KATHERINE ‘KIT’ ELLIOTT TO RETURN AS MENDOCINO COUNTY COUNSEL, but as a “contractor” for six months. After that…? Elliott will be paid $31,666 per month, for a total contract value of $190k, or 960 hours at almost $200 an hour. At least this is less than the $400 an hour the county paid for their last temporary contract County Counsel, Mr. James Ross, whose primary contribution to County operations was to complicate and delay the disbursements of Measure P money to local fire departments. Elliott will also get a generous travel and per diem allowance from her place of residence, presumably in Nevada County where she now lives after abruptly resigning from the Mendo County Counsel position back in 2019. This will bring her total cost to well over $200k per year. Next Tuesday’s agenda item says that the Board will have to waive the residency requirement to appoint her as temporary County Counsel, meaning she will be commuting to the position from Nevada County.
According to an article in The Union, a Nevada County publication, Elliott “retired” from her position as County Counsel there in December of last year. This means she will be getting her County pension (based on upwards of ten years of government employment) on top of her contract payments and travel/per diem income. We can’t help but wonder if Elliott’s return will translate into a revision or further delay in the County’s position in the ongoing Chamise Cubbison civil case. Elliott’s start date is January 12, 2026. Mendo’s County Counsel position became vacant when Charlotte Scott was appointed to the Superior Court bench a few months ago.
PS. There is nothing on next Tuesday’s agenda about the recently completed State Audit which was discussed for three hours in closed session last week.
BESIEGED IN FORT BRAGG: "I have been flashed, attempts to touch my neck and body three times after I smacked their hand away, talked to about peckers,slapped on my thigh by different men at the Safeway bus stop and Red Rhino gas station in Fort Bragg. All in two months. I swear since Fort Bragg police think I should call them every day it happens now. Do you condone this behavior to a disabled woman? Has this happened to other women you know? Can Fort Bragg do things about vagrant men hanging around loitering?
ED NOTES
LOTS OF AMERICAN controversies can't be talked about in realistic terms. If, for instance, you constantly describe all the people living on the streets as “homeless,” it ignores basic distinctions: Yes, there are major shortages of low-income housing. But a lot of the distressing public behavior attributed to the “homeless” doesn't have anything to do with shelter. It occurs because people are allowed to be helplessly drunk on the streets, or publicly nuts from drugs or one of the large bloc of people living outside because they're crazy with or without drugs. The more manageable, the “reimburseables,” get periodic cash and carry attention from the many helping bureaucracies allegedly “fighting” mental illness, or homelessness or or substance addiction or, or, or… Old-fashioned bums of the type who wander around without bothering anyone are a tiny minority of the "homeless." All three groups of the drunk-drugged-crazed homeless need to be hospitalized, which is what we used to do with people incapable of or unwilling to care for themselves, but what we are unlikely to ever do again because the upper income people in this country don't tote their fair share of the social load.
A HOMELESS GUY explained his homelessness to me. “I get social security and some food stamps. The cheapest rental I can find in Mendocino County is about $900 a month, and that's in Willits but I'd probably get kicked out because I can be loud when I'm drunk. I can't drink and pay rent, both. And I'm not going to stop drinking. I either find a free place to stay or I live on the streets.”
“AS LONG AS WE'RE YOUNG, we manage to find excuses for the stoniest indifference, the most blatant caddishness, we put them down to emotional eccentricity or some sort of romantic inexperience. But later on, when life shows us how much cunning, cruelty, and malice are required just to keep the body at ninety-eight point six, we catch on, we know the scene, we begin to understand how much swinishness it takes to make up a past. Just take a close look at yourself and the degree of rottenness you've come to. There's no mystery about it, no more room for fairy tales; if you've lived this long, it's because you've squashed any poetry you had in you.” — Louis-Ferdinand Céline
JAYMA SHIELDS (Mendocino Observer, Laytonville):
We are in the thick of playing Santa for our annual Laytonville Toy Drive, which we call Pam & Susan's North Pole Toy Express, a tribute to Pam Tucker (Cornell) Laytonville Unified's long-time lunch lady, who started the toy drive by wrapping up stuffed animals and delivering them to the houses of kids. When my mom met Pam and they became BFFs, my mom wanted to form a non-profit to raise funds with the help of advertising in The Observer, and thus the North Pole Toy Express was born. Kids have been spoiled ever since! When my mom passed, we added another special name, so we call it Pam & Susan's North Pole Toy Express. We will wrap for over 100 Laytonville kids tomorrow. Will miss my dad coming by towards the end of the wrapping party and taking a group photo for the newspaper.
WHAT TO DO WITH A DEAD WHALE AND A SEA EAGLE?
(From a May 2, 1914 Mendocino Beacon)
A good sized dead black whale drifted on to the beach at the foot of Main Street last week and has been an object of interest to sight-seers. It is said to be of the sulphur-bottom variety and is 29 feet long.
Mr. Chalmers at the nearby shipping point is considerably agitated about how to get rid of it. The smell of the strange ripe visitor is not appreciated. An attempt will be made to tow if off with a small boat and if that fails Mr. Chalmers is going to make a bonfire. Why? It is as dead as a mackerel, dead a long time, and the smell is BAD.
And what is a Sea Eagle? It may have been an Osprey. In a 1884 Mendocino Beacon story Mr. Fred Malman of Little River shot and captured a very Large Sea Eagle weighing 10 pounds and measuring 7 feet from wing tip to wing tip. It is a fine specimen of a falcon bird and the largest ever captured on the coast. Malman is an accomplished taxidermist and will prepare the bird for a fair to be held in Ukiah next fall.
(Contributed by Katy Tahja)
BRITTANEY ALBONICO:
When I come home the first place I visit is the white man cemetary and it gives me peace. I remember going up there with my grandma; she would clean the graves and tell me choose which plot I would like as she’d purchased enough for our family. I recall stories of community members, teachers, bear flaggers. As time has gone by the number of graves has grown exponentially, several fire chiefs, a well loved bull rider and athlete, friends’ parents and grandparents. I have always been a lover of community and the stories of those who have gone before me. I know of some of the most inexplicable acts that have occured in this beautiful place, from the photo of Laura’s baby being shot out of his headstone, to Ms Burke finding her family headstone simply vanished. The kind repair of the head stones most recently damaged is heart warming, inspiring to know that kind people of action exist. A stone that I’ve been visiting my entire life, one that bears my last name, is gone. John Albonico and Anna Bettega, a married couple, were buried next to each other approximately a year apart. Their headstone has vanished. I don’t know who found it appropriate to desecrate this grave; I can’t imagine where this headstone has made its way to. I forgive whomever decided to remove it. People have reasons for their actions and sometimes what seems like a good idea can have a reaching and unintended effect. My grandfather placed that stone to honor and memorialize John and Anna. I’d love to have the stone back. I believe in Round Valley community, in its citizens, in the goodness of its people. I humbly ask, please consider letting me know where the stone is so I can retrieve it. Thank you for reading.
ELISE COX (Mendolocal.news): Folks, it turns out I broke a bunch of bones in my foot. Does any one have a referral to a orthopedic surgeon trained specifically in bone alignment, healing, and biomechanics who is also a foot & ankle subspecialist?
SUPERVISOR JOHN HASCHAK:
Dear Residents of District 3 and Mendocino County,
Serving on the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors has been a great honor. For the past seven years, I get up each day with the clear intention of making the County a better place for its residents. I am proud of having accomplished that goal on many days. Whether it is connecting a senior citizen in need with the right service or working with service providers and healthcare professionals when the federal government is cutting away the safety net for too many of our neighbors, it has truly been my privilege to be a public servant. I have decided not to run for re-election. While this was not an easy decision because I love doing the work and working with and for many wonderful people, I cannot commit to another four-year term. When Henry Thoreau was asked why he left the woods, he replied, “Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live….” I plan on completing this term and advocating for Mendocino County and its residents during the next year.
Sincerely,
John Haschak
Willits
JOHN SAKOWICZ ASKS: Does this mean Tom Allman will be running for District 3 Supervisor?
ON-LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK
[1] The uniparty hasn't done a fucking thing to fix anything and stupid Americans continue to vote for the incumbent. It's hard to wrap one's brain around this stuff. How can millions of people be so duped, so clueless, so damned stupid.
I have long believed that DJT is not a solution to what ails America. DJT is a symptom of a very sick political system and a people who have nowhere to turn for healing of that sick system.
We are boned and we are going down hard. Nothing but absolute collapse will fix what we have now.
[2] HISTORY, AN ON-LINE COMMENT: I took high school civics in Twin Falls, Idaho 1960/1961. We were taught that the best form of government was a "good king." The problem, of course, being how you find a good king and what you do if he/she turns out not to be so good.
History has examples of "good kings" — autocrats who, on balance, did a good job. Sometimes a great job. Few of them were without fault, to be sure.
I would cite post-Mao China as an example. Certainly not without problems, but the lot of the average Chinese has vastly improved. Mao was a good example of the other side.
There are many more examples of autocrats that were horrible.
The history of man has been overwhelmingly that of autocratic rule. Mostly to the benefit of a tiny, tiny minority living in (relative) splendor while the masses lived lives that are "nasty, brutish and short."
The US has been described as an "experiment" in self-governance. We have had one hell of a good run, but the signs to this old man are that we are returning to the statistical mean — autocratic rule. Most of the time it doesn't work well for the ruled.
The Wilson era "Progressives" (love how that term got buried, then resurrected) basically declared that the self-governance experiment had failed, that the good king model was preferable. Of course, they had candidates for the job.
IMO, when the history of the late, great USA is written –-assuming there is anyone to write it and anyone that can read it—Wilson will be near the top of the list of the principle causes of collapse. (The list is long)
[3] We're in a cold civil war/information war, and informed readers should be skeptical of everything in the media/information sphere. Attempts to control who gets to use the internet to say or write words just means that the internet's going to be controlled by someone. Which is bad.
[41] Except that climate change, like diseases from cigarettes, is something we can prevent.
But, yeah, those pesky government regulations– getting rid of lead in both gasoline AND paint!? Not allowing contamination in food products!?
Preventing the dumping of raw sewage into waterways!?
Why do those darn government regulators hate freedom so much?
[5] We need to go back to paper ballots and the days when those ballots—cast in person on election day—were mostly tallied by 9 p.m. and you could trust the result. That's what Wisconsin was like nearly statewide before 2010. Why in he'll did we switch to those machines?
[6] I was a county attorney in rural America. There were times when a family would come to the courthouse and petition the court to place a family member in a hospital for 72-hour evaluation, having to prove their family member was “a threat to himself or others.” It was always a hard thing for a family to do. It was a last resort. The embarrassment and shame and regret, like the family had done something wrong.
If the unfolding Reiner story is true, that these parents were allegedly attacked and murdered by their own child who had a long history of issues. . . People with all the money, stature, and respect were unable to prevent this?
President Trump was a complete loser with his response to this. I am beyond disappointed. Mental health wellness is behind most of our health issues in this country. This is a time to be kind. There is NO JUSTIFICATION for that heartless post. None.
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