Mendo’s hard-working supervisors are taking another big six-week summer vacation. Their last meeting was July 29 when they decided that they couldn’t take even modest pay cuts, but they could do a fiscal assessment of local volunteer ambulances services to see if the $200k per year they grudgingly allocate is being properly spent. For perspective, $200k is less than the CEO makes in a year and less than a fifth of what the Board itself makes in salary and generous perks. Their next meeting won’t be until September 9.
In 2024 the Board took a six-week summer vacation as well, there being so little to do. No multi-million dollar budget gaps to attend to, no issues like homeless camps, glamping regs, airbnb rules, no staffing problems at the nearly finished Psychiatric Health Facility or the new wing of the jail, no road work to finance, no lawsuits to settle, no union negotiations to conduct, no tax sharing agreements or annexation proposals to examine or review, no vacancy reports to review… You know, nothing much. So let’s take six weeks off! Anyone who thinks the Supervisors are working hard for their generous salaries and benefit packages while not going to Board meetings for six weeks can look back at the agenda for last year’s post-vacation board meeting and see that no supervisors used the time off to develop any priority agenda items that required preparation or extraordinary proposals. We will be watching to see if this latest month and a half off produces any results.
It’s been a while since we checked in on what the Supervisors give their department heads and themselves (via their cozy “me too” salary-setting provision) as “benefits.” The latest Department Head Memorandum of Understanding (which expiries this month and will be up for renegotiation while they claim to have a multi-million dollar budget deficit for this year and an even bigger deficit next year) provides for a range of perks that many corporate managers would envy.
Department heads (and supervisors) get longevity increases (automatic pay increases for holding the job for specified years), a deferred compensation plan (to game their taxes), a $1500 “education, training and health” annual stipend, a $3,000 a year “automobile allowance” (for out of county travel), a commuting to “work” stipend, a large health insurance contribution, life insurance, retirement, vacation, sick leave, bereavement leave, “management leave,” family and medical leave, “catastrophic leave,” on top of eleven paid holidays a year.
According to the latest salary data at Transparent California (for 2023) Supervisor Ted Williams got $109k per year in salary and $64k in benefits (plus the non-monetary benefits like leave, vacation, etc. mentioned above), Supervisor John Haschak got $114.5k in salary plus $56.5k in benefits, then-Supervisor Dan Gjerde got $120k in salary and $38k in benefits, Supervisor Maureen Mulheren got $102.5k in salary and $49k in benefits, and then-Supervisor Glenn McGourty got $105k in salary and no benefits (no explanation provided). CEO Darcie Antle got $220k annual salary plus $65k in monetary benefits. Having served three terms, former Supervisor Gjerde gets a “pension” of around $26k per year on top of his salary from his transportation planning position for Caltrans which he cleverly positioned himself for while attending two decades worth of MCOG transportation planning meetings as Fort Bragg City Council rep and Supervisor rep.
Most of the highest paid Mendo employees are law enforcement officials with the top nine recipients for 2023 getting annual salaries ranging from $170k to $206k per year plus benefits ranging from $150k to $190k per year. In 2023 Sheriff Matt Kendall got $199k in salary and $176k in benefits. DA David Eyster got $197k in salary and $95k in benefits.
Funny how the Board spends money conducting a “fiscal assessment” of the $200k per year they grudgingly give to the local volunteer ambulance services (about $66k per organization, which hasn’t gone up in eleven years) who never get to take any vacation, but nobody ever calls for a “fiscal assessment” of the $200k/year-plus inflation-adjusted annual pay and perks that the CEO and the Supervisors give themselves and their department heads every year.
Well said, Mark. I am sorry, but I have never taken six weeks off from work, except after my back surgeries while employed at MCSO. Even working for myself and a local Tribe since 2010, I would never think of taking six weeks off, maybe one or two, but not six. All of the vital tasks that you listed still need to be addressed, dates put on them, and they need to be completed, not just pushed down the road to the next BOS meeting and then on to the next, and so on….
At this point, I am not going to complain about the salaries for law enforcement, since those raises were long overdue. It’s about time a deputy sheriff/coroner can make a living while putting their lives on the line every day, unlike when I worked for MCSO (1996-2010). I was married, my wife worked, and we were raising three kids. In the late 90s and early 2000s, Deputies’ wages were barely more than what would qualify them for county assistance. I know firsthand. Why? Because the county did not want its employees receiving county assistance.
I do, however, disagree with the lack of consideration by the BOS and CEO to reduce their salaries while dealing with our current budget matters. It’s good faith to the rest of the county employees and department heads to lead by example, even if the action is temporary. There are too many heads on this snake, and things need to change.
I hope that the rest of your readers and other media outlets can share these apparent flaws, faults, and lack of accountability that continues to go on within our local governments. People need to pull their heads out of the sand, review BOS meetings/agendas, and ask themselves if things are moving forward to make Mendocino County a better place for its citizens, visitors, and businesses, or is it Oz behind the infamous Green Curtain?
I agree with Kevin Cline 100 %.
MCSO deserve what they get. Been there. Done that. Worked in Ad-Seg in the Jail. It was the hardest job I ever had, and there was zero tolerance for mistakes because Ad-Seg houses high-risk inmates.
The BOS and the CEO, on the other hand, pontificate and bloviate and fulminate…and do nothing, except largely mismanage the county and its budget.
At least John Haschak agreed to salary cuts consistent with other county employees. His colleagues? Tone deaf!