MENDOCINO GRAND JURY: HEALING THE TOXIC CULTURE IN THE CITY OF WILLITS WORKPLACE
The 2024-25 Mendocino County Civil Grand Jury (Grand Jury) received a complaint detailing multiple irregularities including an intimidating and toxic workplace culture for the employees of the City of Willits. The complaint called into question other specific issues and requested a formal Grand Jury investigation. This report addresses only the workplace environment.
. . .
With information gathered, the Grand Jury determined top management has allowed a toxic and intimidating workplace to develop by failing to follow or enforce written policies and procedures. Employees have no process available to address bullying or harassment by top management because there is no Director of Human Resources and because of the fear of retaliation. The City Council failed to provide effective oversight of top management. Specifically, the City Council has failed to follow express policies and procedures as identified in the Personnel Policies and Procedures Manual regarding oversight: “The City Council shall exercise control over personnel only through the City Manager.”
The City Council also has not conducted the annual performance reviews as required by City Council Manual of Procedures and Protocols which reads, “the City Manager shall receive performance reviews by the Council by April 30 of each year.”
ms notes: As best we can tell from an initial on-line search, the Willits City Manager was a man named Brian Bender until late March of 2025 when he was “terminated following a closed session” discussion. KZYX reported that the City Council “finalized a separation agreement” with Mr. Bender on May 5, 2025. The current Willits City website does not list a City Manager, but only lists Assistant City Manager as Cathy Moorhead. Previously, in August of 2023, Redheaded Blackbelt reported that the Willits Police Union voted “no confidence” in City Manager Brian Bender. Apparently Mr. Bender was hired in 2021. Rumors beginning being circulated about Bender’s heavy-handed management style soon thereafter. But the culture of intimidation prevented complaints from being made publicly.
THERE WERE NO ITEMS on the hard-working, underpaid Supervisors regular agenda for next Tuesday besides four routine discussion items — staff reports, CEO report (there is none), Legislative Platform and Supervisors reports. They do have a closed session labor negotiations item with all the County’s labor unions/bargaining units:
Conference with Labor Negotiator
Agency Negotiators: Darcie Antle and Cherie Johnson;
Employee Organization(s): Service Employees' International Union (SEIU) Local 1021, Mendocino County Deputy Sheriffs' Association (DSA), Mendocino County Law Enforcement Management Association (MCLEMA), Mendocino County Management Association, Mendocino County Association of Confidential Employees (MCACE), Mendocino County Department Head Association, Mendocino County Probation Employees' Association (MCPEA) Teamsters Local 856, Mendocino County Public Authority and SEIU Local 2015 (IHSS-In Home Supportive Services), Mendocino County Public Attorneys’ Association (MCPAA), and Unrepresented.
Given the County’s multi-million dollar budget deficit, this might be the agenda item that will take the most time, but whatever is done will be behind closed doors. (Or it might just be a brief review of what the barganing units are asking for.) We’ve always been amused that Mendo’s highly paid officials who make up the “Mendocino County Department Head Association” are their own barganing unit. Not only is that basically an oxymoron, but the Supervisors have their own salaries tied to the Department head salaries. So they the Supes get a raise whenever they give their top officials a raise. A cozier self-serving arrangement would be hard to imagine. (Mark Scaramella)
Also scheduled for closed session discussion is a lawsuit against the County for their controversial vote to allow the old water tower/staircase in the town of Mendocino to be demolished filed by Mendocino realtor Scott Roat. In addition to the closed session discussion, there’s a consent calendar item for the Board to approve the hiring of SF-based Kronick, Moskovitz, Tiedmann & Girard to defend the County against Roat’s lawsuit for $20k.
(Mark Scaramella)
SHERIFF MATT KENDALL:
We had a lot of moving parts during the 4th of July weekend throughout Mendocino County. This week it started with a little track meet at the Comptche Store where we had to chase down a wanted subject who had pulled a crime in Boonville. Luckily my commanders from central sector and the coast responded quickly and we took gold. This was largely due to the locals being good communicators. My hat is off to them.
Belinda at the Comptche store had quite the crowd gathering to see why all the patrol cars were in town. She should’ve sold tickets to the event. Following this arrest she was kind enough to set up a small station with water and a bottle of tecnu for those deputies who don’t respond well to poison oak.
With the celebrations in Willits, Fort Bragg, Mendocino and Point Arena we were stretched a little thin. But so far so good. I’m knocking on wood that we can keep the pot from boiling over.
One thing for certain: everywhere I have been so far, our residents have treated each other and my deputies well. I can’t thank folks enough for that. It gives me hope that the noise from our warring political parties hasn’t infected all of us.
God bless America and God bless all the folks in Mendocino County for continuing to look out for each other. And I almost forgot, God bless Jim Shields and all of the commenters and those good old fellows at the AVA. If they weren’t stirring the pot we might all forget how bad some of these things stink!
“WHAT A LOUSY EARTH! He wondered how many people were destitute that same night even in his own prosperous country, how many homes were shanties, how many husbands were drunk and wives socked, and how many children were bullied, abused, or abandoned. How many families hungered for food they could not afford to buy? How many hearts were broken? How many suicides would take place that same night, how many people would go insane? How many cockroaches and landlords would triumph? How many winners were losers, successes failures, and rich men poor men? How many wise guys were stupid? How many happy endings were unhappy endings? How many honest men were liars, brave men cowards, loyal men traitors, how many sainted men were corrupt, how many people in positions of trust had sold their souls to bodyguards, how many had never had souls? How many straight-and-narrow paths were crooked paths? How many best families were worst families and how many good people were bad people? When you added them all up and then subtracted, you might be left with only the children, and perhaps with Albert Einstein and an old violinist or sculptor somewhere.”
— Joseph Heller, ‘Catch 22’
“BUT IF THOUGHT CORRUPTS LANGUAGE, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one’s elbow. Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against. By this morning’s post I have received a pamphlet dealing with conditions in Germany. The author tells me that he “felt impelled” to write it. I open it at random, and here is almost the first sentence I see: “[The Allies] have an opportunity not only of achieving a radical transformation of Germany’s social and political structure in such a way as to avoid a nationalistic reaction in Germany itself, but at the same time of laying the foundations of a co-operative and unified Europe.” You see, he “feels impelled” to write -- feels, presumably, that he has something new to say -- and yet his words, like cavalry horses answering the bugle, group themselves automatically into the familiar dreary pattern. This invasion of one’s mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one’s brain.”
“(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.”
― George Orwell, ‘Politics and the English Language’
DOPE ARREST IN FORT BRAGG
On July 5, 2025, at approximately 6:25 PM, officers from the Fort Bragg Police Department conducted a traffic stop in the 700 block of S. Franklin Street after observing a vehicle failing to maintain its designated lane of travel.
During the investigation, the driver, identified as Bryan Kann, 54, of Fort Bragg, displayed signs of potential drug intoxication. Officers conducted a series of field sobriety tests and determined that Kann was operating a motor vehicle under the influence of drugs. A search of Kann’s person yielded approximately $400 in United States currency in various denominations. While conducting an inventory search of the vehicle, officers discovered various packaging materials, 1.91 grams of methamphetamine and nine individually packaged Ziplock bags of suspected fentanyl, hidden within a concealed compartment in the engine bay. The total weight of the fentanyl was approximately 9.5 grams.
According to the DEA’s standard, a single dosage unit of fentanyl is estimated at approximately 2 milligrams. The 9.5 grams recovered in this case equates to approximately 4,750 potential dosage units. Given that as little as 2 milligrams of fentanyl can be fatal, this seizure potentially saved thousands of lives, removing a quantity of narcotics capable of causing over 4,000 fatal overdoses from circulation.
Following the investigation, Kann was arrested and transported to the Mendocino County Jail, where he was booked for the following charges: Possession of Narcotics for Sale, Transportation of Narcotics for Sale, Use of a False/Hidden Compartment in a Vehicle, Possession of Methamphetamine, and Driving Under the Influence of Drugs.
Anyone with information regarding this incident is encouraged to contact Officer Moore with the Fort Bragg Police Department at (707)964-2800 ext. 225 or email [email protected].
FORT BRAGG DOPE ARREST, AN ON-LINE COMMENT
Many people can’t imagine what 2 kg of something looks like, let alone 2mg, if only because the metric system trips them up. Or understand something that only needs 1000x less of a dose to make you unconscious and stop breathing. For example, I weighed a single chocolate chip, the type for Toll House cookies. It was 0.5 grams. Divide that pencil eraser-sized chip into 250 even smaller pieces and you have a potentially fatal fentanyl 2mg dose. It’s so strong that you could hide multiple fatal doses inside legal Rx capsules and nobody would notice unless they tested every gram. That’s how easy it is to hide, and explains the “enough to kill 5000 people”. It’s not hype. It’s chemistry. Now consider a relative newbie, Carfentanil, which is multiple times stronger than fentanyl.
I FIRST SAW TANGIER in the summer of 2006. I was traveling in northern Morocco with my future husband, who is half Moroccan. On our arrival in Tangier we checked into El Muniria, a simple little hotel where William Burroughs wrote ‘Naked :Lunch.’ We could climb out the window of our room, sit on the red-tiled roof, and smoke joints—northern Morocco is well known for its copious production and consumption of hashish, If the day was clear, we could see Spain across the Strait of Gibraltar. Tangier still had a bad reputation then, though this, like almost everything else about it, turned out to be a half-truth. I was instantly seduced by the city’s stunning natural setting, its scruffiness, its whiff of freedom and its broken-down glamour. Of course, if I’d known more about its history, I would have realized that my enthusiasm was the most predictable reaction possible on the part of a young, hedonistic, literary Western visitor.
We had mint tea and split pea soup at Café Hafa. whose stepped terraces face the sea, and croissants and coffee at Café de Paris, whose mirrored walls multiply one’s views of passersby. We met Simon-Pierre Hamelin, the editor of the multilingual magazine Nejma, at the historic Librairie des Colonnes; we went to the Cinéma Rif, beautifully renovated by the artist Yto Barrada. We people-watched in the Grand Socco, an oval plaza that tilts at a rakish angle toward the entrance of the medina. One night an old man with a white beard and the handsome weather-beaten face of a sailor stepped out of a shady-looking hotel and declared, “Le vrai Tangier n’existe plus!”
Nostalgia hangs in the air in Tangier. The Moroccan writer Mohamed Choukri—one of the city’s great, scathing chroniclers—had no patience for it: “The lamentation over the mythical Tangier, the yearning for a Tangier that no longer exists, and by those who never even lived there, is the peak of absurdity.” Choukri loved Tangier but refused to romanticize it. His writing is a bracing corrective to the notion of the city as a glamorous, bohemian playground.
The mythical Tangier lasted from 1924 to 1956, when it became part of independent Morocco. During those decades the city and its environs were an international zone administered by Spain and France (which each controlled part of Morocco as a protectorate), the United Kingdom (which had an interest in the area because of its enclave in Gibraltar), the sultan of Morocco, and, after World War II, the United States, none of which had strong authority. This ambiguous arrangement made for a lawless, cosmopolitan place that drew spies, smugglers, money launderers, millionaires, con men, artists, bohemians, and Moroccan nationalists and agitators. Its social mores were reputed to be as lax as its banking regulations,
— Ursula Lindsey (New York Review of Books)
ON MIDSUMMER EVE 1413 Margery Kempe told her husband, “Truly, I would rather see you murdered than have sex with you again.”
The duties of a provincial middle-class wife—brewing beer, making cheese, overseeing servants—no longer satisfied her. And as for the sex, Margery had already given birth 14 times and, aged only forty had every reason to dread further pregnancies. Besides, there was by this time auother man in her life: Jesus Christ.
Eventually John Kempe agreed to Margery’s sex ban, although not before telling her that she was a “no good wife.” It likely sealed the deal that she . agreed to pay off his debts, possibly with money inherited from her father the previous year. Nonetheless, the vehemence of Margery’s declaration that she was willing to see her husband murdered—beheaded, to be precise—seems shocking, as does the bold and sometimes barely sane tone of ‘The Book of Margery Kempe,’ in which the incident is described. The Book is routinely billed as the first autobiography in English, although this needs to be qualified: Kempe was illiterate, so she can hardly be said to have written anything. She dictated her account to two clerical scribes who altered it in ways we can only imagine in order to bring her narrative, written in demotic Middle English rather than churchy Latin, closer to what they thought a spiritual antobiography ought to be.
— Kathryn Hughes
MOVING CABINS IN WINERY GULCH, ALBION.
The handwritten note on the back of the photo states: “Two at rear are George Escola-engineer & Tom Gunser. This engine called the “Goat” ran all the way up but was yard engine after.”
AT THE END TUESDAY’S Board of Supervisors meeting, Supervisor Bernie Norvell reported on the status of the ad hoc Annexation Committee which was appointed to last month along with Supervisor Madeline Cline. Norvell said they met with some Ukiah officials including City Council members Mari Rodin and Doug Crane. But, Norvell said, the Ukiah solons didn’t provide anything new or different, especially no new annexation map. The Ukiah reps did not even withdraw the highly criticized super-sized annexation map that Councilman Crane described at their last meeting as “a big fuck up.” Norvell said the Ukiah reps did abandon the timeline for annexation (end of this year, a highly unlikely time limit to begin with), but that was it. Norvell added that he and Cline intend to meet with “stakeholders” in the Ukiah Valley in the coming weeks. If by “stakeholders” Norvell means property owners in the proposed annexation area, we have yet to hear from any who support annexation. If he means a few of the “stakeholders” who are on Ukiah Valley water or sewer district boards, there may be some residual interest — but probably not if their district constituents are against it. It was obvious that Norvell had hoped that Ukiah would at least say they intended to withdraw their ridiculously oversized annexation proposal, and but without that Norvell didn’t think the first meeting represented good faith on the part of Ukiah. A close reading of last month’s Supervisors meeting when the Ukiah contingent implied that they were going to downsize their annexation proposal, cleverly leaves open the possibility that they won’t do that, but just slow it down by breaking it down into somewhat smaller chunks — such as the north end first (where the big retail is), then the south end where there’s more of a service demand. Councilman Crane crude description of the annexation map as “a big fuck up” could have simply meant that they shouldn’t have released it so soon with all their plans combined into one, not an admission that the annexation proposal was too big.
(Mark Scaramella)
FRANK HARTZELL SAYS LOCAL MEDIA ARE WORTHLESS
On the discussion about using Facebook or Instagram to communicate any sort of dissent or ICE criticism. I say DON’T. I have been told by a Republican in a fairly high govt that musk and his geeks at DOGE set up very sophisticated monitoring of Facebook and other social media run by globaliNsts such as Next Door. If you are a federal worker and complain over there, you will. be cleaning out your desk.
The MCN listserve is safe from that, I can say as a moderator and we remain so. I will have an in-depth article about this on Mendocinocoast. news. If l you can sign up for free, please do. Eventually we will break even at least if we can use hits and subscribers to show we have an audience.
I have two pieces to share Id appreciate all thoughts on. In the first, I got into why I think we must embrace old fashioned myths and symbols and use our collective power. Its on the 4th of July Parade and it does criticize, the Thin Blue Line Flag, the Thin Blue Line Flag and those on left andk right who have been using the upside down flag for political purposes. See if. you agree with my take…
In my second story, I finally tell you how worthless the local media has become and why. I take my own pledge to stop the universal bad reporting and reporting ONLY from the mouths of power. That’s all the rest in Mendo County do now! I pledge not to run guilty as arrested stories anymore. I will try, without your help, to tell the stories of victims and suspects. OTHERING is killing us all right now.
Please agree, disagree, share, cuss me out (usually I only get comments from the right wing in Mendo county, but I LOVE THEM for at last commenting. Right-wing anti-conservative radical have taken over everything partly because they are not afraid to speak out, wrong though they may be and I’m one to tell them so and visa versa. We have to come together to save our country.
Frank Hartzell
Fort Bragg
707-964-6174
ED REPLY: Easy Frank, easy big champion. In living fact, Mendocino County media have never been better. Led by the redoubtable Jim Shields at the Mendocino County Observer, who has reliably and thoroughly kept his gimlet eye fixed on county affairs going on forty years — the guy is truly an excellent reporter. And, in no particular order, the county is fortunate in journalo-talents like Justine Frederickson at the Ukiah Daily Journal, Monica Huetl at MendoFever, Feve himself, although he’s more focused these days on his work for SF Gate, the young woman at KZYX, Elise Cox, who has just been offed by the perennially Borgia-like management of Mendocino County Public Radio, and before her, Sarah Reith, also a first-rate reporter. And right in your own fogbelt, Frank, the young women reporting for the Advocate are quite good, Megan Wutzke and Mary Benjamin. Modesty forbids mention of the venerable AVA, but all by itself the AVA redeems whatever media deficiencies you seem to think prevail.
“THEY’RE TRYING TO KILL ME,” Yossarian told him calmly.
“No one’s trying to kill you,” Clevinger cried.
“Then why are they shooting at me?” Yossarian asked.
They’re shooting at everyone,” Clevinger answered. “They’re trying to kill everyone.”
“And what difference does that make?”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22
OUR TIMES: BILLION-DOLLAR BASH
by Fred Gardner
Vultures Over Mamdani
Former President Bill Clinton’s backing of former Governor Andrew Cuomo for mayor of New York City did not sway voters in the Democratic Party primary June 24 . They chose Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old Democratic Socialist.
Before Clinton made his useless endorsement, he attended a billion-dollar bash to which the New York Times paid proper attention. Excerpts follow, with comments:
“The Democratic establishment descended on the Hamptons this weekend for something of a political royal wedding that brought together the worlds of big-money politics and Clinton-era insiders. The newlyweds were Alex Soros, the son of George Soros, the Democratic Party’s most generous patron, and Huma Abedin, a political aide who has been described as almost a daughter to Hillary Clinton, the former first lady and secretary of state. Held on Saturday at Mr. Soros’s estate in Water Mill, N.Y., the wedding drew private jets and Clinton aides galore…
PS. Running stories from the New York Times every day doesn’t mean the AVA is endorsing their POV or confirming the facts reported therein. The Times conveys info deemed relevant by the recently-deposed-but-not-replaced establishment. A lot of that info is important to us “concerned citizens.” For example, as Devlin Barrett and Nick Corasanti reported July 2…
ON-LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK
[1] For over a year, I have been saying that we are regressing to a pre-Gutenberg world. Very soon the only things you can even consider trusting will be your own recollections, physical clippings or other evidence, and perhaps a very few people to whom you are very close and can trust implicitly. Everything else will be unreliable. We are always being played—that is the only thing we really know to be true.
[2] As a young man I opened my first IRA with Wells. After seeing my first annual statement it became apparent that they were charging a service fee for holding the IRA that exceeded the annual interest they paid. Nice way for wealthy bankers to educate a working stiff about the way the system works.
[3] Not sure why people still refer to them as "mainstream"? CNN's viewership is teetering on the edge of oblivion. MSNBC is deplorable. Very few serious reporters are referring to them to illustrate anything resembling reality. Legacy or corporate media seem to be the better choices.
[4] My grandfather came here from Italy at the beginning of the 1900’s. He had nothing. Stefano Spinelli took a job in a factory in CT that he hated. He saw the workers didn’t like the cafeteria food. So, he quit the factory and made sandwiches that he sold from a cart outside the factory. He made sandwiches that appealed to Irish, Polish and Italians. He was outside for lunch breaks for ALL 3 Shifts. From the proceeds he opened a restaurant near this huge GM factory. He became a lover of the Yankees. When Joe D was at bat on the radio he would stop cooking to listen. Stefano became a US citizen. I’m sure countless people loved the US as much as him. But none loved this country more than him. That restaurant stayed in the family for 60 years.
[5] Democratic socialism, which is not communism, is a good thing, as a visit to one of the European countries quickly reveals. We should be so lucky to have a country with universal health care, affordable day care, and the ability to live without the fear of financial ruin if you contract a serious illness. Perhaps one day we'll join the rest of the civilized world.
[6] Theoretically, people should be intelligent, critical consumers of information and able to separate the wheat from the chaff in the marketplace of ideas, but too often they are not. Case in point, they do not have the sophistication to sort out the medical data and latch onto faulty advice about vaccines. I agree that content moderation can be a slippery slope especially when imposed by the government. In the old fashioned media climate there were editors who required reporters to verify information before they would publish an article. On social media the opposite occurs. The more outrageous, conspiratorial, or emotional the information the more likely it is to generate ad revenue for the platform. It’s a cliche, but I believe we have freedom of speech but not freedom of reach. No one has the right to have their views amplified over other people’s views. Social media algorithms do not serve the public interest in freedom of information.
[7] Trump’s America is where you drown before you’re warned, where children die in floodwaters while billionaires get tax breaks. As 80 people died and dozens more vanished in Texas flash floods, one thing is clear: this wasn’t just a natural disaster—it was the man-made fallout of MAGA austerity. For years, Kerr County begged for outdoor flood sirens. They knew the risk. They saw kids pulled from trees. But officials didn’t act—because raising taxes, even slightly, was politically taboo. Meanwhile, Trump’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” gutted the National Weather Service, slashing 600 staffers and crippling communication with local responders. This is Trump’s version of savings: dismantle NOAA because it tells uncomfortable climate truths, silence FEMA behind a wall of political appointees, and strip public health and safety budgets to the bone—all while fueling fossil fuel expansion. When asked about the cuts’ role in the Texas tragedy, Trump blamed Biden. Because nothing screams leadership like dodging blame while citizens are swept away. From Kerr County to climate research labs, from sirens not built to children unvaccinated, Trump’s war on government isn’t about freedom—it’s about power. And Americans are paying with their lives.
[8] Can you please describe for me how one rents a crowd? I have heard this assertion many times but no one has ever demonstrated how it works or shown evidence supporting the conclusion that a process for hiring crowds exists. Please, link to an ad in Variety or the website of a talent agency that specializes in such things. How does one pursue a career as a protestor?
The book promotes principles like using the active voice, omitting needless words, and ensuring subject-verb agreement. It champions clarity over cleverness and teaches that writing should serve the reader, not the ego of the writer. For example, it prefers “He noticed a change in her manner” over “He was aware of a change in the way she was behaving.”
There are two main parts: the original rules by Strunk, which are short and rigid, and the additions by White, which include commentary, examples, and more flexibility. Their combined voices make it both strict and stylistically rich. It’s especially useful for students, journalists, and anyone aiming to improve the clarity of their written English.
Though some critics say its rules are too old-fashioned for modern writing, its influence is still strong in academic and professional circles. Even today, writers return to it for reminders to be concise, consistent, and clear.
FORT BRAGG MAN ALLEGEDLY PEEPED into the windows of two other women, came back to break in once before June 21 rape of different victim. Now faces charges in 4 separate cases
Were there more possible victims? Cayden Craig now charged with two window peeping crimes, a burglary and then the June 21 rape duiring a 40-day crime spree on North Lincoln, South Sanderson and S Harrison streets- at least.
Be First to Comment