Mendocino County Today: Saturday, July 29, 2017

• Art Show
• Ambulance Service
• AVA Mendocino
• Lake Trails
• Dead Fish
• Autumn Leaves
• Clancy Sigal
• Pot Czar
• Housing Fundraiser
• Not Meth
• Tweaker Compound
• Little Dog
• Getting Frankoviched
• Recommended Book
• Yesterday's Catch
• Transsexual Troopers
• Nursery Tours
• Gardens Art
• Marco Radio
• Self-Inflicted Disasters
• Dysfunctional Trumpshow

ANDRA NORRIS GALLERY PROUDLY PRESENTS

Mary Robertson — Long Summer Shadow
July 29 - September 16, 2017
Artist’s reception, Saturday, July 29th 6-8PM
A group exhibition featuring new “River Paintings” from Mary Robertson

 

 

California's Russian River and its beaches, floats, and figures. Yet it is the afternoon Bay Area light that is paramount within the intimate and compelling works. Her paintings, in both watercolor and oil on canvas, have an affinity with the American Realists and European Impressionists. When taking in a Robertson scene, there is a sense of time standing still while being bathed in a lazy California summer glow.

Artist Wayne Thiebaud declared, “Mary Robertson’s joyous and meditative paintings are colorful simulations of contentment and sacred play.”

Andra Norris Gallery
1107 Burlingame Ave
Burlingame, CA 94010 USA
tel: 650-235-9775
info@AndraNorrisGallery.com
www.AndraNorrisGallery.com

KEEP MENDO’S AMBULANCE SERVICES LOCAL

Sonoma County starts over

by Mark Scaramella

In 2013, the second of two expensive studies pointed out the obvious: Mendocino County’s emergency medical services were inadequately funded, uncoordinated, hard to staff and fragile.

At about that same time a huge Denmark-based medical services corporation named Verihealth showed up in Ukiah and started responding to 911 calls, creating a crazy race to emergencies to see who get to the patient first and get whatever reimbursements could be billed for.

Mendocino County soon announced that the solution to both problems was the establishment of something called an Exclusive Operating Area (EOA), contracting with one outfit, public or private, for exclusive ambulance coverage for a designated area of the County, primarily the Ukiah Valley.

Close observers saw parallels with the county’s trash hauling contract with Solid Waste of Willits and the still controversial mental health privatization contracts. In other words, the "solution" would probably depend heavily on who got the exclusive contract and what area was declared exclusive.

According to a 2013 question-and-answer collection on the County’s website, "An EOA is the only means by which the County would be able to limit ambulance operations in a given area to the entity (or entities) which best serve those communities. It is also the only legal means by which citizens, through their elected representatives, would be able to ensure that services meet their expectations. It also allows services competing for the same area the opportunity to compete through a transparent proposal process.”

But that “transparent proposal process” has been anything but transparent. In fact, nothing new has been added to the County’s EOA webpage since that initial flurry of activity in 2013.

Instead, Mendocino County turned the process over to a Sonoma County "contracted local EMS agency" named Coastal Valley EMS. Coastal Valley held meetings, County emergency services organizations and fire departments held meetings, input was taken, an authorizing ordinance was drafted and prepared, and, after several false starts, a Request for Proposals was drafted — but never released for bids.

The entire RFP drafting process was conducted in secret on grounds that doing it through a public process might give an unfair advantage to potential bidders.

Even though Mendo has unique emergency services problems, Official Mendocino County seemed satisfied to turn this important project over to the private Sonoma County agency with Mendo sort-of piggybacking on whatever Sonoma County did — even though most of Sonoma county is suburban while most of Mendo is rural.

The process has dragged out over the intervening years, as local emergency service agency personnel complained privately and became increasingly suspicious of the secrecy involved. Early on, the three ambulance services on the Mendocino Coast griped enough to get themselves excluded from any inland-based Exclusive Operating Area. But the Highway 101 corridor and Anderson Valley were left in limbo with the same fragile situation the two earlier studies had documented.

A 2013 Q&A about the Exclusive Operating Area on Mendo’s website offered this reply in answer to how an EOA would be funded: “Funding would be derived primarily from reimbursement by insurance companies, Medicare, and Medi-Cal for transporting patients.”

This answer shows that Mendo has no real understanding of how ambulance services are funded. If an ambulance operation depended on insurance reimbursements for 9-11 calls alone they’d be bankrupt in a year or have to charge a lot more than their already high costs. Medicare and Medi-Cal pay only pennies on the dollar and while private insurance companies pay more, it’s still not enough to cover the costs. In Anderson Valley — as with most rural ambulance services — if it weren’t for substantial revenue enhancements from memberships, donations, or other crossover services (such as ER supplementation during non-response times) there wouldn’t be an ambulance service, even one staffed by volunteers.

In Ukiah, Verihealth has figured out a way to cherry-pick most of the “interfacility transfers” by getting Adventist Health to turn over inter-hospital dispatch to Verihealth which then calls its own ambulances, taking away a major funding stream from Medstar the small non-profit that operated in Ukiah for years prior to Verihealth. Medstar sued, but that case is still open while Verihealth still gets that lucrative, cheap-to-provide non-emergency business.

In the intervening years since 2013 it came to light that the County needed to legally and formally enact a complicated, legalistic “enabling ordinance” before they could issue an RFP. This was also assigned to Coastal Valley EMS and was also conducted in secret. A few months ago that ordinance was finally complete.

When the status of the EOA ordinance and the RFP drafting process occasionally arose at supervisors meetings, representatives Coastal Valley EMS would grudgingly concede that the Board of Supervisors had the final authority to decide whether to authorize an Exclusive Operating Area and contract with a (probably private) service provider. But the reps from Coastal Valley made it sound like Mendo’s role was more of a rubber stamp after Coastal Valley handed them the paperwork to sign, not a partner or authority in an important decision.

Making matters even more dicey, somewhere along the way Coastal Valley decided that fire and ambulance dispatch services, currently handled through the Calfire’s Dispatch office at the top of the Willits Grade, should to be part of the bid package — a transparent attempt to privatize dispatch services, perhaps to a remote operation far from Mendocino County.

Coastal Valley presumably thought that including dispatch services in the RFP might make the package more attractive to potential bidders. But local emergency responders — including a unanimous vote of the Mendocino Fire Chiefs Association — complained, saying that the dispatch services should be dealt with separately, if at all. But if that happens, then why privatize dispatch at all? (Mendo pays Calfire several hundred thousand dollars a year for dispatch services.)

Remember, the Exclusive Operating Area idea only surfaced when Verihealth entered the picture butting in on ambulance calls, undermining the already fragile balance sheets of the inland ambulance services which were already in place.

It doesn’t take much of a conspiracist to think that the entire effort was really a way to turn the whole show over to Coastal Valley EMS and a big private ambulance company like Verihealth who as far as anyone could tell, could be orchestrating the entire secret process (which until recently included dispatch services) to turn over the most lucrative ambulance service areas to a private company (which could easily low-ball their bid to get their exclusive foot in the door) and leave the rest of the County’s small ambulance services with whatever’s left of the less profitable, low volume calls. Coastal Valley’s attempt to include dispatch services in the RFP was further indication of a tilt toward large outfit privatization because local ambulance service providers don’t have background or experience with dispatch services, and therefore couldn’t bid.

Enter Lynda Hopkins.

Lynda Hopkins is a young Stanford grad and small scale vegetable farmer in western Sonoma County who somehow beat Noreen Evans, the Democratic Party’s chosen replacement for Efren Carrillo as Sonoma County Fifth District Supervisor, in November of 2016.

Supervisor Hopkins’ Fifth District in Sonoma County is more rural than the other Sonoma County supervisorial districts and so she started hearing complaints from the rural fire departments in her district about Coastal Valley EMS and their plans to set up an Exclusive Operating Area in Sonoma County.

In June of this year Supervisor Hopkins wrote a scathing (by northcoast political standards) letter to the Sonoma County Department of Public Health finally saying in public and on the record what many emergency responders both in Mendo and Sonoma County had been grumbling about: that the entire process was being badly handled in closed rooms, that Coastal Valley was being high-handed, and that if left alone would seriously jeopardize rural fire departments and ambulance services.

In early July, Press Democrat reporter Martin Espinoza opened his account of Ms. Hopkins letter and its reaction in Sonoma County with, “Supervisor Lynda Hopkins has slammed the brakes on a move to rewrite the rules governing local ambulance service in Sonoma County, claiming the draft in its current form would financially harm local fire districts that provide ambulance services.”

A week later Gualala-based Independent Coast Observer reporter S.J. Black (whose readership includes a chunk of Ms. Hopkins northern Sonoma County constituency) wrote a similar article entitled, “Emergency medical ordinance gets fresh start.”

It took some digging but we finally found Supervisor Hopkins original letter. It’s four single-spaced typed pages.

Here are some excerpts:

“The Fire/EMS providers in our district do not generate income from fighting fires. Although the EMS side is not profitable, the revenue generated from EMS supports the overall mission of the agency. Ifyou take away or compete with the ambulance service these agencies provide, you will take away the revenue that supports the firefighter/EMS personnel that provide it. Without them, the overall mission of the agency will be severely compromised.” …

“To be perfectly clear, I will oppose any attempt to create a system that places public agencies in competition with a private provider and/or requires that they assume a subservient position and have to contract with a private provider to remain in service. This position has been advocated by the current LEMSA [Coastal Valley EMS], both orally and on a distributed flow chart. It is not acceptable. As I studied the ordinance and spoke with the providers in my district, I became troubled by their reports of how they have been treated by CVEMS. They have been threatened, denigrated, demeaned and bullied. This treatment is not acceptable — especially not from a public agency subservient to DHS [Sonoma County Department of Health Services] and the Board of Supervisors.” …

“It is time to stop the endless rounds of negotiations that have resulted in the denial of exclusive operating areas to all of the public [my emphasis, not Hopkins] service providers. To date, the only current exclusive operating area, granted by LEMSA, has been given to a private provider. There is no reason to imagine that the LEMSA's stance will change, which is why the exclusive operating areas of public agencies must be clarified and codified by County ordinance.” …

“Therefore, I will oppose any ordinance that does not expressly recognize those exclusive operating area rights and will seek to pass an ordinance that places those agencies on a safe, sound foundation so that they may continue to serve their communities without threat or interference. Finally, I will firmly and publicly oppose any ordinance that grants a LEMSA the right to grant contracts that interfere with those public provider exclusive operating areas. For the reasons stated above, the draft ordinance and the governance structure it proposes are not acceptable to me. I plan to take a strong and vocal position against it. Furthermore, the current treatment of the public service providers, by the current LEMSA, is also unacceptable and I intend to take steps to make sure whatever agency we utilize works in a cooperative, respectful and professional manner.”

After reading Ms. Hopkins letter one local official who’s been following the situation told us that it looked like Coastal Valley was “intent on wiring things for their favored outside corporation. Why else take three runs at putting CV [Coastal Valley] in charge of the final decision on EOAs? And why else attempt to exclude CDF from dispatch, and Medstar [the private ambulance service in Ukiah that Verihealth started competing with in 2013] from ambulance service by attempting to issue a single RFP for both functions? … Bribery has to end up on the short list of potential explanations for CV's consistent approach to the issues at hand.”

In the weeks that followed Hopkins’ letter, Sonoma County’s Director of Department of Health Services, Barbie Robinson, quickly reversed course and announced that they were starting over in Sonoma County, telling Independent Coast Observer reporter S.J. Black, “We heard from our stakeholders and constituents, a lot of them, that they wanted to be more engaged in the process and have more information. Our goal is to hit the reset button and start from the beginning."

What does this mean for Mendocino County?

Nobody knows. Official Mendo is still in the dark, expecting the Sonoma-based Coastal Valley EMS to handle Mendo’s EOA in spite of everything, blithely unaware of Ms. Hopkins’ letter and Sonoma County’s subsequent restart.

Since we can’t expect anything from Hopkins’s Fifth District Supervisor counterpart in Mendocino County, someone like another Supervisor or CEO Carmel Angelo or Health and Human Services Director Tammy Moss-Chandler will have to raise the issue — and make sure that rural public ambulance providers like the Anderson Valley Fire Department are not undermined, dictated to or imposed upon by the likes of Coastal Valley or Verihealth.

OOPS. Village Spirits, a stalwart sales venue for the ava in Mendocino, is still open. The paper can also be found at Gallery Book Shop over with the magazines, although the hedge fund-owned papers are prominent on a rack near the door.

THE TRAILS OF LAKE MENDOCINO

To the Editor:

The Ukiah Valley Trail Group (UVTG) is disappointed at the recent discussions of closing Lake Mendocino for some, or all, recreational activities. The UVTG originally formed in 2004 in an effort to support our understaffed and resource poor local land managers, including the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) at Lake Mendocino.

We are proud of the work we have been able to accomplish in cooperation with the USACE and staff at Lake Mendocino. With the cooperation of their professional but overworked staff we have built 5 miles of new trail on the east side of Lake Mendocino. We rerouted an additional three plus miles of trail on the south side of the lake to improve user experience and sustainability. We built a 60 foot fiberglass bridge as part of our efforts to ensure that trails will be accessible even when the lake is at its highest levels. Our Director even presented at a regional USACE Ranger training speaking to the amount of work that can be accomplished with this kind of public-private partnership.

The USACE Operations and Management Plan of 2013 estimates that Lake Mendocino attracts over five hundred thousand visitors per year bringing 5.6 million dollars in economic benefit to the Ukiah Valley. Unfortunately, the resources committed to Lake Mendocino have continually declined over the years. The USACE has operated the Lake Mendocino facility without a Park Manager and/or Supervisory Ranger and with unfilled ranger positions for at least six years. Without a Park Manager they have also struggled to fill seasonal ranger positions and contracts for support services have been neglected. The UVTG has provided the USACE with a trail plan outlining a number of trail improvement projects. However, the lack of leadership and staff has limited us to basic trail maintenance projects for three years while we await approval of our next significant project. Although we have a signed agreement with the USACE to raise funds for recreational support projects at the lake, we have been unable to take advantage of this opportunity as managerial staff is unable to provide the necessary support or approval of our efforts. In sum, the staff at Lake Mendocino are too short staffed to effectively accept help.

Our mission is to create and maintain a trail system that will improve our community’s quality of life and health. As such, our commitment to providing support to Lake Mendocino staff in managing this valuable resource, and our commitment to representing our community will continue unabated. We want to thank Jared Huffman who has already responded with a letter to USACE leadership to find the resources to maintain this valuable community resource. We ask for you to join us in supporting the remaining staff at Lake Mendocino while we together implore our local elected officials to find a way to keep our Lake Mendocino open.

Neil Davis, Director, Ukiah Valley Trail Group

CLEAR LAKE SUFFERS FISH DIE-OFF

Hundreds of fish have died in Clear Lake, likely as a result of low oxygen levels triggered by algae.

pressdemocrat.com/news/7243921-181/dead-fish-wash-ashore-on

EASY MONEY

by Scott M. Peterson

RON & EDITH NELSON are the sweetest couple you could ever hope to meet. Owners of Placement Services in Pleasant Hill, the Nelsons placed elderly people into old folks homes. Nelda Asuncion worked with them as a realtor on behalf of Realty World Pacific West in Concord. And Chris Lagarejos helped them as a financier for Legacy Financing — also in Pleasant Hill. Why? Because they’re all such nice people.

BY 2012, Placement Services had bought and operated twenty residential home care facilities in Northern California. All with the help of Realty World Pacific West and Legacy Financing. The Nelsons started their business in 2001. Lagarejos had only been a licensed real estate broker since 2004. And Asuncion had no official license at all. But that didn’t slow them down. After the subprime mortgage meltdown of 2007, housing was in short supply. So with the wind at their backs, Nelson & Company made an absolute killing. Business was so darned good that Ron & Edith didn’t need a website. In fact, none of them did.

THE LARGEST affordable housing development in Mendocino County is a 92-apartment complex by the name of Ukiah Autumn Leaves. Although that nonprofit was formed to assist ‘elderly lower income persons’ in 1975, it now includes other categories as well. In March of 2011, the City of Ukiah identified Autumn Leaves as the biggest of eleven such complexes to be ‘At Risk’ for conversion into market rate housing — i.e., condos. But dismissed that possibility because Autumn Leaves had ‘no intension [sic]’ of doing such a thing.

SINCE THE PATH to Hell is paved with good intentions, I decided to take a little walk over yonder. Ukiah Autumn Leaves is joined at the hip with the shiny new California State Grange. A pro-business entity that bulldozed the old State Grange into oblivion. Local chapters with half a brain reorganized under the California State Guild to protect their property from a land grab. Others fell in line, including Ukiah Autumn Leaves. Which is reportedly led by a distant relative of mine — Bob Canclini. So I gave him a holler.

BOB’S WHAT WE CALL ‘long in the tooth’ here — meaning that he just celebrated his 86th birthday a week-or-so before. You just don’t mess with people like that. I hadn’t spoken with him in a decade — at least — so I wanted to keep it short. Bob confirmed that he was the president at Ukiah Autumn Leaves now, and that it’s a very fine place. ‘We just paid off the mortgage,’ he told me. There was a note of pride in his voice. ‘The entire mortgage?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘The whole darned thing.’ He also confirmed something I’d learned previously. That Ukiah Autumn Leaves was managed by a fellow in Santa Rosa named Ted Barcelon. Check.

BARCELON’S NAME appears on records going back since Autumn Leaves’ inception in 1975. If a lowly pond scum journalist like me wants a Form 990 — or any other information — it goes through Ted. Fortunately, the State of California keeps the same records on its website at the Registry of Charitable Trusts. All the way back to 2000. So I downloaded everything first — then dropped Ted an email. Based on some paperwork I’d gotten from the Mendocino County Recorder’s office.

THAT PAPERWORK indicated that Ukiah Autumn Leaves had just mortgaged its property for $750,000 in May of 2016. Right after the old mortgage had been paid off. The weird thing was this — Autumn Leaves’ Form 990s never reported that money — any of it. Not on its balance sheet as debt — nor on its operating statement as income. That gigantic pile of untaxed money simply passed through Ukiah Autumn Leaves in 2016. And did it without leaving a trace. How could that happen?

I WAS RAISED in the picturesque seaside town of Mendocino just like Bob Canclini. Everybody had a livelihood back then. My dad worked at the Fort Bragg sawmill. My Uncle Joe worked for the Mendocino School District. My mom worked as an accountant. And Bob Canclini? I honestly couldn’t tell you what his occupation was when I sat down to write this. So I Googled him.

CANCLINI GRADUATED from Mendocino High School in 1949. In 1975, he was savvy enough to get elected mayor of Tracy, California — a city of 80,000+ people. Local newspaper archives show that he was appointed to the Mendocino Historical Review Board in 1983. And then he was on the Mendocino County Planning Commission in 1987. Yet Mendocino County records indicate that Canclini didn’t register to vote here until February 23, 1992 — years after he was serving in office. He appeared again in meeting minutes of the Albion-Little River Fire Department as both a trustee and advocate for Mendocino Redwood Company’s hack & squirt deforestation policy in 2015, but got outvoted. So he resigned.

GIVEN MR. CANCLINI’S illustrious past, one may reasonably conclude that he’s; (a) smart, and (b) pro-business. So the idea of him losing track of a $750,000 mortgage doesn’t hold water. Unless a smart and pro-business development opportunity is afoot. Which takes us back to Ukiah Autumn Leaves.

THE $1.7 MILLION mortgage on that property was backed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — also known as HUD. So as long as that loan was in place, converting 92 units into market rate units wasn’t going to happen. Or was it? A peek at UAL’s Form 990s suggests otherwise. From 2000 on, rent increases have outpaced inflation by 15%. Suggesting that market rate conversion is already taking place — albeit gradually.

THE CITY OF UKIAH values a development like that at $9.2 million. And that’s not counting the land. The price tag on that puppy rose in 2014 when — ta-da! — its deal with HUD expired. That certainly explains what happened in 2015 when the average rent at UAL shot up $76 a month. Yeah baby. But that only begs the question — why take out another mortgage? I figured that’d all be explained on the Ukiah Autumn Leaves website. So I went ahead and Googled it.

UKIAH AUTUMN LEAVES has no website — none. The closest thing I could find was an advertisement for ‘California Affordable Rentals’ — where the contact for UAL is listed as Barcelon Associates. They don’t have a website either. Not currently, anyway. The Wayback Machine reveals two website snapshots for that outfit. One from 2008 and another from 2014 — but that’s all. Both of them suggest that Barcelon is a full-service real estate operation. Just like the one that Ron & Edith Nelson ran. California State Grange records show Ukiah Autumn Leaves as an affiliate there. So I went to former State Grange member Bruce Broderick to see if he had any dope on UAL or Barcelon. That’s where I got a bingo.

JACKPOTS don’t get any better than what Broderick had for me. It was a gigantic stack of documents including UAL’s latest mortgage, meeting minutes and audited financial statements. He’d gotten them straight from straight from the horse’s mouth. The mortgage came from the Mendocino County Recorder’s office. While the minutes and financial statements came from Bob McFarland at the old California State Grange. Broderick has a business to run, and hadn’t the time to go through them. So he handed them off to me.

ALL OF THE meeting minutes I saw relied on paperwork provided by Ted Barcelon. Each set includes something that appears to be a mortgage statement from Capmark recording a $15,000+ monthly payment. One of them is from November of 2007 where Bob Canclini was present. Yet the statement signed as ‘a true and correct report’ by Mr. Barcelon swears that payment was only $8,618.72. Which — if true — would be less than interest only on a $1.7 million mortgage with 7% juice.

STRANGER STILL was a set of minutes for October of 2005 with the exact same accounting irregularity. In addition, there were two pairs of $100,000 credits and draws on the mortgage statement for the same day. The financial report was read by Mr. Barcelon himself — and then accepted by UAL trustees. Suggesting that nobody but Barcelon had seen that statement. The amount for Barcelon’s ‘management fees’ that month were a mere $2,732.58. Which annualized would amount to a very reasonable $32,784 per year for Barcelon. Yet Manta estimates their annual income at considerably more — $256,818. Which is pretty miraculous considering they don’t have a website.

THE BIGGEST PRIZE of all was a set of audited financial statements for 2005 in their original binding. Complete with a warning from the accountant:

‘In reviewing the accounting system, it was determined that the accounting person recording accounts receivable also makes bank deposits. Management should attempt to segregate these duties to the extent possible by having the manager approving deposits prior to accounting person making deposits.’

THAT WARNING apparently didn’t sit well with Barcelon. The CPA who’d reported that — Michael Celentano — suddenly became a lot less visible thereafter. His signature flat out vanished from Form 990s from that point on. And by 2009, he’d gotten replaced by a Bay Area CPA named Dennis Lorette. Who according to Manta pulls down annual pay estimated at $431,172. Which isn’t too shabby for an accountant with an expired license and no website. And since UAL doesn’t itemize accounting expenses on its Form 990s, the sky’s the limit for Lorette there today —  as long as he doesn’t complain.

GOOD REVIEWS are scarce as hen’s teeth for Ukiah Autumn Leaves. Ditto for Barcelon Associates. I could only fine one on Mr. Barcelon’s Facebook page — and it was terrible. The reviewer was a young mother named Audrey Cade. Who claims that Barcelon tried to sue her for having an autistic child. UAL has a Facebook page — but no reviews at all. Which is odd for something that Bob Canclini told me was such a great place to live.

MY LAST COMMUNICATION with Bob was an email where I sent him to an inventory of records that he might have access to. It includes monthly meeting minutes, Form 990s, audits and State renewal forms from 1975 forward. Not that I needed them — because I already had many of them. All I wanted to know was whether or not UAL trustees had access to them. I’ve yet to hear back from Mr. Canclini on that matter. That followed another email that I copied to Ted Barcelon. Asking for copies of the Form 990s for 2015 and 2016 within ten days. Something he’s legally obliged to do. I haven’t gotten a response on that one either. Finally, I asked if he knew anything about the $750,000 mortgage. Mr. Canclini seems to have gone radio silent after that.

TREASURERS are customary in nonprofits like Ukiah Autumn Leaves. According to UAL’s bylaws, they’re required. But when you look at UAL’s Form 990s for the last decade plus, you’ll notice something odd — there’s no treasurer. Huh. How can a nonprofit protect its assets without one? And how could it pay off a $750,000 mortgage without one? The answer is simple — trustees are kept in the dark. All of UAL’s Form 990s report that ‘No documents (other than Form 990s are) available to the public.’ Ahem. Unless you count the Registry of Charitable Trusts — where everything is available to the public. All you need is an Internet connection.

ROBBING OLD PEOPLE happens all the time. Why? Because it’s so darned easy. One source even compared it to the natural world. ‘When cows get old,’ he said. ‘Wolves don’t wait for them to die.’ That made me think of the 92 units at Ukiah Autumn Leaves as a virtual feeding frenzy for those who prey on the elderly. Then asking myself not why it’d happen there — but why it wouldn’t. In 2011, MetLife did a study on elder financial abuse. It found press reports on that subject at the rate of 1,076 per year. But that the actual occurrence is suspected to be forty times higher. Indicating that — more often than not — the wolves get away.

THE LAST TREASURER reported at UAL is a lady named Ursula Partch. That’s according to a website at findthecompany.com. The revenue from that report dovetails with UAL’s Form 990 for 2014. But Partch is listed as secretary on that record. Huh. Maybe she didn’t know about that report. So I sent her an email with three questions — (1); Was she the treasurer at Ukiah Autumn Leaves? (2); Did she know anything about a $750,000 mortgage being taken out on the property in 2016? And (3); Did she know about the 2016 assignment of rents agreement? That contract — if true — would appear to strip UAL of all future income. As such, it should have been put to a vote and recorded in meeting minutes. And as secretary — according to Form 990s — she should have them. That’s what the bylaws require. Unlike her peers, Ms. Partch has a website complete with a contact form. Not that any response was expected. I just thought she’d want a heads up — in case something bad happened.

RON & EDITH NELSON pled guilty to bank fraud, money laundering and tax evasion in February of 2012. So did Nelda Asuncion and Chris Lagarejos. Between December of 2002 and January of 2007, they’d recruited straw buyers to submit fraudulent applications for 63 bank loans that swindled lenders out of $20 million. On top of that, the Nelsons hired twelve illegal immigrants to work in their facilities, paid them less than minimum wage and threatened to turn them over to immigration authorities unless they played ball.

HOW THEY DID IT was brilliantly simple. All that money changed hands through wire transfers. Which appears to be how Ted Barcelon made the mortgage payments on behalf of Ukiah Autumn Leaves. It also may answer the question of why UAL needed a $750,000 mortgage in 2016. Suggesting that half of those mortgage payments hadn’t been made. Just like Barcelon had been saying all along — in the reports he read.

CLANCY SIGAL (1926-2017): BIG BALLSY ANTI-FASCIST

by Jonah Raskin

I did not know Clancy Sigal well, but I read almost all of his books, including Going Away, Weekend in Dinlock, Zone of the Interior, Hemingway Lives!, plus A Woman of Uncertain Character—which is about his mother—and Zone of the Interior, a fictionalized version of his time with the British psychiatrist, R.D. Lang. I reviewed a couple of his books for the San Francisco Chronicle. For a time, I carried on a correspondence with Clancy who always urged me to think of New York editors and publishers as modern day Borgias and not to trust them. That was good advice.

I met Clancy on one occasion in San Rafael, California and spent an afternoon talking about a subject he loved to talk about: politics, especially the politics of the American Left. I also read all of his memorably pieces for the Anderson Valley Advertiser. I was always eager to know what he was thinking and feeling because I admired his brand of radicalism and his dedication to writing and not repeating himself. No two Sigal books are the same, though they carry his essential trademarks, including the ability to excavate his own life and turn it into both fiction and non-fiction.

I knew a lot about Clancy before I met him because I was a friend of his most famous lover, Doris Lessing, the British author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007, and who wrote about him under the name Sol Green in The Golden Notebook. By the late 1970s, Lessing had grown irritated with what she called my “revolutionary romanticism,” though she had been a revolutionary romantic herself. After all, it takes one to know one.

Fed up with my defense of the ideological left, she suggested that Clancy might be a more willing listener than she. Indeed, he did listen to my screeds, though he made it clear that he didn’t agree with me, especially when it came to what I called “revolutionary violence.” Sigal was against it, including the bombings that were carried out by the Weather Underground in the 1970s. At the same time, he also insisted that the Weather Underground had played a significant role in the annals of American radical history, and that time would validate that perspective. He didn’t care for the IRA bombings in London, either.

We often wrote to one another about the nuts and bolts of publishing: namely how to get a book into print. Clancy explained unapologetically that he’d do most anything to get his manuscripts published, including having sex with women editors. I didn’t ever follow in his footsteps in that regard. I didn’t have his balls, but I did flirt with women editors at Random House and elsewhere and my flirtation did help get my work out there for the reading public.

Looking back at Clancy’s life and work, I can see now that he has been a role model: an unreconstructed radical who was true to his core beliefs and who went for the jugular, especially when writing about insidious, villainous American slime balls like Roy Cohn. Clancy came through McCarthyism, the blacklist and red bating with his head held high. I think of him now as a kind of street fighter. I was glad to be on his side. For those who don’t remember, he wrote big sections of the screenplay for Frida, the feature length film about Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Leon Trotsky, whose real lives he knew a great deal about and whose personal drama he turned into a riveting cinematic story. See it if you haven’t. See it again even if you have, and read Weekend in Dinlock. It’s a real classic about British coal miners in which there’s no doubt whose side the author himself takes in the war between the classes.

The title of his next-to-the-last book, Hemingway Lives! is a paean to one his role models, who was another American original, an anti-fascist and a living legend. Now that Clancy is dead, I feel safe in saying that his work will be rediscovered and that readers will say, “Sigal lives.”

PETER LIT WRITES: Neither pot growers nor AirB&Bers should get a free tax pass card. And I doubt the $90 for an overnight stay vs. $300 figure stated by your reader.

PS. I nominate myself for the position of Pot Czar.

GREAT HOUSING FUNDRAISER

Dear Editor,

The Anderson Valley Housing Association’s Summer BBQ took place Sunday, July 11^th and was not only a successful fundraiser but also a great time.

We’d like to thank Deborah Cahn and Ted Bennett for hosting at the Navarro Ranch – a more idyllic setting and more gracious hosts than we could have asked for. We’d also like to thank the Lions Club of Anderson Valley for their work at the grill and behind the scenes. The Lions give vital support to many of AV’s local organizations, and we’re proud to be among them.

Music by Roger That (Jeff Moss, Steve Derwinski, & Roger Leonard) kept toes tapping and perfectly complimented the breezy afternoon. A silent auction featured items donated by a host of supportive local businesses, and we had quite a few happy auction winners.

We saw many familiar faces, and a few new ones as well. Thanks to everyone who came out and joined us. The services provided by the numerous volunteer and non-profit organizations in Anderson Valley help to make our home a better place in so many ways, and it’s all possible because of the support of community members like you.

Sincerely,

Angela DeWitt, Administrative Manager, AV Housing Association

PS If you have any questions about Anderson Valley Housing Association, please call or email: (707) 895-3362 or info@andersonvalleyhousing.org.

ZAPPA MONTAG OF ELK WANTS TO KNOW:

Dear Mendocino County Sheriffs Department,

I am writing asking you to clarify your policy which led you mischaracterize my arrest, by an officer from your agency on September 3, 2015, when you listed in public arrest record me as having been arrested for possessing Meth, when I actually was alleged to have what are commonly known as "Mushrooms." Your records, as well as the testimony of my lawyer, Mr. Omar Figueroa will indicate that I was never alleged to have possessed any Methamphetamine of any type. Your mischaracterization has led to great distress, and financial hardship. In addition, a person named Lethea Warren is using this mischaracterization to publicly slander my character and attempt to publicly portray me as a danger to the community. This leads me to feel that my life, and that of my family may actually be in danger due to your policy. I am asking at this time that you publicly clarify your policy, and issue an apology and retraction to me, for linking me with the use, and distribution of Meth, which is rightly seen as a danger to the community. I urgently await your response.

Zappa Montag, Elk

AIRPORT ROAD, FORT BRAGG, is just north of town. There is a tweaker compound at the Road's east end that's making the whole neighborhood very nervous. Here's the latest nerve-wracked posts:

4 AM — woke up to loud noises (sounded like large oil barrels being thrown into the back of our truck)

Got up to investigate to see flames as high as a two story building at the Kurliko residence (yes the trouble neighbors)

Called 911 – dispatch was disconnected 3 times – and finally got the fire department to answer

Told them of the fire.

TEN MINUTES later – no fire trucks – and the fire across the street mysteriously disappeared. The smell of smoke was evident – but no more fire

The fire department called us and asked if there was still a fire – WHAAAAT?  I said I do not see flames but smell the smoke and I said where is the fire truck – he said “they are on their way.  But call us back if you see flames again.”

SINCE WHEN?  REALLY?

15 minutes later – the FBFD showed up -  They entered the property and found a “guy” sitting next to a barrel with a small fire in it – The chief asked what he was doing with a fire at this time in the morning – and the response was – I just felt like it.  The chief did confirm it smelled like gasoline and he saw the smoot indicating a larger fire.

HELP!?  These freaks are going to burn our neighborhood down! What can we do?!?!?  I am so freaked out knowing we can lose everything because of these druggies.

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “One of my pet arf-arfs is my status as a so-called 'pet.' I'm my own dog, and don't any of you forget it. If you really want to get my goat — nothin' against goats; hell, my Mex neighbors eat 'em and, come to think of it, my grandad himself got et on the Lewis & Clark expedition, and the Chinese are still chowing down on my cousins — call me a 'pet' or play "How Much is That Doggie in the Window" right in my face!”

NUMEROUS BUSINESSES IN WILLITS, UKIAH FACE NEW LEGAL THREATS OVER DISABLED ACCESS

A California attorney who has made a name for himself suing thousands of businesses and governments across the state over alleged violations of federal disability access law now is taking aim at enterprises in Willits and Ukiah.

Thomas Frankovich and his disabled Willits client have filed eight separate federal discrimination lawsuits affecting more than two dozen Mendocino County businesses since late December, accusing the defendants of failing to provide adequate access for disabled people as required by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

pressdemocrat.com/news/7232984-181/numerous-businesses-in-willits-ukiah

GABRIELLA RECOMMENDS:

Re: Traffic, HWY 1 and the Albion Bridge

I love this book on Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt. It says, for one, that cities will grow to fill their traffic lanes. And a good way to slow folks down is have complexity, with human life visible and real to the drivers.

Entertaining reading: http://amzn.to/2uLNBEO

CATCH OF THE DAY, July 28, 2017

TALON GEER, Albion. Probation revocation.

CESAR GONZALEZ-TREJO, Willits. Suspended license, probation revocation.

LARRY LAVENDUSKEY, Ukiah. Bicycle riding under the influence.

RAFAEL MALDONADO-MATA JR., Ukiah. Probation revocation.

CAITLIN RAY, Ukiah. DUI causing bodily injury, probation revocation.

SATASHA ROSADO, Willits. Battery, criminal threats, DUI, unlawful display of registration, failure to appear.

STEPHANIE YOUNG, Redwood Valley. DUI, DUI-suspended license, probation revocation.

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I read yesterday that transsexuals, both male and female, serve in far higher numbers than they represent in the general population. Why is the military attractive to them? Dunno, there are a couple of speculations.

So one article showed a guy, nice looking, in the 70’s who was in Viet Nam. He said he wanted to prove to himself that he was a man, because he hadn’t figured himself out yet but was attracted to crossdressing and such. But, he was attracted sexually to females and had girlfriends. Fast forward, and now he has had a sex change operation and and a female partner (he’s attracted to females) but considers himself a lesbian.

Trans males (and I mean males) are about 25-30% or so heterosexual – attracted to females. But the articles I read yesterday from 2016 about trans in the army, were gearing up to let these guys use the women’s showers. The more I think on all this the more scenarios and ramifications of “reality is whatever I feel it is and the physical world take the hindmost” occur to me and the more crazy it all seems. Perhaps, eventually, we will all collectively gag.

DIGGING DOG NURSERY'S FREE SATURDAY STROLLS & PLANT CHATS

July 29

Future Dates: August 19, and September 16

Hours:  10:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.  (Saturday tour at 2:00.)

Theme: Beautiful coastal garden; free tour on Saturday.

Cost:  Free admission.

Location: 31101 Middle Ridge Rd., Albion CA 95410. (Wheelchair accessible.)

Contact:  Deborah Whigham/ Digging Dog Nursery, Phone: (707) 937-1130

Email:  business@diggingdog.com

WEB: (full catalog) diggingdog.com

Brief Description: Stroll Digging Dog Nursery’s beautiful gardens in the redwood forest near the Mendocino coast. Choose from an abundance of easy-to-grow garden plants, at great savings.  On Saturday only, free horticulture tour with light refreshments, at 2:00 p.m.  Digging Dog Nursery has been featured in The Garden Conservancy’s “Outstanding American Gardens”, "Martha Stewart Living," "House and Garden," "Vista" and other publications.

RAFFLE TICKETS ON SALE NOW!

Art in the Gardens is next Saturday! This year we will be holding a raffle in the theme of "Mendocino Stay and Play," consisting of 5 splendid prize packages that highlight the best lodging, adventures, dining, cultural experiences, handmade creations by AIG artists, and spa treatments that the Mendocino Coast has to offer.

Visit www.gardenbythesea.org/aig for a full listing of the raffle prizes. The prize drawing will take place at 3PM on the Event Lawn at Art in the Gardens (August 5). You do not need to be present to take home one of these magnificent packages. Tickets are $5 each or 5 for $20 and will be available for purchase at Art in the Gardens and on the Plaza at Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens: Saturday, July 29 . 10AM to 2PMSunday, July 30 . 12:30 to 3:30PM

And…

Get your advance tickets to Art in the Gardens and save on entrance fee!

General admission tickets $20 in advance or $30 at the door ($5 children ages 6 to 16; Free for children under 5) - $25 additional for wine or beer tastingTickets will be available on the Gardens’ website (www.gardenbythesea.org/aig) through Thursday, August 3rd. Tickets are also available for purchase at The Garden Store, Harvest Market in Fort Bragg, and Out of This World in Mendocino through Friday, August 4.

Roxanne Perkins (Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens) marketing@gardenbythesea.org

MEMO OF THE AIR FRIDAY NIGHT!

jcgblatt@mcn.org wrote:

Interesting that AVA article notes MCDH has brought in EmCare. Just this week, 7/24, the NYT had a long page 1 article about billing complaints, including overbilling and being billed at the highest allowable price levels, and other complaints, skyrocket in hospitals utilizing the EmCare service.

* * *

Marco here. Thank you; I didn't know about the Times article. Here's a link to that:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/24/upshot/the-company-behind-many-surprise-emergency-room-bills.html

Also, this might amuse you. A post with video in MissCellania; the real reason hospitals are so expensive:

http://misscellania.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-real-reason-hospitals-are-so.html

IN OTHER NEWS, tonight (Friday, July 28) I'll be doing my show from Fort  Bragg, not by live remote from far away, so here's an open invitation to  the general /you/ to come and play your musical instrument(s) or talk  about your project, or whatever. It's 325 N. Franklin (next to the Tip  Top bar). Just traipse in any time tonight after 9pm, head for the  lighted room at the back and get my attention away from whatever I'm  doing, and we'll go from there. If you need more room to spread out, I  can pull an area mic out into the cavernous echo gallery.

And if you ever write something you want me to read aloud on the air  (which is the main think I do this for), email it to me any time during  the week. The deadline is usually around 6pm the night of the show. Or  call it in to 962-3022 during the show. Let it ring awhile in case I'm  in the bathroom or tangled up in wires or nearing the punchline of some  kind of sick joke.  Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio. Every Friday, 9pm to about 4am on  107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg, including midnight to 3am 105.1fm KMEC-LP  Ukiah. And also there and anywhere else via http://knyo.org or  http://TuneIn.com

Marco McClean

memo@mcn.org

CAN THE WORLD DEFEND ITSELF FROM OMNICIDE?

by Ralph Nader

Notice how more frequently we hear scientists tell us that we’re “wholly unprepared” for this peril or for that rising fatality toll? Turning away from such warnings may reduce immediate tension or anxiety, but only weakens the public awareness and distracts us from addressing the great challenges of our time, such as calamitous climate change, pandemics, and the rise of a host of other self-inflicted disasters.

Here are some warnings about rising and looming risks.

• The opioid epidemic is here now, and poised to become further exacerbated. It is the US’s deadliest drug overdose crisis ever, taking over 1000 lives a week. Even that figure is underestimated, according to a report by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). These fatalities, many of them affecting people in the prime of their life, stem from legally prescribed drugs taken to relieve chronic pain. Tragically ironic!

Congress is figuring out how to budget for many billions of dollars to combat this toll – much greater than the deaths by traffic crashes or AIDS. Republican and Democratic state officials are suing the drug companies for excessive, misleading promotion for profit. Still, the awful toll keeps rising.

• Cyberattacks and cyberwarfare are increasingly becoming a facet of daily life. Although IBM and other firms are trying to develop more effective defenses, the current scale of cyberattacks is “crazy”, according to specialist Christopher Ahlberg. As he said in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, “If you told anybody 10 years ago about what’s going on now, they wouldn’t believe it.”

Negotiations are not even underway for a cyberwarfare treaty among nations. The sheer scale and horrific implications of this weaponry seems to induce societies to bury their heads in the sand. Former ABC TV host of Nightline, Ted Koppel, discusses this emerging threat in his recent, acclaimed book, “Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared”:

“Imagine a blackout lasting not days but weeks or months. There would be no running water, no sewage, no electric heat, refrigeration, or light. Food and medical supplies would dwindle. Banks would not function. The devices we rely on would go dark. The fact is, one well-placed attack on the electrical grid could cripple much of our infrastructure. Leaders across government, industry and the military know this…yet there is no national plan for the aftermath.”

Former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director, Leon Panetta, says Koppel’s book is “an important wake-up call for America.” Yet neither he nor the enormous military-industrial complex, of which he remains a supportive part, are doing much of anything about this doomsday threat to national security. The big manufacturers are too busy demanding ever more taxpayer money for additional nukes, aircraft carriers, submarines, fighter planes, missiles and other weaponry of an increasingly bygone age.

• “The World is Not Ready for the Next Pandemic,” headlined a recent Time Magazine article. The authors note that the “US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ranks H7N9 as the flu strain with the greatest potential to cause a pandemic – an infectious disease outbreak that goes global.” They predict the disease could claim “tens of millions” of lives.

In between his Twitter-tantrums, President Trump approved an insanely myopic proposed budget cut of over $1 billion in the CDC’s programs used to predict and combat rising pandemics from China, African countries and elsewhere. Fortunately cooler heads may prevail in Congress, backed by some private foundations.

The number of new diseases per decade, Time reports, has increased nearly fourfold over the past 60 years. Antibiotics are being overridden by adaptive mutations of bacteria. Dr. Trevor Mundel of the Gates Foundation, asserts, “There’s just no incentive for any company to make pandemic vaccines to store on shelves.” That profit-driven rejection is exactly why government must act to produce the drugs, as the Department of Defense it has successfully done with new anti-malaria drugs in the seventies and eighties.

University of Minnesota Professor Michael Osterholm, one of the nation’s leading experts on infectious diseases, warns that for all our world-class scientists and high-tech isolation units, the US health care system is not ready for the stresses of a major pandemic. Not even close.

• It isn’t just Elon Musk, founder of the Tesla company, who is warning that the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is “the greatest risk we face as a civilization.” In 2015, hundreds of other scientists, like renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, and technologists, like Steve Wozniak, signed a public letter that was a one day story, instead of an alarmed world turning it into a galvanizing event. Professor Hawking warns us: “Success in creating Artificial Intelligence would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks. In the near term, world militaries are considering autonomous-weapon systems that can choose and eliminate targets.” We humans, Hawking adds, “are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete and would be superseded by AI” In short, the robots race out of control, become self-actuating and are not held back by any moral boundaries.

From Lincoln to Einstein, we have been counseled that new situations require new thinking. A massive reversal of our world’s priorities toward reverence for life and posterity, toward diplomacy and waging peace, toward legal and ethical frameworks for exploding science and technology (including biotechnology and nanotechology) must receive our focus, from families nurturing their children to the philosophers, ethical specialists, engineers and scientists pausing from their exponential discoveries to ponder the serious adverse consequences of their creations.

Our present educational systems – from Harvard Law School, MIT to K-12 – are not rising to these occasions for survival. Our mass media, wallowing in trivia, entertainment, advertisements and political insults, is not holding the politicians accountable to serious levels of public trust and societal safety. Time for new movements awakening our best angels to foresee and forestall. Do any potential leaders at all levels want to be first responders?

(Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!)

WORDS & DEEDS

by James Kunstler

I know I’m not the first to point out how Anthony Scaramucci, President Trump’s brand new Communications Director, is suddenly and eerily carrying on like his namesake, the arch-rascal / buffoon of the Old World Commedia dell’Arte in lashing out at his fellow scamps and bozos in the clown school that the White House has become. Of course, these antics only reflect the astounding violent vulgarity of current US culture in general, especially as it recursively re-amplifies itself in the distorting echo chamber of TV. It’s how we roll nowadays — right up the collective butt-hole of history until some fateful event provokes a last frightful purging of our own bullshit.

Still, it was rather shocking to hear Scaramucci refer to White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus as “a fucking paranoid schizophrenic” and Trump ultra-insider Steve Bannon as someone who “enjoys sucking his own cock.” It’s kind of like Paulie Walnuts of “The Sopranos” wandered into the West Wing of “Veep.” Somebody’s gonna get whacked, and it’ll be a laugh-riot when it happens.

We need a little comic relief in these midsummer horse latitudes of the mind as the ill-starred Trump Show appears to enter its ceremonial death dance. There’s also something satisfyingly Napoleonesque about Scaramucci. Here’s a guy who cuts through the odious blubber of US politics right to the bone of things with a flensing blade of profane righteousness. Personally, I’d like to see him take some whacks at a few more deserving targets, and I can even imagine a somewhat farfetched scenario where the little guy shoves Trump out during a concocted national emergency and manages to declare himself First Citizen, or some such innovative title allowing him to run things for a while — say, until the generals toss him out a window. Or maybe he’ll last less than a week in his current position. I would not be surprised, either, if Mr. Bannon beats little Mooch to death with an Oval Office fireplace poker right in front of the Golden Golem of Greatness himself.

The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine — in this case, inexorably toward the restorative medicine of the 25th amendment. There is, after all, that hoary old artifact called the national interest lurking somewhere offstage aside of all this colorful mummery, especially as the Russian Meddling gambit appears to be dribbling away to nothing. It’s more than self-evident that poor Trump is in so far over his head that he’s come down with something like the bends, a debilitating systemic disorder rendering him unfit to execute the powers of office. Decades from now, they’ll say he had “the tweets.”

This is a melodrama of a type the world has seen before in a hundred royal palaces and other centers of mis-rule. The need to get rid of the head of state becomes so painfully self-evident that idle chatter about it ceases and all intention is signaled in mere eye-rolls, sighs, portentous glances, and other fraught devices of body language. That’s what’s going on now in the senate, the agency executive suites, the terraces of Martha’s Vineyard, and surely the hallowed corridors of the White House itself. One way or another, the knives are coming out.

The most economical script would have Trump graciously “resign” and be allowed to return to his familiar money-grubbing activities in real estate, where he can really only do harm to his own bank accounts and family posterity. Or, he could be dragged kicking and screaming from the premises, shall we say, and thrown to the bloodthirsty beasts of Deep State justice. That will not be pretty. Either outcome could provoke a lot of mischief “out there” among those who voted for him.

In any case, I doubt that the polity can take much more of Trump after Labor Day — and I say all this as one who was never part of the so-called “Resistance.” I’m not even very much convinced that getting rid of Trump and installing his stand-in, Mike Pence, will leave the government any less dysfunctional. After all, the nation is riding a larger and scarier arc of history as the techno-industrial fiesta winds down, with all the awfully disruptive consequences that implies. But at least there’s a chance that we might at least face this predicament seriously instead of feeling trapped in some sort of cosmic sitcom in an alternative universe of endless fucking nonsense.

(Support Kunstler’s writing by visiting his Patreon Page: https://www.patreon.com/JamesHowardKunstler)