WILLITS AND UKIAH emerged mostly unscathed from the big winds and rains of last weekend, suffering no power outages inside their city limits. Ukiah, incidentally, is civic proof that municipalities can elude the power-eating monopoly of PG&E by operating its own power system, just as Green Bay, Wisconsin, proves that cities can own, operate and profit mightily from pro football franchises. Ukiah isn't quite ready for the NFL, but there are other government ways of doing things that actually benefit everyone…
SPEAKING OF WILLITS, the guys working on the Bypass, a section of which famously collapsed a couple of weeks ago, have been warned by their bosses not to talk about anything related to the magnificently botched project.
YOU REALLY want to annoy me? Say something along the lines of, "Well, you guys really aren't a newspaper…"
YOU MEAN A REAL NEWSPAPER with horoscopes and sex ads and bulletins about what Madonna wore to the Degenerate's Ball? A real newspaper like the Press Democrat of Monday Feb 9, 2015? "Lifestyle. Locals open up about first loves, lessons learned. Readers share memories of the first time they fell victim to cupid's arrow, and how it shaped their views on romance today."
A CALLER wants it brought up: "It's rude and arrogant of our supervisors to look at their cell phones while people are addressing them." Agreed. Checking the video of the most recent meeting of the County's leadership, we see the four male members of the board electronically distracted, Woodhouse and Gjerde not so much, McCowen and Hamburg a lot. Carrie Brown, a child of the 1950s, when good manners were still assumed, of course remains fully attentive at all times. In defense of the distracted, especially during windy presentations by County department heads, they couldn't be blamed if they simultaneously read War and Peace while the bureaucrats droned on. And a note to new Supe Woodhouse: "Don't say, 'I'll be brief' then ramble on for five minutes. Get to the point and get off, Tom. For pure arrogance, however, the 'liberal' members of the Fort Bragg City Council take the Rude trophy going away, especially that nut in charge of the speaker's time clock.
ACCORDING to a presser from the Mendocino County Sheriff's Department, a "Child Custody Exchange Location Project," located in the County Jail parking lot, "came about through a partnership between Sheriff Tom Allman and Superior Court Judge David A. Riemenschneider."
IT ALSO ACKNOWLEDGES the sad fact that there are so many semi-psychotic and fully psychotic parents loose in the County (and everywhere else in the land) that they can't even control their loathing for each other long enough to exchange their unfortunate children for the weekend without a cop being nearby.
THIS NEW WRINKLE creates a “safe zone” of parking spaces near the parking lot for the jail that are “well-lit and video-recorded 24/7 with multiple cameras for the purpose of documenting all activity. It is designed to allow families with court-ordered child custody and visitation agreements to document their exchanges without the direct assistance of law enforcement officers."
TERRIFIC INTERVIEW by Barry Vogel with Deputy Orell Massey, Mendocino County's first and only black law enforcement officer. Among other revelatory comments from the deputy, Massey says Mel Brooks’ 1974 movie Blazing Saddles best represents his experience here in Mendo (!). The interview appears in two parts and is available on-line.
ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE WEEK: "A buddy of mine had the idea for housing from shipping containers a while back too. Told me that right after I noted in passing that, what with the many advancements corrugated cardboard technology, my long unrealized dream of one day living in a refrigerator box down by the river was coming ever closer to fruition. But seriously, what single human being needs more than 200-400 square feet to live in and store their actual useful shit? I’m living in 550′ now, and it’s only slightly cramped because I, like almost every American breathing, have too much shit! And just think, if everyone in America were to somehow even try to approach that figure, public spaces would once again bloom, simply by default!"
DON CLAUSEN, who was born in Ferndale and served in the US House of Representatives for this area from 1963 to 1982, died last week. He was 91. Clausen was finally defeated by conservative liberal Doug Bosco, then Bosco was succeeded by a wacky former cop called Riggs with, by the way, a big shove from the Peace and Freedom Party, then Riggs was succeeded by a double-wack lib from Mendocino County called Hamburg, then Riggs again, then another conservative lib called Thompson, and lately some of us are represented by a glib lib lab from Marin called Huffman. (The wine industry gets three votes for every one vote the rest of us get.) The last time the Northcoast was represented by a true liberal was back in the sixties. His name was Clem Miller. Miller died in a plane crash during the election race with Clausen, but dead, Miller, running from his grave, defeated Clausen because his name was still on the ballot. Clausen, I believe, is the only person in Congressional history to be defeated by a dead man, although you could plausibly argue that the Northcoast has been "represented" for years by men dead from the neck up.
“A 32-YEAR-OLD REDWOOD VALLEY MAN is being held in the Mendocino County Jail on suspicion of attempted murder, burglary and false imprisonment, after a bizarre incident in which he was discovered inside a Potter Valley couple’s home Tuesday evening, the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office reported.”
THAT PARAGRAPH is from the Sheriff's Department's press release that goes on to describe the ultimate nightmare of every outback resident of this county.
A WOMAN enters her home in late afternoon to find an armed tweaker (presumably tweaking, that is) standing there. The woman's husband soon appears to find his wife a captive of the intruder. Which serves nicely as Exhibit A of why lots of rural dwellers keep a gun handy because the police, in vast Mendocino County, are almost always at least 30 minutes away, and this unfortunate couple was on their own until help could arrive. In the mean time, and in this case it was a very mean time…
EUGENE PETERSON JR., the intruder, had committed an incompetent one-man home invasion late afternoon last Tuesday in the wilds of Potter Valley. Peterson, armed with a handgun, was discovered inside the rural home by the 55-year-old woman who lives there with her 56-year-old husband. Whatever the intruder had in his (probably) drug-clouded mind, he picked the wrong house.
WHEN the terrified but clear-thinking woman's husband arrived, Peterson waved his gun menacingly at him. The husband had to get to higher ground for cell phone reception to call the police, momentarily leaving his wife hostage to the erratic Peterson who soon fired several shots in the direction of the husband. While Peterson was shooting at her husband, the wife tried to run but was caught by Peterson. She struggled with her captor for possession of the gun, at which point her husband tackled Peterson and, in the chaste prose of the Sheriff's press release, “subdued” Peterson as his wife again frantically called for help.
THE UPSIDE of this frightening event, if there is one, is the inspiring courage of the couple and the 56-year-old husband's efficient suppression of the rampaging Peterson, age 32. That's a big discrepancy in age. A lot of 56-year-olds couldn't have managed it.
AT AN AFTERNOON discussion of the Potter Valley case in this newspaper's editorial offices, a trio of geezers lauded the 56-year-old Potter Valley guy's thumping of a man young enough to be his son. Not that 56 is geezerhood but you're no kid at that age either. The consensus was something like this: “Most old guys are good for about two minutes of vigorous hand-to-hand. After that they're screwed.”
PS. IT TURNS OUT that Eugene Matthew Peterson Jr. 32, is the son of Eugene Matthew Peterson Sr., 61, a registered sex offender based in Willits. Peterson Sr. was briefly featured in the AVA a few years ago when a series of booking photos showed Peterson Sr. with a very nasty looking growth on his right cheek. Since 2007 the father and son have been arrested many, many times.
BUMPERSTICKERS spotted in Ukiah: "Our dreams aren't broken, they just walk with a limp." And, "Don't Be A Dick."
AMONG MENDOLAND'S many unsung heroes and heroines, count Dr. Mark Nash of Fort Bragg. He may be the only dentist in the County to take MediCal patients, and not only does this guy accept and treat the poorest of the poor, he calls them, post-op, to make sure they're ok. Talk about going the extra mile!
WHILE WE'RE PASSING out the bouquets, let's hear it for Dave Gurney and Friends for their important, last minute effort to prevent Fort Bragg from establishing a Willits-like sprawl at the town's southern ramparts. There are only two coherent municipalities left in Mendocino County, and Fort Bragg, except for the ghastly Boatyard shopping center and the McDonald's not far from the intersection of Highway One and Highway 20, has managed to stave off the miles of visual squalor characteristic of Willits and Ukiah. Another shopping center on Todd's Point would screw up the entire north sector of the Mendocino Coast, converting it to an ocean view Gualala. (Mendocino, village of, is ghastly for different reasons, with the Anderson Valley, now dominated by transient millionaires with their own wine labels, sinking fast. The other remaining coherent town? Point Arena. It's wacky population aside, it still at least looks like a distinct place. Gurney and Co. may not be able to stop the arrogant City Council majority presently do its best to permanently damage Fort Bragg, but their legal challenge to the shocking Fort Bragg Planning Commission decision to erect another Boatyard deserves high praise.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ABE LINCOLN! Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was a reluctant abolitionist and so on, but Honest Abe explained himself and fessed up every step of the way. Put him up against the clown show we suffer under today and… Just in my lifetime we've gone from FDR to a perfect entropy presided over by straight-up sociopaths and incompetents, all of them celebrated by media. For instance, just the other day the SF Chron gave us an embarrassingly slavish gush-gush story on Bill Clinton playing golf as Senior Citizens rushed up to President Nafta for autographs, for which the Seniors ought to be stripped of their MediCare cards and Dentu-Cream, as the audio Chron, NPR, was doing comparable celebrations of bad people all morning long. The Chron partially redeemed itself by at least questioning the propriety of an expensive farewell dinner for the crooked head of the Public Utilities Commission, Michael Peevey. Then it was back to the prone position as Thursday morning's lead story was the news that California's emptiest suit, Gavin Newsom, announced he was running for Governor in 2018, the same year Americans get a presidential choice between Hillary and another Bush, a choice between death today or tomorrow midnight.
ROBERT GARDNER, Potter Valley, is charged with "DUI with drugs causing great bodily injury, vehicle theft, evasion, driving on a suspended license, addict driving a vehicle, grand theft auto, obtaining vehicle by extortion or theft, under influence of controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of controlled substance, resisting arrest, probation revocation.
INTERESTING ARRAY of charges faced by Mr. Gardner. “Addict driving a vehicle”? Apply that standard to all American drivers and our highways and byways would be largely traffic-free.
SUZETTE, WE HARDLY KNEW YE. The pleasant young woman only signed on as Editor of the Mendocino Beacon and Fort Bragg Advocate in November… “Suzette Cook has decided to pursue other endeavors and has stepped down as Editor of The Mendocino Beacon and Fort Bragg Advocate News. We appreciate all she's done during her time here and wish her well on her journey!” (Stalin announced today he couldn't seem to find half his Soviet politburo. "I don't know where they went, but suspect Trotsky had a hand in it."
WILL MENDO privatize Animal Control? In 2014, the Grand Jury recommended combining Animal Care Services and Animal Control back into one department (i.e., the Sheriff’s Office). But the County has received "an unsolicited letter of intent" from Petaluma Animal Services Foundation expressing their desire to assume management of Mendocino County Animal Care services. Options pondered by the Supervisors include: 1) Move the shelter services under the Sheriff’s Office 2) Leave shelter services under the County's bumbling Health and Human Services admin, with the work of corralling rampaging beasts services remaining with the Sheriff’s Office); 3) consider the proposal from Petaluma Animal Services Foundation to assume responsibility.
JEFF CHARTER, writing on behalf of Petaluma Animal Services Foundation, puts it this way: "[We] were recently contacted by a group of concerned Mendocino County citizens and Ukiah animal shelter volunteers regarding management of Mendocino County Animal Services. This group is led by the Mountanos Family. After careful consideration we wish to open discussions with the County of Mendocino regarding a potential contract with Petaluma Animal Services Foundation for the running of the Animal Care and Control Services Division. We believe this can be accomplished with no additional cost to the taxpayers while many improvements can be realized by the citizens of Mendocino County. This potential contract also allows the County to freeze their costs associated with the division, no cost increases are incurred by the County during the length of the contract. Petaluma Animal Services Foundation currently provides services to The Cities of Petaluma, Healdsburg and Cloverdale. We also have a contract pending with the City of Calistoga...."
MENDO'S PROMOTIONAL TITANIC chugs endlessly towards the big iceberg. Representatives of the Mendocino County Lodging Association (MCLA) and Mendocino County Promotional Alliance (MCPA), historically at war, and both with their begging bowls perennially extended, now want "an across the board 2% assessment with a continuation of the 50% County match to be applied to all their funding." The Supes think they can knock back the admin salaries the wine and cheese bloc pays itself in favor of more actual promotion, whatever they mean by promotion.
OUR POSITION is not a public nickel should be spent on the promotion of any sort, but the Supervisors seem to disagree and will probably approve the rearranged (but essentially the same at higher cost) draw on the public purse.
THE NEW ARRANGEMENT will, in theory, be overseen by a governing board of eleven people: five Lodging; two Chambers of Commerce; one Mendocino Winegrowers, Inc.; one Arts and Attractions; one Food and Beverage (includes culinary, beer and other spirits); and one At Large (a pliable chum of all of the above).
ED NOTE: If this sounds workable to you, you must be one of the ad hoc committee members. Note that there's no estimate of the amount of money that the taxpayers will be contributing via the newly (to be) established 2% lodging tax. Under the previous proposal the County would have handed over $550k next fiscal year (up from $360k this fiscal year). (Hint: It will be higher than the previous proposal.)
WE ESPECIALLY ENJOYED this provision: “A guarantee that a high (but yet to be determined) proportion of all new revenue will be dedicated to direct promotion and marketing, not administration.” (A provision which magically disappeared when the Promotional people started emailing it around among themselves.)
THIS DEPENDS on how you define “administration,” and who gets to decide which expense goes in which account. In all the preciously consensed deal making that has gone into this unworkable arrangement there’s no mention of the current marketing organization known as “Visit Mendocino County,” the top heavy and wholly ineffective “promotional” outfit that currently does whatever they do — place ads in foodie mags and host other fancy wine and tourism drones at Mendo gastro-galas in the hopes they'll go back to Frisco or LA or wherever and write good things about the delights of Mendocino County. Which are real, but darned if people don't seem to find their way here without noticing the tiny Mendo ad in Sunset Magazine or it’s invisible on-line equivalent. So long as our Mendo promo beneficiaries are getting the promotional money (upwards of $2 mil a year), it will be very difficult to get them to stop squandering it, if they even try.
SPEAKING OF FREE LUNCHES, the Supervisors have naturally, nay instinctively will, approve "automobile allowances" for more of their administrators, essentially paying favored people to drive to and from work.
THE PROPOSAL IS BURIED in obfuscating gibberish like “Community Choice Aggregation” and "Community Choice" and, most laughably, "California Clean Power."
FORT BRAGG MOBILIZES. A reader writes: Stop the Old Coast Hotel project… "Regarding the purchase of The Old Coast Hotel for homeless services. This is not an anti-homeless issue; this is an effort to rein in our power-mad mayor and his henchmen. The mayor's position that he is not required to notify the public on matters that affect us all, his belief that he doesn't need to consider citizens' input in the decision-making process, and his focus on staying in the grant-getting game above all else, have created a situation that requires us all to speak out in protest."
ADRIAN BAUMANN of the Willits News (in an article about the Board of Supervisors’ plans to study the local economic impact of possible marijuana legalization statewide) reported: “Recently the Emerald Growers Alliance has begun collecting survey questionnaires from local growers, and according to the organization their results indicate that the average marijuana farm in the area employs four full time workers, that the average grower makes about $102,000 a year, which they note is less than the national average for family farms, and that the average worker on the farm makes about $42,000. The EGA says this is significantly higher than the average for farm workers. Additionally 75% of growers surveyed also grow food.”
HOW TO ROYALLY SCREW UP A TIMBER HARVEST PLAN — and stick the taxpayers with the bill.
From the Supes: "Increase the contract amount with Roger Sternberg for a total revised contract price of $53,192.77" for his work at the County-owned acreage adjoining the Little River Airport.
* * *
THE WRITER of the labyrinthine agenda item requesting more money for Rog (see the AVA website for the full text) implies that this ongoing fiasco began in April of 2013. In fact, the County has been working on the Little River Airport timber harvest plan since 2007 and Mr. Sternberg has been laboring away at it since 2012.
STERNBERG'S original contract was for $20,000. Back in August of 2013 we transcribed this exchange from the Board discussion of the timber harvest plan's prep work:
Supervisor John Pinches: “You expect the contract with the forester not to exceed $20,000. But does that include the biological surveys?”
GSA Director Kristin McMenomey: “That's everything.”
Pinches: “That's everything?”
McMenomey: “That's everything. That's all the hooting, that's everything. He hires the sub-consultants under his limit with the county.”
Supervisor John McCowen: “Is it correct that there was a competing proposal to perform the same work not to exceed $10,000?”
McMenomey: “There was a proposal of not to exceed $10,000 [from Registered Professional Forester Tom Kisliuk of Fort Bragg, a real working forester]. However, the plan of action to do so, you could not do that in accordance with our NTMP because we have surveys that have to be conducted and it was CalFire's call. And you can't possibly know CalFire's call until you meet with them. And they made the call. You have to redo your studies.”
McCowen: “Was everyone bidding on the same project?”
With this, Ms. McMenomey hedged.
McMenomey: “Everybody was bidding on the same project. It wasn't a bid. It was a request for qualifications.”
YEAH. RIGHT. Sternberg got the job for “not to exceed” $20k and he’s now milked it for over $50k!
ROG is not a working forester. His expertise is in conservation easements, not logging. The County has now abandoned its earlier plans to harvest the small patch of timber near the Little River Airport because the value of the timber won’t cover Sternberg’s fees.
COAST ENVIROS think what's left of the stand is worth saving so they’re looking (they’ve been looking for a year now) for someone or a land trust to buy the 57 acre parcel. But the Supes seem inclined to stumble on with greater and greater fees for ol' Rog's work on a plan that will never, ever harvest timber.
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