money pot was litigated over by a character called Shunka Wakan for the $185,000 willed to the bogus charity by a deceased Bay Area woman who thought she might be keeping a redwood or two in an upright position if she sent the money north.

Instead, one group of hustlers, Shunka and friends, went to Humboldt Superior Court fighting the other hustlers calling themselves Trees. Shunka argued that the money was intended for him and his hippie bros, while phony baloney Trees said it was theirs.

IF ONE DIME of the $185 thou ever saved a single tree it probably happened the same day Charles Hurwitz did his own tree sit in Houston. One of the larger ironies here is that Darryl Cherney, never one to leave a single stray dime to chance, denounced Shunka’s “greed.” Of course in those days it was common knowledge on the Northcoast that there were more people getting paid to save trees than there were old trees to save.

SHUNKA’S real name, by the way, was Jason Wilson. He claimed a “Lakota medicine man” gave him the name Shunka Wakan. Shunka said his name meant Humble Man Called Horse. A Pomo friend told me, "Shunka means ‘white doofus.’ Whenever the hippies want to pretend to be Indians we give ’em some kinda name in Tonto-speak and they go away happy.”

A READER WRITES:

The CVS drug stores employees across California are now on strike. CVS pays the lowest wages of all drug stores in the state. Please honor this strike, and bring real justice to these workers.

RON PARKER:

I watched the Palace Hotel go downhill starting with the loss of the first Black Bart Room. If the hotel is revived there is still little interest in business locating in the center of town. Who is going to stay there and what will they do for entertainment and tourism? There is little parking during the day. With the court house moving there will be even less interest. I hate to say it but the Palace property would make a great parking lot for all the downtown businesses. Maybe a really nice steak house and parking?

A LEASE DISPUTE COULD JEOPARDIZE COAST HOSPITAL

Adventist Health, which operates Adventist Health Mendocino Coast in Fort Bragg, is seeking to restructure the terms of its lease, stating it has taken a financial loss over the last year.

by Sheryl Sarfaty

A lease dispute could lead to Mendocino County losing Coast Hospital.

Adventist Health, which operates Adventist Health Mendocino Coast in Fort Bragg, is seeking to restructure the terms of its lease agreement with the Mendocino Coast Healthcare District, citing financial losses.

In a Sept. 30 letter to District Board Chair Paul Garza, Adventist Health Northern California Network President Eric Stevens said the “medical business … has achieved less than 5% EBITDA for the previous 12-month period.” EBITDA stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

Adventist Health took over management of the hospital from the district in May 2020.

Stevens in his letter proposed a 60-day negotiation period and said if an agreement to restructure isn’t reached within that time, Adventist would terminate its lease.

Garza agreed and negotiations are underway, with an end date of Nov. 29. If there is no resolution, Adventist Health stated it will vacate June 30, 2025.

Should the hospital close, the nearest for Coast residents would be Adventist Health Howard Memorial in Willits — 40 miles away.

In an Oct. 17 joint statement, Adventist Health and the Mendocino Coast Health Care District’s leaders said they are making “steady progress on optimizing the existing agreement” to keep the hospital in the community.

“The community can be confident that both organizations are reaffirming our investment in helping keep health care local through a sustainable model,” Stevens said in the statement.

Garza stated, “I look forward to an enhanced agreement that is a win-win for both entities and the communities we serve.”

No specific details were disclosed, but both parties said they intend to release weekly updates as discussions continue.

The hospital was known as Mendocino Coast District Hospital before Adventist Health took over management, and the publicly run facility had a board of directors that had been in place since 1971, according to the Fort Bragg Advocate-News.

“We recognize this is an appropriate time in our five-year relationship (with Adventist) to reevaluate the terms of our partnership,” Garza said Oct.

ED NOTE: Coast Hospital was built and owned by the Coast community, primarily Fort Bragg, and was operated for years as genuinely non-profit. Enter the vegetarian cult called the Adventists which, although a tax-exempt church, operates its hospitals as for-profits, hence its lament that it isn't making enough money from Coast Hospital, which it probably isn't, given the number of indigents hospitals must treat, including putative Christian hospitals. (Jesus seemed to have been a non-profit operator all the way.) The Adventists now operate all three Mendocino County hospitals. However, it's not as if there aren't adequate medical options in the County's network of. clinics, mini-hospitals capable of competently handling the bulk of medical care. I daresay most Mendo residents head for The City for serious, complicated care anyway.

IF YOU VOTE for Harris or Trump — I have no intention of voting for any candidate who sustains the genocide in Gaza — you are voting for one form of rapacious capitalism over another. All the other issues, from gun rights to abortion, are tangential and used to distract the public from the civil war within capitalism. The tiny circle of power these two forms of capitalism embody, exclude the public. These are elite clubs, clubs where wealthy members inhabit each side of the divide, or at times go back and forth, but are impenetrable to outsiders.

— Chris Hedges

THE FLOW IS CONSTANT. Words, pictures, numbers, facts, graphics, statistics, specks, waves, particles, motes. Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we need them, we depend on them. As long as they happen somewhere else. This is where California comes in. Mud slides, wild fires, coastal erosion, earthquakes, mass killings, sea level rise, et cetera. We can relax and enjoy these disasters because in our hearts we feel that California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom. Japan is pretty good for disaster footage. Florida is a target rich environment. India remains largely untapped. They have tremendous potential with their famines, monsoons, religious strife, train wrecks, boat sinking, et cetera. But their disasters tend to go unrecorded. Three lines in the newspaper. No film footage, no satellite hookup, no internet streaming. This is why California is so important. We not only enjoy seeing Californians punished for their relaxed life-styles and “progressive” social ideas, but we know we’re not missing anything. The cameras are right there. They’re standing by. Nothing terrible escapes their scrutiny.

— Don DeLillo, ‘Players’

THE IDIOT TOME on acting was written by Dale Carnegie. It was called “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” It’s a book on hustling. Acting is just hustling. Some people are hustling money, some power.

— Marlin Brando

REMEMBERING THE PALACE

“Tom Carter, a longtime North Coast contractor with experience in turning old buildings into new uses, said Wednesday he secured the title of the Palace Hotel, the historic downtown Ukiah landmark.”

Shawna Buschman:

I spent my younger years in the Palace. My Grandmother Olga was a cook there and lived in the Hotel with my Mom. I remember running in and out of the “BackDoor” to the store across the street. Man how I miss those simpler days & times. I make regular trips to the Palace just to feel a little bit of that era & family that I miss so much. Here’s my little piece I’ve kept at home

ALMOST NO ONE from the general public attends the final budget hearings in late August. And why should we? The budget is so jargonized and gibberish-ridden that nobody (with the notable exception of Cowboy John Pinches) could understand it if they wanted to, much less comment intelligently on it.

TRY DECODING THIS, MENDO:

A brief PowerPoint presentation referencing the Proposed Budget and the sequence of events undertaken in this year’s budget development process. Contained within the presentation was a review of pertinent program accomplishments, including the following highlights: The budget development process; Recognition of the County budget team, Department Heads and staff; Programmatic Highlights in the functional areas of County government; The creation of the Health and Human Services Agency (HHSA), the General Services Agency (GSA), and the study of Criminal Justice facility master planning; Planning Team projects and accomplishments [sic]; Impacts of employee meet and confer processes, including increases in employee wages and benefits.”

IF YOU can find anything in that load of pure bullshit even remotely close to an “accomplishment” we’ll lend you our senior pass for a free day on SF Muni. We do note the clarity of the last phrase, however. When it comes to their own pay and perks there's never any confusion.

THE CHRONICLE recently featured a series of tired reminiscences about The Summer of Love from the same old Summer of Lovers — Wavy Gravy, Grace Slick, Country Joe and other A-List Hippies. The fairest assessment I've read of that dreary, foggy summer of race riots and prevalent bad urban vibes, comes from a fellow survivor named James Pendergast of Sonoma: “The Summer of Love per se may not have had much meaning, but many features of the counterculture had a great effect that is still powerful today: the organic food movement, the peace movement, sustainable agriculture, back-to-the-land, protecting the environment, ‘living lightly on the earth,’ ‘small is beautiful’ and more. On the other hand, I witnessed many transcendent examples of ignorance, naiveté, mindless hedonism, venality, and plain old American stupidity. And drugs ruined many promising things. As David Crosby said later, ‘We were wrong about drugs; we were right about everything else’.”

IT’S APPARENT that nothing Israel does, including killing American grandmothers, college students, and aid workers, will trigger the US government, whether it’s under the control of Biden, Harris, or Trump, to intervene to stop them or even pull the plug on the arms shipments that make this genocidal war possible. This week, Biden, while his secretaries of State and Defense publicly waged their fingers on Netanyahu for continuing to starve Palestinians, ordered US troops to Israel to operate the THAAD missile defense system he had just gifted them. Shortly after they arrived, Netanyahu took a gloating selfie with the fresh-faced US troops who had now officially placed their boots on the ground in Israel’s ever-widening war.

— Jeffrey St. Clair

ABRAHAM LINCOLN SAID that a country divided cannot stand, and here in the United States, it is extremely polarized. Just look at the Democratic Convention. I mean, they threw out Trump's name 289 times. It was more of a hate fest. It's not like “Vote for me. I'm going to do this. I'll run this better.” It's 'Vote for me because he's evil.”

— Martin Armstrong

A READER WRITES: The Niners, Sunday: In all my years watching football, and even playing in high school, I have never seen, or even heard of a kicker missing the ball on an on-side kick. The Niners might be cursed. The problems, in no particular order: (1) Shanahan's play calling, (2) the Offensive Line, (3) special teams, (4) injuries.

A PERSON writing as “Agreed” (Aggrieved?) basically accused many of the County's cops as a bunch of crooks and drunks. You want to paint with a broad accusatory brush like this, you gotta do it under your true name.

YOU CAN get anywhere in the city on the Muni's bus, trolley and train lines, but don't be in a hurry to get there and allow at least an hour for even the shortest journey if it requires a transfer. And always be ready to dismount and walk if you happen to be on the bus when the mutants are getting out of school, or traffic is so jammed that it doesn't move at all for long minutes at a time and you can walk ten blocks faster than the bus will carry you.

WHEN IT RAINS everyone learns to drive all over again, as seemed to happen the other rainy day on my long, long trip to San Francisco’s main library with the bus drivers in snarlingly bad humor. A depressingly large number of drivers seem to be active misanthropes. If you're not interested in people, if they especially annoy you in the aggregate, if you get to the point where you find yourself taking petty revenge on your trapped passengers as you wheel your bus up and down the Rice-A-Roni streets, maybe you should go back to school and get a law degree so you could do your fellow man more lasting harm.

AS A SUDDEN HARD rain fell, catching us without our umbrellas, six of us huddled in the southbound shelter at California and Polk, me clutching my transfer like a worried kid with a note home from school pinned to his shirt. The bus finally appeared, but rather than pull up at the shelter so we could board without getting wet, the driver stopped the bus a dozen feet beyond. A young girl and I exchanged glances and laughed. Two Asian women reacted not at all, a young Hispanic male muttered under his breath, a huge fat man in knee length grey shorts inscribed “Michigan Baseball” on one leg lumbered on board and loudly asked the driver, “Why'd you do that?”

THE DRIVER looked straight ahead, unhearing, uncaring. There's no answer to petty malice, of course, so the fat man, having satisfied himself (and us) with his rhetorical blast sat heavily down in the front section. These seats are theoretically reserved for the elderly and the infirm, but the young and firm are often planted in them, as two of the young and firm were that day, both of them mesmerized by hand held gizmos. I was hoping the fat man would sit down on them, but he took up two seats across the aisle, where he sat wheezing from getting wet, getting annoyed, getting on the bus, and now facing the prospect of repeating the annoyances in reverse order when he got off the bus because he could count on the driver letting him off in the most uncomfortable possible set of circumstances.

ETHNIC OBSERVATIONS and distinctions are impossible not to note among Muni passengers, although almost without exception young people of all races tend to be loud, vulgar, vapid, uneducable, and thoroughly unattractive. We've all been young and stupid, but today's crop of under-30s seems uniquely awful in every way, from their laundry bag fashions, tattooed butt cracks, their cretinous music, even dumber movies, and extreme verbal dysfunction. “Like I said to the dude, ‘Like dude, what the fuck you mean?’” Schools of fish have more individuality. The only kids you see around who look like they might be age-appropriately wholesome are probably very recent immigrants. Or they're home schooled by that tiny minority of parents who know the popular culture is evil and will eat their children.

THE MOST aggressive Muni passengers are Chinese women between the ages of 60 and 90. They just put their heads down and go, like mini-fullbacks on goal line plunges. You feel a soft but insistent pressure somewhere in your lower back and, when you look over your shoulder to see if it's a pickpocket or a perv playing bus rubbsies, what you see and continue to feel is an elderly Chinese woman, or a squad of them, making their relentless, head down ways up the aisle. “Grandma Fong gets maybe a yard in a huge pile-up of shopping bags and umbrellas. We'll probably need a replay here to see if she got to the back of the bus. But wait! She's still on her feet and still moving, shoving that old beatnik out of the way like he wasn't even there! She's in for six! How about that, Howie? Granny Fong kept her head down and her legs pumping like the great ones always do.”

I WAS ON A California Street bus one afternoon whose black female driver checked the transfer of every boarding white person, me included, while waving all other ethnicities on past. At California and VanNess there was an angry standoff between this driver and a young white woman whose transfer the driver had rejected. Typically, with people piling on the bus through both front and back doors, drivers, even the rare sticklers, don't even look at transfers other than maybe a glance at its color to see that it is that day's proper hue. They don't check the time. “You'll have to pay,” the driver said to the girl. “This transfer is no good,” The girl indignantly replied, “But I just got it.” The driver took the transfer from her and looked carefully at it. “It's an hour over,” she said. “This is from way early this morning. You gotta pay.” The girl continued to say she'd just got it on her previous bus. “You'll have to pay,” the driver repeated, this time with some heat. The traffic light had gone green to red three times while the transfer argument raged. There was an audible groan from the back of the bus. A man yelled, “Kick her off! Let's go.” The driver and the girl were staring at each other when the girl stomped off the bus. As we pulled out, I could see her waiting for the next bus, the expired transfer in her hand.

ON DIVISADERO I was sharing a bus stop with a woman I guessed to be early AARP. She was dressed in a purple sweatsuit, wore one of those Tibetan wool knit doofus caps on her head with its five or six dingleberry ties bouncing down off it, a metal pentagram around her neck, and she carried a pink “Hello Kitty” backpack festooned with various size cartoon cats. I remember when city women never went anywhere near downtown without their formal day clothes on complete with hats and gloves, and all the men wore suits, ties and fedoras. A large percentage of the old downtown crowd might have been totally crazed in those days, too, but you wouldn't know it looking at them. And you can't know it now, either, in a time when only the truly dangerous wear suits and ties.

THIS LADY, it turned out, wasn't nuts. Or, I should say, standards of mental health being what they are, she was maybe half-way out there given the wacky visual she presented and given her lack of hesitation in asking me where I was going the instant I walked up to the bus stop. Considering she was asking a stranger a question unlikely to have an interesting answer, and that my destination was none of her business, I replied, but only because I wanted to see if she was as wacky as she looked. “I'm going to the Castro Theater Noir Film Festival,” I said, “to see a movie called ‘Cry Danger’ with Dick Powell and Rhonda Fleming.” She said, “I met Raymond Burr once.” I replied, “Do you know who my uncle is?” She said no, but looked interested in what I might say. “He's my uncle.” She laughed. She'd passed the sanity test, and passed it again when she sat as far away from me as it was possible to get on an empty bus.

THE LATEST GOVERNMENT STATISTICS estimate that between 11.5% and 12.4% of Americans lived in poverty in 2022, depending on the measure. That amounts to between 37.9 and 40.9 million people, or roughly the population of California. Still, some close followers consider these counts too low. In 2022 a family of four was considered poor if they made less than $29,679 that year, but a 2023 Gallup poll found that most Americans believe such a family needs at least $85,000 to get by.

One can make the poverty problem seem smaller than it is by ignoring all those Americans who are poor in many ways except officially: people who aren't hard up enough to qualify for public housing but will never be able to afford a mortgage; those who aren't poor enough to receive MedicAid but can't afford private insurance either. Some prefer a more expansive definition of poverty, one that considers someone to be poor if a $400 emergency would prevent them from covering their basic monthly necessities. Using that metric, in a country of 337 million people, an astonishing 140 million are poor or low-income.

— Matthew Desmond

SUPERVISOR McGOURTY ON FROST FANS

Hola, Supervisor:

As you must be aware, frost fans are a major annual nuisance in the Anderson Valley, far exceeding the County's noise ordinance of 50 decibels. For a week or two every spring roughly a thousand locals are routed from their sleep by the midnight-to-dawn din of frost fans which, btw, are a fairly recent innovation thus precluding Right To Farm stipulations. I hope you will include them in your proposed ordinance.

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Hello Mr. Editor:

Thanks for checking in. Our biggest noise complaints by the numbers are loud amplified music and parties that go on late into the night. These often happen in summer when people want to have their windows open for cooling at night. Frost fans are also identified as a smaller group of complaints but also unwanted noise for those affected. The “Right to Farm” ordinance protects the use of frost fans at present. Regardless, I have asked UCCE Viticulture Farm Advisor Chris Chen to check the literature for more data on frost fan noise levels and if there are mitigation measures that can be taken to reduce noise levels that are practical. We are in the process of gathering information on how other communities regulate excessive noise so that we can learn from others what are practical solutions to have more quiet communities.

Kind regards:

Glenn McGourty.

A READER WRITES: I am looking over the BOS agenda and noticed item 4c, discussion and possible action to add another road to the County roster of roads to maintain.

Item 4c: Recommended Action: Form an Ad Hoc Committee to perform an inspection of completed street improvements of the Feed Lot Lane Buildout, extending the existing Feed Lot Lane (County Road 250B) approximately 361 feet East to Lovers Lane (County Road 222), for inclusion into County maintenance, and report their findings and recommendations to the Board (Ukiah Area); and, by order of the Chair, appoint two Supervisors from Districts other than District 5 to serve on the Committee.

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Attachment from Howard Daschiell, County Transportation Director:

“Honorable Board Members:

Ukiah Pacific Associates II, a California Limited Partnership, has developed a property along Feed Lot Lane (private), between No Name (known as Millview Road) (CR 106) and Lovers Lane (CR 222). As part of that development, Ukiah Pacific Associates has upgraded this private section of Feed Lot Lane to County Department of Transportation (DOT) standards. The County-owned portion of Feed Lot Lane extends 0.08 miles west from No Name (Mill View Lane) (CR 106) to Bush Street (CR 250C). This new section of Feed Lot Lane will add 0.07 miles from Millview Road (CR 106) to Lovers Lane (CR 222).

The improvements are complete and Ukiah Pacific Associates II has requested that the improved street be accepted into of the County Maintained Road System. DOT recommends accepting the improved street into the County Maintained Road System as this portion of the street is integral to the circulation and emergency services in the area. Acceptance will occur by future action of the Board.

County Code Section 17-78(B) requires that before such acceptance can occur, the street improvements are to be inspected by the County Engineer (or his designee) and two members of the Board, appointed by the Chair, from districts other than that in which the street lies. This committee is to report back to the full Board in writing with findings and recommendations with respect to the acceptance of the roadway improvements. Feed Lot Lane is situated in Supervisorial District No. 5. Appointment of Board members to perform the inspection is now in order.”

I looked up Ukiah Pacific Associates, who is mentioned as having developed the apartments on the north end of Lovers Lane in Ukiah.

They look to be senior housing slumlords whose CEO makes about half a million a year.

https://www.mercedsunstar.com/news/local/article250150134.html

“Merced nonprofit CEO made $570K in a year. How does the ‘stunning’ salary compare to others? A Sun-Star review of several Merced County-based organizations showed what it pays to head a local nonprofit… The chief executive of an affordable housing developer based in Merced drew salary and benefits worth more than $570,000 in one year — among the highest compensation of CEOs of similar nonprofits in the state and eclipsing even the chancellor of UC Merced, public records show. As the longtime CEO of the Central Valley Coalition for Affordable Housing, Christina Alley runs a modest-sized nonprofit that helps build and manage housing developments around the state for low-income, disabled and senior residents. The organization employs about 22 people. Alley earned $441,221 in income from the nonprofit organization, as well as $129,415 in additional compensation in the one-year accounting period ending in September 2019, state records show. The nonprofit reported $7.6 million in revenue and $4.6 million in total expenses that year.

Read more at: https://www.mercedsunstar.com/news/local/article250150134.html#storylink=cpy

Seeing how much this “non-profit” pays the CEO, it seems profit is a large motive in their “non profit.” Their CEO’s salary is more than 12% of the outfit’s expenses even though she claims they reinvest a lot into the properties. The pull in about $7.6 million in revenue with $4.6 in expenses. If they are pulling that much in, it seems like they could charge less for this kind of “affordable” housing.

In addition, it appears that Ukiah Pacific Associates is affiliated with Danco Inc. which does a lot of “affordable” housing projects in NorCal. They both get substantial injections of tax dollars to build these “affordable” housing projects. And they seem to have a near-monopoly on such projects allowing them to decide how to finance them, build them, contract for them, and then turn them over to subsidiaries like UPA.

https://www.treasurer.ca.gov/ctcac/meeting/2020/20201014/staff/5/CA-20-124.pdf

https://www.hcd.ca.gov/grants-funding/active-funding/iigp/docs/small-jurisdicton-award-list.pdf

Another project, Ukiah Senior Apartments, secured $5.1 million with help from the COU.

https://cityofukiah.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/City-of-Ukiah-2019-2027-Housing-Element-Update-full-CERTIFIED-120519.pdf

https://coscda.org/projects/ukiah-senior-apartments/

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ms notes: On its face, this looks ordinary, but one does have to wonder about the timing. Is there something about this short stretch of roadway — repaving, liability, safety, etc. — that has just come to light and the “non-profit” outfit wants to get rid of? The supes will probably just rubberstamp this like everything else on Tuesday’s agenda without asking Mr. Dashiell any pesky questions.

MIKE GENIELLA:

Who knows? If Ukiah is lucky, maybe someday it will have a version of the acclaimed Tallman House and Blue Wing Saloon in neighboring Lake County. Owners Lynne and Bernie Butcher have transformed the 17-room boutique hotel and restaurant in Upper Lake into a spirited venue, including great food and entertainment. Local Contractor Tom Carter, the new title holder to the Palace Hotel in Ukiah, worked with the Butchers in 2005-2006 to transform the rundown historic Tallman and Blue Wing into an oasis that has helped reshape the face of Upper Lake.

ABALONE, A MEMORY. I remember my first and only ab experience. It was a good one, an easy one because all I had to do was watch. I went along to see how my friend Tony Summit quickly got his legal limit at Elk, but not before the two of us had rappelled down over the side of a cliff to an otherwise inaccessible little beach. Getting in and out of the access site was half the hunt, and if the poachers then prevalent had to work half as hard they wouldn’t haven't have been half as successful.

IT TOOK TONY about ten minutes to get his three mollusks, a task he made look easy but, as was obvious to me, a task that could be extremely hazardous unless you not only knew what you were doing but were good at it. Tony was very good at it. The tide wasn’t low that day; it wasn’t a matter of wading out and pulling abs off exposed rock.

TONY paddled out about thirty yards offshore on an air mattress, tied up to a partially submerged boulder, dove briefly into the treacherous surf pounding the rocks on whose sides the abs batten down with such adhesion it takes a very sharp little crowbar to pry them off, dove, reappeared with a legal one, dove again, reappeared with another legal one, and dove for a third time and emerged with a third legal one. Three for three!

THEN, Tony still in his wetsuit, me in my dry one, pulled ourselves back up the rope to head back over the Greenwood Road to Boonville, where Tony extracted the meat, the Missus pounded them and pan fried them in butter and garlic and we enjoyed as delectable a natural dinner as it’s possible to get in all of culinary California.

ABALONE POACHING, in the words of a Coast ab fisherman, was soon “out of control.” Poaching was so far outta control the entire fishery was shut down until April of 2026. It wasn't only poaching that shut it down. there were also too many licensed ab-ers. Abalone was in danger of going extinct.

ASIANS got the poacher blame. But the organized poachers were not confined to the Laotians, Vietnamese, “and some Chinese and Koreans” whose names appeared regularly in the court dockets of Coast newspapers, that caused some people to conclude that these particular ethnic groupings were doing most of the systematic looting of the delectable mussel.

THE AVA'S INFORMANT told us at the time that “the biggest ring lately is a bunch of white boys out of Citrus Heights near Sacramento.”

MUCH of the poaching, in all its multi-ethnic relentlessness, was done under the cover of regular licenses with their legal limits of three abalone each. “But ab poachers will fudge their cards and go out twice a day, sometimes three times a day, taking their legal limit of three each time.” The law says one trip a day per fisherman and an annual limit of 24 per person. “You’ll see a whole van load of guys with brand new wet suits at low tides,” our guy said. “They’re working for someone who’s pre-sold the abs.”

AND THEN “there’s the real pros who tank-dive at night,” meaning experienced divers who can stay below water for long periods of time breathing from oxygen tanks while they strip the outer rocks of the much desired mollusk. “Tank diving is illegal, but these guys can get to abalone the legal divers with their regular gear can’t get to. Fish and Game set up a checkpoint on Highway 20 near Fort Bragg one time; 40% of the ab fishermen were in violation.” There’s pending legislation to make poaching much more costly for the minority of thieves who get caught, “but with cutbacks in the number of game wardens,” our Coast Guy says, “too many of these crooks are getting away with it. Bigger fines probably won’t stop them.”

INEVITABLE ACCUSATIONS of racism accompanied the prevalent assumption among licensed recreational ab divers that Chinese and Vietnamese poachers were engaged in wholesale commercial theft of the lucratively monetized mollusk.

NO RACISM about it. Organized groups of Asian ocean thieves were stealing abalone, which was already endangered by the annual hordes of legal divers. White poachers, of course, were probably just as prevalent but they were unorganized and tended to operate alone. Every week, though, several Asians were in the dock at Ten Mile Court, Fort Bragg, charged with poaching abalone, which sold for upwards of $50 and $70 a plate in Bay Area restaurants when it was available, and it often wasn't available because the commercial taking of abalone had been banned since 1997. Scarcity made it ever more valuable, and wherever there’s value there are crooks.

THE MENDOCINO COAST is particularly vulnerable to poaching because of its sparsely settled length and its relative proximity to the San Francisco Bay Area’s six million people. Fish and Game wardens were already spread thin and, like most regulatory agencies, did the best they could with smaller budgets and fewer patrol people.

FISH AND GAME depended heavily on a snitch hotline to apprehend ab crooks, but often, by the time wardens got out to the scene of the crime, the thieves were gone. There was a large-scale gang of Vietnamese-American ab thieves who were arrested when several of them were observed on the Sonoma County Coast stripping the offshore boulders of their abalone. These arrests led to an organized ring of poachers, two of whom had been arrested before for stealing as many abalone as they could pack off to the city for sales to no-questions-asked Asian restaurants.

IN THEORY, fines for poaching abalone could range from $15,000 to $40,000 and state prison time, but Judge Lehan’s Ten Mile Court never saw a prosecution which sought fines approaching these amounts, nor was a single member of an organized poaching ring ever packed off to state prison out of Mendocino County. (Several years later one prolific poacher was prosecuted into the state pen by DA Eyster.) But so long as sanctions were light in relation to the profits that could be made, and the hordes of licensed ab hunters also proliferated, the Mendocino and Sonoma coasts were pretty much stripped of abalone.

IT TAKES an abalone 12 years to reach its legal size of 7 inches. Poachers didn't measure. They just grabbed whatever looked old enough to be edible.

IN 2017, the season was closed “due to environmental stressors that have caused the death of red abalone populations. These stressors include a marine heat wave, the decline of the kelp forest, and the proliferation of purple sea urchins.” Abalone taking will resume in April of 2026, just in time for them to be wiped out again.

For those interested in the intricacies of a typical abalone poaching case, go to Bruce McEwen’s detailed court coverage of a poaching case in the fall of 2014: https://theava.com/archives/35275

SUPERVISOR ELECT MADELINE CLINE:

Re: ED Notes: Abalone

The Editor’s comments took me back to some of the best memories of my youth – abalone diving and spearfishing right off our coast. Usually with my father and his friends, it was a rarity if there was another female let alone another kid. Being a strong swimmer, I could dive 15 feet, but some of the people I dove with were such legends in the water they dove 20 feet with ease and suctioned the abalone to their wetsuit to forgo a tube. One of the highlights of my life will always be harvesting a 10-inch ab on a cold fall morning.

Friends from inland areas like Colusa, Sacramento, etc. had longstanding summer trips to Fort Bragg for cool weather and abalone diving trips. The ones I keep in touch with don’t make the trip over much anymore. It seems there has been a hit to the coastal economy due to the close of abalone season.

I doubt we will see the opening of abalone season in 2026. I recently read about the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s tracking and research of abalone, and two abalone species remain extinct.

I remember seeing abalone poaching take place all over the coast, through both rock picking or actual diving, by taking too small of abalone and many over the legal limit. However, I saw more wardens and increased general presence on the coast than I have ever seen in twenty years of other fishing and hunting endeavors.

California Fish and Game Code Section 13100 establishes the county fish and wildlife propagation fund to be expended for the protection, conservation, propagation, and preservation of fish and wildlife. Funds are received through various fines – and as the levying of these fines has decreased, so have the funds available to return to the community in the form of local grants. As a Commissioner on the Mendocino County Fish and Game Commission, I appreciate attention to topics such as abalone. The Commission regularly discusses wildlife trends or issues, as well as selects the grants to be funded by the propagation fund. If members of the community are interested in joining these conversations or applying for a grant (applications will be opening soon), we’d welcome the participation. We are meeting this afternoon (Tuesday) at 2pm, and meetings are also available via the County’s youtube page.

GEORGE HOLLISTER sends along a definition of fascism from the WSJ:

“Fascism historically was “national socialism” —government control over much of the economy. By that definition, Democrats today are the national socialists — using regulation, mandates, law enforcement, and trillions of dollars in subsidies to coerce Americans to follow their dictates on climate and culture. Mr. Trump was a deregulator in his first term and promises to be more so in a second.”

ED NOTE: Trump is a bargain basement fascist. Emotionally, of course, he's a born and bred goose stepper. But he's not smart enough to be the real deal, and if he's elected for another four years he'll surround himself with a kindred coterie of nuts and incompetents. The lib's hysteria about the oaf is a measure of their own bankruptcy. What else do they have other than fear of this mega-clown?

A READER WRITES: I wonder if the Dems realize how much they help Trump when they overreact to his intentional provocations? Trumpers love it when the Dems go ape over the latest Trumpism. That’s the point. Who the Dems think they’re winning over when they and their allies in the media scream in reaction to every little outrage that Trump says (or dances to). Trump has them paying attention to him, dancing to his tune, and that’s all that matters to a narcissist.

THE ISRAELI MILITARY claimed on Monday that Hezbollah was operating an underground command center beneath a major hospital just south of Beirut, prompting the facility to be evacuated as fears spread that it could be targeted.

As the Israeli military launched new waves of airstrikes near the Lebanese capital, Lebanese health officials denied its claims about Al-Sahel hospital in the Dahiya, the densely populated community adjoining Beirut where Hezbollah holds sway. The hospital was evacuated once before, a few weeks ago, transferring patients to other facilities, because of Israeli bombardment. (New York Times)

ED NOTE: Not to be too judgemental, my fellow lib-labs, but it seems the least we can do in the face of this monstrous Israeli rampage is VOTE NO on all Democrats on the ballot.

A READER WRITES: “Here is a shocking report which brings home the far-reaching impact of drug production and consumption. It was written by Stephanie Powers of Tampa, Florida: “As a veteran English teacher I need to speak some ugly truths you will never hear from politicians or school officials: this country is full of clueless, disengaged parents who can’t or won’t control their kids. Many of my students shamelessly admit they never study, do homework or read books for fun. Meanwhile, I spend a lot of instructional time shutting them up, waking them up and telling them to put away their cellphones. I love my job and my students, but I’m tired of taking all the blame for education’s problems. Everyone needs to be held accountable.”

PLEASE, mighty editor, knower of all things, give your readers some answers to the questions posed by this beset instructor of youth. We look to you for salvation!

BLESS YOU MY SON, but if you’re looking to me for either answers or salvation, you need a new church.

BUT WHAT CAN WE CONCLUDE from the teacher's experience? Is civilization falling apart? (Yes.) Why do people practice self-destructive behavior? (Because it makes them feel good temporarily.) Does a combination of material wealth and democracy carry the seeds of its own destruction? (Yes, capitalism’s inherent contradictions make it unsustainable, long-term.) Does this help explain why so many (all?) societies, now and in the past, devolve into authoritarianism? (Yes, but also wealth and its concomitant decadence, which we have in lethal abundance.) What is the process by which a “green” region such as Mendocino County becomes a major player on both sides of the equation? (Mendocino County is no kind of major player in any kind of equation, except maybe civic dysfunction.) Does this letter reveal a major source of trouble? ([When’s the last time you met an entirely wholesome kid?) Was legalization of marijuana a solution or a step toward even greater trouble? (Legalization did great damage to Mendocino County's economy, albeit a criminal-friendly economy, but marijuana or no marijuana we have millions of drug-soaked Thanatoids We're headed for the rocks. Stockpile rice, buy extra ammo.)

ACCORDING TO Ralph Nader, in the fine documentary about him, “An Unreasonable Man,” several “third parties” approached him in the summer and fall of 2004 and told him that if he withdrew from the Presidential race they’d “shower” his non-profits with millions of dollars. But if he stayed in the race they’d “strangle” those same non-profits. Either way, they’d also make sure the non-profits knew exactly who was responsible for the cash or the strangulation: Ralph Nader. No one else seems to have noticed this particular piece of Democratic Party thuggery in all the reviews and comments about the movie. This kind of coercion is applied to most politicians if they stray from the reservation, not that many stray since they arrive ready made for, ah, ethical flexibility. Ralph ran for president, his non-profits were strangled, the noose around the country’s interchangeable two party neck, tightened.

SOME YEARS AGO, a highly-paid Criminal Justice Center consultant named Steve Reader told the Supervisors that the jail facility on Low Gap was in such bad shape that “inmates can shove their fingers through the wall.” Reader also said that “the lights require constant maintenance, doors are constantly failing, and the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system doesn't work. Because it's so old, you can't get the parts to fix these things anymore.”

AHEM. When yours truly was housed in this third world facility back in ‘87 in the days when dope came sailing over the fence from adjacent Low Gap Road in tennis balls, I slept on the floor for three days before I even got a cot. The showers couldn’t be turned all the way off and there were huge holes in the ceiling’s sheetrock, from which a fine powdery dust fell round the clock.

HARRUMPH! A petition was quickly drafted then, me and my fellow Americans filed a unanimous writ with the Superior Court based on everything wrong with the place, from the dangerous overcrowding on through a dozen or so other obvious violations of the laws governing incarceration to which even Mendocino County is beholden.

THE JUDGES, predictably, pretended not to know that jail conditions were so bad, but we won, and a whole lotta guys had to be released early because there were too many of us crammed into a very unhealthy space. I, however, had to do all my 36 days, finally being released one minute after midnight on what would have been my 37th day of lounging around outside on the grass with highly amusing company, And reading in my friend Rod Balson’s cell and eating free meals with the jail soup being particularly good, as I recall. A new jail was soon built, and it soon fell apart, leading to today’s “jail expansion project.”

ON-LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] As a life-long dog owner I’ll simply say that if you are in an area where dogs are supposed to be on leash and yours aren’t, you are being an asshole. Somewhere around one-third of the “he’s friendly” off-leash dogs I encounter with mine end up being aggressive towards my dog. Not necessarily attacking, but barking/growling or lunging at her. Most of the rest seem to be content chasing wildlife, which is another reason why leash laws exist.

[2] The only reason I can think of to endure a 30 minute interview with Kamala Harris, would be to glean some information that would make sense of the nonsense.

Bret Baier asked: "You told many interviewers that Joe Biden was on his game, that ran around circles on his staff. When did you first notice that President Biden's mental faculties appeared diminished?"

… and Kamala Harris replied: "Joe Biden, I have watched from the Oval Office to the Situation Room, and he has the judgment and the experience to do exactly what he has done in making very important decisions on behalf of the American people …"

[3] I do regret email. Even though I’ve turned off the ping that once heralded every new message, I regret how susceptible I am to its constant interruptions. I regret all the times I look, only to find there’s nothing there. I regret the minutes it takes for my attention to fully return to other work at hand after stopping to check. I regret how I can spend an hour a day writing back to people I’ve never met, explaining why I can’t speak at their school or judge their contest or read their novel. I regret how every person who hits “reply all” to the holiday message sent to a hundred people shaves off a few seconds from all of our lives. Those seconds add up.

[4] A former poster here called Obama effeminate (and of course Michelle manly). I decided not to respond, but I was thinking that it was really projection or something. His (the former poster) guy wears crazy amounts of makeup (and badly as anyone can see the edge where he didn’t bother to blend), has a construction of hair that is ridiculous. Wears lifts in his shoes and uses that long tie to diminish his gut.

Trump acts like he is a tough guy, an alpha, but he whines more than my teenage grandkids. A whole lot more. Constantly. Whine, whine, whine.

[5] These are dark and crazy times. I have to pass a house with two lawn signs for "Harris" where they obviously just cut "Biden" off the top and so, half a sign. But the worst part, on the same lawn, between the halves supporting Kamala, is a four foot sign with Franklin's statement "A republic if you can keep it." I am so tempted to stop by and find out where the disconnect lies, but honestly, whoever lives there scares me more than the many outrageous displays of yard demons for the upcoming "Trick or Treat."

[6] Alert! I wrote a check for cash a few months ago. The bank said that over a certain amount they are required to ask what I intend to use it for. The teller was embarrassed and provided me with a "potential use." I guess we have moved from "friendly banker" to "nosey banker."

[7] They did that to me a few yrs ago when I pulled out 20k just to keep at home … and I had to go to 2 different branches as neither had the 20k on hand. I told them it was "for a trip to Vegas to do hookers and blow"