Supervisors Urged To Celebrate Their Excesses, Er, Successes

… “Success” as defined by them, anyway.

For two full days this Tuesday and Wednesday the Supervisors gave themselves and their senior staff, the equivalent of participation trophies for mostly doing what they’re supposed to do. No action was taken. No proposals or motions were made. Except for one lone man who objected to the banishment of the abstention option, nobody but Supervisors and staff attended.

The first day of the workshop was “facilitated” by a professional facilitator from Sacramento named Yolanda Underwood of “CPS HR Consulting,” a former Social Worker turned Human Resources Consultant. Ms. Underwood got a whopping $4,800 for her one day appearance, plus an additional $720 to prepare an “action plan.”

Ms. Underwood’s “services” were obviously unnecessary. Her remarks were clichés, and she didn’t appear to be prepared to discuss any Mendo-specific subjects. Her primary contribution to the meeting was for the County officials to “Celebrate your successes.”

A few random bits of info were dropped here and there, such as when Acting Auditor Controller Treasurer, Tax Collector Sara Pierce officially declared that the County now has at least an $11 million-plus carryover surplus from last fiscal year ending in June of 2024. Nobody seemed interested in knowing how the County went from near bankruptcy last year (according to Supervisor Williams) to an enormous surplus a year later.

A few small cost savings measures that the CEO and the supervisors implemented — turning out the lights earlier, more carpooling, paying a few senior staffers to retire early — may have contributed a little to the apparent surplus, but most of it is the result of the County’s high vacancy rates in all general fund departments. No one seemed interested in the actual vacancy numbers, even when the beleaguered Human Resources Department made their presentation, nor did anyone express any interest in such trivialities as workloads, backlogs, output statistics, experience levels, hiring delays, performance evaluations, etc. The Supes paid frequent lip service to “efficiency,” but of course, only in the abstract. Paying $5,500 for a pointless “facilitator” for one day’s “work” undermines that theoretical objective though.

At one point CEO Darcy Antle complained that “Staff has been labeled with negative titles in the public” but did not offer any examples. Like her colleagues and the facilitator, Antle thinks that they need to do a better job explaining themselves and their accomplishments to the public who for some reason doesn’t hold them in the same high regard they have for themselves.

Environmental Health Director Marlayna Duley told the supervisors that there wasn’t much chance of significant housing increases in the unincorporated areas of the county because “most of the low hanging fruit has been picked” — meaning that most of the potential sites in the unincorporated areas that might seem suitable for housing development do not have adequate soils or percolation capacity.

A few new departmental budget reports were presented which listed the account numbers and categories for some departments with unannotated budget status snapshots. They came with the usual caveats about the timing of revenues and expenses so please don’t draw any conclusions and don’t ask any questions. Everybody thought these reports were a wonderful achievement — a success to be celebrated! — failing to mention that these raw reports, such as they are, could have been produced by the Executive Office years ago if they had wanted to. Instead, they preferred to berate former Auditor Chamise Cubbison who pointed out at the time that the departments and the executive office were slow to update the budget information, making the reports nearly useless. They preferred to blame Cubbison for their own failures; getting rid of Cubbison was more important than getting useful departmental budget reports.

Newly elected Supervisor Madeline Cline didn’t contribute much beyond what sounded like excerpts from her generic campaign speeches. Near the end of the workshop she suggested that the Board “needs to shift to linear prioritization,” and they need “a dedicated PR professional to tell our stories.”

Supervisor Bernie Norvell very politely said that the county and staff could do a little better with the homeless situation a la Fort Bragg. Sheriff Kendall, Social Services Program Manager Megan Van Sant, and Mental Health Director Dr. Jenine Miller explained some of the intricacies and difficulties with the more incorrigible homeless people — most of whom are not crazy enough to be “reimburseable,” so not eligible for mental health services. But they promised that yet another new program was in the works focusing on frequent offenders. Sheriff Kendall insists that Proposition 36 which ups the penalties for theft will force some of them into treatment to avoid jail. He hopes these efforts will show results in six months to a year. (Nobody in Mendo ever provides a time certain or a specific date when the results will be provided. But things will get better soon, trust them. Again.)

Ms. Van Sant told the Supervisors that hard-nosed approaches like enter treatment or go to jail may sound good; and that people with jobs can be influenced by the threat of jail and job loss. “But we can’t just arrest somebody for being objectionable. This is America. They have freedom. We can’t just take their liberties away.” Ms. Van Sant also insisted that the County’s homeless bureaucracy has implemented all of consultant Robert Marbut’s recommendations, despite the public impression to the contrary.

The first hour and a half of day 1 was wasted on “decorum” in the board chambers. This exercise was clearly the brainchild of Supervisor and new Board Chair John Haschak. Decorum is Mendo’s way of telling people to go with the flow, not rock Mendo’s sensitive boat. In this case it came across as a thinly veiled attempt to stifle Supervisor Williams who has an annoying habit of asking questions and shooting from the lip.

Supervisor Williams wasn’t very receptive to Haschak’s passive aggressive coercion and continued to ask most of the questions during the two day workshop.

Supervisor/Chair Haschak, with an obvious jibe at Williams since Williams is the only Supervisor who even tries to put novel ideas on the agenda, noted that some agenda items are “totally off track,” but then Haschak added that he was “just putting it out there for discussion.”

Williams himself has an annoying way of invoking “the public” in his questions as if he alone is specially tuned in to what “the public” wants. Nobody asked Williams how he knows what the public wants. At one point Williams even claimed that “the public” wants daily budget reports posted on the County’s website.

The board mulled their tentative plans for a road tax proposal, currently being evaluated by the Mendocino Council of Governments (MCOG) for both the receptiveness of local voters as well as the level of the tax and what it might be used it for, or at least what they might tell “the public” what they’d use it for.

Consultant Underwood didn’t show up for the Day 2 of the workshop, so at least they can celebrate not wasting another $5,500.