Is Anything Going On Behind The Green Curtain?

Former Deputy/Sheriff’s Investigator (Now Private Investigator) Kevin Cline of Ukiah on our article about the Supervisors taking six weeks off:

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?

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Jim Shields, my colleague at the Mendocino Observer, among others, seems to be of the opinion that the Supervisors taking six weeks off (again) might be a good thing because at least they won’t be screwing anything up while on vacation.

Of course, we agree that this Board of Supervisors (especially the three holdovers from the last two years), has made some glaring blunders over the last few years, the largest being the attempted Vets Office relocation; the attempt to charge Sheriff Kendall for ordinary budget overruns, and to illegally take over his computer system; the costly consolidation of the County’s financial offices; and of course, the Get Cubbison disaster, which is still ongoing.

Obviously, those kinds of self-inflicted wounds are less likely if the Board doesn’t meet. Jim Shields’ overly cynical viewpoint makes some sense in the abstract. But as former Deputy Cline notes, there are important tasks that these overpaid officials are avoiding and pushing further down the road, making them more costly and difficult to deal with when (if?) they are addressed.

Let’s look just at the tasks the Supervisors have taken on this year that are being delayed and neglected as the Board casually strolls away from their duties and does nothing while drawing their generous salaries and perks.

Last June when the Board finalized their “balanced” budget (based largely on a flawed assumption that a lot of staff vacancies would remain vacant) CEO Darcie Antle promised that she would provide monthly vacancy reports in support of the Board’s “Strategic Hiring process” which was supposed to keep a lid on departmental hiring to fill vacancies and deal with each vacancy on a case by case basis. By the time the Board next meets in September we will have gone three months without a report and no oversight of vacancies or “strategic hiring.”

During the budget discussion in June Supervisor Mulheren said that “Notable savings include $6.3 million projected from staff turnover…” Are vacancies appearing as people retire or quit? Where? How many? In what departments? Are they being replaced? (We know that some were replaced in the Assessor’s office already because Assessor Katrina Bartolomie reported as much last month and nobody asked if the Board had approved them.) Are any savings being achieved? Or are deficits piling up that will only be harder to deal with later?

Supervisors Madeline Cline and Bernie Norvell were assigned to a Tax Sharing/Annexation ad hoc committee that was supposed to hold some discussions with Ukiah officials and report back monthly. No reports have been made. Supervisor Norvell briefly mentioned that the ad hoc committee met, but the Ukiah Officials they were supposed to meet with didn’t show up. The idea was that if the agreement was more balanced Ukiah would propose more reasonable annexations which could lead to more economic development in the Ukiah Valley. Apparently, this is not an urgent concern.

Earlier this year we were told that “the County is exploring the use of Opioid Settlement funds to support medical services in the jail in partnership with the Sheriff’s Office.” This was supposed to help offset the ongoing and increasing medical services costs in the jail. What was the result of that “exploration”? Is the Board going to just let those medical costs ramp up?

Also earlier this year the Board appointed an Ad Hoc Committee of Supervisors Ted Williams and Madeline Cline to “work on the Budget challenges and solutions with Public Safety and Strategic Hiring process improvements for the most efficient outcomes.”

Since “public safety” is by far the largest expense category in the overburdened General Fund, this “work” should be a priority. But we’ve heard nothing about it since the ad hoc was formed, months ago.

The County admits it is way behind on tax collections since covid, but they’ve done next to nothing to prioritize the recovery of this important function, especially considering that they have a growing deficit for this year and an even larger one next year. How long can they neglect the basic function of tax collection before it catches up with them? There was a small step toward improvement in July when Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector Chamise Cubbison told the board that they had sent out some long overdue delinquency notices and some delinquent taxpayers had paid some or all of their delinquencies. But what’s the status? What’s being done to catch up?

We have yet to see staffing plans for Psychiatric Health Facility set to open in the fall or the new jail wing set to open next spring. These will present both a hiring/staffing challenge and a budget challenge. Yet the Board hasn’t even asked staff for operating plans.

There are still overdue answers to Grand Jury reports, chiefly concerning personnel/staffing.

Supervisors Williams’ highly touted $5 million grant for water storage in Mendocino stemming from the 2021 drought has turned into a morass of competing priorities and budget confusion since it was merged with a Mendocino School District water project and is now stalled in permanent limbo, leaving the entire town of Mendocino in danger of a repeat of the last drought emergency.

Earlier this year the Board said they were going to review the County’s healthcare contribution rates in light of the large budget deficit. But the subject hasn’t appeared on any agenda since.

We could go on about such things as why it took over two years to distribute the Measure P funds to cash-strapped fire districts, the status of the “review” of the small ambulance service stipend for the unincorporated ambulance services which was scheduled to be completed in August while the Board is in recess, why none of the Measure AJ pot tax money has gone to any emergency services when, as Supervisor Williams noted in March, “I haven’t seen any go to fire or EMS. The language said not to supplant existing funding. The public has asked me several times.” The long delayed AirBnB regulations, Hipcamp regulations…

Sheriff Kendall said repeatedly in 2024 that Proposition 36, which ups the penalties for former misdemeanor thefts and drug arrests, would magically force some perps into treatment to avoid jail. He expected that these efforts “will show results in six months to a year.” “Results” presumably being lower frequency of arrests if more people opting for treatment rather than jail, which should lower jail operations costs, among other things. Nobody has offered or asked for any report on those results.

At the Board’s big January workshop CEO Darcie Antle told the Board 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. We have seen nothing resembling “accomplishments” since then. This one would be easy if there were any.

It’s one thing to cynically say that a bad Board not meeting has an upside. But when you look just at the tasks they’ve set for themselves being pushed further and further down the road as things continue to worsen (and we haven’t even mentioned pending federal budget cuts), we expect the Supervisors we pay to deal with these things to not just throw up their hands but to at least try to earn their exorbitant salaries.