News traveled fast in Point Arena about two weeks ago, when finally, down where City Councilwoman Heatherstone-Szantos lives on her property which straddles Point Arena Creek, she received a 14-day move-out notice from authorities yet unknown. Why? She does not live in a legally habitable structure within the City limits; also a requirement of her elected seat on City Council. No legal shitter or infrastructure where she's lived since 2010, and with no accountability for all those years she also sat on City Council, as it now turns out - illegally. Ditto for Mayor Koogle. Point Arena is having difficulty finding applicants who fulfill the minimum of legal requirements for elected seats on City Council.
Once again, at least two out of five Council members are usually appointees, rather than elected officials, who replace the two who almost always evenntually quit because they can't stand the political bullshit. And as is the case with Point Arena, two of the other Council members gained their City Council seats while living lies about their residency in order to qualify.
About three Mayors ago (only three or four years), the owner of Cove Coffee at Arena Cove looked out his window onto the deck, covered with about half-a-dozen Council Members and City Planners, all spontaneously meeting for morning coffee to obviously determine the outcome of former Mayor Lauren Sinnott's potential recall. He shouted over the sputtering espresso machine, “That would be Brown Act violations happening on my front porch!”
'Zactly! ...That's Point Arena politics in a “City” too small to run a government. (Yet smaller than the Village of Mendocino!)
Two fifths of Point Arena City Council members quit their posts last month: Phil Burfoot and Trevor Sanders. The two Councilmen were out-numbered by the other (rarely dissenting) three: Mayor Jim Koogle, Deborah Heatherstone-Szantos, and former Mayor Doug Burkey. Burfoot was interviewed by the ICO in Gualala, where he stated that Mayor Koogle's intimidation tactics, familiarly-known to many locals, were implemented in particular towards Burfoot by Koogle during Burfoot's time as an elected official on City Council.
On the heels of the recent resignations of Councilmen Burfoot and Sanders, the seemingly impossible happened. Councilwoman Deborah Heatherstone-Szantos, who has been living for the last five years in an uninhabitable shed without septic on Point Arena Creek, was finally served with a 14 day move-out notice to vacate the property she bought from Tom Wodetski of Albion. One reason Tom sold the property was that there were no longer any legal living structures with sewer on either connected parcel straddling Point Arena Creek at Hwy One and Iversen Road. Located at the bottom of the hill in Point Arena, 125 Main could no longer generate rental income, therefore. Tom's former property consisted of two two-story homes at 125 Main Street which burned down in 2008, leaving the property with one structure, an uninhabitable shed without infrastructure South of Point Arena Creek on an adjoining parcel. Heatherstone (legally named Szantos) and her partner chose to make this their new home since purchasing the property in 2010 - even though the last renter of the uninhabitable shed, a glass blower who was living in the structure also without a proper shitter, was evicted by former fired City Clerk, Claudia Hillary, in 2009, prior to the sale of the property by Wodetski.
So how could Heatherstone-Szantos live on Point Arena Creek all those years in violation of environmental regulations involving sensitive habitat in a riparian zone, without the City of Point Arena providing enforcement of this obvious water quality issue, at least? The problem with pirates is that they only possess one good eye. Makes it easier to turn the other blind eye. So I ask, how could Councilwoman Heatherstone-Szantos not provide her own enforcement? Why would she choose to slander and threaten citizens who have voiced their opposition to her obvious unhealthy and illegal living situation for certain health considerations, to include infectious disease caught by surfers, some of whom have lost their hearing and others who now and then catch some type of “infection” from swimming at the other end of Point Arena Creek where it spits out into Arena Cove. How could Heatherstone-Szantos, as an elected representative of our local government and a so-called “greenie”, think it was okay to live in an uninhabitable shed in a riparian zone, within the California Coastal Zone, in a City that charges sewer fees to every other address but hers? Unfortunately, Heatherstone-Szantos doesn't know Point Arenans already lived like that in the City before the sewer ponds went in on Port Road in 1984.
The remaining septic for the two burned out homes at 125 Main is from the 1950's and leaches where it sits, smack-dab in the middle of Point Arena Creek. The concrete septic lid was discovered by the earth mover hired by Szantos (the name on permit), on an expired demolition permit, when he removed the foundation blocks from under the burned out homes and disturbed the ivy which obscured the septic in the creek. As Councilwoman, H-S clearly operates outside the limits of the City's own Muni-Code and permit process time and again.
But, who can find the Muni-Code guidelines when you need them? (See AVA article “Pint Arena's New City Manager”.) They've been stolen from the binder that sits in City Hall! Truly. Chapters 14 through 18 of the City's Muni-Code, specifically relating to the Councilwoman's current property plight and which governs violators like the City's Councilwoman Heatherstone-Szantos, have been stolen from City Hall and no longer exist? That's what we are told. City Hall can't find what REALLY exists for Chapters 14 through 18 — not even on the City's computer files? Shoemaker's not returning inquiries. It's a public shut-out. So what gives with any management at all of the City of Putin.. err aaaa, Point Arena? Is Point Arena still able to operate as a real City? It hasn't done such for quite a few recent generations of Mayors - four or five so far in just about as many years. And now Council has chosen Richard Shoemaker as Point Arena's newest City Manager?
Do we need a City Hall with such slimy morals, passing the position of Mayor like a rugby ball?
Last week Council again, like a bad boomerang, redundantly reappointed “the replacements” on Council. For the umpteenth time, Richard Ad Nauseum Wasserman, former Mayor of Point Arena and one of PA's infamous peddlers is a City Council Member, once again. Did I mention he's been on the City's payroll several times already?
The only reputable Council member at this point is newly appointed Scott Ignacio. We remain hopeful, but at this point, he could wind up being that one dissenting vote.
Last Friday night I visited an old friend in Point Arena whom I've known for about twenty-five years. She lives across the street from Heatherstone-Szantos and her partner where they squat still in Point Arena Creek behind 125 Main Street, living out the duration of their 14-day eviction notice. My friend is ill. She's had a catastrophic health history including the radiation modalities of thirty years ago which were simply archaic, and now continue to wreak havoc on her body. Radiation keeps on marching long after exposure. She's fragile, is my point. And because of her near deathness from time to time, and some of her experiences sailing around the world by her own hand in her healthier days, she views a much bigger picture each day she lives her life. She doesn't care to gossip and I like that about her. When we visit, I love our talks for their simplicity and objectivity. We talk of transcendental things, mystical happenings where magic and hope still exist, life, love, death, sailing (she's circumnavigated - the world with her late lover in their two-person sailboat), food (she's an authentic, world-class, lavish chef), ...we focus on good things. I have few friends like that who can honestly focus on the positive qualities, and it is the thing I love most about her. I kept running into her as she walked up to the Post Office last Friday, so decided to go down to her home along Point Arena Creek for a visit.
We sat peacefully outside on her porch, when down the street stomped Heatherstone-Szantos (H-S) with her dog, headed down to their illegal living structure on the creek, where they still abide. We went quiet as H-S (which could also stand for High School) asked my friend from across the street, if she was okay. H-S kept repeating, “Are you sure you're okay?” Then finally responded to my friend's affirmative responses each time with one final, “I don't think you are okay!”.
My friend looked at me and asked, “What did that mean?” We heard H-S barking orders at her partner as if he was an attack dog, on their creek bridge as she stood on Hwy One. My friend said to me, “Is she making threats?” We stood still and listened. The Councilwoman didn't want me on my friend's porch. My friend says that H-S tries to implore her to dislike me, and is obviously bent out of shape that I am there visiting. (Makes me wonder if H-S is both a psychopath and a fascist!)
We could both hear Heatherstone-Szantos asking her partner Phil to go across the street to beat me up(!). He asked “Who?”. She screamed so I could hear her, “Debra Cunt! She's across the street. Let's go! !#%?*!@?^!*”.
I stood there on my friend's porch first wondering if, as an elected government official, Heatherstone-Szantos should harass with such scarey threats of violent encroachment onto my disabled friend's porch to punch out one of her guests.
I said to my friend, “What a low-girl! They're making threats!”. We sat waiting, still as stone, to see if they'd walk across the street. I knew I could probably handle my own, but what about my (fragile, disabled) friend?
I mumbled to her, “If they get to the bottom of your sidewalk, you hop in the house. I'll lock the door and call the sheriff.” She nodded as she shuffled her heavy boots closer to the front door, a bit fearful. We just stood there in silence, not responding - staring at the morons, who gave up and crawled back to their hobbit hole on the other side of the creek.
This is a City Council member making violent physical and verbal threats, and we're trying to avoid being beaten by her? It must be viral, cuz Koogle's like that too: a puncher, a shover, a bully. One woman, also a former City Planner, suffered a fracture when she was shoved by Koogle down the steps of the old Upstairs Cafe in Point Arena: A tumble of about twenty steps down to Highway One.
If you haven't read the resignation of Councilman Burfoot in Gualala's ICO from a coupla weeks ago, former Councilperson Burfoot also described his experiences with the impossibility of trying to maintain his own opinion and vote on Council, while sitting next to Mayor Koogle, without being physically threatened and intimidated by the (also illegally-elected) mayor. I applaud Burfoot for choosing his words well, because what he probably experienced, was much scarier than what appeared in the paper, knowing Koogle the way many of us do in Point Arena.
Are these government officials on steroids? Or crack? Or shocked on misplaced personal power — even going so far as to steal the pages of law in order to bend it for their own best interests? (Aren't these Council members responsible for Muni-Codes 14-18, which disappeared while they currently sit on Council?) No explanations are offered... a sabotaged government.
With a small population of around 500, what do we have to do in Point Arena to be capable of drawing from a larger constituency in order to elect some City officials with actual business acumen and experience, let alone decorum and manners? Currently, most elected officials tend to act like thugs under Point Arena's small-town microscope. The old retreads they keep pulling from the closets are beyond tired, too, while Main Street doesn't look much better, with all its empty business fronts and tourists walking from one end of town to the other with nothing to do, nowhere to spend their money, looking disappointed, shrugging their shoulders... Without prepping Point Arena for her future, what exactly did former Mayor Dahlhoff have in mind for Point Arena with the onslaught of “The Monument”?
Every citizen I've quizzed says Richard Shoemaker, the newest in a string of City Manager-type employees working for the City of Point Arena, won't respond to anyone who calls wanting to know sic em. I was told he is the partner of Linda Ruffing of Fort Bragg City Council fame, who has sons with local, Chuck Henderson. About a hand-full of folks from Anderson Valley who've asked me about him, advise to beware. “He's a slimy bastard!”, two chimed in simultaneously, during one breakfast round-table. To which I respond that he'll have like company in Point Arena City Hall!
I've written at least half-a-dozen e-mails to Shoemaker asking him, specifically, what agency gave his Councilwoman her 14-day move-out notice, and he won't respond. But when I pointed out that the City's web site advises visitors to Point Arena City Hall to stop by for a talk with the City Manager on Fridays, when City Hall is clearly closed on Fridays, he did respond that the web site is in the process of being updated. So why not respond to my other e-mails? Is this “doing his job”? What IS his job?
The perfect metaphor for this episode in dirty conspiratorial Point Arena politics is the story of the City Sewer employee who remains so fraught with previous experiential concern over the incompetence of Point Arena's City Council, he personally chose to not report to City Council as a part of his employment agreement when rehired to his previous old job with the sewer department some months ago. He alone, as employees go, reports to the City Manager, only. I'd say he's righteous in that decision, especially with Heatherstone-Szantos's disregard for Point Arena Creek by turning it back into “Shit Creek”, (which it was called in previous years when all sewer lines on Mill Street poured and glopped into Point Arena Creek, directly from each home through ceramic asbestos pipes).
Point Arena politics have become so transparently high school, bully, and lame, that the “City” must either disincorporate at this point, or expand it's boundaries to include several hundred more voters on the periphery of Point Arena. Koogle and Heatherstone-Szantos are asked to resign from City Council based on their continued duping of the public's trust: Heatherstone-Szantos's obvious creek shame, and the fact that Koogle lied about his actual living address to election officials in order to get on the election ballot in the first place. (On Koogle's election application he listed his gutted ten+ year vacant property at 53 Lake as where he lives, because it is in the City limits, and legal residency is a requirement of running for elected office within the City of Point Arena.) I say that the same consideration should be given to everyone in a new election — not just Koogle, if election law is to be overlooked in this regard. Last election is a do-over, I say. Fine the dirty bastards for their violations, have a new election, and move on. Re-annexation of Point Arena by expanding the borders of the City limits is long overdue. Maybe it's time to put the Stornettas back in the ballgame!
Point Arena Creek
After the passing of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, Point Arena Creek became one of the first creeks in Northern California to undergo creek restoration. When I first owned the long stretch of Point Arena Creek which ran thru my three Mill Street parcels, I checked into further rehab of Point Arena Creek, to repair damage by bottle “diggers” who eroded the creek banks. I found that creek restoration had already been done on PA Creek by a Berkeley environmentalist.
Since the 1900's PA Creek had been known as “Shit Creek”. All of the outhouses for the homes built between Mill Street and Point Arena Creek, lined the creek banks behind their homes. The census of 1911 counted 3000 men and 200 women at a few addresses along Point Arena Creek(!). Since the laws of the time prohibited women from drinking alcohol in public, the women did their consumption in out houses; there disposing of their empty bottles in the “shitter” (now antique treasures for bottle collectors). The problem was (and still is) that the creek banks were further eroded by ensuing bottle diggers; collectors along Point Arena Creek. Most imported bottles were glass from the Orient or black & tan clay Guinness bottles with a stamp on the side of the bottle at the base, which said “Glasgow”.
Subsequently, the Coastal Zone was created with a sewer situation like Point Arena Creek in mind, in such close proximity, flowing to the ocean. PA Creek was “restored” by the 1980's and the City's sewer ponds and facility created in 1984. In fact, there was a recent (unreported to the EPA) sewer spill into Point Arena Creek under Mayor Dahlhoff, which caused hearing loss in a few of the surfers, as well as odd skin infections. These, the best reasons for not letting sewer into Point Arena Creek.
Bonnie Morgan, a friend who has lived in Point Arena for over 60 years now, tells me stories of when she lived in several consecutive houses on Mill Street, which runs parallel to Point Arena Creek. She raised her family down on Mill Street before buying her present home at 50 Lake. She tells me that Bill Hay dammed off PA Creek several miles up, so he could divert water to his beef cattle. It dried up and made a mess of “Shit Creek”, as Point Arena had named the small vein of water, up to the time of creek restoration when it was reclaimed as “Point Arena Creek” in the 1980's.
Unfortunately, the Mill Street homes of the 1950's all had ceramic asbestos sewer pipes which let directly into Point Arena Creek without septic. The Creek would wash away the raw sewage, down to the ocean(!). Finally a sewer facility was created in Point Arena, and the environmentalist from Berkeley came to begin restoration of Point Arena Creek, which mostly entailed creating a sewage treatment plant facility with sewer ponds for Point Arena in 1984.
In addition, I found out that John King, the former dog catcher of PA in the '70's, quit his job in PA to care for his elderly parents in Santa Cruz, where he then researched and facilitated grants in his spare time for the beginning of the Pacific Coast Trail, which currently runs from below Santa Cruz to the Hills of Oakland. Eventually this big chunk of Coastal Trail will be added to the Coastal Monument in Point Arena, as more coastal property is purchased by government agencies and added to the protected areas of the Pacific Coast Trail between Point Arena and Santa Cruz.
Is there any valid reason why Point Arena should just disincorporate.
I think actually the Case of Point Arena exposes a serious fact: our FBI must be seriously understaffed.
Their budget, for one, is on-line if you want to look at it. About the only way they’re going to make it is if they quit paying for the COPS program for $100,000/year and hire a constable with housing for $30,000, since the only thing we got in town was a tasing death for the City’s money in the last fiscal year.
There’s no we to it as far as Point Arena and you go. You don’t live here. You just milk the town. Well meaning folks run the town and you selling your house is amply a loss of your residence here. Oh you once paid taxes? Oh the town got a piece of the sale of your house? Well what you got was a trip to Thailand and no mor house. I’m sorry for you that you made some bad financial decisions but you no longer live here. Why don’t you try digging up the dirt on Anderson Valley as you reside there,last known address with Bruce.,who, I suppose, couldn’t resist the incendiary nature of your writing. It s good he is reminded how close he gets to being on the wrong end of a successful lawsuit whenever he publishes your ill considered pieces.
Valerie barber talking about herself again. Welfare fraud daughter of wealthy parents, her father a patent attorney for a major oil company. Read AVA article, “Wealth’s Daughter”.
Val is the one who doesnt live in the city limits… Never has! Full of projecting her own bullshit onto others.
A close personal friend of Szantos, Valerie led the Szantos charge, supporting trashy creek shitters, because she’s just as environmentally oblivious.
If Ms. Keipps melange of truth and falsity were all true then you would have a point Mr. Updegraff.
Thanks for your article Debra. Is there some sort of inverse relationship between the size of a city’s population and the wackiness of it’s internal politics? We don’t live there, but are strongly considering a move. Your article had me in stitches.
My own educated guess is that the long term resistance to modest expansion of affordable housing and necessary upgrades to the sewer and water infrastructures (main pipes and laterals) has largely been based on back to landers of the old generation resistant to their perceived “enemy” Bill Hay who owns the eastern lands of Point Arena where the affordable housing development would most likely occur. (He had a proposal for 10 fourplexes on a great site 0.6 mile up Eureka Hill Rd from Main Street.) These folks believe that any Hay based project would bring in more Republican voters.
I take it that the affordable housing project across the street from City Hall and by the Cal Fire site is not a “GO” anymore?
The affordable housing project across from City Hall is located in a kind of swampy area just behind “Lake” Street. It’s stalled in the water, so to speak. And with four mayors in as many years, continuity gets interrupted…
Wow. Did you know that a long time ago project was nixed there due to the swampy conditions? Alice Devens told me that when this project was first on the table. I’m surprised this past established bit of knowledge wasn’t known by those who needed to know.
Again, when continuity interrupted, issues are forgotten. No new members of city council ever ask previous council members about history of decisions. Take muni code, for example, …went missing w advent of Heatherstone-Szantos on council.
You have a point Mike. I don’t disagree with anything you say. The Point Arena City Council is a different group and we need to see what they come up with before we make judgements based on past dynamics. From past city council members. By the way Bill and Karen Hay were our parade marshalls this year and I personally welcome this new positive relationship between our town and Mr. Hay.
Awesome to hear Val. I saw the pictures of them in the parade.
As they say in Point Arena and surrounds… “Don’t buy IN Point Arena!”
Maybe YOU said this Debra but I have never heard anyone else say it.
Thats cuz u’ve NEVER lived in City limits under muni-code,Valerie-Valeraw!!
Yes her stuff is funny. Many have been taken in by that humor and lived to regret it. I know my town well. It is, at his time being run by intelligent and well intentioned people.who are in the process of making improvements for everyone in town. There’s also a lot of love on this town and an amazing understanding of one for another. That is why almost to a person we don”t appreciate Debra’s meanness.
Yah, when not an uninformed, dumbed-down hate-monger named Valerie Barber,
Funny as she is she’s describes a town that exists only in her imagination.
Yah, the Grand Jury, too?!?
I am surprised that you continue to publish mean spirited articles by Ms. Keipp, a woman who has become persona non grata in Point Arena. No longer a resident here she seems to relish spending all her time slandering local residents. I am quite sure, Bruce that you would not allow such treatment of your neighbors in Anderson Valley. You are edging closer to a lawsuit yourself if you keep publishing such articles. At an earlier time you were hiking on the lost coast when she wrote a slanderous article. Will you have to be “away” this time too? I await your reply as to why you continue to publish slanderous articles about Point Arena. Funny though they may be they are far from accurate. Ms. Keipp seems to periodically invade our town to gather information from drunks in bars, and vulnerable people, that she characterizes as her friends. In fact she has burned her bridges here and is unwanted by most if not all Point Arenans. I for one am sick of her behavior and will not purchase the AVA until you cease publishing her hit pieces.
That would be Ms. Val, whom I helped get donations for after her son died. Go Val! Gum the hell out of me! Bold words, but lacking, for one whose never lived inside Point Arena, improved its homeownership by 13+% with the sale of one home, served on council, volunteered in the school district and local fund-raising for the library, and helped write the muni-code that Ms. H-S ignores in her roll at illegal seat on Council. I’m sure your break in readership is going to sink us! God forbid YOU should be ill-informed. A close personal friend of Ms. H-S, it could be Val who suggested that the Councilperson to build a big throne for a shitter and haul their poo out when it’s full – while living on the creek, which is their current mode of sewer disposal. Too bad, I gotta lot of good responses from this piece, and others living on the creek paying THEIR sewer bills!! Still have that big 100 yard pile of trash at your house?
Right… Is that why Szantos lost her unconstitutional court case against me trying to take away my right to freedom of press!?!? What a dork!
Yah, AVA is gonna go broke w out u!!!! Remember when u told the owner of cove coffee u’d not go in there any more if I was allowed there? And owner said,” OK.”? They were so pleased to be done w your ridiculous self. But then, you returned where u werent wanted. Self exile plundered?
In Point Arena you don’t lose your Council seat, you just lose your turn…
Silly ubiquitous quote often attributed to ms. Keipp herself.
I just got this article sent to me on-line. Very funny!
Mostly, I like the history supporting this article. She’s a good writer! Keep at it!
It also made me laugh – sometimes irony gets it across best when people are too dense to see the error of their ways and are doomed to repeat history because they don’t know what happened before they arrived (and most often think they’re the center of their own universe!).
Water Quality laws didn’t just happen yesterday, although “Val” and the politician (obviously gal-pals) seem to remain in the dark (ages). Funny how crazy people can act when they try and turn the tables around to make you the bad guy when you’re following the laws you spent hours defining and they most certainly are not. Sounds like the voters are going to have to sue HER to get her to move!
Can Heatherstone come up with a sewer bill? No? End of story!
Drove over from Annapolis a few days ago and went by the spot in question on Hwy 1. Looks like their cars are still there as they still have smoke coming out the chimney. Are fines going to be levied from whatever agency issued the 14-day notice for each day after 14 they refuse to vacate? THAT gets expensive. If the previous owner could not afford to rebuild there, I doubt these newbies can, either.
I heard Debra Heatherstone in the Coop about a month ago telling folks that they were given the 14-day notice and she seemed pretty resigned to it, saying that would make her and her partner start work on rebuilding the houses, finally. Rebuilding doesn’t sound real. Do you know how much that would cost with California Coastal Commission? Got her head in the clouds, or, up her
Yah, Point Arena, as the masses encroach. Changes.
So Jona,(Pseudonym), unlike me you have a false name. I stand by what I say. Yes there is some adulterated history in Debra’s humorous articles. None of which has anything to do with Deb Heatherstone . For the record I am proud to have Deb Heatherstone as one of my most respected friends. Apparently you take as gospel truth this ridiculoius idea that Deb and her husband shIt in Point Arena Creek, which they absolutely do not . Ability to mix lies with truth in a humorous manner is always entertaining.. I think much of Debra’s motivations for hurting Deb come from the fact that she was living illegally on the same creek befor some former city council persons forced her out. Oh and then there was the part where Debra wanted to pasture her horses on the steep hill owned by Tony Gassoin which is above and adjacent to Deb and her husbands place.. The place while grassy was too steep for Debra’s horses,(which she continues to attempt to keep without owning land for them), is absolutely not appropriate for grazing large animals. Hillside erosion is a problem there and Deb Heatherstone objected because erosion would be the result and the mudslides would have inundated her land,(And the creek Ms. Keipp pretends to be so concerned about). So Deb Heatherstone defends the same creek and this is what makes her Keipps latest target? Don’t know who you are Jona. I suppose you are her guy pal or wish you were. Best wishes to you. You will need all our best wishes.
Respected? Didnt she get fired from Co-Op board, too?
Who wants a creek shitter managing your food!!!???
Your new alias Debra? And fallse place of residence? Your style f writing outs you. No actual supporters. Got to make one up.
Clearly Jona is DK. “I drove over from Annapolis…” Haha!!! What a nut! No one from Annapolis gives a hoot about this dumb shit, just like no one transcribes conversations overheard in the coop UNLESS YOU’RE DEBRA KEIPP. One of these days, you’re going to attack the wrong person who is going to take YOU to court as you’ve done to countless other undeserving community members. Perhaps then, we’ll get you committed for the psychiatric treatment that you so desperately need. Attention Coop, Sign of the Whale, Cove Coffee, etc….DK uses your business to obtain inaccurate information and create further divisions within this community. I suggest you exercise your “right to refuse service” to DK. The sooner she is completely alienated, the sooner we can all live in peace.
Valerie overheard complaining to anyone who’d listen, as usual. Complaining of no money while her mum throws more money at her. Never had a job in her adult years.
See what i mean? Now Valerie tries to do what she blames others for doing… Hold up a mirror, Valeraw! Now talk into it!!!!
Regarding the overall critiques of the reporting here by DK, and in past articles, that would be great to dig a little deeper into. Obviously everyone in Point Arena is attuned to and aware enough of DK to filter out the personal characteristics of PA’s AVA correspondent and take into account the impact that has on the picture presented. Readers beyond the Point Arena milieu do not have that advantage. But, on the other hand, it should be clear enough to anyone that her starkly presented personal characteristics, affecting the style of reporting, should likewise be enough for anyone to separate the wheat from the chaff. So….maybe what she can be called out on is with what she presents is “accurate”. I guess we may perhaps throw “fairness” out the window here insofar as the reporting on certain personalities she dislikes.
Personally, I think she airs too much personal laundry. But, I don’t think she deliberately falsifies. But, sometimes things may be imprecise and made partially inaccurate because of her angry presentation. Of course her presentations are often incredibly funny and informative, especially the flashbacks to the past.
Is there any reason why someone else can’t just step up to write dispatches from Point Arena also, in addition to DK?
For Cyrus: Point Arena is okay. You can start your morning at the Coop, with great spacious sitting, and sip coffee, read the paper and chat with friends. Then you can walk up the block, same side of the road, and stop in at Fanny’s Cup and Saucer and have a great selection of fresh baked goods (and breakfast and lunch stuff ); later in the morning you can get a super great wi fi connection at the library just a door or two up from Fanny Cup and Saucer. Across the street, you can get your current gardening stuff, shop for antiques and used furniture. Also, near the library and Fanny’s, a lot of music, events, debate watch parties, and wine and food, can be had at the 215 Club. Across the street, regular new releases of movies and special movies and concerts and parties at the Point Arena theater. Down the street, Hoolis the bartender has become quite the cocktail artist at the Sign of the Whale. There’s a credit union, a post office, Pirates Cove restaurant at the north end of town, and I haven’t even started with what’s there at the Arena Cove!!!!!
Problems flare up, usually the very south end of town. Port St Mill St. A few homeless in the park beyond the Outback Garden Supply place.
Truth is, most of the long time cast members in the Point Arena Story are getting old and addled and likely really don’t give a shit about past stuff all that much anymore. (They’ve arrived perhaps at what I call The Great Transcendental I Don’T Give A Shit Condition, where Shit still arises but you just let it pass through those hopefully soon upgraded sewer laterals and mains in Point Arena.)
I forgot. There’s not only a very liberal supply of sativa (for deep penetrating clarity and insight) or indica (for deep calm abiding), there’s also a very active and popular Yoga center across the street from the elementary school and a Catholic and also a Methodist church. In case you don’t like the plant medicine. That Yoga Center is out of the Yogananda lineage and so I think that means that have some powerful energy yoga practices (the spinal line, nerve currents and higher brain centers affected).
Ms. Keipp spends her life penning personal attacks on people who are about as deserving of her ire as we are of Ms. Keipp’s continued, insane diatribes. Val is right! Ms. Keipp is persona non grata in this community, and has been for years. Her writing isn’t funny or smart, or accurate. It’s mean-spirited and more importantly, functions as an outlet for serious mental health issues. You mistake funny for crazy…only an insane person would focus her energies to such malicious ends time and time again. It isn’t sane to pen pages and pages of meandering personal attacks on community members, such as the last time we all lived through this in the AVA with her vitriol directed towards another former neighbor and family in PA. It’s equally insane and shameful to publish such garbage. To say the AVA lacks journalistic integrity would be a severe understatement. Most people in PA see Ms. Keipp for what she is – a sad, lonely, pathetic woman who feeds off of stirring up shit in a community in which she doesn’t even reside – and the AVA is all too happy to exploit her mental instability. It’s like a tick feeding off a succubus.
By the way, that story about Cove Coffee owner calling out a Brown Act violation is total bullshit. Ask him. It’s just another manufactured story for the sake of furthering Ms. Keipp’s unfounded attacks. Perhaps Ms. Keipp should stick to fiction…focus her energies on writing a book, since so many of you find her writing to be so humorous.
A few times a year, like a herpes sore, DK comes back to PA. She talks to drunks at The Whale, then goes on another attack of people to which she has no real connection. Her grasp on reality is tenuous, at best. She has no control over her OCD attachment to her drummed up “controversy” du jour. She needs to get a life, and focus this manic energy towards longterm work with a qualified psychiatrist. Somewhere in there is a decent person, I guess. What we read in the AVA is really taking advantage of Ms. Keipp’s mental health issues for the sake of having a laugh at dumb ol’ point arena. We’ve all learned to not speak to her, or acknowledge her when she’s in town because she’s a dangerous and conniving person. Perhaps it’s time to do what the good people of Elk did when Deb infiltrated their town…two folks on either end of town obtain restraining orders against Ms. Keipp, disallowing her to continue to troll our community. I’m guessing Deb Heatherstone would be willing to get one for the south side…
Sometimes ya gotta be cruel to be kind, as one Point Arena reader called this article, like a grand-parent to a high schooler.
I’m not apologizing for anything. And, I’m keeping my opinion, too. But not to myself. Point Arena is a place I moved to in ’93 and have loved it ever since. Any disappointment with Point Arena is in it’s dumbed down political crew, which extends far beyond City Council.
My first year here it rained 44 days straight ending with a storm that blew a hole in the side of the theater, closing it for almost five long years, while a lot of folks on both sides of many controversial issues worked together to rebuild it. I bent and tied rebar under the snack bar area’s floor and helped with the beam under the balcony. I had enough free tickets from working to last about a year of movies. I love Point Arena and always will. The theater is symbolic of one of the community victories of Point Arena during the ’90’s. Point Arena had good spirit then and most of the storefronts were filled to capacity at the point of re-opening the theater – complete also with a new Art Center because of the building project. The City Loan fund flourished during that time, too. Look at it now. The proof is in the pudding.
All the other fascist bullshit is good to fall by the wayside, cuz this town now flounders, and if you aren’t noticing, it is you who are out of touch. No amount of name calling and trying to silence the writer with threats, is going to change that. The City budget is online. Look at it. Troll, if you like, but without i.d.ing yourself, look in your own mirror, at home before trying to morph me into your unfitting image – … errrr aaaaa… vision, out of your own self-hatred, or whatever person you wish to make of me.
For some reason your words don’t land as hard as intended compared to the enjoyment from the support I get from writing from people I consider to be of sound mind and such. Does that sound like self-loathing?
The history in the article about Point Arena; previous muni-codes and not being able to find applicable 14 in the current muni-codes, absolutely historically true. In fact, can’t think of any of it that isn’t. A coupla former councilpersons helped me write parts of it, based on their experiences, and yes, we discussed it at the WHALE BAR! Yahoooo!!!!!!
Does the Councilwoman receive a sewer bill? No.
Easy for you to paint with a wide brush making broad sweeping statements, I suppose without getting sued… Oh yah, you 4got “litigious”!!! A word often used, also… although I turned down the $5,000 court award when landlord Bruin of Mill Street had his crank house on Mill Street, determined a nuisance after a home invasion. Just wanted him to “clean it up” instead of taking the money in the judgment.
I’ll never forget that as soon as Judge Lehan ruled in my favor, Mill Street neighbors, Mayor Dahlhoff and her husband sat alone in court to scream out of order in the court room, “Debra Keipp needs to be railroaded and driven out of town!!”. An interesting choice of words to use in a court of law, the judge had to ask who it was yelling about rail roadings and other illegal means… I said, “That would be the Mayor and her husband…” It was Judge Lehan. I shoulda had a camera.
Ya can’t make up this stuff. It just falls right out of people’s mouths like frogs and toads. And, poor Elk, with its fierce hidden heroine problem.
In Point Arena the pot growers have gotten so used to glossing over the horrific in an effort not to attract attention; like the tasing death on Mill street and a home invasion, too; as habit from all the other subterfuge they endure – (we’ve endured – cuz I used to participate in growing, of course – almost everyone has!)-in such an industry – deemed illegal by the gvmnt. An unseen revolt has to occur and does.
A shoemaker’s kid can look at his shoes and say, “My dad made them.” Some pride in that which can be voiced.
Pot growers on the other hand…
It leads to a lot of unsaid this and unspoken that, which disavows endowment in strange ways generationally.
Cultural observations, all…
Yah, I’m stayin’ around for the duration of free speech, so quit your whine-in. There’s lots to write about here and throughout Mendocino County.
But, again, unless you’ve been present when words were said, government regs were written, owning and paying taxes on land and property in town, your comments are ill-informed and not invested, themselves in any experiential truth from which I speak.
Fact is; I got nothin’ to steal – nothin’ to take. That makes me dangerous? A lot of folks who are on the inside of our local pot industry – those who try to live their lives in healthier ways – “liked” this article enuf to send it on in a few other forums.
Most here live in fear of being busted by the Feds and having everything they own sifted and much of it taken. Even so, they too tire of the BS in PA, but say nothing in order not to attract attention to their illegal field of income. So, maybe you are part of the problem? I guess, maybe a few guilty parties felt threatened enuf to write in livid response? Is that effective writing?
It speaks a lot to more than just a gal-pal support session taking up space like this. I mock for good reason. The prob is universal – not just in small towns. The law of government is being broken in anti-trusts by elected officials across the nation from the Feds to City Gubment, but then upheld in insane ways against every man, and woman, and child, at the convenience of government’s supposed benefit, and it’s also called “justice”.
By the way, in the above article I forgot to include Jane Jarlsburg, the elected Treasurer and city secty, was once elected to City Council, but then unfortunately had to step down from Council, when she moved out of the City limits – a (now questionable) requirement of election. Why did she have to do that when Koogle just gotta lie on his election application, and assume his Council seat unlike MS. Jarlsburg?
Cheers!
You mention self-loathing a lot. That’s called projection. You often misrepresent your various court cases and the rulings in said cases. How many times have you taken people to court? That might have something to do with why folks think you’re litigious. I love how you gloss over your banishment from Elk by suggesting that your troubles there were linked to the underground heroine scene! You’ve never met a town that you like, or who likes you. It’s always someone else’s problem, right? You’re never the cause of your own misery? It’s not a whine in, it’s a response to your bullshit. It’s not a gal pal response – I only peripherally know Val or Deb. Stop being so pious and accept that you too are or were a part of the pot economy in PA and that you’ve practiced acupuncture for years without certification. Those are minor notes compared to the pain and turmoil that you’ve inflicted on many of your neighbors and community members.
Seriously, the endless list of people you’ve gone after through the years….too many to name. Who else carries around so much vitriol for so many people? You should be ashamed of yourself your actions, and your words, but you’re too narcissistic to see the err in your thinking. Surely, you understand that if you bully people, they will respond? You elicit livid responses because you behave abhorrently. Your words are hateful and hurtful and you act surprised (and offended, I can tell) by a person’s response after decades of this shit?! Accept responsibility for your tiresome and longstanding behavior. We are sick of it. If you’re gonna stir the pot, expect reactions. You gotta be cruel, like a grand-parent to a high schooler, or a community to a sociopath.
We who actually live in PA should assume that when we see DK in our community, she is here to gather misinformation that will be shat out in the form of another PA-smearing article in the AVA. Act accordingly.
Valerie must not have been able to spend her food stamps in Paris! Now she’s back. Just in time to help move the Council woman out of her inhabitable hovel.
See Grand Jury report. Heatherstone plead guilty. Resigned. Now PA City Council is down to three members, and not enuf for a quorum last week, so no meeting. Waiting for Mayor to resign – will have another special election in November.
Amazing how folks want to defend others’ ineptitude and lying, shitting in the creek. Symbiosis?
Hey, Val. Did you get a building permit for your expansion? Still getting welfare/food stamps after that big inheritance rolled in from your uncle?
What? Mention fraud and Valeraw shuts up????!!!!