On Tuesday, the Supervisors unanimously but very belatedly agreed to appoint Supervisors Maureen Mulheren and Madeline Cline to an ad hoc committee to explore how to adjust to the abandonment of the old downtown courthouse and opening of the new Barcode Courthouse over by the railroad tracks several blocks away.
Supervisor Mulheren: “I have been meeting with the court executive officer, Kim Turner, and a representative from the city of Ukiah and Steve Dunicliff from the County Executive Office for some time about the building of the new courthouse. As the downtown in Ukiah shifts and changes, I think there is a lot of opportunity for our community to adapt to that including several county departments, and that would be some of our justice departments, the District Attorney’s office, the Public Defender’s office, a possibility of how Probation works with the courts would be… It would be better for them to be located closer to the courthouse. Also, for some time the Mendocino County Library has been looking at an opportunity to relocate or improve the facility they are already in. Because there are so many shifts that are happening in the downtown I thought it would be appropriate for an ad hoc to be formed and Supervisor Cline to join me to have those conversations both internally with our county staff and with the community. The County will vacate the current courthouse and that’s going to leave a large key piece of downtown Ukiah vacant. I think it’s important that we have community feedback on what should happen with that building and how we will use it. So there are a lot of pieces moving in the downtown of Ukiah. I think it’s appropriate to have a County ad hoc that is working with staff and the community on those pieces. You may not know the corner of Perkins and Main Street, which is adjacent to and across from the library is set for demolition. It will become Mendocino College student housing. The building that formerly housed Curry Furniture and the Perkins Street Grill is also set for demolition this month. That will become a medical facility from New Life Clinic, which is currently located near the former Probation office. So a lot of shifts are underway in downtown Ukiah and it’s appropriate for the county to engage on the next steps. Particularly, there’s quite a bit of money in the library budget for improvements or repairs to the roof at the current library. There is also going to be a meeting, or a potential meeting that this board has seen on the assessment related to the movement of the District Attorney’s Office to the Child Support building on State and Perkins. Before we shift and start spending those dollars I think we should take a holistic look at everything in downtown Ukiah and probably interact with them.”
Cline: “I think it’s appropriate for the County and the city of Ukiah to look at what’s appropriate for the redevelopment of Ukiah and what it looks like. I am interested in exploring options and bringing it back to the board. What does that look like? How much does that cost? What is realistic for the County? What kind of investments do they want to make? I’m looking forward to working together and bringing the information back to the board.”
Supervisor John Haschak: “Another piece to the puzzle is the law library that’s in the court now. They are looking for a new location. I know they have had discussions with the executive office.”
James ‘Jamie’ Connerton, retired Ukiah teacher:
“We are longtime users along with our children and grandchildren of the Ukiah branch library. I attended the recent Library Advisory Board meeting, which was also attended by Supervisor Mulheren. Also [Ukiah] Mayor Susan Sher. I found out about this meeting just a few days earlier in the Ukiah Daily Journal article in which I was rather alarmed to see Supervisor Mulheren’s statement, if you were correctly quoted, that ‘the library has been needed to be replaced for quite some time. There’s a group that has been working with alternatives.’ I was unaware of such a group. However, at that meeting, it was quite clear that Mayor Sher and Supervisor Mulheren were pretty motivated to consider moving of the library to somewhere near a possible site near the new courthouse. What the community would like is to see is community input into this because as far as I can see there has not been a lot of reaching out, as you might say, to find out what the people think. I hope that there will be a commitment from this Board [of Supervisors] to actively proactively seek that type of input. It was also stated by the County Librarian, and I think we all know, that there are No Funds. That’s a pretty big statement. And it’s true. I was wondering about that. I was encouraged to hear Supervisor Mulheren say that the possible upgrading of the present facility is considered also. And I would like this board and the community to consider that a downtown public library is a treasure. I hate to sound precious, but to me to be able to walk from downtown to the library – I like to go in there a lot and watch the little kids, and again I do not mean to be precious, but you should consider this very seriously.”
Supervisor Ted Williams: “I think what Supervisor Mulheren is proposing is an opportunity to engage with the public. I think what we just heard is the goal of the agenda item.”
(Supervisor Mulheren conspicuously did not confirm Williams’ interpretation.)
President of the Library Advisory Board Michelle Savoy and long-time member of Friends of the Library said she appreciated that the ad hoc committee was being formed and encouraged people to join the Friends of the Library to learn about what’s going on. “Our monthly meeting at the library is always open to the public. The feasibility study that we did five years ago now identified that the library is too small. And making the current library larger is not feasible. We need to look at all the various options available for what might become a library for the future.”
Supervisor Haschak: “I think this is really important to the future of the County and to have participation from all the parties. I am on the MTA [Mendocino Transit Authority] board and I think the MTA is going for that grant and to put their facilities there and try to work with the other entities like the library and the city and the county to work to locate there. I look forward to this possibility.”
The extremely disruptive new courthouse, blindly supported by our nine judges from the git-go no matter how much it affected Ukiah or the County was first presented to Mendo as a done-deal by the SF-based Administrative Office of the Courts back in 2009. At that time the City of Ukiah and the County knew the new Courthouse would be built at the site of the old Ukiah Train Depot after its “owner,” the never-to-run-again North Coast Railroad Authority (NCRA), paid to have the toxics removed from the site so it could be sold to the Courts. There’s no point in belaboring the fact that an ugly new $120 million courthouse is wasteful and unnecessary at this point. But Mendo has known about the relocation and disruption the new building would cause for 17 years and they are only now getting around to discussing how to “adapt” to the move. In fact the library/Curry furniture building was briefly considered as a possible site for the new courthouse in 2009 but was eliminated for mysterious back-room reasons probably having to do with the Democratic Party which owned the NCRA which wanted some cash to pay its debts to former Congressman and Democratic Party bigwig Doug Bosco who owned the private company that maintained the tracks for the NCRA…
Where was I?
Supervisor Mulheren was previously on the Ukiah City Council having been first elected in 2014 and during her last four years was Mayor of Ukiah. So she has had 12 years to deal with the old courthouse abandonment and new building three long blocks away and is only now realizing that Mendocino County should examine how it will “adapt.”
But now, besides the original question of what to do with the District Attorney’s office, the issue has grown to include the Library/remodel/expansion/rebuild, the Mendocino Transportation Authority, the Probation Department, the Law Library and perhaps the Public Defender on top of whatever commercial changes are underway in downtown Ukiah and over by the tracks.
The idea of relocating the DA’s office from the old courthouse across the street to the Deadbeat Dad building (aka child support) won’t do anything to improve the problem of the DA being several blocks removed from the new Courthouse. (Where would the deadbeat dad office go?)
Anyone who thinks that the Mulheren/Cline combine will be able to solve this Rubik’s cube of office locations, funding shortfalls, grants, timing, and competing interests at this late date hasn’t been paying attention. But they would be no better than the Supervisors themselves who haven’t been paying attention either.
DA David Eyster, probably the most affected by the move, has been paying attention. as indicated by his complaint last month about closed door discussions being held by Mulheren, Sher and the Court Executive office. We doubt he’s particularly encouraged by the appointment of an ad hoc committee which hasn’t even seen fit to invite him or his staff to the discussion.
Mulheren never confirmed that she will start announcing when and where the ad hoc committee will hold their meetings for public participation, even after being prompted by Williams. Perhaps Supervisor Cline’s recent involvement will change that. After all Cline was the only Supervisor to at least point out that the one-sided Ukiah/County tax sharing agreement that Mulheren arranged in secret was a non-starter that hadn’t been analyzed by County staff.
As it stands the new courthouse is set to open in the summer of 2027 and you know the judges are eager to get started in their lush new digs. The odds that Mendo will have “adapted” to the new courthouse by then are about the same as Mendo’s legalized pot business returning to profitability.
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