Mendocino County Today: Wednesday, Oct 14, 2015

• FB's Willits Water Option
• Water Carriers
• Roman Elliot
• Prop 172 Money
• Library Ripoff
• El Nino Estimates
• Catch of the Day
• Gun Nut Fantasy
• National Novel Writing Month

FORT BRAGG is apparently looking at several emergency water strategies, but the Willits Option seems the most likely. Willits has a surplus and is relatively close by. The water would be piped into train tankers and hauled out the Skunk Line to where the tunnel is collapsed at the Noyo headwaters where FB has a pump station near the tracks on the Willits side of the tunnel. Sounds more or less workable, we suppose, but it won't be cheap. Fort Bragg, though, has got to do something, and do something fast.

MAJOR SCARAMELLA (a former logistics and industrial engineer) was skeptical. He doubts the idea is very workable nor properly thought through. When he heard about the idea, he balked:

“First, where will the tank car come from? What will its capacity be? How many trips over what period of time? (If it’s just for a few trips, that’s much easier than a long-term arrangement, but would it justify procurement of a tanker car?) Next, water is dense and heavy, over eight pounds per gallon. Modern full-size rail tank cars carry 20,000 to 30,000 gallons, although there are older smaller models in the 10,000+/- gallon range.

So that’s between 80,000 and 160,000 pounds or 40 to 80 tons of water per tank car. Next you have the condition of the track to consider. Will that aging track carry such loads all the way along the track? Then you have those wonderfully dramatic steep switchbacks on the Willits end up to the ridgeline. Will their locomotive be able to get up the switchbacks with 40 or 80 tons (plus the car itself) in tow (or more)? That’s a lot more weight than a few tourists. What about the brakes on the downhill side? Will they be able to keep the tonnage from overspeeding down the hill toward the collapsed tunnel? What about wear and tear on the tracks over time from such heavy loads? There are other such questions (very slow curve speeds, actual track configuration, compatibility of the car with the train, etc. for example), but I’ll stop there. These are not trivial questions. If they by chance have a lower capacity tank car available somewhere, these problems would be mitigated somewhat, but then other questions would arise about total volume delivered. They might be better off considering a tanker fleet over Highway 20, but it would take at least five 2,000-gallon water tenders to haul as much water as one small rail tank car.”

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ON THE OTHER HAND, FORT BRAGG might consider taking water lessons from Brad Lancaster, the Tucson water genius. This guy's innovations have resulted in Tucson presently enjoying a water surplus. I happened in on a riveting hour of Linda McElwee talking with Lancaster on KZYX some months ago.

TO ME, everything said in that hour was almost Biblically revelatory. And what was said had to do with the specifics of rainfall storage. I was aware of course that lots of locals capture some rainfall but I thought that was just a matter of downspouts and tanks from Jack's Valley Store. I didn't know you could store water in the ground itself that you could retrieve without the expense of pumps.

WE USED TO GET upwards of 50 inches of rainfall a year in Mendocino County, more than enough not to worry about conservation measures. But none of the lesser amounts of rain over the last few years are presently conserved in the inexpensive ways described by Lancaster, and all four of our four parched municipalities are now considering mandatory limits on use. The rain falls, runs off, we squander the little we capture in long showers, lawns other profligate practices.

LANCASTER talked about how those of us who live in Concrete Land, can, with a focus on a few simple innovations, NOT run out of water, as millions of us in California are presently doing. I listened and hoped Mendo's civic leaders were also listening. This man brought water to desert Tucson and his innovations were very inexpensive. Fort Bragg would never have to consider buying water again if the town took a few innovative catchment steps.

19 YEAR OLD UKIAHAN HOPED TO HELP OTHERS BEFORE HE WAS SHOT.

The Ukiah teen shot and killed near an apartment complex Friday night was a good person with a big heart, according to friends and family.

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/4605802-181/slain-ukiah-teen-hoped-to

EVERY FEW YEARS, there’s a flurry of interest in Mendo’s obvious misallocation of Proposition 172 funds. Then everything returns to the status quo ante. It goes all the way back to 1994 when California voters approved a half-cent sales tax increase for “public safety” to backfill money from the infamous “tax shift’ when Governor Wilson (illegally, but the courts ruled the legislature could do it anyway) “shifted” general fund money from police and fire departments to compensate for lost education revenues during that particular economic downturn and revenue drop.

RECENTLY a new group calling themselves the Mendocino County Fire Departments Association has entered the fray to organize and agitate for more Proposition 172 funds for the County’s independent fire districts, mostly barebones, underfunded operations staffed by volunteers. MCFDA (McFuduh?) seems to think that by making the case that a good chunk of the Prop 172 money — over $6 million for Mendo each year lately — should be allocated to fire districts which have to respond to over 7,500 calls per year, Mendo Officialdom will reverse years of bad decision-making. They’re right about the need and they’ve been right for years. But their expectations are out of touch with Mendo reality.

NOTHING HAS CHANGED. Nothing will change.

WHY? Because, essentially, County officialdom does not care about funding small rural fire districts when there are more pressing demands from their own departments, for pension funding, and for reserve build-ups — including particularly high and escalating law enforcement pensions (which is a separate rip-off well save for another day). The fire departments have no representation and no leverage.

ONE OF THE MORE RECENT proposals for giving a small amount of the Prop 172 money to fire departments was from the Mendocino County Fire Chiefs Association as expressed by then Chief Larry Tunzi of Comptche. In 2011 in the wake of the “Fitch study” which documented the fragile funding status of the inland ambulance and emergency services, Tunzi distributed a long response to the Fitch Report summarizing the situation then.

THE PROBLEM is that the County has to provide some of the Prop 172 money made available by the statewide half-cent sales tax for “public safety,” passed into law in the early 1990s. So far in Mendo, most of the money goes to law enforcement (Sheriff, DA, probation, jail), and the rest to miscellaneous general fund accounts that do not provide any direct “public safety.”

TUNZI AND HIS FELLOW CHIEFS wanted a small percentage of the Prop 172 money to supplement the County’s struggling, mostly volunteer, fire and ambulance services. The Board of Supervisors could dispatch some of the Prop 172 money tomorrow if they wanted to, but so far they are clearly indifferent to the welfare of outback emergency services because they have been told about the need off and on many times over the years and done very little. In fact when the Grand Jury brought it up in 2011 the CEO and the Board both said they had no authority to change anything, boldly and wrongly declaring that fund allocations were the responsibility of the County Auditor.

IN 2008, representatives from the Mendocino County Fire and Ambulance Services got a one-time grant of a few hundred thousand dollars and that’s happened once or twice (whenever the Board of Supervisors feels like it, apparently) since then. Not enough, too sporadic to be reliably depended upon.

THEN (2008) BOARD OF SUPERVISORS Chairman Jim Wattenburger (a retired Calfire Captain) said he appreciated the work that the fire and ambulance services do in this county. He said the allocation of funds was a good short-term solution. “I've been pushing for a long-term fix for three or four years,” he added. “It was well-deserved and well needed,” said then-Third District Supervisor John Pinches of the one-time allocation. “I would like to think that in a budget of $200 million, we could find another $200,000.”

WATTENBURGER added, “It's time that rural agencies and rural counties start getting their fair share from Sacramento,” but, of course neither he or his colleagues did nothing by way of follow-up.

“THE HOLD UP is here with the county board,” said veteran Ukiah Valley Fire Chief Dan Grebil, stating the obvious.

CHIEF LARRY TUNZI’S LETTER in 2011, however, explained why the Chiefs later abandoned their request for Proposition 172 money:

“During the early phases of the (Chiefs sub-)committee, the Fire Chiefs Association had recommended a revenue-sharing plan for Proposition 172 money. … The proposal was to allocate the annual increase in revenue to fire and EMS. The existing law-enforcement portion would have stayed constant (to meet the required so-called “maintenance of effort”) until the Fire-EMS portion reached a cap at 25% of the total revenue. This proposal was not pursued because of opposition by the Sheriff and county staff. The Chiefs Association believes but a revenue-sharing plan for Prop 172 money remains the most appropriate method for funding emergency services.”

DISTRICT ATTORNEY David Eyster told KZYX’s Valerie Kim last month (September 2015) about another major obstacle in achieving any kind of fair or legal allocation of the nearly $7 million: a comprehensive audit. Eyster said that he has asked for one but has not received a full accounting of where the Prop 172 money has gone and still goes. Eyster added that the $7 mil goes into a “misnamed account” that the County uses to then funnel it to the General Fund, so the County can’t say which “public safety” agencies get the money or how much. He also insists that the accounting be retroactive to some point in distant past. “There’s no point in acting until an audit is done,” insists Eyster, adding that the Board of Supervisors has to require the Auditor-Controller to do the audit. Eyster also said that he has an email from former Auditor Meredith Ford saying the Prop 172 money is just dumped into General Fund, and that any Prop 172 money that may be going to Social Services should probably go to fire departments (but none of his own DA Prop 172 money, however much that might be).

IF THE FIRE DEPARTMENTS have to wait for the Supes to order the independently elected Auditor to do something that should have and could have been done years ago and that the Auditor would simply refuse to do even if they “asked,” they’ll never get any of the Prop 172 money and Tunzi’s original conclusion to abandon the idea will be proven to be correct.

WE WISH the new Association of Fire Departments all the luck in the world, even if their idea to have Mendo Officialdom do the right thing is naïve in the extreme.

LIBRARY RIPPED OFF AGAIN?

To the Editor:

The new Bookmobile, bought with grant money from the Department of Agriculture (which means the County put out no money for its purchase) is being billed to the Library... as if it had been paid for by the County. Got that? Every day, in every way, someone at the County is figuring out how to steal the funds that local taxpayers wanted specifically to go to libraries in this county. I, for one, want to know who is responsible. This is really a theft of public funds (library dedicated funds) hiding behind the equally odious mask of “creative accounting”; and further, raises questions about the legal issues of charging the Library for a purchase that you made with grant funds, which on it’s surface seems fraudulent. It is little wonder that this administration and board has credibility issues and that cynicism among the local electorate is the norm. This kind of behavior must stop.

Gail Dammuller

Ukiah

ED NOTE: So far as we can determine, the County Library was not charged for the new bookmobile; it was purchased by a grant that Supervisor Carre Brown managed.

THEY ARE CALLING IT A 'MONSTER' and likening it to Godzilla, but it's unlikely that the looming El Niño will be playing any tricks come Halloween, and you may even be able to carve your turkey al fresco next month.

The latest long-term projections from the National Weather Service suggest November will be much, much drier than normal.

The red and orange sections covering the Bay Area in the map below foretell a month with 40-75 percent less rain than normally seen in the month of November.

Check @fallbekind (on left) November outlook dry weather likely. January (on right) above avg. @nbcbayarea #ElNinopic.twitter.com/bxHin4sSWG

— Jeff Ranieri (@JeffRanieri) October 13, 2015

The late arrival doesn't mean the storm is petering out. Meteorologists are comparing it to the weather pattern in 1997-98, when the rainy season started slowly before bringing a damaging deluge for the first three months of the new year, flooding waterways across the region and setting off the biggest landslide in Bay Area history.

“This El Niño is not supposed to peak until the spring, which leads me to believe we will have a normal weather pattern in November and December,” said Mike Pechner, of Golden West Meteorology, told the Chronicle. “The likelihood is the heaviest stuff will come in January, February and March.”

These projections are not forecasts, so it's still too soon to bank on a rain-free Thanksgiving, but it's unlikely that late November will see the big rainfall totals you might have expected based on all of the hype.

Ocean temperatures show this one to be the second-strongest since such record keeping began in 1950, said Eric Boldt, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. That would make it weaker than the El Nino of 1997-98 but stronger than the El Nino of 1982-83.

Further south, the heavy precipitation has already begun to hit Mexico and Central America with plenty of additional moisture waiting to slam the region for weeks to come.

Total precipitable water image shows very moist air just to our south. #cawx pic.twitter.com/o010Q2dvHF

— NWSBayArea (@NWSBayArea) October 12, 2015

When the full force of El Niño does hit California, it's likely to creep up from Southern California, which may see the biggest change in rainfall totals.

According to AP, in the last 65 years there have been six strong El Niños and only two produced major precipitation statewide, according to the California Department of Water Resources.

Weather models for the upcoming rainy season show a 60 percent chance of above-average rainfall in Southern California, but that figure declines farther north, Boldt said.

From the San Francisco Bay Area to Sequoia National Park, there's a 50 percent chance of above-average rainfall. From Eureka to north of Reno, Nevada, that estimate drops to 33 percent. In other words, expect "Godzilla" to show up in Los Angeles and San Francisco sometime early next year.

(Courtesy, the San Francisco Chronicle.)

CATCH OF THE DAY, October 13, 2015

ISMAEL CEJA-REYES, Ukiah. Kidnapping or equivalent, evasion.

BRANDON CLELAND, Willits. Burglary, possession of controlled substance and paraphernalia, conspiracy.

ANTHONY FRANK-FREMONT, Fort Bragg. DUI.

NICHOLAS HALVORSEN, Fort Bragg. Drunk in public, probation revocation. (Frequent flyer.)

FOX HOAGLIN, Covelo. Dirk-Dagger.

LAURA MUZZY, Willits. Domestic assault, resisting.

RICKY PHILLIPS, Willits. Domestic battery, petty theft, probation revocation.

RUSTSY RAMSING, Willits. Court order violation, failure to appear.

THOMAS SANDERS, Ukiah. Drunk in public. (Frequent flyer.)

BOBBY SOSSAMAN, Willits. Burglary, felon with body armor, receiving stolen property, prohibited person with ammo, ex-felon with firearm.

TRISTAN STUNDEN, San Francisco/Mendocino. Drunk in public.

JEREMIAH TEMPLE, Spokane, Washington/Willits. Burglary, possession of meth.

JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

RYAN WADE, Lakeport. Community Supervision violation.

THE GUN NUT fantasy is that idiot bad guys will holler “Here we come!” and lurch, zombie-like into the front yard so that they can be shot down. The fantasizer can stick his gun out through the front window or even, in a glorious display of manly courage, stride out through the front door, declare “Not today, bad guys” and then mow them down. And some bad guys, being idiots, will do that. But some bad guys are neither stupid, nor brave, nor honorable. All that a smart. cowardly, dishonorable bad guy needs to do is choose a time when you don’t expect an attack, hide in the bushes some discrete distance from your house, and wait until you come out to tend your garden, empty your chamber pot, or whatever. From a safe distance he then shoots you dead. You could be the world’s greatest marksman and own a hundred guns, but there’s not a damned thing you can do about it. Life is not a video game.

NATIONAL NOVEL WRITING MONTH KICK-OFF EVENT

On Wednesday, November 4, at 5 p.m. the Mendocino County Library, Fort Bragg Branch is hosting a National Novel Writing Month Kick-Off Event.

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing. On November 1, participants begin working towards the goal of writing a 50,000-word novel by 11:59 PM on November 30. Valuing enthusiasm, determination, and a deadline, NaNoWriMo is for anyone who has ever thought about writing a novel.

Fort Bragg Branch Library will be hosting a Kick Off Event for NaNoWriMo. Both participants and those who want to learn more are welcome to drop by from 5 pm to 6 pm. There will be space to write, information about upcoming Write Ins, door prizes, and more. We’re hosting both adult Wrimos as well as participants in the Young Writers Program this year, and it looks to be a fantastic month.

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National Novel Writing Month Programs:

NaNoWriMo Kick-Off Event: Tuesday, Oct. 20^th 6:00 – 7:30 pm

Come Write In: Saturdays in November 12-5 pm

During the month of November, the Mendocino County Library, Ukiah Branch is hosting National Novel Writing Month.

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a nonprofit event that encourages kids, teens & and adults to tackle the challenge of writing a novel in November. Launched in 1999, NaNoWriMo inspires its 300,000+ participants with pep talks, a huge and supportive online community, and a host of web-based writing tools.

The Ukiah Branch Library will be hosting a kick-off event on October 20 @ 6pm as well as weekly drop-in writing events every Saturday from 12-5 pm.

If you are interested in the program or want to find out more about NaNoWriMo, please contact Melissa at the Ukiah Library: 467-6434 or carrm@co.mendocino.ca.us