Mendocino County Today: Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018

• Rain Perhaps
• Maurice Turner
• BOS Fatigue
• Budget Info
• Pinches Endorsement
• Poachers Sentenced
• Deer Tracking
• Quizmaster Returneth
• Religious Regret
• Library Rejection
• Heritage
• Drought Resistance
• Social Security
• Yorkville Eats
• B Agenda
• Tucker Tired
• Cyclist Hit
• Yesterday's Catch
• Salad U
• Failed State
• Many Violins
• Time Splat
• Proposition Recommendations
• Tax Deficit
• Cannabis Meeting
• Bee Stings
• Honduran Migrants

RAIN NEXT WEEK

There is the potential for rain next week, perhaps Monday night or Tuesday. This Climate Prediction Center graphic shows the probability of above or below normal rainfall for the week starting October 22nd. Confidence is low on the timing, but it is starting to look like there will be a pattern shift.

For more information visit www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov.

(National Weather Service, Eureka)

MAURICE TURNER

Maurice William Turner was born on June 24 in Pe Ell, Washington to Eva and William Turner. Maury was the seventh of seven children and was 10 minutes younger than his twin sister Marian.

Maury graduated from Pe Ell high school in 1940 where he was a member of the high school band. He played the baritone horn and drums and was also a member of the marching band. The band played at many social events

Maury was broiught up with his family, his father was away most of the time working in logging camps as a timber faller and saw filer. Maury was very close to his twin sister and used to take her to the movies on his Cadillac bicycle.

During high school Maury learned how to pick ferns which provided him with necessary finances for purchasing clothes and other items. He picked ferns with his sister Marian and two nephews. Together they purchased a model I Ford pickup for $10. Nephew's Billy and Boyd Tyler each pitched in $3.33 and Maury, the big spender, pitched in $3.34. In those days gasoline was 10¢ a gallon. On some of those steep hills the Ford had to climb in reverse because the gas input was gravity flow.

Pe Ell was a very small town; however one of Maury's favorite stores was a small candy shop owned by an elderly widow named Mrs. Brane. Candy bars were available for 1¢. In those days people would stoop to pick up a penny.

After high school it was very difficult to get a job because of the Great Depression. Maury was fortunate to get a job working with his brother-in-law Jess, who told them Maury was an experienced logger. “It was a good thing that we didn't have to furnish resumes in those days,” said Maury. Later more he got a job working for the Aloha Logging company on the northwestern peninsula in the state of Washington. Maury worked as a whistle punk, choker setter, rigging slinger and spar pole rigger. In his new endeavor more he had to learn a new lohger language which included words that were not very nice. Also he learned how to chew tobacco like all the other loggers.

During this period of time Maury played drums in the Turner family dance orchestra. “We played at most of the dance halls in Lewis County, Washington,” said Maury. Maury used to hate playing the drums while all the other people were having fun on the dance floor. During those years more he purchased a new 1942 Studebaker, one of the most beautiful and efficient vehicles he ever owned.

In 1942 more he enlisted in the United States Navy. For a short time he was stationed at Pasco, Washington on a Naval air base. During this time he was trained in mechanics and worked on Steerman biplane. Later he was transferred to the Bremerton Washington shipyards and was assigned duty on a sea-plance tender named the Hamlin as a machinist’s mate third class. His duties were working on a 28 foot Bowser boat changing oil, fueling and working on PBM aircraft which were tied up to bouys alongside the Hamlin.

From Bremerton the Hamlin sailed to Alameda, then on to Long Beach, California, then to the Hawaiian Islands at Pearl Harbor and Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands. “In September of 1944 we dropped anchor at the island of Saipan,” said Maury. “From that time we saw many acts of combat on islands such as Guam, Ulithi, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and Kerama Rhetto where we were notified that the war with Japan was over. From Kerama Rhetto our ship traveled with the United States Third Fleet into Tokyo Bay where the peace treaty with General Macarthur was signed.” Maury left the Hamlin in Tokyo Bay early for the United States on a hospital ship and was discharged from the Navy at a naval base in San Francisco Bay as a machinist’s mate second class at Christmas time in 1945.

On January 1, 1946 Maury met a beautiful girl named Bernadine Thoresen at a New Year’s Eve dance. Bernadine tried to arrange a trip back to her home for the Christmas vacation but all travel accommodations were filled because so many servicepeople were returning from the war. Maury believed that the Lord was making arrangements for their meeting. In June 1946 after teaching school was over Bernadine returned to her home in Voltaire, North Dakota. On the first week of July Maury and his father motored to Voltaire and Maury and Bernadine were married on July 14, 1946. On their honeymoon Maury and Bernadine motored back to Olympia, Washington visiting Yellowstone National Park on the way. Maury took advantage of a government-sponsored training program in data processing, attended Harvard Business College, and Bernadine took a position teaching school at Boston Harbor, a suburb of Olympia. During this period of time Maury built a bungalow type house on the Boston Harbor Road.

After the training program was completed Maury received employment from the department of motor vehicles in Olympia as a programmer analyst. Maury designed the procedure for billing motor vehicle licenses on an IBM 650 computer in 1950. The IBM 650 was the first large-scale computer modified to handle commercial applications. Before that time it was only used for scientific research. Chips were not yet invented so it had a magnetic drum which was not very efficient. Program instructions had to be optimized for better efficiency. The system still used IBM punch cards and was so large that a large hole had to be cut in the wall to get it into the building. A dot matrix printer was also very large and cost between $6,000 and $9,000.

During the three years in Olympia, Maury and Bernadine were blessed with three children — Maureen, Thomas and Timothy. Bernadine taught third grade in Tumwater.

In 1959 Maury accepted a position as data processing analyst with Bechtel Corp. The Turner family moved to South San Francisco. They joined Our Redeemer Lutheran Church. Maury and Bernadine taught Sunday school classes and Bernadine lead the junior choir. Maury modified the accounting system from a punch card to an IBM 1401 computer system. Maury also designed scheduling and accounting systems or jobsites and Bechtel area offices. Later Maury received a promotion to manager of administrative services which included personnel, procurement, accounting, budget and statistics departments.

In 1965 they moved to Concord, California from where they invested in a 40 acre parcel of redwoods in 1967. Later that same year they moved to Santa Rosa. Maury, Bernadine and their son Tim built a cabin in the redwoods where they spent weekends. Lumber for the cabin mostly came from an old house which they tore down in Port Chicago.

Maury retired from Bechtel in 1982. After that they did a lot of traveling in the United States, vacationing in Canada and Hawaii. The trip to Hawaii was a 50th anniversary present from their three children.

After Maury retired in the redwoods, “we built a house, three reservoirs and establish an orchard, berries, grapes and a vegetable garden,” said Maury. Maury purchased a dump truck, a bulldozer, and other equipment which aided in establishing the improvements on the 40 acres. “In 2002 we realized that the country was too isolated and too far from doctors because of our senior age so we sold our dream home and moved to Vacaville.”

A graveside ceremony at the Evergreen Cemetery in Boonville will be held on Monday, October 29 at 2pm.

THERE WAS NO PUBLIC COMMENT on any of the usual hot topics at Tuesday’s Board meeting. Several supervisors expressed mild surprise at the lack of public comment particularly on the appearance of Mental Health consultant Lee Kemper who told the Board that they need to deal more with early intervention and outreach before they make a final decision on where and how big a Psychiatric Health Facility should be, and that the County should solicit bids from local hospitals for mental health facilities and services before doing any remodeling of the Old Howard Hospital.

THE BOARD also expressed surprise at the lack of public comment on the pot permit program status report which, as we reported last week, is not moving very fast, even though more irrelevant tweaks are on the table. At the end of the pot permit program rundown, dumbfounded board chair Dan Hamburg openly wondered, “Where are our regulars?”

BUT THERE SHOULD BE NO SURPRISE. The Board steadfastly stonewalls every question from the public, not even asking staff to come back later with replies to questions the public has which relate to questions the Supervisors themselves have already asked about. So “the public” — or that portion which is willing to sit through hours of irrelevant proclamations, tedious process debates, needless staff presentations designed to minimize discussion of real issues, only to get an incourteous “Thank you,” followed by going into closed session for who knows how long — may finally be realizing that the more the taxpayer these people claim as “salary,” the less they feel the need to deal with the public at all.

BUDGET INFO/STATUS REQUEST

October 17, 2018

Dear CEO Angelo and Supervisors,

In the last few months, several significant budget issues have arisen and have been discussed to some extent in various Board meetings. But most of those discussions produced more questions than answers. Since they were originally raised there has been very little follow-up or reporting on the following problematic issues:

Juvenile budget deficit: The food program has been streamlined, but the amount saved does not seem enough to bring their budget into alignment.

Sheriff’s Department Overtime. After first cutting the budget to $300k even though last year’s allocation was about $1.6 million, the CEO and staff promised to follow the budget closely and report monthly. But there has been only one “report” since then which said that after only a couple of months, 45% of the budget had been expended, much of that for disaster/fire response. We understand that due to increased recruiting, Sheriff’s Office OT has increased on top of that initial spurt associated with the Ranch and River fire responses.

Property values and assessments are down due to the 2017 fires and, reportedly, because cannabis growers are having financial difficulties.

The cannabis program has several new staffers both in admin and in code enforcement, but the permit program appears to have stalled. Yet the size of the cannabis program budget deficit for 2017/18 has not been reported or estimated.

Cannabis sales, both legal and illegal seem to be way down due to the drop in prices and difficulties getting permits for transportation and sale. This would have a negative impact on overall sales tax revenues which have so far not been estimated or reported.

Many top officials and the Supervisors have received significant pay raises but at no time was the current or out-year budget impact of these raises publicized nor has the cumulative amount been reported or the extent to which the budget in the CEO, Supervisors or Department Head Bargaining Unit has been exceeded.

Accordingly, since no one else seems interested in these looming budget challenges which have already been noted but not addressed in any board meeting, I hereby request an update on the budget status of the following:

Sheriff’s Overtime: Budget and actual to date plus projections for end of Fiscal Year on June 30.

Cannabis program (including code enforcement) budget and actual, plus projections for end of Fiscal Year on June 30.

Juvenile Hall: Budget and actual to date plus projections for end of Fiscal Year on June 30.

Sales tax revenues: budget and actual so far plus projections for end of Fiscal Year on June 30.

Property tax revenues: Budget and actual to date plus projections for end of Fiscal Year on June 30.

Pay raise budget impact for Supervisors, CEO and CEO staff, and Department heads in calendar 2018, Plus Budget and actual to date and projections for end of Fiscal Year on June 30. And for this item, budget projections for next fiscal year (July 2019-June 2020.

Since these subjects have already been raised by the Board or the CEO in recent months, there should be no objection to at least providing the budget status. However, if no response is forthcoming in the next two weeks, I will reformat this request as an official California Public Records Act request if necessary. Given that all of these items are matters of ongoing concern to the County and its officials, such action should not be required.

Further, I would hope that the CEO’s office would report on these (and other departments) items on a monthly basis as promised in the CEO report of August 21, 2018 under Budget Report.

Thank you.

Mark Scaramella, Boonville

895-3016

CC: Supervisors Gjerde, McCowen, Hamburg, Brown, and Croskey.

PINCHES: COMMITTED TO MENDO

Editor:

Vote for John Pinches.

When I was working on the Willis City Council I worked with John Pinches on many different occasions. He is a hard worker who always listens to views from all sides. He knows the procedures and laws to foster positive progress. He is especially proactive and thorough in matters of infrastructure. He was instrumental on projects such as the Willits bypass realignment for the Brooktrails/Highway 101 intersection. This will make the intersection much safer and move traffic through more efficiently. The current lack of an alternate access into and exit from Brooktrails is one of his primary concerns. John is committed to making the solution to this problem one of his primary projects.

John implemented the Eastside Pine Mountain Bridge project and many others throughout Mendocino County. He is committed to maintaining repair of the more than 1000 miles of county roads in Mendocino County which are in constant need of repair as well as ensuring that the citizens of Mendocino County have an ample supply of clean water.

John Pinches has always had a detailed knowledge of the county budget, finding large sums of money that others had overlooked. In my opinion, John Pinches has the knowledge, energy and commonsense needed to move our county in a positive and prosperous direction. Please join me in voting for John Pinches for Third District supervisor.

Thank you,

Victor Z. Hansen

Willits

COAST SUCCULENT POACHERS SENTENCED

UKIAH - Two men convicted of poaching for profit native succulents that grow wild on the bluffs of the Mendocino coast were sentenced Wednesday to suspended prison in the Mendocino County Superior Court.

Minguk Cho, age 27, of South Korea, and Hyeongjae Kim, age 39, of South Korea, were each convicted of grand theft of property valued at greater than $950, a felony.

Following a sentence bargain negotiated and agreed to by the parties, each defendant was sentenced to 24 months in prison, said prison sentenced being suspended pending successful completion of 36 months of formal probation.

As part of the sentence and in addition to court fines and fees, the defendants were required to pay – and did pay -- $10,000 each to the California Fish and Wildlife for habitat restoration. The defendants were also ordered to exit the United States within 48 hours and not return unless their immigration status allows one or both to do so legally. It is anticipated that each defendant will be denied re-entry due to their new felony theft convictions.

These defendants were caught in March 2018 in the area between Point Arena and Anchor Bay with 30 moving boxes of native succulents known as Dudleya Farinosa. An inventory of the boxes revealed 850 rooted plants with 1,400 rosettes. Together, the plants stolen weighed between 600 and 700 pounds.

The two poachers also had with them paperwork for vendors all over the world. According the investigator, “These people are global exotic plant vendors. I’d guess they’re not just in dudleyas but carnivorous plants deep in the jungle in Sumatra.” The local plants can sell to collectors overseas starting at $50 each and going up from there.

The plants targeted by these poachers are also known as “bluff lettuce”, “powdery liveforever” (owing to the leaves’ dusty appearance) or simply “liveforever.” The squat plants boast a geometric beauty reminiscent to some of the blossom of a lotus flower. In bloom, they sprout stalks, decked in clusters of small yellow flowers.

The prosecutors handling this case were District Attorney David Eyster and Deputy District Attorney Tim Stoen. The investigating law enforcement agency was the California Fish and Wildlife, with a special nod going to the arresting officer, Warden Patrick Freeling.

The judge who imposed sentencing today was Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Ann Moorman.

DEER & THE RIVER FIRE

Below is press release regarding what we had learned from deer movement during the River Fire from one of the key researchers involved in that project, Alex McInturff (Brashares Lab, UC Berkeley Environmental Science Policy and Management).

Hannah Bird
Community Educator
Hopland Research & Extension Center

* * *

In 2015, staff at the Hopland Research and Extension Center held their breath as they saw the smoke of the Valley Fire curling over the summit ridge of the Mayacama mountains. Two years later, wildlife scientists halted operations for a week as a ring of fires encircled the Center, pouring smoke into the valleys and ravines and turning the sun a blurry, violent red. This year, as the largest fire in California’s history raged, it was only the heroic efforts of CalFire, center staff, and neighbors that kept the center’s homes and headquarters from the flames.

While employees living at the research station are thankful to have kept their homes, the wildlife inhabiting the burned area on the research station have witnessed dramatic changes to theirs. For herbivores like black-tailed deer, losing habitat is like losing a home, grocery store, restaurants, gas station – the whole neighborhood. Tragically, for many human victims of the fire, this is analogy is a reality known all too well. Many are familiar with the vital support, recovery, and rebuilding efforts for people whose lives have been lost or permanently changed by the fires. However, across the more than 400,000 acres burned by the Mendocino Complex fire, and the millions of acres torched by other megafires in California in recent years, we have a surprisingly poor understanding of just what happens to the inhabiting wildlife. What does a deer do when its neighborhood burns?

There is a silver lining for wildlife ecologists at the Hopland Research and Extension Center, who now have the rare opportunity to peer into the changes in the wildlife community after a fire. A research group at UC Berkeley has been tracking black-tailed deer at the Hopland Research and Extension Center for more than two years using GPS “collars.” These devices transmit a geographic location – a latitude and longitude – once every hour. From this information, scientists can determine a great deal about a deer’s behavior and habitat use, and, in the wake of a grand natural experiment like a megafire, these devices present an incredible opportunity for discovery.

While data is still being collected in the aftermath of the fire, a few findings are clear. The most surprising finding is that the GPS collars are revealing little in the way of change in where the deer are going. It turns out, when their neighborhoods burn, they don’t leave. A few animals in the study traced clear paths away from the fire, but for many deer, if they fled the fire at all, they were back in the space of an hour before their flight was detected by the tracking collar.

Female black-tailed deer in Hopland spend their time in surprisingly small areas called home ranges. Unlike migratory deer in the Sierras, the black-tailed deer in the coast ranges spend the vast majority of their lives circling a home range with a radius of about a mile. After a fire, scientists expected home ranges to expand as deer scoured the scorched earth for scant forage. While their ranges have expanded slightly, the change has been smaller than expected, and it remains a mystery what the deer are surviving on.

Other questions remain open as well. Do the puzzlingly small changes in deer behavior and movement revealed by tracking collars mean that they really are back to business as usual? It may be that hourly data points are hiding a new set of behaviors and micro-habitat adjustments as deer seek islands of green growth on the blackened ground. It may be that these deer are making a dangerous choice by staying in a neighborhood with inadequate food, and slowly declining in condition, hoping perhaps for an early rainy season to spring the ground back to life. And it may be that the absence of cover is exposing them to new risks from the watchful eyes of mountain lions, bears, and coyotes. Scientists will keep watching the data, and just as importantly, watching the deer themselves to try to glean something, even if it is only knowledge, from the tragedy of the Mendocino Complex Fire.

THE RETURN OF THE QUIZMASTER

But not this week. There is no General Knowledge and Trivia Quiz at Lauren’s Restaurant this week…

We do brain exercises on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays and therefore will return to action next week - Thursday, October 25th at 7pm…

I will be there and hope to see you...

Steve / The Quiz Master

GOLDEN RULE’S ENOUGH

Editor,

I will celebrate my 78th birthday this week and I have been reflecting and sort of grading myself.

I am an atheist, and now feel I should have been more outspoken on the topic. I've been quiet because I was reluctant to take anyone's crutch away from them.

I now think that I was wrong.

In my youth I was a practicing Episcopalian, was licensed to preach the gospel by the Southern Baptist convention, became an agnostic, then for the past 30 years realized I am an atheist.

The point I wish to make is that I believe the world would be a better place if people didn't believe in spirits. (Not the single malt kind -- the speaking serpents kind.)

As I told my grandchildren, the Ten Commandments are the result of the committee trying to improve on the golden rule -- you know: "Do unto others."

Michael Smith

Philo

THERE’S ALWAYS GOOD NEWS

by Jim Gibbons

It’s been one year since my book came out. I had joined a Hawaii writers’ group at the end of 2016 to get some inspiration to finish what I had been working on for the past few years, figuring to use those weekly meetings as weekly deadlines, like when I wrote a weekly newspaper column. Looking back, those were the years I was most productive.

Then my wife needed a bone marrow transplant for her MDS, and they don’t do that in Hawaii, so we headed back to California for her weekly visits to the UCSF Hospital for blood and platelet infusions. Just days after returning to Willits my first pack of books arrived.

I like to say, no matter how bad things get, there’s always good news. My good news was that now that I was back in Willits, where I not only spent half my life, but wrote about many of my experiences, I could give, trade, and sell my books to the many friends and acquaintances I would run into on my almost daily visits to town.

Besides having a few at the local bookstore, I donated a copy to the local library. There I met Will, a friendly librarian who read and liked it enough to place it on the Staff Picks shelf, and asked if I wanted to give a reading. I did, and the room filled with old friends and local writers, many of whom bought my book. Then I got a message from Chris at the bookstore for more books, saying that my reading spiked sales.

When my wife needed more weekly visits to the UCSF Hospital, we moved to Sausalito, which just happened to be where my book begins. The cover is a 1970 photo of me standing next to my boat on the ways just after completing a bottom job and painting COWPIE/Waldo on the starboard bow.

When I went into the Book Passage, the new local bookstore right next to the Sausalito Yacht Harbor, the manager seemed excited to carry a local author’s book. Then I went to the Sausalito Library and asked the librarian at the desk if I could donate my book. She took a copy and in a bit returned, saying “We already have your book.”

Then she talked to Abbot, the head librarian, who invited me into his office and told me he had gone on Amazon and saw the book with it’s four 5-star reviews, and decided to buy a few copies. Then asked me if I wanted to give a reading.

Again several old friends showed up and I sold more copies. Afterward, many of us headed over to a local bar for a few beers. I couldn’t have asked for a better situation to sell books and unite with old waterfront friends. But back to the bad news...

Tragically, my wife couldn’t get her transplant and was directed to Hospice. She died seventeen days later. I returned to our empty house in Waimea, realizing how much I missed her and even my friends in California. But I had made a few friends here in Hawaii, thanks to the Hawaii Writers Guild, and had given a few readings at both the local library and the North Kohala Library.

Since Waimea doesn’t have a bookstore, unless you count the many Hawaiian-themed books for tourists in the various gift shops, I told a few people that it was at the local library. One day a friend said she had gone to the library to take out a copy but it wasn’t in the system. That’s funny, I told her, I’ll go check it out.

I had brought a book to the Thelma Parker Library way back in January when I was here briefly while my wife was in the UCSF Hospital, but never followed through to check if it was processed into the system. When I finally did in August, it wasn’t there. Instead of making a big deal about it, I gave them another copy, figuring it must have been some simple glitch and this one would be in the system by October when I would be giving a reading there with a few Guild members.

Since I arrived early for my October reading, I went to the desk and asked Jeanetta, the sweet smiling librarian, if my book was now in the system. There was a Jim Gibbons but it wasn’t me. She went to the back to ask Pam, the head librarian, and returned without her usual smile, saying it wasn’t accepted.

I was stunned. I repeated slowly, “Wasn’t accepted...” Instead of asking to talk to Pam right then, I realized it was almost time for the reading and exited.

A few weeks before that I had contacted the closest bookstore, Kona Stories, which is a one hour drive away. Since I very seldom go to Kona, usually shopping locally on foot or on my bicycle, I had put off the trip until a fellow Guild member suggested I give them a call.

When I did, the co-owner told me they were having a Words and Wine event, and one of the readers canceled. Would I like to take that spot? Then she suggested I bring “ten or twelve books” to sell, saying they usually get a good crowd at these monthly events.

Wow, I was on a roll! The fact that my book “wasn’t accepted” made me think it was banned. Maybe due to the f-word or something else offensive. I looked up other banned authors, thinking I’m in a select group, including D.H. Lawerence, Stephen King, Vladimir Nabakov, J.D. Salinger and even children authors Judy Blume and J.K. Rowling, whose Harry Potter, is the most banned book in the United States!

I was feeling pretty good about myself, so I decided to go back to the library and ask Pam why it was banned? Just what was so offensive that my local library banned my book, putting me in that select group of writers I’ve admired most of my adult life?

When I approached Jenetta her smile was gone and though Pam was “out right now” she went and returned with two copies in a manila envelope with a note that read, “Sorry but we won’t be adding your book to our collection. Thanks for sharing.”

I still wanted to know why? The next day I dropped in and asked Pam. She looked me straight in the eye and told me she gave one copy each to a male and female to read, and they both replied, “Eh...” Her “eh” included a shoulder shrug, which I interpreted as meaning so-so, boring, not worth reading, and just not good enough for the Thelma Parker Library. Maybe I should get a life!

I thanked her for her honesty, then went home and had a few beers to celebrate the discovery that my local library has such high standards!

GEORGE HOLLISTER WRITES:

Drought thinning thesis

Lynn Webb forwarded the link below to this study that associates increased draught tolerance, of redwood trees, to decreased competition. In my opinion this is an important study to people growing redwoods for profit, as well as for restoration. It suggests to me that moisture in the ground becomes a limiting factor to redwood forests at some point in their development, and this point is reached prior to, or before, these stands have commercial value. Droughts expose this likelihood. I did not see any mention of tan oak control, but have to assume tan oak control would have the same affect of increasing draught resistance. Maybe more so. There needs to be more follow up on this study to understand what is going on more thoroughly.

This a quote from the abstract:

"Local competition had a strong negative effect on drought resistance during the recent drought (2012 to 2015) (p < 0.0001), and drought resistance did not appear to vary by treatment, site, or species. These results strongly suggest that restoration thinning treatments have the added potential of increasing tree growth and resistance to drought under current stand and climate conditions and possibly under future climate stress."

digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/etd/121/

THIS FRIDAY 10/19 is the C’mon Home to Eat dinner at the Yorkville Market, and since it’s the Friday we do Fiesta night we are making a Mexican dinner using local and fresh ingredients! We will also be having live music from the Dirt Roosters, so come and join us for a delicious Mexican meal.

On the menu:

• Calabaza rellenas (stuffed zucchinis)
• Spanish rice and beans
• And chips and salsas for an appetizer

We will also have the usual $5 draft beer and wine

Music starts at 5:30 dinner will be served at 6pm!!

OCTOBER 24 MEASURE B COMMITTEE AGENDA AND HANDOUTS

Please find attached the 10/24/18 Measure B Committee Agenda and handouts:

Measure B Rev & Exp Report

Draft 2019 Meeting Calendar

Tuesday’s BOS meeting with the Kemper presentation can be viewed at: youtube.com/watch?v=wHIPtAxTCIY

Thank you,

Dora Briley
MCSO - Measure B Committee Clerk
707-463-4408

MEASUREBCOMMITEEAgenda10-24-18

MeasBProposed 2019 CalendarMEASUREBCOMMITEEAgenda10-24-18

CHP SEEKING HELP IN FINDING HIT‑AND‑RUN DRIVER IN HIGHWAY 1 BICYCLE CRASH

pressdemocrat.com/news/8844481-181/chp-hitandrun-driver-strikes-bike

CATCH OF THE DAY, October 17, 2018

AARON CONTRERAS-BARRAGAN, Santa Rosa. Pot cultivation with fish and game violations and more than six plants.

SAGRERO FERNANDEZ, Ukiah. Pot cultivation and illegal diversion of water.

BRYAN NEWBERRY, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, resisting, probation revocation.

BRANDON STONE, Fort Bragg. Battery with serious injury, controlled substance.

SALAD U

Sunday, November 4th, 11:45-4 Pacific Standard Time: Growing and Eating on the Wild Side, AKA Salad University, Floodgate Farm in Redwood Valley. Learn about and make thistle drink, wild chips, and the famous floral and herbal salad mix with 40 ingredients. We will discuss the health-giving properties of the plants, and how to grow and best harvest and use them. Step up your health by feeding yourself and your microbime the most nutritious plants. Starts with some energy drink and snacks and concludes with a potluck. Meet at West Road Exit 557 at 11:45, leaving 11:55 sharp. $30 or $50 per couple. 707-272-1688 Bill or Jaye

BROKEN

by John Arteaga

Isn’t it starting to feel like we are living in a failed state? It seems like all of the most vital institutions created by civilization are being broken; root, stem and branch. To a greater and greater extent, we now seem to be living under a genetic oligopoly, where only a tiny, inbred elite has the resources to place their offspring, regardless of the child's poverty of ability or intelligence, in the most important schools, giving them first choice at our society’s positions of greatest authority.

Has there ever been a better example of this national dysfunction than Brett Kavanaugh? I am sickened by his ascension to a lifetime position on the Supreme Court despite the numerous eyewitness accounts of his, shall we say, conduct unbecoming of a federal judge, much less a Supreme Court justice. Just think where he would be had he been born into a black or brown family of modest means; no doubt one of his drunken, belligerent outrages would have landed him in prison, or worse. Instead we must all suffer under the nakedly partisan opinions that will no doubt be written by this lying drunken lout. His white-privileged, sanctimonious Christianist hypocrisy will determine how we may be forced to live for decades!

A second pigish, perjuring, sexual harasser on the nation's highest court will certainly not increase the likelihood that the great majority of sexual assaults that go unreported will suddenly change; if that’s how they treat someone with the commanding credibility of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, no wonder so few of these crimes are reported!

The checks and balances envisioned by the founding fathers are without meaning when one ruthless political party has been using every crooked trick in the book for generations now to undermine democracy. It’s the only way that a party favored only by a clear minority can ever hope to take control of all the levers of political power, which they will then faithfully use to further enrich the already pathologically wealthy members of their political funding class. Through the blatantly anti-democratic means of gerrymandering, vote-rigging and voter suppression, the Republicans have completed their coup of executive, legislative, and now judiciary; supposedly co-equal branches of our democracy. Our only hope at this point is to do all we can to help enlighten those who have been taken in by a man who may go down in history as the greatest con artist in the history of the world; the New York Times has just published a 13,000 word takedown of the absurd mythology Trump has, with the help of a gullible media, created about himself; that he was a self-made billionaire. The piece, backed by irrefutable documents, lays out how, instead of a ‘small $1 million loan’ from his obscenely wealthy father, that much of Trump’s life was spent on the edge of ruin, only to be pulled back again and again with massive infusions of capital from his father, totaling somewhere around $1 billion. Apparently much of that was done with tax avoidance schemes of questionable legality. I was pleased to hear that Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo intend to look into the half billion or so worth of inheritance taxes that the Trumps had evaded. Happily, there is no statute of limitations on this particular crime against the rest of society.

Political leadership seems to be broken and futile on the local level too; while many of our roads deteriorate to the point of radically diminishing the life expectancy of our vehicles, and lower-level County employees are still making do with the 10% pay cut that was forced on them many years ago, the fatcats in leadership positions enjoy huge raises, with pay packages out of all proportion to those of the vast majority of their constituents. That would not bother me so much if they were capable of decisive leadership on things that call for such. Take the Palace Hotel; in the Journal’s recent article expressed surprise that no one seemed to be lining up to buy the composting ruin of a building, even after the highly touted ‘public receiver’ Mark Adams spent a small fortune on his no doubt significant consulting fees, as well as having some hack Santa Rosa contractors come to town and inexplicably prop up the rotten second floor joists. They ignored the much greater threat of the crumbling cornice at the top of the building. Soon enough this started to threaten pedestrians, as chunks fell to the sidewalk below, requiring yet more pointless, expensive work on a building which will eventually be torn down.

As I and others have been trying for years to bring to the attention of those in charge of such things, it was foolish of city leadership to pass the buck on this tar baby project to that clueless out-of-town judge who bade them to go into mediation with the inert owner of the property (as if they hadn’t been fruitlessly doing just that for the last decade or so) it was doubly foolish to appoint this Southern California ‘public receiver’ to dig the fiscal black hole that this property has been mired in for decades even deeper.

Wouldn’t it have been eminently more sensible to have demolished it years ago and to now be building a new courthouse there, where it would keep the walking traffic near the downtown businesses, instead of its insane relocation blocks away from downtown, which will likely wreak havoc on the stores and restaurants struggling downtown.

If only we had political leadership willing to deal with problems rather than passing them off to someone else!

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

The everyday world we live in is straight forward and relentless and it doesn’t tolerate the frolicking of people that disrespect its dictates. You need to eat, you need to sleep, you need to drink. If you don’t drink you die in a few days, if you don’t eat you die in a few weeks. In this everyday world, in fact, in this universe, every object hurtles through time and space at the combined speed of the speed of light whether we like it or not, and given that we move through space at maybe a few hundred miles per second, we are moving through time at pretty much the speed of light. And that would be about 186,000 miles per second. Which is one hell of a clip.

The point is that literally, time flies, or alternatively, we fly through time, and if time can be defined as the distance between events, that distance is covered pretty damn quick. There isn’t “time” for nonsense, and so the bullshit-mongers, to the extent that they believe their own bullshit, will not be accommodated, they will go splat against the windshield of onrushing events.

And if YOU ascribe to bullshit, you won’t be accommodated either, you are speeding through the direction of reality we call “time” and the events interspersed through it will splat you too.

And so Hollywood, the bastions of – cough – higher learning, the promoters of a “liberal” world order where oligarchs allowed to run rampant, these are people and things that don’t respect the macro-reality of time and space and its rules. These people, the New York Times included, may insist that THEY make the reality but this is a laughable conceit.

CA BALLOT PROPOSITIONS RECOMMENDATIONS from non-partisan ElectionInfo.org

Hello friends & neighbors. I hope this info below helps you when voting. Please pass it on to your friends and contacts.

ElectionInfo.org has once again created a very helpful tool for voters -- a spreadsheet that lists the 11 statewide propositions that are on the November 6, 2018 ballot, cross-referenced with sixteen nonprofit organizations' recommendations as to how to vote on them. The organizations run from the Green and Democratic Parties and the League of Women Voters to the Republican and Libertarian Parties and the Chamber of Commerce. We tried to include all the major political parties and nonprofits in the state.

Most progressive organizations recommend Yes votes for Propositions 1, 2, 7, 8, 10 and 12 and No votes on Propositions 5 and 6 while most conservative organizations recommend Yes votes for Propositions 5 and 6 and No votes for Propositions 8 and 10 according to the semi-annual survey done by the non-partisan group ElectionInfo.org.

You can locate the full chart at the website: ElectionInfo.org.

Tom Wodetzki, tw@mcn.org

UPDATING THE AD HOC

BOS Cannabis Ad Hoc Committee To Hold A Community Meeting On Revisions To The County's Cannabis Cultivation Ordinance

The Board of Supervisors Cannabis Ad Hoc Committee will hold a community meeting on Monday, October 29, 2018, to provide residents with an opportunity to hear a brief update and share their recommendations with the Ad Hoc Committee regarding potential revisions of the County’s Cannabis Cultivation Ordinance (Code Section 10A.17 and 20.242).

On July 10, 2018, the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors created a Cannabis Ad Hoc Committee, consisting of Supervisors John McCowen and Dan Hamburg, to review the County’s Cannabis Cultivation Ordinance and report back to the Board with recommended revisions to address local conditions and concerns.

Chair Dan Hamburg stated, “This community meeting will give residents a chance to hear directly from the Ad Hoc Committee on the ordinance revision process and allow us to better understand the thoughts and concerns of residents, stakeholders and interested parties throughout the County on potential amendments.” The Cannabis Ad Hoc Committee will be hosting the public community meeting on Monday, October 29, from 5:30 p.m.” 7:30 p.m. at the Willits Community Center.

Cannabis Ad Hoc Community Meeting
Monday, October 29, 2018 5:30 p.m.- 7:30 p.m.
Willits Community Center
111 E Commercial Street
Willits, CA 95490

For more information, please contact Sarah Dukett at Mendocino County

Kathy Wylie, M.S. Ed. Mendocino, gglgrl@gmail.com

“I still feel so bad.”

DEVELOPING: Caravan of migrants fleeing Honduras has grown to 4,000, and the Mexican gov’t has sent an additional 500 federal police to its border with Guatemala in anticipation of their arrival, according to U.S. government documents obtained by NBC News.

Honduran migrant caravan grows to 4000 as U.S. border crossings spike