AVA COURT REPORTER BRUCE McEWEN and I had lunch Thursday at the attractive and affordable vegetarian restaurant at the City of 10,000 Buddhas in Talmage, formerly the State Hospital at Talmage. As we toured the sprawling campus of nearly 500 acres we were struck — again — at how big a waste it was for the state to close this still serviceable and beautiful facility and what a travesty of short sightedness for Mendocino County to turn down ownership of the property in 1972.
MY UNCLE and former County Supervisor Joe Scaramella told me years ago that he thought the reason Mendocino declined ownership of the Hospital grounds after then-Governor Ronald Reagan’s short-notice closure announcement was that the then-Board of Supervisors thought that the cost of “maintenance and upkeep” was too high.
WE COULDN’T FIND any reference to that particular reason in the skimpy newspaper archives of the time. We did find a reference to 1972 being a drought year and speculation that Mendo didn’t think there was enough water to keep the place open. The Russian River Flood Control District apparently even voted to make an emergency allocation for the Hospital to keep it from closing. (But we sure hope that was not the reason to sell it off.)
WE FOUND references to several attempts to prevent the closure including a failed attempted at a class action suit brought by some Ukiah-area used car dealers and another by the California State Employees Association.
THERE WAS ALSO a story that said it would cost an estimated $600,000 a year to keep the place open at the County level with a minimal staff of up to 200 under a plan proposed by then-Ukiah area Supervisor Ernie Banker. Banker suggested converting the Hospital to a Mental Health staff training and research facility.
BUT MENDO didn’t have $600k sitting around and the State wasn’t offering any money. The state terms (under Reagan) were closure and conversion to “community based mental health” programs which came with separate — and substantially smaller —funding.
WE COULDN'T find any reference to simply holding on to the property until a use could be found for it. It’s possible that Uncle Joe was right in that context because simply closing the place and sitting on the property for a few years would have cost some minimal level of maintenance and upkeep which the County shortsightedly may have wanted to avoid spending.
THE COUNTY ended up selling the property to a developer who did nothing for two years after which the Buddhists bought it in 1974 for a reported bargain basement price of $240k (about $1.2 million in today’s dollars.)
ACCORDING to the on-line inflation calculator, $600k in 1972 dollars is about $3.5 million in today’s dollars — which looks pretty small compared to over $20-mil Mendo now pays for only a small fraction of the services provided at the old Talmage State Hospital for as many as 3,200 wards (the high was reached in the 1950s).
THE TALMAGE STATE mental hospital had grown since its founding in 1887 to include separate facilities for drunks, crazy people, retarded adults and children, and the criminally insane. They were also separated by gender.
CONSIDERING THE 60-BED homeless barn-shelter that Ukiah now operates for a few months of the winter and comparing it with the 3200 inmate capacity of the dorm rooms at the old Talmage hospital we see how far civic pride and obligation have declined.
TO THE CASUAL EYE, it appears that the Buddhists are only maintaining about half of the facility in any level of repair, the rest of the graceful old mission style buildings seem essentially abandoned, including the dozens and dozens of dormitory rooms. And it’s not likely the Buddhists will be offering the abandoned parts of the old hospital facility to Ortner any time soon.
— Mark Scaramella
KATHY SHEARN LOOKS BACK: "Enjoyed the items about the Buddhist grounds. When I first arrived in Ukiah from the Bronx, via Berkeley, my then-husband and I lived on Mid Mountain in Potter Valley, on the land of old friends of the hubby. While building our own Class K abode, we shared the 40 acres with Bikshu Eric, a monk from San Francisco sent north to find a new home for the Monastery. Eventually, after other real estate was considered unacceptable, property for sale on Mid Mountain was rejected due to bad feng shui — the old mental health grounds was selected. I knew nothing about California, Ronald Reagan, or anything else really, back then, concentrating mostly on having a good time and trying to scrape up enough money for the next meal. The hub and I met Susan Bell, and our first (unpaid) job was painting an osprey on the facade of an old bar on Perkins street—the first home of the Ukiah Community Center. There seemed to be a lot of odd folks wandering around, stopping to talk and give me recipes for spoon bread; folks, I learned a little later, who had been "released" from the Talmage mental health facility. The osprey bit the dust when the old bar came down, replaced by Rainbow Ag and the BBQ joint. I managed to survive doing bits of artwork, washing dishes at The Corner Store, living rent free on a mountain… the good old days. Said Buddhist Bikshu accused me of visiting him in his dreams, trying to seduce him. This was after he told me that he and I were married in several different life times. He riled Michael up to the point that Michael drove our old fifty-something chevy truck — Rackety Boom — off the road on a hairpin turn!!!!"
THE ESSENTIAL Tommy Wayne Kramer took up one of our ongoing beefs in his column last Sunday. "I’ve always been willing to bet that no more than a tiny fraction of county residents use the Mendocino Transit Authority. Now there’s a study that proves it. The huge buses lurch and roar around town and countryside, going from nowhere to someplace else, full of empty seats and a driver...." He goes on in hilarious but irrefutable detail. Look it up at the Journal's website. Great stuff.
THE BROADBAND ALLIANCE has released a survey demonstrating what happened early last September when much of Mendocino County was cyber-severed. Telephone and internet service disappeared when AT&T's trunk line was cut near Hopland. Police speculated the vandalism was committed by tweekers looking for copper wire. There is no copper wire in the line.
THE ALLIANCE has now released the responses to its 33-question survey that shows 96 percent of respondents lost all forms of communication, whether from cell phones or Internet and 911 emergency calls. 97 percent of 364 businesses, organizations and governmental agencies also reported being affected. Businesses were unable to use credit card devices, forcing them to close for the day. The Alliance reports that almost $119,000 was lost by businesses.
PS. SORRY COVELO! The Broadband alliance report says that Covelo is the only zipcode in the County where more than half the area is under- or un-served with decent broadband service.
THERE GOES THE STATE OF JEFFERSON. The Plumas County Board of Supervisors has voted unanimously to rescind a ballot measure supposed to go to voters to join the secessionist State of Jefferson. This comes a month after the Lake County Board of Supervisors also voted to rescind an advisory vote set for the November ballot on the state of Jefferson. Trinity, Sierra, Alpine and Shasta counties have said no to a split with the state.
JONAH RASKIN'S wonderful capsule biography of Jack London nearly got him assaulted last week. Chris Smith, the Press Democrat's venerable columnist, described what happened:
"It was an older crowd that gathered in Sonoma last Saturday for a banquet marking the 140th anniversary of the birth of Jack London. As Jonah Raskin, the prolifically published SSU prof emeritus, and a friend approached their table at Ramekins Culinary School & Inn, a white-haired fellow assigned to a seat at the same table rushed at Raskin, seemingly enraged.
"He called Raskin, who’s 74, a communist and said he had no business sitting at his table.
"Both Raskin and his friend, Santa Cruz historian and journalist Geoffrey Dunn, were taken aback. ‘At first it was so over the top,’ said Dunn, ‘I thought it was a joke.’
"It became clear to Raskin and Dunn, and probably to all within earshot at the Jack London Foundation dinner party, that the guy was truly outraged at Raskin, some of whose writings challenge orthodox thinking about London’s life and legacy.
Dunn, 60, warned the man to back off or be knocked down because he feared Raskin might be struck. The fellow said he was sorry and sat down.
"Raskin notes that a theme of the evening was how to attract younger people to Jack London. He suggests that such a show of intolerance at a dinner celebrating the author won’t help. And both he and Dunn found it bizarre for someone to be cursed as a communist at a celebration of one of the country’s most renowned socialists.”
A MEMBER OF THE LONDON FOUNDATION who doesn't know the difference between a socialist and a communist ought to have his membership rescinded.
THE AVA highly recommends Raskin's apparently inflammatory new booklet called “"Mysteries of Jack London: Socialist, White Supremacist, Anti-Semite and Lover of Beauty.” Raskin's essay is wrapped in a striking color portrait of London with the same artist, Don Ponte, depicting a turn of the century pastoral that recalls what London's beloved Sonoma would have looked like.
RASKIN RIGHTLY OBSERVES, “This year, 2016, is the 100th anniversary of London's death in 1916. Most of the stories that are coming out about him don't say that he was a socialist and a white supremacist who could get on his soapbox and fulminate against Indians, blacks, Chinese, Japanese and Jews. I have presented nearly all of the buried truths about dear old Jack.”
THIS LITTLE JEWEL of a booklet, a for sure one-of-a-kinder, is available at the truly bargain price of $5, check or money order, from Jonah Raskin, PO Box 22, Graton, Ca 95444.
MIKE JANI HAS STEPPED DOWN as the President and Chief Forester of HRC/MRC, and John Anderson will be his replacement. Jani says he's staying with the company in an advisory role, providing input, but he will no longer be involved in the decision-making. Too bad. We always found Jani helpful and forthcoming.
JUST IN from the County's Animal Shelter: Long-time Shelter boss Sage Mountainfire has been placed on administrative leave. The Shelter has always had a healthy share of critics who lately seem to have reached critical mass. A Sonoma County animal group wants to assume responsibility for the Shelter. If that happens, the Shelter would be the second County function to be raffled off to an outside entity, Mental Health being the first.
FROM last week’s Chron sports page re the hiring of the new 49er's coach: "Kelly has a dog, a golden retriever named Henry. The 49ers' previous head coach was a cat guy. Sorry cat people, but that should have been a red flag."
A MENDOCINO READER COMPLAINS: "The anvils are quiet at the Mendocino Art Center. Where the sound of tink-tink-tink of hammers hitting metal could be heard faintly in the town on Sundays and Tuesday nights the blacksmithing open studio has been closed. These men and women showed up with cash in their hands to support an art center facility every week and they have been told to go away, Why would you turn paying customers away? I’m sure the MAC has a litany of excuses on why it needed to happen but the ironmongers are artists too."
PD HEADLINE OF THE WEEK: “Five Songs Sure To Make You Happy.”
ANY WITNESSES? A young man was walking on Highway near Mendocino's Surfwood subdivision about noon Monday (January 18th) when a passing car seems to have deliberately swerved to hit him. The pedestrian says he was walking on the dirt beyond the paved edge of the highway when he was struck. He said the driver of the car did pull off a hundred yards or so up the road to check his vehicle for damage before driving off. His victim was not hospitalized but is in some pain. There were many drivers in both lanes at that time who witnessed the accident, but apparently nobody turned in a report to CHP. Please call the CHP or your local police station if you have any information.
YOUNG MEN do a lot of stupid stuff when they're young men. An unformed judgment is the nature of the beast, most of the beasts anyway. It's taken the courts way too long to recognize this basic fact about young men. A kid can commit a horrible crime he will look back and shudder at when he's 30.
IT'S A GOOD THING, therefore, that a state appeals court has ruled that a judge must consider how a kid, when he's no longer a kid, has done in prison. Has he repented? Has he got with the program? Or has he continued to romanticize himself as some kind of outlaw, a tough guy?
ACCORDING to the recent ruling, people sentenced to life-without for murders they committed before age 18 are entitled to new sentencing hearings.
THE NEW MERCY ought also to apply to people like Fort Bragg's Tai Abreu. He got life without because his stunningly incompetent attorney, Mendocino County Public Defender Linda Thompson, refused to plea bargain for a reduced sentence. The murder Abreu was in on as one of the three young Fort Bragg men who committed it got him life without as he'd just turned 20. His two accomplices both pled out and got about twenty years each, depending on how they do in prison, and from what I hear all three have been model inmates. The three of them were just out of high school.
ABREU was so egregiously misrepresented by Public Defender Thompson that everyone in the County Courthouse, including the cops, was angered by Thompson's deluded performance. The kid had no defense. He was guilty, and should have pled out but Thompson took him to a jury! Abreu was in and out of court in about a day and a half and was soon sentenced to life without. Thompson called no witnesses on his behalf and spent much of her time telling the jury what a bad guy he was and what a terrible thing he'd done. Abreu wasn't (and isn't) a bad guy but he did a bad thing, the worst thing, actually, when he was still a teenager. On his own, Abreu never would have been party to murder. But you know what they say about young men — more than two makes one idiot.
IN FACT, none of the three had criminal records. They were young, smoking a lot of dope, wandering aimlessly up and down the Coast, and they killed a gay guy they'd lured up to Fort Bragg for the purpose of robbing him. We're not talking master criminals here.
IN ABREU'S CASE, he ought to be able to get in front of a judge with an appeal based simply on Thompson's utter lack of reality as it applied to the kid, and there ought to be some remedy for the thousands of men and women locked up for life for crimes they committed before they had any idea what they were doing.
IN A MESSAGE to local friends, Jim Martin, formerly of Fort Bragg, writing from Alaska says, "I have to go over to Sarah’s porch to see Russia, but we’re close! I’m in Palmer, AK. Gotta go, there’s a gun show in Wasilla today, and I’m shopping for a Mossberg Mariners shotgun. The Gun Show? It’s at Wasilla High School. Gotta love Alaska!"
SHERIFF TOM ALLMAN'S mental health plan is not only doable, it's the best idea out there. Of course it's the only idea out there, but it's still a good idea and just may be on the November, 2016 ballot.
ALLMAN aims to find out if Mendocino County will approve a five-year half-cent sales tax increase that would raise roughly $22 million for a new, in-county mental health-specific facility where our chronic mental health patients and, hopefully, our large population of drop-fall drunks, would be housed and treated.
IN LIEU of a place other than the County Jail to house dangerously deranged people, the County now pays upwards of $800 a day for privately owned lock-up psychiatric beds in Yuba City or other distant venues. Drunks? They die in the street. They get no treatment at all other than three or four overnights a month in the County Jail.
THE COUNTY'S annual mental health budget is about $20 million. For that kind of money our chronics, fifty of them, (and another fifty drunks), could be housed at the Fairmont Hotel with bedside psychiatrists. As is, they all go to the County Jail, which is not designed for the mentally ill.
ALLMAN WOULD LIKE TO SEE that $20 mil spent on something effective right here at home because what we're presently doing is wholly ineffective, as Allman himself knows — his County Jail now functions as default psych ward and overnight sobriety room. To accomplish a real psych center and, hopefully, rehab berths for drunks, Allman's tax proposal would erect a building to house a brand new program. He has mentioned the hospital area of Ukiah as a possible site.
THE OLD HOSPITAL in Willits has also been suggested as a possible site for a mental health facility, which would spare millions in new construction costs.
THE SHERIFF has a great idea here, but to bring it off it's going to be necessary to establish it independently of the existing mental health morass of by-the-minute charging practices, exorbitant administrative costs, gross incompetence, and plain old fashioned scamming.
“WITH A $20 million mental health budget, we deserve to be in the driver’s seat,” Allman told Adam Randall of the Ukiah Daily Journal. “Right now, Mendocino County government can’t figure out how to treat mentally ill people. We’re really lacking in mental health crisis services.”
ALSO FROM THE JOURNAL, Allman "estimated that in 2015, deputies spent 1,000 hours on emergency mental health calls that technically weren’t related to a crime, which in retrospect, is 1,000 hours that weren’t spent toward county communities, and less time, for example, in strategizing with other law enforcement agencies in combating domestic violence, or teaming more with local schools, he said."
“At 2am when someone calls and says that someone is about to do something stupid, the best thing we can do is send somebody with a gun and badge,” Allman said.
SUPERVISOR DAN GJERDE, spoke to the Fort Bragg Advocate-News last week to clarify his views about the Mental Health fiasco (among several other topics). Gjerde repeated his complaints about Ortner’s high admin rates, and added that the County staff had “assured” him that the contract he voted to approve would be much more specific about the mental health services to be provided “in a subsequent contract amendment.” There were no amendments, and the Supes still have no idea how much Ortner is charging for alleged services.
WHICH makes one wonder: 1. Why not? And 2. Why would anyone — especially any sitting supervisor — believe anything those particular staff members ever said again regarding the subject of Mental Health if they’re willing to lie about something like that.
IN SPITE OF THIS GROSS STAFF FAILURE (also among many others), Gjerde continues to believe, “There will be reforms in the contracts and I think people can look ahead, as the county gets those contracts more in order, then the county will be in a better position to put it back out to bid again.”
GJERDE added that “there’s also always the option of bringing it back in-house, but I don’t think there are anywhere near three votes to bring it in-house. Management staff is very resistant to talking about bringing it back in-house (because of cost and more the risk of cost over-runs from year to year, is their biggest concern.”
GJERDE SHOULD INSIST that if they really put the contract out to bid (which is getting more doubtful by the day) that the County be required to prepare a bid for an “in-house option.” This would keep the bidders a bit more honest and force the County to prepare a bid package that is specific enough that a reasonable in-house option bid can be prepared and correctly costed out for comparison to the private bidders. The bid package itself should go out for public review before it’s sent out for bid, too.
DEMANDING AN IN-HOUSE OPTION would also end run the supposed “management resistance … because of the cost.” And Gjerde’s and/or staff’s worries about over-runs could be addressed fairly. (There’s no guarantee that a contractor won’t overrun either. It’s naïve if not corrupt to think otherwise.)
GJERDE also said he expects that the Kemper Report will help provide the specifics that should have been in the original Ortner contract in something called a “work plan” and some detailed and consistent reporting requirements.
IF HISTORY IS ANY GUIDE, however, management will continue to resist providing specific work standards, and will also resist any decent reporting. Reporting and tracking is something Official Mendo, especially in Social Services, is constitutionally allergic to — it would make them look bad when the work’s not done.
GJERDE’S modest expectations are reasonable but they don’t address any of the underlying management problems. Nevertheless we doubt that even Gjerde’s modest improvements will make it past CEO Carmel Angelo and Health and Human Services Director Stacey Cryer, who seem to think they can ride this lame old mare right into retirement (with their big, fund-depleting pensions) and leave their Mental Health mess to the next administration.
IF COUNTY MANAGEMENT’S “biggest concern” is cost overruns, not proper delivery of service that costs millions of taxpayer dollars, then clearly they are the root of the problem and should be replaced before any reforms are undertaken.
OAKY JOE? You out there? Oaky Joe Munson, white courtesy telephone, please. Your fans are clamoring for your 2016 calendar. We need 'em, man. Everyone needs them.
CULTURED AFFAIR: Yes we are finally re-opening! Thank you to everyone who sent good wishes (and some home remedies) to me. Also a BIG thank you to everyone who sent good thoughts to my mom, she is recovering at a rehab facility and doing much better. She smiled when I told her that everyone from Wiccans to Baptist and everyone in between were sending her good thoughts. We are happy to be opening again, we've missed all our regulars. Thanks for reading,
Laura and Art Evans
Cultured Affair Café
Albion Str. just west of Kasten,
11-4:30PM daily, 937-1430
THE CHARTER PROJECT of Mendocino County has turned in roughly 4,000 qualifying signatures to the Registrar of Voters. About 2,500 valid signatures qualify a measure for the ballot. The state constitution recognizes two types of counties – general law, which adheres to state law as performed by elected officials, and which we have now; or a charter county which gives locals more control over developments within our borders.
Former Supervisor Norman de Vall is a Charter County stalwart. I invited him to weigh in:
"Over the years I've been in eleven elections, (lost four, won seven) but never engaged in a proposition/measure.
"The Charter movement is one I researched in my first term and learned from Al Barbaro that it had been tried before and lost by one vote.
"The movement found new life with the Occupy Movement which challenged the foreclosure process. That lead to learning about Public Bank. Proponents found that to be a chartered county rather than a general law county was an easier way to go to develop a Public Bank which, I believe, is at the top of the list to accomplish.
"The campaign is a sequel to Measure H but seems to have a different organization style: It has a few serious hard working point people but is not structured as a candidate campaign would be: No manager, statistician, treasurer, office or easy access phone numbers.
"A great deal of time and effort has gone into drafting a charter (read: Constitution) for Mendocino County but whatever will be in front of the voters in November General Election will be decided by the Charter Commission.
"In sum: It's probably best to scan the web, go to the Charter website and follow us on Facebook. Charter has a list.serv site on mcn.org”
THE MENDO Superior Court's ticket amnesty program runs to March of 2017. As of New Year’s Day, if you've picked up one or another of the usual exorbitant tickets for driving without a license, driving on a suspended license or having your license put on hold for unpaid fines, you can get them lowered by applying for mercy.
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