THE SUPERVISORS, in a move that would pay them almost twice as much as the average private sector Mendo working person, voted 4-1 Monday to raise their annual salaries from $61,200 to a startling $85,500, starting next year. Fourth District Supervisor Dan Gjerde was slightly more restrained. He thought he and his colleagues should get $73,960, the percentage increase award the five elected department heads. The Supes, immune to public opinion, ignored the deluge of outrage from the public.
MARK SCARAMELLA NOTES: Every time the Supervisors’ pay comes up someone invariably claims that they know “very competent and smart people who have skipped running for supe because it would mean a big pay cut and an interruption of their career,” or an equivalently silly observation. They never, repeat NEVER, say who they’re talking about so that the rest of us can determine for ourselves how “competent and smart” the person they “know” is. They also never cite their own bonafides in being able to determine who’s “competent and smart,” the claimant, of course, being the self-alleged final arbiter of competency and smarts. And why would someone like Baumann not mention the names of those competent and smart “people they know”? After all such a claim would be complimentary and hardly worth hiding. Could it be that mentioning the name would invite disagreement as to the competency and smarts of the “people” they “know” who might run if the pay was $200k a year or something? Seems to us that the higher the pay the more cautious and dependent the politician becomes on the source of their pay and, like Ross Liberty, is less likely to rock the boat and jeopardize their insiderness. Competence and smarts, obviously, have never been a factor in Mendocino County elections.
REGARDING the Supes' pay raise: None of these people were paupers prior to their elevation to their present eminence by small percentages of eligible voters. Hamburg's a trust funder who has made another untaxed fortune in the marijuana business; McCowen is a rentier; Gjerde comes from a comfortably well-off family, sparing him even the slightest acquaintance with the 8-5 grind as experienced by most Americans; Brown's from the county's landed kulak class; Ms. Croskey, an interim appointee and the lamest of ducks, is a veterinarian married to a cop. None of these people, as is typical of elected persons at all levels of our alleged government, have ever lived with the wolf at the door, hence their blithe delusion that they are presently working very hard as public servants and should be compensated at a level far beyond the average annual pay of most working people in Mendocino County. It probably went unnoticed, but the Supes want to peg annual raises to judge's salaries, making them automatic, and thus sparing them what they probably see as the indignity of giving themselves fat raises in view of the pesky public. The only recourse that pesky public has is to vote out incumbents.
A READER DISAGREES ON BROWN: "I don’t know about the others, but Carre Brown has lived with the wolf at the door. The details, which I will avoid stating, are classic blue collar American. Remember, also, she has no college degree, and there was no one there to pay for one, either. Her father had a gas station in Ukiah. Her current husband was never monied, and depended on Carre to contribute her share. Carre Brown is what a friend of mine would call a 'dirtier,' someone who had to make it from the dirt. The other type is a spooner, someone who was born with a silver spoon in the mouth. Carre Brown is a great American story, and someone who should be an inspiration, particularly to women. So, next time you see her, you need to tell her you have newfound admiration for her."
BRUCE McEWEN on the Supes: Ms. Angelo's comment about the "courage" of the board in voting for controversial projects has always seemed a bit rich, since they bring in consultants at exorbitant expense in order to spare themselves any liability which, to my mind, ought to be part and parcel with the responsibility of taking office -- were any consultants brought in on this courageous (if not audacious) vote to raise their salaries?
YUP. WHEN CARMEL ANGELO congratulated the Supervisors the other day for their "courage" in giving themselves raises, I sought back over the years for example of real courage from generations of boards of supervisors. Pinches took a number of lonely stands for common sense, but that's as close as I got, and even Cowboy John's were hardly of the rescue-the-kids-from-the-burning-house courage. Political courage in Mendo is non-existent, with political courage defined here as a position that could cost you your job — in many countries your life.
SUPERVISOR McCOWEN successfully pushed for the funding of a qualified County Museum curator some years ago, but the interim person in charge of the nearly invisible Willits facility, Alison Glassey, diverted funding to Russ and Sylvia Bartley of Fort Bragg, amateur historians who did whatever they did for several years and have since retreated to the Coast. Why Ms. Glassey took no steps to follow through on the hiring of a professional curator remains one of those only in Mendo minor crimes that went unpursued, although when it was belatedly discovered that the funding for the curator position had gone astray, Ms. Glassey was immediately packed off to retirement rather than jail.
EVEN HERE in Amnesia County, where you are whatever you say you are and history starts all over again every morning, if we pay for a County museum why not run it properly, and promote it as the valuable archive of local history that it should be? A real pro might even link it to the history troves at the Held-Poage library and the Grace Hudson, both in Ukiah.
LAST WEEK, the DA was kind enough to take me on a tour of the labyrinthine County Courthouse, including its dusty, ghostly basement where court records all the way back to Mendocino County's sanguineous beginnings are haphazardly stored. The point of the tour was the DA's well thought-out and thoroughly convincing opinion that the present Courthouse can be re-tooled and modernized to become the showcase County centerpiece it once was prior to World War Two for much less than the new Courthouse the judges are pushing for. We agreed that the records should be digitized, scanned for public availability. Scanning technology is radically better all the time, and these records, especially the beautifully handwritten trial summaries rendered wayyyyy prior to typewriters are all a crucial part of the County's history. They've got to be preserved before they crumble into dust.
PERHAPS the most tragic loss in the infamous Fort Bragg Fires of 1987, apart from the highly suspicious death of Kenneth Ricks just before the young man was scheduled to appear before a federal grand jury in San Francisco, was the loss of both the Ten Mile Justice Court's archive and the old Fort Bragg Library's collection of historical documents, old history books and artifacts. The perps, although known, were never prosecuted. The full story can be found at www.theava.com/special-projects.
ON THE OTHER HAND, I THINK Russ and Sylvia Bartley make a strong case for them continuing their work at the County Museum. (See the on-line posting called "Mendocino County Museum: A Threatened Public Trust") Their dismissal seems to be short-sighted, especially given that the County has simply abandoned systematic collecting, archiving and maintenance of the Museum's existing collections. The Bartley's were dismissed along with interim director Alison Glassey, whose fiscal sleight-of-hand annoyed the County CEO's office, but truth to tell it has been the Bartley's diligence that has made the Museum the valuable resource it is. In lieu of a fully qualified museum director, they should be kept on rather than making them pay the price for their association with the dread Glassey. Without skilled, experienced archivists like the Bartleys regularly on-site, history, already a dubious proposition here in Amnesia County, comes to a halt.
SHORT-CHANGING the County Museum as the County's tax-paid leadership awards itself huge raises on the childlike (and false besides) basis that Sonoma County supervisors and higher-ups make a lot more money than Mendo's, is especially annoying, not to say a selfish promotion of themselves to first place in County priorities. The recent raises, by themselves, are more than enough to adequately fund the County Museum. Sonoma County is a lot more to manage than Mendo. Comparisons to it are misleading, not that SoCo's civil apparatus seems any more effective than Mendo's. The leadership, at all levels of government, is defective, seems from here, and won't look very good from the historical perspective but, so long as SoCo is the invoked standard by our grasping supervisors and their bureaucrats, it should be pointed out that SoCo fully supports its museum, recognizing that it's an assumed county responsibility to record what has gone before.
PINCHES to the rescue? The North County cowboy plans to run again for the Third District seat. So far, only a Willits school teacher, John Haschak, and pioneer Laytonville pot farmer, Pam Elizondo, a recreational candidate for forty years, have announced for the Third District seat. We understand that Fifth District supervisor Hamburg is shuffling off for some function with Sonoma County Clean Power whose drums Hamburg has been beating for a couple of years now. We also understand that Carre Brown is retiring while John Sakowicz has announced he will vie for her First District seat. Potter Valley's noble sons of the soil will certainly drum up a candidate as committed to virtually free water from the Potter Valley Diversion as Carre has been all these years; whichever candidate gets the popular Brown's nod is likely to become the next First District supervisor. Without Brown's anointment, poor old Sako is DOA. We keep hearing that Ross Liberty, formerly Ross Head, inland business guy known for reviving the old Masonite premises north of Ukiah may run for the Fifth District seat vacated by Chauncey, er, Hamburg. Liberty, unindicted car bomber Mike Sweeney, and Supervisor John McCowen teamed up to write the winning anti-pot backlash text contained in Measure B, which undid the late Richard "The One True Green" Johnson's Measure G. Measure G was aimed at making marijuana farms a "low law enforcement priority." Both measures passed; both reflected the shifting opinions of County voters who at first seemed to view pot pharming as relatively harmless then, as farms proliferated, gathered behind the antidote written by the three Ukiah caballeros, Sweeney, McCowen and Liberty. The late Johnson, ironically, was more committed to booze than weed, having once been arrested for riding his bike under the influence. Ted Williams, the impressive young family man from Albion best known as chief architect of Measure V, the successful County-wide initiative to curb use of herbicides on timber holdings, is officially running for the 5th District seat.
WE RECEIVED the following note from Mendocino County's famous hill bandit, Trevor Jackson. Trev, as he's known around the ava, was recently packed off to the state pen for a prolonged time-out:
Thank you for sending me a copy of the ava. I am hoping you will forward it to my new address at SQSP, San Quentin, Ca 94974. PS. I have a story to tell about our local law and DA David Eyster, and so I was hoping to get a typewriter and spell check. Would you be interested in printing what I have to say? Guaranteed!! Trevor Jackson, aka Brush Pimp.
We're all ears, Trev.
WE GET THESE indignant calls now and then. This one from an angry woman who started right in, "How would you like it someone called you a scumbag?" I said I've been called worse, and now, at an advanced age, I'm immune to insult. "Huh?" she said. I said I need some context. She said, "You called the men accused of murdering Barbara Stroud, scumbags. It was under truth serum. The confession was thrown out." I asked her to give me her word for five men who rape and murder young women. "Did you ever think that the people you call scumbags might have children?" Did you know that Charles Manson's daughter is a CPA? "What's that have to do with anything?" she said. Nothing, I said. I don't even know if Charles Manson had a daughter, but the point is that none of us is responsible for the crimes of our ancestors. "I want a retraction," she said. You aren't getting it, I said. Barbara Stroud was 19. She wanted her life, and the Willits scumbags strangled her to death. The caller hung up.
ON LINE COMMENT OF THE WEEK
I spent many decades working in the Private Sector where my responsibilities were to “get it done and save money doing it or I will find someone else who will”! We always got it done and earned lots of profits doing it. I work a part-time retirement job for fun for a Non-Profit business where they beg for money, accept donations for write-offs and get some from our services for pay. There is NO cost savings, good money gets thrown after bad, and a total lack of financial abilities is the rule of the day. I am also a member of our local government. Our Committee takes whatever it wants from a population of distracted, disoriented, uncaring taxpayers that are so far over their heads with their complicated and overly complex lifestyles that they simply just shut up and pay. The government laughs and berates the citizens and pisses away more money than a shipload of drunken sailors. My experiences of life over the course of my 63 years living it have proven beyond all doubt that things like money lose value when they do not have to be earned though human effort and the more that is accumulated, the less value they actually have for those that hold it. Unfortunately for humanity right now, the same holds true for human life. There are more than enough people around, perhaps too many, and those who use us all have less and less value for all of us as the population expands. This is a formula for real disaster.
It’s unquestionable that people in positions that require training and education are going to receive less pay in this County than they might in a neighboring one. The most commonly cited example is Sonoma for cops, for social workers, for doctors, what-have-you. I would like to point out that while the pay raise given to the supervisors would not be enough to make a dent in the problem at hand that we have an underfunded social services system in this County. Before supervisors give themselves such a handsome pay raise without much in the way of public discussion, however overdue or not, I would submit that they consider what others might term the poor optics of that occurrence as we review the continued reality of those still-furloughed public service workers who can just as well jump to another County the minute they are trained if they are so inclined. Underpayment for professional qualification is quite simply the price one pays for living in this place. Those who are interested in something else should live elsewhere and get paid more there. There is no reason for this County to go out of its way to pay more than a reasonable living wage for the place in which someone is expected to live, no more.