County Notes

THE UNSPOKEN THEME of Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting was Ignore All  Representatives of all advisory boards — the Behavioral Health Advisory Board, the Library Board, the Museum Board, the cannabis permit “working groups.” Pot permit stalwart Ron Harris, who shows up at nearly every Board meeting where he patiently tries to take the Supes seriously, seemed to capture the general tone with his plaintive, “How do we get answers to our questions?”

TO WHICH, of course, the Supervisors and the CEO stared back at Harris as if they hadn't heard the question.

FARM BUREAU rep Devon Jones said that it seemed like almost everyone who’s trying to participate in local government is suffering from “meeting fatigue.”

SUPERVISOR JOHN McCOWEN seemed to agree while he again volunteered to sit on yet another pot “ad hoc committee” because “people have hit a wall despite their best efforts.”

McCowen doesn't seem to realize he's a vital part of The Wall.

THE DEEPER THEME however, was that CEO Angelo, who really runs things — most especially the Board itself — has no use for all these advisory boards and committees and working groups and their reports euphemized as "work product.” By turn, the advisory groups are increasingly frustrated with the Supes and their puppeteer, Angelo.

THE LIBRARY ADVISORY BOARD, chaired by a clearly frustrated Marc Comer, has become so “sour” (in Supervisor Dan Gjerde’s description; it's never anything to do with the Supervisors or their CEO) that Comer finally managed to provoke the Supervisors into a response regarding his pointed refusal to get on board the proposed Cultural Services Agency train. Angelo and her 5-0's propose to combine the library, the unvisited county museum and county parks into one agency (which Comer and the Library Advisory Board are adamantly opposed to. The 5-0's were so annoyed with Comer they voted to reject his report to them, the first time in our memory the Supervisors have ever done that.

CEO ANGELO’S “Soft hiring freeze” — which Supervisor John McCowen had previously insisted be agendized for reconsideration — was postponed on the recommendation of CEO Angelo for one quarter, while admitting that her “balanced” budget really isn’t — not even close.

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WE WERE BRIEFLY HOPEFUL when Supervisor McCowen pulled the consent calendar automatic item giving County Counsel Kit Elliott a large, unexplained salary increase, saying it was an item from closed session and that he disagreed with it. But McCowen declined to explain why he pulled the item or why he disagreed with the raise, leaving the public to wonder: why bother? The rest of the Board quickly and sheepishly voted to award Elliot her big gift of public funds over McCowen’s perfunctory objection without comment or discussion.

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THERE’S A BIT OF A CONTRADICTION in the statements coming out of the Board of Supervisors and the Measure B Advisory Committee. On the one hand, they talk about how no decision has been made on the conversion of the Old Howard Hospital into a locked Psychiatric Health Facility (PHF) and the objections outlined in a unanimous Willits City Council resolution are premature or incorrect. But on the other Sheriff Allman, Chair of the Measure B Advisory Committee, repeated several times at last Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting that he wants to “fast-track” the Kemper report in the obvious hope that Howard Hospital will be converted into a PHF.

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WE WERE MILDLY SURPRISED to see Mendo’s newly hired Ag Commissioner, Harindar Grewal, giving the pot permit status report at last Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting. The pot program started in the Ag Department last year, and has now gone through Diane Curry, Joe Moreo and Kelly Overton in a matter of months. Mr. Grewal is now in the pot dock.

RON EDWARDS of Willits pointed out that the County’s eight — eight! — pot working groups are still “working.” CEO Carmel Angelo was worried that adding an ad hoc committee to the working groups would make it hard to provide staff support. A little later Edwards said the working groups weren’t working very well because attendance was poor. Edwards also asked, “How do we as the public get our questions answered? We are watching our cannabis program but we really don't know what the state of it is and we don't know what's going on. We have a director that left. Are we supposed to get all our information through public requests? How do we get the information out of you?”

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LOOKING BACK over Mendo’s utterly failed pot policy, the disaster began when the Feds made Mendo drop its entirely reasonable 9.31 program, the corpse of which would have made a simple model for a new local program instead of the ad hoc mess we now have.

LEAD BY Supervisor John McCowen, the Captain Ahab of local pot rules, it was his single-minded insistence that the Board of Supervisors themselves concoct the rules into a morass of eternal unworkability. Not only does Mendo have an unworkable pot permit framework, but it now requires the full Board itself to continually revisit the mess to tinker with it, much like the 3am tweaker returns to the carburetor he's dismantled and reassembled for a week, each time forgetting which part goes where.

IF MENDO had taken the lead of other pot-based counties they would have turned over the task of developing the rules over to the Planning Commission and staff where there was at least an outside chance that a coherent program might emerge. Or they could have even let the pot people — the ones who want to go legal anyway, the ones who keep trying to help — draft the rules under the supervision of the Planning Commission. (Whatever you want to say about the small cadre of pot people now trying to go legit, they’re smart and want to create a local legalization that will work. The Supes would of course retain veto power.)

WORSE though, is the effect endless discussion of failed pot policy has had on everything else the Board has to deal with. Whether it’s housing, mental health, perennial staff shortages, juvenile hall, the budget deficit, dilapidated roads, deteriorating county-owned buildings, the new courthouse and horrible local impact, the Exclusive Operating Area (for inland ambulance service) process that’s been stalled for years now, the fire recovery effort (and associated loss of property taxes), the mythical “metrics” (instead of ordinary management reports), and so on — whatever attention those and many other subjects may have needed from the Board has been drained away by the endless revisiting of their unsalvageable wreck of a pot permit program.

IT ALSO MEANS that CEO Carmel Angelo has assumed the role of the Board, making major decision after major decision on her own while she lets the Supes drone on about pot permits and other irrelevancies, knowing that as long as the Board spins its wheels in the sand of their failed pot program, they don't’ interfere with her own unaccountable private agenda (which mostly has to do with looking good to the outside financial auditors and rating agencies, not serving the public).

IF THE TWO NEW SUPES, Ted Williams and either Pinches or Haschak, do nothing else, they need to re-take control of the County from Angelo and get the pot permit program off their backs.