Giant Grant Score for Parents & Friends

The Fort Bragg City Council met October 23, in a fast-moving session that gave away $3 million bucks to the richest not for profit in the city instead of putting money into your long neglected and ancient sewer and water system. They had a clear choice.They knew the facts. You might even say it was an emergency. They did it in cold blood anyway.

The meeting opened once more in its customary swirling glamor as a very well dressed council circulated amidst a crowd of interested citizens. The whole room sort of orbited around the stunning Sam (Samantha) Zuttler, our departing City Attorney. She was dressed in a pink that I would not call hot pink but something profoundly pinker. It was a pink that just had to be expensive. A dark byzantine pink, a pink to remember. I really should not be sorry to see Sam Zuttler go, but how can I not be? She was a team player on the other team, but she was certainly an ornament to the city process, intellectually and esthetically.

They gave her a plaque and introduced the new city attorney.

Russell Hildebrand is a partner with Jones-Mayer which is reputed to be a little lower to be on the prestige tree than Sam’s Burke, Williams and Sorenson. He seemed very formidable personally. His firm represents cities and municipalities. We do that, we don’t do anything else, he told us. He is getting ten grand a month as a retainer. That buys us 45 hours a month at $205 bucks an hour. If we don’t use it the money is forwarded to the next period. We hired his associate Mr. Jones as deputy attorney.

He somehow conveyed by his lawyerly presence the idea that he had lovingly adopted us since we had lovingly purchased him. This is my town now, nobody is going to mess with it, he stressed with body language. He was quite fierce in a controlled courtroom way. I don’t think he approved of my scatological mutterings and repressed guffaws as I sat through the evening’s discussion. He stayed to the bitter end of the meeting.

After we had performed the ritual of switching attorneys the meeting crawled through a few trivialities down to the evening’s principle entertainment. We were happily gathered together in the presence of our new attorney to spend some big money. Everybody got focused. The Parents and Friends supporters who tookup a whole section sat up in their chairs. Jennifer Owens, CDBG superstar, stepped up to the plate to patiently give confusing contradictions in simple direct language. She described the terms and conditions of this year’s (2017) CDBG grant and gave the council a clear choice between two options.

Down at our cordial and well-lit town hall we celebrated the good news that from Olympian heights the gods of Community Development Block Grants had manifested their annual bounty. This year $27 million in cold cash would be dumped with all due consideration into to the indecently ravenous maws of 195 California municipalities. A velvet competition would ensue. Monday night our local assembly was collectively confident that Jennifer Owens would once again get us our share.This money is how small cities and rural counties live. Five million was on the personal plate of Fort Bragg. The rule is that any project had to be shovel-ready the same year that the money is allocated.

Last year when Fort Bragg got CDBG money a newly elected City Council was still in heated election mode indignation over decades of diverting CDBG money into local social services agencies exactly at the cost of said infrastructure. The realignment of the council into a newbie majority and a very diminished minority meant in practice that the 2016 money did not get spent on social services. The reformist council bought a water tank. They have been bragging about it ever since.

We had a year to do it and we knew the rules but we could not get the tank money spent. If we had finished putting up our new CDBG watertank we could have gotten two CDBG projects in 2017 but since we were remiss to build our tank we won’t. I don’t know how far along they are on the tank project. Not far, I hear. At least they are not by any means on time by CDBG standards as they are obliquely informing us. The city council in its customary see no evil, we appreciate each other mode, spoke not a word of remonstrance of any party whatsoever. It is live and let live management.

Graciously the gods of CDBG granted Fort Bragg a “waiver” which will still permit us one project if we are deemed sufficiently worthy according to an arcane mathematical analysis to qualify at all. Jennifer Owens is reputed with no contradiction to be to the Queen of competitive CDBG mathematical formulas like Babe Ruth was King to baseball. Trusting her implicitly is bedrock city council policy.

A the winter darkness settled down over sleepy Fort Bragg and the City Council met in in their lighted hall, somewhere out in the weeds and the darkness down by the river the ancient pumping stations that without glamor keep our sewage moving are clunking and chugging into their last hours of usefulness. They are forty years old. They are on their last legs. The anticipated failure would be, as city workers describe it, catastrophic.

Fort Bragg’s old, battered pumping stations are another unheard heartbeat of our old town. They are faithful but faltering and fearfully fragile. They are an open joke with city workers. They are our long term impending emergency. The muttered urgency of city waterworkers is why they were being discussed at all. The pumping stations ought to be a humble but inflexible first priority for any responsible government.

Here is what the council was told: Since we can only do one project and we have only two projects remotely qualifying as shovel ready, you the council have to pick between an $800,000 rehab of the humble sewage pumping stations (that happen to be dying before your very eyes and threating to overflow every toilet in an uncomfortably wide area.) Or! Your other option is giving #3 million to Parents and Friends as the possible last payment from the outgoing city manager’s long term patronage and support of that local mega agency. It’s not that they need it, but it’s there, so they want it. Linda Ruffing maneuvers fiercely to toss them the bone.

Here is how it happened. Danco, the city’s favorite subsidized low income housing contractor was originally going to be our CDBG project and get $1 million. Their deal did not fly so Rick Moon of Parents and Friends plunged in from left field and grabbed $3 million in cash by dumping his old project that the city council had already given him money for and announcing his new project that would cost much more. He was clever. He was just in time. He gets the whole burrito if Jennifer can pull out another rabbit.

Getting our new majority city council to back off much needed infrastructure seemed unlikely. We now have a clear majority that have always opposed in principle twenty years of social service spending at the expense of civic infrastructure.

It did not look like it was going anywhere, but Linda Ruffing confidently moved in on them with her regular prepackaged conclusions and implicit instructions. It was clear to the City Manager that getting $3 million was a lot better than getting $800,000 no matter what it has to be used for.

Bottom line: She swore piously that the sewage pumps were the very next thing. We will do them when we do the main sewage treatment plant, she assured the council. We already have the money for the whole sewer rehab project grants and loans, $15 million, it’s all sewed up. This was news to everybody. I believe it is the first they have mentioned this important milestone. Dave Turner had an opportunity to nudge the resisters remarking that Linda Ruffing’s notes clearly indicated Parents and Friends were a smart choice over some old pumps. “It’s right in the numbers,” he pointed out.

What it means is that the City Manager is fired but still firing back and with what ammunition we do not know.

When the vote came the city council split as it always now must and as it should. Lindy Peters and Dave Turner of course support the social services industry without qualification. Will Lee and Bernie Norvell stood solid for infrastructure. Cueball Cimolino defected.

Parents and Friends get two four-bedroom houses for $1 million each and $1 million more in connection services and street improvements in free city cash.

The pumps can wait.