And a $3,000 Comfort Support Dog For The DA’s Victim Witness Office.
Agenda item 4b for next Tuesday’s Supervisors meeting is entitled:
“Discussion and Possible Action Including Approval or Denial of Requests from Department Heads and Elected Officials Regarding the Funding and Recruitment of Vacant or New Positions Following the Strategic Hiring Process.”
Attached to that Agenda Item is a three page long description of the CEO’s “Strategic Hiring Process.”
In that description (written last May) we find:
“Human Resources will present a monthly agenda item to the Board of Supervisors, which reviews all departmental requests to fill vacant or soon-to-be vacant positions. Each request will include a justification outlining the necessity of the position, any legal or regulatory mandates, and the proposed funding source.” (Dated May 23, 2025)
There have been no “monthly agenda items” for the Strategic Hiring Process until this month. And even this month, five months after the “monthly agenda items” were promised, there are still no listings of departmental vacancy filling requests with justifications, etc. which the Board is supposed to either “approve or deny.”
The Strategic Hiring Process (i.e., leaving positions vacant when staff members resign, retire or otherwise leave County employ) was budgeted to save $6 million dollars this fiscal year (July 2025-June 2026) which we are now almost three months into. Is it? Nobody knows, or cares. Next year the CEO says that the budget deficit will be around $16 million (some say more than that). But we don’t know how that was calculated and whether it assumes that whatever savings were realized from vacant positions carry over into next year.
We have heard that the Strategic Hiring Process is even being applied to Social Services (where every week, it seems, another desk is empty but management keeps insisting that they are fully staffed), even though most Social Services positions are not funded by the General Fund, but through state and federal grants and programs. This, of course, leads to staffing turmoil, morale problems, confusion, higher workloads and stress, delays in handling applications and cases, and further reductions in staff, such as what’s happening in Family and Children’s Services lately.
The long anticipated report of the financial status review of ambulance operations in the unincorporated areas of the County — Covelo, Laytonville, Anderson Valley — is now complete, only one month after it was promised. But it is not on the Board’s agenda for this month, so the mostly volunteer organizations will continue to wait for their county funding supplements. We have been advised by those involved that the report is “positive,” a self-evident conclusion that certainly needed no outside review to determine since the local ambulances are mostly staffed with dedicated volunteers who get only a minimal stipend for covering 12-hour shifts and being on call during all hours. Presumably this “positive” conclusion means that the Supervisors will continue to provide the meager $67k annual allocation to each ambulance operation as it has done for more than ten years as the value of the $67k is significantly eroded by inflation.
Also not on Tuesday’s agenda is an item important to residents of Gualala about their long-delayed attempts to improve traffic and parking in town on Highway 1, and underground their utility lines. This item has implications for Anderson Valley since, reportedly, CalTrans has plans to pave over an 80-foot wide swath of downtown Boonville to rigid Caltrans standards to the consternation of most local residents on that stretch of Highway 128. Like Boonville, Gualala is trying to get Caltrans to take their local input into account. So far all we have been told is that Caltrans is “listening,” but has not changed any of their all-concrete/all the way plans.
Instead of those high-priority missing local items, the Board’s main agenda for next Tuesday includes: “Discussion and Possible Action Including Direction to Staff for Creation of a County Wide Fee Structure for Public Use of County-Owned Electric Vehicle (EV) Charging Stations. (Sponsored by the Executive Office). (Possibly a potential revenue generator, but fraught with potential problems.)
Other items on the regular agenda include: a Fee Schedule hearing, a Willits area cannabis prohibition zone application, Supervisor Madeline Cline’s proposal to regulate the sale of nitrous oxide canisters in the County, the County’s role in Governor Newsom’s anti-Trump redistricting proposal, and a couple other routine matters.
On the consent calendar we found these curious items:
- Consent Item 3e: Approval of the District Attorney’s Purchase of a Trained PALS Facility/Comfort Support Dog for the Victim Assistance Unit in the Amount of $3,000; and Approval of Standard Service Agreement from September 23, 2025, through June 30, 2030.”
- Consent Item 3y: Approval of Agreement Between Carahsoft Technology, Corp. – Accela Government, and Mendocino County Planning and Building Services In The Amount of $1,103,936.65, For New Automated Permitting Software, The Accela Civic Platform, with a Term Through October 31, 2030. (You thought Mendo was broke? Au contraire; they apparently have $1.1 million sitting around for a new permitting computer program. (And we doubt it will stop at $1.1 million.)
- Consent Item 3k: Authorization to Rescind Mendocino County Policies #3 Fee Waivers and #31 Standard Copying Fees; and Approval of Amendment to Mendocino County Policy #47 Master Fee Schedule Policy.
This one is a mystery. There’s no explanation of what fee waivers are being rescinded or why, and there’s nothing about what the cost of copies will be after the “standard copying fees” policy is rescinded.
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