Letters 8/29/2025

• Local Housing Idea
• Behind Closed Doors In Fort Bragg
• No More Complaint-Driven Enforcement
• Gigantic Increase In Water/Sewer Rates For Hopland
• A ‘Living Wage’ Won’t Produce Responsible Adults
• ICE Officers Should Be Accountable For Behavior
• Longer Carpool Hours Will Make Traffic Worse
• Desecrating The Hallowed Halls Of Government
• Ghislaine Maxwell’s DOJ Interviews
• The South Has Risen Again
• Where Are The Pro-Lake Protests?
• Tax Cuts For The Rich, Safety Net Losses For The Poor

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LOCAL HOUSING IDEA

Editor,

Multi Family Housing Deal in Boonville Area

I am tossing out some brainstorming and want to mention that an amazing opportunity exists for land and home ownership for people who are capable of thinking outside of the box and have a handful of similar minded friends.

The former Frogwood Lodge property, AKA Bear Wallow, is for sale for $1.5M.

It has 39+ acres, seven homes, and a much larger lodge building with three floors and three bathrooms.

Six individuals or couples who could each afford to spend on average $250K could each wind up with their own 1-4 bedroom home plus have more to share as a community; including an additional cabin for guests or to use as rental, as well having a huge lodge building.

The lodge building has an apartment upstairs, three bathrooms (2 half plus one full), a fireplace, a large space with a hardwood floor on the main floor that is suitable for presentations, dancing or community activity such as mothers sharing minding the neighborhood children so that other moms can take turns having a break (all being uses that the lodge has seen during the last 20 years).

Downstairs there is what was once a large kitchen with a huge Wolfe 2 griddle, 6 burner and 2 oven range and a dining room that can seat close to 30 people.

Other features include a large Hot Springs Grandee hot tub, and mushroom foraging for white matsutake, black trumpets, several sorts of chanterelles, two hericiums, porcini and other edible species.

The site has seen a long series of upgrades and improvements over the years including adding paved skirts to the two driveway entrances. It has a protected well with a commercial seal and excellent quality drinking water that does not require treatment.

All eight of the buildings have their own separate electric meters, propane and septic tanks.

I am not involved with the sale but have lived there for 22 years and would love to see it continue to be used for area people’s residential housing bliss, and continue to be a community as has been the case for the past decade; rather than it be turned back into a retreat center renting to people visiting from outside of the Valley or outside of the county. In my opinion Anderson Valley needs housing for families much more than it needs another retreat rental.

If you have a group of friends with whom you want to share a neighborhood and co-own a property, this is by far the best deal for housing in Mendocino County.

See https://www.Frogwood.org for history, more information and photographs.

If you have interest, Anne Fashauer, the realtor in Boonville, can provide more details.

Geofrey Pomeroy

Boonville

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BEHIND CLOSED DOORS IN FORT BRAGG

To the Editor:

Members of the local government and the Fort Bragg Police Department have been acting in an unethical way for some time. Much of the public is aware but don’t know what they can do about it. Bernie Norvell, Lindy Peters and Chief Cervenka need to be called out and the public needs to be aware of what they have been doing and what they are trying to pull off now.

Bernie Norvell has been an advocate of Cervenka for some time. Bernie is the one who got him a salary completely out of line with the average for that position. He is the one who tried to place him as a back up city manager, while in his role as chief.

Many people have approached Council members and the City Manager with documentation, photos, etc. documenting the PD’s and Chief's immoral conduct. People have raised concerns during City Council meetings about the PD as well. Nothing was done about it

In addition to the immoral conduct by staff of the PD, the Chief has misused funds earmarked for specific purposes, such as Asset Forfeiture money used to paint the PD saying it was a safety issue, etc.

Regarding the immoral behavior by the PD, a local citizen finally filed a civil lawsuit stating the Chief was covering for his employees. The City Defendants filed. Motion to Dismiss and the judge denied the request (attached) and the case is ongoing

In the meantime, the City Manager finally opened an investigation on the Chief. About two days after the City Manager informed the Chief of the investigation, he responded that he would retire. However, he came back shortly after and told a someone in Human Resources that he would stay if Isaac Whippy, Scott Hockett and Marcia Rafanan stepped down. He was told that will not happen. Cervenka told Isaac Whippy he had been faced with a hostile working environment and he would sue the City. The Council offered him the three month salary, which was in his contract. The Chief rejected it

He then wrote his own press release announcing his retirement, which rarely occurs.

Bernie Norvell’s Letter to the Editor on MendoFever.com, singing Cervenka’s praises, while being fully aware of the ongoing issues with the PD since Norvell was mayor was interesting as well. This was placed online after while the lawsuit was in progress and the investigation had already been initiated.

In one of their many closed sessions, which have been used most recently to discuss the ongoing lawsuit details and investigation, Lindy Peters proposed they pay Cervenka an additional severance of six month’s salary of close to $100k of taxpayer money; which Rafanan and Hockett opposed vehemently. The taxpayers have no idea what is happening behind closed doors.

Captain O’Neil, who is the center of recent developments of his own, is slated to be Cervenka’s Interim Chief, then stay in the position long term. The same Council members who are discussing paying Cervenka the additional severance proposed Cervenka stay on as a consultant to assist O’Neil in his transition. This is what Captain O’Neil told the Sheriff’s Department.

The mayor, Lindy, Tess and Whippy's lack of transparency, by using closed sessions to hide behind has been abhorrent, arrogant and is an insult to the people in the community who elected them in good faith. The Chief, Norvell and Peters are trying to hide something and are banding together to do it.

This matter needs to be escalated appropriately. I hope this is a good place to start.

Name Withheld

Fort Bragg

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NO MORE COMPLAINT-DRIVEN ENFORCEMENT

August 17, 2025

Dear Supervisor Haschak and the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors,

When we spoke on the phone the other day I was quite upset and do not feel that I was able to clearly express my feelings about the complaint driven code enforcement policy.

In theory, I agree with the policy that code enforcement officials will not seek out violations, but will respond to complaints. That seems reasonable. In theory. In practice, it doesn’t seem to work so well. I am assuming that the policy was intended to gradually bring everyone up to code with the people who had really egregious violations that were harming their neighbors in some way being the first to be cited. Makes sense. Your neighbor has something going on that impinges on your ability to enjoy your own place, you have asked them to fix it, they don’t, you talk to your other neighbors, they don’t like it either, you get together and turn them in to code enforcement as a last resource and they are forced to make some changes. Fair enough. Nobody really likes to be either the complainant or the violator, but fair is fair.

Recently, I am not seeing things go this way.

In the past few months I have been the object of two different complaints. One at home, one at my business. At my home, we had one neighbor who turned in 8 different properties in our neighborhood anonymously. We all know who it was-he was angry at everyone and decided this was the way to retaliate. We have all lived together in our neighborhood for many years with no problems. We all keep to our side of the fence, argue at our road association meetings and are there for each other if we need to be. Otherwise, we leave each other alone and everything is fine. This one complaint has put everyone in a position of having to spend a huge amount of money that they don’t have in order to fix things that don’t affect anyone but themselves. I realize that I made decisions to do things without permits-some of which I was aware of and some not-and now I have to pay the piper. I get that. I don’t like it, but I get it. Making the complaint was petty and vindictive in my opinion, but I acknowledge that I was going around the rules and am trying to fix all the things. This whole thing is a drag and secondary really to the problem at my business.

My husband and I own Long Valley Feed & Supply in Laytonville. The feed store has been in business since 1947. It runs out of an old building that has lots of charm and isn’t super practical, but we do our best and make it work. We don’t make lots of money-but enough that it has supported our family (with my husband doing some other work on the side) for almost 22 years. I work 6 days a week mostly, I have had some employees, less now with the economy what it is, we don’t go on vacation barely ever, or out to dinner, but we make it work. I love my job, my customers are very supportive and I am fortunate and grateful to still be in business. However—last week I received a visit from ‘the code enforcement guys’. They walked in and I knew it was going to be a bad day. I asked if they were here to ruin my day and they said yes, they were. They told me that someone had anonymously turned in 100 complaints, mostly businesses, across Mendocino County. They were very nice, apologetic, said they really didn’t want to come to me because they know that I do a lot for the community and this was going to be hard. And yes, it will be hard. I have a few outbuildings that I use to store things-hay, grain etc. Those buildings will all need permits.

I have lots of customers in and out all day. The comments that I get are along the lines of “oh, nice, this place is so cute, I brought my out of town visitors to see the store because it’s great”. I have NEVER had a complaint from a neighbor except when I had some roosters that crowed at 3 in the morning, and we fixed that.

I have tried, in the past, to get permits to build new stuff. I spent thousands of dollars to put in a permitted septic system (there wasn’t one) and to apply for, and receive, a use permit, so I could apply for a building permit to put up a building to store hay in. I wanted to put in a bathroom to attach to the septic system, but in order to do that I would have to bring all kinds of other things up to current code-parking places, paving. I couldn’t do it. By the time the use permit was granted, the cost of putting the building up had increased to the point where it was not affordable. So I just stuck with what I had, got a porta-potty-and that’s where we are. I would love to have a beautiful (or even an ugly) barn to store hay in. I’d like to have an ADA accessible bathroom. I’d like to have all the things the way they should be and not have a hammer hanging over my head. But I’d also like to stay open. The feed store business is not going to make me rich. I struggle every month to make it all work. I do what I can, try to pay my part time people a reasonable amount per hour, pay my sales and property taxes, support my community in the best way possible, but it’s not a walk in the park.

If I have to bring everything up to current code-I will have to close the doors. There is no way that I can see to do it. I have had friends say-“oh, maybe you can get around it like this-or that” and while a really appreciate that they want to help me find a way-I don’t want to ‘try to get around it’. I just want to keep the doors open and go to work. I want Mendocino County to take a long hard look at the policies that they have put in place and decide if this is what they want in the county.

I want to live here. I want to have a little shop and donate straw to the Halloween Carnival and receive people’s packages when they live too far away for UPS or whatever and take the extra roosters and help reunite lost dogs with their people and employ a couple people and encourage people to raise chickens and have a spot where people run into each other and chat. I want to run the kind of place I want to have in our town.

I have seen a lot of businesses close down for all kinds of reasons. I really don’t want to be another one. I’m not hurting anyone. My ‘unpermitted buildings’ aren’t hazardous. They’re not going to fall on anyone. It’s just a cover so the hay doesn’t get wet and a little covered storage for the grain. None of the neighbors object-just some anonymous person with nothing better to do than drive around and make problems. Is that the kind of system we want in place?

I’m not saying anything that hasn’t been said before. But now it’s affecting me, so I am feeling it directly.

If this county can’t see a little more clearly how it’s policies are affecting its population, there’s going to be a lot less population to affect. How does this generate more revenue for the county? If I go out of business, there goes my sales tax revenue, that’s a couple less jobs, I can’t support local non profits with donations to their silent auctions, I can’t be a supplier for small livestock producers, and a business that has been in operation for 78 years will be gone.

I am absolutely not the most savvy business person, but I’ve managed, with help and support from my family, friends and customers and the community as a whole, to keep the doors open for 22 years. I’d hate to have to close because of someone who doesn’t even have the courage to say who they are.

In a perfect world I would like the Board of Supervisors to halt the complaint process and its repercussions for a little while and really look at the way it is being used. And while you’re at it-look at the Planning and Building permit process. Why not try to have a process that encourages improvement instead of punishing past behavior-a lot of which was not even a problem when it happened? The process that is in place now makes change so difficult and costly that it absolutely requires applicants to try to get around the system.

So please, please can you look at what you have done. Please.

Thank you,

Meadow Shere, Owner, Long Valley Feed & Supply

Laytonville

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GIGANTIC INCREASE IN WATER/SEWER RATES FOR HOPLAND

To whom it may concern:

The Hopland Public Utility District plans to increase our water rates by 100% over the next two years and ultimately by 200% in 5 to 7 years.

Local business people feel that there has been a mistake in the HPUD analysis.

The whole thing seems very fishy and the Hopland Public Utility District is not responding to our emails.

None of the news agencies in Ukiah or Hopland seem to be interested in covering the story.

Vernon Budinger

Hopland

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A ‘LIVING WAGE’ WON’T PRODUCE RESPONSIBLE ADULTS

Editor:

Imagine a young person jumps into “adulthood,” having never worked hard for things wanted, with an entry-level job, gets married and starts a family (like a responsible person). Also imagine one (or both) of these “adults” never finished high school or attended Santa Rosa Junior College. They have cellphones and cars, but never held part-time jobs before jumping into adulthood. Is it any wonder that some adults end up with no real skills or abilities — stuck in dead-end $7.25 per hour jobs?

If older, wiser, responsible adults don’t teach our young to prepare for true adulthood, we will always have working poor people stuck in low-paying jobs. If we raise the minimum wage to a living wage (“Make the minimum wage a living wage,” Letters, Aug. 18), there would be no temporary or part-time jobs for students finishing their schooling (or gaining skills through internships or apprenticeships). I don’t think we can legislate responsibility or patience (to eliminate jumping into adulthood).

We have to do a better job of linking (in young people’s minds) why they go to school and obtain skills (through 4-H, FFA, internships or apprenticeships) with a good adulthood experience.

Diane H. Davis

Penngrove

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ICE OFFICERS SHOULD BE ACCOUNTABLE FOR BEHAVIOR

Editor,

I am writing in response to the recent article regarding the Trump administration’s threat of sending federal troops to Oakland.

I am equally concerned about the threat of masked officers from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency appearing to raid schools and farms. Some of these incarcerations of workers and even children definitely appear to be illegal.

I wonder when Congress, the courts and the American public will finally have seen enough. We should all, Democrats and Republicans alike, be very afraid of these continuing and escalating aggressive tactics, especially since these “soldiers” are apparently so ashamed of what they are doing they have to hide their faces.

Noel Robertson

Fairfax

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LONGER CARPOOL HOURS WILL MAKE TRAFFIC WORSE

Editor:

Expanded carpool lane hours on Highway 101 will worsen, not improve, the commute for Sonoma and Marin County residents. CHP and Caltrans are extending the morning carpool window from 2½ hours to nearly five hours. This decision defies logic and traffic patterns. Also, it comes right before the Marin-Sonoma Narrows is set to open.

When I questioned the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Caltrans, they cited a need to “better align times.” Yet this alignment adds over an hour to both ends of the previous schedule, forcing commuters into a single lane for longer periods. They dismissed the fact that significant traffic doesn’t begin until 6:30 a.m. and pointed to an unnamed study they could not produce. They claim they will evaluate after the change but couldn’t say how or when.

This move smells like a cash grab for CHP. For a daily commuter like me, who leaves home before dawn to beat traffic, these new hours negate any benefits from current road improvements. A more logical solution would have been to set the carpool hours from 6:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., when they’re actually needed, not to expand them to suit some unknown agenda.

Benjamin Wallen

Petaluma

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DESECRATING THE HALLOWED HALLS OF GOVERNMENT

Editor:

How much money will it take to undo Donald Trump’s ghastly, gaudy, tasteless White House decor once he leaves office? How many hungry mouths could it feed? Where is the outcry to make him stop? I think the American public is in a state of shock. As a long-retired successful commercial interior designer, I would have been run out of town on a pitchfork for desecrating the hallowed halls of our government in the way Trump has managed at the White House. It would be important to know what design team, if any, had a hand in it. They’re to be avoided at all costs. How many hungry mouths could be fed? How many lives could be impacted in a positive way if only the money was used to do good instead of feeding his insatiable ego? It’s sickening!

Pearl Seymore

Sonoma

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GHISLAINE MAXWELL’S DOJ INTERVIEWS

Editor:

I’m listening to the interview of Ghislaine Maxwell by DOJ attorney Todd Blanche. It’s a complete farce. Ghis spinning fables like Scheherazade in a demure ladylike voice, while Blanche lobs softball questions.

I’m following this because of my interest in true crime, politics, and pop culture, but I don’t expect to ever learn the true story. This is going to have more iterations than the Kennedy assassination, and will never go away. There seem to be guilty parties on both sides of the aisle. Trump is using this to distract from the fact that he’s unleashing a military dictatorship.

Here is a link to the written transcript and the audio recordings. The first two audio episodes have bad sound quality but it gets better after that.

https://www.justice.gov/maxwell-interview

Monica Huettl

Redwood Valley

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THE SOUTH HAS RISEN AGAIN

To the Editor:

South Won Civil War: The White House

President Donald J. Trump today signed an executive order declaring that the winner of the War Between the States was the Confederate States of America.

At the signing ceremony Trump observed, “Abraham Lincoln was the original RINO.”

Dan Hibshman

Ukiah

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WHERE ARE THE PRO-LAKE PROTESTS?

To the Editor:

I find it interesting that Ukiahians are not protesting, for our own lake, and Russian River. Our own agriculture and our own farmland. It is beyond my comprehension that all these years, I see protests for people and causes far far away. But when a local calamity is about to ensue, nothing but crickets in town. The entire ecosystems & economy is based on water, from reservoirs. The seismic studies used to validate removal of Scott dam, by corporate PG&E, where exaggerated. A fish ladder is what is needed. Pools along areas for Salmonoids, can be put in by agencies. And salmon do need saving. But as I write, much larger polution, is coming from Japan, as Carbon 14 & Tritium radioactive waste water, from reactors, are released and will be released, for decades into the ocean. Salmon live their lives, in the ocean. Breeding beds, pools through summer, all exist right now, because water is let flow, and controlled, to keep water flowing, through summer. A River that completely dries up, wether Russian or Eel, cannot bring salmon back, if another drought, happens again. We had a great record rainfall days this year. The first in a long, long, time. Please people, I implore you. Write politicians and save water, for the really tough times, ahead. For fire supression in Mendocino National Forest. Save farms, cattle ranches, vineyards, cannabis farms, pear orchards, new berry farms, and the future of potential food prosperity, grown right here, in our backyard.

There is a way, to do both…but politicians, are not even listening or trying to see alternatives. Which means we lose a lot. And will be asked by them, to pay, a lot, in new taxes, for nothing but dry lakes and dry river beds. Not to mention flood control in winter. Sometimes the heavens open up and pour buckets of water on us. Will places along the river be able to cope? The consequences, have not been really discussed about that part of this dam removal. Thats a lot of water stored, in a safe way.

Save Lake Pillsbury, Lake Mendocino , The Russian River

Catherine Lair

Ukiah

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TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH, SAFETY NET LOSSES FOR THE POOR

Editor:

Historically the Democratic Party has aligned itself with the labor movement and has instituted and supported policies that aim to protect and empower workers. They advocate for increases in minimum wage with the goal of providing a “living wage” for all workers. Democrats support trade unions to strengthen bargaining rights and address unfair labor practices.

Today we have an ever-widening wealth gap, and with the recent passage by the GOP of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” that gap is certain to grow. The ultra-wealthy will continue to get government subsidies and huge tax breaks, while the middle class and the poorest and most vulnerable citizens will lose many social safety nets — food stamps, housing help and medical insurance, to name a few.

These unjust policies will result in unequal access to quality education, health care, job opportunities, etc., resulting in mental health decline and social unrest. The present administration has shown that workers are at the bottom of the list of their priorities. No Democrats voted for this bill.

November 2026 will be your opportunity to offer the workers of this country your support at the polls.

Joan Mc Auliffe

Santa Rosa