Off the Record 9/2/2025

GREAT REDWOOD TRAIL EXPLAINS THEIR $2.1-MILLION-A-YEAR-PLUS BUDGET

(Excerpts from the Great Redwood Trail’s FY-2025-2026 budget…)

Revenue Overview:

Income from GRTA revenue generating activities, grants and inter-agency agreements is anticipated to total $2,123,722.23 including funds from an allocation of State funds dispersed by the State Coastal Conservancy (SCC), CalRecycle’s Illegal Disposal Site Abatement Grant Program, encroachment permit application charges, the disposal of assets such as rail and other track material, and annual revenues generated from the private use of GRTA property through license and lease agreements, for which consideration is defined in the agency’s Schedule of Rates and Charges, last updated in July 2024 by the GRTA Board of Directors. Revenues generated from permit application charges, and charges for the private use of GRTA property are proposed to be utilized to offset maintenance of Agency-owned property. Estimates for these revenue sources are anticipated to increase marginally as the Agency gains capacity to manage additional permit applications and existing contractual agreements, resulting in additional funding to manage maintenance and property management expenses

Expenditure Overview:

GRTA annual expenses are estimated to be $2,073,722.23, covering all staff wages and benefit costs, payroll expenses, and regular annual operating needs. The FY 25-26 budget estimates that there will be a change in Net Position of the GRTA of $50,000, as anticipated expenses are expected to be fully covered by granted and appropriated State funds. The estimated revenue from sale of NCRA salvaged assets will be added to the GRTA Bank Account for future use, as funds from other sources are sufficient to cover annual expenses and have critical deadlines for full expenditure.

Labor Permanent Positions:

The FY 25-26 budget includes full costs associated with the personnel expenses for the three currently active employees working for GRTA, and the possible inclusion of an Administrative Analyst hired at mid-year to assist staff in all divisions with ongoing needs and Board meeting activities. The total amount of estimated costs, $512,480.23, includes sufficient encumbrance of scheduled wages to address any increases in pay through annual employee evaluation, the payout or accrual of leave-related benefits, and all anticipated taxes and fees paid by GRTA for costs associated with general payroll expenses. Increases in CalPERS retirement contributions, FICA, health insurance, worker’s compensation insurance and unfunded pension liability have also been proportionally increased as reported by various tax and benefit sources.

(Mark Scaramella)

JEFFREY ST. CLAIR: One of my favorite photos of Alexander Cockburn, taken on a hike that was meant to traverse the King Range to the mouth of the Mattole River. But we ended up descending into the wrong canyon, with none of us willing to admit that we were lost on the Lost Coast, heading vaguely east instead of west, each hour farther and farther from our destination. Alex was typically non-plussed about our embarrassing predicament, soaking up the sunshine on one of the King Range’s golden hillsides. He’d brought wine and hard cider in his leather satchel, which may or may not have diminished our navigational faculties. (Those socks!)

FROM EBAY, A PIECE OF SEMI-LOCAL HISTORY: A token from Mendocino City, good for five cents. Token is circa 1908, just before Mendocino City outlawed alcohol sales.

FORMER FIFTH DISTRICT SUPERVISOR JOE SCARAMELLA, on Fort Bragg’s dumping of waste in the 1950s and 60s:

In the 1960s we had to deal with the fact that you could no longer simply dump trash and sewage into the ocean like Fort Bragg did. They were dumping everything up there at Glass Beach. The whole damn thing. The sewer was running wide open into the ocean at that time. And Fort Bragg was not doing a damn thing about it. I had a smaller version of the problem down on the south coast. The town of Mendocino was dumping right over the bluff. Right over it! All the stuff was going down there.

In one case they were using the storm sewer as sewage drains, they were dumping down there. People are a problem. You get a million people in a square area and hell… I would tell people, "I can go behind a stump and relieve myself, but I can't do it on Fifth Avenue in New York.” Why? Because people are there. That's why you can't do it. So the idea was that these people were coming down here dumping and we had to do something about it.

Point Arena — I got the County to fix it up. We put up a garbage dump so you couldn't just back up and dump it into the ocean. But the lady who owned it, the Stornetta Family, said that we had to quit dumping out there. So we had to find another place. And I was stuck with the responsibility. Well, I willingly assumed it, something had to be done. We had to find some places where people could get rid of their trash. From down here on the South Coast and on up to Fort Bragg. Mendocino was a case in point. Hell, I tried. I looked over heaven and earth. I went all over the Mendocino Coast. Naturally nobody wanted it. Who wants a garbage dump nearby?

I got the Health Department involved, obviously, I got the person there, I can't remember her name. We went out there where the Caspar dump is now. We bought some acreage. I bought it, set the whole thing up. I went down to the Caspar Lumber Company in San Francisco, made two trips down there. They were going to hold me up on the price. I said, “Ok, fellas, we'll pay it, but the assessor will be involved and it will end up costing you more in the long run.” So I got a decent price and I got the 20 acres out there. It was thought to be huge. Naturally Fort Bragg got into it. They had their trash problem. I said, “Well, this ought to be a joint enterprise.” So they created a joint venture and therefore Fort Bragg got into it. But I started the gol-darn thing. Fort Bragg hadn't done a thing. So, yes. That “cultural center” in Fort Bragg was just dumping everything into the ocean.

FRANK HARTZELL RE MCN CHATLINE:

Everyone loves to debate national politics here. Why not local issues instead. We can do something about local politics and then when we do together, we can actually impact the wider world. Turn off the billion follower blogs and cable TV and tune in locally! I would suggest a topic of the day and putting some thinking and typing cells to work on that, even if we feel more like arguing about celebrities.

Things like—

Future of our hospital Assemblymember Chris Rogers. State Senator Mike McGuire. the mayor and council. the supervisors.

Caspar Forest

Logging- from a local perspective

Butterflies.

The broadband now being installed everywhere in FB

Skunk Train future

Local music.

Birds or bears, or dogs or starfish

Some issues people are arguing here are arguing by people who have only heard lies on Fox News or Joe Rogan. Forget all of the TV news and don't feed off national right or left. If you want to argue immigration, tell us how you think its helping or hurting the local scene based on actual facts, not made-up stuff from national sources who are lying to you and you somehow cant see it.

My opinion:

Ask yourself if you could change your mind on this? If not you are preaching, not discussing.. Analyze your sources of information and try to find fresh viewpoints and do your own research.. Think!

The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office sponsored two recruits to attend the basic police academy at the Santa Rosa Junior College, who graduated on Thursday 8/21/2025.

Parker Del Fiorentino and Santiago Olea Vargas attended the 20-week training course and will begin their assignments and training at the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office.

There were 27 graduates who comprised the 217th Class at the Santa Rosa Junior College, Public Safety Training Center campus in Windsor, CA.

Please join Sheriff Kendall in congratulating Parker Del Fiorentino and Santiago Olea Vargas on their accomplishment of graduating from the police academy and their commitment to serving Mendocino County.

JR MICHAEL REDDING:

File this under "What Could Possibly Go Wrong?"

The president of our beloved utility, PG&E, is Patricia Poppe. She made these remarks at a recent forum of the World Economic Forum (I wish she hadn't gone in the first place.):

Demand management with modern technology can be automated,” said Poppe. “We shouldn’t have to send a text message.”

This statement was made in the context of discussing how AI-powered smart grid technology could automatically manage energy demand by controlling household appliances and electric vehicle batteries, reducing the need for manual interventions like text alerts.

PG&E in my opinion is just an extension of Newsom and the Democrat supermajority in Sacramento. Which means PG&E should never have this ability. I'd say the same of Republicans.

WHAT ABOUT KAMALA HARRIS — the hapless loser to Trump in November’s presidential election? She must think she has something to say on behalf of the 75 million people who voted for her or against Trump. Silence! She is perfect bait for Trump’s intimidation tactics. She is afraid to tangle with Trump despite his declining polls, rising inflation, the falling stock market and anti-people budget slashing which is harming her supporters and Trump voters’ economic wellbeing, health and safety.

— Ralph Nader

NEW YORK is one of the capitals of the world and Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic, San Francisco is a lady, Boston has become Urban Renewal, Philadelphia and Baltimore and Washington wink like dull diamonds in the smog of Eastern Megalopolis, and New Orleans is unremarkable past the French Quarter. Detroit is a one-trade town, Pittsburgh has lost its golden triangle, St Louis has become the golden arch of the corporation, and nights in Kansas City close early. The oil depletion allowance makes Houston and Dallas naught but checkerboards for this sort of game. But Chicago is a great American city. Perhaps it is the last of the great American cities.

— Norman Mailer

THE WAY IT IS. The freaking real estate market? Who can buy a house right now? No one! Houses cost a million dollars. They’re not seventy thousand dollars anymore. Your kids literally can’t keep their eyes off their screens. You’re expecting them to go off into the workforce and actually work? When’s the last time anything was made in America? Everyone’s like, ‘We’re gonna bring factories back. It takes twenty years to bring back industry. Right now, there’s only one factory thriving in America. It’s called the Cheesecake Factory. Do you realize that hundreds of Latinos, at every construction site, are getting shipped outtahere, arrested? What are all these contractors — who are Republicans, by the way, who voted for Trump, gonna do? Where are all the white people lining up to pick lettuce and rutabagas and shit? We can go back to the Roman times. Do you think their senators gave a shit who won in the Colosseum? No! They built the Colosseum to keep the people at bay, so they wouldn’t revolt. They were trying to keep poor people entertained while they take all their freaking money. It’s as old as the freaking hills — give them entertainment.

(New Yorker)

“THE WORST PART is wondering how you’ll find the strength tomorrow to go on doing what you did today and have been doing for much too long, where you’ll find the strength for all that stupid running around, those projects that come to nothing, those attempts to escape from crushing necessity, which always founder and serve only to convince you one more time that destiny is implacable, that every night will find you down and out, crushed by the dread of more and more sordid and insecure tomorrows. And maybe it’s treacherous old age coming on, threatening the worst. Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn’t enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I’ve never been able to kill myself.”

— Louis-Ferdinand Celine

GUNTHER BACHMANN was a case hardened German espionage man who had made the weather in his day. In his worn but respectable suit, he was working the room conferring in undertones with a bureaucratic baron, shoulder-slapping old buddies from way back… Ask Bachmann about how his project had been in the making and if he knew you well enough he’d put on his bland smile and say, “25 fucking years,” which was one way or another how long he’d been laboring in the secret vineyards. Which of these men and women with their affable smiles and sideways glances would be his friend for the day, which an enemy? Which staff, or committee, or ministry, or religious persuasion, or political party owns their allegiance? Only a tiny handful to his knowledge had ever heard a bomb explode in anger, but in the long, silent war for the leadership of their service, they were also case-hardened veterans. That was another lecture Bachmann would have dearly loved to give to these swiftly risen managers of the post 911 boom market in intelligence and allied trades. Another Bachmann cantata that he kept on his sleeve for the day when he was invited back to Berlin was to warn them that however many of the latest spies’ wonder toys they had in their cupboard, however many magic codes they they broke and however many hot signals chatter they listened to, the brilliant deductions they pulled out of the ether regarding the enemy’s, organizational structure or lack of them. However many internecine fights they had, however many paid journalists were vying to trade their questionable gems of knowledge for planted tip-offs for something for the back pocket… In the end, it was the spurned imam, the love-crossed secret courier, the venal Pakistani defense scientist, the middle ranking Iranian military officer who’d been passed over for promotion, the lonely sleeper who can sleep alone no longer, who among them provide the hard base of incomplete knowledge without which all the rest is fodder for the truth vendors, ideologues and politipaths who ruin the Earth.

— John Le Carre, ‘A Most Wanted Man’

BORDER

by Taslima Nasrin

I'm going to move ahead.
Behind me my whole family is calling,
My child is pulling my sari-end,
My husband stands blocking the door,
But I will go.
There's nothing ahead but a river.
I will cross.
I know how to swim,
but they won't let me swim, won't let me cross.

There's nothing on the other side of the river
but a vast expanse of fields,
But I'll touch this emptiness once
and run against the wind, whose whooshing sound
makes me want to dance.
I'll dance someday
and then return.

I've not played keep-away for years
as I did in childhood.
I'll raise a great commotion playing keep-away someday
and then return.

For years I haven't cried with my head
in the lap of solitude.
I'll cry to my heart's content someday
and then return.

There's nothing ahead but a river,
and I know how to swim.
Why shouldn't I go?

I'll go.

ON-LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] My father had a few sayings he thought were pretty funny. On meeting a child for the first time he’d ask, “How old are you? Ten? When I was your age,” he’d continue, “I was 21!” A favorite of his was: “For once in my life, I’m right again.” He’d make that joke whenever he’d been proven right about anything. I sometimes think it’s the fate of many progressives for once in our lives to be right — over and over. This isn’t because we’re particularly good people, although some of my heroes are indeed good people. It’s at least in part because we are people with good luck. It’s been our good luck that, at some time in our lives, somebody offered us a place to stand, a viewpoint, an ethical way of grasping the world.

[2] What I miss most is humor. Hell, it’s sort of fun when liars lie in a knowingly humorous way. But it gets tedious fast when liars lie and get a ‘twofer’ by preaching how stupid you are for calling bullshit to the lie. I love how mainstream media thinks we’re too stupid or lazy to have read the recently declassified documents. If the headline in the NYT tomorrow read ‘We Fucked Up! We Finally Read The Documents,’ they might have a future, but lying, preaching, and doubling down on the bullshit ain’t gonna get it.

[3] There are a lot of people who have been growing ‘weed’ around here for decades, who actually care about the environment. (Most of the original ‘back-to-the-landers’ qualify in that way). True that some have had to struggle with the pull between those values and greed. Yet most the growers I have known have likely learned a lot in these ensuing, post-’legalization’ days, about the need to generally let waters flow, for the larger good. And I believe they would likely condemn people who cause permanent or long term environmental pollution and trashing our communities. The problem is many of other groups involved in this industry, be they ‘green-rushers’, cartels, cops, countie$ or CDFW, are extremist zealots, looking out for their narrow goals, without consideration that there IS middle ground in which this industry should, or was able to maintain families and their communities as part of their relatively healthy growing techniques.

[4] Unfortunately, the USA has Stage 4 cancer: the evil and corruption and destruction has gone too far. No cure available. It has already sealed its fate. You are living in history… the fall of the USA empire (the UK was the last, and there were hundreds before that). The flaw is in the individual: the human mind, the human spirit. When the day comes that man actually understands himself, the atrocities and failings of humanity will finally be able to be prevented.

[5] SMOKE, an on-line comment:

Here in inland Mendo I think we’ve got smoke from the Pickett Fire in Napa.

That looks like it could become a bad one.

I know it is a stretch, but smoke can really travel in odd ways.

I once called CalFire to report smoke moving into my woods,

“Help there’s a fire it’s near me I see the smoke omg it’s coming closer!!”

Calm down, Ma’am. Ma’am, calm down. It’s in Oregon.

The Biscuit Fire, it was.

Smoke moved in from the south this morning.

First we’ve seen in many, many weeks.

I am grateful for all the blue this summer.

[6] I remember coming home the night of the 2016 election and seeing that NYT “Needle” giving Hillary a 95% chance of winning. And there was a sub-head on “why is it taking so long to call Florida for Hillary?”

And I put a pillow over my head and went to sleep.

And woke up two hours later in a different reality altogether.

Had I known that Colbert was melting down live, I’d have watched that feed instead, but what I got was a bunch of very somber and scared News pundits trying to talk everyone off the ledge, that things would still work out.

If only they had a Camera in Hillary’s victory suite, I’d watch that video every time I felt a sad, just to lift my spirits and remind myself that the favorites don’t always get their way.

[7] Compulsive exerciser here, spending my retirement trying to stay ahead of Father Time. I started doing pushups when I was about 14 and you had to do them as part of the NYC PSAL tests to get a medal. I never had the frame for weight lifting and this has helped me keep decent upper body musculature and definition. Been doing them ever since and if done right they are the best compound exercise as they work arms, shoulders, back, core, abs, even legs if you hold yourself rigid. 50 every morning, 50 every afternoon, along with squats for legs and glutes and leg lifts for abs. My doctor knows and approves.

[8] ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I wonder what would happen to me if I illegally entered Honduras or Sudan or Nicaragua or Mexico and publicly burned that country’s flag at a demonstration. The 1989 SCOTUS decision was outrageous and just plain wrong. And btw the flag does not represent the government. It represents the country. “Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.” – Mark Twain Citizens should learn to differentiate between the two. If you hate this country so much that you are in favor of burning its flag, you really should leave. You’ll be so much happier.