Supes Notes

WE NOTED this pointed sentence in the Library Advisory Board’s report to the Supes on next week’s Board of Supervisors agenda: “Apparently the County was unaware until last year that the Museum had a problem with its director, staff morale and a deteriorating collection.” 

THE LAB repeats their opposition to combining the Library with the Museum and Parks functions by saying, “In order for the Museum to thrive it needs a fulltime dedicated and experienced director to actively safeguard its collection, plan new exhibits, prepare publicity and supervise staff. The proposed Cultural Services Agency (CSA) with a 10-25% director would abolish the validity of the Museum as a County Department and forfeit its ability to shape itself as a tourist and public entity.”

(WITH THE CASUAL cruelty our boorish leadership is famous for, Russ and Sylvia Bartley's request to stay on at the Museum was simply ignored. They brought a knowledge and sophistication to the collection work the County is unlikely to see again.)

THE LIBRARY ADVISORY BOARD also says that “the County has improperly charged the Library for A-87 reimbursement on fully depreciated equipment. The Fort Bragg Branch insurance funded facility and the Willits Branch’s grant funded facility are two examples of improper charges to the Library. It took two Grand Jury Reports and two years for the County to refund $24,000 for building use charges and $31,000 for equipment charges to the Fort Bragg and Willits branches. Additionally, the County refuses to even consider that the Library Director’s salary should be paid by the County as explicitly stated in the Education Code. Prior to the passage of Measure A, the Board of Supervisors considered closing the Willits Branch and the Bookmobile. The Library had no budget for materials. The branches were open only three days per week. Measure A, approved by 75% of the voters, reversed this dire condition.”

THE ABOVE CRITICISM of the County’s bad management by the Library Advisory Board is what annoyed the Supervisors the last time the combined agency was discussed, with Supervisor McCowen accusing the Library people of spreading disinformation and hurting their own chances of renewing the 2011 Measure A Library sales tax increment which sunsets in a few years.

THE LAB adds, “It is likely that what the CEO means by [the combined agency] will have ‘greater access [to] shared resources’ is that the Museum and Parks will have the potential to utilize Library funds through ambiguous accounting and unspecified co-mingled costs of admin and A-87 expenditures. The County’s opaque accounting practices, past attempts to inaccurately assess A-87 charges and refusal to consider following state law regarding the proper source of the Director’s salary are reasons to doubt the intentions of the County in its attempt to combine the Library with the Museum and Parks into an agency.”

OH BOY. This is impressively blunt. The Library Advisory Board doesn't trust the CEO or the Board's frequent assertions that the Library won't be affected by the consolidation. These borderline mutinous statements (bureaucratically speaking, of course) clearly won’t sit well with the famously vindictive CEO Angelo and her lockstep Board, which is already on record as resenting the Library people's "griping" and has unanimously (of course) approved the consolidation of the Library with the Museum and Parks functions. Tuesday’s discussion of the LAB’s report should be very interesting.

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ALSO ON TUESDAY’S BOARD of Supervisors Agenda is what seems to us like a rather obvious conflict of interest, not that anyone in Official Mendo is likely to care. After all, Official Mendo had no problem with a former Ortner employing steering millions of dollars in privatized Mental Health dollars to his old employer in Marysville. Under “recommended appointments” for the Health and Human Services Advisory Board is: “Ms. Camille Schrader” to be appointed to the HHSA Board’s “Children System of Care” position. OK, she’s “qualified” for the position, but her role as Mendo’s biggest HHSA contractor should disqualify her for any position with influence over the agency which she contracts for (to the tune of over $25 million a year approved on the consent calendar). Besides that, it looks bad. 

ANOTHER ANNOYING APPOINTMENT is Supervisor Dan Hamburg’s re-appointment of Third (not Fifth) District resident Marilyn Harden of Willits to the Civil Service Commission. Yes, I am choking back black bile. 

BACK IN 2010 when Dan Hamburg was first running for Supervisor he assured me that he would appoint me to the Civil Service Commission which was established in the early 60s by my uncle, Supervisor Joe Scaramella, who also wrote Mendo's first civil service rules to try to ensure fairness in County employment. A few weeks after he was elected Hamburg notified me that he’d changed his mind and was going with Colfax’s old appointment, Ms. Harden, who also happened to be the Willits City Clerk and Human Resources Manager (since retired), an insider with a record of rubberstamping everything the County’s Human Resources department puts on the agenda. 

HARDEN'S current re-appointment notes that the County is waiving the requirement that she live in the Fifth District, which is also interesting because back when I applied for the Civil Service Commission, then-Supervisor John Pinches told me he’d appoint me but was told that he couldn’t because I didn’t live in the Third District. 

I HAVE LONG suspected that the Civil Service Commission not only doesn’t question anything Mendocino County HR requests, but they don’t follow the Brown Act in their agendas so that it’s impossible to tell what kinds of personnel actions are coming to them and impossible for members of the public to participate in any meaningful way. (Go ahead, try to look up their agendas on-line. One we found at random actually says: “The County is committed to making its Commission meetings accessible to all citizens.” Hah!)