Mendocino County Today: Monday, April 23, 2018

• Highway One Closed
• Gowan Family Scholarship
• Weekend Adventures
• Parking Meters
• Supe's Race
• Water Storage
• Little Dog
• Budget Workshop
• Hart Analysis
• Thin Air
• Public Employees
• Secret Rajneeshpuram Diary
• Cracked Warriors
• Get Smart
• Water-Saving Ideas

HIGHWAY 1 CLOSED NEAR ALBION

Sunday evening (8:45pm) CHP Dispatch - Ukiah issued the following cryptogram:

HWY 1 AT MM 46.05 IS CLOSED IN CITY OF ALBION DUE TO A TRAFFIC ACCIDENT AND TELEPHONE POLE AND LINES BLKING THE RDWY

UNKN HOW LONG RDWY CLOSED

GIVING BACK: A FAMILY'S LEGACY

by Megan Barber Allende

Alice and Cecil Gowan

The Gowan name is known throughout our region for wonderful local apples and produce, so it does not come as a surprise that the history of Cecil and Alice (nee Studebaker) Gowan's family in Mendocino County is deep and rich. Both sets of Alice's grandparents moved to the Anderson Valley in the 1860's. Notably one of her grandfathers traded sixteen horses for his initial home property in Philo. Cecil's family moved to the Anderson Valley from Shelter Cove in 1902 when Cecil was 13.

Education was important to both families. When Cecil and Alice were growing up, public schools were just being created in the area. In Shelter Cove there were none, so Cecil's parents hired tutors to teach their children. Of this experience, Cecil once remarked, "We studied just like any kids, as little as we could!" In the Valley, Cecil and Alice both attended elementary school at the Shields School, which the community built on property donated by the Studebakers. One of Alice's happy memories was of third grade when she and Cecil would be asked to go together to bring the bucket of drinking water up to the school.

Alice continued her education through 8 or 9 grades, which was all that was available in the Valley. Cecil attended high schools in Cloverdale and Ukiah and obtained a teaching certificate in 1911. His teaching career, however, was short lived since the pay was not adequate to support a family. Later, as a school trustee, he was heard to say, "It is a thankless job and a good way to lose all your friends. If I was to make a choice, I'd choose the teaching!"

The Gowans and their family are known for agriculture. Alice started the roadside fruit stand business by putting fruit next to the oak tree and selling it to passing travelers in the 1930's. Her granddaughter Grace Espinoza currently runs the stand. Cecil began peddling apples, fruits and vegetables in 1922 by taking over his father-in-law's route. He and his son Jim entered into a partnership in 1947. Jim's wife Jo worked with her husband on the ranch for sixty-five years. She recalls that soon after they were married she joined him in the orchards to thin apple and peach trees. In later years they were favorites at local Famers' Markets. "We were always together," Jo says. "We were great companions."

Jo and Grace

For many years the family has administered a scholarship fund for Anderson Valley High School students that Cecil Gowan created in 1978 as a memorial to his wife. Since Jim's death, Grace has helped her mother with the scholarship. Now the family is looking to create a lasting legacy by transferring the scholarship to the Community Foundation. "We want it to continue, and this looks like the best way to keep it going," says Jo.

The Community Foundation will continue to administer the scholarship in keeping with the family's values. Jo says, "Cecil believed that every child should have the opportunity to continue their education. He didn't believe that everyone needed to go to college, but that everyone should have the opportunity. He liked to pick students who didn't have the highest GPA because he knew they might not get as many scholarships. He looked for students who were more in the middle academically but who participated in school activities. Good citizenship was important to him. He said he wanted students who were a part of the school and not just attending the school."

The Community Foundation will work with the Gowan family to find students who meet with the criteria the family has developed. It is a privilege to administer this scholarship on behalf of a family that has done so much for our county.

If you would like to donate, visit the M. Cecil and Alice M. Gowan Memorial Scholarship Fund page communityfound.org/for-donors/donate-today/scholarship-funds/m-cecil-and-alice-m-gowan-memorial-scholarship-fund/

The Gowan Family, 2015

MIKE KOEPF WRITES: "Attended the wild flower exhibition in Boonville yesterday. Learned from a nice lady manning a microscope that a lovely, little flower that grows around my house, and one that I sometime pick to display in a vase, is called a "death camas.” A few bites and it's the hospital or lights out. Later, strolled to the nearby “goat festival” and met supervisor candidate, Ted Williams. Nice, sweet kid, intelligent, idealistic, BUT with strings attached — notably, the nuclear core of looney libs of bygone years who’ve turned this county into their own private, political goat rope, sans regret or introspection. It was nice to meet Micky Colfax and Charlie Acker again hovering close along with so many of the usual suspects off camera from the Mendocino Coast Democratic Club — Norman de Vall, Paul Tichinin, Don Kirkpatrick, Paul Katzeff, Tom Wodetzki. They’re all on board anticipating strings attached to their fair haired lad. If Williams was to win, my only hope is that he owns a pair of scissors and can cut the strings to those engaged in a desperate search for a Hamburg clone.

PS. Last night at R.D. Beacon’s Cocktail Lounge — David Eyster made a fun-filled appearance pressing the flesh with the locals belly-up to the bar. He was wearing a pork-pie hat and Hawaiian style shirt reminiscent of Gene Hackman in the French Connection. Like Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle, Eyster always gives the bad guys exactly what they deserve. As I left, I shook his hand and told him I predicted he’d win his upcoming election by a landslide. The acute DA pointed out that he only needed one vote to win since he’s unopposed. As evidenced by his positive reception at The Beacon Light it’s obvious why he is. Also present was Amy Bloyd, nee Lilliberg, once the Queen bartender of the old Boonville Lodge. However, it was a non-flashing night. In honor of Eyster's visit, Chief Beacon reduced the drinks to “happy hour” prices.

FROM TOMMY WAYNE KRAMER'S must-read Sunday col in the Ukiah Daily Journal:

"I have talked to my share of people about the plans to put 440 (!) parking meters downtown and haven’t found one who thinks it’s a good idea. Of course I haven’t canvassed any city council members yet.

The whole project is designed as a money-maker for the city. No one disputes that. The city has a parking district so it needs money to support its parking district. Ergo, ipso, facto and thus, we need meters.

But what if the city eliminated its parking district? No more expense.

Does anyone think that without a parking district all the parking spaces in Ukiah would sneak off at night and disappear into the hills around Cow Mountain? Would Ukiahans wake up on a Monday morning and be forced to drive out to Redwood Valley where there were still some parking spots, leave their cars and take a shuttle bus back into town?

Politicians and government workers like to strut around and talk about how they’re doing “More with less” as if saving money is a concern held dear. How about this instead: Do less with less."

MAYBE Ukiah ought to put parking meters in the parking lots of the big box stores down by the freeway. The town's beset merchants shouldn't have to also compete with city government on top of the BIG's, but the parking meter scheme is what a town gets when its government is also triple X plus-size. Given the proliferating homeless population and the condition of Ukiah's streets it would seem its government would have other priorities than gouge the ever-smaller population of downtown shoppers.

JUDGING the Supe's race purely by the number of candidate signs in the Anderson Valley, Roderick is wayyyyy out in front. The mighty ava predicts Roderick in a runoff with either Williams or Skyhawk, probably Williams. To beat back either Williams or Skyhawk, Roderick will have to show up in both Albion and Mendocino in tie-dye, or drop a rhetorical “paradigm”' or two at candidate's nights.

THE ACTIVE MENDO DEMOS, of the politically feckless central committee type, are torn between Skyhawk and Williams, so torn the County's Demo Central Committee has announced they won't endorse for the 5th District seat, a seat the Demos assume belongs to them, although the Supervisors, in theory, are a non-partisan body, and also in theory act in the best interests of the whole county. They've endorsed Haschak for 3rd District supe, although judged purely by their prose, Mrs. Haschak would be the more attractive of the two as a supervisor. The ava is for Pinches in the 3rd because he's always been devoted to all of Mendocino County and available to all his constituents. And he has never feared talking back to Mendo's little Deep State, the permanent bureaucracy in Ukiah.

AN INTERESTING FACEBOOK FORUM page maintained by Kathy Wylie and Cathy Wood is available via Facebook. It's eponymously called, I think, Mendocino Fifth District Supervisor Race. Ms. Wood is candidate Williams' step-mom, but from what I see she's maintaining an unbiased, open-to-all page focused strictly on the issues. Ms. Wylie has served as foreman of the County Grand Jury and still is, I think, president of the Mendocino County Federation of School Employees (Classified and Certificated staff).

THE FIVE MEN running for the 5th District represent, by far, the smartest, best informed group of candidates I can remember in any Mendocino County election race over the past fifty years, which isn't saying a whole helluva lot considering…

IN THE COURSE of some candidate talk on use of herbicides and pesticides, Chris Skyhawk made the useful point that "local jurisdictions are not allowed to prohibit the use of herbicides due to pre-emption (where the state takes regulatory powers from local authorities). If we were a Charter County we could take back some of that power."

THAT'S RIGHT, and old timers will recall that Mendocino County people overwhelmingly passed into local law an ordinance prohibiting the aerial application of chemicals following a grisly episode that saw L-P helicopters spray a bunch of kids on Greenwood Road as they waited for a school bus. But then at the state level, Willie Brown, ever attentive to big money interests, and at the behest of Big Ag, hustled into state law a measure that prohibited local jurisdictions from regulating chemically-enhanced agriculture.

SKIP TAUBE nicely summed up the Mendo pesticide situation: "Do you think enforcing Measure V could help reduce the use of poisons in the wine grape industry as well as everywhere; as the reported use of RoundUp (glyphosate) in 2015 was over 18,000# on wine grapes, 7000# of herbicides in the forest, 2000# on pears, etc etc?!!!!!!!!!"

And "that works out to over 1 cup a year for decades for every man, woman & child living and eating and drinking and breathing in Mendocino County (and the animals, plants and fish get what's left after we are long gone). My cup runneth over!"

ANYBODY serving as supervisor ought to have an understanding of inland water issues, especially the precariousness of the entire Diversion system at Potter Valley, and how Mendo gets annually shorted on the income from water piled up in Lake Mendocino, most of which is owned by Sonoma County, an arrangement which, for reasons of major historical blunder, have continued since 1954. Supervisor Pinches couldn't even get his colleagues to talk about re-negotiating that deal when he was supervisor! Anyway, We liked candidate Roderick's response to Ted Williams:

"Ted, Yesterday you asked for clarification regarding my statements about the need for expanding water storage facilities in Mendocino county, specifically within the coastal zone. You framed the questions with the obvious concern of environmental impacts that such projects invariably present. This is true. However, it is now beyond doubt that our environment is changing, rapidly, and that rainfall patterns of the past can not be assumed into the future. We can not wait 30 years and discover that we should have planned for a secure water source for the coastal areas. Cape Town South Africa has learned what it means to not plan for water scarcity, as their "day zero" approaches. Yesterday, April 19, I was the only supervisor candidate from Mendocino county invited to attend an all day tour of the main fork of the Eel River and the diversion system to the Potter Valley irrigation district and power generation facility. I was given access to areas the public does not usually get to see. More importantly, I spent nine hours with hydrologists, river system biologists, water rights experts, representatives from Cal Fish and Wildlife, Cal state Water Resources Control Board, supervisors and council members from our neighboring counties and cities. I was able to ask questions about the future of water storage facilities in our state and our county and what was being done to prepare for changes that are occurring now. Without exception, the group agreed this is an issue that needs action now. Not everyone agreed on how to do it, citing impacts that will occur from any plan that involves water catchment of a scale needed to provide an emergency water storage for thousands of people. My plan involves siting a state size water project within a watershed system of class 2 or higher tributaries, meaning they have no native fish populations. There are multiple sites that qualify under this criteria namely within Jackson State Forest, which is in close proximity to the populations of Fort Bragg and the Mendocino. Nothing will be done to address our water security if the conversation does not begin. Conservation works only if you have actual water to conserve. Individual catchment such as rain harvesting does not provide enough primary supply to be effective, year round. These are the challenges we face as we move forward with this conversation."

LITTLE DOG SAYS, "Almost a week now and no Skrag. I've worked up this poster."

YESTERDAY WE REVIEWED some of the big ticket items the County will be considering at next Tuesday’s “budget workshop” at the Supervisors meeting. The remainder of the workshop topics are:

• Facilities Improvements: Roof Replacement & Repairs ($6.4 million; Capital Facilities Maintenance ($2.3 million), Unspecified “Major Projects” ($2.8 million); Fire-Life Safety/Modernization of Aging Facilities ($1.9 million); Energy Efficiency Retrofitting & Upgrades ($810k). A significant portion of the estimated costs will come from “non-general fund” funding, but it looks like almost $6 million of the estimated facilities cost will come from General Fund dollars. There’s no indication where that would come from, however.
• Fleet Replacement is estimated to cost over $1.1 million, $830k from the General Fund, $600k would be earmarked for the Sheriff’s office.
• The Jail Expansion Project will require $1 million as the County share of the cost, also from General Fund moneys.
• Under “Property Acquisition” the County expects to spend about $850k on the “Orr Street Training Center/Patrol Unit”; some unspecified “courthouse properties,” and a “Measure B Mental Health Facility,” the last two listed without any cost estimate, but are unlikely to occur in the next fiscal year anyway.

Also listed as topics for discussion are “consolidation,” “enterprise development,” “regional approaches,” and “privatization.” Another chart mentions “county-wide employee compensation study.”

• Under “financing options” we find “expenditure reduction,” “reserve utilization,” “debt financing,” a “road tax,” “enterprise development” again, and of course “grants.”
• The presentation concludes with “Recommendations” — primary among them is for the County to “dedicate discretionary revenue to new long-term opeational expenditures: County Disaster Recover and Resiliency Planning,” and “IT Master Plan.”

All of this while “maintaining a 6.35% of General Fund reserve.”

The entire presentation seems skimpy and disorganized especially with the odd inclusion of the pot program info and the passing mention of a possible “road tax.” There’s no clear delineation of priorities (even though that’s mentioned as a “workshop goal”), funding sources, individual departmental priorities, timing, sequencing, and minimal explantion for most of the expenditures. Apparently, the CEO’s office is just throwing a bunch of miscellaneous stuff at the Board of Supervisors and expecting them to blather about it for a while in the feint hope that something useful will come of it. In other words, business as usual.

Our favorite “goal” is the mythical and clumsily worded “identify and measure departmental performance metrics, including the balancing of location-based provision of county services.” Mendo’s been talking about “metrics” for years without doing a single thing about it, not even proposing (much less presenting) routine monthly budget and staff reports from the departments.

But none of this prevented the CEO from introducing the workshop with some ridiculously hyperbolic cliches: “Desperate Times Call for Desparate Measure,” and “The Financial Fate of Mendocino County.” There’s nothing even remotely “desperate” in the budget workshop presentation. But if Mendo’s “financial fate” is in the hands of these people it certainly will become desperate soon.

* * *

IN A RELATED non-development, we note the conspicuous absence of County management, metrics and reporting from the many Third and Fifth District candidate forums and interviews, in favor of the usual, bland pronouncements and ideas that never go anywhere because, despite the bloated CEO’s office staff, the County has no mechanism to get such important topics — housing, post-industrial jobs at living wages, water, grapes, wind fan nuisances (ok, that one hasn’t even been discussed by any of the candidates), county contracting policy and local-source preference — on the agenda each meeting and then push them into implementation.

TAKE AFFORDABLE HOUSING, for one glaring example. Some interesting ideas and proposals have popped up from candidates and some of their supporters. But unless the Board puts somebody in charge of gathering them, organizing them and pushing them every month until completion, they are nothing but the usual hot air.

* * *

ON THE OTHER HAND, the $27 million jail expansion project is pretty well planned out already with a schedule that calls for work to begin in 2021 and be completed by August of 2022.

MENDO 844 Milestone Sched 20180418

* * *

TYPICAL OF THE SLOPPINESS of the budget information is item 4f on the consent calendar which calls for “Transfer of Funds from Budget Unit 2810, Line Item 862189 in the Amount of $114,016 to Budget Unit 2810, Line Items, 861011, 861021, 861022, 861023, 861024, 861030, 861012, 862060, 862230 and 862239 to Fund Key Personnel, Technology Improvements and Supplies for the Cannabis Unit.” But the text of the Auditor’s memo summarizing these transfers says, “On March 13, 2018, the Board of Supervisors approved the creation of the Cannabis Management Budget Unit and allocated $150,000 for FY 2017-18.”

Which leaves almost $36k unexplained and unaccounted for, nor does it explain how the budget units being drawn from will deal with the corresponding reductions.

HART FAMILY: ANALYSIS (1):

Bleep those two women. And pretty much bleep everybody who was close enough to call an end to their shamily antics but didn’t. I’ve known liberal festival-going whites my whole life. They are some of the weakest people. If they see something abusive they tend to ignore it or go to another camp so they don’t have to see it. “Who are we to judge anybody?” And “karma will get them” are the weak excuses that hippies and liberals use every day to walk away from bad situations instead of stepping up and doing something. So it’s no wonder that nobody intervened for the children. These bitches ran them through the exact crowds that would never question or notice or care enough. “Let’s all be positive in our fairy fantasies everybody!” And then a carload of children goes off the cliff. Awesome job. And the neighbors? They called Child Protective Services? Big deal. A teenage girl shows up in the middle of the night and says you need to protect her and what- you send her home?! That girl would be living in my spare room until I got to the bottom of that shit. I’d hope everybody reading this would do the same thing- protect her. Step up…WTF is wrong with us?!

HART FAMILY: ANALYSIS (2): Because as horrible as this whole thing is, nothing is simple. Sociopaths are very plausible people. And children, teenagers especially, can emotionally derail without much cause. I can remember a sister screaming at my mother, saying “I hate you” because my mother stopped her from doing something risky. Then these people moved around so that no one could sort it it out. People who have not had much experience would be confused about what needed doing and would find themselves questioning themselves about their own feelings. Yet some people tried anyway to do what they thought was right to no avail. There are few roadmaps on how to behave in extraordinary situations… And then there is the ridiculous social agendas that pervade right now. So many people looking to be a victim and noisily blaming. Even now, with the whole situation raising so many questions, way too many here can’t sort out reality from fictions in conflicting claims of being a victim and attack those who would question. I imagine these poor children themselves were conflicted between wanting some security, sometimes getting it, sometimes not and the reality of being placed where they were. … Those who have been subjected to abuse in such cases may very well have seen the ominous signs but the rest of us would have mostly been confused and afraid of doing harm. I’m sorry that we are not so good at it and don’t understand. And I’m sorry for those who bear and bare the scars of that are still not heard.

CATCH OF THE DAY, April 22, 2018

(Unavailable due to “Server Error in '/NewWorld.Aegis.WebPortal' Application

DO THE MATH

Editor:

Climate change. Before the left and right begin gnashing their teeth and pointing fingers, I’ll ask them to examine our situation from the perspective of simple math. We’ve all seen the pictures from space of our planet, 8,000-plus miles in diameter. We learned in elementary school about our atmosphere, mostly nitrogen, and that plants on the surface take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen, blah, blah, blah. Sorry, I don’t want to put anyone to sleep.

A common mistake is calling our atmosphere an “ocean of air.” When we look up we see an endless sky, when we look down from an airplane we see clouds and the curve of our planet. In fact, our breathable oxygen starts to diminish at about 10,000 feet.

Imagine our Earth shrunk to the size of a schoolhouse globe, to keep things to scale, the breathable oxygen layer that we depend on for, well, everything is now the thickness of a coat of varnish: four-thousandths of an inch. That doesn’t sound much like an “ocean” of anything. It sounds more like a side-effect of photosynthesis than an ecosystem.

So, there you have it. Do the math, you will be tested on this.

Dan Bates

Santa Rosa

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

The American Dream has never been to be a public sector employee. If they actually taught kids how to think instead of what to think they might have a legitimate gripe but the fact is our school systems are overloaded with high paid administrators and the State Govt.'s are pretty much bankrupt because of insane pension obligations. Perhaps they should form a working group to figure out how to get blood out of a stone.

MYSTERY DIARY OF RAJNEESH SECRETS DISCOVERED IN LOCKED FILE CABINET FROM COMMUNE

For a full year, the teenager from Terrebonne devoted at least 15 minutes each day fiddling with the lock on a black file cabinet stored in the back corner of his father’s workshop.

s.oregonlive.com/EmS3X8O

APRIL 22 1943: Rufus H. Kimball, chairman of the public health section of the Commonwealth Club, using a paper, “Nerves and the Military” written by Dr. Joseph Caton, San Francisco psychiatrist, as his source, said that weeding out the mentally unfit is one of the hardest tasks confronting draft officials today. “Modern war is a pretty tough proposition for even the hardest young men,” Kimball explained. “If you train a boy from infancy to the first 20 years of his life by Christian precept and example, if you foster him on kindness and gentleness and then turn him back to savagery and fill him with bloodlust, what is likely to happen? In far too many cases he cracks under the strain.” Other speakers told the group that from 20 to 40% of American casualties are mental cases.

(SF Chronicle)

SORRY ABOUT THAT, CHIEF

Editor,

It occurs to me that there are many similarities between the Trump administration and the old TV show “Get Smart.” Doesn’t EPA chief Scott Pruitt’s $45,000 private phone booth sound eerily similar to the Cone of Silence? Donald Trump himself can easily be described as the evil organization KAOS, with his unending turmoil in the White House. And his tweets sometimes sound like they start with the tagline, “Would you believe…”

I can even see the title of the show being “Get, like, really Smart!”

Tom Rudolph

Brisbane

SAVE WATER TIPS

Editor,

Walking by the reservoir and seeing the water levels rising but half full, I wanted to share some water-saving ideas.

A) Last year, we composted our organic kitchen scraps directly in our vegetable bed, burying each bit on a daily basis. Thereafter, we top dressed with a thick bed of leaves, 18 inches or 2 feet thick. The leaves cooked down, forming a fruit leather-like seal. The beautifully sweet smelling, coffee grounds-black soil thereafter was light, crumbly (our soil is clay). After the unusually heavy rains last year, given the seal from the leaves and the moisture-retaining composted soil, I did not have to water for three months. To replace soil nitrogen, plant legumes, lupines, borage (which the bees just love) and other nitrogen-fixing plants, use fish emulsion or other nitrogen-rich fertilizer. (To protect the bees, I hereby plead with the public to consider not using glyphosate or pesticides, and purchase pesticide-free food. The bees need every health boost they can get!)

B) We have no need to blast the water at full pressure when washing the dishes, and no need to keep the water running. I turn it on to about half pressure, then I stop after only a small amount of water has gathered on each dish, to scrub with the water turned off. Use the clear rinse water to start washing the next dish.

C) In the shower, turn off the water when lathering or soaping.

We can save water while making very few sacrifices! I just wanted to pass this on.

Drina Brooke

Novato