- Hare Creek Hearing
- Sandlot Days
- False Idols
- Catch of the Day
- MH Board Failing
- King Tides
- Vintage Suspects
- Palace Receivership
- Wrong Charlie
- Credit Unions
- Gas Troopers
- LAFCo Oversight
- Selma Review
- Fracking EIR
- Library Events
FORT BRAGG’S LATEST SHOPPING CENTER PROPOSAL
Hare Creek Center - 1250 Del Mar Drive, Fort Bragg
The Hare Creek Center is a proposed new shopping center consisting of three buildings, including: Building A at 15,000 square feet, Building B at 10,000 square feet and Building C at 4,500 square feet, for a total of 29,500 square feet of retail space. Associated development includes a new access road on the west edge of the proposed development that would connect to Bay View Avenue (CR #439A) to the southwest and to Ocean View Drive at the intersection of Ocean View and Harbor Avenue. Other associated development includes a new 99 space parking lot, loading zones, pedestrian improvements, rain water storage tanks, utility connections, drainage improvements, utilities, and associated landscaping.
A public hearing before the Fort Bragg Planning Commission to consider adoption of a Mitigated Negative Declaration is scheduled for Wednesday, January 28, 2015 at 6:00 PM at the John Diederich Center, 208 Dana Street, Fort Bragg. Click here for a copy of the Public Hearing Notice. View the flyer about the public hearing. (— Fort Bragg City Permit Introduction)
Detailed Permit Information:
http://city.fortbragg.com/486/Active-Permit-Applications
OLD TIME BASEBALL
Editor:
The history of semi-pro and non-pro baseball throughout northern California is captured on goodoldsandlotdays.com. We have been searching for some time to locate former players or family members of some who may have memorabilia on town teams that played in Gualala and Point Arena as well as other towns in the area.
The Gualala Whalers who hosted teams from the Bay Area on Sunday afternoons on the Manchester diamond during the late 50s and early 60s are mentioned in a story of a game played in 1959 and written by Steve Chell who played on the visiting Menlo Park team that day, but now lives in Gualala. The story appears in the Menlo Park team section of the website.
We also have pictures of the field at Manchester in the Gualala section on the website. The Point Arena Rosebuds were also playing during this period but were part of a league that included Branscomb and Laytonville.
We welcome hearing from anyone who may be helpful in this search. Please write to john@jmwassociates.com or telephone (650) 342-0683. Please know that this undertaking is a hobby.
Thank you,
John Ward
Burlingame
* * *
ED NOTE: The Good Old Days website mentioned above is highly recommended.
Semi-pro, or town team baseball, was once a central part of life in Mendocino County. Every community had a baseball team, and weekend games were heavily attended. Fort Bragg always had a very strong team, once hosting a San Francisco team featuring all three of the DiMaggio brothers, Joe, Dominic, and Vince.
Local myth has it that the pre-War DiMags stopped in Navarro for a meal. Fort Bragg featured the young Vern Piver, who went on to play in the Dodger organization, and the Fort Bragg mill regularly hired ex-pros to flesh out the town team's roster. These guys were called “ringers.”
The Good Old Days website has a photo of the Boonville team, circa 1950, and we also found a team picture of Branscomb's nine, a bunch of guys who look like football players stuffed into baseball uniforms. The state hospital at Talmage fielded a baseball team, as did several rancherias.
Quality of play varied, of course; Fort Bragg, as I recall from talking with Vern Piver, the Loggers mostly played city teams, many of which were very good, because FB was a much too much for most of the in-county teams. Yours truly played on a high school all-star team out of San Francisco sponsored by Fisherman's Grotto Number 9. This would have been 1956. We played a doubleheader in Fort Bragg during Paul Bunyan Days; I think we split. I have a more vivid memory of the Fort Bragg third baseman threatening one of my more verbal teammates. "I don't give a shit if he's a kid; he's got a big mouth," the would be child abuser yelled as he was restrained by the ump. Those were the days when regardless of age one was held accountable.
CATCH OF THE DAY, Jan 21, 2014
VERONICA CORTINAS, Ukiah. Domestic assault, child endangerment, resisting arrest.
SCOTT FRANKS, Probation revocation, resisting arrest.
TROY HOAGLIN, Laytonville.
GABRIELLE MILLER, Fort Bragg. Domestic assault, court order violation.
CITLALLI PINEDA, Willits. Driving on suspended license.
JACKI LYN SCOTT, Willits. Mandatory Supervision violation.
SAMANTHA WARD, Covelo. Failure to appear.
BRIAN WHITE, Potter Valley. Driving on DUI-suspended license.
DELIVER SERVICES, NOT RESIGNATION REQUESTS
Letter to the Editor
To the Mendocino County Mental Health Board:
The Mendocino County Mental Health Board (MHB) is supposed to encourage community input so you violate your own charge when you ask me to resign from the MHB Crisis Care Committee and the MHB Finance Committee.
The MHB mission is to enable people with severe mental illness to access services and programs that assist them … MHB members need to review their mission (WIC5600.1) and focus on carrying it out.
WIC5600.3 defines how mental health patient money should be used. Other sections define the minimum array of treatment services the money should be used for. This includes: Pre-Crisis, Crisis, and 24 hour Treatment Services, Rehabilitation and Support Services, among others. Services are to be in every geographic area and all ethnic groups should be served.
WIC5604.2 says the MHB shall do all of eight well-defined responsibilities that have been ignored. They begin with “Review and evaluate the community's mental health needs, services, facilities, and special problems.” The MHB is also supposed to report to the Supervisors “on the needs and performance of the county's mental health system.”
Please get to work as people desperately need these State-mandated services.
Sonya Nesch
Comptche
KING TIDE SCHEDULE
Here’s a link to a schedule of dates and locations from the California King Tides Project. And here’s a map that includes locations for the next three days and for the three-day king tide period of Feb 17-19.
The tides could result in what the NWS is calling minor flooding of low-lying areas along the coast and bay fronts. “Coastal locations that are typically dry during high tide, such as parking lots and coastal trails, may become submerged,” the NWS says. Even during low tide, be on alert for strong rip currents at the beach and breaking waves near harbor entrances.
MENDOCINO VINTAGE ROBBERY
UPDATE 01-19-15
Releasing Officer: Sergeant Brandon A. Lee
Report Number: FG1401602
Date / Time Incident: December 10, 2014 / 1:53 p.m.
Location of Incident: 334 N. Franklin Street
Crime or Incident: 211 PC - Robbery
Victim: Mendocino Vintage
Suspect(s): Unknown
CIRCUMSTANCES:
Since December 10, 2014, officers of the Fort Bragg Police Department have continued to follow up information related to the armed robbery that occurred at 334 N. Franklin Street (Mendocino Vintage), but had been unsuccessful in positively identifying the male and female suspects. FBPD investigators have recently received information from law enforcement agencies in the Sacramento area, that a male and female matching the same descriptions and photographs as the suspects in the Fort Bragg robbery, were involved in a high speed vehicle pursuit that resulted in the apprehension of the female suspect. Investigators in the Sacramento area were able to identify the male suspect involved in the chase, and he was later apprehended at a motel in the Sacramento area. The two suspects are believed to have been on a multi-state robbery spree that covered several western United States. Due to multiple jurisdictional investigations overlapping, investigators from several agencies are collectively compiling information in order to verify the identities and connection of the suspects to numerous crimes. FBPD investigators have shown photo line-ups to local victim/witnesses, and have gotten positive identifications linking the two suspects to the robbery that occurred in Fort Bragg. More information will be released when it is available.
(Fort Bragg PD press release)
RECEIVERSHIP may save Point Arena's 'Palace Hotel'
Second try at receivership may make Point Arena's own Palace Hotel a success story
http://www.ukiahdailyjournal.com/news/ci_27342656/receivership-may-save-point-arenas-palace-hotel
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY
Credit unions are a far safer place to put your money. I have pretty much done all my banking with my credit union for years now and it has worked great! No ATM fees, my daughters could get their own student accounts with no ATM fees, I paid off my bank mortgage on my house with a home equity account at 3% interest with $0 closing costs. I then have used that Home Equity loan to fund investments in energy efficiency which have already paid off in lower heating bills with my new new energy efficient furnace and triple pane windows, my solar carport making 90% of my electricity, etc. I don’t think the credit unions will screws its owners, ie we the depositors and shareholder members. In all likelihood though the banks would come screaming and dispatching their legions of lobbyists against the credit unions as “unfair competition”. But they tried that a few years and lost. I doubt even the banks will be able to touch the credit unions with their natural banking (lol) of embedded political support…
LAFF CO. — BETSY CAWN WRITES:
Subject: LAFCo seeking public member - Ukiah Daily Journal
Dearly Beloved Editoria,
“LAFCo SEEKING PUBLIC MEMBER” — Ukiah Daily Journal, January 17, 2015
Here's a juicy opportunity to mix it up with the official swizzle stick soiree -- I've heard only that Mendo LAFCo has been nearly dormant in the last few years, probably owing to the dearth of speculative investment action which is the least of its concerns but the only thing it seems to care about.
Meanwhile natural and human resource management issues well within its purview (and owed to you, the tax payer) muddle along with a smattering of attention from the fiscal administrations overseeing your essential public health and safety services. And note that Shasta LAFCo was sued for failure to perform and lost. Long past-due Municipal Service Reviews -- for which all district rate payers are promised accountability -- are rapidly making their way through the suddenly attentive elected representatives that cut up the pie.
When the County of Mendocino laid off most of its Water Resources staff after the 2008 downturn did it abandon its health and safety oversight role for insuring environmental protection of source water supplies, or stop complying with state regulatory permits for waste discharge requirements and waste load allocations, illegal discharge prevention, and overall environmental conditions of your whole water system? What agency administers the natural resource management -- the Resource Conservation District? How is that district funded? Are they involved in dealing with the Mendocino Redwood Company's timber harvest plans? Is the District active in developing groundwater sustainability plans, now required by state law? What is the Russian River Water District's job in maintaining the water quality and supporting the new state laws for mandatory conservation?
The County of Mendocino is involved (voted for) a two-county coalition, with Sonoma County, to provide a Quagga/Zebra Mussel Prevention Program, implemented at Lakes Sonoma and Mendocino, run by the Sonoma County Water Agency. Lake County is not apparently a part of the coalition, even though many vessels that travel to western water bodies pass through and often stop at Clear Lake. Where were they before that? We can't tell you.
What County agency is interacting with the federal and regional state agencies (North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board) to ensure that your overall water security is protected? Probably your Office of Emergency Services has been active in addressing the state's 2014 Drought Emergency, and its associated funding for shovel-ready conservation projects. What agency planning is in place for protecting your most important source: Lake Pillsbury? Lord knows Lake County can't do it.
What does LAFCO have to do with this? Their oversight of cities, for example, to ensure delivery of safety and sanitation services paid for by both rates and taxes. What role has the City of Ukiah taken to protect its water resources from invasive species, and what are its business practices conforming to the recent mandatory conservation laws?
You have your Rube Goldberg contraption and I have mine, but they are by golly Siamese twins, and if this half is any indication of how Chang and Eng felt, I'd say we have quite a circus performance coming (oh, never mind, the Coyote Valley tribe trumped us all -- no LAFCo required).
Best regards,
Betsy Cawn
The Essential Public Information Center
Upper Lake
Link:
http://www.ukiahdailyjournal.com/letterstotheeditor/ci_27343411/lafco-seeking-public-member
BILL MOYERS ON LBJ & ‘SELMA’
There are some beautiful and poignant moments in the film that take us closer to the truth than anything I’ve seen in other movies to date: the cruelty visited upon black people every day by whites and armed authorities; the humiliation they faced simply trying to register to vote (“Name all the county judges in Alabama!”); the courage and fear of those black people who put themselves on the line for freedom’s sake; the ambivalence in Martin Luther King Jr. as he faced the inescapability of leadership and constant threat of death. I cannot imagine the dread one had to subdue to step on that bridge that day.
And I came out of the theater shaking my head in disbelief at the obscenity of the Republican Party as it has piously but insidiously taken up voter suppression as a priority. The Party of Lincoln? Of Emancipation? Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” of 50 years ago has now become their subliminal mantra: “Whites of America, Unite!” Back in the 1970s, in the early days of a resurging conservative movement, the late Paul Weyrich — godfather of the religious right and co-founder of the American Conservative Union, and of ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council, the powerful lobbying group for corporations and conservatives) – declared: “I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of the country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
So look who won the midterm elections as voter turnout fell to its lowest in 70 years: A coalition of suppressionists doing everything they can to make it hard for black and poor people to vote – and their big donors who give millions to drown out those very same voices. That’s “Free Speech” in the Roberts era.
As for how the film portrays Lyndon B. Johnson: There’s one egregious and outrageous portrayal that is the worst kind of creative license because it suggests the very opposite of the truth, in this case, that the president was behind J. Edgar Hoover’s sending the “sex tape” to Coretta King. Some of our most scrupulous historians have denounced that one. And even if you want to think of Lyndon B. Johnson as vile enough to want to do that, he was way too smart to hand Hoover the means of blackmailing him.
Then, casting the president as being opposed to the Selma march, which the film does, is an exaggeration and misleading. He was concerned that coming less than a year after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, there was little political will in Congress to deal with voting rights. As he said to Martin Luther King Jr., “You’re an activist; I’m a politician,” and politicians read the tide of events better than most of us read the hands on our watch. The president knew he needed public sentiment to gather momentum before he could introduce and quickly pass a voting rights bill.
So he asked King to give him more time to bring Southern “moderates” and the rest of the country over to the cause, but once King made the case that blacks had waited too long for too little, Johnson told him: “Then go out there and make it possible for me to do the right thing.”
To my knowledge he never suggested Selma as the venue for a march, but he’s on record as urging King to do something to arouse the sleeping white conscience, and when violence met the marchers on that bridge, he knew the moment had come: He told me to alert the speechwriters to get ready and within days he made his own famous “We Shall Overcome” address that transformed the political environment.
Here the film is very disappointing. The director has a limpid president speaking in the Senate chamber to a normal number of senators as if it were a “ho hum” event. In fact, he made that speech where State of the Union addresses are delivered: in a packed House of Representatives. I was standing very near him, off to his right, and he was more emotionally and bodily into that speech than I had seen him in months. The nation was electrified. Watching on television, Martin Luther King Jr. wept. This is the moment when the film blows the possibility for true drama — of history happening right before our eyes.
So it’s a powerful but flawed film. Go see it, though – it’s good to be reminded of a time when courage on the street is met by a moral response from power.
* * *
(The movie's portrayal of Coretta Scott King is also questioned — “…That Coretta is pure Hollywood fiction.”
OIL LOBBYIST/FORMER MLPA CHAIR PRAISES RELEASE OF FRACKING EIR
by Dan Bacher
The oil industry welcomed the release of the California Natural Resources Agency’s draft environmental impact report of fracking operations in California, while environmental groups slammed the report for failing to address the many major risks posed by the controversial well stimulation technique.
Catherine Reheis Boyd, President of the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) and former Chair of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force to create so-called “marine protected areas” in Southern California, praised the Brown administration's release of the regulation in a statement.
“The release of the draft EIR on Well Stimulation Operations marks an important milestone in meeting the deadlines set by Senate Bill 4. WSPA and our members are reviewing the details of the draft EIR and will continue to participate in workshops and public discussion regarding SB 4,” said Reheis-Boyd.
“While we are pleased with the state's process on implementing Senate Bill 4, it is important to note the draft EIR contemplates hypothetical development scenarios and provides a high level review. To date, well stimulation in California has never been associated with any known adverse environmental impacts,” Reheis-Boyd claimed. (http://www.wspa.org/blog/post/wspa-president-comments-report-detailing-environmental-impact-well-stimulation-operations)
In contrast with Reheis Boyd’s claim that the release of the draft regulations mark an “important milestone" in meeting the deadlines set by Senate Bill 4, the Center for Biological for Biological Diversity said the draft environmental review of fracking “fails to adequately analyze many major risks from fracking, including air and water pollution and risks to public health.”
The group noted that the review by California’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources was released even though state scientists are still six months away from completing their analysis of the risks and harms of the controversial form of oil and gas extraction.
“The California Council on Science and Technology today released the first volume of a state-commissioned, three-part fracking study," according to the Center. “The other two volumes won’t be released until July, and the first volume addresses only the extent of fracking in California and does not assess risks.”
“State oil officials’ deeply flawed fracking review shows the urgent need for Gov. Brown to institute an immediate moratorium on fracking and other dangerous oil and gas development,” said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity. “State regulators are shrugging off the grave threats to our air, water and health from oil and gas wells. Instead of whitewashing the risks, California needs to follow New York’s lead and halt these dangerous activities immediately.”
The science council reported that fracking is heavily concentrated in communities in the San Joaquin Valley, which already suffers some of the nation’s most polluted air.
According to a recent American Lung Association report, the five cities with the most polluted air in the nation are in California - and three out of these five are in the San Joaquin Valley. (http://www.stateoftheair.org/2014/city-rankings/most-polluted-cities.html
These five cities are:
#1: Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA
#2: Visalia-Porterville-Hanford, CA
#3: Bakersfield, CA
#4: Fresno-Madera, CA
#5: Sacramento-Roseville, CA
But the council also said that fracking has occurred in at least 96 different oil and gas fields around the state and reiterated concerns about the risk of contaminated oil industry wastewater potentially being used to irrigate crops.
“The draft report from DOGGR focuses almost exclusively on fracking and other well-stimulation techniques, rather than considering the risks and harms associated with all phases of drilling and production, which cannot be separated from well stimulation,” said Siegel. “Because of this flawed approach, state regulators can’t fully analyze the environmental risks, but even this incomplete review admits fracking causes significant and unavoidable damage to California’s air, biological and cultural resources, public safety and climate."
She also said the DOGGR review downplays the risks of water pollution, despite a previous finding from state scientists that fracking in California occurs at shallower depths than elsewhere, increasing the potential threat of contaminating groundwater, and despite the state’s failure to protect groundwater from pollution by oil and gas wastewater, as required by federal law.
The Environmental Protection Agency has found "serious deficiencies" in California’s effort to protect water supplies from contaminated oil industry wastewater, according to Siegel. Almost 3 billion gallons of oil industry wastewater have been illegally dumped into central California aquifers that should have been protected under federal law and are clean enough to supply drinking water and farming irrigation, according to state documents obtained by the Center.
The wastewater entered the aquifers through at least nine injection disposal wells used by the oil industry to dispose of waste contaminated with fracking (hydraulic fracturing) fluids and other pollutants. (http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/california_fracking/pdfs/20140915_State_Board_UIC_well_list_Category_1a.pdf)
Siegel said thousands of wells have already been fracked in 15 counties across California, as well as in the state’s coastal waters.
The oil industry has been fracking like crazy off the Southern California coast over the past two decades, including the years that the WSPA President served as the Chair of the MLPA Initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force to create questionable "marine protected areas" in Southern California.
"In waters off Long Beach, Seal Beach and Huntington Beach — some of the region's most popular surfing strands and tourist attractions — oil companies have used fracking at least 203 times at six sites in the past two decades, according to interviews and drilling records obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request," stated an Associated Press report published on October 19, 2013 (http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/10/19/calif-finds-more-instances-of-offshore-fracking/3045721/)
New York health officials recently released a fracking analysis that found that fracking posed significant threats to the environment and public health, noted Siegel. On the basis of that report, New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a ban on fracking in that state.
“Gov. Brown must follow New York’s lead and protect our health and climate from oil and gas pollution,” Siegel concluded.
UPCOMING LIBRARY ACTIVITIES:
BASIC BRIDGE SKILLS: The Willits Branch Library and Friends are pleased to repeat the popular series of Free Lessons in Basic Bridge Skills, to be held weekly at the library from 10:15 to 12:15, beginning Saturday, February 21 through Saturday, April 19. If you would like to freshen up your bridge skills, or even if you have never played bridge before, here is your chance to join the 25 million Americans hooked on the game. Our hands-on approach will have you playing bridge on the very first lesson! Donna Vaiano, bridge teacher accredited by the American Contract Bridge League, will guide you through the intricacies of bidding with a partner, keeping score, finding the best contract and playing the best defense. Sign up with a friend, or sign up as a single; partners will be provided. The Willits Branch library is at 390 E. Commercial Street. For more info, phone Donna at 459-9035.
FEBRUARY FIRST FRIDAY ART WALK, A Valentine Maker Station. On Friday, February 6th, 5-8 PM the Mendocino County Library, Ukiah Branch will host: February First Friday Art Walk, A Valentine Maker Station. Celebrate all things of the Heart. Please join the Ukiah Library in an evening of heartfelt craftmaking, Live music with Dan Frey & yummy treats. Sponsored by the Friends of the Ukiah Library.
Be First to Comment