Supervisor Maureen Mulheren (Facebook video, Wednesday, October 29, 2025):
“I have been thinking a lot about the way that elected officials… people try to pigeon hole them into one specific point. The one that I always think of that comes up for me is when I was on the Ukiah city council I was opposed to the Great Redwood Trail. I called it the path to nowhere. I thought it was a giant waste of money. And to be honest, at the time it was. But now seeing the bigger vision and now understanding the idea of it, understanding the importance of outdoor recreation, understanding the importance of outdoor recreation and the importance of active transportation… I have just learned a lot about many topics over the last 10 years. I think that when elected officials get locked into a point and say something like, I will never vote for XYZ, you are doing a disservice to the community. There is so much you have to learn and so many opportunities that might arise that might change the path the project was headed down. So if you are in office, if you are running for office, I would just think that you should keep an open mind. Our job is to not vote on anything or have an opinion until we hear from everybody. Some things get headed down a path to where you’ve already made some decisions headed down the path, but there is always important feedback. A lot of times I hear from certain individuals on social media that target me specifically. You don’t see them on my colleagues’ pages. And at the end of the day, I read all those comments and I’m trying to sort through what’s going to make me a better elected official, what valuable information they might have, how to incorporate their feedback… Despite some of it is just being hateful, and rude and unnecessary, honestly. But that’s part of my job. I see my role… I’ve talked about this in the past. You will find that other elected officials are not using social media in the way that I am. I need your feedback to do my job. I just wish people would be more civil if you have questions instead of accusations all the time. I understand the frustration, especially when you don’t know things. And after 10 years of doing this job, there are still plenty of things that I don’t know. I was trying to think of clever taglines like Policy Over Personality, Education Over Anger. There’s so much that we need to do in order to communicate with each other about what’s happening. I appreciate those of you who kind of hang out in the background and don’t say much but are learning and that you have questions that are not accusatory because I think that’s how we move our community forward. All feedback is valuable, but there’s different ways to present it.”
Funny, Supervisor Mulheren had no trouble voting to suspend her fellow elected official, Auditor-Controller/Treasurer Tax Collector Chamise Cubbison, without hearing any details about why DA Eyster filed dubious charges or what evidence there was, and without giving Ms. Cubbison an opportunity to respond. And she was quite willing to promote a very flawed one-sided tax sharing agreement with the City of Ukiah without hearing from her own department heads that her colleagues are now trying to claw back. (To name just two glaring examples; we could have included the abrupt relocation of the Veterans Service Office before asking the veterans first; or the attempt to personally charge the Sheriff for ordinary budget overruns, or the unworkable Strategic Hiring Process…)
But now, apparently, some anonymous facebook posts related to she no longer believes to be the Great Redwood “Waste of Money” are so “rude” and “unnecessary” that she wants everybody to step back and be more civil and keep an open mind and ask polite questions so she can “educate” us rubes who don’t know things (deplorables?) about how the Great Redwood Boondoggle is not a Boondoggle anymore and have us all crawl back into the background and shut up because, gol-darn it, she’s such a great listener herself and knows so much more than her ignorant critics.
Oh dear, have I been rude? Gosh. Sorry. Nobody made Ms. Mulheren run for office — three times. Nobody made her use facebook to promote herself and her allegedly scrupulous neutrality.
Supervisor Mulheren even goes so far as to recommend that elected officials or even candidates for elected office should not take a position on issues until they have “heard from everybody” — especially from Supervisor Mulheren (which kind of defeats the whole purpose of democratic elections).
If the Second District Supervisor is so bothered by certain (unspecified) facebook comments, she could imitate DA Eyster and simply block comments on her “Mo4Mendo” facebook page and then her not always so friendly facebook friends would be spared her periodic lectures on civility and the importance of active transportation… boondoggles.
Perhaps it has something to do with Scarmella’s tireless crusade of misogynistic potshots.
Is Mark really that self-important and vindictive that he’s incapable of objective local reporting?
Maybe someone should return the favor—shadow him 24/7 and write breathless updates on his own “performance” and that uniquely bitter brand of commentary he mistakes for journalism.
At least she’s living rent-free in his head—prime real estate, apparently.
If media, other than Scaramella, don’t have the time to report on what is happening with our county government then they certainly don’t have time to shadow Mr. Scaramella. What the AVA provides can’t be perfect because it never is, but knowing what is happening with our local county government is essential, and what the AVA provides is better than the alternative, which is nothing.
Absolutely +1
Hi Suzy, 🌷☀️
I didn’t take this as misogyny. Mr. Scaramella actually watched the video and listened to her talk about what a rough week it’s been, how politics can change, and how she’s still learning after ten years, along with how she prefers the people who stay quiet in the back over the ones who speak up. Her message was kind of all over the place, so it’s understandable he’d question what she was even trying to say. You really have to watch the whole video and know what came before it to see the full picture, and I don’t think Mr. Scaramella knew that part. Still, when you’re in politics, what you say should line up. Critique isn’t the same thing as putting someone down.
mm💕