“You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going because you might not get there.” — Yogi Berra
Toward the end of Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, Board Chair John Haschak off-handedly asked Supervisor Ted Williams to report on his (and Supervisor Madeline Cline’s) Budget ad hoc committee since Williams hadn’t mentioned it in his similarly off-hand “Supervisor’s Report.”
In his Supervisor’s report Williams had instead said that during the Board’s six week self-granted vacation he had studied County budgets going back to the 50s and brilliantly concluded that Mendo was spending a smaller percentage of property taxes on roads than in the past and that 1978’s Proposition 13 statewide property tax limitation measure had restricted County revenues almost overnight. Williams predicted that Mendo might have to convert some County roads to gravel rather than maintain them as asphalt. Williams also brilliantly noted that the County should be “more pro-active” with regard to business development. (It would be impossible for them to be less pro-active. In fact, it would be nice if they were even active.)
It took Williams six weeks of study to make these patently obvious and pointless observations. But when it came to addressing the County’s current budget problems all he could say was, “We haven’t got anywhere. We will have to make massive cuts and nobody will like them. We are like a deer in the headlights. I know the Board won’t support these cuts. It’s not good news.”
Haschak doubled down on the obvious, adding, “The longer we wait, the bigger the problem.”
“Cuts will have to be made,” added CEO Darcie Antle, “and it all will be opposed.”
Antle then inexplicably told the Board that her CEO report “does not include the things we’re looking at.” Why not?, one might wonder, but nobody did. “It might be new revenues. We are looking at a $16 million shortfall next year. I work every day with the Sheriff on what to cut. Travel, training… But most of it is required spending. And the Board has stated that we can’t touch public safety.”
The Board and the CEO have been making these kinds of self-evident doomsday observations for at least two years and yet, as Williams said, “We haven’t got anywhere.”
Williams then suddenly contradicted what he’s had been saying previously: “We have to cut public safety. If you cut other things, you cut off revenue. We need the Sheriff’s Office to right-size public safety. We can’t afford what we have.”
Before anyone could respond, Williams then interrupted himself saying that maybe they were drifting into an unagendized budget discussion.
Haschak concluded, “Sooner is better than waiting.” And later is worse than now. And more is more than less. And stop is slower than go. And never is later than someday.
Instead of doing the responsible thing, i.e., volunteering a substantive budget report or recommendations at the next Board meeting, Williams asked Haschak, “Do you want a date? Do you want hard proposals for cuts?” (Williams is in no position to magically know by himself what cuts to recommend, other than those that he presumes the board won’t support.)
Haschak thought that would be nice, “Bring back a proposal,” he replied, but imposed no date.
Williams and his oblivious colleagues have been sitting on their hands for years with this kind of empty budget rhetoric with nothing to show for it.
They never demand budget status reports or recommendations from their CEO, never invite the department heads for serious budget-xutting discussions, ignore their own assignments, and fail to take action at every turn, despite their vague acknowledgement that the longer they delay the worse the problem gets.
What about that “monthly vacancy report” that CEO Antle promised in June, the one that was supposed to track how many millions of dollars they claimed would be saved by leaving random vacant positions open for at least two years? It’s over three months and counting now and CEO Antle hasn’t provided any vacancy information, much less a monthly report, and none of the Supervisors have bothered to ask.
On Wednesday, after doing nothing and making no decisions on Tuesday, the Board held their big “workshop” concerning anticipated social services funding cuts heading this way from the Trump administration. The workshop was originally supposed to take all day, but the ended it before noon and went into closed session.
Deputy Social Services Director Rachel Ebel-Elliott summed the health and social services situation up nicely, although at bureaucratically long length, by telling the Board that 42,000 Mendolanders are on Medi-Cal and that she expects it will cost more to process their paperwork, require more staffing to handle more applications for less help and less money for the County as well as stricter eligibility requirements.
Mendo’s response was summarized by Board chair Haschak: “We will have to work together more and collaborate,” adding that “the CEO’s door is always open.”
As an afterthought, among the distressing observations made by the County’s Behavioral/Public Health Director Dr. Jenine Miller, was the fact that the soon to be opened Psychiatric Health Facility (PHF) now under construction on Whitmore Lane south of Ukiah which was supposed to reduce the number of mental patients sent outside the County, will not accept anyone under the age of 25 because state law prohibits them being on the same site as adults. “It also depends on insurance,” added Dr. Miller. The insurance providers (Medi-Cal and private companies) have to agree to designate the County’s PHF as a mental health services “provider” before insurance will pay for whatever the PHF may provide. In other words, the PHF, paid for with around $10 million of 2017’s Measure B money and sold to the public as a way to assist or reduce the number of free-floating street nuts and drug addicts in the County, won’t make any noticeable improvement since the only people admitted to the PHF will be those whose costs are determined to “reimbursable,” at least half of whom will be paying customers from outside Mendocino County,
MAZIE MALONE:
Re, Going nowhere slowly….
Regarding the budget, one area that could be evaluated to make more revenue is the use of County Vehicles. Not law enforcement, or street crews, but why on earth does Public Health need 16 vehicles? The registration, the gas, the maintenance, all very expensive.
I was able to listen to part of the meeting on Wednesday morning, it is disturbing to say the least. The part I found fascinating is that Dr. Miller [Mental/Public Health Director] stated Mendocino County spends approximately $4 million a year on Conservatorships and $3 million a year on hospitalizations and that we have about 64 people conserved on a yearly basis for whom the county is paying $62,500 per person! Since most people end up in jail multiple times before being hospitalized or conserved for these issues, as I have mentioned before the county is quadruple paying for shit that is not working and that includes the PHF. As I have often said it is a band aid, a PHF is not going to fix the root of these conditions. For example the bill for my son having a psych stay back in 2020 for five days was $13,000!
Everything has doubled in price since then, let me reiterate: that is a PHF! Sheriff, what is the reimbursement rate per inmate?
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