KZYX News: Recent Episodes
KZYX News Department
KZYX reporters cover local news for Mendocino County, California, Monday through Friday in six and a half minute reports. Featuring Sarah Reith, Sonia Waraich, Michelle Blackwell, Jim Culp, Marty Durlin and Alicia Bales.
How much will Fort Bragg’s innovative Care Response Unit save the county’s general fund? Supervisors Ted Williams and Dan Gjerde brought Fort Bragg Police Chief Neil Cervenka to the Board of Supervisors Meeting on September 12 to provide an overview of the innovative homeless response program initiated by the city and managed through the police department. The program known as “CRU” or Care Response Unit utilizes a non-enforcement type of interaction to help the homeless get what they need and hopefully get them off the street.
The CRU team has served 321 individuals and successfully reconnected 22 homeless individuals with family or friends, persuaded 18 into rehab programs and moved 7 into permanent housing.
The program which was initiated by Mayor Norvell got its start with grant funding from the State of California’s Behavioral Health Justice Intervention Services Project. Funding for the program through grant and city funds will only last through mid-2024. Cervenka asked the BOS to fund the program for four years at a cost of 1.72 million using Measure B dollars. Measure B is tax money that was designed to fund the construction of psychiatric and behavioral health facilities, operation costs, and services to treat mental illness and addiction.
So how does the program save the money in the county’s general fund?
According to Chief Cervenka it costs a minimum of $107 dollars per day to incarcerate an individual in the county jail and goes up based on health and psychiatric needs.
Since the CRU program’s implementation there has been a sea change in how the Fort Bragg Police Department deals with the homeless and spends its officer hours. There has been an overall 27 percent decrease in calls for service involving homeless from the 21/22 fiscal year to the current fiscal year. The most dramatic being 242 calls in December of 2021 versus 58 in December of 2022. There has been a 20% decrease in arrests of homeless and an increase in overall arrests.
The program also includes contract staffing for Project Right Now, which helps youth with substance abuse disorders fight addiction.
The Board of Supervisors directed staff to determine if current funding for homeless services, that is not as effective, can be redirected to CRU and agreed to send Cervenka’s request to the Measure B Committee for consideration. Williams also asked staff to determine how much money the CRU program has saved the county, presumably, due to reduced jail expenses.
November 30, 2022 -- Mendocino county has a diverse environment but for Spanish speakers in the area enjoying the outdoors is something that can be difficult for many reasons including language barriers. The Center for Environmental Inquiries at Sonoma State University has created a partnership with Crecer Conciencia, a Latino environmental organization to offer outdoor events in Spanish. This Saturday, they are organizing Descubre el Bosque an environmental day for Spanish speakers at the Galbreath reservation in Yorkville.
November 24, 2022 -- For many immigrants, holidays are a way to understand a new country and create the little things that make one feel part of where you are and remember where you come from. Latinos in Mendocino county told KZYX how they celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday.
Covelo has a downtown area that sits on either side of Highway 162, and which is about to receive a facelift from Caltrans. With grant funding from the Clean California Act, a beautification project has already been funded which aims to beautify Covelo as well as make it safer and more user friendly. Community members had a chance to walk the project area last Tuesday when representatives from Caltrans came out to present project options and get community feedback. They are still seeking community input by providing a survey that can be found on the Round Valley Area Municipal Advisory Council at mac.roundvalley.org. The survey closes Monday, November 28 at midnight.
The Mendocino Council of Governments is run by private enterprise. It was originally created to respond to regional transportation needs, later it took on state mandated housing allocations and now is adding planning for regional climate change impacts. Mendocino is one of three California counties that hires a private firm to manage its state transportation funds according to Supervisor Dan Gjerde. Gjerde and the MCOG Executive Director Nephele Barrett answer questions about the purpose, processes, and efficacy of MCOG.
November 15, 2022 - - The 15th day of November is the last day to receive electoral ballots in Mendocino and county Election officials are moving forward counting the ballots to present the official elections reports.
California state law gives election officials 30 days from election day to complete the canvass and certify the election. But this year's election calendar may present a delay on the final results.
Election results will be posted on the Mendocino county website www.mendocinocounty.org
November 11, 2022 -- The Arts Council of Mendocino County will soon receive over 3 million dollars in grant funding from a statewide program called the California Creative Corps. The California Creative Corps is a pilot program aimed to help communities recover from the impacts of the pandemic. The grant program invites artists to identify areas of need in their community, and to then create projects to ameliorate these issues. The program is funded through the state’s 2021, one time allocation of 60 million dollars to the California Arts Council. The Arts Council of Mendocino will partner with the Nevada Arts Council to help local artists identify areas of need in our unique neighborhoods, brainstorm projects, and apply for grants when the money becomes available in the spring of 2023.
November 10, 2022 -- Members of the Willits Teachers Union appeared at the November school board meeting for the Willits Unified School District to demand the need for a living wage. Under the slogan of "Professional pay for professional services" the union members, parents and students packed Willits High School's media center to present their discontent with the current situation at the school district.
November 9, 2022 — The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors attempted Tuesday to close in on who and what is responsible for the multi-million shortfall in the health plan, which has caused as-yet unknown damage to the county’s fiscal health.
The county has set aside $4.6 million from the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA funds, to patch the hole in the health plan deficit, which accumulated over two and half years but didn’t come to light until April of this year. In addition to the $4 million projected deficit, this week’s CEO report stated that there was an incurred but not reported loss of $2.6 million in Fiscal Year 20/21.
CEO Darcie Antle reported previously that in fiscal year 16/17, then-Auditor Controller Lloyd Weer said the State Controller recommended spending down an overly robust reserve in the health plan. The county and its employees responded with a health holiday, which means neither party made health insurance payments for three months out of the year for fiscal years 17/18 and 18/19. Supervisor Dan Gjerde identified a key flaw in that approach at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting.
“It was represented to the Board by the elected auditor, Lloyd Weer, that the State of California was telling him that the reserves were too large,” he recalled. “And that they needed to be drawn down. At the time, their proposal was to only extend the holiday to the employees. Well, the county, the plan sponsor, is paying 75% of the plan. So the Board said, well, we’ll have the holiday, but both parties benefit equally. When employees have a pay holiday, so will the county. What the managers should have said was well, we weren’t proposing that. We’ll need to scale that back to maybe one month, because both parties are having a holiday. They never said that. They just went ahead and implemented a three-month pay holiday for both the employees and the employers and they did not speak up, as they should have, and said, well the math doesn’t work with that.”
Deputy CEO Cherie Johnson told the Board that Weer was the only one who knew exactly what the communication from the state had been.
“I have not ever seen any documentations from the State, stating that the health plan reserves or savings needed to be drawn down,” she told the Board. “That was information that I had received from the auditor’s office. We did talk with our broker. He had never seen that either, and he said other counties had not received that information.”
Now, in the wake of the pandemic, the deficit is one of many heavy blows to the local economy. Cannabis taxes are lagging in a lackluster market, and the county has yet to see millions in disaster reimbursements from FEMA.
County workers, feeling the pinch of inflation and frustrated by the lack of a cost of living adjustment, or COLA, packed the chambers to overflowing during public comment, with social workers citing staggering caseloads and union leadership warning of an impending worker exodus. SEIU 1021, the county’s largest union, is asking for a 2% COLA, but county negotiators won’t budge.
Antle reported that the county is offering each employee a one-time payment of $3,000 from the ARPA fund, but is asking for a year-long pause in the COLA until last year’s fiscal books are closed.
In early October, the county switched over from its self-funded health plan to a fully funded plan called PRISM health, an insurance pool for counties and other public entities that allowed employees to stay with their current healthcare providers. Health plan premium increases have been frozen until fiscal year 23/24.
But even with a new health plan, supervisors wanted to talk about how the old plan’s deficit spiraled out of control. Gjerde said the Board got bad information about the health holiday.
“At no time was the Board advised that it would result in depleting all of the reserves and actually creating a deficit,” he emphasized. “That’s been new information since we've had a changeover in auditor and new people managing the healthcare fund and new eyes on the healthcare fund. I believe there should have been better advice given to the Board.”
County Counsel Christian Curtis conceded that the Board had gotten bad information. “In some cases, the information that was put into the sheets as to what balances you were drawing out, and what one-time funds you were using, may have been incorrectly entered into the spreadsheets before they went to the Board, and that you may have had that erroneous information in front of you at the time that those decisions were made,” he said. When Supervisor Glenn McGourty asked him who would have entered the information, Curtis replied that the CEO may “be able to speak to that a little bit better. My understanding is they were generated by the auditor’s office.”
Supervisor John Haschak pointed out that more than one party was supposed to be keeping track of the health plan. “We’ve been paying an actuarial to manage the health plan,” he said. “And we have the auditor looking at the health plan, and we have the Executive Office looking at the health plan too, right? So how do we figure out where this deficit happened, and how do we get to the bottom of it to see, why wasn’t the Board informed about it, and how this all happened?”
Curtis said there is more material to review, but that with key personnel now retired, he expects the information “may be imperfect.” Still, he said the information, while not highlighted, had been available. “If I can be a little blunt,” he warned. “The deficit itself is reflected in the budget documents. I think this may have just been something that was buried; that while the Board may have had the information, it may not have been particularly called out, or addressed very explicitly.”
Supervisor Ted Williams wondered if the Board could expect more revelations along the lines of the health plan deficit. “Do we think there is any other data entry that may have provided inaccurate reporting?” he asked.
Curtis demurred, saying, “I can’t speak to that at this time.”
Williams pressed him: “Can you and the CEO assure us that that’s not the case? Can we trust the data that we have received?”
“We can’t make such assurance,” Curtis told him. “No.”
The Board agreed to ask Weer to provide an explanation, in writing if he prefers.
November 08, 2022 - - Today marks the end of this year's election cycle. In California, the electoral contest has at stake the governorship and several congressional positions at the state and national levels, in Mendocino county, voters in several localities will decide positions of city councils and measures for libraries and fire department funding. But for election officials and voter support organizations the focus of the day is to make sure that everyone eligible has access to exercise their right to vote.
Hoy marca el final del ciclo electoral de este año. En California, la contienda electoral tiene en juego la gubernatura y varios cargos en el Congreso a nivel estatal y nacional, en el condado de Mendocino, los votantes de varias localidades decidirán posiciones de los ayuntamientos y medidas para el financiamiento de bibliotecas y bomberos. Pero para los funcionarios electorales y las organizaciones de apoyo a los votantes, el enfoque del día es asegurarse de que todas las personas elegibles tengan acceso para ejercer su derecho al voto.
November 7, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors adopted a resolution proclaiming a local emergency related to tree mortality last week. The Board also agreed to prioritize one water project per district and hire a consultant to organize what it will take to carry out the projects.
Supervisor John Haschak noted that trees are dying off at an alarming rate in all the county’s ecosystems, due in large part to increased aridity and bark beetles. The bark beetles, which have long plagued fir trees, are now also making inroads in redwood and hardwood forests, which haven’t been stressed by the infestation until recently. He summed up what he hoped to accomplish with the resolution.
“Not only do we need to replant trees, but we also need to create healthy forests,” he said. “That’s one of the critical issues in combating this tree mortality, is that our forests are stressed, not only from the aridity, the drought, but also from overcrowding and some of those other issues. So we need to look at the holistic approach of how do we manage these forests, and how do we create healthy forests? So if we can get grant funding to do that and focus on those kinds of issues, that’s what we’re trying to get.”
Haschak added that he expects the resolution will bring the county in line with neighboring jurisdictions and the rest of the state, which in 2014 declared a tree mortality emergency. The declaration eight years ago stated that “the scale of this tree die-off is unprecedented in modern history;” and predicted that it will contribute to wildfires that will release thousands of tons of pollutants and be beyond the capacities of the firefighting systems in place.
Supervisor Ted Williams had a provocative and still unanswered question about dead standing trees. “Supervisor Haschak, do you think it’s a good idea to continue poisoning trees, given that we already have so many dead from natural causes?” he asked.
“Are you talking about Measure V?” Haschak asked. Williams clarified that he was, and Haschak replied, “Well, we weren’t looking at that issue in this. We were looking at this global tree die-off that’s happening, whether they’re poisoned or not.”
Elizabeth Salamone, the general manager of the Russian River Flood Control and Water Conservation Improvement District, offered a comment on how forest health is connected to water quality.
“We need surface water and groundwater sustainability in order to support the forests,” she declared. “And there will be, and is, grant funding that supports nature-based solutions, which need to happen across many sectors, across many agencies, a lot of collaboration in that, so that water-based issues can work hand-in-hand with the reforestation.”
Salamone was on hand to offer her services to help collect data from the county’s 42 water agencies, after Supervisor Glenn McGourty presented on the five top priority water projects for a consultant to take up with a water agency, once the consultant is hired and the agency is up and running. An exact price tag for the agency remains elusive, but the county is working on a draft memorandum of understanding with the UC Cooperative Extension office, in hopes of taking some of the burden off of county staff. The extension plans to start recruiting for a hydrology and climate change advisor starting early next year.
McGourty started with the first district, where he reported that a joint powers authority is working to consolidate the water districts of the Ukiah Valley. This is in keeping with the goals of the state water agencies, which he says have funding available for the purpose.
In the second district, he cited groundwater recharge, which would divert some of the Russian River’s overflow onto a flood plain, where, theoretically, it would infiltrate the water table. He suggested Riverside Park on the eastern end of Ukiah for a pilot project.
He said the priority for the third district was mapping the groundwater basins, and reported that Round Valley has already received funding to start the task.
He suggested more reservoirs for the fourth district, including floating solar panels to reduce evaporation and provide some power.
For the fifth district, he said the top priority is the long-wished-for modernization or replacement of the wastewater treatment plant, which has a price tag of $4 million and is still in the conceptual design phase.
Williams said the projects were not the final list, but that the Board asked for it to make sure that any funds for water projects were spread equally around the county. “Glenn came to us with a request for money,” he recalled; “and I think we said, it looks like it could all go to, say, the Potter Valley Project, and we need to make sure there’s improvements all throughout the county. There’s water problems everywhere, and the request was that Supervisor McGourty come back with a plan that provided a project in each district.”
The Potter Valley Project, while not forgotten, remains uncertain. “You think we have trouble figuring our budget out,” McGourty said, after recapping the current state of affairs. ”This is something that’s a much bigger puzzle.”
Chantal Simonpietri, a private environmental consultant, had a process question. “I participated in the advisory group that was to form the water agency,” she said. “I don’t know where that ended up. We spent a lot of time on calls with a very well-paid outside hired consulting group to facilitate that process. What I appreciated about that, though, was that it was truly a stakeholder-driven process and full stakeholder input. And my concern with this is…where is the stakeholder process that went into informing that these are the five priorities, like one per district?”
McGourty acknowledged her points, saying, “Remember, this isn’t a total list. These are just things that were kind of prioritized that I picked up from numerous drought ad hoc meetings that Supervisor Haschak and I convened last year and this year, and also involvement with the Ukiah Valley Groundwater Sustainability Agency and the Mendocino Inland Water and Power Commission. So it is stakeholder driven, but just not in an organized way.”
The Board voted unanimously to approve the five proposed projects, hire a consultant, and outline the staff time needed for each project. Haschak expressed reservations before the vote.
“We spent $307,000 on a consultant who should have done this work that we’re talking about now,” he recalled. “That’s why I’m hesitant to go the consultant route. But if that’s what we need to do, that’s what we need to do. We need a water agency. We have needs. And we need to be active in this grant game with the state.”
November 4, 2022 — The Planning Commission Thursday discussed a resolution that seeks to clarify the interpretation of how a single-family residence can be used as a short-term rental.
The four commissioners present did not make a decision, since Commissioner Marie Jones, who is half of an ad hoc committee that prepared a report on the issue, was unable to attend the meeting. The committee was convened in December of last year. The report was not attached to the agenda.
The resolution states that if the entire house is rented out for less than a month and the owners don’t live there, that qualifies it as a vacation rental, which the commission finds is not an allowable use without a major use permit. Some commissioners signaled that they were not inclined to require a major use permit for homeowners renting out a room or two in the homes they live in.
Chair Alison Pernell said the resolution is a stopgap measure, not a dramatic overhaul of the county’s vacation rental policies.
“We are not writing a new ordinance,” she emphasized. “We are not changing an ordinance. This is a resolution that will affect how staff interprets vacation rentals, because we are working with an antiquated zoning ordinance that existed before the current proliferation of vacation rentals. There’s really one of two places in the current zoning ordinance where that can be interpreted through. One is transient habitation, one is room and board. Prior to this discussion at the Commission level, vacation rentals have been run through room and board, and so the discussion now is, where is the best location in our ordinance to run vacation rentals through? This Commission does anticipate reviewing an updated zoning ordinance for inland Mendocino County sometime in 2023, which will more permanently address this issue.”
Though it took no action, the Commission heard public comment for about an hour, from people who rely on income from short-term rentals to those who fear that those rentals are dissolving the communities where people settle in and form an interest in the community.
Stephanie Gold, who is on the board of the Anderson Valley Housing Association, called in to voice some of the frequent concerns of housing advocates.
“The AVHA is always monitoring housing stock availability for rentals,” she said. “There’s a real crisis in AV when it comes to long-term workforce rental availability. In fact, we did a housing needs assessment survey recently, and there were multiple responses from people who had lost their housing because their homes had been turned into short-term rentals. We understand that there are some people in the Valley who rent out a spare room or a small cottage on their property for additional income, and that’s one kind of situation, but there are also many properties owned by people who don’t live on the premises who have turned them into short-term rentals because it’s more lucrative, and perhaps that could be approached differently, where it would be limited more vigorously to address the workforce housing shortage.”
Jo Bradley said that her work with the Mendocino County Tourism Commission has led her to believe that illegal rentals are having an outsized effect on workforce housing — and the county general fund.
“I would suggest that we tighten up what we’re doing to get these places into compliance and then start looking at it,” she opined. “We have this problem on the coast, but those problems are also inland. And in the capacity of the jobs that I have done for the Tourism Commission, I am finding a lot of them. They’re in Anderson Valley, they’re up the 101 corridor, and then obviously on the coast…we need the ToT (transient occupancy tax). That’s the money that goes right into our general fund, and that’s fine if people are paying. I think if we were able to round up all the illegals, we would find that we have a better income, and you would then be able to say yes or no and make your decisions with a little better information.”
But Spencer Brewer said getting legal isn’t easy under the current system. He told the Commission he’s been an airbnb host on a private road in Redwood Valley for 12 years, ever since the music industry crashed and he converted his recording studio into a rental space.
“Over the years, we’ve paid well over five figures in taxes,” he related. “I have tried three times to get a business license, and all times were denied. Because first, Building and Planning had a moratorium on this type of license, until the ordinance was reviewed and voted on by the Board (of Supervisors). The next two times, they asked for me to do a major use permit, because of the ordinance not being updated on a county-maintained road, which is one of the issues at hand right now. This has not been addressed, but at the August first, 2017 meeting, where this issue was initially brought up, several of us addressed the Board of Supervisors, and a vote was taken at that time that a major use permit was not needed to operate a short-term rental. And the language and the rules were then kicked back to Building and Planning to create a review and create a new ordinance. Seems like that particular vote at that time has not been addressed. In cases such as ours, we fall through the existing cracks, where we send in our ToT every quarter. We pay our taxes, yet we cannot get a business license, and we are being asked to spend $7500 for a major use permit on basically an outdated ordinance on the books.”
The Planning Commission will take up the resolution again at their next meeting on November 17.
The City of Fort Bragg is looking at an innovative way to set up a second desal plant that uses ocean waves for power. John Smith the Director of Public Works is with us today to talk about the pilot project.
November 2, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance establishing an appeals process for cannabis cultivators whose permits have been denied, over the objections of advocates who found it inadequate.
Much of yesterday’s morning session was spent in a discussion with Treasurer Tax Collector Auditor Controller Chamisse Cubbison, about financial reports and how to speed up recruiting staff for her office.
The appeals process was on the consent calendar, but Supervisor John Haschak pulled it for discussion. Mendocino Cannabis Alliance Director Michael Katz called in to cite the reasons he thought it should be abandoned:
“We strongly object to the passing of it, as it does not provide an equitable appeals process for local licensees; it does not allow continued cultivation or operation during an appeal; it does not address the outstanding vegetation modification issues; it does not include previously directed Board amendments; and it does not reduce the likelihood of lawsuits against the county,” he said.
County Counsel Christian Curtis said the ordinance only applies to people who never got their permits, and that there is a different appeals process in place for those whose permits are being revoked.
“That’s a process that does allow continued operation during the revocation process,” he said. “There’s a hearing at the end. You know, once they have the permit, essentially it’s a different footing, in terms of what has to happen, in terms of investigation, penalties that are assessed or any rights that are taken away. What we’re talking about here is a situation in which someone never had a permit…were ultimately determined by the Department not to be in compliance and not able to obtain a permit. As it stands in the ordinance right now, that determination is final. And once that determination is made, they have to stop.”
The Board passed the consent calendar, including the appeals process, unanimously.
In other cannabis news, the cannabis department is moving from the Ukiah campus on Low Gap to the Willits Justice Center this month. The desk will be closed from November 14 through the holiday weekend, to resume on November 28 at the new location.
Some tension came up in the discussion involving the board, CEO Darcie Antle, and Cubbison, who relayed in great detail how much work she has to do with limited staff as supervisors press for year-end closing numbers, carryover, and answers to questions about uncollected cannabis tax. Cubbison complained that the reports she gets from the CEO’s office do not appear to have been reviewed carefully, and the board directed Antle to make sure they have been scrutinized more closely before they get to Cubbison’s office.
Wendy DeLong, an employee under Cubbison, told the Board she thought the planning was a little late, coming months after supervisors voted to place one person at the head of both departments.
“If you had come up with a plan for this, and there was a transition plan in place,” she opined; “things would have been a lot smoother if you had gotten the employees’ buy-in, if you would have got some cooperation. If you had timed it correctly, we would not be in this situation we are in right now, of just having this desperate lack of people in these two departments.”
Supervisor Dan Gjerde said he was especially interested in filling positions that would result in more local tax collection. Cubbison said when she gets the high-level analyst she needs, she expects the new hire to spend a certain amount of time on that task
“So it does have to do with that,” she said. “It also has the desire to work with some of the reporting needs for cannabis and the property tax. So being able to have an analyst to be able to help assist with the data reporting and analysis in terms of the collections side. I can’t say exactly to what percent, but I would say it would probably be about 50% related to the revenue side of the house, in making sure that we are either collecting what we should be, or are able to report on it.”
Supervisors Glenn McGourty and Ted Williams expressed their wish for a speedy hire.
“It just makes it sound like this is a really critical position,” McGourty said. “It should be the number one position, probably, that we are trying to recruit as a county right now, in terms of upper-level management. So I personally urge the Board to support moving this forward as fast as possible.”
“Well, I think we probably all support that,” Williams said. “It’s a matter of, what can we do to expedite it. Supervisor McGourty, do you feel like you have an answer to your question, or do you want us to light a bigger fire?”
“Light a bigger fire,” McGourty replied.
Human Resources Director William Schurtz said the analyst’s classification was changed in September. Now it needs to be changed again, which means that at the earliest, the county could have a list of qualified applicants ready for review by the middle of the month. An auditor appraiser position is “still flying,” or out for applications, until November 8. Cubbison said she recently hired an assistant from the private sector, but the new person doesn’t have the skills yet to contribute to closing out the books on the fiscal year. She said that in addition to a shortage of staff with government accounting qualifications, which is endemic throughout the state, the complexity of the situation means that she has no estimate of the carryforward from last year.
“I’m not prepared to issue an opinion one way or the other at this point,” she said. “There’s still a significant number of entries that need to be made, and transfers. The Board directed that money be moved to the designated reserve for certain purposes. There’s still designated reserve adjustments that need to take place for the use of the PG&E funds. So there’s not just a couple of things left to happen. There’s still several entries that could swing something in a different direction, and I’m not comfortable providing a guesstimate as to what we may or may not have.”
Cubbison said she expects that number will become available when she closes out the books, which she hopes to do by the end of this month. But she was less optimistic about the usefulness of spending staff time on collecting another unknown amount.
“If you want the Treasurer Tax Collector’s office to step up collections on cannabis, that’s long past due, or has extremely large interest and penalties associated with it,” she told Williams. “I’m not sure that’s going to be an entirely fruitful process.”
November 1 , 2022 — Cannabis growers are frustrated with the latest delay in processing the paperwork they need to renew their annual county permits, which they fear could lead to missing deadlines for full state licensure. Many growers continue to operate under provisional licenses or even embossed receipts, as they work to come into compliance with state and county regulations.
The majority of growers in the county, 590 out of 863, have been “deprioritized,” meaning their materials will not be reviewed until they “satisfy the conditions needed to reprioritize their applications,” according to the Mendocino Cannabis Department.
At last week’s public Cannabis Department meeting, Director Kristin Nevedal said she had sent out the notices to people who are either delinquent on tax payments or who do not have a valid state license on record with the county. She said her department has made multiple attempts to get a record of the state licenses since the Department of Cannabis Control stopped sending updates to local jurisdictions. Multiple requests and exhaustive searches have not yielded the information they needed about the licenses. Staff has searched and cross-checked what information they do have through portals and databases.
“We have no way, just like the public has no way, to type an address or an APN (Assessor Parcel Number) into the state license search, and find a license,” she explained.
Mendocino Cannabis Alliance Executive Director Michael Katz said there was a simpler way to get the information.
“It sounded like there was a lot of time spent into this process, looking for the state license information, and that despite multiple outreaches and multiple efforts, that there was no way for the department to get this information, which is really curious,” he said. “Because I just forwarded to you and the cannabis program an email from the DCC (Department of Cannabis Control) that was received on October 26 within three hours of being asked for, that included a list of all licensees in the state by county, APN number, address information. And so if this is a piece of information that can be gathered within three hours by anyone emailing the DCC, I’m wondering why the cannabis department isn’t able to access that information. As far as streamlining goes, how come the easiest path has not been identified, and all of this time, effort and energy went into this very complicated process that has really now challenged further the applicants and the department?”
Brandy Moulton restated the question, which Nevedal answered succinctly.
“Saying that you couldn’t get it from the DCC, it feels kind of like a copout,” Moulton opined. “The PRA (Public Records Act request) can be simply one sentence long. I’d be happy to draft that for you. It could even include active, expired and pending licenses. I do know the MCA (Mendocino Cannabis Alliance) pulled this list years ago when the fires were happening years back to get cultivators access to their properties, so it’s not new. So given your comments about staff time and the difficulties you guys are facing, does the department intend to request that info now to alleviate the burden on staff, and if not, why?”
“The department does not currently have a plan to PRA the DCC for license material because we hadn’t considered it until today,” Nevedal replied.
Many of the recipients of the notice do have licenses. Katz said more than half of them also have receipts for taxes paid. Nevedal maintained that the lack of a license was often only one reason applications were not currently under review, and that sending out notices was the most efficient way to obtain the materials she needs.
“No license on file, meaning that we had nothing to search, triggered a deprioritization notice,” she reiterated. “And, again, most folks have multiple things going on: taxes, and licensing questions. We ran this as one program. Breaking it into two programs, here’s all of our license questions, we’re asking all these people license questions, and then going back to a second list of license questions for taxes alone, would have created twice as much communication with applicants from the department as coupling these pieces together into one notice process. It also would have meant licenses coming in in separate emails, and then a whole separate stream of tax documents coming in separate emails. Because again, I know a few of you are just having license issues or just having tax issues. But the vast majority of deprioritization notices went to folks who have both tax delinquencies and license issues. And there's no way to streamline the program by breaking it into two separate requests.”
Jude Thilman, president of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, said applicants were taken by surprise. The Alliance also sent out a survey, which netted 34 responses. All but two of the respondents reported that they have state licenses, most of them provisional.
“I’m very happy to hear your honest response to Brandy’s question, that you hadn’t considered PRA’s before,” said Thilman. “This is great. Now this is a tool that can really expedite.” She relayed a question from her membership, asking, “If people have been told to not send any updated information until a planner contacts them, how do they make sure that they are allowed to submit updated information, including their current license? In other words, they didn’t know about this, so how are they going to know about it if they have to wait for a planner to call?” She added that 98% of the respondents to the MCA survey reported that they do have active state licenses, “So it was just some verification that this was an inaccurate deprioritization action,” she concluded.
“That’s exciting news, that 98% of your members are licensed,” Nevedal replied. “We look forward to receiving their materials.”
October 27, 2022 — Measure B, the half-cent sales tax to fund mental health, is heading into its fifth year, when the tax will be reduced from a half-cent to an eighth of a cent. The behavioral health training center in Redwood Valley and the critical residential treatment center in Ukiah are now open. A crisis respite center in Fort Bragg could be open by the end of the year, and preparations to demolish a building and build a psychiatric health facility in Ukiah are underway. But now, with the prospect of much less revenue and several buildings to maintain, the 11-member oversight committee is turning its attention to how to pay for long-term maintenance of the physical infrastructure.
Two items at Wednesday’s special meeting dovetailed with one another. County facilities director Janelle Rau offered a presentation about the maintenance and life cycle costs of the Measure B-owned buildings, which have been added to the county’s list of assets. Commissioner Sherrie Ebyam proposed developing a long-term financial plan, including projected revenue and ongoing costs, and expectations for the prudent reserve.
The prudent reserve for Measure B is currently 6.85%, following the county’s policy per advice from former county CEO and Measure B oversight commissioner Carmel Angelo.
Rau told the committee that the numbers she estimates for maintaining a 20-year life cycle for the buildings is rough, because one is new, another is not yet built, and the other hasn’t been used for very long.
“So that’s the CRT (critical residential treatment center), the puff (psychiatric health facility), and then the training center in Redwood Valley,” she clarified. “From an operational perspective, it’s approximately $155,000 per year. That’s the total of the three buildings. So Redwood Valley is approximately $35,000. The psychiatric health facility we’re estimating at between $78,000 and $80,000, and then the CRT was an estimate of $42,000. And again, that’s an annual cost to operate, separate and aside from the services that are included in that. From a capital asset management perspective, over a 20-year period, for a total of the three buildings, we estimated $3 million: $553,000 for the CRT, the psychiatric health facility a little over $2 million, and then the Redwood Valley training center, approximately $400,000.”
Dr. Jeanine Miller, who is the current chair of the committee and the head of the county’s Behavioral Health Department, posed the question that may have been on everyone’s minds when she asked, “Do we need a capital facilities reserve for Measure B to be able to maintain these buildings for twenty years?”
Commissioner and county CEO Darcie Antle said, “My question would be, if it’s not Measure B, Jeanine, are you going to have money? Because otherwise it’s going to come back to the general fund, and that’s not likely an option.”
Miller replied that, without a plan, the money for maintenance and repairs could come out of the very services the buildings are supposed to house. “Behavioral Health would not have that if we do not have it through Measure B,” she confirmed. “I don't know where those costs would come (from). It would actually come from having to reduce client care overall. There isn’t going to be any revenue on these buildings. If we were to be generating revenue they would most likely be running in a hole, which means we’d be using Measure treatment dollars to maintain them at a zero budget. So there isn’t going to be a revenue to maintain these facilities, because the services are not going to cover themselves, so we are trying to make it so the services do cover themselves, which means not creating a large rent to maintain the buildings.”
Miller added that the current plan for a prudent reserve is not specifically a capital reserve.
“At the time, what we brought forth for the prudent reserve was to cover treatment services long term, knowing that the psychiatric health facility is not going to be 100% covered. It’s going to require Measure B dollars to operate. We’ve known that from day one. We also don’t know if the crisis residential treatment will or will not be able to operate at a zero dollar amount. Will it be able to cover all of its costs? This year is really going to tell us whether or not we’re able to cover all costs or what that looks like long term. So when we brought a prudent reserve forward, that’s why we brought it forward...we didn’t want to build a building and then four years from now, we do not have the funds because we’re not bringing enough in, and then how do we fund that loss for those facilities.”
The eight commissioners present voted 6-2, with Commissioners Tom Allman and Donna Moschetti dissenting, to ask the county’s Behavioral Health and facilities departments to put together a multi-year financial estimate for the committee to review at a future meeting.
Commissioners agreed that a crisis stabilization unit was beyond the financial abilities of Measure B. Moschetti, who represents the local branch of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, summed up the committee’s perspective.
“NAMI National as a whole, supports the CSU,” she said. “However, NAMI local does not. It does not pay for itself. It’s a beautiful idea. It is a wonderful part of the mental health continuum of care. But it is very expensive. First of all, we’d need staffing. It’s hard to staff anything we have already. But secondly, you can keep a person for 23 hours and 59 minutes. You can only bill for 20. And of course we’re not going to let people go when they’re not able to go. And so we’d have to provide four hours of care at no reimbursement cost. I personally, and I asked my board, we don’t think that this county can support that.”
The committee has been charged with assembling a stakeholder group to craft a request for proposals from service providers competing to offer drug addiction treatment. Miller estimated that the document could be ready for review in 60 days.
October 31, 2022 - This past weekend Mendocino county started the celebration of the spookiest holiday of the year, Halloween, n ancient celebration tied to the harvest and in many cultures also has a connection with the spiritual world. In modern western cultures, Halloween is a time when people of all ages have the opportunity to dress up as their favorite characters and go door to door collecting candy.
October 26, 2022 — The Surface Transportation Board, the federal entity that regulates railroads, issued another ruling on the Great Redwood Trail this week, deciding that the agency can convert 176 miles of line to a trail. The Great Redwood Trail Agency will be allowed to railbank the track, which means filling it in with aggregate or dirt so that the railroad ties serve as a frame for the trail.
The track runs from Commercial Street in Willits, where the Skunk Train depot is, to just outside Eureka. Robert Pinoli, the President and CEO of Mendocino Railway, the Skunk Train’s parent company, did not know what the Agency’s plans regarding the depot are. Representatives for the Agency and the State Coastal Conservancy, which is now in charge of the trail, have not addressed our question about the depot.
Last week, the Surface Transportation Board rejected Mendocino Railway’s bid to purchase thirteen miles of track from the depot to Longvale.
A few hours after the Surface Transportation Board’s Monday- afternoon approval to railbank the line, Senator Mike McGuire held a virtual Town Hall to unveil the first step of the trail’s “master plan,” a process he expects will take two to three years before building the trail can begin.
Karyn Gear, of the State Coastal Conservancy, is the Executive Director of the Great Redwood Trail Agency. The Conservancy has been involved in conservation projects on the shoreline as well as inland rivers bearing anadromous fish. Gear spoke about her organization’s role in the planning process.
“The Conservancy was asked by Senator McGuire and the Legislature to take a leadership role in doing the master planning for this project, and also to help be the interim staff for the Great Redwood Trail Agency,” she began. “The Legislature appropriated ten million dollars to the Conservancy to do just that, to help move this project forward. So the first thing we did, after we started looking for additional staff with expertise to work on this, was to start to develop a request for proposals to look for consulting firms to help with the master planning process.” The Conservancy settled on Alta Planning and Design, which has offices all over the state.
McGuire insisted that there is plenty of money for the project, announcing that, “We have the funding sources for all of the trail master plan, and we have money in the bank for construction. We were able to secure ten and a half million dollars in state funds to pay for the staffing and master plan of the Great Redwood Trail. This is going to take us through the next several years of hard work and planning the trail. And a half billion dollars, five hundred million dollars, has been secured for the State Coastal Conservancy for projects that will help us fight our climate crisis and build trails of statewide significance. That includes the Great Redwood Trail.”
McGuire and members of the Trail Agency hope that private landowners alongside the trail will take advantage of opportunities to offer hospitality services and amenities to trail users. Wild camping will not be allowed, but the senator enthused about one site that he said has already committed to providing a campground.
“Eventually, what you’re going to see are authorized camping spots throughout the trail,” he said. “In fact, just last year…the state, along with the Wildland Conservation Board, just purchased the old Lone Pine Ranch,” a remote forested property on the eastern bank of the Eel River, on the border of Mendocino and Trinity counties. It was formerly owned by Dean Witter, who bought it in the 1940’s. It stayed in his family until his heirs decided to sell it to conservation groups.
The Conservation Fund’s website says that, “For many years, our partners at The Wildlands Conservancy owned a 3,000-acre portion of the Lone Pine Ranch. But in 2019, they sought our help to protect the remaining 26,000 acres…The support for this project has been tremendous with the help of Governor Newsom, Secretary of Natural Resources Crowfoot, the Center for Biological Diversity, California Wildlife Conservation Board, and the California State Coastal Conservancy.”
McGuire described the property as “some of the most spectacular land that you’ve ever seen. It’s 30,000 acres. It will have 12 miles of riverfront trail. That’s going to be our first authorized campground. You’re going to have restrooms there, be able to stock up on provisions and water. This is a game changer for the trail.”
Devon Young, with Alta Planning and Design, which is preparing the master plan, said that the design could include enhanced access for CalFire vehicles, though McGuire pointed out that trail users are not among the main culprits, when it comes to human-caused fires. And McGuire referred to a ranger service that he hopes to deploy along the trail to pick up trash and assist travelers. Young spoke about ideas to create solar-powered hotspots that would enable hikers to call in emergency responders if someone gets hurt.
“A lot of it comes down to wayfinding in and around the corridor itself,” he said. “It’s remote. So demarcating and outlining and creating points along the corridor is really critical. As part of that wayfinding, we’ve actually found remote, really rugged trails have a lot of success using things like bluetooth beacons” with tiny solar panels along the trail, which allow hikers to have cell phone access and call for help.
Timelines and exact figures are not available yet. And it will take a separate ruling from the Surface Transportation Board to allow railbanking south of Willits to Ukiah, and on to Cloverdale. Carol Hart, Chairwoman of the Great Redwood Trail Agency, is pushing to make it happen within a lifetime.
“And I really hope, for our eighty-year-old plus people who have tuned in, that they are going to get out on this trail,” she enthused. “They are going to get to see the phenomenal Eel River Canyon, and the Founders Trail, and enjoy what this trail will have to offer.”
October 25, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors is working on amending the cannabis cultivation ordinance to add a new ordinance that will establish an appeals process for applicants whose permits have been denied. The amendment could go live as soon as December, after a fee hearing and a second reading.
The effort to craft the appeals ordinance is taking place concurrently with an attempt to clarify what kind of tree removal cultivators can engage in, and what evidentiary standards should be required to prove that they are not damaging the environment by removing trees to improve their cultivation sites. Outside legal counsel is scheduled to bring the tree removal item before a Board of Supervisors standing committee in December.
Last week, the full Board discussed the amendment that will establish how permit applicants can appeal a denial. Cannabis Department Director Kristin Nevedal told the Board that for now, only applicants who never got as far as the portal are being denied. She added that the process of renewing permits has involved a certain amount of correspondence.
Nevedal told the Board that, “The only individuals that have been denied since the Board directive to pause denials until the appeals ordinance has been completed are those who failed to submit materials through the 2021 portal, and then a smaller portion of folks who failed to submit in 2021 but were allowed into the 2022 corrections portal and then failed to submit again. They have been denied as well. So what we’re struggling with currently in regards to a lack of response is issued permits that are undergoing renewal. So we have renewals, not in all cases, but in a number of instances, taking an incredibly long time because folks will not respond with full application packets in a timely manner. So we’re constantly sending notices. It’s a fifteen-day notice, and then it’s a seven-day notice, and then we still don’t have the materials we need at the department to conduct the review. We have not denied issued permit holders when they are undergoing that renewal review for failure to complete their renewal application.”
In a memo to the Board, longtime cannabis attorney Hannah Nelson noted that the appeals process does not include a provision that would allow growers to continue growing while their case is in the appeals process. She wrote that, “Here we have cultivators that have waited 5 ½ years for the County to get its act together regarding processing the application…As such, the appeals provisions should include protections from abrupt termination of their continued right to cultivate, unless there is an imminent harm or safety concern to people or the environment.” She elaborated on her position in a call to the Board during the meeting, with a reminder that State deadlines are coming up fast.
“With respect to not allowing people to continue to cultivate, i.e. a stay pending the appeal,” she began. “I think that there may be a way to break up the egregious violations and the people who were completely non-responsive, versus the majority of people who are going to fall into these more nuanced areas. You have to remember the context here, which is, not only does code enforcement have the ability to immediately go and require those plants to be cut down, but there’s the possibility that at this point, particularly if it’s after next March, that there will be no entry back into the State licensing system.”
County Counsel Christian Curtis offered an explanation of the balance his office is trying to strike with the ordinance.
“One of the things that the Board had really, I think, if I may say, struggled with, is the question of balancing the fairness of people who have some pretty good faith bases, with those that may be egregious violators, but may go ahead and put in an appeal merely to be able to extend their cultivation period for some length of time, while they're able to go ahead and harvest,” he noted.
Mendocino Cannabis Alliance Executive Director Michael Katz and Chantal Simonpietri, an environmental consultant who works largely with cannabis cultivators, presented arguments against the characterization of growers as egregious violators.
“It seems like there’s more of a concern of egregious actors trying to take advantage of the appeals process to stay in the licensed cannabis industry, which as many of you may know, is less profitable than the unlicensed industry,” Katz observed. “So if somebody is trying to appeal to stay in it, odds are they are not these egregious actors of whom you’re speaking. So it would be a shame for you to get caught up and have less ability to have a meaningful appeals process because of these concerns.”
Simonpietri added that, “On these egregious actors, I don’t think there’s that many out there that are still involved. Unless they’re really, really, not that smart, honestly. It’s not worth it to stay in at that point.”
The question of tree removal is expected to come up in many of the denials and subsequent appeals. Supervisor John Haschak sought clarity on what he called the veg mod issue.
“I think that any denials based solely on the veg mod issue should probably be put on hold. It would probably save us a lot of grief in the long run if we did that,” he said. “I think that until the standing committee comes up with what they bring back to the Board, we should hold off until that point.”
Supervisor Ted Williams sort of provided an answer. “I don’t think we gave any direction,” he said. “County Counsel clarified that the department head has the discretion and communicated today that she would focus on other areas, awaiting clarification on veg mod.”
October 24, 2022 — Drug overdose deaths increased dramatically last year, with the availability of ever more powerful synthetic and addictive drugs. Dr. Jeanine Miller, the director of the county’s Behavioral Health Department, told the Board of Supervisors last week that opioids and synthetic drugs are taking a heavy toll.*
“We went from 43 (overdose deaths) in 2020 to 72 in 2021,” she said. Three additional people who died from overdose were determined to have intentionally committed suicide. “When we look at opioids as a whole, we’re looking at natural, semi-synthetic, and synthetic. That’s our number one. If we separate that out, and just look at the synthetic, which is fentanyl, our number one overdose is actually methamphetamine, followed very close to fentanyl. We believe fentanyl would be actually the number one if it wasn’t for Narcan and Naloxone, and we continue to work on getting that in our community.”
The opioid blocker Naloxone was first approved as a fast-acting medication for opioid overdose in 1971. But Narcan, the nasal spray that can reverse overdose within minutes, only received tentative FDA approval in 2018, with final approval granted in April of the following year. Since then, it’s become a mainstay for first responders. A smattering of communities across the country have installed vending machines, where people can help themselves to a free box of Narcan. Some local organizations offer it for free to people suffering from drug addiction, and to their friends and family members.
On Saturday during Farmers Market, county, tribal, and non-profit workers set up tables in Alex Thomas Plaza in Ukiah to share information about drug overdose and treatment, and to spread the word about the rising death rate.
Lindsey Daugherty, the Executive Director of NAMI Mendocino, the local branch of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, spoke about what’s still being learned about Narcan. Some reports indicate that people who have overdosed multiple times require more than one dose of Narcan to be revived.
“There is some research out there to suggest that we are developing some kind of an immunity to the Narcan,” she said. “Or that the opiates are becoming stronger and stronger, or being taken in higher doses. So that is one theory. Another theory is that it can take a couple of doses of Narcan to bring someone back to consciousness. Typically, you would give a dose and wait two minutes to see how that goes, and give another as needed.” She added that “Narcan itself is not psychoactive. It’s an opiate blocker, so it blocks the opiate receptors in the brain, stops that person from being high immediately, and throws them into acute withdrawal, so really intense withdrawal symptoms.” She pointed out that Narcan is still relatively new, but that “There is no known side effects currently to giving people multiple doses of opiate blocker.”
Gabriel Ray, who works for the Pinoleville Nation’s Native American Youth and Family Empowerment Program, is working on an approach he hopes will prevent kids from needing emergency treatment. He said he is “teaching kids about their culture. I think it’s important to know your history, where you came from…we don’t know our culture. We’re picking up other types of culture, and sometimes that may be gang culture. So getting to our kids younger is good, and then working with the families. Having as much support as we can provide to our tribal families.” Ray has offered talking circles in schools, and has a whole program called Boys with Braids, to teach kids about the cultural significance of long hair, and to discourage bullying.
The Pinoleville Pomo Nation is the owner of New Life Clinic, an outpatient medication assisted treatment program that’s been in Ukiah for about a year. Physician Assistant Noah Schutz gave an overview of the program, which includes three medications: Suboxone, which is widely available as an outpatient treatment; the traditional Methadone; and Naltrexone, what Schutz calls “a full antagonist.” He said many of the clinic’s approximately 155 patients have found out about the clinic’s services by word of mouth, but also through referrals from the hospital, probation, parole, and jail. “Basically, it’s giving our facility a call, and just saying, we’re interested in treatment, and we set up a time, ideally that day, if not the day after, to get people some care,” he concluded.
Jill Ells is the manager of the county’s Substance Use Disorder Treatment program. She has been in the field for 23 years, and said, “I’ve never seen the likes of what is happening with our county right now. With the nation.” She explained that residential treatment is available, but some patients, especially kids, have to travel a long way to get it. The Ukiah Recovery Center offers residential treatment locally, and people with insurance through Partnership Health Plan can take advantage of services in seven counties, including Mendocino, that are part of a regional model. “So if we can’t get you in a program here in Mendocino County, we absolutely can get you in a program in one of the other six counties that’s a part of this regional model,” she declared. But Els has sent young patients for treatment as far away as Los Angeles. “Our adolescents are the concern,” she acknowledged. “Sending them clear to LA to me is not the solution. It is one of our county problems, yes.”
October 21, 2022 — The Great Redwood Trail overcame a major hurdle late yesterday afternoon, when a federal regulator turned down the Skunk Train’s offer to buy 13 miles of track north of Willits.
The Great Redwood Trail Agency, which owns the track, had asked the Surface Transportation Board, which regulates railroads, to allow it to abandon the track so it could start the process of converting it into a trail. The Board approved the abandonment, effective on June 19, unless it received a formal notice from an entity intending to buy part or all of the line. The Skunk Train, also known as Mendocino Railway, did so. Last Saturday,it filed its bid, known as an Offer of Financial Assistance, which the Board rejected within the five-day legal timeframe. The Board also lifted the hold on its authorization to abandon the line, which means that as of Tuesday, October 25, the entire 176 miles of track from Willits to just outside Eureka is officially an abandoned railway.
There is no appeals process, and the Board will take up further issues around converting the railway into a trail in the next few days.
The Great Redwood Trail Agency is working closely with Senator Mike McGuire, the California Coastal Commission, and environmental groups including Friends of the Eel River, to build a 320-mile trail alongside or on top of the railroad line from Marin to the Humboldt Bay. The Agency also holds the deed to the Willits yard, or depot on Commercial Street, which is a critical part of the Skunk Train’s infrastructure.
Last month, Robert Pinoli, the President and CEO of Mendocino Railway, told a judge he feared that if the line were abandoned, his company would no longer be able to use the yard. Pinoli was the only witness in a three-and-a-half day eminent domain trial, where Mendocino Railway is suing a landowner just outside of Willits, claiming that short lines like the Skunk Train are a vital element of the nation’s infrastructure. As such, Pinoli argued, the Skunk should be authorized to take the property because its use of it would serve the most public benefit. The eminent domain trial seemed to conclude about a week before the Great Redwood Trail Agency signed the deed to the Willits yard, but it’s since been reopened. It will start up again on November third.
The process of converting the railway into a trail appeared to be threatened over the summer, when an anonymous “Coal Train” interest based in Wyoming declared its intent to purchase all 176 miles of the track and use it to carry coal from the midwest and ship it overseas from the port in Humboldt Bay. That plan was scuttled when badly redacted bank statements showed that the company was flat broke.
The Skunk Train’s challenge remained, though. On Saturday, it made good on its stated intent to buy the track from Willits to Longvale. In a 271-page Offer of Financial Assistance, the company argued that the Great Redwood Trail Agency had grossly overestimated the maintenance and rehabilitation costs of the line; that the Skunk Train had a potential client for its freight shipping services; and that it has the financial wherewithal to purchase the track for about five and a half million dollars. The company estimated that rebuilding the track would cost an additional seven to nine million dollars.
The Great Redwood Trail Agency’s attorney, Charles Montange, argued that “In order to show financial responsibility, MR (Mendocino Railway) must show available assets sufficient to cover purchase price and rehabilitation and other costs of sustaining the initial two years of operation.” The Agency calculated that the purchase price, rehabilitation costs, and the two years operation and maintenance would come out to a little over $39 million. The entire northern portion of the line is so unsafe that in 1998, the Federal Railroad Administration embargoed it, meaning that it is illegal to use the line. And a tunnel on the Mendocino Railway line between Willits and Fort Bragg has collapsed multiple times. There is no connection between the Mendocino Railway short line and the national rail network. Pinoli testified last month that to his knowledge, the last time Mendocino Railway interchanged a freight train with another train was the day before Thanksgiving of 1998. He did not know the last time a freight train left Mendocino County.
Mendocino Railway did not include its assets or the name of its potential shipping client in the public filing of its Offer of Financial Assistance. The Surface Transportation Board did have access to that information, and it found that the Railway “failed to demonstrate…that it has, or within a reasonable amount of time will have, the funds necessary to not only acquire the 13-mile rail segment, but to rehabilitate, maintain, and operate it as well.”
The Great Redwood Trail Agency hired Marie Jones, a Fort Bragg consultant, to conduct a market analysis of Mendocino Railway from Longvale to Willits. She wrote that, “As an abandoned community, (Longvale) will not provide a market for the rail-based transport of any finished goods, manufactured goods, or commuting traffic, and on its face, is not a tourist destination for excursion train use. Aggregates, gravel and sand are the only realistic potential freight from this area.” She calculated that permitted operations in the area allow for a maximum of 79,100 tons of gravel extraction per year. With competitive transportation costs in the Willits market, she concluded, “There is no space within the market for non-competitive transportation pricing.” Jones is dubious that any potential shipper would pay the higher rates she believes Mendocino Railway would have to charge to be profitable, especially since trucking is so much cheaper.
According to Jones, for the train to compete with trucks, it should charge $211 per railcar. But Jones concluded that “the total capitalized cost for acquisition, construction, and operating costs for the Longvale to Willits rail line would be $3,767/railcar, which is an order of magnitude higher than the average trucking cost of $211 for 80 tons of aggregate delivery.”
Montange summed up Jones’ findings: “The only shipper that could possibly be served on the Longvale to Willits segment is Wylatti dba Geo Aggregates, which has previously been identified by MR (Mendocino Railway) as the only shipper in the Longvale vicinity, and which is also present in Fort Bragg. GRTA (the Great Redwood Trail Agency) retained Marie Jones to examine rail need and feasibility for all the shippers identified by MR, and the transportation market generally from Longvale to Fort Bragg. Suffice it to say that Ms. Jones shows in her resulting report (attached to Jones Verified Statement, exhibit 4) not only that Wylatti is being served by trucks but also that that trucks are cheaper than rail to satisfy all current or expected transportation needs. If trucks are cheaper, then freight rail is not feasible or needed.”
The Board agreed that Mendocino Railway “has not demonstrated financial responsibility.” Meanwhile, the Great Redwood Trail Agency has released its “Feasibility, Governance, and Railbanking Report,” which McGuire refers to as the “Master Plan.” He anticipates it will take two to three years to get through the details of construction, fire safety, and community engagement before trail building begins. There will be a virtual town hall about the master plan on Monday night at 6:30 p.m.
October 18, 2022 — With harvest season underway, cannabis is in the spotlight at the Board of Supervisors chambers.
Earlier this month, at a meeting that dragged on until after 7:00 pm, the Board discussed a dozen recommendations by the cannabis ad hoc committee, consisting of Supervisors John Haschak and Glenn McGourty. Several of the recommendations were passed to the General Government standing committee, which is made up of Supervisors Maureen Mulheren and Dan Gjerde. The composition could change next year, with the rotation of positions on the board.
The question of vegetation modification, referred to politely as veg mod purgatory, is still hanging in the air, as an outside legal firm ponders the details. Growers have worried that their permits could be revoked or denied if they remove trees and vegetation from around their grow sites, even if it was for fire safety or because the vegetation was diseased. At Monday’s General Government standing committee meeting, County Counsel Christian Curtis asked for more time to prepare an affidavit for growers to present as evidence that they have removed a tree for legitimate purposes.
“The primary issue here is not so much the issue of whether or not trees can be removed,” he said. “I think that’s pretty clear from the ordinance that they can, unless it’s a commercial species, with certain provisos…I see from the recommendation put forward from the ad hoc, there are some features there that model what we’ve been working on…we’re working with the department on a potential affidavit process to essentially establish as a starting point where people are, establish compliance with the ordinance with respect to the tree removal…a big part of the issue is, when you have the affidavit, what are the appropriate standards for the departments to apply when they think there may be something false in the affidavit, what may be the appropriate standard, both to investigate, and once having investigated, what would be an appropriate standard to apply, based on what they have.”
Attorney Hannah Nelson, who outlined the idea about the affidavit in a memo to the Board, summarized the historical context of policies that haven’t always arrived at a tidy conclusion.
“This is after five and a half years, the sixth department head slash manager in the third department, and processes have changed, and so I think that it’s important to note that it’s not just about the evidentiary standards, but also inclusion of standards such as, can dead trees be removed or not,” she opined.
Michael Katz, Executive Director of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, urged the committee to avail itself of Nelson’s legal memos. Last month, she submitted several pages on tree removal, with details about the affidavit and a critique of the current vegetation modification notice process.
“Hannah is a thirty-year expert attorney who successfully litigated the first case for the federal government to have to return medical cannabis to a patient,” he said. “So she really knows what she’s talking about. And for her to provide dozens and dozens of pages of specific language recommendations that are then be either ignored or unseen or asked for repeatedly, and not actually absorbed and integrated, the county is losing money by not utilizing this free resource and instead hiring outside counsels to come up with things that are already established law.”
The issue will come back before the committee next month.
Another item that came before the committee was a suggestion from the ad hoc to create a process to resolve disputes over permits without denying them. The intent is to keep the current applicants on track to getting their state licenses by next summer. Cannabis Department Director Kristin Nevedal said she could craft such a policy, but that it might include a fee.
During public comment, Susan Tibben referred to the next big grant that will soon be available to growers. Nevedal succeeded in securing an $18 million local jurisdiction assistance grant program from the state, specifically to help growers comply with environmental requirements for their state licensure. Ten million dollars of the grant will be available to applicants, in awards up to $100,000. The first application window will open in mid-January, and be open for four weeks. After six to eight weeks to process the applications, the window will open again. Tibben thought there would be enough money in the department that applicants disputing an issue in their permits should be able talk with a planner at no extra cost.
“The idea of staff hour fees tied in any way to a fee for the permittee is just absolutely unacceptable,” she opined. “You know, earlier today, $18 million was referenced with regard to the LJAGP (local jurisdiction assistance grant program), with $10 million earmarked for grantees, so that would leave $8 million, and also our tax dollars…so please do not even consider a hierarchy of department assistance tied to additional fees.”
On the next day’s Board of Supervisors agenda was a recommendation to amend the county cultivation ordinance to establish an appeals process for permit applications that do get denied, with a fee to be established by the Board. One of the consent calendar items is a retroactive agreement with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife for $231,654 for sensitive species habitat reviews that agency started conducting in February of last year. An item without materials attached is a recommendation to clarify that removing dead and hazardous vegetation is not development, and to direct Planning and Building Services to deprioritize all related code enforcement.
Tibben’s partner Paul Hansbury used part of his allotted three minutes of public comment to reflect on the incremental, long-term nature of crafting cannabis policy.
“My partner Susan and I have been advocates for a very long time,” he said. “We’ve traveled on a state level to all the cannabis advisory meetings. And at one point, we made up little stickers for everybody in the audience, saying, ‘trying to make a difference, three minutes at a time.’”
A new documentary called Tending the Garden made it's premiere in Covelo at the Library Commons last Friday. The film weaves the stories of three regenerative cannabis farms who integrate practices into their gardens that sequester carbon and improve life on the planet. Covelo's Blaire and Daniel AuClaire of Radicle Farms were one of the families featured.
California is one of the states where undocumented students can get access to higher education, this week the California Community College Foundation is holding the 6th annual Undocumented Students Action Week. In Ukiah, the Mendocino College's Dream Center is organizing activities for students and staff.
October 17, 2022 — The City of Ukiah and a private developer spoke to a citizens group last week about a variety of plans to increase housing stock in the Ukiah Valley.
Plans for a housing project on 171 lots at the south end of town are getting closer to breaking ground. And the city is updating its general plan for 2040, with an eye toward land use, infrastructure, and agriculture, among other elements. A new state law and a focus on accessory dwelling units are meant to make it easier and more affordable to build more housing within city limits. Jesse Davis, Planning Manager with the City of Ukiah, and Jake Morley, a developer with Guillen Construction, spoke about their work at a meeting of the inland Mendocino County Housing Action Team on Thursday morning.
The proposed project, Bella Vista, has been under consideration in one form or another for about a decade. It is a modification to a proposed subdivision formerly called Gardens Gate, a nearly fifty-acre property just outside Ukiah city limits, on South State Street. A map of the proposal shows that it is centered between Gobalet Lane and Plant Road, and extends west near Oak Knoll Road and Oak Court. The lot sizes range from about 3,500 square feet to just over 18,000 square feet. The plan includes four point four acres of open space, and a roundabout at South State Street and Plant Road. It is in the Willow County Water District.
Jake Morley calls himself the “paper project manager” for Guillen Construction, which means he’s been coordinating the studies and other preparatory materials for the development agreement with the county. He said 39 of the 171 lots will be age-restricted to people 55 years old or older; and that ten percent of the balance of the lots will be dedicated to moderate-income housing. He said the homes for seniors will be between a thousand and 1250 square feet, with extra wide hallways and bathrooms, and the larger homes will be between 1400 and 1800 square feet, to accommodate more residents. He said Guillen has been working through the studies for the project for the last three years, and “we’re hoping to be before the (Mendocino County) Planning Commission by the end of the year, and Board of Supervisors by the start of the year. Then off to PG&E to go through their process, and start moving dirt, hopefully in spring or the end of summer of the following year.”
Morley said he couldn’t predict exactly how much the homes will cost, as the costs of building fluctuate, but said he expects them to be affordable for people in the community.
Morley added that Guillen Construction was planning another subdivision called Vineyard Crossing, just north of Ukiah, but, “we’re giving it a long, hard look right now…that fragmentation of water doesn’t really lend to making sure we have a project. So that’s kind of where that sits right now.”
In addition to updating the general plan, the city is working to consolidate the water districts in the Ukiah Valley and update the city’s “sphere of influence,” the areas on the edges of town where it can provide various services and annex land. The city is not planning to annex the Bella Vista property at this time. Davis, the planning manager, hopes the items about water district consolidation and the sphere of influence will be ready to bring to the CIty of Ukiah Planning Commission in more detail on October 26, next Wednesday.
Davis focused on smaller-scale approaches to building more housing within the city, to fill what he calls the “missing middle.” This includes accessory dwelling units, cottage court developments (defined as a group of small homes “arranged around a shared court visible from the street”); duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and other kinds of second units. “And that’s where we see the potential for infill to really be expanded in the city of Ukiah,” Davis said. He added that the city has three pre-designed sets of plans for accessory dwelling units, which are supposed to help homebuilders cut down on the costs of adding a living space to a property. The plans didn’t generate much interest when they were first introduced, but in the last year, Davis reported, “We now have two developments that are utilizing those plan sets to help expedite the plan review and move projects forward, here in Ukiah.”
A new state law, SB9, is another strategy that is supposed to increase residential developments. Davis explained that SB9 allows R1, or small residential properties, to be subdivided to accommodate four residential units, in a number of combinations. The city is using SB9 to allow a property owner to build an accessory dwelling unit on a lot that already has three units, which, prior the law’s passage last year, was a non-conforming usage for the city’s R1 code. The law has a number of restrictions, including a requirement that the owner live on-site, and a prohibition on short-term rentals. “It’s a very extensive law, that a lot of jurisdictions are still feeling out, including the county,” concluded Davis, a former county planner. “Because, as these laws are passed in Sacramento, they have to be means-tested by the local jurisdiction, to see how they are applied.”
If you’d like to review the current draft of Ukiah’s general plan, you can visit City Hall at 300 Seminary Avenue, or visit ukiah2040.com.
Conversaciones cívicas es un espacio para explicar como funciona nuestro gobierno local. En este episodio hablamos con el Supervisor del Distrito tres del Condado de Mendocino John Haschak quien nos cuenta que hace los supervisores del condado y cuál es la participación de los ciudadanos en las tomas de decisiones en Mendocino.
October 12, 2022 — The Measure B Oversight Committee is seeking a contractor to provide substance use disorder treatment.
Measure B is a sales tax initiative to fund mental health facilities that passed in 2017. The tax was a half-cent for the first five years, and has now decreased to an eighth of a cent. An eleven-member oversight committee is tasked with making recommendations to the Board of Supervisors on how to spend the money.
Last month’s meeting of the Measure B Oversight Committee included a discussion about a $3.1 million proposal from the Ford Street Project to offer substance use disorder treatment, or SUDT. Last week, Behavioral Health Director Dr. Jeanine Miller, who sits on the committee, spoke with the Board of Supervisors about what they’d like to see in a request for proposals, or RFP, from contractors competing to offer the service.
Supervisor Glenn McGourty was shocked to learn that 75 people in Mendocino County died last year from drug overdose. Miller clarified that the number ruled out people who intentionally took their own lives. “Really, really terrible,” McGourty remarked, adding that he thinks the number points to the need for treatment.
Supervisor Dan Gjerde wanted to make sure Measure B funds wouldn’t be used to pay for a program that could be funded by the state. “My concern with the Ford Street Project isn’t what they’re proposing. My concern was that they were seeking local tax dollars for what I suspect the state would be happy to fund,” he explained. “For example, the state’s making significant money available for homeless housing, or for people who are in danger of becoming homeless, and I would think that people who have serious substance abuse issues are certainly in danger of becoming homeless. So I would just be concerned if we were to use local tax dollars, which are very precious and minimal, even if it’s Measure B funds, to pay for something that we think the state is likely to fund.”
Miller told him the details haven’t all been hammered out yet, and she was monitoring the availability of state grants.
Supervisor Ted Williams signaled that he is likely to vote in favor of a proposal requesting evidence-based treatment plans that meet with the approval of local doctors. Miller suggested inviting some of them to help write the proposal.
“I appreciate the RFP. I think that’s the right process, given the dollar amount. We have finite funds. I would prefer (to) see evidence-based, medically supervised substance abuse treatment. Is that a possibility?” Williams asked Miller.
Miller told him “we can put out a request for whatever type of services we want…in that RFP we can put in a request for specific services, or all of the services, and then get the proposals we get, and go off of those by opening up types of SUDT (substance abuse disorder treatment) services.”
WIlliams told her that “I don’t want to guide that process, as the county supervisor. You’re our expert. I want to trust you. It would be helpful if we could involve local physicians. When I have local physicians calling me and telling me they don’t support what we’re doing, that it may have benefits, but is it the best use of funds, that’s concerning. It’s a red flag. Is there a way early in the process to make sure that we’re including local physicians so we at least capture their ideas about what they need?”
Miller said discussions at the Measure B Oversight Committee meeting had included a conversation about the composition of a stakeholder group as part of writing the RFP, “so we can definitely include a couple of medical community members in that RFP to get their feedback,” she said.
Miller also assured Williams that the RFP would come back to the full Board of Supervisors for its approval before it is posted.
Measure B funds have also been used to purchase a behavioral health training center in Redwood Valley. Miller told the Board that although the training center is coming in $285,000 under budget, more IT equipment is needed, and there’s a marketing campaign underway to rent the hall. It’s mostly unused, even as the memory of pandemic restrictions fades.
There is also a Measure B funded Crisis Residential Treatment facility in Ukiah, where people in moderate psychiatric crisis can spend up to thirty days in treatment. It’s currently $264,000 under budget. The facility opened in April, so it is still too early to tell if initial financial projections of a neutral impact on the budget were accurate.
A mobile crisis response team of three mental healthcare staff working with the sheriff’s department and the Ukiah police department has responded to 212 calls so far.
An architect is designing the tear-down of an old nursing home on Whitmore Lane in Ukiah to build a Measure-B funded psychiatric health facility, or puff, on the site. The original estimate was $19.5 million, but that estimate has grown by about a million. The current estimated completion date for the construction is June of 2025.
October 11, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors went through a dozen recommendations from a cannabis ad hoc committee led by Supervisors John Haschak and Glenn McGourty last week, sending five of them to another committee. Supervisors received assurance that other items are already being addressed, but cannabis advocates who stayed in the chambers until after 7:00 at night complained about a lack of urgency as state deadlines loom and operators give up on ever making it through the permit process.
Mark Schaeffer, who has chimed in on cannabis policy at every step of the ordinance and now serves as the policy chair of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, wept as he spoke about losing his farm. “I used to say I had a ten thousand square foot farm in Comptche,” he said. “It’s closed. Not only can I not pay for my taxes, likely I’m going to lose my land, and I don’t even have enough money to get fuel to get home. But I’m here. Why? Because I put everything into compliance. Because I believed. I believed in myself, my government, my community. Neither the county nor the state has given any of us a pathway to success. They have not given us a pathway at all. And now we perish.”
Most of the ad hoc’s recommendations had to do with streamlining processes so local operators will have a better chance at complying with annual state license requirements. Because the county’s ordinance did not go through California environmental review, individual growers have been struggling to keep up with regulatory requirements as they are being crafted.
Another process that has often been described, including by the Mendocino County Grand Jury, as building the airplane while it’s flying, is the rollout of the equity grant program, which was designed to aid cannabis business owners who were harmed by the war on drugs. The committee’s first recommendation was a three-part reiteration of Board direction to align the county’s program with the state’s requirements. Applicants have complained that the county has been stricter and more meticulous than the state, out of fear that the state could reclaim funds that were improperly awarded. Haschak laid out his position.
“I know that there have been issues that have gone on and on and on, for six months, a year, about trying to clarify whether a solar panel is the right size, whether the number of jars is right for the business, and that kind of stuff,” he said. “And if it’s allowable by the state, then we should just go with it and move on. Because the way I see it is, the role of the (Mendocino Cannabis) Department really needs to be getting people to their state licensure.”
Cannabis Department Director Kristin Nevedal said she believes she is already implementing that direction. She added that, although there have been bottlenecks in the equity grant program and very few awards have actually been made, no one has been outright denied at this point.
Nevedal secured another nearly $18 million in grant funds to help local cannabis business people: the Local Jurisdiction Assistance Grant Program. She described her planned approach to applications for that grant, which she hopes will save her department from multiple rounds of review, and circumvent the need to bring in outside contractors.
“I think that these will come to us, this is the hope, review ready,” she said of the upcoming grant applications. “And if they aren’t review ready, we will not be issuing an award, and folks can make corrections and apply in the next round. And I’m thinking the rounds for grant applications will be short. Thirty days. We’ll announce ahead of time, it will open for thirty days, it will close, we’ll do reviews, we’ll award, we’ll announce another opening.”
Nevedal told supervisors that she expects the cannabis department’s upcoming move to the Willits Justice Center will help remedy some of the department’s shortfalls — but she’s not sure exactly how long the move itself will take.
Another proposed simplification involved several steps that have not yet been completed. The ad hoc recommended that the cannabis department provide a ‘no objection’ status for every document or requirement that it’s referred to a state agency, after the agency has been unresponsive for thirty days. But this is problematic, when the county does not have a contract with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the main state agency responsible for environmental review and approval. Nevedal said her department has referred about 100 sensitive species and habitat reviews to CDFW, and that a contract is on its way to being finalized.
“It came to us as an unsigned document,” she said of the contract. “So we’ll work it through approvals at the county level. Once it’s signed at the county, I’m sure CDFW is eager to sign it so that we can pay them for the reviews they have conducted…and they have staff waiting to conduct further reviews. So I think they’re just as eager as the county to move this contract forward and resume work.”
Another layer of procedural difficulties involves vegetation modification, or the removal of trees and shrubs from grow sites. Growers have complained that their permits have been denied or terminated if they’re suspected of removing trees for cultivation purposes, even if it’s for fire safety or because the tree was dead or dying. Haschak explained the ad hoc committee’s recommendation that the Board clarify some exemptions, and establish what kind of evidence is required.
“If we’re all in agreement that tree removal has happened because of defensible spaces, for health, for safety, for the tree mortality crisis that we have going on, and I think that we really need to be clear on what the parameters are,” he said. “Because what we’re having is, we’re having a lot of, well, five years ago, I look at this satellite imagery, and I see that there was something there, and we don’t know exactly what it was, but there was something, and so it was removed, and so now you’re into the veg mod issues.”
Supervisor Ted Williams complained repeatedly that recommendations were not “shovel ready,” with plans to implement them with budget and staff.
During public comment, Susan Tibben, a frequent commenter on cannabis policy, recalled her experience planting trees in San Francisco with a group called Friends of the Urban Forest. “We did not know what that soil was going to be, until we stuck that shovel into the dirt,” she told the Board.
October 5, 2022 — Members of the rapidly dwindling cannabis community showed up en masse at the Board of Supervisors meeting this week, to speak about the hardships of the market, the recommendations of the cannabis ad hoc committee, and a proposal to limit the cannabis equity grant program. Dozens of cannabis business people in yellow T-shirts waited in the hallway outside the Board of Supervisors chambers on Tuesday afternoon as the Board held an extended closed session that lasted until after 3:00 pm.
Monique Ramirez, a farmer and policy advocate for the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, had driven down from Covelo, a week before she was due to give birth to her second child. “Our harvest is going wonderful, especially with the great weather we’ve had,” she said. “The market, that’s a whole other story. Not doing so great.” Other farmers who were spending a sunny fall day off the farm described offers of $350 and even $100 a pound for their product. Ramirez said she was still struggling to sell last year’s product from her cottage farm, which is the smallest license type. “For us, $200-$300 a pound does not work when you’re yielding maybe 80-100 pounds, max,” she explained.
Ramirez told the Board that the reason she is such a staunch legal policy advocate is that she was raided years ago. She was harmed by the war on drugs, which makes her eligible for a cannabis equity grant. The much-delayed program was the subject of a Grand Jury report this year.
This week, Supervisor Ted Williams sponsored an item proposing that staff limit the program to “legitimate government purposes,” and to “void any program elements found to be impermissible under federal law.” The grant guidelines are set by the state. The item was not accompanied by explanatory materials, which was frustrating to some of the leading cannabis advocates in the room.
Supervisor John Haschak didn’t think the feds were much of a threat. “We’ve been into this program for two years,” he said. “And so what is the concern right now? You know, I don’t hear that the feds are coming. We can’t even get the federal government to deal with the cartel growers in this county.”
In a brief interview after the meeting, Supervisor Ted Williams, who sponsored the item, said that he has been asking County Counsel for a long time if the grant program is legal, or if it exposes the county to legal liability for violating federal laws about cannabis cultivation. “It appeared (on this week’s agenda) because I finally got a different answer,” he said. He was particularly worried that the state currently allows grant funds to be used to pay the start-up costs of cannabis businesses.
County Counsel Christian Curtis insisted on getting majority board approval before he would answer the question of whether or not grant applications are in keeping with federal law. After a three-vote approval, with Dan Gjerde and Maureen Mulheren dissenting, he offered his opinion.
“With respect to whether the activities that were to be funded by the grant program were compliant with federal law: no,” he said. The activities that are to be funded are the cultivation of cannabis. Cultivation of cannabis remains unlawful under federal law. The review that my office conducted was for the purposes of determining whether or not the applications met the requirements of the grant program and state law. Those that went through, we did believe met those requirements and were consistent with the statute, the guidance put out by the state, et cetera. Whether the underlying grant program is consistent with federal law, I can’t say that it is.”
But Hannah Nelson, an attorney with thirty years’ experience in cannabis and criminal law, offered a history lesson on the county’s original permitting program, originally enacted in 2008, which sought to regulate cannabis cultivation locally, in contravention of federal law. “The feds came in and threatened to intervene with the county for starting a permitting program, and that’s why that program shut down,” she said. “But the specific reason was because at the time, that was under Prop 215, and the State of California basically only had the Attorney General’s guidelines, which were pretty loosey-goosey. And the feds said, when California enacts a complete, robust regulatory system, we’ll back off.” In a memo to the Board, Nelson wrote that “each year since 2015, the federal budget was passed with a specific amendment that prohibited the feds from spending money on pursuing cases regarding medical cannabis (later expanded to recreational) if the activity was in conformance with state law where the activity was legal in that state.”
During the October 4 meeting, Nelson opined that the risk of running afoul of federal regulations is minimal at best, and that if county counsel thought differently, he should have addressed it long ago. “This is an issue without a problem,” she declared, as farmers laughed and cheered. “And it has been decided by the courts, by the annual budget, and it is so far beyond the scope. And it is, in my opinion, and I respect County Counsel Curtis, but this is malpractice, legal malpractice to not have raised this issue if it was a concern when your office has reviewed every single equity grant contract. And in fact, a lot of the bottleneck and a lot of the delay was because everything was being reviewed by your office, and new issues kept coming up, all of a sudden.”
The board decided 4-1 with Haschak dissenting, to continue adhering to the state’s requirements for the current round of cannabis equity grants, and to seek an outside legal opinion about federal liability for the next round of grant funds.
October 4, 2022 — During an investigation last year into a collision where no one was hurt and no property was damaged, Ukiah police broke several bones in a man’s face and handcuffed a woman in her own home, even after she indicated she was willing to cooperate.
Officers had a case against Arturo Valdes, who was accused by another motorist of causing a minor accident in the parking lot of the Ross Department store a little after 6:30 pm on March 28. The victim didn’t speak English, but KZYX obtained police body camera video of him describing the incident to Ukiah Police Officer Daniel Parker with the help of a witness. The victim said he had stopped suddenly to avoid hitting pedestrians, when Valdes, who was behind him, bumped into him with a lifted black GMC truck. He said Valdes “said a bunch of bad things in English and Spanish,” and drove off fast, with a woman and two small children in the vehicle. He told Parker he wanted insurance information, and, according to his volunteer translator, and to “get him in trouble, because it’s not fair, he’s driving drunk with two kids in the back.” According to a written police report, the victim added in a followup interview that Valdes asked him if he wanted to fight.
Surveillance video from outside the Ross department store isn’t high quality, but it does show that a man matching Valdes’ distinct appearance did bump into another car that afternoon. But Valdes didn’t admit it, when Officer Eric Rodello and Sergeant Rondald Donahue questioned him. He said “no,” when officers asked if he had just been “involved in a little traffic collision,” and told them that his black truck was missing. Police found the truck about a block away from his home the next morning.
Valdes wasn’t the only one providing bad information. Police dispatch had reported erroneously that he was currently on DUI probation, though that had expired in December. And when Valdes said he wouldn’t answer any questions until his lawyer arrived, officers told him he didn’t have a right to an attorney.
Valdes’ attorney, Richard Middlebrook, says that was another piece of misinformation. “That is a flagrant lie, and a misstatement of almost every bit of case law, ever,” he remarked in an interview over the summer.
It’s hard to see exactly what happened in the next few minutes. Valdes walked away. The officers reached for him. He tried to shake them off and then to stand up as the three men flailed on the ground. It took about eleven seconds for Donahue to break Valdes’ nose and fracture his sinus and eye socket. Middlebrook said the couple’s private Ring camera footage provided a better view of what happened. Later that night at the hospital, Valdes and Donahue argued over what happened during that eleven seconds.
Valdes insisted that “I never intended to swing.” Donahue said, “To me, it looked like you were. So I grabbed your hand and I tried to take you to the ground. You pushed forward. I actually fell backwards. I got up. We pushed you to the ground.” “Both of you were on the ground. I never swung at you. I had every ability to swing at you, and I never did,” Valdes argued. “Like you said, he was flipped over, and I never.” “You flipped him over your back,” Donahue said. “Yes,” Valdes replied. “And I never, never, never intentioned to swing.”
Donahue assured Valdes that he would include that in his report, and true to his word, he made a note of it. Before taking him to the hospital, though, Rodello and Donahue knocked on the door to speak with Elizabeth Valdes, Arturo’s wife. She took a few steps backwards with her small son in her arms. I was not able to discern from the video that she was stumbling, but the officers judged that she was so intoxicated it would be in the child’s best interests for Officer Parker to care for him until CPS arrived.
“What happened with your husband, I apologize,” Donahue said. “That should never happen. I wish it would have went different. What I want you to do, though, please, just go ahead and put the baby down. My partner — actually, I have a little bit of blood on my hands, so I’m not gonna do anything.”
Elizabeth Valdes flinched and sobbed, “this is so horrible.”
Parker held the boy and tried to amuse him by giving him shiny police department stickers. After a few minutes, Elizabeth Valdes began to walk towards them slowly. She pressed her hands together for a few moments when she reached the man and her child, then held her hands out for him to give the baby back.
After warning her that she was about to be arrested, Rodello and Donahue cuffed her, without reading her rights or informing her of any charges. In his report, Rodello wrote that Elizabeth Valdes “continued to be uncooperative, and was upsetting the children.” But about twenty minutes later, he didn’t take her up on it when she told him she would provide the information he said he needed.
“Do you have insurance on the truck in there?” he asked. “Of course I fucking do,” she told him. “With the truck on it,” he specified. “I need that information.” “Of course I fucking do,” she repeated. “Hey. Okay. So let my hands go, and I will go in the fucking house.” She began to sob again, and he asked her, “What’s your daughter’s birthday?” “Are you serious?” she asked. “Yes. I’m asking you, what’s your daughter’s birthday?” he repeated.
Instead of going inside to get the insurance paperwork, as Valdes indicated she was ready to provide, Rodello locked her in the back of the patrol car. He appeared to hold her responsible for what he suspected her husband had done.
“This is so horrible,” she said again. “What do you need from me?” “It’s horrible to drive with your kids in the car while you’re intoxicated,” he replied. “You didn’t do it, but your husband did.”
Back at the hospital, Arturo Valdes and Sgt Donahue continued their discussion.
“If you were in my shoes,” Valdes said. “I would not resist,” Donahue responded. “Because I understand the law, and the law says you have a duty to comply.” “And I have a duty to preserve my rights, too,” Valdes told him. Donahue’s reply was prescient: “If I put handcuffs on you though, and I transport you, and I’m wrong and you sue me, that’s how the system works.”
The Mendocino County District Attorney dismissed all charges against Elizabeth and Arturo Valdes on August 19, “in the interests of justice.” The couple is bringing a civil suit against the Ukiah Police Department, the City of Ukiah, and the officers involved. The fourteen claims include false imprisonment, emotional distress, and assault and battery.
October 5, 2022 — Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall suspended a “prison monastery” program at the jail on Monday afternoon amid revelations that Unconditional Freedom, the organization running the program, was linked to OneTaste, a company intimately connected to the Institute of OM, which touts the supposed neurological and spiritual benefits of an expensive clitoral stimulation technique called Orgasmic Meditation, or OM. The Institute of OM Foundation, which generates white papers and studies on the practice, claimed in a press release to have raised over $2 million “to support rigorous, peer-reviewed scientific research into partnered stimulation and the physiological and psychological effects of Orgasmic Meditation ("OM").”
Kendall was concerned that inmates would be vulnerable to exploitation through the so-called spiritual curriculum, which revolved around a self-published book called “The Art of Soulmaking,” by OneTaste founder Nicole Daedone.The program included a penpal component with mystery address labels and unknown correspondents. One of the Unconditional Freedom volunteers also worked at Juvenile Hall, though he was never alone with inmates, and the curriculum was not in use among the minors.
A Bloomberg piece from 2018 reported former OneTaste members’ allegations that the company pressured its sales team to work long hours selling seats at OneTaste events, often to pay off staggering debts they themselves had incurred to receive higher and higher levels of certification in “the practice,” which consists of one person stroking a woman’s clitoris for exactly 15 minutes, often in a group setting. And in 2020, the BBC released a ten-part podcast called the “Orgasm Cult,” which interviewed subject matter experts and chronicled the experiences of people who claimed that the organization engaged in abusive and controlling practices to make money from sex.
An attorney for Unconditional Freedom insisted that there is no legal connection between OneTaste and Unconditional Freedom, though they share key personnel, a website, and a mailing address
According to OneTaste’s website, which went live this year, there does seem to be some kind of relationship between the service organization and a company that’s been dogged by reports of financially and sexually exploitive practices. Numerous professional profiles and advertisements for past OneTaste events identify eight current or former OneTaste personnel among the Unconditional Freedom volunteers who appear in months-long correspondence between Kate Feigin, the inmate services coordinator for the Mendocino County jail, and the organization’s leadership. (The connection between Unconditional Freedom and OneTaste was initially reported last year by B.T. Linhden.)
Unconditional Freedom shares an EIN (Employer Identification Number, issued by the IRS to track business tax reporting), with another organization the OneTaste Foundation. The Foundation is legally distinct from OneTaste, though intimately connected with it. A 2014 press release issued by OneTaste for an event called an “Orgasmic Meditation Xperience” in San Francisco states that, All proceeds from ticket sales will go to the OneTaste Foundation, which exists to convert trauma into triumph through the practices of narrative therapy and Orgasmic Meditation. It aims to advance an innovative method of holistic reconciliation which serves to liberate both victims and perpetrators from debilitating, negative narratives.”
Until a few days ago, the OneTaste website featured a photograph of a Mendocino County jail inmate whom we were able to identify by distinctive tattoos that were visible in photographs Feigin attached to an email she sent to Marcus Ratnathicam, the Executive Director of Unconditional Freedom and a former coach at OneTaste. The picture was replaced shortly after we started asking questions. Visitors to the OneTaste website, which features highly sexual content, can quickly follow a series of links to the Unconditional Freedom website, where they can still view images of inmates and video testimonies by a variety of participants identified as “Builders of the monastery.”
We spoke with Unconditional Freedom attorney Caren Callahan about how the program measures the success of the program with inmates. She did not know how much public money it saves. The eight-week curriculum includes brief before-and-after surveys, where inmates self-report a 24% reduction in depression, 23% less use of drugs and alcohol (which they are not supposed to have in the jail anyway), and 16% less anger. Objective measurements like recidivism and post-release employment, housing, and sobriety were not immediately available.
Kendall had some rough metrics. He said Unconditional Freedom’s garden program alone saved the jail $10,000 in food costs last year. “And it’s going to be more this year, because prices of things have gone up,” he predicted. The jail is also working to gather data on inmates who have gone through the Art of Soulmaking curriculum, versus those who have not. “We’re trying to put together some data on that, but you have to understand, that’s going to take probably another year before we get enough history in the rear view mirror before we can say if this is really working,” he said.
Inmate Services Coordinator Kate Feigin said the curriculum does include making connections with the outside world. “Part of the Art of Soulmaking is that you connect with a mentor on the outside of jail, and they write letters back and forth with the incarcerated person, and they go through the lessons in the workbook with them, to help them deepen the lessons that they’re learning,” she explained. We discovered when we looked at one of the inmate Art of Soulmaking packets which contained two envelopes with mailing stickers to an addressee. Inmates receive instructions informing them that removing the stickers “will constitute immediate removal from the program.” When we removed the sticker, we found another label underneath–this one to the address shared by OneTaste, Unconditional Freedom, and the Institute of OM, which offers intimacy training packages for upwards of $500, claiming that studies show that “OM has been shown to produce mystical experiences on par with the second highest dose of psilocybin.”
The penpal program was a concern for Kendall, as he considered the jail’s relationship with Unconditional Freedom over the weekend. “Number one, is there any issue with this OneTaste program?” he asked. “And then secondly, are the inmates staying in contact with these folks after they get out?”
Both Kendall and Chief Probation Officer Izen Locateli, who runs Juvenile Hall, said they never had complaints about any of the Unconditional Freedom volunteers in their institutions. Locateli welcomed the help after he cut back on staff.
“A while back, our staffing was reduced, when the county had conversations about closing Juvenile Hall, and to keep it open, we had to have less staff,” he explained. “So we used more community-based organizations or non-governmental organizations, and volunteers, to do some of the work we used to do. Which includes the Unconditional Freedom Project working in our garden on a volunteer basis,” starting a little over a year ago.
The garden is closed until security protocols can be improved after two inmates escaped briefly over the weekend, but Locateli said the volunteer, a high-level trainer in OneTaste techniques, will not return when the garden re-opens. Locateli said Juvenile Hall only uses evidence-based curriculum, and that The Art of Soulmaking program was not in use at the facility. He emphasized that volunteers are never alone with the underage inmates. He hopes to continue the gardening project with a paid contractor.
“Growing up in this community, and not wanting to bring any type of perception issues and having a vulnerable population, I think it would be best to do some type of RFP (request for proposals from would-be government contractors) to bring in a variety of different people, and make a selection process that’s very transparent and open,” he concluded.
On Monday afternoon, Kendall spoke with Ratnathicam, the Executive Director of Unconditional Freedom. He said he wasn’t much more successful than we were at getting information. “Marcus said that he had previously worked for OneTaste, and that he was very proud of the work that they had done,” he reported. “I said, there are some things that went on there that simply shocked my conscience. And he said the reporting made it very shocking to people. And so I very bluntly asked him…if there was some type of group masturbation going on. And he simply went into the science behind things and did not answer.”
Kendall suspended Unconditional Freedom programming at the jail on Monday, though he plans to continue looking into the situation. The same night, he said, “If it doesn’t meet my morals and values for my family, it’s not good enough for the inmate population. And I’m sorry. From what I’ve seen so far, the work that the Unconditional Freedom Project did, I’m thrilled with it. I thought they were good, professional people. However, if the foundation of this is OneTaste, I am not okay with that. And it will not continue.”
With glaciers melting and cliffsides crumbling, coastal dwellers are beginning to come to terms with sea level rise in the very future. Just this year, the Ocean Protection Council put out a multi-agency state action plan for mitigating some of the worst expected damages. On August 23, the League of Women Voters hosted a talk by California Coastal Commission Chair Donne Brownsey, who tried to communicate a sense of urgency about the threat.
Cemetery Districts can easily fall into the category of unseen government. On the Mendocino Coast we have two Cemetery Districts with volunteer boards of directors appointed by the County Supervisors. They’re funded by a combination of property tax, donations and revenue from plot sales. The property tax is not listed on your tax bill as a line item so you might not know if you are in one.
Gary Quinton a board member from the Westport-Ten Mile District and Laurie Hill the general manager and board secretary of the Mendocino-Little River District answer my questions about how the districts run, what services they provide and how people can access those services.
Octibre 10 - 2022. Por Victor Palomino. La temporada de incendios forestales tradicionalmente alcanza su punto máximo entre julio y octubre, pero los funcionarios meteorológicos advierten sobre la posibilidad de incendios peligrosos antes de que termine la primavera. Para las personas que no hablan inglés, el acceso a la información de emergencia ha sido históricamente mínima o inexistente. Por este motivo en el condado de Mendocino, UVA Vecinos en Acción está realizando sesiones de capacitación en español de seguridad durante emergencias.
Listos Mendocino es el nombre del programa de preparación para emergencias creado en Santa Bárbara que hoy se usa en todo el estado para ayudar a la comunidad a estar lista durante situaciones de emergencia. Los miembros de la comunidad también pueden inscribirse en un programa de certificación donde aprenden las herramientas para enseñar la capacitación básica en sus comunidades. UVA está llevando a cabo el programa de entrenadores por primera vez en Ukiah. Uva está realizando la capacitación los días 22 y 23 de octubre, más información en la página de facebook de UVA
Wildfire season traditionally peaks between July and October, but weather officials are warning of the possibility of dangerous fires before spring is over. For non-English speakers, access to emergency properness information has been historically minimum to non-existing. for this reason. In Mendocino County, Uva vecinos en acción is holding safety training sessions in Spanish. Listos Mendocino
The tricounties bank in Covelo recently told account holders it is considering closing the branch permanently.
Gathering Time, Pomo Art During the Pandemic, is the first exhibit of Contemporary Pomo art to ever show at the Grace Hudson Museum. The multi-media show stems from a collaboration between the museum and Eastern Pomo artist Meyo Marrufo, who serves as guest curator. The exhibition features artwork from numerous Pomo artists created during the dark time of the pandemic. During lockdown, Pomo artists throughout Mendocino, Lake and Sonoma counties continued to create beautiful and hopeful pieces aimed to promote healing and keep their people and culture alive. The exhibit showcases the wide range of skills of these Pomo artists, and celebrates the resilience of Pomo people.
Conversación con Cristina Llop de los Servicios de autoayuda de las cortes del condado de Mendocino
The public libraries on the coast in Fort Bragg and Point Arena are part of the larger county library system. Measure O is a 1/8 percent sales tax for library services that is replacing a sunsetting sales tax. Janice Marcell represents district 4 at the Library Advisory Board. She is with us to talk about the libraries and how they are funded.
información de DACA con los servicios de inmigración de las Caridades Católicas y reporte de la celebración de la herencia hispana en Ukiah.
For the past couple of weeks, the news about immigration has been dominated by political theater. But for thousands of DACA recipients the attention is on the Biden’s administration’s announcement of changes to the DACA program.
The Nome Cult Walk is an annual trek that happens each September from Chico to Round Valley in memory of indigenous people who were forced to walk the trail in 1863. KZYX's Eileen Russell reports
PIO John Allison of Westport Volunteer Fire Department and Chief Dave Latoof of Mendocino Volunteer Fire Department discuss funding mechanisms and the challenges of volunteer fire and rescue.
From September 18-24, Mendocino libraries and bookstores celebrate Banned Books Week, an national event sponsored by the American Library Association. Banned Books Week celebrates the freedom to read by spotlighting efforts of censorship.
The American Library Association tracks a risingtrend in book challenges in the United States; eight months into 2022, the number of attempts to ban or restrict library resources in schools, universities and public libraries is on track to exceed record counts from 2021, with over 1,600 targeted titles. In 2022, most of the titles target LGBTQ people and themes. Listen to Ukiah Branch Librarian Melissa Eleftherion Carr, and bookseller Toni Wheeler, speak about local attempts to censor books and the rather surprising outcomes.
September 20, 2022 — Erosion is a form of pollution, especially alongside waterways, as pieces of the terrestrial landscape make their way into rivers and streams, damaging fishbearing habitat.
Now, several private landowners in Laytonville are working with the Eel River Recovery Project, using EPA money distributed by the State Water Resources Control Board, to remediate over 600 feet of erosion on four creeks that feed into the South Fork of the Eel River. Patrick Higgins, the director of the Eel River Recovery Project, gave an overview on Saturday morning as he led a tour along Cahto Creek. The four projects are “relatively substantial,” he said. “Two on Cahto Creek here, along the Cahto Trail. And one at Mill Creek, above Little Case Creek. And one at Black Oak Ranch along Streeter Creek. And these are all salmonid-bearing streams.” Each site ranges from a hundred feet to about 180 feet long, so Higgins notes that “they’re pretty big open sores, where dirt’s pouring into the creek. And that’s not good for the private land interests, but it’s also a form of pollution,” which fills in downstream pools and salmon nests. It can also cause rivers to get shallower, widening and heating up as the cold water comes to the surface. The Eel River Recovery Project sent surveys to all the landowners in the basin, asking them if they had problems with riparian erosion, then chose to work on the four sites that had the highest potential for sediment pollution and the most significance for fish habitat.
The work is scheduled to take place between July and October of next year. Mostly, it consists of engineering features that will affect the velocity of the river where its flows have been altered by human activity — or the lack of it, like building bridges and roads, and allowing conifers to overtop oak forests and absorb groundwater that some scientists believe would otherwise join the river.
Dennis Hogan owns property near what he calls the Mulligan Bridge. He’s working on improving forest health and remediating a section of riverbank that he says has receded steadily since he moved onto the place in 1989. He’s also raising willow and other riparian saplings to plant on the newly engineered riverbank, once the heavy machinery gets out of the way. “The streambed is lower than it used to be, by quite a bit,” he told visitors on Saturday. The nearby bridge has concrete abutments, which could account for narrowing the river channel, causing the water to rush through with great velocity. And Hogan said the rate of erosion seems to have increased since a large oak on the riverbank came down about five years ago.
Philip Buehler is the foreman of BioEngineering Associates in Laytonville, which designs riverbank stabilization projects. On Saturday afternoon, he told a small group of landowners and nature lovers about the forces at work in the creek under Mulligan Bridge. He’s taken a lead role in designing the structures that will be installed next year, and will be in charge of the crew that puts them in
“What’s happening here is really common on creeks,” he said. “You can see we’re on a slight outside bend of the creek here on this side. With any outside bend, the water is moving faster over here than it is on the inside…we have all this blackberry and other vegetation that is strengthening that side of the creek. You can see where Dennis has cleared, just behind the blackberry, it’s really sandy, fine sediment. During high flows, when that part of the bank is inundated over there, you’re getting slower water velocity in all of that vegetation. The vegetation is absorbing the energy of the flowing creek, and slowing the water down. When it’s slowed down, sediment drops out and gets deposited over there. That’s what’s moving this creek eighty feet this way, is sediment being deposited over there, vegetation growing up over time. Over here (on the eroded side), we have no erosion-resistant vegetation, so it’s stronger over there than it is over here.”
Buehler took a few moments to talk more about bioengineering at the end of the tour on Streeter Creek at the Hog Farm. That’s another erosion site where a section of fencing dangles in midair about ten feet from the edge of the riverbank. “Bioengineering is a type of technology where we build living structures, generally out of locally harvested willow plants,” he said. “So we build our structures out of rock, live willow, and erosion control fabrics…the gist of it is, the projects are living things. They grow over time, they stabilize the river bank, and they have a lot of benefits for the creek in general.”
At Hogan’s property, Buehler plans to put in five structures made out of boulders, live willow branches, and root wads to coax the river into creating more deep water pools for young salmonids. “What we want to do here is move the channel, so it’s flowing in the middle here, more to that side, rather than against this bank,” he explained. He expects the root wads to create turbulence in the channel as the water flows over them, scouring out a pool downstream, giving the fish a place to spend the summer, “until it rains, and we get a creek here again.”
The next day, Laytonville got well over an inch and a half of rain.
September 19, 2022 — The rain arrived over the weekend, bringing relief to firefighters and salmon alike. In Mill Creek, which makes its way to the South Fork of the Eel River in Laytonville, coho salmon surprised a leading fisheries biologist.
Patrick Higgins, director of the Eel River Recovery Project, sent out an email last week, reporting that he couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw coho near some restoration sites, just a few days after a scorching heat wave.On Saturday afternoon, just before the clouds moved in, he led a tour of the restoration sites, including a visit to a shaded pool tucked into a bend of Mill Creek where living shadows flickered among the rocks.
“I didn’t know that coho still actively used Mill Creek, so it was kind of a minor miracle when I went in there last Wednesday, and there were these beautiful showy fish,” he marveled. “And not the steelhead, and no warm water fish, just mostly coho…it’s a sign of resilience…it’s a further illustration that we do need to improve the habitat here for fish like coho, that like three feet of colder water…and then we also found them at the Varnhagen Cahto Creek Ranch, so that means the adult coho went by there, and other coho in that year class also went by, and temporarily used the habitats that we’re going to improve…the coho probably went by here in late December, early January, which was the last flood peak, and that’s exactly perfect for their spawn timing. And then the rain skinnied out between January and March, and so there were fewer steelhead juveniles to compete with them, so it was just kind of the luck of the draw.”
Landowner Joe Faigon said the site has been affected by events ranging from the great flood of 1964 to a variety of non-indigenous practices in the last two hundred years. Little Case Creek comes into Mill Creek at his property, he said. “And Little Case Creek has a longer history of rich guys redirecting it. And it's pretty much a straight run…Nine tenths of the year, it’s dry as a bone until it gets wet, and then it’s like a fire hose. Geigers and the local kids would use this corner as a swimming hole during the summer because it became that deep, mostly because of this log jam and the stuff they did over there to keep the meadow from flooding. And it was probably used as a sluice channel, way back,” when loggers used rivers to transport logs to the mills. The practice scoured the river bottoms and tore out many of the bends in the channel that slowed down the water velocity and created refugia for wildlife.
Higgins is studying a number of factors at this site and several others in the Eel River and its tributaries. “We’re doing an analysis of flow in Cahto Creek and Mill Creek, to see how they differ in flow from Alder Creek, which is an old growth system over in Angelo Reserve,” he said, as fingerling coho flickered in and out of visibility. “Likely we will see that flood peaks are greater on Cahto and Mill than in Alder, and also that base flows are maintained better on Alder, and that the descent of the hydrograph reflects greater evapotranspiration,” he predicted. He added that the ponds in Mill Creek had been just about dry for a week during the Labor Day heat wave, but, “as you can see, it’s flowing beautifully, just from the cold nighttime temperatures, and the trees reducing evapotranspiration. When the pool is disconnected, they have to kind of scour around for food.” He paused to watch a fish snap a bug off the surface. “That’s almost always true of watching fish,” he said, in what may be a time-lapse analogy of humanity’s history of endangering species and then trying to restore them. “You come up to the creek, you see very little. First of all, you probably scared everything. Now we’ve been here for about five minutes. And they’re all just kind of going, okay. We’ve got to eat lunch.”
September 15 marks the beginning of the Hispanic heritage month, a time when the nation reflects and celebrates the contributions of Latinos in all aspects of our communities. In Ukiah, the Spanish language newspaper Al Punto is organizing an event on Sunday September 18 to bring together all the Latino American cultures.
El 15 de septiembre marca el comienzo del mes de la herencia hispana, un momento en que la nación refleja y celebra las contribuciones de los latinos en todos los aspectos de nuestras comunidades. En Ukiah, el periódico en español Al Punto está organizando un evento el domingo 18 de septiembre para reunir a todas las culturas latinoamericanas.
Public health official Dr. Andrew Coren talks about the COVID 19 booster and flu vaccine. El Dr. Andrew Coren, funcionario de salud pública, habla sobre el refuerzo de COVID 19 y la vacuna contra la gripe.
Conversación mensual sobre cómo funciona el gobierno de la ciudad y educación cívica básica. Episodio 2 Mes de la herencia hispana y las reuniones del concejo.
Ukiah Vice Mayor Josefina Duenas opened Wednesday's city council meeting where the The city of Ukiah recognized the contributions of Latinos and Latino culture, issuing the proclamation of September as the Hispanic heritage month.
City council member Juan Orozco read the proclamation acknowledging the contribution in different sectors from people whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America.
Council member Orozco is part of the city committee that for the last 3 years has recognized the Hispanic heritage month.
Dr. Joe Vargas receive the proclamation representing the community. Dr. Vargas said that he has seen progress in representation of Latino in the city, but knows that the younger generations need to get involved to continue the Hispanic representation in all sectors.
The Hispanic heritage month goes from mid September to mid October and is the time for street festivals and celebrations. The city of Ukiah is collaborating in an event with local organizations and business.
Over the last few years of drought, the village of Mendocino has struggled to keep the water flowing to taps. Dry wells, water imports from adjacent communities and even emergency hauling from as far away as Ukiah has kept this town afloat. The State of California’s Division of Drinking Water and the SAFER program are assessing the situation. Recently appointed MCCSD board member Donna Feiner and MCCSD Superintendent Ryan Rhoades explain the state’s interest and the obstacles they face.
Ukiah High School’s burgeoning Women’s Empowerment Club, founded in 2021 and over 30 members strong, continues to hold weekly meetings to address systems of oppression that prevent women’s rights to thrive as realities on their campus and in society. Members of The Women’s Empowerment Club research feminist topics to create informative presentations, which are then shared at the weekly meetings. Club members analyze data, reports, and articles on selected topics to create power-point presentations that serve to educate club members and spark discussions. The Club is also active in the community; the group organized a protest in front of Ukiah’s courthouse in protest of the overturn of Roe vs. Wade, and fundraises for Project Sanctuary and Planned Parenthood.
El mes de septiembre y octubre se celebra el mes de la herencia hispana en los estados unidos, un mes de eventos dedicados a reconocer los aportes de la cultura latina en los diferentes sectores de nuestra sociedad. También es un momento en donde organizaciones culturales buscan mostrar el trabajo de las comunidades inmigrantes. Este es el caso de Ukiah center for the arts, una organización de arte sin fines de lucro que está haciendo un llamado a artistas inmigrantes de cualquier país para su exhibición de Octubre titulada. Inmigración, ni de aquí ni de allá. Las noticias de KZYX visitaron la galería para hablar del evento.
The first Friday of the month, galleries and art spaces in Mendocino county open their doors to the public for an evening of new exhibitions. KCYZ talked with the organizers of three events happening around the area. Grace Hudson museum presents the exhibit. Gathering Time: Pomo Artists in a Time of Pandemic The Ukiah Center for the Arts exhibition for the month of September is a Salon style exhibit. Ukiah Playhouse Theater: Clarence Darrow
August 29, 2022--Over 100 Forest Activists gathered in Caspar on the Mendocino Coast on Sunday, August 28, at a Youth Led Rally to protect Jackson Demonstration State Forest. The rally, called by youth climate activists, took on heightened significance after CalFire announced this week they would resume logging on four controversial Timber Harvest Plans that were shut down last year due to protests, including tree sits and road blockades. Trees could start falling as soon as today.
CalFire’s decision to re-start logging operations came as a shock to activists. This announcement came just two days after CalFire released what they called “A New Vision” for JDSF, describing CalFire’s plans to Update the Management Plan to demonstrate forest restoration, expand the Jackson Advisory group, and establish some form of Tribal co-management. Government to government negotiations about the future of JDSF are ongoing between the State and the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians, but the tribe was not consulted or informed about the resumption of logging. Chairman Michael Hunter said the news calls into question the state’s seriousness about co-managing his tribe's ancestral lands.
Sunday's Rally took place at the entrance to JDSF in Caspar, next to the Caspar 500 logging plan, home to large redwoods known as Mama Tree and the Gemini Tree. Buffie Schmidt of the Sherwood Valley Band of Pomo and Bernadette Smith of the Manchester/Point Arena Band of Pomo Indians welcomed the group with a prayer and songs. Her daughter Suzette Smith spoke at the rally about her people's connection to the forest and the pain of watching it be logged. Another rally organizer, Ravel Gauthier, expressed their frustration with Calfire. And Sara Rose, co-founder with Ravel Gauthier, of Mendocino Youth For Climate, made the connection between ecological and racial justice in the fight against climate change.
Activists are calling for a number of rallies to protect the forests of Jackson State. They will gather Monday from 1-3pm at Camp 20 Recreation area out Hwy 20 west of Willits, near the entrance to the Chamberlain Creek THP, at 4pm they will rally at fort Bragg Town Hall and march to Cal Fire’s headquarters on North Main Street. Tuesday there is a rally in Sacramento from 11-1 at the California Natural Resources Agency on P Street, followed by a legislative walk.
As part of The Clean California Act, over 4000 cubic yards of waste were removed from Covelo free of charge. Caltrans partnered with Solid Waste of Willits and community members with the Round Valley Municipal Advisory Committee to offer a free week of services at the Covelo transfer station.
The women’s healthcare access debate is top of mind throughout the country, since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade. But access to care was not equal even before that landmark decision. On the Mendocino coast, women can face physical and economic stress regardless of their age and choices about having a family. We talked to Lucresha Renteria, the executive director of the Mendocino Coast Clinics and Judy Leach, the president of the Adventist Health Fort Bragg Hospital about access to care. We also talked to a new mom about her experience during pregnancy and delivery.
Ukiah Vecinos en Acción held their community meeting with conversations about equity and community issues.
In 2002, a group of students of English as a second language and their teacher in Willits got together to solve the need for services and referrals for immigrants, forming what today is the nonprofit Nuestra Alianza.
Nuestra Alianza works on a train the trainer program, creating a sense of family in their work.
Sergio Perez, started as a student in the summer class 18 years ago, then serve as a volunteer for the organization and now he is helping with administration
Dina Hutton was the English teacher to the group that founded Nuestra Alianza and continues to be part of it today. She said that the organization is based in Willits because that’s where the need was.
Nuestra Alinza serves communities in Mendocino county and is looking to get more funding to continue services and outreach. Perez said that they used to serve other communities around Mendocino county, but due to funding they are only serving Willits for the moment. But are looking for grants to continue expanding services.
Since the beginning the organizations use a model of listening to the community to create programs and find resources.
This grassroots approach continues to be the strength of Nuestra Alianza, investing in the generations that will continue the work of guiding new immigrants navigate their new home.
More information can be found at www.nuestraalianza.org
En 2002 un grupo de estudiantes de inglés como segundo idioma y su profesor en Willits se unieron para resolver la necesidad de un lugar de servicios y referencias para inmigrantes formando lo que hoy es la organización sin fines de lucro Nuestra Alianza, una organización al servicio de los inmigrantes que aún hoy mantiene su enfoque de base.
Nuestra Alianza trabaja en un programa de formación de formadores, creando un sentido de familia en su trabajo.
Sergio Pérez, comenzó como estudiante en la clase de verano hace 18 años, luego se desempeñó como voluntario para la organización y ahora está ayudando con la administración.
Dina Hutton fue la profesora de inglés del grupo que fundó Nuestra Alianza y sigue siendo parte del jabalí en la actualidad. Ella dijo que la organización tiene su sede en Willits porque ahí es donde estaba la necesidad.
Nuestra Alinza sirve a las comunidades en el condado de Mendocino y busca obtener más fondos para continuar con los servicios y la divulgación. Pérez dijo que solían servir a otras comunidades alrededor del condado de Mendocino, pero debido a la financiación, por el momento solo están sirviendo a Willits. Pero están buscando subvenciones para seguir ampliando los servicios.
Desde el principio las organizaciones utilizan un modelo de escuchar a la comunidad para crear programas y encontrar recursos.
Este enfoque de base continúa siendo la fortaleza de Nuestra Alianza, invirtiendo en las generaciones que continuarán el trabajo de guiar a los nuevos inmigrantes a navegar por su nuevo hogar.
Se puede encontrar más información en www.nuestraalianza.org
August 22, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors last week discussed a media exemption to a new ordinance that charges hefty fees for public records.
On June 21, the Board passed the ordinance, after hearing from County Counsel Christian Curtis that some people requesting public records were doing so in order to conduct market research or to take up county government time. He said then that the county receives about 4.7 public records requests per day, and that fulfilling them takes about 20-30% of his attorneys’ time. He told the Board then that one person who is upset about a code enforcement issue is responsible for about 5% of the requests.
Members of the local media objected in person and by voicemail at the time, including Kate Maxwell, the publisher of the Mendocino Voice, Zack Cinek, who has an email newsletter on Substack called Newsboy, and me (Sarah Reith). It is unclear if anyone shared their opinion with the Board in writing, because February 8 is the last time that letters criticizing a proposed policy were attached to the agenda so the public could see them.
The fees are broken down into three categories: for duplicating documents, searching for documents that have not been specifically described, and specialized search and review fees, for when a request calls for staff to sift through records that are disclosable as well as those that are not. Requesters will be charged $20 an hour to search for documents and refile them. The charge for attorney time to sort out the public documents from those that are confidential is $150 an hour, or $50 an hour if non-attorney staff undertakes the task. The county will update the requester each time they’ve run through $50 worth of searching, and the requester can decide then whether or not to make another $50 deposit. Over-and underpayments are to be reconciled when the records are provided.
Last week, the Board agreed to create a public records request grant program for local media organizations to request the public records. Curtis told the Board that this would not have an adverse effect on the budget, though the stated reason that public correspondence has not been uploaded to the agendas for most of the year is that the county cannot afford to hire clerks.
Supervisor Glenn McGourty asked Curtis if there would be an application and vetting process for people requesting the media grant. “I think that’s going to be necessary,” Curtis said. “I don’t want to create a program that’s going to increase the overall amount of administrative work in a way that exceeds the benefit that’s being received…what we’re thinking is a relatively short application form. Something that would really just establish some basic criteria and would not require substantial vetting. For most media organizations, I think it’s going to be relatively straightforward to determine eligibility and be able to get that on file. I don’t know that it’s going to have to be exceptionally arduous for the ones that are more borderline. The more we can have simple, objective criteria, whether that’s circulation, et cetera. I really want to make sure that I’m clear on this up front. From a First Amendment standpoint, every piece of criteria is going to have to be viewpoint neutral. So we can’t look at things like the quality of the reporting, how accurate we think the information is. It’s really got to be something that’s tied to things like circulation, something that is showing that this is something that is effectively reaching a sufficiently sized audience to be a worthwhile investiture of the public funds and an efficient use of the resources. And then it’s really up to the media organizations and what has been referred to as the marketplace of ideas to be able to sort out where to go from there.”
I want to say here that I spoke again during public comment, and was encouraged to receive an invitation from County Counsel to work with his office offline to hammer out some of the complexities involved. My situation is that I am employed by KZYX, the public radio station in Mendocino County. I freelance for other outlets, and sometimes people volunteer to help me with research. Often, they wish to remain anonymous. I accepted the invitation at the time, and I remain encouraged by the willingness to consider my input. But I ultimately bowed out of the meeting after reflecting that I do not personally believe the ordinance is perfectable.
Michael Katz, the Executive Director of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, summed up the experience of many of us who wish to have free and easy access to public documents.
“Just limiting it to media is something that is also not necessarily as beneficial as it could be for the whole community,” he argued. “There are many groups here that are engaged actively with the County and the goings-on there, and have constituencies. And there is, due to substantial understaffing…a lack of transparency in certain things. And so in the past when items that could easily have been provided by email have not been, it has been a requirement to go through a public records request process in order to get something that would just normally be seen as a part of the discourse about how to deal with issues that arise between the regulators and those being regulated. So I would encourage, in the spirit of openness that was just expressed…that not just media, but also local associations and groups that are invested and dedicated to the future of Mendocino County can also have access to this important tool.”
Curtis maintains that the ordinance is legal. The California Public Records Act does not authorize the fees that are covered by the new ordinance. However, he told the Board that “The Public Records Act comtemplates that the charges might be authorized by other statutes. Specific to counties, there is a mechanism where fees may be charged by statute if the Board chooses to an elective ordinance as long as those fees do not exceed the actual cost of the service to be provided.”
Maxell didn’t buy any of the arguments. “It seems like the County is just creating more and more layers of staff time and complications on something that is actually fairly simple under California law,” she told the Board. “So I might be able to be eligible for the fund, but someone like Michael should be, too.”
August 18 — Union members packed into the Board of Supervisors chambers at last week’s meeting, scoffing at claims of a financial crisis and calling for an increase in pay.
“We’ve been hearing that the county can’t afford a cost of living increase because there’s a financial crisis,” said Patrick Hickey, the field representative for SEIU Local 1021, which represents most of the county’s unionized workers. “But is there? In a word: no.”
The county has asked for a year-long pause in negotiations over a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) to assess the financial situation on the national as well as local levels.
And the Board contemplated a program to exempt media from paying fees for public records act requests, even as a new system of including public comment on meeting agendas has drastically reduced the public discourse.
Hickey argued that in the last five years, the county has overestimated expenses and underestimated revenues, sometimes by more than 100% for one source of tax funds. Union members clapped and cheered as he shared his data points with the Board. “The only potential funding shortfall is in cannabis taxes,” he declared; “which everyone who was paying attention knew was coming. But every other funding stream is increasing. How can the Board take action to support county employees? Number one: there are 264 funded, unfilled positions. Repurpose some of those funds. The county has argued that there is no money there because it gets used up by overtime and extra help. But you need to look at the actual data. If you review the past budgets, and the recently released annual comprehensive financial report, you will see that that is not true. There is an increase in overtime and extra help, but it doesn’t come close to using up the savings when those positions are not filled. Number two: for this year’s budget, the county has projected no increase in sales tax revenues. Let’s take a look at how well the county has done in forecasting sales and use tax revenues.” In the last five years, he said, “actual revenues are regularly higher than projected, and expenses are regularly lower than projected. The budget is a fiction, designed to make the Board look prudent and effective. The Board needs to understand this, and make decisions accordingly.”
Not all of the presentations were quite as data-driven. Jessica Christensen shared responses to county job postings on Facebook. “We are advertising that your check can be up to $1850 per paycheck,” she began. “Up to. And this is what the public had to say about that: ‘Mendocino County is a gorgeous place to live. But the job market couldn’t suck harder if it attached a nozzle to it.’” She went on, including some frank language from users of the site, as union members laughed and held up their signs.
Union President Julie Beardsley predicted what will happen if more workers become dissatisfied and leave the county. “Falling behind in employee compensation will result in a lack of services, phones not being answered, long wait times for permits, and it will put the most vulnerable in our county at risk,” she declared.
The public is also no longer privy to correspondence with the Board of Supervisors on matters of public interest. Up until the beginning of June, comments addressed to the Board about items under discussion during the meetings would be attached to the pertinent agenda item. They were often plentiful, and they ranged from expert opinion to angry one-liners. But a new system, called Granicus, requires commenters to create a password-protected account, which has not caught on.
I was first surprised on June 21, when it appeared that no one besides supervisors and county staff had anything to say about a controversial proposal for a sales tax. Since then, only county documents have appeared on the agendas.
Since the new system was in place, I have obtained at least three important letters about topics that are clearly in the public interest — just not by way of the agenda.
Chamise Cubbison, the elected Treasurer-Tax Collector/Auditor-Controller, wrote to the Board of Supervisors on August 2, characterizing assertions they had made about the county’s budget as false. Earlier that day, the Board had agreed to ask the State Controller to help the county with its budget, due to an alleged financial crisis. Cubbison informed the Board that the meeting had been full of misinformation, and that she had not been given a chance to respond. That letter made its way into my hands informally.
On July 29, Cannabis Department Director Kristin Nevedal wrote to the Board of Supervisors about updates to the manual for the cannabis equity grant program. Mismanagement and delays in administering the direct grants to qualified applicants were the subject of a recent Grand Jury report, called “Building the Airplane While it’s Flying.” I also obtained this piece of correspondence, from a public servant to elected representatives, informally.
I happen to be on the mailing list for the Redwood Valley Municipal Advisory Council, which wrote a letter to the Board dated August 10, urging it to adopt a standing committee to address cannabis issues. They wrote that, “As is obvious to everyone now, the roll out of the cannabis permit program has been fraught with hiccups and missteps sinc ethe inception.” At the meeting no August 16, the Board directed cannabis concerns to the General Government standing committee. The cannabis community has been requesting this for years, but the Board has held firm on its position that the entire Board should hear cannabis matters, and that an ad hoc committee should take up specific, narrowly defined problems. But the Board changed its position during a discussion about an item on a retroactive contract amendment that was pulled from the middle of the consent calendar. The public did not have a chance to see who, besides the MAC and the cannabis community, had weighed in on that decision by writing to the Board.
The most recent agenda consisted of 66 items, and contained only one public comment, which was a memo from the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, an advocacy organization that has long been working with the Board and the public to establish and clarify its position.
I shared my thoughts about this with the Board during public comment on Tuesday. I said that previously, I have been able to gauge the level of public interest in an item, including the thoughts of people who are not well-versed in advocacy; and that I find value and interest in what the public has to say.
Williams responded that he agreed, but that the Clerk of the Board’s office is down from five employees to about 1.5. The union members, who were in the room for public comment, booed and groaned. Williams said the clerk is charged with saving emails as pdf’s, and manually uploading them as comments. “We simply didn’t have staff time, based on the number of comments,” he said. “I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have that simplified model that we had before, but it's a struggle, and it’s not just in the clerk’s office. It’s across the board. Every problem that we look at, we say, we don’t have enough personnel to carry it out. Yes, it’s a problem…I don’t know what that solution is today. It’s not as easy as directing staff to put back in place what was in place previously. Because we simply don’t have the staff time to carry it out.”
The County recently used close to $370,000 in one-time American Rescue Plan Act funds to remodel the Board of Supervisors chambers, including new chairs, a new telecom system, and an automatic door system.
Beardsley, the union president, summarized her position: “We have examined the budget, and the claims of no money just don’t add up.”
August 17 — A consent calendar item on the agenda for this week’s Board of Supervisors meeting revived concerns about mismanagement and delays at the equity cannabis grant program, which was the topic of a recent Grand Jury report.
And cannabis issues will now be directed to the General Government committee, a standing committee that meets every other month under Brown Act requirements and will bring proposals to the full board. Cannabis advocates have long requested a standing committee, but will now work with two supervisors who have not been serving on the more limited ad hoc.
The equity grant is a state-funded direct grant program that is supposed to provide some assistance to people in the cannabis industry who can prove they were harmed by the war on drugs. In 2020, the county received $2.2 million in round one funding. It has also received roughly $800,000 in round two funding. Ten percent of those funds can be used for administrative costs.
On Tuesday, the Board was asked to approve an amendment to the contract with the company hired to administer the grant, Elevate Impact, by over $83,000 in back pay, for work performed between February and August of this year. The expectation was that the contractor would do 95% of the work administering the funds, but that number has been closer to 50%. Five checks have found their way into the hands of applicants, and 47 approved grant applications are under review at County Counsel’s office, to make sure the funds won’t be misused .
Supervisor John Haschak pulled the item for a more fulsome discussion, saying, “dealing with this amount of people and almost $300,000 of administration and untold amounts of administration from our cannabis department, because we’re taking on half of the workload…I would just like to see the county compensated, rather than these outside entities.”
Monique Ramirez, a grant recipient, reeled off a list of difficulties she’s encountered with the program. “I have a really hard time seeing us potentially give more money to the LEEP program when they have not effectively done their job to this point,” she said. “Back in February, I submitted a very lengthy memo about the equity program, detailing, I believe there were 123 emails with the correspondence in the back and forth that I had to go through just to get to the point of finally getting my check…even my check wasn’t issued correctly.”
Haschak had a number of complaints about the contract with Elevate Impact. “The county is expending time and resources on these equity grants,” he declared. “But we do need to get the equity grants out. It’s been way too long, and it’s been way too micromanaged.” When Supervisor Ted Williams asked him if he would be willing to bring back an agenda item with a proposal, Haschak said he thought the cannabis department should bring back a proposal to the Board, “because I don’t understand the contract. None of us understand the contract with Elevate. We haven’t seen any information for it.”
The Grand Jury report, called “Building the Airplane While It’s Flying,” found that Elevate Impact, the contractor hired by the county, lacks experience in rural capital improvements projects. Cannabis Department Director Kristin Nevedal said the contractor does not have a team of planners on staff, and that the county didn’t have enough information about the applications in advance to realize that planners would be necessary.
She also said the program had been on hold for months, starting in April. “It was on hold for three months,” she said, “during which time we could not proceed with county reviews. We proceeded with department approval, but we couldn’t proceed with moving those proposals through Cobblestone,” the county’s multi-department contract management system.
The information about the pause was news to Michael Katz, the Executive Director of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, who also said that growers have long been trying to bring their parcels into compliance with CEQA. The earliest iterations of the program, he said, required the involvement of Planning and Building Services. In an interview, he lamented that from the beginning, “expert stakeholder input was not integrated to create a more successful program.”
To the question about whether or not the county will be able to pay itself for administering the grant, Nevedal said that, with the payments to Elevate Impact, the county was close to the $300,000 administrative cap that’s allowed for the $3 million in grant funds.
“WIthout the contract administrators, we would have to drastically staff up,” she said. “We do not have allocations for staff for grant purposes. Nor have we budgeted for staff for grant purposes…if the Board were to not proceed with the Elevate contract, we would have to cease processing equity applications until such time as we had allocations from the Board for staffing specific to this program.’
County Counsel Christian Curtis told the Board they had the option of shutting down the program. “If you’re looking to re-evaluate, you could just decide not to proceed with this program,” he said. “You could look at wrapping it up, rather than re-staffing or moving forward.”
Attorney and cannabis advocate Hannah Nelson said she thinks the answer is taking a hard look at the program and making it work. “The answer is to not stop a program, but rather, when millions and millions and millions of dollars are coming into the county, and being re-invested locally, it’s imperative that we look and see, how can we improve the system so it functions,” she urged the Board.
There was still some miscommunication near the end of the discussion, when CEO Darcie Antle and Nevedal each thought the other had been tasked to ask the Auditor-Controller to approve a special run of checks for the applicants who have been stuck in the system. If the money is not spent by the end of the month, the county could either be required to return it to the state or be ineligible for future grants.
Moments before the board voted to send the matter to the General Government committee, Antle broke into a supervisor’s request with a piece of news. “The special run for August 31st has been approved,” she announced.
The next General Government committee meeting is scheduled for October 17 at 1:30 pm.
August 16: The Drought Task Force Committee met Monday morning to hammer out more details about how to form a water agency, now being called a water resource team. But questions about where the entity is going, and what it will ultimately do, remain.
The formalization of the task force, which is now a Board of Supervisors standing committee currently meeting under the rubric of the Public Health, Safety, and Resource committee, is part of a state mandate to respond to the drought. While potable water and ag water are top of mind at the moment, the scope of the drought is immense. And the extent of local expertise is unknown, with regional experts scattered among 42 water agencies. There are no licensed hydrogeologists in Mendocino County, and hydrologists are thin on the ground.
The county did not use all the funds from last year’s $2 million grant from the State Department of Water Resources to haul water from Ukiah to Fort Bragg. That program was administered by the Department of Transportation, which is where the water agency is currently housed. DoT Director Howard Dashiell gave committee members Supervisors John Haschak and Glenn McGourty an update on the remaining money.
“If you just look at the contract commitment we’ve got, like, eight or nine hundred thousand dollars for sure that’s available, but if we don’t start hauling water and we don’t meet some of those contract commitments, it could be a million. Those are the estimates…I looked at the grant eligible activities, and didn’t see a lot of flexibility there. Some of the other things like, I know the community would really like to do groundwater monitoring in many of our basins, and trying to get a handle on what the capacity of some of our aquifers are, I didn’t see those kinds of activities, which have been popular in the past, as eligible under that particular grant.”
In the meantime, the state is opening up applications for $300 million in urban grant awards, and Round Valley won a grant of close to half a million dollars to monitor groundwater in Covelo.
For now, the Board of Supervisors has agreed to work with the UC Davis Cooperative Extension to hire a consultant to come up with proposals for countywide water projects. The process of hiring the consultant could take four or five months. The county hired GEI Consultants last year to work on establishing a standalone water agency. Depending on how much more work they do on their current $306,000 contract, there is between $40,000 and $80,000 left over.
Dashiell told the committee what he’s looking for, in response to his request for proposals from a consultant. “A lot of times I’ll put out a proposal for a bridge — I’m sorry to keep using road and bridge examples, because that’s really what I know,” he began. “But I know I want to get from this side of the river to the other side. And often I’ll get a proposal that just blows my socks off on how to do that. So to some extent I’m looking for whoever proposes on this, how to take this bucket of things we said we want, and gives us a nice proposal on how to do that. And obviously, that’ll be translated into a contract the Board and the public will get to look at.”
Devon Boer, the Executive Director of the Mendocino County Farm Bureau, wants more clarity on who will be responsible for what. “In terms of the consultant, I’m still not 100% clear on what role UC potentially could play,” she said. “Who is going to be in the role of the standard everyday water agency requirements related to the quagga zebra mussels, some of the issues with water rights up here on the east side of Ukiah, the USGS gauge and other things, are sort of the everyday responsibilities of the water agency…if there’s going to be money expense, we want to see it be productive and complementary to what’s happening, and at this point in time, I’m just not sure, personally, where this is going.”
During the budget workshops, the Board authorized $250,000 from the PG&E settlement funds for the water agency. Earlier this month, they agreed to spend up to $190,000 a year on assembling the team. If the money is not spent, it will go back into the PG&E fund.
Jim Shields, the manager of the Laytonville County Water District, urged the committee to compile the expertise he says the county already has, and argued for a five-member technical advisory committee that would prioritize capital projects. “Water production is overseen and managed by local government public utility professionals who are the true experts in water related matters,” he said. “They’re the most valuable resource the county has available to rely and depend on at this time for their expertise and professional insights into water related matters. What we need to do is send out a letter to all the water agencies in the county, requesting they get this information to us…I believe this is something we need to get started as soon as possible.”
Deborah Edelman, the water program manager at the Mendocino County Resource Conservation District, said the water resource team will be just one part of the drought response. “Once the water agency is up and running, it’s going to be addressing things beyond just getting water into taps,” she told the Board. “Including stormwater management, including invasive species, like the quagga zebra mussels, and, as Supervisor McGourty mentioned, eventually, almost certainly, flooding. So the scope of work is more than just the current emergency of drought and getting water to people and farms. So I just wanted to mention that. And one thing that was not reflected in the GEI implementation plan is that much of the boots on the ground work that’s being done by the water agency in those areas, such as the quagga zebra mussel monitoring, is currently being done by the Resource Conservation District, in our contract with the water agency.”
Most of the people who called in to the meeting were part of a countywide steering committee assembled by GEI Consultants to provide information about regional water issues and make suggestions as to what’s most needed. Many of them argued against hiring a consultant again, but the Board of Supervisors already voted 3-2, with Supervisors Dan Gjerde and Haschak dissenting, in favor of McGourty’s proposal to hire someone who would help put together a team.
“At the end of this consultant’s term, the county will be left with, not a stand-alone water agency, but a team,” Dashiell summarized.
Primer episodio de una serie de conversaciones con el Concejal de la ciudad de Ukiah Juan Orozco explicando cómo se maneja la ciudad, cuál es el trabajo de los concejales y las responsabilidades cívicas de las personas.
The city of Ukiah has tools for non-English speakers to access information and communicate with the local government.
August 11, 2022 — The Fort Bragg City Council had second thoughts this week about its own plans for a sales tax that would have been used to fund workforce housing. The proposal for a ⅜ cent sales tax would have been a general tax, needing only a simple majority to pass and going into the city’s general fund. An oversight committee was going to make sure the estimated $650,000 to $800,000 a year was used for the stated purpose, but that’s not guaranteed with general taxes, as former interim city manager David Spaur, who now works as a consultant for the city, explained.
“Having the funds go into the general fund, and then earmarking or designating them towards your specific purpose, allows you to build that account for your specific purpose, but in the event of an emergency, if the Council needed the funds for police, or for fire, or for flood or famine, those funds would be available to you,” he said. “But the oversight committee would want you to possibly replace those funds and backfill them at a later date, or find alternative sources of revenue to replace those funds.”
Council member Tess Albin Smith asked Spaur what the city could do with less than a million dollars a year. She said $800,000 “does not seem like enough to do anything with workforce housing. So I’m wondering, are we just going to save it up until we get enough? What would we do with $800,000? What’s the plan?”
Spaur replied that the money “will allow you to leverage your housing community development funds for $800,000 into $1.6 million. So with a 50% match, you can double it. You can accrue those funds over several years. You can use those funds to purchase property, or a down payment on property, and then use grant funds and others to close on that property. So it’s a good start. It’s a good bite at the apple. Obviously, you’re going to need a couple bites at the apple. You’ve got a housing crisis going on, and you need to find revenue sources specifically for workforce housing, for the workers, and have that housing be deed-restricted. You also need the funds. So creating some source that helps the city apply for other grants and leverage the funds is needed, whether it be this source or another source.”
There will be two taxes on the county ballot in November. During public comment, Supervisor Dan Gjerde told the council that he’s worried that a third ballot measure asking for a tax would doom all three. Fractions of two already-existing taxes are sunsetting: Measure B, a special tax to fund mental healthcare facilities; and Measure A, for the libraries. Library supporters got enough signatures to put a quarter cent proposal, Measure O, on November’s ballot. The Board of Supervisors is also asking voters to approve Measure P, another quarter cent sales tax for fighting fire and fire prevention. Gjerde was key in getting the Board of Supervisors to drop its original idea to include funding water projects, in part by arguing that the Board does not have the political credibility of a citizens group.
“I think this is a great, worthy proposal that you have,” he said. “My concern is the timing….One thing you should know is, in the last couple of years, California courts have ruled that if the voters collect signatures and put a tax on the ballot for a specific purpose, it only takes a 50% (plus one majority) to pass. So the library folks have figured that out, and that’s part of the reason why they went directly to the voters. First of all, they gathered support by getting people to sign up to put it on the ballot. Secondly, they know it only takes 50% (plus one majority to pass) and they can guarantee how the money is being spent. So with this proposal, if there was a sales tax, if the voters here in Fort Bragg, if we were to collect signatures and put it on the ballot, it could potentially be ready for the next election. At the latest, that would be March of 2024, the presidential primary…I actually think there’s an advantage, when you have fewer things on the ballot. I think people are better able to understand the proposal itself. And I think they are therefore more likely to vote yes. I think if they don’t know enough about a proposal, they’re more likely to vote no. Anyway, again, I’m just concerned that if there are three taxes on this election, they’re more likely to all go down in defeat.”
Mayor Bernie Norvell cited the lack of trust in government at the county as he agreed with most of his colleagues that now is the wrong time to ask voters to pay more taxes. “I’m going to fall in line here,” he said. “I think the timing is just not right for a general tax. I don’t think there’s trust in government right now. If you have followed the county, they got a lot of heat. I don’t think there’s trust with the county right now. I do think they’ll get their library tax. I hope they get their fire tax. I think we’re in a better position than the county with government trust, and I would hate to see this project get a stain on it by not getting the necessary votes, and I just don’t think it will. With looming recession, inflation, I don’t think it’s a great time right now to be taxing people. Again, if you go back and watch some of the county meetings, that was a lot of the discussion, is why now, why more taxes. If we do shoot this down tonight, it may send a message of goodwill, that we understand the economy, and what people are struggling with…I’m just not going to support this. I’m going to recommend no action on this item. But Mr. Spaur, you did everything we asked you to do…I think a year and a half or even two years ago, when we started this, and even at the budget meeting, I think we were right then. I just think so much has changed since then. I just don’t want this to reflect on you at all. Because this was our idea, and I think you did an amazing job putting the report together.”
August 10, 2022 — The new fiscal year is off to a rocky start, with miscommunication about the health plan deficit, uncertainty about federal disaster reimbursements, and the county’s main labor union filing a complaint with the state in the midst of contract negotiations.
Last week, the Board of Supervisors agreed to ask the state controller for help with its books after Supervisor Ted Williams declared that the county was in a financial crisis. Chamise Cubbison, the newly elected Treasurer-Tax Collector/Auditor-Controller, wrote a letter to the board saying the discussion was full of misinformation, while retired Treasurer-Tax Collector Shari Schapmire said the county is “absolutely not” in a financial crisis.
CEO Darcie Antle said crisis is a strong word to describe the county’s financial situation, but there are areas of concern, including close to $70 million in long term debt service and rising interest rates as the county contemplates refinancing bonds to fund the new jail. Eleven million dollars in disaster reimbursements from FEMA is still outstanding.
And Antle described the confluence of events that led up to the sudden news about last year’s $3.6 million shortfall in the county health plan. She recalled that just before COVID, and the high-dollar claims that followed, the county had a robust reserve in the health plan.
“The prior Auditor-Controller came forward in 16/17 and stated that our reserve for the health plan, the fund balance, was too high,” she recalled; “and that the State Controller was concerned about that, and recommended that we spend down that amount of money. I think we spent down roughly $6 million through a health holiday. That occurred in 17/18 and 18/19. In the quarter of October through December of each respective year, employees and the county did not pay the premium for those months. So those were health holidays, which equated to about a $6 million spend-down. In December of 2019, who would imagine we would be going into COVID…claims increased, acuities increased, over the last three years.”
In August of last year, Antle met with former Auditor-Controller Lloyd Weer to discuss a $1.1 million deficit in the health plan. She stated that in 2021, “that information was reported to the Board, a couple of times…At that time, the team, the HR team, and the Executive Office, did ask for an increase in the health plan, and that increase went into effect January 1 of 2022 at a 12% increase,” which Antle says was well within the amount allowed by the county’s contracts with its labor unions.
There was a delay in reporting the additional $2.5 million deficit to the board, and Antle said her team did report the inaccurate number. She said the $1.1 million deficit was on a cash basis, “which can be seen by any department running a month to actual report. That is what was obtained by the Executive Office, the HR office, and what was clearly understood by our outside actuary. The $2.5 million, which is the number that was missing from the original $3.6 million, that was on an accrual basis on the balance sheet, and the balance sheet is balanced once per year by the outside auditors. The balance sheet for 2021, because of the delay in the outside audit, was not completed and submitted to the auditor (because they complete and submit to the auditor), until the end of June, early July, of 2022. So we can clearly see that from the financial statement now. But that wasn’t what was reported. And again, the team reported twice, publicly, a $1.1 (million deficit). Nothing was brought forward to clarify those statements. So is this misdoing on anyone’s part, or is this part of a transition? We had our Auditor-Controller retire. Our Treasurer-Tax Collector retired. We have a new person stepping into a dual role that had never been filled here before. I’m stepping into my new role as well. So I think everybody needs to continue to work together, and come together as a tem, and make sure that there is transparency and communication to the Board, and to the public.”
The county is currently in negotiations with its labor unions, which also want more budget information. Last month, SEIU Local 1021 filed a complaint with the Public Employees Relations Board (PERB) about lengthy delays in fulfilling requests for detailed information, which Deputy CEO Cherie Johnson said she’s working to supply. The county has until August 18 to respond to PERB about the complaint, and is likely to face a number of deadlines to produce the rest of the information to the union negotiators.
The union is asking for a 5% Cost Of Living Adjustment, or COLA, and Antle said she is asking for a one-year pause on that part of the negotiation. “We really want to assess the financial stability of the county at this time,” she said. “Coming out of COVID, not receiving all our reimbursement from FEMA, going into a possible economic downturn. We really just want to understand the fiscal position. We are just asking for a one-year pause on the COLA…over the last three years, all bargaining units have received a 3% COLA each year…in that three-year period, they were also receiving classification study surveys to bring most if not all positions into market. So there were additional increases during that time.”
She hopes next year’s budget process will involve more collaboration, and more regular reports. “I would like to see the Auditor-Controller’s office, the Executive Office fiscal team, come together with the budget ad hoc on a regular basis,” she reflected. “Again, communication is both ways, so we need everybody to come to the table.”
August 9, 2022 — The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors is facing fierce criticism after its unanimous decision last week to send a letter to the state controller, asking for help with the county’s books. “I think we have a financial crisis here, and we just don’t know how bad it is,” said Supervisor Ted Williams, during a discussion about projected cost overruns at the project to build a new jail. But the county’s own financial experts say the real problems are miscommunication, misinformation, and a lack of financial understanding at the leadership level.
On Tuesday afternoon, after last week’s Board of Supervisors meeting, Chamise Cubbison, the newly elected Treasurer-Tax Collector/Auditor-Controller, wrote a letter to the Board, complaining that “there was a lot of misinformation discussed at today’s meeting and no opportunity for rebuttal or open discussion. I would hope the Board would seek information directly before spreading rumors.” She took on Williams’ assertion that he hasn’t been able to get a credible financial report the whole time he’s been in office, writing that the statement that “outside auditor recommendations are being ignored and not implemented is false.” She claims that she had already explained to Williams that the outside auditor makes adjustments to the information depending on where it’s being reported, whether on a financial statement or to the state or federal government.
And in an interview, Retired Treasurer Tax-Collector Shari Schapmire said that she believes “the majority of this board is ill-equipped to comprehend the financial complexities that are inherent in the operation of the county.” She added that overall, communication deteriorated during COVID, but she thinks most of the board members “also lack the communication skills to have any dialogue with any staff outside the CEO’s office that may be able to assist them. Right out of the chute, I want to say I do not believe the state controller’s office needs to access the records or clean anything up.”
Asked if she thinks there is a financial crisis, Schapmire said, “Absolutely not…I do not believe there is a financial crisis. I’ve been through a financial crisis. I know what a financial crisis is. And I cannot imagine that we would be there, less than five months after I have retired.”
She took umbrage at Board comments about a lack of skill in the financial offices, particularly Supervisor Glenn McGourty’s assertion that he supports “a professional financial office, which is what most big organizations have, where you appoint people based on their skill set and a proven track record of handling money well. And if we look back through Mendocino County’s history at the Auditor-Controller and Tax Collector-Treasurer, we don’t see that pattern.”
Schapmire drew on history to refute the claim, saying, “If you go back a decade ago and look at the financial meltdown, there was an unbelievable effort in place by the CEO, Auditor, Treasurer-Tax Collector, and the sitting Board of Supervisors, all working together to address several financial issues that the county was facing. And despite these claims, this group was extremely qualified to address those catastrophic issues and they were addressed. And I think there absolutely was a proven track record of those individuals that were there at the time, me being one of them. We handled this during the most dire of times. And I think if Supervisor McGourty hasn’t seen this, he wasn’t paying attention the last decade…It almost feels like they have some inadequacies at the Board, and it’s almost like they’re publicly airing irresponsible and inaccurate information because they’re trying to deflect from those inadequacies.”
Cubbison emphasized the theme that financial information is available, and laid out some details about a breakdown in communication. She wrote that shortly before his retirement last year, she and former Auditor-Controller Lloyd Weer met with members of the Executive Office fiscal team to discuss the projected deficits in the health plan, which they expected would keep growing. The shortfall in the health plan for fiscal year 2020/2021 was $3.6 million. The projected shortfall this year is another $4 million.
“It is unfortunate that the CEO’s office and the Health Plan consultants did not sound the alarm sooner on the growing deficit, but that is not because the information was not available,” she wrote. “Mr. Weer and I both believed that the CEO’s office would present the issue during the already scheduled future Board agenda item to go over the Health Plan. We were both surprised that a higher Health Plan contribution rate was not requested at that meeting.”
Schapmire thinks the Board should have allowed the auditor’s office to replace Weer as soon as possible. Leaving the top position vacant for months, and then consolidating the offices of Treasurer-Tax Collector and Auditor-Controller were two decisions that leave her with “very deep concerns.” She also does not have confidence in the fiscal team at the county’s Executive Office. “There is a lot of stuff this financial team doesn’t know anything about, and all those things are going to come up,” she predicted. “Nobody knew what these offices did before they consolidated the positions, and nobody really cared to find out.”
Looking to the future, Schapmire thinks last week’s public stumble could affect the county’s credit rating. At its meeting next week, the Board will discuss how much money it wants to leverage through new bonds to pay for the new jail. “Anytime that you want to issue new debt, a rating agency is going to review the county’s credit rating,” she explained. “And in order to maintain a positive credit rating and receive the best rate, they need to see that there is a stable government. You know, the governing body and the financial leadership team. And I think by saying these kinds of things, and acting like this county doesn’t have a clue what’s going on, I don’t think they understand the consequences of their actions,” she concluded.
August 8, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors agreed in a narrow vote last week to approve the idea of a water agency. During budgeting in June, the board agreed to allocate $250,000 from the PG&E settlement to form the agency.
And, to comply with a new law, SB 552, which requires drought planning, the board agreed unanimously to formalize the drought task force into a standing committee, consisting of Supervisors Glenn McGourty and John Haschak. At the moment, the Department of Transportation is in charge of water issues, but McGourty told the board that he thinks the county should create a water resources team consisting of the drought committee and county staff collaborating with experts at the U.C. Davis Cooperative Extension. Some of them, including McGourty himself, have already done water studies in Mendocino County. In 2012, McGourty led a study on ag water use in the Navarro River watershed.
CEO Darcie Antle offered a quick calculation of how much she thinks it will cost to hire a consultant for a quarter million dollars. “If you are going to be payin ga consultant $200 an hour for roughly a thousand hours, our staff would be required to attend the meetings as well to stay current,” she said. “I believe that happened last year, where I had Sara Pierce on most of the meetings, and also Judy Morris or Steve Dunnicliff, as well as Brent, who helped coordinate all the calls with CalOES. So for every consultant hour you’re probably looking at two or three hours of staff time…if we’re going to do the grant writing, and I don’t believe we want to pay a consultant that amount of money to help write our grants. We have another contract out for grant writing. Typically, for every grant, it’s costing us anywhere from six to ten thousand dollars per grant, so it’s going to add up quickly. I would estimate roughly, with the staffing level that we’re out, we would be doubling the amount.”
Haschak favored another proposal, by Department of Transportation Director Howard Dashiell, to use internal staff. “I just don’t think that we need this consultant, who’s going to be working 58% of the time at $200 an hour to do these things,” he said. “I think that we can do it internally. The long term is, we need to put it out there to get a person who can learn the ropes and learn the business and provide that over a long term. Because this is a one-shot deal, and we don’t even need it.”
But McGourty argued that the subject matter is too complex not to bring in experts who are already connected at the state level and are alert to funding opportunities for local projects. “Mr. Chairman, I’m wondering if you could pull up the MCWA implementation plan and go to page 14,” he remarked. “There is a task list that has been identified, based on stakeholder comments. I think this might be helpful to Supervisor Haschak, about the complexity of what he’s expecting to sort of spontaneously happen.”
Supervisor Dan Gjerde reminded the board of his position on the use of public money for water districts. “I’m not convinced of this allocation at this time,” he said. “Supervisor McGourty, I heard you say that very little has been done since the water agency was disbanded. I actually think that’s not accurate. It may accurately describe some of the inaction of some of the water districts in our county. I don’t think it accurately describes some of the action of many of our water districts in this county, during the time that the county water agency was going. And I think the unevenness of leadership by the water districts throughout the county, some failing to do their job, looking for a handout but not willing to charge their customers enough to help themselves, other water districts in the county asking their ratepayers to pay what I would say are the state rates for water so they would have the resources to solve their problems and aggressively seek state grants. You know, there’s a disparity of leadership between the different water districts in this county, and I don’t want to reward the lack of leadership by some of the water districts with county funds.”
Devon Boer, the Executive Director of the Mendocino County Farm Bureau, invited Gjerde to a meeting to discuss the complexities. “We do have some of our residents who live outside of an actual organized district,” she pointed out. “And some of the unknowns that have been discussed, such as the water hauling extraction ordinance, which is going to the Planning Commission. We’ve got the Governor’s Executive ORder N722, which is being punted over to Environmental Health…those are the questions I’ve been receiving from individuals with wells outside of districts, who are now looking at various county departments that might be providing them with various directions, lack of oversight, and perhaps not having qualifications for looking at hydrogeology…that’s been the downturn of our county, is we don’t have any sort of specific level of expertise. We’ve got different staff in different departments that get punted…it makes it complicated for the applicant, whoever they may be, to get through the process…you know, I’m not going to get into a dispute with Supervisor Gjerde. I think that what I’m going to do is work with our local water districts, and invite him to come over to a meeting.”
The board voted 3-2, with Gjerde and Haschak dissenting, to approve the concept of working with the UC Cooperative Extension using up to $250,000, to create a water agency, contingent on a list of projects that will appear before the full board before moving forward. The list will have to be countywide, and any consultant who is hired will have to include objectives, milestones, outcomes, and staff time.
The drought standing committee is scheduled to meet next Monday at 9:00 am. The meeting is currently listed as the Public Health, Safety, and Resource Committee.
August 4, 2022 — Abortion remains legal in California, but there have been barriers to access since well before the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade.
In Mendocino county, where poverty is high and roads are long, religious hospitals and federally funded clinics dominate the healthcare landscape.
But the pandemic has legitimized telehealth, and the use of abortion pills is on the rise. Organizations whose mission it is to increase access are flush with volunteers.
Gloria Martinez, the Senior Director of Operations at Planned Parenthood Northern California, said her affiliate calls on an organization called Access Reproductive Justice about once a week to give patients a ride or airfare, or even to help cover the cost of abortion. Access Reproductive Justice is not accepting applications for volunteers at this time due to overwhelming interest.
Martinez says Planned Parenthood is upping its availability. “We’re actually doing good on access,” she said. “Which means that most individuals can access an appointment within seven days…the reason we’ve been able to maintain our access as such — and in some cases, depending on the week and the location, they can get in sooner than the seven days — the reason we have been able to maintain that level of access is we’ve been planning for it by increasing hours, making sure we have more evening hours availab.e weekend hours as well, and then alsoy increasing our staffing and the number of staff members who are trained to provide abortion services, not just providers, but also frontline staff.”
But religious hospitals, which manage one out of five hospital beds in the country, and all the hospitals in Mendocino County, routinely deny abortion care. In 2019, when the Mendocino Coast Healthcare District Board was looking for a larger hospital to take over the small hospital in Fort Bragg, the ACLU sent the board a letter reminding it that, as a public entity, the MCHD was required under the California Constitution to provide abortion services. The letter urged the board “to prioritize partnership with an entity that will not restrict care at MCDH based on religious doctrine.”
Dawn Hofberg is a retired Physician Assistant who is part of a reproductive access group that worked to make sure that medication abortions remained available in the former North Coast Family Clinic before it transferred to Adventist control. “It seemed like there was an agreement that whatever services were currently being provided in the community would be continued by Adventist, should they take over,” she recalled. “Of course, the biggest thing on the table was OB-GYN, which was eliminated…we could see that OB-GYN was going to be taken away, but we decided to form this group to make sure that some kind of abortion services on the coast would continue. We would very much like to have both medical abortion and surgical be options for our community, but at this point, all surgical abortions are done in Ukiah or Santa Rosa, through Planned Parenthood or other private clinics.”
The Adventist clinic provides medication abortion about once or twice a month, with referrals from Mendocino Coast Clinics through its Blue Door program. Mendocino Coast Clinics is prohibited from offering abortions because it is a federally funded clinic and the Hyde Amendment to the Medicaid appropriation prevents the use of federal funds for abortion services.
Adventist would not discuss its abortion policies with us, but in 2019, during a proposed merger with another hospital in Delano, Adventist Health told the Attorney General that, while “Medical abortions are performed in Adventist Health facilities…Abortions are not performed on demand, without medical justification.” In non-life threatening situations where a pregnant woman requests an abortion, the hospital convenes an ethics committee to make a recommendation.
Hospitals have long been allowed to deny patients certain kinds of healthcare, even when it was supposed to be a constitutional right. Lori Freedman is a sociologist and Associate Professor at UCSF, and a researcher with the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health. “We have a lot of conscience protections in the United States,” she said. “Some scholars have called it conscience creep. Initially, when abortion was legalized in 1973, there was the first conscience clause, the Church Amendment, that said no one would be forced to provide abortions. But importantly, that got broadened to cover institutions. Once it was determined that institutions have conscience rights, that paved the way for all Catholic hospitals to have a doctrine” which overrode the consciences of the people who work within the hospitals.
Freedman said there is a lot of good abortion legislation going forward in California, but she can’t think of a way that any of it would affect the protections that religious hospitals enjoy. On the national level, she would like to see the repeal of the Weldon Amendment, which withholds federal funding from public entities that practice so-calld discrimination against other entities that refuse to provide abortion services.
Freedman reflected that, “The Weldon is insidious, because it prevents us from making policy changes that will impact institutions that are institutionally constraining care.” She does think it’s important for people to know about, so that patients and healthcare providers can make choices about where to seek care. “But these are all individual level solutions, and what we really need is a structural one, so it’s hard,” she conceded.
And the Supreme Court does remain relevant, even in California, where its decision to overturn Roe led to a slate of protective legislative and budget measures.
Freedman cautioned that “One of the key points in this time period is that the Supreme Court is so pro-religious rights that any court case that would attempt to change the status quo could result in really worse law than already exists.
KZYX Newscast for August 5. Sarah Right report on the Powder Valley Hydropower plant, followed by a bilingual interview with La Familia, a group of young Latino entrepreneurs and Stacey Sheldon with the Ukiah Observatory Park.
Following the Supreme Court’s overturning of the reproductive rights bill Roe v. Wade, members of Mendocino Country are now speaking up about the injustice.
RoeRage Ukiah is a small orginazation that was born out from the reproductive rallies following the overturning of Roe on June 24th, 2022. Ellen Weed, a Ukiah local, had been gathering stories about women who had abortions or suffered from a lack of abortion accessibilty. In gathering these stories, Ellen Weed gathered a group called RoeRage to organize a free event where community can share and listen to these stories.
KZYX spoke with Ellen Weed about why local women have organized themselves. Weed hopes the community gathering will inspire and motivate others to keep advocating for women’s rights. She comments that when she was younger, before Roe v Wade existed, women were disempowered to speak up for themselves. She says she is inspired by the younger generations of women showing up for themselves. RoeRage Ukiah will take place this Saturday, August 6 at 7:00 pm, outside of the Ukiah Playhouse Theater. Weed invites all to bring chairs or blankets to sit on and listening ears.
August 3, 2022 — A Board of Supervisors discussion about cost overruns for the new jail construction project veered into a cry for help from the state, as county leadership admitted that it does not have a clear idea what its financial situation is.
“I would like to ask my colleagues for support on direction to the CEO’s office to reach out to the state controller’s office to help us get our books in order,” Supervisor Ted Williams announced, about a half hour into the meeting.
A few minutes after hearing that state review of construction documents is causing months-long delays and that cost estimates for the new jail are now $7-8 million over budget, Williams told his colleagues how frustrated he is by the lack of financial information, even after a budgeting process that started months ago.
“I’m three and half years into a term,” he said. “I worry, I'm coming up on the point where I can no longer use the excuse, I’m new here. And yet in the three and a half years, I haven’t been able to get a credible financial report. I understand we have three different sets of books. They all differ. Why?”
CEO Darcie Antle corroborated the main point. “I would agree with you. I’m not quite sure,” she acknowledged. “I think a lot of the reason we have asked for a pause in the labor negotiations is that we don’t know. We don’t have a clear vision on what the books are, and where the finances are. And those discussions need to continue with the new auditor-controller.”
It doesn’t seem like anyone has a clear idea, and that’s a problem for rank and file workers and the public as well as the leadership. SEIU Local 1021, the union that represents the bulk of the county’s employees, filed a complaint with the Public Employees Relations Board last month, detailing the information they’ve requested as they negotiate their contract. The union wants a 5% Cost of Living Adjustment, which Field Representative Patrick Hickey estimates would cost the county $3.2 million. The county released some information to the public a few days after the union filed its complaint, but Hickey said that he, too, is frustrated by missing details. He’s still looking for specific information about differential pay and temporary and part-time workers that will help the union understand the impact their proposals will have on the county’s budget. “That’s something we submitted all the way back in November,” he said last week. “So we’ve been trying to keep track as the county has parsed out little bits of information to us as the negotiations have progressed.”
Though it seems no one has the information anyone wants about the budget, the county has had an unprecedented amount of money to work with in the past year and a half. Local agencies are still receiving their allotments from the county’s $22 million settlement from PG&E. And the county was awarded almost $17 million from the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA. Maria Avalos of UVA, a Latino advocacy group, requested more details about how those funds will be spent, and how the decisions will be made. She noted that over $4 million of the ARPA funds has been allocated for core county services and infrastructure. “So I’m just wondering, where is the breakdown of where that money will go?” she asked during public comment. “Will it be able to be found by the public? And how is the local government making the decision to use the funds? And will there be public input?”
Williams counts himself among those agitating for financial transparency. But he told his colleagues yesterday that he doesn’t think anyone is able to provide detailed financial information about the county. “We do have an outside audit that happens,” he said. “When was the last time this board, you and I sitting on this board, voted to direct the auditor to incorporate the outside audit recommendations? I don’t think I’ve done it yet. I don’t know if past boards have done it. But it means we’re paying for an outside audit, we’re getting advice about changes we need to make to meet accounting principles. And then we’re ignoring the advice. So how much accumulated error is there, and over how many years is it? Ten years, is it thirty years? Is that why we have different sets of books, with different numbers? Because we never incorporate the outside audit findings? I think we have a financial crisis here, and we just don’t know how bad it is.”
Supervisor John Haschak pointed to a recent shakeup in the county’s main financial offices. But Williams thinks the problem goes back much further than the decision to consolidate the offices of auditor-controller and treasurer-tax collector.
“It’s just really ironic that this board voted to consolidate the two positions when those people in those positions said don’t do it, and that consolidation would not help, and now we’re in the position where we’re asking the state to step in to help out this position that in part we created as a board,” Haschak said.
“So I want to respond to that. A part of the reason that I supported the consolidation is that I couldn’t get financials,” Williams replied. “And we had an auditor retire, and shortly after, I learned we have a $4.5 million hole in the health plan. Why didn’t this board know that we had a $4.5 million hole? We would have planned accordingly. There’s an institutional problem here that this county doesn’t have a set of books that anybody believes. There’s nobody in this county today you could ask, how much money do we have to our name, and get a straight answer. How can I do my job, voting on a budget, if I don’t know how much money we have to spend?”
Supervisor Glenn McGourty called for structural change. “You want to have people who really know finances, who are properly trained,” he said. “That’s why I’ve supported a professional financial office, which is what most big organizations have, where you appoint people based on their skill set and a proven track record of handling money well. And if we look back through Mendocino County’s history at the auditor-controller and tax collector-treasurer, we don’t see that pattern. So I still think we’re going to need long-term structural change in county government on this. This will not go away until we do.”
The board voted unanimously to ask the state for more money for the new jail, and to ask the state controller for help with the county’s fiscal issues.
August 2, 2022 — In the wake of a Mendocino County Grand Jury report that found layers of delay in distributing a grant, a policy manual has been updated, an affidavit is being drafted, and legal review will start up again next week.
In 2020, the County received $2.2 million from the state, to administer individual grants to applicants who are eligible to run a cannabis business in the unincorporated areas of Mendocino County; and who can demonstrate that they have been harmed by the war on drugs. But most of that money is held up in legal review. Out of 52 applications, five grants have been awarded. The other 47 approved grant applications are waiting for County Counsel to determine that they won’t run afoul of the state’s policy about misuse of funds.
The Local Equity Entrepreneur Program, or LEEP, is supposed to allocate direct assistance awards to individuals, which puts the county in the position of vouching for the recipients. If the county were to award a grant that doesn’t meet the state’s strict requirements, the county would have to collect the misused funds as it would any other debt, possibly becoming ineligible to receive further grants. But if the money is not awarded by the end of August, the state could take it back.
Michael Katz, the Executive Director of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, an industry advocacy group, noted that the Grand Jury report aligns closely with complaints and policy proposals that the MCA has been making for a while.
The report’s first finding is that “There was no process developed for the distribution of grant funds to individuals prior to applications being received. This has resulted in extended delays at every step from eligibility to application to communication to contract negotiation,” which prevents the timely distribution of funds. “The results of that, unfortunately, have been that some operators have been in this application process since February of last year, counting on these funds to help them move forward in this incredibly challenging business at this incredibly challenging time,” Katz said last week.
Kristin Nevedal, the Mendocino County Cannabis Program Manager, uses similar language for what she’s faced in her role. Asked about the same finding at July’s LEEP meeting, she said, “I think that’s absolutely correct. I think the program has been incredibly challenged by changes and lack of leadership, frankly, in the cannabis program as a whole.” Shortly after the county received the first round of funding in February 2021, Megan Dukett, the cannabis program manager at the time, left her position. The county had hired a company called Elevate Impact to administer the grant for no more than 10% of the award, but Nevedal said, “It is completely unfair to expect a contract administrator to develop a program for any local jurisdiction solely on their own.”
Nevedal said she learned about the program’s complexities at the end of 2021, when she had one part time helper and had been on the job herself for just a little over a year.
“So I had no clue how underdeveloped the program was until we started getting into the review of applications and then how we would essentially issue checks,” she acknowledged. “Most local jurisdictions do not include capital improvements in what’s allowed as far as expenses that can be paid for using direct grant funds. And I think from the county’s perspective, you don’t know what you don’t know. So I don’t believe the county really knew ahead of time the complex nature of the applications we’d be receiving to have the foresight to understand that we also needed planner time to also conduct these reviews.”
The Grand Jury also found that “the county did not ask the state for requirements on record keeping until May 2022,” and that this should have been done much earlier in the process. That finding dovetails with the fear of misusing the funds, which Katz thinks has led to unnecessary restrictions.
“There are still barriers that are being put in place on certain requests by the department that are not demanded by the state. So for example, there are many folks who are working to create solar usage opportunities on their cultivation sites in various ways. And solar is something that’s desirable, obviously. We’re trying to phase out generators. We’re trying to phase out fossil fuel use…but the cannabis department has been objecting to specific types of solar, being concerned with how much power the solar would provide, and really just putting what seem like unnecessary restrictions that are not demanded by the state on the uses that would benefit the operator. So if they actually revised the manual to allow anything that is not explicitly disallowed, there wouldn’t be the need to dig into every item and go back and forth on the minutiae that we’ve seen happening for applicants.”
On Friday, the cannabis program issued V5, the latest edition of the Local Equity Program Manual. In an email, Nevedal wrote that, “The program is still working on a form/affidavit for awardees to sign stating that they’ve read and understand the grant agreement,” as well as the much-edited manual. Nevedal added that “County Counsel plans to resume the review of approved grant applications next week.” However, the changes to the manual consist of several sets and subsets of requirements for documentation, and do not address what the money can and cannot be used for.
County Counsel did not immediately return a call requesting more information, but Katz said yesterday that he thinks that’s what County Counsel needs in order to complete its review.
“We hope it turns into money in people’s hands soon,” he said. He expects the next round of edits will include language expanding the allowable uses of the grant funds.
He hopes to see version V6 of the manual sometime next week.
August 1, 2022 — At last week’s meeting of the Mendocino Coast Healthcare District Board, directors discussed a new website, last year’s minutes, and a letter concerning the possibility of Adventist hospitals no longer taking Anthem insurance. With a packed agenda, one member of the public expressed her gratitude for the board’s attentive demeanor. “A few of us have actually placed bets on whether Mr. Redding would be playing his guitar while he thought he was on mute again,” said Jenny Shattuck. “Because we found this, and his actions just beyond disturbing, that the board was literally discussing the future of our ambulance, and the future of our healthcare.” Objections to directors’ conduct was not limited to members of the public. This became clear with Directors John Redding and Sara Spring expressed differing points of view about who was responsible for preparing last year’s minutes, which appeared on the new website without full board approval. “Director Spring’s position is that she was unwilling or unable to do the minutes,” Redding stated; “and furthermore that she did want anyone else to do the minutes; that any such attempt was illegitimate.” As Spring attempted to interrupt, Redding added, “Those minutes are eighteen months old. I’m not finished!” he exclaimed, as Spring shouted, “John, I will say to you again: I never got the zooms. You had them. I did not. I’m not gonna let you sit here and say I didn’t do something I could not do.” Chair Jessica Grinberg shed some light on the migration of the website, and how the minutes ended up there without board approval. “The minutes isn’t the point,” she objected, breaking into her colleagues’ discussion. “The point is the migration of the website, of what was in the past to the current, and during the migration, items were added that hadn’t been brought towards the board yet, or voted on, and the integrity of our new migration put the cart before the horse because items were submitted to the public, not noted as draft, not vetted through us, but was posted…but I’m just acknowledging that our migration had some missteps.” The old website redirected users just as they were looking for the agenda and the link to the meeting. Some reported difficulties, some said it was easy to find, and one member of the public requested that the entire board resign over a special meeting that may or not have been noticed properly. The root of the confusion was not immediately known, but Grinberg said “It may be a payment issue. I recall, we’re due to pay that domain.” The board decided to pull the minutes from the website, which led to community input about the parliamentary procedure. When Malcolm MacDonald inquired after the board’s policy on taking public comment about the minutes, Grinberg told him the board does not. “Wow,” MacDonald replied. “Just wow.” One member of the public suggested creating a dedicated zoom link for board meetings at the new website. “I go crazy, looking for zoom links,” she explained. Redding inquired after the speaker’s name, and she said, “Hello. Chess on Tuesday. Name: Chess. Last name: on Tuesday.” “Chess. As in the game, chess?” Redding inquired, whereupon Chess on Tuesday obliged him by spelling it out.
After an hour and a half, the board wrapped up the discussion about the website and the minutes. WIthout further ado, they moved on to the topic of a letter, drafted by Redding, about the negotiations between Adventist and Anthem. Judy Leach, the president of Adventist Health Mendocino Coast, gave a few hints about the negotiations. “We are not choosing to terminate,” she said. “It’s just the contract that has now come up for renewal needs further conversations. It is one negotiation. There are different rates that are happening, actually, even per market. So that’s why we are discussing rates with them. I don’t have details about what that looks like, but I will tell you it is one negotiation that’s going on. There are different rates in different areas.” The letter under discussion laid out the financial hardship that would ensue if the hospital stops accepting insurance from Anthem. The final sentence stated that if the negotiations are not successful, “the Board of Directors would like to immediately begin talks with Anthem for the purpose of creating a one-year exception for our remote community, recognizing that our circumstances differ significantly from other hospitals and clinics in the Adventist Health Network.” This passage in particular drew the ire of Jade Tippett, a member of the public. “The tone of this letter is wrong,” he began. “I agree with the chair that it is appropriate for the board to write a letter supporting Adventist in the negotiation. But I’ve done negotiations, a lot of them. And if a subset of the organization that I was representing came in looking for a side deal, it would totally undercut the negotiation that I was doing. And that’s what this letter is doing. It’s asking for a side deal for the hospital in the middle of the negotiations. It’s utterly inappropriate.” The board agreed to have Grinberg and Director Amy McColley modify the letter and bring it back to the full board. The hospital and the insurance provider were originally planning to renew their contract by mid-July, but granted themselves a two-week extension.
The extension expires today.
July 29, 2022 — This week, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued two decisions that water interests in the Eel and Russian River watersheds have been waiting on for months. On Wednesday, the Commission approved a drastic reduction in the flow of water through the Potter Valley hydropower project into the East Branch of the Russian River. As of 2:00 yesterday afternoon, the water coming out of Lake Pillsbury started to be reduced from 75 cubic feet per second to five cfs. The Potter Valley Irrigation District will continue to receive up to 50 cfs on demand. PG&E still owns the project, though it recently submitted a 30-month schedule for decommissioning, which FERC approved. PG&E argued that it needed to reduce the flow in order to preserve the infrastructure at Lake Pillsbury, as well as cold water pools at the bottom of the reservoir for fish habitat. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), declared that if the water levels in the lake went down below 30,000 acre feet, the water would get too hot for juvenile salmonids. Though there is no fish ladder at Scott Dam, which impounds Lake Pillsbury, there is a needle valve at the bottom of the dam. The valve releases water into the 12-mile section of the Eel River between Lake Pillsbury and the van Arsdale Reservoir, near the diversion tunnel that directs the water into the Russian River. Charlie Schneider is the coordinator with the Salmon and Steelhead Coalition, a partnership among Trout Unlimited, California Trout, and the Nature Conservancy. He said early models indicated that, in order to preserve the cold water pools, the variance should have been implemented by July 15. “We’re glad the variance was finally approved, but I think we need to better understand and look at those models to really see what’s going to happen later this summer,” he said; “to see if it is in fact too late.” He added that conservationists are interested in preserving the 30,000 acre-feet of storage in Lake Pillsbury because in “big, deep reservoirs, the water stratifies, and the water in bottom part of the dam is cooler than the water at the top…the more water you’re able to retain in there, the more cold water there is in the bottom of the lake. And that’s the water that gets released from the low-level outlet. So it’s really about preserving water temperature in that 12-mile reach between Scott and Cape Horn dams, making sure that water’s a cool enough temperature to be habitable for salmonids.”
Elizabeth Salomone, General Manager of the Mendocino County Russian River Flood Control and Water Conservation Improvement District, expects drastic changes for human water users on the other side of the diversion tunnel. “It’s unusual for curtailments to cut into what we call the pre-1914 grouping,” she noted. “We do expect the curtailments to cut back into that pre-1914 category. But we won’t know for sure until the State Water Board issues their findings and curtailment notices.” Salomone expects the state will allow Upper Russian River water users enough water to meet human health and safety needs, which is 55 gallons per person per day. Some urban water suppliers have other sources, including groundwater or recycled water. And some farmers as well as urban centers have contracts to divert stored water from Lake Mendocino. “So not everyone will go completely without water,” she concluded.
The Commission also delivered an ambiguous opinion refuting the claims of environmental groups that the Commission has the authority to amend the Potter Valley Project’s new annual license to include more protection measures for wildlife. The license for the Project expired on April 14. Within days, a group of conservationists and fishermen filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue PG&E under the Endangered Species Act. At the time, Redgie Collins, the Legal and Policy Director for California Trout, one of the coalition threatening the lawsuit, said that with the expiration of the license, PG&E “can no longer harm, harass, directly kill or injure salmon or steelhead at their project site.” The group wanted a new round of improved mitigation measures, arguing that the Commission had discretion over whether or not it granted the annual license. The Commission rejected that argument, saying that it was required to issue an annual license after the old one expired. And, while it also denied the coalition’s call for an Endangered Species Act consultation, it did consult with NMFS to require PG&E to monitor water in parts of the Eel River and Lake Pillsbury. The utility must pay for two state programs to monitor salmon on the mainstem and middle fork of the Eel River for a period of time. It’s also required to continue collecting data on water quality in Lake Pillsbury and provide that data to NMFS, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, and the Round Valley Indian Tribes. These are the four entities that PG&E consulted before making its request for the reduction. The Commission also disagreed with a slew of comments by Russian River water users complaining that PG&E was required to consult a drought working group composed of a wide array of stakeholders before requesting such a drastic change in the flows. The Commission wrote that “Establishment of and consultation with the Drought Working Group is not a license requirement; however the Commission encourages licensees to consult with stakeholders and to consider their interests when developing plans for Commission approval.” However, the Commission is now requiring PG&E to consult with the drought working group as it implements the reduction. Theoretically, the flows could be increased to 25 cfs. But the final decision will be left up to the four entities that supported the reduction to 5 cfs.
Commissioner James Danly concurred with the Commission’s decisions, but asked if it was fair to require ratepayers to finance the studies. Schneider thinks the solution is simple.“You know, he’s sort of complaining about new operational measures while PG&E is no longer seeking to operate the project,” he reflected. “But the way to solve that is to get your facilities out of the river. Right? To get your dams out of the river, and then there won’t be operational measures for you to need to comply with. He’s sort of arguing like, oh, you guys should just let PG&E kill fish while they’re decommissioning this project. You shouldn’t worry about it. But we actually care about fish every year. Over the next couple of years while they’re decommissioning this project, we want to make sure these fish are in good shape.” Danly wrote that he thinks “the Commission should ask the following: is it “reasonable” to require Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) — that is, California ratepayers — to pay to comply with new operational measures that are not required by law for a project that PG&E no longer seeks to operate? One must also bear in mind that compliance typically does not immediately follow an order’s issuance. Orders requiring compliance frequently entail compliance plans which can take years to develop, review, and approve.” But Schneider called out the commissioner by name. “You’re the people that can tell them to do it faster, FERC. Danly,” he exclaimed. “They take years. It’s like, yeah, because you let them take years!”
Cooperation in the allocation of water rights, often referred to as the California water wars, is rare. But on July 1, the state approved a first-of-its kind voluntary program in the upper Russian River, where senior water rights holders agreed to share their water with juniors. That program is contingent on project water that won’t be available under the reduced flows, but Salomone remains optimistic. “About half of the water that’s represented in water rights in the Upper Russian River signed up for the program,” she reported. “That’s significant. That is a fantastic result for a pilot project. So what will happen now is that the program will essentially go on pause. It won’t be canceled, it will just be on pause. It continues to be a participation tool. All of the participants will receive information on their water allocation, for which most of them, it will now go to zero. But as soon as conditions change, let’s say we get a nice big rainstorm in October, or maybe even September, then the participants will be notified and their water allocation will go up as appropriate. So I am really proud of our Upper Russian River folks. This was a grassroots stakeholder-built program that took about two years to put together. And we are sticking with it, even if we have to hit the pause button. We’re going to use it as a permanent tool in our toolbox, I hope.”
July 27, 2022--Dr. Drew Colfax gives an update on the local coronavirus numbers, and how the BA4 variant surge is affecting Mendocino County.
July 28, 2022 — At a brief Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday, the Board heard about Measure B, cannabis, covid, and labor.
Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren called in to warn about new variants. He is strongly recommending that people wear masks indoors and gather outdoors. Since May, the county has recorded eight deaths from covid, six of them in the greater Ukiah area. The descedents ranged in age from 67-91, and most had comorbidities.
And negotiations between the county and the union representing most of its workers are not going amicably. SEIU Local 1021 filed an unfair labor practice charge with the state Public Employment Relations Board, claiming that the county has refused to give union negotiators all the information they need to participate in bargaining sessions. Union representative Patrick Hickey called into the Board meeting on Tuesday to say that he thinks the county does have the money to give members a cost of living allowance, or COLA.
“We’ve been waiting since November for a variety of information requests,” he said. “And the county continues to drag its heels, has failed to present the information that we’ve needed to analyze the budget…we did finally get a dribble of information from the county last week in our negotiations. They provided a small portion of the information requested regarding the more than 402 unfilled vacant positions in the county…based on the limited amount of information provided, it’s clear that there is certainly funding available to provide county employees with a reasonable COLA to address the current high level of inflation. Based on the current budget, a lot more attention is being paid to taking care of the buildings, rather than taking care of the employees. Some of those projects are not imminent or urgent, and certainly can be postponed and that money can be rededicated to COLAs…there’s a sizable amount of money set aside to buy new vehicles. The County has a large number of vehicles that are not even used on a regular basis, that are just sitting in parking lots, getting old.” The union told the employee relations board that “the County should be ordered to provide complete and accurate responses to the Union’s outstanding requests for information; ” and asked it to “order all other remedies it deems just and proper.”
The union frequently contends that low pay leads to understaffing, a theme that emerged in many of the Grand Jury reports, which started to come out last week. Michael Katz, the Executive Director of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, drew the board’s attention to the Grand Jury report on the cannabis equity grant program, which is supposed to provide grants to people who have been harmed by the war on drugs. The report detailed communications failures, and noted that as of May, the county’s Cannabis Department had ten vacant positions and only twelve employees. Katz said the report bolstered many points the board has heard before. “I’m not sure you had a chance to review it. It came in yesterday,” he began. “If you had, you might see that some of the findings and some of the recommendations align with what MCA and stakeholders from the community have been saying for quite some time. One of the first findings indicates that there was no process developed for the distribution of grant funds to individuals prior to applications being received. What that indicates is a project management issue, I believe, that speaks to the need for additional support of the cannabis department by the CEO’s office to ensure that as projects are set up, they align with all of the requirements of the county infrastructure and that we are not waiting for the last minute to identify potential roadblocks in getting out these much-needed funds. That goes on, additionally, to finding #2, that the County did not ask county did not ask the State for requirements on record-keeping until May of 2022, and apparently only did so to establish the County’s risk of having to repay funds if they were not spent for approved purposes.” The county received $2.2 million for the equity program, and close to $10.5 million for a local jurisdiction assistance grant program to help growers comply with environmental regulations and cover the cost of various fees. Supervisor John Haschak pulled an item from the Board’s consent calendar approving a year-long agreement with a company called Planet Labs to provide satellite imaging services, starting July 27, for a little over $350,000. “This is the Local Jurisdiction Assistance Grant money,” he said; “and the concern expressed was that this only be used for helping out with getting people to their annual licenses, which is the intent of the Local Jurisdiction Assistance Grant.”
The Mendocino Cannabis Alliance sent a memo to the Board, sounding the alarm over the satellites’ potential use for enforcement purposes, which it contends are ineligible uses for the grant money. Katz called out what he sees as a double standard. “It’s been made very clear that if funds are misused, we will not be able to retain them,” he warned. “And seeing County Counsel’s focus on making sure that the misuse of funds policy was in place for applicants to the equity program, people who have already been harmed by the war on drugs, it seems obvious to us that there should be similar misuse of funds policies in place for the administration of these funds.” The Board passed the consent calendar and agreed to fine-tune the use of the funds later.
In the Measure B update, Behavioral Health Director Dr. Jeanine Miller told the Board that a new crisis team of mental health specialists worked with law enforcement to answer about one call a day last year. Sheriff Matt Kendall claimed that law enforcement visits to hospital emergency rooms with people in mental health crises are down 60% since the team started working together. But the mental health training center in Redwood Valley is expensive, and so far not living up to expectations. Again, Haschak was dubious. “We’re hearing that there's two trainings per month at this point,” he said. “So that’s 24 per year, and if we’re looking at the operational cost of $50,000 per year, plus it looks like $30,000 for the capital, so we’re talking $80,000 a year just to keep it up and running. So I guess the question is, how do we get better usage of it.” Miller said she expects better marketing will get the training center rented out more often. While the Measure B committee has put aside a prudent reserve, there is no reserve for capital improvement projects or maintenance, though one of the stated purposes of the Measure was to “Provide for the necessary infrastructure to support and stabilize” people needing treatment for a variety of conditions. The Measure B committee has ordered a gun locker for the training center and is deciding where to put it.
Neil Simon’s Tony-winning romantic comedy Barefoot in the Park is currently being performed at the Ukiah Players Theater until the 31st of the month. The play, originally written to take place in the 60s, in fact, takes place in 1982 in the Ukiah players theater’s rendition. The change is an ode to the 40th anniversary of the theater, says director Eric Ward. With 80s-inspired costumes, soundtrack, and set props, the play follows a young newlywed lesbian couple who have just moved to New York City in a teeny apartment on the top floor. Corie, played by Grey Wolfe-Smith, is an interior designer whose colorful personality is expressed with a rainbow wardrobe. Her wife Paula, played by Amanda Baguley, is beginning her law career and is the opposite of Corie, Paula is always anxious, concerned, and just trying to get some sleep. From the director’s notes on the couple’s dynamic: “opposites attract, but what makes someone easy to love, can also make them very hard to live with.”
July 26, 2022 — The Fort Bragg City Council swore in a new chief of police and hired another retired public employee as an interim city manager Monday night. Last month, the council bid farewell to Interim Police Chief John Naulty and Interim City Manager David Spaur, who were both serving for a limited time due to their retirements from public service. Last night, Neil Cervenka, formerly of Turlock, took his oath of office as the new chief. Cervenka thanked family and friends and pledged his loyalty to his new community, saying, “I commit to concern for this community and all the issues that affect it. I commit to compassion for all segments of this community regardless of status. And I commit to courage, to do the right thing, no matter if it’s difficult.” In another key position, Peggy Ducey can put in 960 hours a year as Interim City Manager, in keeping with the rules of the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS). She will receive no benefits or any other form of compensation outside of an hourly rate of $76.30, starting July 26.
And the council adopted a resolution to declare a Stage 1 water alert, asking for a citywide water conservation goal of 5% to 10% and prohibiting wasteful water use. Water customers are only supposed to irrigate on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays before 9am and after 6pm, and restaurants will only serve water upon request. Operations Manager John Smith told the council that water in the Noyo River, one of the city’s three water sources, is diminishing. “The Noyo River is currently at 6 cubic feet per second,” he told the council on Monday. “It was 6.75 when I wrote this, which is still 4.3 million gallons a day, which sounds like a lot, but it’s dropping about 1.5 cubic feet per week.” Smith added that the city’s small desalination plant is ready to go as a last resort, and promised to keep working on the city goal of storing 60 million gallons, an estimated four months’ supply.
And officials are preparing for the next election, just a month after publishing results from the last election. City Clerk June Lemos told the council that the deadline to return nomination papers to run for Fort Bragg City Council has been extended to August 17, because Vice-Mayor Jessica Morsell-Haye is not seeking re-election. Council member Lindy Peters’ papers have been certified, and he is qualified to be on the November ballot.
The Council heard a number of reports, among them a draft of a feasibility study to diversify the local economy by developing the former Georgia Pacific Mill site. As its tourism-based economy crashed during COVID, the city received $137,000 in CARES Act money from the U.S. Economic Development Agency, plus a $10,000 California Sea Grant for the Blue Economy Symposium to develop new ideas to create sustainable jobs and industries. However, as Morsell-Haye pointed out, the former Georgia-Pacific mill site is not public property. “This study was initiated at a time when we were in negotiations for that property,” she said. “We’re talking about uses on property that we do not control.” Last year, Mendocino Railway, or the Skunk Train, won an eminent domain case against Georgia Pacific and purchased 272 acres of the mill site property according to the terms of a stipulation for $1,230,000. Though the Skunk Train does not engage in interstate commerce, its lawyers claim that its status as a railroad means that it is subject to federal jurisdiction, which exempts it from local and state permitting regulations. In 2019, the company declared that it would not be seeking permits from the city of Fort Bragg to do work on the property, but that it was happy to make a donation to the city equal to the cost of a building permit. The City sued the Skunk, asking a local judge to declare that the railway is not a public utility, and to command it to comply with all city ordinances. The First District Court of Appeals briefly placed a stay on the case after Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Clay Brennan declined to throw it out, but the stay was dissolved after about five weeks. The City and the Skunk are scheduled to be back in court for a case management conference in September. On Monday night, Chris Hart, of Mendocino Railway, called in to the City Council meeting to complain that his company made only a brief appearance in a document concerning land it owns. “I do feel that Mendocino Railway’s perspective could have been more incorporated,” he said. “It is concerning that even though we are a local company that owns much of the land and is trying to invest millions, we’re not considered a stakeholder or an asset. Instead we’re shown as an obstacle. The study states that we interfered with the City’s verbal agreement with GP when we used eminent domain in the summer of 2021. It makes no mention of the City’s interference five months earlier.” Last year, the City Council wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Transportation, urging it not to award a railroad rehabilitation and improvement financing loan to Mendocino Railway. Skunk Train lawyers sent the City a cease and desist letter, threatening to sue for defamation.
In another update, the council also heard from Parents and Friends Incorporated, a non-profit organization that is building a four-bedroom residential care facility on Cypress Street for people with developmental disabilities or age-related disabilities like Alzheimers or dementia. The organization received a $3.6 million Community Development Block Grant for the project, which started construction in April of this year. The deadline is May 31 of next year, and they expect to be finished in February.
The Council also heard a report from consultant Marie Jones about the Eagles Hall, a well-loved venue that is currently in escrow with an unknown potential buyer. Council member Tess Albin Smith was concerned that the building could be “razed to the ground,” but Jones told her that it would probably be expensive to tear down, and it’s a historical landmark, which means the city’s planning department and council would have to sign off on a demolition. There is enough parking for four living units, but, like so much else about the status of the property, nothing is known about the plans for its future.
La organisación UVA, Ukiah Vecinos en Acción está preparando un podcast en español para informar a la comunidad latina de la región.
UVA, Ukiah Vecinos en Acción is working on the production of Spanish language podcast to cover news and information for the local Latino community.
Friday newscast: Former Ukiah Police chief court case update and local organizations are filling a gap in services to children and families, as small governments struggle with funding.
Born out of Oakland, the Afro-Latin band “La Misa Negra” performed at the third concert of the Sundays in the Park summer concert series in Ukiah. The seven member band put on a upbeat show, playing fusions of cumbia and salsa.
Nacidio desde Oakland, la band afro-latina “La Misa Negra” presentaron en el tercero concierto del serie Domingoes en el Parque en ukiah. La banda de siete musicos pusieron un espectaculo animado, jugando fusiones de cumbia y salsa. Marco Polo Santiago, guitarist, composer, and accordion player, founded the band in 2011. KZYX sat with the band before the presentation. Translations will follow.
Marco Polo Santiago, guitarrista, compositor y jugador de acordeón, fundó la banda en 2011. KZYX sentó con la banda antes del presentacion. La traducción seguirá. Que es tu nombre y que tocas? Me llamo Lydia Rodriguez y toco baritono saxofon.
La banda nacio de Oakland, tu eres de la area? Soy de Stockton pero ahora vivo en San Jose. Actualment soy nueva a la banda, ayer era mi primer concierto. Me invitaron ser parte de la banda, pienso que me adoptaron.
Por cuanto tiempo has jugado musica? Empeze cuando tenia 9 años con el flauta, hice todas mis programes de musicas y cambie at saxofón a los 13 años.
Como te encontraste en este género? Es lo que creci escuchando. Mis padres son de Zacatecas, Mexico. Ellos y mi hermana emigraron aquí. Es lo que siempre he sabido, es en mi sangre…esta banda también hace sonidos de rock y roll, y punk, un género que me metí por mi cuenta. Es una mezcla de todo que me encanta. Puedo sacudirme el pelo y toca musica latina, es chido! In the car the band was telling me you performed yesterday? Where? A festival in grass valley.
Are you spending the summer doing shows? We just have a few shows this summer, because of the pandemic our return to the scene has been slow.
Where do you draw inspiration from when songwriting? I have the inspiration already because I have listened to music all my life so I can think about what styles to draw from. I have my own style of composing music derived from listening to not just cumbia, but cuban music, latin jazz, mambo, rock, metal, hip hop, rap, and funk. It guides me when writing melodies and wind instrument parts. Its principle for our sound – our music revolves around the wind instruments, saxophone, trumpets, all that. And so, I write music because I’m educated on those varying genres.
What has been your favorite song to write for the band? Pistola, a salsa song we have on our recent album.
What is next for the band? I’m writing the next album right now. I have several songs done, they are missing lyrics, but in a few months, we’ll be putting new songs out. La Misa Negra was a fresh sound for Ukiah, concert goers were hesitant at first but soon enough the stage front was filled with dancers, many following the steps of the musicians moving on stage.
La Misa Negra era un sonido fresco para Ukiah, la gente primero estaban vacilantes, pero pronto el frente del escenario estaba lleno de bailadores, muchos siguiendo los pasos de los musicos bailando.
For the KZYX News, I’m Ayled Zazueta. For all our local stories, with photos and more, visit KZYX.org. You can also subscribe to the KZYX news podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
July 20, 2022 — A recent announcement by Adventist Health about its negotiations with Anthem Blue Cross, the county’s main insurance provider, has caused widespread panic. The contract between Anthem and Adventist, a faith-based nonprofit hospital system that manages all three of the county’s hospitals, was originally due to expire on July 18, but has been extended to August first. Adventist posted FAQs on its website this week, directing patients to call the number on their insurance card for answers to most questions. But patients are advised that if they are in the hospital after midnight on August first, Anthem could choose to transfer them to another hospital. Some patients may be able to continue receiving care for some time as a “continuity of care service.” In a letter to patients last month, Adventist claimed that Anthem has enjoyed record profits for the past two years, but continues to pay Adventist “substantially less than other hospital systems. Anthem is one of our lowest-paying health plans, and we can’t continue to provide quality care for patients at such significantly reduced rates.” Adventist offered to be interviewed on this subject, but we declined because President Judson Howe refuses to speak to us about the faith-based hospital’s policies on abortion, which remains legal in the state of California.
Recent studies show that much of the high cost of doing medicine in the state of California is due to a lack of competition, both in healthcare and insurance markets.
According to a study by the California Healthcare Foundation, titled, “Markets or Monopolies,” “the preponderance of evidence suggests that hospital consolidation leads to higher prices… Furthermore, workers bear the burden of these increased premiums as employers depress wages to pay more for health insurance coverage.” The MediCare Payment Advisory Commission told Congress in 2018 that “hospitals with large market shares have the leverage to negotiate relatively high prices from commercial insurers.”
This affects small local governments offering employer insurance, as well as private citizens who pay for their own coverage. The county’s health plan is currently close to $5 million in the hole, with the county paying about 81% of the cost of skyrocketing claims, according to a presentation by Deputy CEO Cherie Johnson during last month’s budget hearings. “So we would really need to change our whole plan,” she told the Board of Supervisors. “We need to be looking at the deductibles, the co-insurances…Fully insured is where we’re looking at, so we know, with a fully insured plan, what your payments are every single month. Right now, we don’t know. We project what we believe our monthlies will be, but it’s unpredictable. We could get a $60,000 claim week, and then the next week, we could get $116,000.”
Julie Beardsley, President of SEIU Local 1021, which represents most county workers, said it’s time to cut loose. The union is in a battle with the county, which is offering a 0% cost of living allowance. “The county has been stalling about looking into new plans,” she said at a union rally during the budget hearings. “Obviously Adventist has kind of monopoly here in the county and they can charge whatever they want, but we need to look at other plans.”
Adventist told its patients that in the last five years, it’s given away more than $276 million in charity to those in need. We have not had the opportunity to review detailed financial information for Adventist Health.
But according to a report by Stat, a healthcare-focused news website produced by Boston Globe Media, nonprofit hospitals in the U.S. received an estimated $25 billion in tax exemptions in 2015. Its authors, Ge Bai and David A. Hyman, write that “many nonprofit hospitals do not provide enough charity care to justify their exemptions…More than one-third of nonprofit hospitals (36%) provided less than $1 of charity care for every $100 in total expenses.” Nonprofit hospitals are exempt from federal, state, and local property taxes, and donations to them are tax-deductible. Ge and Hyman argue that, “If nonprofit hospitals are unwilling to provide sufficient charity care to justify the amount of their current tax exemption, there is no reason we should deprive local communities of the property tax revenues that allow them to fund local schools, parks, and other public services.”
Assembly member JimWood’s office responded to our inquiries with a statement reading in part that the Assembly member understands that, “In this case, Adventist is the one initiating the action to renegotiate, requesting higher reimbursements in a number of areas…On the other hand, Anthem is seeking an agreement that would not reflect significant cost increases to the employers, employees or others with Anthem coverage. It’s important to note that the entities being affected, such as the school districts, city of Ukiah and (the) county, are self-insured and, as such, are tax-payer funded and can only absorb certain cost increases before they have to look for other ways to make it up, like cutting costs. This is not a situation that Asm. Wood wants to see happen and commends these self-insured entities for being responsible to the taxpayers and by pushing back against any attempt to raise the cost of coverage beyond what they can afford.”
Some of the largest employers in the county, including the county government, the city of Ukiah, and the Ukiah Unified School District, rely on Anthem for their insurance. The county has 961 employees with 810 dependents, while the school district has about 750 employees with approximately 350 dependents. The city of Ukiah has 194 workers and 234 dependents, and is consulting with a regional insurance provider about its options. If the contract between the hospital system and the insurance provider is terminated, people with Anthem will have to pay out-of-network costs at Adventist facilities.
After last month’s healthcare presentation during budget hearings, Supervisor Ted Williams said the choices seem to be to continue to invest in an ever more expensive system, or look to the state and federal government for a whole new system. “We can ask staff to shop around, try to find a creative solution, (but) the bottom line is, without a single payer solution, or some national and state level solution, we’re going to see continued increase in health costs. And the only answer is, we need to contribute more.”
July 15, 2022--Victor Palomino, Sarah Reith and Alicia Bales of the KZYX Local News Team attend the California Coastal Commission Meeting in Fort Bragg and file this special report.
Los servicios de autoayuda de la corte vulven en persona después de un tiempo ofreciendo servicios remotos debido a la pandemia. Los servicios en persona son para las personas que no tienen un abogado y necesitan navegar y entender los procesos de la corte.
La Comisión Costera de California realizó una visita de 3 días a Fort Bragg como parte de sus viajes mensuales para aprender en persona sobre los problemas que afectan la costa de California.
Los comisionados son designados por el gobernador del estado y sirven por un período de 4 años con la misión de proteger los recursos marinos y costeros y garantizar su futuro.
La visita incluyó reuniones oficiales y encuentros sociales donde los comisionados tuvieron la oportunidad de escuchar al público, organizaciones sin fines de lucro, empresas y funcionarios.
Las noticias de KZYX hablo con la comisionada Linda Escalante sobre la visita.
Self Help Center of Mendocino offers legal information for people without a lawyer and now they are back offering services in person.
July 15, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors took up fire and water this week, with discussions about funding water projects, a water extraction ordinance, and a ballot initiative for a quarter-cent sales tax for fire departments.
The original tax proposal included money for county water projects, but the Board abandoned that portion of the plan after Supervisor Dan Gjerde launched a campaign against it, arguing that it was an attempt by inland water interests to win a subsidy for agricultural water. Gjerde and Supervisor Maureen Mulheren formed an ad hoc committee to research other avenues to fund county water projects. They turned in separate memos that arrived at different conclusions.
The Board has already allocated $250,000 from the PG&E settlement fund for a water agency, though there’s been no decision yet on how to spend it, or what the agency would look like. Gjerde told the rest of the Board he had identified more money from the PG&E fund that could be used for water projects. He included an email from Deputy CEO Sara Pierce explaining that she had erroneously stated that $960,000 was available from the fund for grant matching. In fact, the remaining PG&E funds come out to a little over $1.2 million. Gjerde also expressed optimism that the state, with its $100 billion surplus, will come through with water funding.
In her memo, Mulheren wrote that last year, the Department of Water Resources only funded a small portion of the county’s water needs. Many state-funded projects, she noted, require a county match. She doesn’t think the county has the money to leverage grants, and provided a partial list of budgetary deficits, writing, “we are upside down in our health plan, have received only ¼ of the projected cannabis taxes and have an obligation to create a new wing of our county jail, all in excess of $10 million above our abilities.”
Mulheren serves on multiple bodies that deal with water policy in the Russian River watershed. When Supervisor Ted Williams tapped her and Supervisor Glenn McGourty to serve on a drought ad hoc committee, Gjerde complained, saying, “It’s curious that we would choose to have an ad hoc where both supervisors are in one of the three, so to speak, watersheds, and one of the two is not facing short-term drought issues. And I can’t help but wonder if it’s because I’ve been outspoken about the fact that some of the Russian River water districts are undercharging for their water, but they’re still looking to the county for assistance, and I’m wondering if that’s the motive for keeping either Supervisor Haschak or myself off the drought ad hoc.”
Mulheren shot back, saying, “Supervisor Gjerde, your assumptions about my interests in water are incorrect. I am deeply interested in making our community have sustainable resources. If it’s going to make you drop the subject, I will yield the seat. Happily. Because the assumptions and the allegations that you are putting out in public are very upsetting to me…I would like to remove myself from the drought ad hoc.”
McGourty objected, saying that neither he nor Mulheren would show favoritism to their watershed. “I think my actions last year proved pretty well that your district benefited handsomely from the efforts of the ad hoc,” he noted. “When you look at where the water went that was hauled, it turns out that two-thirds of the water was delivered into the fourth district, and one third went into the fifth.”
Supervisor John Haschak agreed that more than one watershed should be represented on a body working on how to approach the drought, and Mulheren insisted on yielding her seat. The committee is now back to its original membership of Haschak and McGourty. Under a new Senate Bill, 552, which was signed into law last year, local governments will be required to have a standing drought task force, with demonstrable plans to address water shortages.
Haschak introduced another ordinance that he believes will help the county comply with SB 552, to regulate the sale of water from private wells. A group of volunteers from around the county worked with the drought ad hoc to draft the proposed ordinance, drawing heavily on laws already in place in other areas, including the coastal zone.
Sherrie Ebyam, of Willits, summarized some key points of the proposal, which hinges on the county hiring a hydrologist to make sure that production wells don’t draw down neighboring wells or the surrounding aquifer more than 10%; and to keep track of data submitted by applicants and gathered from meters. “This ordinance proposes regulating water extraction from groundwater wells from which the water is being sold and from which the water is being transported and used off the property,” she declared. “I’d like to make it clear that this ordinance is for extracting water in order to sell it, and not for general commercial purposes…its intent is to make sure use of our groundwater is sustainable, and to have mechanisms in place to adjust that use, should it become unsustainable. The implementation of this ordinance will tell us when groundwater is being overtaxed, and mechanisms will be in place to ratchet the use back to sustainable levels. The ordinance lays out a plan to respond to adverse effects that may affect the source well, a neighboring well, and ultimately affect the aquifer itself. Much of what this ordinance calls for, in terms of required groundwater well information, has been the law in the City of Mendocino since 1990. We also borrowed language and methodology from the Mendocino County Coastal Groundwater Development guidelines.”
The Board voted 4-1, with Williams dissenting on budgetary grounds, to pass the ordinance along to the Planning Commission for further development.
July 14, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors’ chambers filled to overflowing at Tuesday’s meeting, with county union workers demanding better pay and an end to staffing shortages as inflation climbs. Regional union reps weighed in, too, saying they were dismayed at the county’s offer of a 0% cost of living allowance. Workers had filed out, chanting, “we’ll be back,” by the time supervisors decided to have a study session on what it would take to craft a living wage ordinance.
The first speaker of the day was Vince Hawkins, a health inspector who spoke about how many of his colleagues have been lured elsewhere by better pay. Purple-clad workers rose silently from seats marked “Unavailable” and raised their signs as he spoke. “On any given day, I could be the only health inspector to respond to complaints or inspections for food facilities or recreational water facilities or well and small water systems, body art facilities, things like that,” he said; when “those three empty seats should be filled with my co-workers to go out and do the job with me. It’s no fun having to go out and do it by yourself.” Speakers were mostly from the social work and public health sectors, like Heidi Corrado, the county’s public health emergency preparedness coordinator. “One way that many counties and municipalities have been showing appreciation for their employees is through the American Rescue Plan Act,” she noted. “In fact, this was one of the listed purposes of ARPA. Now, Mendocino County has received ARPA funds, but so far, the administration has said nothing and made no proposals, while staff watch other public employees in neighboring counties be acknowledged for their service…these employees come to work even when they themselves were evacuated and living in a shelter; worked at home when they were sick with covid; went to work knowing that they could be called out to respond to a home where everyone in that house was sick. It’s true that you cannot buy that kind of work ethic. It’s true. You cannot buy that kind of loyalty. But it should be rewarded.” The room erupted in a solid fifteen seconds of cheers and applause when she finished her remarks. The county is negotiating with employee units again today. Asked if county workers are moving towards a strike, SEIU Local 1021 Field Representative Patrick Hickey said in a text that “if the County doesn’t move, we’ll be discussing all of our options at our next General Membership meetings on Wednesday, July 20.” Later in the morning, Supervisor Ted Williams sought support from the board for a living wage ordinance to help low wage workers earn sufficient pay. “You know, frankly, I just feel embarrassed,” he said as he introduced the item. “It makes me feel like we’re the Wal-Mart of employers.” Supervisor Dan Gjerde said the county pays 70 cents in benefits for every dollar in wages for most of its employees, which means that the county pays $34 an hour for a worker earning $20 an hour. “Some of the better private-sector employers are paying about 30 cents in benefits for every dollar in salary, so that turns into $26 at $20 an hour pay,” he said; “so it’s much easier for those contractors (that are hired by the county), to bring their employees in at $20 an hour starting pay than it is for the county.” Supervisor John Haschak pointed out the irony of asking county staff in departments that typically represent the county in negotiations with employees, to also work on a living wage ordinance. “In this time of real budget crisis and very difficult times even providing anyone with a COLA when the cost of living is going up at 7 or 8%, then I don’t want to see staff time diverted from trying to figure out that problem at this point,” he said. Martin Bennett, a professor emeritus at Santa Rosa Junior College, co-founder of North Bay Jobs with Justice, and a staff member of a North Bay union, called in to say that Sonoma county and three of its cities have adopted living wage ordinances. “Living wage ordinances have proven to be good public policy,” he declared, saying that UC Berkeley Labor Center and others have proven that they reduce turnover and absenteeism, and increase retention and the quality of services. “Living wage ordinances also ensure that taxpayers do not subsidize employers that pay less than a livable wage, forcing workers to access public programs,” such as MediCare and food stamps. He offered his help and that of staff at the Labor Council, to provide information about their experience crafting the living wage ordinance in Sonoma County, as well as contact information for advocates and staff all over the state, in other counties that have enacted living wage laws. Gjerde asked about what he called the roll-up effect, when low-wage workers get a raise and their managers demand the same percentage raise to maintain the gap between them, which he worries could result in a torrent of increased pay for employees at the management level. But Bennett said that was unlikely to be a problem. “There are many fiscal impact studies of living wage laws,” he said, including one by the University of Massachusetts of the living wage law in Sonoma County. “The bottom line is this,” he said. “There is a so-called ripple effect when you raise wages at the bottom. But it’s limited.” The Board voted to direct Williams to work on the ordinance with outside help and minimal staff time, limited to things like providing documents but no lengthy analysis; and for him to return to the full board at an unspecified time with an informational workshop.
July 13, 2022 — There have been two developments in the ongoing saga of the Potter Valley hydropower project this week. The 20-year license has expired, but PG&E still owns and operates the project on an annual license. On Monday, PG&E submitted a rough schedule to surrender that license to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). In a separate filing, PG&E argued that it should be allowed to continue operating the project under the biological protections that were attached to the license when it was issued in 2002.
The 100-year-old project consists of two dams and two reservoirs that impound water on the Eel River; and a diversion tunnel that sends Eel River water into the East Fork of the Russian River, eventually making up the majority of Lake Mendocino. At its height, the project was capable of generating 9.4 megawatts of power, but it’s not currently producing power due to a broken transformer. The project provides water that’s key to agriculture in the Russian River and has long been a hot-button issue for environmental organizations that argue it harms endangered fish in the Eel.
On Monday, PG&E submitted a four-page proposal for a two-and-a-half-year timeline to surrender the license and decommission the project. The bulk of that time will be devoted to interacting with agencies and stakeholders as PG&E drafts more detailed documents. Environmentalists are pushing for a speedy removal of both dams. But PG&E spokeswoman Deanna Contreras said in an email, “We expect it will take many years following PG&E’s submittal to FERC for a Decommissioning Order to be issued.” She added that PG&E still plans to replace the broken transformer, expecting it to amortize over a period of five years. Replacing the part could take up to two years.
Water-using stakeholders include the Potter Valley Irrigation District, which has contractual rights to some of the water; and the City of Ukiah, which has pre-1914 rights to water further down the East Fork, before it flows into Lake Mendocino. The Sonoma County Water Agency claims the bulk of the water in the lake. The Russian River Flood Control and Water Conservation Improvement District also has water rights to the lake, and sells wholesale water in Mendocino County. All these interests are currently in suspense about whether or not PG&E will be allowed to drastically reduce the water flowing through the diversion tunnel. PG&E has stated that one of its reasons for asking FERC to allow it to cut down on the flows is to preserve a cold-water pool for young salmonids in the Eel River.
But it’s not just environmental advocacy organizations that are concerned about the project’s impact on wildlife and the environment. Back in 2002, the National Marine Fisheries Service, or NMFS, wrote a Biological Opinion, laying out the measures that PG&E needed to take in order to comply with the Endangered Species Act. That opinion was incorporated into the license that was issued at that time, and which expired three months ago. In March of this year, NMFS wrote a letter to FERC, saying that the project was causing take, or killing and harming fish that are listed under the Endangered Species Act, “in a manner not anticipated in the Opinion and from activities not described in the Opinion.” The letter goes on to say that the fish passage facility at Cape Horn Dam has not undergone the proper consultations regarding endangered species, and that none of the operations at the facility are covered in the 20-year-old opinion. NMFS wants to re-open consultations about the license in order to update and strengthen the environmental protection measures. This means that the license for the project would be undergoing amendments at the same time that it is being surrendered. Within a few weeks of the NMFS letter, environmental advocates filed a notice of intent to sue PG&E under the Endangered Species Act, citing among other things that the fishway at Cape Horn Dam made the fish easy prey for river otters. In a 16-page letter to FERC, PG&E wrote that NMFS doesn’t have evidence to back up its claims. PG&E also protested that NMFS failed to mention “any of the voluminous monitoring record covered by over 20 years of monitoring Project operations.” Redgie Collins is the legal and policy director for California Trout, one of the organizations arguing that PG&E is in violation of the Endangered Species Act. He believes the biological opinion expired along with the license, and that it needs to be updated. CalTrout is threatening litigation as part of a pressure campaign to speed up dam removal and install other structures that will enable a winter diversion from the Eel to the Russian. “We have plenty of information that shows that these 100-year-old plus Eel River dams kill fish,” he declared. “And becasue they kill fish, and because we believe that the Biological Opinion has ended, that PG&E is required to either re-consult, or open themselves up to litigation that we are preparing, as we speak.” Collins is inspired by plans to remove four hydropower dams from the Klamath River, which is scheduled to start next year. “It took them about 18 years to get to the point of the surrender process,” he said. “And once it kick-started there, the writing was on the wall for the eventual solution, which was worked on by a host of stakeholders, including tribal nations. Here we have a very similar path, and so we’re hoping that they use the existing information that we’ve put forth, and the removal plan, and try to beat that 30-month window. That’s our goal. It will never be quick enough for us.” The Round Valley Indian Tribes have weighed in on the NMFS request to amend the license, saying the tribes support all the protective measures proposed by the service. The tribes are one of the few entities PG&E notified of its intent to reduce flows coming through the project, much to the chagrin of the Russian River water users, who argued that PG&E should have assembled a full drought working group before asking FERC to sign off on the reduction, or variance. Collins says PG&E could have cut down the flows any time, without waiting around on FERC. “If they truly wanted to save listed species, they would have implemented the variance,” he said. “That cold pool will be functionally gone in a short period of time. We think just in a matter of weeks that cold pool will be drained based on the variance not being implemented.”
With ag users writing angry letters pleading for more water and environmentalists threatening lawsuits, one thing is clear: the initial outreach to stakeholders is not going well. And the decommissioning process hasn’t gotten started yet.
July 12, 2022 — The Ukiah Police Department is going to federal court again, with officers accused of brutalizing another unarmed man. The latest allegation involves a beating that took place at a private residence just a few days before officers beat Gerardo Magdaleno, a naked, mentally ill man in a South Ukiah parking lot. The City settled that case for $211,000, plus attorneys’ fees of approximately $92,500, according to Izaak Schwaiger, Magdaleno’s attorney. The Valdes complaint, filed in the Northern California US District Court two months ago, claims that on March 28 of last year, Officer Eric Rodello held Arturo Valdes while Sergeant Ronald Donahue punched him in the face, causing multiple injuries that continue to interfere with his ability to breathe through his nose. Rodello and Donohue were not among the four officers caught on camera beating Magdaleno. According to the Ukiah Police email directory, there are currently 28 members of the Ukiah Police force (counting two community services officers and a property officer, but not counting the dispatch and records manager and the dispatch supervisor.) Two officers and a sergeant are listed in the Valdes complaint. Three officers, a lieutenant, and former Chief Justin Wyatt were named in the Magdaleno beating. (Wyatt was not present at the beating, but was faulted for lack of leadership and training.) Former Chief Noble Waidelich is being investigated for an allegation of assault and is facing a domestic violence trial. Former Sergeant Kevin Murray, who recently pled no contest to felony intimidation and misdemeanor false imprisonment, is facing criminal sentencing in August and a civil complaint by former UPD Officer Isabel Siderakis. In all, ten members of the Ukiah Police force have been implicated in violence in the past year and a half. The fourteen-count complaint also lists Valdes’ wife Elizabeth and the couple’s two small children as plaintiffs, saying Rodello and Donahue and a third officer, Daniel Parker, handcuffed Elizabeth Valdes and placed her in the back of a police car with the windows rolled up. According to the complaint, officers told her she would lose custody of her children if she declined to provide them with information about a ‘fender bender’ that took place earlier that day in the parking lot of the Ross department store. Richard Middlebrook, a Bakersfield attorney who is representing the Valdes family, says there was no injury or property damage in the minor collision, and that Valdes gave the other party his driver's license and insurance information. According to Middlebrook, the other person refused to return the license, and Valdes went home. Police officers retrieved the license from the other person, and came to the Valdes residence a little after 7 pm. In Middlebrook’s account, the officers asked Arturo Valdes if he had been involved in a hit and run, which Valdes denied. “There was no hit and run, because in order to have a hit and run, you have to have damage which you refuse to take responsibility for or leave information about,” Middlebrook argued. He said the officers told Valdes that they could smell alcohol, and that Valdes was on probation for a prior DUI. The complaint states that at the time of the arrest, Valdes was no longer on probation. Middlebrook said officers told him he was required to take a breath test, and Valdes did not argue. But now, Arturo Valdes is being prosecuted by the Mendocino County District Attorney’s office for driving under the influence, child endangerment, and resisting arrest. Middlebrook says it’s impossible to prove whether or not Valdes was under the influence at the time of the collision (when police believe the children were in the car), because officers met him at his home some time afterwards. And he’s skeptical about claims that Valdes was resisting arrest, because he says his client wasn’t being arrested when the beating took place. “They said, ‘you’re not under arrest,’ multiple times,” Middlebrook reported. “And then said, you’re not entitled to speak to a lawyer, since you’re not under arrest. That is a flagrant lie, and a misstatement of almost every bit of case law ever, involving the right to speak to an attorney.” Describing the video (which we have not viewed), Middlebrook said Donahue began to walk to the front door of the residence, while Arturo Valdes walked toward the garage. He said then, the officers grabbed Valdes by the arms. “When the officer comes up and grabs him from behind, my client turns around and pulls his arm away and says, ‘What are you doing? Am I under arrest? Am I being detained?’ He said, ‘You’re being detained.’ And he said, ‘Why am I being detained?’ And they grab him, throw him face-first into his own car, then throw him to the ground, hold him down, and beat him.”
Middlebrook says the officers falsified the arrest report, which is easily proven by the fact that their statements are contradicted by Ring cameras at the Valdes residence. “One of my concerns in this case from the beginning,” he said, “is that these officers will testify according to what they wrote in their police report, when we know that their police report is fraudulent.” This, he said, could cause legal problems in court, “if they answered questions that incriminated them criminally, that they could be prosecuted for those answers.” He said the officers found a way around that, at a recent preliminary hearing, when he asked Donahue, “‘How many times did you strike my client in my face in order to break five bones in his face?’ At that time, he said, ‘I’m going to take the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination, and I refuse to answer the question.’” According to Middlebrook, Rodello likewise stated that he planned to plead the Fifth, which “throws a huge monkey wrench into this whole criminal case,” because if the officers don’t testify under cross-examination, prior testimony is likely to be thrown out. “If you can’t or will not answer questions under cross-examination in the case, and the entire testimony is then removed, there is no evidence against my client whatsoever, and the case will be dismissed,” he predicted. Deputy District Attorney Heidi Larson did not return an email asking questions about the case, specifically the implications of Middlebrook’s account of the sergeant’s testimony. There will be another hearing in The People vs Valdes on August 19th. Deputy Ukiah City Manager Shannon Riley said she was in meetings all day yesterday and was not able to provide information about the case in time to meet our deadline. The civil suit that the Valdes family is bringing against the city of Ukiah, the police department and the three is just getting started. Charges against the city include willful negligence that allows for multiple instances of expensive police misconduct. “It’s rampant,” Middlebrook said. “It’s overwhelming. Almost one-third of the officers have had civil rights violations lawsuits filed against them in the last year and a half alone. I’ve never heard of anything like that in any other department…not only when there’s smoke there’s fire. This is when there’s fire there’s fire. You see the whole police department burning down. At some point, it’s systemic. It goes from the top down.”
July 11, 2022 — The Middletown Art Center in Lake County was packed on Saturday night. Visitors from several counties were there to look at work by 31 Native American artists, including traditional baskets, digital art and paintings, woodcut prints, bobbleheads, and a short film about the historical context of Jules Tavernier’s paintings. “Tonight, we are at the opening of Earth, Sky, and Everything in Between, which is actually the first time that a Native American has curated art by Native Americans. Ever,” said curator Corine Pearce, just as visitors began to arrive. She’s from the Little River Band of Pomo Indians in Redwood Valley, but she also claims ancestry from people indigenous to Lake County. Pearce said the show is a culmination of a year-long project that involved teaching basket-making to Native and non-Native people as a way to build cultural bridges. She emphasized the variety of styles and approaches on display. “While we were setting this up, the owner of the gallery, Lisa Kaplan, said she’d never had as many mediums in at one time. So we have acrylic on canvas, we have three-dimensional baskets of lots of kinds, including electrical cable…if you are alive, and you are Indigenous, no matter what art you’re making, it is contemporary art.” That includes commemorating recent achievements and memorializing ongoing tragedy. In one small room, there are a pair of mannequins in a mix of modern and traditional regalia, and a haunting empty skirt covered with red handprints. One piece celebrates a young woman’s recent graduation, while the other is a reminder of how many Indigenous women are missing and murdered. According to statistics that are part of the installation, Indian women are murdered at a rate of ten times the national average, though only 2% of the known number are included in the Department of Justice database. The mannequins, notes Pearce, “are a cool thing.” A young woman from the Pinola family of Kashia graduated from school this year. “The school she goes to allows them to wear a traditional outfit to one graduation, and then a contemporary cap and gown. And she broke the mold. She made a little feather topknot. And the white beads that go down (across the forehead), that’s a Pomo thing, representing wealth. So she brought both of them. Also, where that room is, there’s a display for the Missing Murdered Indigenous Women that has statistics. Because that sad statistic is part of our culture.” Many of the artists are displaying their work for the first time, from twelve-year-old Sarah Franklin, who made a small red basket, to 75-year-old Wanda Quitiquit, who created a special technique for burning designs onto gourds. But some of the artwork has been on tour. The video about Jules Tavernier’s paintings of the Elem people, which includes local experts discussing the mercury mining that began at that time, was recently at the De Young Museum in San Francisco. “It was actually at the Met first, and then it came to the De Young,” Pearce said. “When it came to the De Young Museum, they incorporated more representations of living artists. I happened to be one of those artists. So they had my baskets, they had baskets of Susan Billy, they had baskets of Clint McKay, and they had tule dolls made by Meyo Marruffo. That exhibit just ended, and they sent the stuff back to me, and then I brought that stuff here to exhibit here for a little while, and then it’s going to go to the Grace Hudson Museum (in Ukiah). So we have some really ‘fine art’ art here.” Wanda Quitiquit, who is Eastern Pomo from Robinson Rancheria, debuted her work at the Middletown Art Center, wearing a multi-strand shell necklace made by her late sister. She took a seat on a hay bale next to a garden full of basket-weaving plants to talk about her artistic approach. She is partly inspired by her own tradition, and partly by Indigenous Peruvian artists who carve elaborate designs onto tiny gourds. “What I like to do is I make big, large gourd bowls,” she said. “I have to draw the design first, and then I wood-burn the design in. And then I use dye for color. I only do Pomo basketry designs, old designs…But they all come out different on the gourd. It just depends on the gourd, and my feeling. I think the most important thing is that these designs that I use are gifts to us Pomos who use them in our artwork. I just stick with Pomo basket designs, because I’m a Pomo. It’s done by a Pomo, and it’s Pomo art.” Jacob Meders, who is Mechoopda Maidu, takes a different historical approach. In addition to making sculpture and woodcut prints, he is an associate professor of an interdisciplinary art and performance program at Arizona State University. He’s also the founder of a printmaking company called War Bird Press. His woodcut, “Divided Lines,” is a mixture of Socratic line theory, illustrations from accounts of first contact between Indigenous and European people, and pop-culture satirical riffs. One design features a figure wearing a cross and a crown, sitting cross-legged on a tree stump. “I was thinking more of the British crown in that,” Meders said. “What he’s sitting on is the largest stump in all of those woodcuts. It’s this very large tree that was cut down, so he’s using that as a throne in some way. And he’s referencing Manifest Destiny…the idea that God has given him the right, as the king, and chose him to be royalty, but also the idea of Manifest Destiny, that God has given him the right to take from us, as Indigenous people. So there’s that reference to that spiritual power that is a colonial spiritual power, that is used as a weapon, really.” Jacqueline Graumann, of the Redwood Valley Little River Band of Pomo Indians, melded a personal fascination with the “Everything” part of the exhibit’s title. “During the pandemic, I got kind of a fixation on anatomical hearts,” she said. “So I have drawn probably 20 different anatomical hearts. I try to pull out, what people’s hearts are about, what their lives are about. My sister is a basket-weaver, so I did a basket-weaver’s heart. I was a traditional dancer when I was younger. I had a death in my family and I stopped dancing, so I try to find my way back to that by doing a dancer’s heart.” As a labor and delivery nurse, Graumann brings a medical understanding of anatomical features to her artwork. “I'm there at the very beginning of life, and a lot of it starts with hearing the heartbeats of babies,” she said. “Hearing the heartbeats of mamas. So it’s a connection throughout generations, and listening to the Earth. It’s the beginning of everything.” As she spoke, an Elem elder inside the gallery clacked a stick sharply, twice. It was a call to go in and hear a blessing for a historical show, equal parts ancient, the first of its kind, and not necessarily confined to a gallery. “They are museum quality,” Pearce said of the pieces on display. “But we are not people who live in museums. So it’s important for us to share, in community, that we’re still here.”
West Center has a new Spanish language program. Fundando mis sueños is a training program that if completed in conjunction with other eligibility requirements will allow the business owner grant funds.
July 7, 2022 — Kevin Murray, the former Ukiah police sergeant facing seven felonies and one misdemeanor, pled no contest to one felony and one misdemeanor at a pretrial conference late Thursday afternoon. He has not been sentenced, but he is facing anywhere between what the judge hinted would be the likely outcome of two years felony probation or the possibility of three or four years in jail. The date for his jury trial, originally set for July 18, has been vacated. Presiding Judge Ann Moorman took the bench in Courtroom H, where Judge Carly Dolan usually presides, and ordered Murray to report to a probation officer within three days. Murray has served a total of 60 days in custody, and Moorman told the court she was “not inclined to add custodial time,” indicating that she prefers the option of supervised probation.
Murray was originally charged with committing five felonies on November 25, 2020, but pled no contest to one that did not appear in the original charging documents: that of willfully engaging in intimidation to dissuade a female victim of a crime from reporting the crime. The victim in this case is a woman identified only as “S.Y.” MendoFever previously reported that the City of Ukiah settled with S.Y. for $250,000, and quoted then-Chief Noble Waidelich as saying that the settlement “admits no liability for the City or its employees.” Waidelich himself is being investigated by the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office on separate assault charges.
Murray also pled no contest Thursday to a misdemeanor charge for false imprisonment of a woman identified only as Jane Doe, sometime between June 1 and July 31 of 2014. He was originally charged with a forcible rape alleged to have taken place on June 1 of that year.
The original five felonies of November 25 were one charge of sexual battery, and two charges each of first-degree burglary and burglary with others present. He also faced a felony charge of forced oral copulation, alleged to have occurred on April 10 of 2014. His original misdemeanor charge was possession of a controlled substance. Because the sex crimes were dismissed, Murray will not have to register as a sex offender.
However, his status as a felon would mean that he would have a strike against him, which would have sentencing repercussions if he were to be charged with any future felonies. It also means he will never be allowed to own a firearm, ammunition, or a variety of other weapons for the rest of his life. Murray had previous difficulties with this requirement early last year, when he was ordered to surrender his firearms and only gave up four handguns and a rifle with a scope. At that time, he was facing an allegation of committing a sexual assault while armed with an assault weapon. A month after he submitted paperwork to the court saying he had surrendered all of his weapons, investigators discovered that he had hidden an assault rifle at his father-in-law’s house in Lake County. This led to Mendocino County District Attorney David Eyster requesting that Murray’s bail for charges of rape and forcible oral copulation be recalled and increased from $200,000 to $500,000.
Though Murray was fired by the Ukiah Police Department in late January of last year, his relationship with the the city and the police department is not over yet. Former UPD officer Isabel Siderakis is suing Murray, the city, and the police department in civil court on four counts of sexual harassment and hostile work environment, discrimination, retaliation, and failure to prevent discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. Siderakis now works for the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office and was present in court all afternoon during the pretrial conference. It is unclear at this time what bearing Murray’s status as a felon will have on the upcoming civil case Siderakis is bringing against him.
Murray brought considerable legal firepower to the criminal matter leading to Thursday’s plea arrangement. Court documents indicate that he is represented by five attorneys, led by Stephen Gallenson, who sat beside him in court on Thursday. The prosecutor is Deputy Mendocino County District Attorney Heidi Larson.
Murray is scheduled to be sentenced on August 24.
Pandemic news mixed, with new contagious variants and free
And now we’ll turn to pandemic news, which is a little mixed. The new variants are highly contagious but not as virulent as some of earlier strains. However, Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren said studies are showing that the risk of long term damage to the brain and nervous system are more serious than scientists previously understood.
Within the last ten days, hospitalizations fluctuated between three and seven.
Earlier this week, Coren said that even with FDA approval, the uptake in vaccines for 5-11 year olds is “very slow.” Children under five are being vaccinated at the clinics, and the county doesn’t have data on how many of the youngest children in the community have gotten the shot.
Some test sites have now expanded their offerings to include treatment, in a program called test to treat, where patients take a rapid test under the observation of a healthcare professional. If they test positive, they can consult with a doctor either onsite or remotely via telehealth, to determine if they should receive a prescription for paxlovid, one of the treatments for mild to moderate covid infection. Patients are not guaranteed to receive the treatment, even if they do test positive. But if the doctor does dispense the prescription, the patient receives the medication on-site and can begin treatment the same day. The Optum Serve test site at the Ukiah fairgrounds is a test to treat site, open Saturday through Thursday, 9 am-5pm, closed for lunch around 1:00. Walk-ins are welcome, though appointments are encouraged. The other test to treat site in Mendocino County is in Gualala, at the Redwood Coast Medical Services clinic on Ocean Drive. For apointments, call (707) 884-4005. KZYX spoke with a patient who availed herself of the test to treat service at the Ukiah fairgrounds this week. She reported that she spoke with a doctor via telehealth, and that she was not asked for payment or for insurance information. We’ll be airing excerpts from today’s covid briefing on our newscast tonight at six pm, where you can also catch our new bilingual segment.
July 7, 2022 — After seven years of standing vacant, the Hopland Superette is under new ownership, set to reopen as Geiger's Hopland Market, possibly as early as Labor Day. Ken Molinaro, a Sonoma County developer who purchased Geiger's Market in Laytonville three years ago, says he expects the Hopland store to have a full-time staff of about ten people serving local grocery shoppers as well as tourists slowing down along the highway, which passes right through town. “This was a perfect opportunity for us, being right on 101, just like our other market is,” said Molinaro. In Laytonville, he added, “we really serve two masters. We serve the local market…but more and more, the tourist market is getting to be our other master. And it’ll be the same here in Hopland. We’re really opening it to serve the needs of the local community, but there’s 14,000 cars a day go by here, and whole bunches of them, especially this time of year, are tourists.” At about three o’clock on Wednesday afternoon, traffic was steady, and so was business at two of the medium-to-high-end restaurants within sight of the store. Now that the hotel is here, “I would guess that as time goes by, Hopland will become bigger and continue to be more popular,” Molinaro predicted. The brown-papered windows are plastered with a “Coming Soon” sign and flyers advising people on how to apply for a job at the future Geiger's Hopland Market or take a survey on what they’d like it to carry.The store is about 6,500 square feet, approximately 6,000 of it what Molinaro calls sale space. “If I had to compare this market to a local market in the area, I would say we’re going to be obviously a very small, like Big John’s in Healdsburg, Oliver’s, those kinds of markets,” Molinro anticipated. He said most or all of the produce will be organic, which was one of the things that showed up on the survey. “We got about 250 responses,” he reported; “which I thought was incredible…the responses were all very specific: can we get fresh fish, we really want organic produce, can we get Annie’s macaroni and cheese…it really gave us a great idea of what this community is looking for, because it’s far different from the community in Laytonville.” Wholesalers in the Bay Area, he noted, often won’t travel to the north county, especially with rising fuel prices . But he expects to be able to get commodities like fresh fish at the Hopland store, and plans to ferry specialty items back and forth between the two markets. He is also planning to have a few tables where people can wait for a to-go order or eat something from the deli. Standing in front of a 12-foot-long cold case, he outlined his plans for what he expects will be the business’ centerpiece. “The highlight of the store is this deli,” he declared, describing a full range of salads and hand-made sandwiches with organic produce, meat sliced to order, and fresh bread. “High quality stuff, but not at San Francisco prices,” he promised. “Reasonable prices for what reasonable means today, which is way different than what it used to mean,” he acknowledged with a laugh. He’s not planning to just quietly open the doors one day and wait for people to notice the store is in business. After the soft opening, he concluded, “we’ll definitely be having a soiree.”
July 6, 2022 — As the cannabis market plummets, the state lifted its cultivation tax of $161 per pound of product, effective as of July first. Cannabis advocates say that’s an important step, but far from being enough to make the market sustainable.
And with Mendocino County’s final election results in, the assessor-clerk-recorder’s office is already looking forward to November’s general election.
Lauren Schmitt, of our sister station KMUD, interviewed Ross Gordon, policy director of the Humboldt County Growers Alliance and policy chair of Origins Council, an organization that partners with six regional cannabis trade associations in northern California, including Mendocino, advocating for changes to state cannabis policy. He says cannabis is still heavily overtaxed. “Proposition 64 established a pretty onerous state tax framework,” he opined; “which included a tax on cultivation, which was most recently $161 a pound for every pound of cannabis sold off of a farm; and also established a 15% excise tax levied at the retail level on the consumer.” In Humboldt County, Measure S, a voter initiative, allows permitted farms to be taxed at $1-$3 a square foot, regardless of how much cannabis is sold. Gordon said earlier this year, advocates campaigned to lower the Measure S taxes, “given just the general unsustainability of the tax rate, but also…the complete collapse in wholesale prices in cannabis, particularly for small farmers, going from maybe $1000 a pound to $300 a pound on average, created a situation where these taxes, which were always really onerous, have really become absolutely unsustainable.” In 2016, Mendocino County voters passed Measure AI, which imposed a cannabis business tax of 2.5% on gross receipts per fiscal year, with minimum rates of $1,250 for 2,500 square feet, up to $5,000 for grow sites greater than 5,000 square feet. An advisory measure directed that those taxes go towards enforcement, mental health, county roads, and increased fire and emergency services. During budget hearings, the Board of Supervisors directed the auditor-controller/treasurer-tax controller to track where that tax revenue is going. Gordon said that, although the state cultivation tax no longer exists, there is a nuance for growers who sent their product off to a distributor before July first. If a farmer has transferred cannabis to a distributor, but the product has not received its final testing, the distributor is required to return the tax to the cultivator and document the transaction. If it can’t be returned to the cultivator, then it can be given to the state. Gordon added that, short of overturning Prop 64, which he says would cost “tens of millions of dollars,” there are still some focus points that are essential if small farmers are going to hang on. “There’s many. There’s probably a hundred,” he said; but the two main ones are direct to consumer sales, and the normalization of cannabis as agriculture. The Origins Council is working to introduce AB 2691, legislation that would allow farmers to directly sell their product to consumers at a certain number of events per year. “If we don’t have more direct access to the consumer,” said Gordon, “I think we’re going to continue not being in a very good place, as an industry and a community.” As for normalization, “the cultivation tax, I think, is one great example of how we have policies that apply to cannabis agriculture that are not applied to other forms of agriculture.”
Election results In county news, final election results are in, with 42.3% of the county’s electorate participating. Incumbent Mendocino County Superintendent of Schools Michelle Hutchins lost narrowly to challenger Nicole Glentzer, who pulled ahead with 55.4% of the vote. The other incumbents remained seated, including Fifth District Supervisor Ted Williams, who defeated challenger John Redding with 82.52% of the vote, and Third District Supervisor John Haschak, who defeated challenger Clay Romero with 71.72% of the vote. Sheriff Matt Kendall, who faced a last-minute write-in challenger in YouTube gadfly Trent James, remains in office with 85.52% of the vote. The $13 million Anderson Valley School District bond, Measure M, also easily passed, with 71.36%. Assessor Clerk-Recorder Katrina Bartolomie told Lauren Schmitt she’s expecting lots of taxes and initiatives on the November general election ballot, but there might not be that many candidates to choose from. Bartolomie herself was among the unchallenged candidates for offices ranging from superior court judge and District Attorney, to auditor-controller/treasurer-tax collector. “We are also having a hard time getting candidates for our special districts,” she said. “If anybody’s interested in running for local office, that’s the place to start. And that’s coming up in November. All the community service, all the fire, all the water, all the special districts, like the Sanitation District over here, the Russian River Flood Control, and then the school districts. So November is probably going to be a big ballot as well.” The filing period for the November 2022 election is July 18 through August 12, “So the next thing I’ll be doing is updating the candidate booklet and putting that on the website so people can look at that. But we just had to get one election over with, before we start the next one.”
This story was written and edited by Sarah Reith, from interviews conducted by Lauren Schmitt, of KMUD news. Thanks to Lauren for sharing her hard work with KZYX.
A reproductive rights protest took place in front of the Ukiah courthouse on July 1st, 2022. A group of 150 residents gathered with signs and rallied in solidarity with states who have had the Roe v. Wade supreme court decision overturned.
July 4, 2022 — The last year has not been kind to the arts, with classes just starting up in person again, patrons hesitant to attend performances and events at galleries, and not a lot of discretionary income available to most people. But on July 2, 2021, Medium Gallery in Ukiah’s Pear Tree shopping center opened its doors to the public — and left them open so fresh air could circulate among the masked attendees. KZYX spoke with co-founder Chris Pugh a few hours before the opening of the first show last year, which was called Prologue. He recalled that he and co-founder Lillian Rubie were both stuck at home during the pandemic, “and we both just had a conversation one day abouthow this is the time to do something, because eventually the world would come out of the pandemic, and we wanted to be ready for that.” The pandemic isn’t over yet, but eight juried shows and a year later, Medium has sold $17,000 worth of art, all of it going to the more than 250 artists who have displayed their work there. The current show, ENcounter Culture, features a graffitied couch, work by established local artists like Spencer Brewer and Jean Avery North, and a collection of street-sign installations by the enigmatic graffiti artist known as the Velvet Bandit. Last Friday afternoon, Pugh talked about how he, Rubie, and fellow co-founder Meredith Hudson have kept the gallery open for its first year. It’s not a mystery. “We do our best to keep our expenses low, and we volunteer as much time as we have. A lot of evenings and weekends, putting in a lot of sweat equity.” Hudson, who worked on laying down the floor when the gallery moved in, knows a lot about sweat equity, though she said, “It might be better put as soft-tissue equity at this point. My knees are still recovering. But I definitely was not the only person who put in the floor. We all worked together to rip out old carpet tiles, and really transform the space from the previous state that it was in, which was an old Radio Shack. It was pretty musty…some very generous friends came in and also donated their knees to the project.” Rubie said she knew from the beginning, when people had a hard time leaving the gallery, that “we were on to something…people enjoyed being here, people enjoyed creating here. And then seeing people make their first sale has been really momentous. And people purchase their first piece of art. Invest in an artist for the first time. That has been for all of us really the most touching part of this whole experience.” Hudson said the practical matter of selling the art is a major focus, though the gallery doesn’t take a commission or charge entry fees. Over the last year, artists have sold their work at prices ranging from ten to $1,500. “A good quarter of those were children, youth under eighteen,” she said. “A lot of the artists who bring their art to us are people who have never shown in a gallery before, people who haven’t had the opportunity to submit work to a show that didn’t have an entry fee, that didn’t take a commission, that made selling their artwork unsustainable. They’ve instead reached out to sell their work through Etsy, or other non-local sources. And I think that this has provided a way for artists to sell their work locally.” Rubie recalled a successful moment for one contributor to the most recent show, where all the artists were kids. “There was a really spectacular piece in the show by an eleven-year-old,” she recalled. “And it was for sale for 25 dollars. But on our opening night, there was a gentleman who was here, who was really moved by the piece. He couldn’t believe that an eleven-year-old created it on the one hand, and he also couldn’t believe that they had marked it at 25 dollars. And when he came to the front desk and wanted to purchase it, he said, I want to buy this piece, but I don’t want to pay 25 dollars, I want to pay 100 dollars. I want her to know that it’s worth that. And that was just really amazing.” That show was memorable for Pugh, as well. He recalled that during the show, the gallery set out a table where visitors could make art. Two men came by and drew for about an hour, then showed Pugh what they had made, which was an elaborate drawing of a lion. But, “they didn’t speak English, and I didn’t speak Spanish, so we couldn’t really talk about their piece,” Pugh said. “Then one of them pulled out their phone, and we had a conversation through a translation app about the drawing that they had made, and they were asking questions about the gallery. They wanted to know if it was a school, or some kind of project…so I explained to them that it was a show that was a kids’ show, but we’re open to everybody…it was great to have people come in and just make art. That’s a thing that we do here. Pretty much every show, we have a place where people can make art, as well as experience art.”
Medium Gallery is in the Pear Tree shopping center in Ukiah, next door to Rod’s Shoes. It is open Friday 12-8, Saturday 12-6, and Sunday 12-4.
July 1, 2022 — Fort Bragg bid farewell to Police Chief John Naulty and Interim City Manager David Spaur this week. At Monday’s City Council meeting, the Council also passed the 22/23 budget, with the assurance that it can be amended as labor negotiations proceed. The city labor union, SEIU Local 1021, is advocating for a 5% COLA, or cost of living increase, but the city has budgeted 3%. Union leaders also argued that the compensation and comparison study was not realistic, as Fort Bragg was compared to Lakeport, where the cost of living is much lower. Naulty and Spaur came out of retirement to serve as heads of the police force and the city. As public servants, they receive CalPers benefits, which would be reduced if they worked more than 960 hours after retirement. But while the city is facing what could be a lengthy recruitment for a new city manager, a new police chief is expected to start work later this month, on July 25. According to a city press release, Neil Cervenka is a veteran of the Air Force and the Turlock Police Department. He also serves as Treasurer on the Executive Board of Directors for the California Peace Officers Association. Cervenka’s salary and benefits will be $110k a year. Council members credited Naulty with improving the culture at the police department and highlighted the grim day when he traded gunfire with the man who killed Sheriff’s Deputy Ricki Del Fiorentino in 2014. Naulty said he expects the new chief to improve the department further, by focusing on training and technology. “It’s just going to flourish even more,” he promised. “We’re fortunate in Mendocino County to be fully staffed, one of the few departments. I mean, some don’t even have a chief anymore, and some people barely have enough officers to cover all the shifts, but we’re one of the fortunate few. It’s thanks to you guys for listening to me, and the investments that you’ve placed into these people, so you guys deserve a lot of credit.” The new fiscal year starts July 1, and the council approved a $38.1 million budget. That’s a $740k decrease from last year, mostly because of upgrades to the wastewater treatment facility and the water meter replacement project. However, the budget for salaries and wages increased by $744k to include packages for high-paying positions like police chief and city manager, as well as two social services workers and an engineering technician. Public Works consumes about 12% of the budget, coming in third after General Government at 19% and police, at 35%. Assistant Director of Finance Isaac Whippy told the council the city has a surplus of $175k, with a projected $3.4 million general fund balance for the upcoming fiscal year. But he warned that a widely predicted recession could knock out the city’s strong ToT (transient occupancy tax, or bed tax paid to lodging establishments) and sales tax revenue. “We could see a decline in our tax revenue, particularly our sales tax revenue, by 10-15%,” he predicted. “And similarly for ToT taxes. So if a recession were to happen in 23/24, we would see a decline in fund balance by $510k, and then in 24/25 there would be a slow recovery from that recession.” The approved budget includes the 3% COLA increase for most city workers, but Assistant City Manager Sarah McCormick’s salary is going up by about $5k. Outgoing Interim City Manager David Spaur summarized the budget implication. “The proposed change in this item, 5G, authorizes an annual salary for the position of Assistant City Manager up to the amount of $120,972.80,” he said. “There will be some salary savings from not having a City Manager for a period of time, as this week will be my last week.” John Ford, of Humboldt County, had accepted the city manager position, but asked to be released from his contract earlier this month, citing family reasons. In a brief interview, Council Member Lindy Peters explained that Spaur had served Fort Bragg at $76 an hour for the 960 hours allowed by CalPers. Peters said now the city is facing a choice. The city can look for another manager through a recruiting agency, which could leave the Council trying to hire someone right after the election, when there might be brand-new Council members. He said the city could also mount its own recruitment efforts, or work its connections through the League of California Cities to try and find another retired city manager who could give Fort Bragg another 960 hours. Meanwhile, city workers lined up during public comment to petition for a higher COLA. Merle Larsen said his reduced earnings as inflation climbs would have an impact on the city’s finances as a whole. “What you’re doing, is everywhere that I shop downtown, they're not gonna get the money,” he vowed. “You're not penalizing me. I’m gonna go online. I’m gonna go over the hill. I’m going wherever it’s cheaper to buy something. So you know what that means here? Less tax dollars. Less for you, when you make that decision.” Vice Mayor Jessica Morsell-Haye said approving the budget was awkward while the city is in negotiations with the union, but Spaur and Whippy assured the Council that they could adopt the budget and retroactively award workers a higher COLA if that is the final result of negotiations. In a final fiscal decision, the Council voted unanimously to approve a resolution granting a three-year waiver of water and wastewater capacity fees for restaurants, cafes, and food service businesses in the Central Business District. According to a staff report, the fees can be as high as $50,000 for a restaurant moving into a location that has not been used for that purpose before. Staff analysis calculated that the fiscal impact for waiving the fees could add up to more than $120,000 over the three years, but that it could be balanced out by sales taxes from the new businesses, with ongoing positive revenue. The City already allows businesses to request a waiver, but in order for it to be granted, it must pass the test of being a public benefit. Council Member Tess Albin-Smith asked that that proviso be spelled out in an upcoming resolution waiving the capacity fees for the rest of the city. Morsell-Haye summed up the feeling on the council, saying, “For years, we’ve talked about how to be business friendly, and I think right here, we’re actually accomplishing it for once. So thank you.”
June 30, 2022 — After seven years of fundraising and scouting for a location, the Friends of the Long Valley Public Library are close to opening a branch of the county library in downtown Laytonville. The Friends have raised about $40,000 since 2015, and just last week, the library got the green light for a USDA Rural Development Grant of $64,200 as a 75% match to buy furniture, books, and other materials for opening day. Shawn Haven, one of the core members of the Friends group, met KZYX on Wednesday morning at the future location of the new branch, in the Foster’s shopping center just off of Highway 101. “We got started in 2015,” she recalled. “John Pinches offered us the old Bookmobile, and we went from there.” The county has an established Bookmobile program, which brings books to Laytonville every other Tuesday. “That Bookmobile that they gave us was not fit for county employee habitation, so we sold that and used the money, moving toward this project,” she said. “Of course, paying rent on this space through covid was a little pricey, but we’re getting there. A little more to go, and we’ll be ready.” Deborah Fader Samson, the Library and Museum Director, said in an email that she is planning for a New Year’s Grand Opening. Haven is pleased with the central location, which is within sight of the elementary and middle schools. It’s a block or so from the high school and the Book Room, a bookstore at the site of the old high school that serves as an ongoing fundraiser for the library. The walls at the Book Room are lined with school lockers, murals by a visiting Mayan scholar, a piano that’s out of tune, and donated bookshelves stuffed with volumes. There is also a seed library, which will remain even after the public library opens. The Book Rom has taken on a life of its own over the years. “We started with a big pile of boxes of books right there,” Haven recalled. Originally, the local school superintendent gave the Friends permission to use the old school site as storage for their books between sales. “And we thought, well, this is such a mess, we can’t function in here,” she said. “So we put up some shelves. And then we thought, well, we can put up some more shelves. And then we said, well, can we open it? Why schlepp all these books? We’re all old ladies, right? So she said, sure, go ahead. We just kept expanding our space, expanding our hours, so there you have it.” The Book Room has become more than a bookstore raising money for the library. It’s a hub of community activity, with a large central room where groups gather to play bridge, spin, have healthy snacks, or curl up with one of the approximately 3,500 books that continue to pour in. Volumes are currently organized by subject and age range, with one shelf dedicated to books about insects for young people, another featuring biographies, and one section devoted entirely to books by lawyers. “We have a little bit of everything,” Haven observed. “Or, as they say, something to offend everyone. The true job of a library.” Haven promised the Book Room won’t be phased out by the library. “The library here, to start off, will be open three days a week,” she said. “Probably Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday. And then the Book Room is open Monday, Tuesday, and Friday. So there will be full literary and seed library coverage every day except Sunday…so we’ve got your back.” The library site has had multiple incarnations: it’s been a restaurant, a beauty parlor, and, most recently, a tattoo shop. It’s about 1000 square feet and has the capacity for around a thousand books, plus computers, magazines, and newspapers. And there’s a variety of artwork, starting with a hand-carved chinquapin counter carved by local woodworker Robin Thompson along the expansive, north-facing windows, “for laptop work and staring out the window,” Haven noted. There will be two public computer stations, with free broadband provided by a California State Library grant with speeds up to 1 Gbps, “so it’s fast and reliable, unless someone cuts a cable, of course.” The Friends of the Library also have a 4x6 mural of local nature scenes that artist Danza Davis painted with kids at Juvenile Hall, as part of a Get Art in the Schools Program grant through the Arts Council. That piece will be one of the first things patrons see when they walk into the library. But another work of art, in the future break room, is being diligently covered over with a meticulous decoupage of printed material. “This post, it had pinups on it,” Haven said, gesturing at a column still featuring a few remnants of vintage girly pictures, leftover from the tattoo shop. “It’s really sad to cover them up,” she said. “But the method is starch with a little varathane over it, so if anyone ever wants to restore it, they can. I hate to destroy someone else’s art.” The Friends found the site about three years ago, but the learning curve was steep, especially during covid. “When we started this, we didn’t even know we had to have a permit,” Haven recalled; “because we weren’t doing anything major. The place had been a business before. It was obviously okay…we thought. So we had to get an architect…it sounds so easy. But it took like three years.” They had to repair an unsafe irregularity in the floor, install new lighting and lots of new electrical outlets, and lay down a new sidewalk that’s ADA accessible from the parking lot. The furniture is supposed to arrive in November, right around the time the ballots go out, with a measure asking voters if they’d like to double Measure A, to a quarter cent sales tax, and keep it going in perpetuity. Voters will also be asked to decide on a quarter cent sales tax for fire services. “The two taxes are not in a fight, I don’t think,” Haven said. “So we’ll be out and about, and out and about.” Voters have been primed by the signature-gathering process, “and we’ll be sure they stay primed, and get more primed, and bring their friends.”
June 28, 2022 — About a hundred property owners in the town of Mendocino have received a letter from the State Water Board’s Division of Drinking Water, asking them to complete a questionnaire to determine whether or not they are operating a public water system. It’s the first step in regulating businesses that may be serving water to the public without the inspections and treatments and permits required by law to prevent water-borne diseases. And it may be the first step in a state-regulated “regional solution” that includes the Town of Mendocino consolidating with other water users, though who would consolidate with whom and where the water would come from are questions that haven’t been answered yet. It’s also not entirely clear why the state and the county have not synchronized efforts to find out what kinds of businesses should have been identified as public water systems when they were first setting up shop. Zachary Rounds is the Mendocino District Engineer for the State Water Resources Control Board Division of Drinking Water, overseeing public water systems in Mendocino, Lake and Napa Counties. It doesn’t take much to meet the definition of a public water system. “A public water system, at its most basic, is an entity that serves potable water for domestic use, and that serves at least 25 people, 60 days a year…I say if you have a restaurant that’s open one day a week, all year round, you actually are not a public water system, but if it’s two days a week, that would be 104 days with 25 people, that would make you a public water system,” he explained. “You could also be a public water system if you have 15 service connections with year-round residents.” At Monday’s meeting of the Mendocino City Community Services District board, Rounds told directors what it will take to permit each system. “The water system needs to demonstrate that they have adequate technical, managerial and financial capacity to operate as a public water system…different tests on the water to ensure that it’s free from various forms of contamination, adequate source and storage capacity; that they’re essentially financially stable enough to operate a public water system without eventually falling into ruin; that they have adequate managerial control over the water system; that they are actually the ones that control the water right there…we typically work with the water system to ensure a complete permit package,” he said. “After we’ve received the complete permit package, we’ll usually do a final review, perform an inspection of the water system, make final determinations, and, if they meet the criteria, issue a permit.” The letter says that the water board will not initiate enforcement actions against systems that are working to come into compliance. Donna Feiner of Feiner Fixings, a plumber and water operator who manages 27 water systems on the coast, was also at the meeting. She took a question about the rough costs of running a water system, though there are a lot of variables, and no two are exactly the same. “So once a month you have to check for bacteria in the water,” she said. “It’s coliform and e. Coli. And quarterly you have to check the well for bacteria and e. Coli. I usually find that the paperwork takes about five, six hundred dollars to do, because it’s a lot. And then it’s usually a visit once a week to check the system, and then it’s sampling once a month, and then once a year for nitrate. So, figuring two hundred dollars a month to cover that. Those are just rough numbers. And then whatever it needs to bring them into compliance.” And “bad bacties,” or high bacteria levels, are not always hypothetical, as Feiner recalled in one system she managed. The tank didn’t have a good cover, so birds would sit on top of it and foul the water. “They had to fix the tank so that didn't happen anymore, and then put in a chlorination system to keep the water safe,” she concluded. Feiner’s own business expenses are rising too, with the cost of chlorine doubling and the price of caustic soda much higher than they were before the pandemic. And a lab on the coast has closed, which means she has to be precise about timing the delivery of water samples to a lab in Ukiah. Rounds said the state sees advantages to working with larger water entities, though he suggested that local organizations are welcome to propose solutions that might not include each and every business going through the permitting process. Director Howard Hauck asked if the state would be willing to pay for a larger community water system. Rounds replied that, “We are interested in water systems consolidating with each other,” because the state finds that working with a few larger water systems is more resilient and more efficient than working with lots of small ones. “Most of the consolidations that I’ve witnessed have been small systems connecting to a much larger water system,” he noted. However, he added that the division of financial assistance would be better equipped than he to answer questions about funding opportunities. Director Christina Aranguren mentioned that there have been over 200 consolidation projects in the state since 2016. The state water board has not identified the parties to the potential consolidation, if that even turns out to be how the county or the town decide to make sure the water meets state safety requirements. Rounds pointed out that typically, smaller users connecting to already-existing permitted systems pay hookup fees to cover future improvements and ongoing maintenance. There are three existing water systems in the town. Rounds said he personally doesn’t know what the source of the water for a larger system would be. Director Dennak Murphy addressed the lingering uncertainties, and encouraged a vigorous public process of figuring out how to meet an age of water scarcity. “Major decisions on how we build that resiliency needs to involve the community in a full discussion,” he said. “I would hesitate to jump to conclusions at this point as to how that resiliency would be built.”
June 23, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors approved the final $355.8 million budget on Tuesday, though some key information is still unavailable. Supervisor John Haschak took up the union’s question before the final approval, when he said, “So, we’re passing the budget without really knowing what those numbers are, about how many are funded but not filled.” The county appears to be budgeting for 400 unfilled positions. According to SEIU Field Representative Patrick Hickey, 172 of those would be paid for by the general fund. He said 92 of them have been vacant for over a year and a half, and 231 are paid for by state and federal funds. He urged the board to freeze some of the general fund positions, which he calculated would free up millions of dollars, and work vigorously to fill the state and federally funded positions, asserting that “Failure to fill these positions has deprived Mendocino County of vital services that seriously impact our residents. It has also kept tens of millions of state and federal dollars from flowing into our community. This is free money. Let’s pay market rate wages to attract the talent we need to serve our community.” The board agreed to direct staff to bring back an agenda item offering increased, market rate wages for state-funded positions. Supervisor Ted Williams also echoed a frequent union refrain, when he specified, “By market rate, we mean enough that people can apply, find housing in our community, et cetera. We don’t want vacant positions that are state-funded. One thing about the budget became clear, after Maria Avalos, of UVA, an inland-based Latino advocacy group, asked for more community involvement in the county’s decision-making process of awarding the $16.8 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds, which were distributed to help with covid recovery. “I would also suggest that in the future, when community organizations are invited to ask, that the Board of Supervisors would look at our population and see that Latinos make up 25.8% of our population, and that the Spanish-speaking community and Latinos are invited and have a seat at the table as well,” she said during public comment. “I would also ask for transparency on whether the Board of Supervisors has engaged with the public before these funds have been allocated, which was advised.” Supervisors briefly considered bringing the item back, to consider awarding some of the funds to community organizations.But after being told that requests for internal county government uses for the funds were greater than the availability, Supervisors Ted WIlliams and Glenn McGourty decided not to revisit their decision to use it for county services. “I think it would be disingenuous to invite community groups to present, if we know we don’t have any funds to award,” Williams said. McGourty added that “I would concur. If there’s no money, why have people apply for something that doesn’t exist?” The county may use some of the covid money to bolster the new consolidated office of treasurer tax collector and auditor controller. Chamise Cubbison was the only candidate on the ballot and county counsel is preparing an ordinance to appoint her to the new position without paying her both salaries. Former treasurer tax collector Shari Schapmire quit after the board voted 4-1, with Supervisor John Haschak dissenting, to combine the offices. Second in command Julie Forrester’s last day is tomorrow. And the outside audit is six months later than usual. Cubbison provided a list of reasons for the tardiness, from staffing shortages to covid to a significant increase in work generated by the receipt of federal funds. The fiscal team with the county executive office prepared the budget this year without the auditor-controller’s report . Interim CEO Darcie Antle told the board it was because her office did not receive the report until two months after the budgeting process had already started. In an item only related tangentially to the budget, the board voted unanimously to approve an ordinance establishing fees for public records act requests. The fees range from simple duplication costs to $150 an hour for an attorney’s time to sort out disclosable information from material that is exempt from disclosure. If the amount is expected to be more than $50, the person making the request will get an estimate and be asked to pay a $50 deposit. If the deposit runs out before the request is fulfilled, the requester will be asked for another installment. The fees are weighted, which means they are not designed for full cost recovery. County Counsel Christian Curtis estimated that the county receives 4.7 document requests per day, and that fulfilling them takes 20-30% of his attorneys’ time. “We’ve also been seeing an uptick in increasingly complex requests,” he reported, including from companies doing market research. One request stands out for him in particular, where he was included in correspondence with an attorney who made a request from the state. “He indicated that the intent of the request was merely to require the government agency to shuffle around paper.” He added that 5% of the local requests at the county are by one person “upset about a code enforcement issue.” Zack Cinek of Willits, who operates an email newsletter on Substack, objected to the fees, calling the California Public Records Act “a powerful tool for journalists and public alike…this ordinance is in direct conflict with Item E of the Mendocino County strategic plan, that states the county shall increase transparency in government operations to build trust with employees, communities, and partners. It’s the same for anybody, media, private citizens, plain and simple: fees deter access to government records.” The Board approved the ordinance, which is based on one in LA County, and asked county counsel to bring back a report in six months and another in a year, to see if it saves staff time.
June 22, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors took a drastic change of course on a proposed water and fire tax at a meeting that erupted once in the morning and then dragged on until after 6:30 pm. The proposal at the beginning of the day was for a three-eighths of a cent sales tax, with 40% going to fund water resiliency projects and 60% going to fund fire services. The tax was projected to generate $7 million a year. Supervisor Maureen Mulheren met with the fire districts board and further honed the fire portion, so that 40% of the projected $4.2 million a year for fire services would be distributed equally among the districts. The remainder would be allocated among them using a formula modeled after the state’s distribution of funds generated by Prop 172. Her formula for allocating the water portion of the tax is now moot, since supervisors discarded the plan to include water projects. Supervisor Dan Gjerde vigorously opposed the water tax, calling it “‘ridiculous and offensive.” During the discussion to approve the county budget, which appeared on the consent calendar, he objected to how the Inland Water and Power Commission was using the money it receives from the county. The county is one of five dues-paying public entities that are members of the Commission, which exists in part to protect the Potter Valley diversion. Gjerde spoke about the records from the Commission meetings, which reflected polling and research expenses, “testing public support for a parcel tax to finance what Inland Water’s minutes, throughout 2021 and 2022 have repeatedly called the PVP, or Potter Valley Project ballot measure,” he reported. He added that the cost of polling services to a firm called Godbe Research was estimated at between $28,000-$31,000, depending on how long the survey took. A scope of work describing a two-phased approach lays out the cost of feasibility studies, strategy, and education and outreach by two additional political strategy firms associated with the Godbe Research Team, TBWBH and NBS. The total costs for Phase I were estimated at $76,450, with a Phase II fee of $45,000, plus three informational mailings priced at $43,491, and optional digital services at $10,000. “So my question is, what is the total amount that Inland Water has paid, or will pay?” to the three firms, Gjerde asked. “These are our tax dollars, so we deserve to know.” County Counsel Christian Curtis said he always advises caution when it comes to political activity on the part of publicly funded bodies. “There is a prohibition, not just on county funds, but on any public funds, for any sort of campaign purposes,” he said. “I don’t know that that prohibits any sort of polling, where what you are essentially doing is research to determine in advance whether or not the public entity should even invest the resources to go ahead and prepare an ordinance and submit it to the voters. This is an area I generally advise caution…there is an exception to the rule regarding campaign activity that allows a public agency to put out purely informational items that do not advocate for or against on a matter that may be submitted to the voters.” Supervisor Glenn McGourty said legal fees make up the bulk of the Commission’s expenses. “If you look at what IWPC is spending their money on, it’s mostly legal assistance from Scott Schapiro, who is our legal counsel, trying to negotiate the purchase of the Potter Valley Project from PG&E,” he said. Gjerde insisted that the Potter Valley Irrigation District and the Russian River Flood Control and Water Conservation Improvement District, which are also members of the Commission, have a valuable commodity for sale. “Those two entities by themselves could produce well over a million dollars a year,” he said. “Problem solved. A million dollars a year. Just those two boards. Take action. Nobody’s stopping them. But instead, nope. They want to ask everybody in Mendocino County to bail them out, because they don’t want their own customers to pay the going rate.” McGourty said a regional entity of Russian River water users is beginning to coalesce around some fundamental principles. “Primarily, the use of the money is to negotiate the water right transfer from PG&E to the community of the Upper Russian River watershed between Potter Valley to Healdsburg,” he said. “That’s really what this is about. Eventually, the agriculture people will pay a reasonable amount of money for water. It won’t be cheap, as you imply now, but it’s going to take some time to get that together…it costs to be there. It costs like a million dollars to participate in the discussions, in legal fees. And it’s extremely important.” Paul Moreno, a spokesman for PG&E, wrote in an email on Tuesday afternoon that “PG&E is not in negotiations about water rights associated with (the) Potter Valley Project and has not been approached about any such negotiations.” The Ukiah Daily Journal and the Mendocino County Observer have come out against the tax, but fire chiefs called in from around the county to express their approval. Angela DeWitt, the Battalion Chief for the Anderson Valley Fire District, said her district is 356 square miles, “larger counting the response area.” With equipment maintenance and turnouts for firefighters, plus working with the county’s Prescribed Burn Association, she said her district would be grateful for any additional funds. But other advocates worried that the three-eighths of a cent would be a detriment to another proposed tax. Michelle Bisson Savoy, President of the Ukiah Friends of the Library, asked the board to reduce its proposal to a quarter cent. A citizens’ committee has gathered over 4,200 signatures for a library tax initiative that would extend the one-eighth sales tax from Measure A, and add another one-eighth of a cent. Measure A, which passed with 75% of the vote in 2011, is set to expire in 2027, but the new proposal would make it and the additional one-eighth a permanent tax. Earlier this month, the Friends sent a letter to the Board of Supervisors, asking them not to compete with the library initiative by crowding the November ballot with taxes. But it was Gjerde’s willingness to campaign against the Board’s proposal, and the lingering question about whether the Commission’s research expenses constituted political activity or not, that appeared key to the board’s decision to discard the water portion of the proposal. Supervisors asked county counsel to come back with an ordinance proposing a quarter cent sales tax for fire services only, using Mulheren’s allocation formula for 90% of the funds among the fire districts The remaining 10% would be used for fire prevention projects. It would be a general tax with an advisory measure, which would not be legally binding, and would only require a simple majority to pass. The tax would expire after ten years. Mulheren and Gjerde agreed to work together to identify money in the general fund that could be used for water projects.
June 20, 2022 — The first annual urchinfest took place this weekend, with opportunities to learn about urchins and their environment, and to eat them raw on the beach at Van Damme State Park in Little River. A woman named Juanita described the flavor as “someone sweet and buttery. It just slides down really easily. Maybe it’s a softer texture than raw fish, but I love it.” She had just sampled some of the red urchin uni harvested by Greg Fonts, a freediver and spear fisherman who was wearing a shirt that said “Meateater” as he cracked into the spiny creatures. About 120 people showed up on Saturday morning to watch the demonstration, hear about the urchin, and have a chance at a taste. Not that there’s much to eat out of the spiny purple shell. A mysterious illness has killed off most of the sunflower sea stars, which were the urchins’ main predator. The purple urchin have overpopulated and devoured the kelp, and now they hang out in a dormant malnourished state. Unlike the red urchin, the purple urchin have no marketable value.
Joshua Russo is president of the Watermen’s Alliance, a recreational divers association that’s part of an effort to remove the urchins from some small areas. The idea is to create a few refugia for kelp so it can re-seed itself if ocean conditions start to balance out again. In 2019, the recreational limit for purple urchin was doubled from the previous year’s limit, to forty gallons per diver in Mendocino, Sonoma, and Humboldt counties. And in Caspar Cove, there is no recreational limit and divers are allowed to crush the urchins in the water. “What we’re doing is under a scientific collection permit,” Russo explained. “Part of the project is to see if divers will voluntarily report their activity. Reef Check (a non-profit that trains citizen scientists to collect data on California’s kelp forest ecosystems) has a website set up where divers can report their activity. It basically asks how many you think you culled in a dive, how many people were with you, how many dives you made, were you scuba or free-diving…it’s not a legal requirement, but we are hoping that everyone will report, because if people are doing it and not reporting, the department (California Department of Fish and Wildlife) will let the regulation expire. Part of the program is to see if people will voluntarily provide that information so we can use it to prove that what we’re doing is effective and it doesn’t harm anything.” The purple urchin has another missing predator, in addition to the sunflower sea star. The otter was hunted out of the area by fur trappers in the 19th century. Russo says there are several shortcomings to any plan to reintroduce the otter to clear out the purple urchin. “The problem with that is these urchin are void of much material, so even if they were full, there’s a study that shows that otters are taught what to eat by their parents. So if you brought an otter up here that was not shown how to eat urchin, it wouldn’t even see them as a food source. So you would have to bring the right otters up here, and very quickly, they would open up a few urchin and learn there was nothing in them, so very quickly, they would move right over to anything else. Abalone, crab, anything they could get their hands on.” Warm ocean conditions from 2014-2019 didn’t help the kelp at all. In the past couple of years, the ocean has been cooling off a little, and the kelp is showing some signs of recovery, but Tristin McHugh, the kelp project director with the Nature Conservancy, says it’s still historically low. There is some money available for studies like the one Russo is involved in. Starting in 2020, Reef Check received a half-million dollar grant from the Ocean Protection Council to work with the Department of Fish and Wildlife and a variety of non-profits and commercial fishermen to figure out how to reduce urchin to what McHugh calls, “this magical threshold value that would potentially facilitate kelp growth.” That is about two urchin of any species per square meter. The challenge, McHugh says, “is trying to understand what to do when red urchin are also grazers, but also have commercial uses, as opposed to the purple urchin at this point.” Commercial divers are effective at culling urchin, but unlikely to do so without grants or other economic incentives. “What other tools for restoration can we test on top of that?” McHugh asked. “So one thing we are starting here in 2022 is evaluating urchin traps at Noyo Harbor, with hand harvesting of urchin, and we’re also looking at Albion, with Moss Landing Marine Labs, looking at out-planting kelp in addition to hand harvest.” There was a promising sighting of a sunflower sea star in Mendocino last year, but for now, the known remnant populations of the once-mighty predator are in British Columbia and Alaska. “Typically, sunflower stars are pretty amazing predators,” McHugh said. “We know that they eat young purple urchin, or sometimes even adult purple urchin. We also know they eat snails, sometimes other stars. I’ve seen them eat fish underwater, I’ve seen them eat anemones, oddly enough. Back when I first started diving, I remember seeing them just cruise on the bottom of the ocean so fast, just nailing everything in its way.” As for the cause of the disease that has devastated them, “That’s still a mystery. We’re working right now to figure out what that is. Because it’s still in the system.”
June 17, 2022 — Noble Waidelich has been fired from his position as Ukiah Police Chief, effective Friday. He was placed on paid administrative leave Tuesday, after city management learned that he was the subject of a criminal investigation into an allegation of an assault on a woman. The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the charge. The press release from Friday afternoon quotes City Manager Sage Sangiacomo saying that “Waidelich was also in violation of police department policy separate and apart from the accusation and ongoing investigation of criminal conduct. He was placed on administrative leave within hours of learning of this incident. His weapons, vehicle, and badge were taken away at that time. Within three days, he has been notified of his termination from City employment.” Deputy City Manager Shannon Riley said the city was not able to answer questions about how much Waidelich was paid while on leave, or if he received a severance package. City staff would not discuss any details of the termination. The timeline has been swift. On Monday afternoon, Sheriff Matt Kendall notified the Sonoma County Sheriff’s office of the matter, and asked them to take on the investigation. Juan Valencia, of the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, said the results would be turned over to the Mendocino County District Attorney’s office for review. Valencia said investigators interviewed Waidelich, but he was not taken into custody. Sonoma County declined to release the crime report and any related information, citing a continuing investigation. Waidelich is also facing a jury trial in a civil charge of domestic violence. Back in 2016, Waidelich’s ex-girlfriend Amanda Carley, who was an adult probation officer with the county at the time, was summoned to an interview with a sheriff’s investigator concerning a report her teenaged daughter had made to her school counselor about Waidelich abusing her mother. Amanda Carley hedged during that interview, then came back a few months later, told the investigator she had not been truthful, and said that Waidelich had been abusing her. Eyster placed her on the Brady list, a roster of dishonest cops whose testimony is useless in the prosecution of criminal suspects. Longtime reporter and former DA spokesman Mike Geniella characterized Eyster’s decision to place Carley on the list as ‘draconian.’ He thinks Eyster should recuse himself, and hopes someone else will get to the bottom of the most recent charge. The original 15-count complaint that Amanda Carley filed five years ago is against Waidelich, the county, and the probation department. Her attorney, Richard Freeman, spoke with kzyx on Friday afternoon, saying his client intends to pursue both parts of the case, against Waidelich and the county. Waidelich is being sued personally in this matter. But there’s more history to violence within the Ukiah Police Department than the one case with Amanda Carley. In recent months, the city has paid out more than a million and a half dollars to settle with three different people claiming to have been assaulted by members of the Ukiah police force. Forrmer Officer Kevin Murray, who is facing trial next month, was accused of sexually assaulting an unnamed woman, whose settlement came out to a quarter of a million dollars. Christopher Rasku, a disabled veteran, settled for a little over a million for a 2018 assault in which he says Murray broke into his home, beat him, and falsified the report about it. Gerardo Magdaleno and his attorney received $300,000 for a sustained beating that Magdaleno received in a parking lot on the south end of town at the hands of four police officers. Waidelich spoke with kzyx in March, after that settlement, saying the idea of a police oversight body “doesn’t necessarily scare me…because, along the lines of our equity and diversity committee, if we can demonstrate to those people the work that we’re doing and the value in it, that only goes to my aid in terms of credibility in the community.” “This is the man who’s going to straighten things out at the Ukiah Police Department,” Geniella said. “And here we are.”
June 17, 2022 – Victor Palomino joins the KZYX News team as its first fully bilingual News Director. He will collaborate with Program Director Alicia Bales and news anchor Sarah Reith to develop a daily news program in English and Spanish. The goal of the bilingual news program is to serve listeners with continued news reporting on issues relevant to our rural community, and to expand news coverage to engage Mendocino County’s growing Spanish-speaking and immigrant communities.
June 16, 2022 — The Ukiah City Council took two actions in response to drought and climate change at its Wednesday night meeting, when they unanimously approved a climate emergency resolution and agreed to participate in a voluntary water sharing agreement with other water users on the Russian River. The city has a sturdy groundwater basin and holds durable senior pre-1914 water rights to flows in the East Branch of the river, which is also the destination for water that’s diverted through the Potter Valley hydropower project. The voluntary program affects water users in the upper Russian north of the Dry Creek confluence. The agreement was written by Phil Williams, Ukiah’s special water counsel, and was approved by the State Water Board on June 7. The program is intended to provide water users with a framework within which senior rights holders can reduce their water use by a certain percentage so that junior rights holders are not left high and dry. Participants, who have until June 20 to sign up, will commit to reducing their surface water diversions using a monthly average based on their water use during the years 2017-2019. They’ll continue to keep track of how much water they use, and agree not to challenge one another’s water rights. The maximum water use reduction for pre-1914 water rights holders like the City of Ukiah will be 20%. The program will end when the Deputy Director of the Division of Water Rights determines that there has been enough rain to alleviate water supply shortage; when the drought emergency proclamation is withdrawn; or if the program starts having an adverse effect on non-participants’ water availability. Sean White, the city’s director of water and sewer, told the City Council that the current legal structure for water rights makes it hard to distribute the diminishing resource in a way that benefits the community at large. He said the water-sharing agreement was ironed out after last year’s bruising negotiations with the state over the program to haul water from Ukiah to Fort Bragg. “Under the current water rights system, the way it works is juniors in a really dire situation like last year essentially get nothing, and if you’re senior enough, you can get everything…I don’t think myself or Phil have any real opposition to existing California water rights, there are a lot of things that are based on that, and this doesn’t undo any of that. What's In front of you, this creates an alternative path. If you don’t want to go down that road, and you want to just do something that is voluntary, that you feel is more equitable, then really, by being equitable, it’s kind of better for your overall community, than having people who have nothing and people who have nothing, then that is sort of the overall premise of the agreement that’s in front of you.” The program depends on how much water makes it into the East Branch of the Russian River, through natural means or by way of the diversion from the Potter Valley Project, which is owned by PG&E. PG&E has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to approve a variance, a request to reduce the amount of water coming out of Lake Pillsbury to five cubic feet per second. Water managers were expecting five times that much, plus a five cfs buffer. Williams said he expects a decision from the Commission in a few weeks, and that approval of the variance request would probably put a hold on the agreement. “If PG&E is only hitting a 5 cfs release, this program likely will not become viable, meaning it won’t become operative until September one,” the start of the next water year, he said. “If there’s more water than that, this program will become operative and viable before then. But what happens in this program is we essentially create a separate block of water. Participating water right holders would agree to not divert a certain amount of water, thereby keeping that water in the stream that would be available to other participants further downstream…we won’t be inundated with requests for this water because it’s more passive than that. We would be creating a block of water, along with other participants, that makes that water available.” The program is a little like an insurance pool, in that it only works if enough healthy people, or, in this case, senior water rights holders, sign up for it. White said that’s why he thought it was important for the city to sign on. “There’s a certain level of critical mass that needs to happen for this program to be viable,” he explained. “One of those is people signing up, in particular senior right holders, because they are the people who will have a resource that can be reallocated to juniors. So if only juniors sign up, then it really won’t work. So I think that’s one of the reasons that it’s important that the City agrees to participate. But there also does need to be enough resources to share, period. If the year goes as it was intended, I think it will be great for this year. The PG&E variance is a bit of a wild card in this whole situation. And even if it ends up sort of negating this program for a while, having this in place and having us be a signatory, still creates an alternative path for the next drought, which we know is probably not that far away.”
The climate emergency resolution, crafted by Climate Action Mendocino, cited drought among the many reasons for the city to endorse the declaration of a climate emergency. It builds on the city’s current environmentally conscious efforts like recycling water and cooling the streets by planting more trees. It also calls for rigorous policy practices, like updating the zoning ordinance and conducting energy and waste audits on city buildings. Helen Sizemore summed up the gist of the 16 letters and all the public comment on the item. “We all voted for you, and this is what we want,” she said simply. Mayor Jim Brown did so, along with his colleagues, and praised the group for its work on the resolution. “You came prepared, with the science,” he said. “I met with Ms. Mitro (of Climate Action Mendocino) personally. She provided me information that I found very rewarding. So I really want to thank the Climate Action Group on their preparedness.”
June 15, 2022 — Ukiah Police Chief Noble Waidelich is on paid administrative leave, pending the results of a criminal investigation into an alleged assault on a woman. Waidelich is facing a jury trial in September over accusations of domestic violence and financial abuse by his ex-girlfriend, Amanda Carley. Carley’s adult daughter Madisyn is also suing Waidelich for damages over what she says is harm she suffered by witnessing her mother’s abuse when she was a teenager. The Carleys are not involved in the most recent allegation, which is being investigated by the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office. Both of the Carleys’ suits are civil matters, which means they are not being prosecuted by the District Attorney. Sheriff Matt Kendall said he received a call Monday afternoon regarding a report of an assault on a woman by Noble Waidelich. Kendall called the reporting party, who gave him enough information to make him believe that her claim needed to be investigated. The alleged assault was not in his jurisdiction, so he called the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, which took over. He added that outside agencies are often called in to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Kendall said he would have been notified immediately if Waidelich had been taken to the county jail. Sergeant Juan Valencia, of the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, confirmed that Kendall asked his department to take on the investigation, and that Waidelich spoke with investigators, but was not taken into custody. In a statement, he wrote that “Upon completion of the investigation, the case will be submitted to the Mendocino County District Attorney's Office for review.” District Attorney David Eyster did not return a call requesting comment on the case. The City of Ukiah issued a brief press release a little before 11:00 on Tuesday night, saying that Waidelich had been placed on administrative leave as of June 14, pending the ongoing criminal investigation; that no further information may be disclosed by the City at this time; and that the City is working to provide continuity of services. But the Police Department is now without a chief. Ukiah Mayor Jim Brown said that typically, the next in command at the police department would take over as acting chief. City Manager Sage Sangiacomo confirmed that Crook, who is not in the office this week, has been appointed acting chief of the Ukiah Police Department. It’s not clear which of the lieutenants is in charge while he is gone, but Brown said the department is “not left to run amok,” and that he “feels confident the police department will run as efficiently as it ever has.” Waidelich’s attorney, James King, did not return a request for comment, but Richard Freeman, who is representing Amanda and Madisyn Carley, agreed to a brief interview. He confirmed that the latest allegation does not involve either of the Carleys’ cases. “Those incidents took place a number of years ago, so there is nothing about the current investigation that relates to them,” he said. Amanda Carley’s case, which she filed in 2017, is against Noble Waidelich, the County of Mendocino, the probation department, where she worked as a probation officer, and her boss at the time, Albert Ganter. Madisyn Carley filed her case in December of last year, against Waidelich alone. Freeman said the question of whether the cases will be combined is “in a state of flux,” and that the question of whether or not Amanda Carley’s case will proceed to its trial date of September 26 “remains to be seen.” While Amanda Carley’s case has been winding its way through the system for years, “Madisyn Carley’s case, which does not involve the county, is in its very early stages.” As for the current allegation, he said that “ultimately, the court may need to make a determination as to whether any of it or parts of it would be admissible as relevant and material to the allegations of Amanda Carley, which date back several years…without the specifics, it is very hard to predict how that would be resolved.” Noting that the latest investigation is still considered an allegation, Freeman concluded that Waidelich “has an opportunity, as anybody suspected of criminal wrongdoing does, an opportunity to understand those charges, and to defend himself.” In March, the City of Ukiah reached a settlement for over $300,000 including attorneys’ fees with Gerardo Magdaleno, a naked, mentally ill man who was beaten by police on April first of last year. And last month, the city paid a quarter of a million dollars to a woman who accused former officer Kevin Murray of sexual assault. The City also paid over a million dollars to settle with a man who claimed Murray beat him in 2018.
June 15, 2022 — With the passage of SB 1383, Californians will be required to reduce organic waste in the landfill by 75% in the next three years. In a few weeks, a new large-scale compost facility will be available to most of Mendocino County, and buy-back recycling will re-open in Fort Bragg and Ukiah. Most of the county’s non-recyclable, non- compostable trash goes to a landfill in Fairfield. The county and cities have composting contracts with Cold Creek Compost in Potter Valley, which is permitted to process 50,000 tons of material a year. On July 1, C&S Waste Solutions will take over the solid waste contract for Fort Bragg and Franchise Area 2, from Waste Management. C&S partner Bruce McCracken sketched out the area where residents can expect to see new containers, and new trucks, making the rounds. “Franchise Area 2 is kind of split in two, an inland portion and a coastal portion,” he explained. “The coastal portion being everything slightly north of Fort Bragg, and then south down to the Navarro river, so down towards Albion, et cetera. The inland portion is the Ukiah Valley: Redwood Valley, Potter Valley, Hopland. So basically the entire Ukiah Valley…I would like to add, though, on the trucks: one thing that the residential customers will see is that we run split-body trucks. So we co-collect. We collect garbage and recycling at the same time. And I know when people first see it, we’re going to get a bunch of phone calls saying, you’re mixing everything! But we’re not. There actually is a wall in between, in the body of the vehicle. It’s one less trip on the streets, so it helps the roads. It makes us more efficient…it makes no sense for us to mix the material, because it costs us money to go to the landfill.” In 2019, the company won a $3 million grant from the state to build a compost facility at the Ukiah transfer station. Like Cold Creek, it’s permitted to process 50,000 tons a year, though it’s currently able to process half that. The transfer station has been composting yard waste, but the new covered facility will take organic waste like food scraps, as well. And, after suspending buy-back recycling in 2019, C&S is promising to open beverage container recycling centers in Ukiah and Fort Bragg. McCracken estimates that in about three months, customers will be able to get their California Redemption Value refunds on bottles and cans. SB 1383 puts the burden of enforcement and education on the contractor, but McCracken says the hammer will come down incrementally. “If we note that there’s prohibited material in the blue can or the green can, we will tag it. Our customer service staff will call the customer. We will send out literature explaining that this is what really goes into the blue or green can. A second time, you’ll get a small fee, which in most cases we will waive. It’s more of a wake-up, to say, hey. We can’t accept this material in these carts. The third time, it’s a little more serious, where there will be a charge levied against you for contamination, and if it continues, we have the ability to take the cart away. But we don’t want to do that. I understand that everybody wants to recycle everything. But it’s just not doable.” That’s apparent at the old Alex Thomas pear shed in Ukiah, now transformed to a sorting facility where seventeen workers separate trash from recyclables. Plastic bags and plastic wrappers, says McCracken, are the enemy. “We don’t want bags in the recycling, because that’s where we find needles, too,” he said, over the roar of the machinery. “Needles are the biggest threat on the line.” There are other hazards, too. In the quiet section of the MRF, or Materials Recovery Facility, there is a huge pile of crushed glass. McCracken’s not worried about glass. “Another thing that’s really bad in the blue can are batteries,” he said. “Because it starts fires in MRF’s, and it starts fires in garbage trucks.” He added that batteries need to be taken to Mendo Recycle during hazardous household waste events, or to the facility in Ukiah, which has limited hours of operation. “The amount of fires across the county in garbage trucks and at MRF’s is escalating at an alarming rate, and it’s batteries,” he warned. On the tipping floor, where workers extract sheets of plastic film from the recyclables, there are room-sized bales of material that are headed for the landfill. Clothes, pillows, foam mattresses and small appliances have all been pulled from the recycling stream. Some items, like hoses, call for extraordinary measures. “These are known as tanglers in the business, because they tangle up in the machinery,” he said, tugging on a length of hose strapped into one of the landfill bales. “So we literally, at the end of the shift, have to send people up there in harnesses, with knives, to cut it out of the machinery. It’s a hard job as it is, and that’s why people doing their part on the front end makes the job a lot easier.” Once the material makes its way out of Ukiah, there are a few options. McCracken says there are brokers on the West Coast who will take recyclables, but that “nothing goes to China anymore.” It does go to Pacific Rim countries, including South Korea. “There is a push to get more and more in-country facilities that will process this material,” he reported. On the far side of the crushed glass and the assembly line where McCracken says a couple hundred tons of material is sorted every day, there is an orphan pile of miscellaneous items that he hopes to educate out of the blue bins altogether. “I mean, there’s a lot of stuff here, why would you ever think of putting it in the blue can?” he asked, nudging a brick with his foot. A beat-up old saddle was nestled in beside a chipped red enamel pot. “We see it all,” he confirmed, eyeing the mountain of trash.
June 14, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors has closed its budget hearings and will formally ratify the final county budget on June 21. The total county budget is over $355.8 million, with an operating budget of over $29.6 million per month, according to documents attached to the June 7 agenda. Talk of closing the county museum was notably absent from the list of recommendations. Several organizations asked the board to consider funding them from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), including Meghan Barber-Allende, the Executive Director of the Community Foundation, who asked for $300,000 for hunger relief and another $200,000 for non-profits that were unable to hold fundraisers during covid. “We can make a difference, and we can feed our communities, especially those that are extremely vulnerable,” she told the Board. “I think it’s just very, very hard to think about how families and individuals and seniors are going to survive this, if we don’t figure out how to provide some support.” Supervisor Ted Williams asked acting deputy CEO Sarah Pierce if it would be possible to fulfill the request. “As we go through these presentations, what would the funding source be?” he asked. “What is the pot of money we have to divide up? Because I can already tell you, I support all of these projects. How do we pay for it?” Pierce told him county staff was keeping track of requests for ARPA funding, but that they were following earlier Board direction to use the funds for county core services first. The health plan deficit, even with an infusion of $4.6 million from the ARPA funds, is projected to be over $3 million by the end of the calendar year. And cannabis tax projections are $1.5 million, down from $6.1 million last year. Supervisor Ted Williams was chagrined. “I see that we had $6.8 million that we didn’t collect on cannabis,” he noted. “We’re not going to collect that, aren’t we?” Interim CEO Darcie Antle confirmed his assessment that, “that’s just written off for this year.” Still, some petitioners were given some hope. Stephanie Garrabrant-Sierra, Mendocino County Resource Conservation District’s new Executive Director, told the Board that, as a special district, her agency is “a government partner,” which is working to alleviate climate change. With the rising costs of gas and steel, she requested double the $45,000 the RCD typically receives. The Board directed her to Department of Transportation Director Howard Dashiell, to see if it’s possible to provide more funding for the district under his allocation. Projected secure property tax for the next fiscal year is up to $41.8 million from $36.8 in May of this year, and projections for the transient occupancy tax are up to $8 million from $6.2 million actuals in May. Patrick Hickey, the field representative for SEIU Local 1021, insists that the budget is not as dire as presented. The county is currently in negotiations with all its labor unions. “Sales taxes are projected to be up by $700,000, transient occupancy taxes are projected to be up by $2 million, property taxes are projected to be up by $2 million as well,” he recited. “This doesn’t sound like a county in trouble to me. But how well has the county done at projecting its revenues? Actually, they’ve underestimated Budget Unit 1000 every year.” This unit is for non-departmental revenue, derived primarily from property tax, sales tax, and ToT, or transient occupancy tax, also known as bed tax. The funds are usually used to make up the difference in expenditures and revenues by county departments that operate at a loss. Hickey went on to say that the county had underestimated Budget Unit 1000 by nearly $8 million in FY 2018/2019, $1.3 million in FY 2019/2020, and $9.4 million in FY 2020/2021. “I think you can see the pattern here,” he concluded. “The county is in the habit of overestimating expenses and underestimating revenues.” Antle provided some more information about the revenue projection, saying, “In the past, the revenue projection has come from the auditor-controller's office, and as you know, we had a change in that position this year. Those numbers weren’t provided to us by the auditor-controller, so the fiscal team made the projection for this coming year of 2022/2023.” She added that the team had eventually received the report from the auditor-controller, but not until May 20, which wasn’t timely enough for them to use it when the budget process started at the beginning of March. She told the Board that the only difference between revenue projections by the fiscal team and the auditor-controller is that “ours is $700,000 higher.” Hickey also suggested that the county stop budgeting for the nearly 400 positions that it can’t fill, which he believes would free up money to pay more to existing staff. The Board agreed to a discussion with department heads to find out if they are still actively recruiting for positions that are funded, but which have been vacant for years. The Board also directed the auditor-controller to track where the cannabis tax that has been collected has gone. In 2016, county voters approved AI, a cannabis business tax of no more than ten percent of gross receipts for cultivation and distribution. The general tax measure was accompanied by AJ, an advisory measure that asked voters if they wanted a majority of the taxes generated by AI to be used for enforcement, mental health, county road repair, and fire and emergency medical services. The destination of the money has not been diligently tracked. AI was a general tax, which means it only needed a simple majority to pass, and the revenue it generated went into the general fund. Advisory measures are not legally binding. The budget also includes direction to the auditor-controller to encumber the unspent PG&E settlement money for its designated projects; and to create one new budget unit within the general fund with $320,000 in it for parks; and another to track grants for the Air Quality Management District. Acting auditor-controller Chamise Cubbison provided some analysis. She said she had given the CEO’s fiscal team an updated projection using her own calculations, and had tried to have a conversation with them, but “I got the sense that they didn’t want to change the projection, because that was what they had based the initial net county cost assignments on. So I understand that…I’m most frustrated by the fact that the auditor-controller budget is the budget unit that appears to be taking the largest hit, at least from the CEO adjustments. And there’s been many references today to direct the auditor, direct the auditor, direct the auditor to do things. But I do need to point out the fact that the auditor-controller’s budget unit cannot be underfunded to the tune of more than $340,000 and expect that I’m going to be successful and that my team is going to be successful. The auditor controller’s office is a key part to the property tax and the ToT distribution and collections processes, along with the special districts…we do put on the tax roll and distribute over $160 million to the county, to the cities, to the special districts, and the schools. So under the new consolidated office, I really would hope that the Board would fully fund the auditor-controller’s proposed budget, with the understanding that in order to be successful, we need to be fully staffed and we need to have the resources that I think are appropriate. So I would hope that the Board would consider possibly revising the ToT projection by enough to possibly cover the auditor-controller’s budget, or direct the ARPA funds be allocated to bring positions up to pre-covid, or that that ARPA fund be used somewhere else in the county to free up additional general fund to help support the auditor’s office budget.” Antle said part of the one-time $1.7 million of ARPA money that was set aside to bring up staffing to pre-covid levels could be used to fund Cubbison’s office.
June 13, 2022 — Five years after filing a lawsuit against Mendocino County and her ex-boyfriend, Amanda Carley will have a chance to make her case in court. Carley is suing the county, the probation department, her boss at the time, and Noble Waidelich, who is now the chief of the Ukiah Police Department. At a hearing on Friday morning, Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Jeanine Nadel granted Carley’s request for a jury trial, scheduled to begin on September 26 of this year. The fifteen-count complaint, filed in April 2017, accuses Waidelich of physical and emotional abuse and breach of oral contract, for failing to adhere to agreements to pay Carley her share of an investment in a home they bought together. Her complaints against the county and probation department stem from what she alleges was a conspiracy of mistreatment after she made contradictory reports of abuse by Waidelich. Waidelich was a member of the Ukiah Police Department and Carley was an adult probation officer. Defendant Albert Ganter was the head of the department in 2015, when Carley’s daughter Madisyn told a school counselor that her mother was being abused. The counselor, who was required to report the statement to the authorities, did so, which led to Andrew Porter of the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office interviewing Carley in April of 2015. Porter was was dubious at her denials of abuse. “I explained to Amanda that I believed she was minimizing incidents and involvement and I told her I understand her concerns,” he wrote. He added that “Amanda appeared deceptive and caught off guard by several of my questions and she countered with what sounded like a rehearsed statement about not being abused or being held against her will.” Porter wrote that prior to his interview with Carley, the Ukiah Police Department hired independent investigator Bill Cogbill to investigate Waidelich, but nothing came of it because Carley denied that she was being abused. Porter’s final entries about his contacts with Carley state that he spoke with her again in July of 2015. “I told Amanda I did not believe she was honest with me when I previously interviewed her,” he reported. “Amanda agreed with me that she was not.” He concluded by describing photographs that Carley sent him of injuries she said Waidelich inflicted on her. But by then, District Attorney David Eyster had returned the investigation to the sheriff’s office for lack of credible evidence. Eyster did not prosecute Waidelich. Michelle Roberts, the director of the Fort Bragg office of Project Sanctuary, a non-profit organization that advocates for, counsels, and houses families who are seeking to escape domestic violence, told KZYX last year, in an interview about a separate suit against Waidelich by Amanda Carley’s daughter Madisyn, that it’s typical for people experiencing domestic violence to deny it. “People often don’t understand that there’s many reasons people stay in abusive relationships, or that it takes them a long time to get out,” she said. Carley believes she was unfairly punished for behaving as a typical victim of domestic violence. In 2016, Eyster placed her on the “Brady list,” a database of law enforcement officers who are known to be dishonest. This effectively disqualifies officers from testifying in court, because they are not considered reliable. Eyster believed that the contradictory statements in Porter’s report made Carley vulnerable to a subpoena if she testified in prosecutions. Carley claimed that Eyster and the probation department conspired to place her on the list, investigate and demote her, and deprive her of her weapon, in order to silence her. The 2017 complaint alleges that, following her placement on the “Brady list,” she was subject to a hostile work environment in the probation department, including sexual harassment and constant humiliation. She contends the deprivation of her service weapon rendered her unable to fulfill her Constitutional duties in a manner that ensured her own safety and that of others. She claims that the county, the department, and her boss at the time, Albert Ganter, authorized conditions that were discriminatory and designed to punish her for reporting the crime of domestic violence of her. Eyster was included in the original complaint, but the court found that he was protected by the anti-SLAPP statute. This is a free speech law in California that protects people from being personally sued for four categories of speech about activities “in connection with a public issue,” including written and oral statements connected with lawful, official proceedings. Eyster was removed from the list of defendants four years ago.
The case wound its way through the court for years. In 2020, it traveled from judicial review to an “active shelf” to the basement of the courthouse in Ukiah. On Friday morning, Judge Nadel faced lawyers for the plaintiff, the county, and Waidelich, and demanded to know why no one had done any work on the case. She said the head clerk was on hand to verify that the file had been available all along, and that she had specifically included a note saying that the case was open. Why, with the deadline for a trial date looming in October, was the plaintiff requesting one now?
Richard Freeman of Sonoma County, who is representing Amanda Carley and her daughter Madisyn in her separate civil suit against Waidelich, said that on October 18, 2021, the court’s website reflected that the case was closed. “That led us to believe it would be futile and impractical to proceed,” he informed the court. When he checked again on December 3, he said, the website indicated that the case was open. “I was reasonably diligent,” he argued. The head clerk conducted a quick search of the website and concluded that this was an accurate representation of the matter. But Deputy County Counsel Brina Blanton protested that the short notice for the upcoming trial was “punishing the defendants,” especially since an attorney is leaving her office, and she will be forced to dedicate all her working hours to discovery in the case. Nadel informed her that she herself had previously served as county counsel, with fewer attorneys in the office than there are now, and that she had been “very aggressive” in defending the county. “I know your boss is here,” she said, of County Counsel Christian Curtis’ presence. She told them that “The absence of Eyster affects your case,” without elaborating how, and that there were instances when she, in their position, had worked hard and “wiped out the plaintiff.” James King, representing Waidelich, also argued that the timeline was “totally unfair,” saying that it “jams our office to the max.” He complained that “this is going to be a he said, she said case,” and requested a number of considerations, including the right to conduct in-person depositions in Mendocino County, rather than Southern California, where the Carleys now live; and shortened time, meaning that witnesses will have fifteen days instead of thirty to respond to summonses to be deposed. Nadel granted both requests, and appeared open to a short extension beyond mid-October. She also suggested the possibility of bringing the matter before a settlement judge. A court official reported that, since the end of the pandemic shutdowns, responses to jury summonses are at an all-time low, sometimes with only forty people out of 500 showing up for jury duty. A confidential settlement conference in the case is scheduled for June 23. Waidelich requested a July 8 hearing for the case to be dismissed.
June 10, 2022 — By 7:00 on Wednesday night, the Board of Supervisors had agreed 4-1 to put a tax on the November ballot to fund county-wide fire and water needs. The amount of the tax has not been decided yet, but the split will be 60% for fire and 40% for water. However, it would be a general tax, which typically goes straight into the general fund for no specified purpose and only requires a simple majority to pass. A special tax requires a two-thirds majority. County Counsel Christian Curtis gave the board some structural advice, saying that he could set up a general tax with an advisory body to give the board recommendations as to the best ways to use the funds. “I can’t guarantee the use of funds in any particular manner, or it will become a special tax,” he cautioned. The advisory body the board discussed came out to eight representatives of diverse interests, including one tribal representative. There are ten tribal nations in Mendocino County. The tax is likely to be one of two that come before the voters in November. The Citizens’ Committee for the Library Initiative has been campaigning since January to put a quarter-cent sales tax on the ballot, in part to pay for capital improvements like roof repairs. They wrote in a letter to the Board that they have already gathered over 4,000 signatures. Supervisor Dan Gjerde read from a five-point memo he started circulating over the weekend, arguing against the water and fire tax. “Voters in every corner of Mendocino County will question why they are being asked to pay a water sales tax, when the water sales tax is originating from, and is the brainchild of, water interests in one corner of the county who pay virtually nothing for their water,” he declared. “Today we have a united Board of Supervisors that politically and financially supports the efforts of the Potter Valley Irrigation District, the Inland Water and Power Commission, and others who are attempting to retain reasonable water diversion rights from the Eel River to Potter Valley and to Lake Mendocino. But this support has limits. A debate at this time over an imperfect and unwelcome sales tax will trigger devastating political division within Mendocino County…and a Board-sponsored sales tax will lose at the ballot. Question: after the inevitable loss at the ballot, will state and federal funders want to give state and federal grants to support any Eel River diversion or related projects? I’m doubtful.” He threatened to campaign against it if it was three-eighths of a cent, but left himself room to support it if it was a quarter cent and its advocates were “open and transparent.” He was dismayed that elected representatives in cities, where the majority of the tax will be collected, had not been consulted. Janet Pauli, of the Potter Valley Irrigation District and chair of the Inland Water and Power Commission, argued in favor of the tax. She said the IWPC is now facing the decommissioning of the Potter Valley Project, and an opportunity for a long-awaited feasibility study of raising Coyote Valley Dam. She assured the board that the interests she represents are not asking the county to pay for their water. “We are now bound by two federal processes that are out of our control, but to which we must react and be engaged, or we will not have a voice in directing the future of our water supply reliability in the Russian River basin in Mendocino County,” she told the Board. “I’m here to speak to these two critically important and urgent funding needs. We have a budget for our funding needs for IWPC. I can’t address other drought-related water supply funding requirements in the county, or fire and emergency services funding needs. But it seems clear to me that between the droughts and fires we have recently experienced, we should be prioritizing fire and water funding needs… A request for funding by IWPC is not a forever tax. It is bridge funding to help us get the information we need to form a regional entity that will be able to self-fund a sustained revenue stream based on monetization of the water supply from the Potter Valley Project, used by the people who directly benefit from the water.” But some speakers were skeptical about the level of planning that had gone into the measure on the part of the board. Michelle Bisson Savoy, president of the Friends of the Ukiah Valley Library, said the library has done a needs analysis, which she implied was missing from the newest tax proposal. “We got together quite an army of volunteers and went out and got a lot of petitions,” she said. “And what we heard, over and over again, is that as long as it doesn't raise the taxes, people will be okay with it…you don’t have your ducks all in a row here yet, as to what you’re going to do with the water and fire money.” Some supporters of the water and fire tax argued that those needs are existential, while libraries are not. Detractors pointed out that a sales tax is regressive and hits poor people hard, while libraries offer an array of important free resources. A water lawyer quoted Abraham Lincoln and the Bible. Cannabis advocate Ron Edwards ranked the priorities, saying, “this is really the most important issue facing the county: fire and water. Yet the turnout is hard for you guys to really get a feel. When we were talking about expanding cannabis, you had two hundred speakers show up. And I don’t know what it will take to get that kind of buy-in and feedback from the general public. I’m just pleading with the public to pay attention to help you guys make a decision, because this is way more important than the cannabis issue.” Union representative Patrick Hickey, who signed on to a letter asking the board not to compete with the library tax for votes, called for a middle way — while also pointing out the strong position of the libraries. Measure A, a 2011 library tax, won 75.66% of the vote. “We need to work together,” he stated. “We can’t be fighting each other, because if we fight each other, both initiatives are going to fail.” SEIU Local 1021 has not taken a position on the issue yet, because the Board has not offered its final proposal, but Hickey’s own proposal is to ask voters to approve a quarter cent sales tax that would be split between fire and water needs. “Friends of the Library will be submitting their signatures next week, and they have more than enough signatures to get it on the ballot,” he promised. The board has four days to publish its agenda for the next meeting. The item is due at the assessor clerk recorder’s office by August 12.
June 9, 2022 — Union members rallied outside the Board of Supervisors chambers during the second day of budget hearings Wednesday. The county is in negotiations with all its bargaining units, and the largest, SEIU Local 1021, says that on Monday, the county offered them a zero percent cost of living allowance increase, or COLA. Negotiator Jackie Otis, a social worker in adult and aging services, let supporters know that they were up against a bad precedent, when county workers took a 12% pay cut in 2010. “Everybody needs to be willing to fight,” she told the crowd of fifty or sixty purple-shirted members. “The problem is, the county knows from our actions before that we laid down and let that 12% salary reduction happen. They want to increase our premiums on our already overpriced and in-the-hole health insurance, ridiculous health insurance that we have. We’ve got to stop this.” One of the budget holes is a multi-million dollar deficit in the health plan, which union president Julie Beardsley says is the result of what she calls a bad management decision five years ago. “I don’t know if people remember, but in 2017 and 2018, the county gave all the employees a holiday on paying their healthcare costs, and the county decided it would be a good idea if they took a holiday, too,” she recalled. “So consequently, we’re in this hole. I don’t think our employees should be penalized for mistakes that have been made in the past. And the county has been stalling on looking into new plans. Obviously, Adventist has kind of a monopoly here in the county, and they can charge whatever they want, but we need to look at new plans.” Lief Farr, in county information services, is part of the SEIU bargaining team. He also cited historical decisions, among a number of other concerns. “The county hasn’t done their homework,” he said. “They haven’t put out the necessary budget reports. And so when they express this concern that we’re not taking what they say seriously, that they have no money, we’re saying, well, this is not a transparent process…for instance, how much money have you made on the teeter plan this year? That’s not listed anywhere. You say you need money to put into retirement, but years ago, you took out a bond measure, which is the worst way to make money on retirement, and you’ve been paying that off at a great amount of money that could have been going into the retirement fund. How close are you to paying that off? Have you paid it off? None of these questions are being answered. Until they can show us the transparency and all these different aspects of their funding stream, it’s really hard to understand or believe that they’re broke.” At Tuesday’s meeting, half a dozen management positions were reallocated for significantly more money, which Beardsley said was irregular and unfair. “There were some complaints about raises being put in the consent calendar instead of the normal channels,” she noted. “When you have your employees who are doing two or three jobs, and then you have these upper-level managers who are getting raises, that just doesn’t seem fair to me…the fact that we’ve had two and a half years of this covid pandemic, when it caused so much hardship for the staff to come in and work long hours in the DOC, to manage this pandemic, and to not acknowledge that, it’s just not right.” Buffy Wright-Bourassa, a program administrator in behavioral health and recovery services, is another negotiator who says she’s not getting a lot of answers. “We actually haven’t gotten those numbers,” she said, of the half-dozen consent calendar raises. “We are asking for them, and looking for transparency from the county to supply us with all of the information that we need to make a decision together.” She’s also negotiating for a more advantageous rate for bilingual workers, who do a lot of translating. “What I’m noticing is that we have a bilingual rate pay that’s really not fair to the people who have to show up and do the translating,” she said. “They’re translating all over the county for us, and we really either need a specialized position in the county for a bilinguist to translate our websites and all of our forms and make sure everything’s going out that’s translated in at least Spanish. Our population of Mendocino County is at least 26% Latino, Hispanic, Mexican. So it makes sense to me.” Farr maintains that, claims of budget crisis notwithstanding, the county can afford to make a better offer. “I think they’re being conservative,” he allowed; “but to say they have no money, I think, is disingenuous. They haven’t even produced the budget reports that they’re required to, so they’re working in the dark, as far as I can tell. All of their revenue sources, ToT bed tax, sales tax, property tax, are trending upwards…They put a lot of things into this category they call one-time money. So if you’re, say, a department, and you have a salary savings, or you bring in more revenue than anticipated, that extra goes into the general fund, but it’s considered one-time money for the next year’s budget. That’s the kind of thing that happens a lot. And that’s debatable, whether you should account that way. It allows them to pick and choose, them being the administration, as to how they want to spend that money. So they can tell us, there’s no money in the budget for a COLA. Well, does that mean there’s no money for a COLA, or you haven’t budgeted for any money? That’s the situation that we’re in.”
June 8, 2022 — The last voter of the night cast her ballot with ten seconds to spare. She was heavily pregnant with a baby on her hip and a firm grasp on another child’s hand as they approached the dropbox in the parking lot outside the county administrative building. She spent the journey back to the car explaining the fundamentals of democracy. Preliminary voting results, with no precincts reporting yet, showed no surprises at the state level. The incumbents were defeating their challengers handily. Locally, incumbent Supervisors John Haschak and Ted Williams each have a comfortable lead. Williams is ahead of challenger John Redding with over 85% of 759 votes counted in the fifth district. In the third,Haschak is leading challenger Clay Romero with 77% of 692 votes so far. But incumbent County Superintendent of Schools Michelle Hutchins is in a tight race with challenger Nicole Glentzer, behind by almost four percentage points. That’s a difference of 130 votes just a few minutes after 8:00 last night. Measure M, the proposed bond in the Anderson Valley School District, is winning with almost 65% of the 116 votes counted so far. And Trent James, the write-in candidate for sheriff’s office, broke the 5% threshold predicted by some election watchers, with 5.16%, or 138 votes, to incumbent Matt Kendall’s 2,536 votes. Assessor clerk recorder Katrina Bartolomie took a few minutes to talk about the first report of the evening, in the lull before the first precincts brought in their ballots. She expects to have updated numbers in a week and a half to two weeks, “hopefully by the end of June,” she predicted. The county has thirty days to certify the election. There was the usual election-day confusion about ballots that had been lost, forgotten, or never made it to the intended recipient, “so we were able to help them with that, and direct them to the right place,” Bartolomie reported. “We had an active day today, but it wasn’t too busy.” A few minutes after eight, one voter, who arrived too late to turn in his ballot, “kind of cussed out” an election worker, but, “Everyone else seemed happy,” Bartolomie said. She had not received any calls from people who were confused about the write-in candidate. “I think that the people that wanted to write in the write-in candidate have been doing so,” she observed. There is no voter ID law in California, and Mendocino is an all mail-in county, with physical polling places available for voters who want to cast a provisional ballot or need to register the same day. Voters who want a provisional ballot verify their identity by answering questions. The county uses Hart voting machines, and Bartolomie said that, while her office gets questions from the public, there is very little of the hostility that has been directed at elections officials in many parts of the US. “I think that’s one thing we can chalk up to living in a small rural county,” she concluded.
June 7, 2022 — In the first round of budget hearings on Tuesday morning, the Board of Supervisors agreed to use $250,000 from the PG&E settlement money for a water agency, though the structure and duties of the agency have yet to be defined. And the board asked staff to revise plans for enhanced code enforcement, even as code enforcement manager John Birx reported that in the last year, his staff has more than doubled the number of cases closed, with compliance. The board set aside $500,000 last year for enhanced code enforcement, but that money has not been used yet. And there is more money to combat illegal weed. Sheriff Matt Kendall has $600,000 from the state for overtime and per diem costs for large-scale busts. He said he’s expecting a busy summer, and he’s willing to share those funds with code enforcement. But the county is facing a number of shortfalls, with over a million dollars a month in healthcare claims. Cannabis taxes are down by about five million dollars and FEMA has not yet committed to about $8 million of expenses the county fiscal team hoped would be eligible for federal assistance. But county worker Jenna Bunker cried foul over a hefty wage increase for half a dozen management positions, even as other workers have been offered a zero percent wage increase. “I think if you can afford to raise pay for these positions, anywhere from eight to fourteen percent, you can afford to give the rest of us a reasonable cost of living adjustment increase,” she declared. And concerns about overwhelming the healthcare system are back. Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren provided a quick covid update, saying that case rates are up 500% and hospitalizations have increased by 300%. “We know that these are underestimates now because of the use of over-the-counter home tests that are not reported,” he stated, adding that there are currently three outbreaks, which has placed the county in the CDC’s highest transmission risk level. Many other counties are experiencing the same wave, with Alameda County re-instituting its universal indoor mask mandate. “So I and others in our public health team are watching this very carefully,” Coren said. “As much as we do not like this, we must consider mandating universal indoor masks for our county to preserve hospital care.”
One of the items on Wednesday’ agenda was a proposal to put a water and fire tax on the November ballot. Early projections are that the tax would generate $7 million a year. But the Citizens’ Committee for the Library Initiative, which has been gathering signatures for a quarter-cent tax to fund the libraries, has come out against it, calling it a competing tax. And Supervisor Dan Gjerde sent a five-point memo to his colleagues, arguing against it. Supervisor John Haschak agreed in a brief interview that it’s the wrong moment for the tax, though, as a member of the drought task force, he does support funding a water agency. Gjerde said he had already found a way to free up $250,000-$300,000. “We have an ordinance, that this board can amend, that says the county will provide a fifty cent match for every dollar collected by the Business Improvement District, the tourism commission of the county,” he said. “At this point, I no longer support that match to apply to the business improvement fees collected within the cities. If we were to amend the ordinance to make that match for revenues collected by lodging operators in the unincorporated part of the county, we would free up over $300,000 of the county general fund. And since they've told us that their plan is to increase the advertising budget by 92% this year, this is the perfect year to not provide that city match. They would still have an increase in their marketing budget, just not a 92% increase. Meanwhile, we could spend that $300,000 on other essential county services.” But ideas about a county-wide water agency have not been quite as refined. Gjerde suggested a committee approach, with members from around the county allocating funds to various communities for their specific needs. Supervisor Glenn McGrouty suggested re-hiring Josh Metz, whom he said had been crucial in bringing water money into the county. He also thought someone at the UC Davis extension office might be a good fit to head up an agency. Supervisor Ted Williams characterized the situation. “I think we have a water crisis,” he acknowledged. “I mean, we have a climate change crisis, we have a staffing shortage crisis, a living wage crisis, housing crisis. This county is all about crisis. So if it were just one or two, I would be all over supporting this. My worry is, we go down this path of spending $350,000, and we've created some bureaucracy that doesn’t generate a drop of water. And I wonder if it would be more effective for the water districts to work with outside consultants…because if you put us in the middle of that, the accounting and the office space and the staffing, everything that goes into public employment, I don’t see a lot of water coming out of it.” At the moment, the water agency is lodged in the county Department of Transportation, along with $190,000, which Director Howard Dashiell said is enough to cover the bare minimum. CEO Darcie Antle said the money the county received last year from the State Department of Water Resources is only for hauling water to residents. But there is close to a million dollars elsewhere. “The only other money there is, if you want to use it, it’s a one-time fund, PG&E $960k set-aside for local match for water type grants,” she said. “So you would be depleting your set-aside for future grants, under water, if you were to use those funds.” McGourty and Haschak agreed to come back to the board with a plan by September, when another round of state water grants is expected to become available.
June 7, 2022 — The Madrone Care Network celebrated its move from a cramped little shop behind an audio store to a 1700 square foot office building on Monday. The network started offering palliative care to patients in Mendocino County just a few months before the start of the pandemic. Physician’s assistant and founder Lynn Meadows, who was a well known longtime midwife in the community, said now, at 71, she has “evolved along this pathway of life,” to the transition for people in their last few years. She was inspired by Mother Teresa’s work in Calcutta, and considered going to India herself, but realized “through studying her, I became aware that there are people right here in Ukiah who need love.” She started a palliative care center at Adventist Health Ukiah Valley before starting the community-based version, “because the need is so great.” Palliative care is similar to hospice care, but it differs in a few key ways. Patients in a MediCare hospice have to follow a strict protocol, like agreeing not to call 911 or pursue more curative care, like chemotherapy. Palliative care patients are often receiving treatments, and are not required to have a diagnosis of a six-month life expectancy. “Some of our patients have been with us for years,” Meadows concluded. Medical director Dr. Ron Sand described services that range from spiritual care and basic food needs to bureaucratic wrangling. Patients receive nursing, social work, optional care from a non-denominational chaplain, and the services of a community health worker. This person offers transportation, technology for patients so they have appointments with remote providers, and food boxes. Many of the patients are with MediCal through Partnership Healthcare, which offers an insurance benefit for palliative care. Blue Shield also offers a benefit, though MediCare does not yet pay for palliative care. Sand said Madrone Care is currently serving about 80 patients in Mendocino and, more recently, Lake Counties, but “In our estimation there are many more who are unserved.” With the pandemic, nurses and physician’s assistants offer treatment either in person or virtually, through telehealth or zoom. Physicians assistant Emily Frey stepped away from the ribbon-cutting festivities to describe some of her work. “We focus on symptom management for improved quality of life, so that’s a very focused approach,” she said. “We also concentrate a lot on advanced healthcare planning, which is kind of a euphemism for figuring out your wishes with regards to resuscitation, CPR, and just goals of care, so what are the goals that that person might have, and helping them figure that out.” Frey added that a lot of the patients are marginally housed, with “a huge amount of psychosocial needs.” The work, she said, “can be really emotionally challenging, but also really rewarding.” Four of the qualifying diagnoses are people with end-stage liver disease, end-stage heart disease, end-stage respiratory disease, and stage three or four cancers. A new diagnosis is end-stage neurological disease, like advanced ALS or multiple sclerosis. “It’s people who have very challenging health conditions that they’re probably not going to get better from,” said clinical manager and RN Elise Gootherts. “And we really want to help them have a better quality of life.”
June 3, 2022 — Senator Mike McGuire may have taken his victory lap a little too soon at a town hall about the Great Redwood Trail on Wednesday night. “Tonight we are able to announce — and this is late breaking,” he declared; “We have finally put a nail in the coffin of Big Coal. We have beat back Big Coal and the toxic coal train.” The nail may be in the coffin, but there’s no train in it yet. McGuire was exulting about what he thought was the extinguished threat of an anonymous coal interest, registered in Wyoming, that was planning to buy the railroad from Willits to Eureka and use it to ship coal to Asia out of the Humboldt Bay. That would put an end to years of effort to turn the railroad into a recreational trail all the way from one Bay Area to the next, from Marin, through the Eel River canyon to Eureka. Sections of the trail have already been built in some communities alongside the tracks. But McGuire and trail advocates were looking forward to railbanking, or filling up the tracks with dirt and gravel, so the trail could be on top of the ready-made line. In order to do that, the federal Surface Board of Transportation would have to declare the tracks abandoned, and grant McGuire and his allies permission to railbank. Anyone who wanted to prevent that from happening was supposed to file their intent to buy the tracks with the Surface Transportation Board by May 31. But the next day, possibly while McGuire was thanking supporters for beating back Big Coal, the North Coast Railroad Company announced its intention to buy the entire 176 miles of track from Willits to Eureka, including appurtenant branch lines. Congressman Jared Huffman issued a statement Thursday, saying “their late application should disqualify them for further consideration. If not, the coalition of community opposition and their lack of transparency certainly will.” The only name associated with the Wyoming-based LLC is Robert A. Wimbish, the attorney, who apologized for his tardiness by explaining that it was “due to unforeseen vacation travel delays.” At a hearing last month, Huffman asked the Surface Board of Transportation Chair, Martin Oberman, where he stood on demanding transparency. “Would the Board require that entity to engage with the community and the public in an open and transparent way,” he began; “in other words, if they’re secretive about who they are, about where their funding comes from, is that a factor that you would consider?” Oberman replied, “that’s not a factor that’s come before us. But I generally believe in full disclosure, and when we get those kinds of applications, we have the ability to insist on a more fulsome application of the facts, which would include revealing the basic financial structure of the entity and so forth. So the general answer to your question is yes, but it’s very much case-specific.” But North Coast Railroad isn’t the only company trying to buy part of the track. McGuire is also worried about another application, by Mendocino Railway, the parent company to the Skunk Train. Mendocino Railway wants to take over 13 miles of track from mile marker 139.5 to 152.5, from Willits to just past Highway 162, in order to ship gravel from Outlet Creek to Willits or Fort Bragg. However, there is a tunnel on that stretch of the track that long been out of operation due to a landslide. “So right now, if there was a rail company operating on this line, they couldn’t even get to the coast because of this massive landslide that’s blocking the track,” McGuire said. He added that he does “have some concerns with this application…number one, it’s going to create a huge hole right in the heart of the Great Redwood Trail.” In addition, he estimated that, while the cost of railbanking could be $12,000 to $15,000 a mile, repairing the damaged track and the tunnel would cost tens of millions of dollars. Oberman told Huffman the Surface Board of Transportation doesn’t concern itself too much with financial details. “You know, we generally are mandated by statute to make it easy for rail lines to come into existence,” he said. “That’s one of our jobs. “There’s a spectrum on how much we look at financial viability. Generally speaking, we take the view that the market will determine whether a rail line is viable.” Two other train-track oriented interests filed their intent to buy sections of the track, as well. The Timber Heritage Association, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the timber history of Humboldt County, wants to buy 18.5 miles from Eureka to Samoa, to offer excursion rides on restored timber crew cars. Pete Johnston, the Association’s president, assured the Surface Board of Transportation that “Designation of this portion of the right of way is not in conflict with the larger Great Redwood Trail Agency’s trail mission;” and he is willing to negotiate with the Agency “on any dual access or potential conflicts emerging to preserve corridor usage for both parties.” And Rail Runners Humboldt Bay in Arcata operates what it calls “a recreation concession for passengers to experience a pedal-powered rail vehicle for an excursion along Humboldt Bay.” In 2019, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors, the mayor of Eureka, and the Humboldt Bay Harbor Recreation and Conservation District, all wrote letters in support of the concession. The owners demonstrated their financial viability by taking out a line of credit on their home and putting up part of a retirement account to buy 5.5 miles of line in Eureka and Samoa. In his remarks to Surface Transportation Board Chair Oberman, Huffman characterized the coal train as, “very unlikely to happen, certainly is at odds with the climate policies expressed by the Administration and Secretary Buttigieg. So I just hope these factors will be on your mind as you discharge your responsibility.”
June 2, 2022 — With a state budget surplus of $97 billion, a coalition of state public health departments and community advocates is weighing in on how to invest a promised $300 million to rebuild the state’s public health infrastructure, especially the workforce. The PublicHERO initiative spells out how much money the coalition wants to be allocated to which priorities in training, recruiting, and retaining people for specialized positions. In addition to organizational backing, the proposal has support from the Governor and Senator Richard Pan, who is also a pediatrician. The gaps in Mendocino County’s public health department are not entirely unique. Between the Great Resignation, burnout, an aging workforce, and decades-long disinvestment, public health departments across the state fared badly during the pandemic, according to Dr. Karen Relucio, the Public Health Officer for Napa County. “Sixty-two senior local public health officials in California cities and counties have left their positions since the start of the pandemic,” she said at a press conference for the PublicHERO initiative. “That includes 21 health officers, 20 agency directors, and 21 local health department directors.” Competition with the private sector is stiff. The last two nurses who quit Mendocino County’s public health department left because they could get 50% more money elsewhere. Mendocino County Public Health Director Anne Molgaard says in addition to a shortage of nurses, there are other significant gaps in the local department. “We also don’t have a Director of Nursing right now,” she said; “who would supervise those LVNs and all of the different nursing programs that we have. And we are also going to start advertising shortly for a new position called Director of Health Education. What we realized is that so much of our public health work is around communications and education. As the science changes, we need to figure out how to explain the science to non-scientists.” The DIrector of Nursing position remains vacant, despite regular advertising. Kim Saruwatari, the president of the County Health Executives Association of California (CHEAC) and the Public Health Director for Riverside County, says the height of a pandemic is the wrong time to recruit and train a workforce. “During covid, we had to double our workforce,” she said. “We went to almost 1400 employees in a matter of weeks…so there was less stringent hiring requirements, evaluation of skills, and then, once we were able to identify people and bring them onboard, we had to do extensive training…so really, the net effect of this is that we had a workforce that was not ready and trained as the public expects and deserves. We also lost time in the response because we had to divert resources to doing this training. So some of our response activities suffered as well.” The local public health department has eight nurses, and is looking to hire six to twelve more. Molgaard said with inflation, a lot of the state money might go toward salary increases, which could be key to retaining employees. Public health is stretched thin, with Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren doing a lot of educational work, which takes time away from delving into epidemiological data and other “things that he, as a medical professional, is specialized at,” Molgaard noted. A Director of Nursing would oversee maternal, child, and adolescent health, the WIC and home visiting programs. “So right now, we’re just doing those as we can,” Molgaard said. “But they deserve more leadership. And they deserve more focused leadership.” Directors of public health labs are among the specialized positions the PublicHERO initiative would like to see funded. But Mendocino County has not had a lab for about a decade. Molgaard acknowledged that it would be easier to send specimens across town than all the way to the lab in Solano, “but would we be able to attract the people needed in order to properly staff a lab?” she asked. “Doubtful.” She estimated that she only has to send an employee to Solano about once a month. When it comes to the biggest concern for the department, outside of being understaffed, “The pandemic is still our number one issue,” Molgaard said. “And no, monkeypox is not our number two issue. Probably venereal disease is our number two issue. I hate to say it. But it’s not pretty in Mendocino County right now.” The final numbers from the state budget should be available this month. “If they’re together in Sacramento, early June,” Molgaard predicted. “If not, it can spill into late June or July. But I’d love to report back then.”
June 1, 2022 — As another dry summer heats up, the Board of Supervisors is considering asking voters to approve a sales tax for local fire districts and county-wide water projects. The tax for Measure B is due to decrease this year, and the Board hopes voters will agree to replace that reduction with the new tax, which is expected to generate about $7 million per year. At a meeting in mid-May, firefighters and Russian River water users expressed their support for the tax, though details about how to allocate the funds and the exact size of the need were not part of the initial discussion. The Inland Water and Power Commission is eyeing some of the potential money as it works to take over water rights associated with the Potter Valley Project. The rights are currently held by PG&E, the project’s owner. Commission Chair Janet Pauli is preparing for an expensive and convoluted process The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has directed PG&E to begin the license surrender process. “That is going to be lengthy,” Pauli predicted. “We don’t know exactly how it’s going to unfold. We do know there are certain sections of that process that are going to require a lot of our participation, so that we can have a voice in what is going to occur with this project. That is going to require some funding.” Pauli added that there has not been consideration of a CDFW-funded study that examined several possible ways to continue diverting water without the current infrastructure. “If the diversion structure comes out, if that’s the final disposition of the license surrender, then we have a very, very, very serious problem,” she said, citing the conclusion that, without water from the diversion, Lake Mendocino would not fill in eight out of ten years. The Commission was part of a consortium that tried to take over the license for the Potter Valley Project, though it fell far short of its funding goals. In addition, it was supposed to form a regional entity that would manage the project, a task that is also imperative for acquiring the water rights. The water rights coalition, Pauli said, “would ultimately own and manage and fund the diversion. That entity needs to be formed so that they can negotiate with PG&E regarding acquiring the actual physical infrastructure and securing the water right for the diversion, as well.” The long-term license for the hydropower project has expired, and PG&E is operating it on an annual license. “Now that PG&E is required to surrender the license, the project will no longer produce power,” Pauli reasoned. “Our job is to protect the diversion, to assure that that water can continue to be diverted into the Russian.” Another long-time goal, a feasibility study for raising Coyote Valley Dam, just got a step closer to the fundraising stage. A press release from Congressman Jared Huffman’s office declared that expediting the study is one of his priorities as the Water Resources and Development Act winds its way towards completion. The Act was approved by the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure last month. The Inland Water and Power Commission is the non-federal local sponsor for funding that study, so “When the federal budget allows funding, we need to match it,” Pauli said. “Those costs combined will be about $3 million, over about a three-year period,” starting sometime in 2023. The IWPC is budgeting for its half of that cost, which would be $1.5 million. But without Eel River water, Lake Mendocino would rarely fill to its current capacity in a rainy year, let alone a millennial drought. Last month, PG&E asked federal regulators to expedite permission to slash the diversion of Eel River water from Lake Pillsbury into the East Branch of the Russian River, which flows into Lake Mendocino, from 75 cubic feet per second to five. The request is being vigorously contested by the Potter Valley Irrigation District and Sonoma County Water Agency. “The idea of people who benefit from this water supply helping to fund what's needed to get us that water supply is critically important,” Pauli declared. She expects that it will cost between $1.6 and $1.8 million a year, over the next five or six years, to secure the water supply through the diversion and raise Coyote Valley dam. “That’s what our budget outline is showing right now,” she concluded. The Board of Supervisors plans to review an initial draft of the proposed tax ordinance at its meeting next Wednesday, on June 8th.
May 31, 2022 — Russian River water users are preparing for another dry year, with water rights curtailments for those who depend on Lake Mendocino, and the possibility of just a trickle coming out of Lake Pillsbury. PG&E, which still owns and operates the Potter Valley Project under an annual license, has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to give it permission to release five cubic feet of water per second from Lake Pillsbury into the East Branch of the Russian River, which flows into Lake Mendocino. This is a variance from the 75 cubic feet per second that’s otherwise required for this time of year. Elizabeth Salomone, the General Manager of the Russian River Flood Control and Water Conservation Improvement District, says that although last year’s variance was the same, water managers were expecting five times as much this year. That was based on the storage levels in Lake Pillsbury, which filled during winter storms, and the terms of the license. “In other words, the request for five cfs is a significant change from the current license,” she asserted; “and I believe there will be questions. What is the justification for that great change, from the expected 25, based on conditions, and what they’ve asked for. The five.” Last year, PG&E aimed to have 12,000 acre feet in Lake Pillsbury by the end of the water year in the fall. This year, after consulting with the Round Valley Indian Tribes and state and federal regulators, PG&E wants to make sure it maintains at least 30,000 acre feet in the reservoir. That’s to create cold water pools below Scott Dam, for the benefit of endangered salmonids. Alicia Hamann, the Executive Director of Friends of the Eel River, says it’s time to face the facts of water scarcity. “I think that makes it eight of the last ten years that they’ve required a variance to operate the project,” she said; “and it’s just really telling that the status quo is not sustainable… It’s not sustainable for the interests in the Eel River, nor for water users in the Russian River. And I think seeking a new future for the (Potter Valley) Project and for the Pillsbury Basin is just in the interests of everyone.” In a letter to FERC, PG&E wrote that if it has to continue releasing 75 cubic feet per second, Lake Pillsbury will be drawn down so low that its banks could be destabilized, which could affect the safety of Scott Dam. Janet Pauli, of the Potter Valley Irrigation District, expects the District to continue getting its 50 cubic feet per second on demand; “but the minimum instream flow going to five without a buffer is a dramatic decrease...If we start the year off as as a dry year, that would give us a 25 cubic feet per second buffer, and then what we believe is they should watch the lake level carefully. If it gets to a point where it drops too precipitously, they could incrementally reduce the diversion rates through the Project.” The irrigation district also submitted a letter to FERC, complaining that PG&E had not consulted with a full range of stakeholders before requesting the variance. Last year, FERC required PG&E to consult with a drought working group to have the same variance approved. In its proposal to FERC, PG&E wrote that it does plan to reconvene the drought working group, but if the full group is unable to agree on flow adjustments, the determination will be settled on by the Round Valley Indian Tribes, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the National Marine Fisheries Service. The letter also says that according to the contract with the Potter Valley Irrigation District, PG&E has the discretion to limit deliveries. The district differs on that interpretation, writing that it’s still entitled to 50 cubic feet per second, but that it’s been requesting less water to conserve the infrastructure at Lake Pillsbury. And the district declares that the new minimum storage target of 30,000 acre feet “is not supported by any definitive studies or modeling of prior year conditions and is clearly outside of the existing license requirements.” Salomone says the variance would have a significant impact on water users further downriver, too. “That 25 cfs that was expected would satiate some of the demand for the appropriative rights along the Upper Russian River,” she explained. “The Flood Control District has one of those appropriative rights. But so do many others, including urban water suppliers and agriculture. At five cfs, preliminary analysis is that the State Water Board would need to curtail all post-1914 water rights. The water rights system is based on priority dates, so the older your water right, the higher priority. It will cause curtailments to go back as far as 1914, and possibly earlier.” Salomone does expect some minor differences between this year and last. “This year it does protect an amount for human health and safety for all urban water users and domestic diversions,” she said. “And there is a small amount for the highest priority appropriative water rights. Last year, the State issued full curtailments. No appropriative rights or riparian rights were able to pump. They were all curtailed. So it’s a tiny, tiny bit better this year. But a very, very small amount of better.”
May 27, 2022 — Sheriff Matt Kendall is facing a last-minute challenger in the coming election. Trent James is a former Mendocino County deputy and Willits police sergeant whose YouTube channel “Confessions of an Ex-Cop” focuses on claims of corruption and malfeasance in local law enforcement agencies. He was sworn in as a write-in candidate one day before the filing deadline, on Monday May 23rd.
May 27, 2022 — Sheriff Matt Kendall is facing a last-minute challenger in the coming election. Trent James is a former Mendocino County deputy and Willits police sergeant whose YouTube channel “Confessions of an Ex-Cop” focuses on claims of corruption and malfeasance in local law enforcement agencies. He was sworn in as a write-in candidate one day before the filing deadline, on Monday May 23rd.
May 25, 2022 — The struggle over the water of the Eel River continues. With PG&E operating the Potter Valley Project on an annual license, environmental groups like Friends of the Eel River are claiming violations of the Endangered Species Act, and asking regulators to reconsider authorizing the annual license. Meanwhile, Russian River water users, whose attempt to take over the hydropower license was stymied by a lack of funds, are now strategizing how to acquire the water rights held by PG&E. “Our job is to protect the diversion, to assure that that water can continue to be diverted into the Russian,” said Janet Pauli, of the Potter Valley Irrigation District and the Inland Water and Power Commission. She added that “The original water rights for the diversion list, as beneficial uses, production of power and irrigation…it’s a matter, though, of acquiring that water right, and making sure that we have control of the diversion itself.” Alicia Hamann, the Executive Director of Friends of the Eel River, spoke a few feet off the tarmac of the Ukiah airport Friday morning, after taking reporters on an EcoFlight in a six-seater Cessna over the wilderness surrounding the Eel. She says Scott Dam, which impounds Lake Pillsbury eleven miles from the diversion, is thwarting the life history of a unique species. “There are rainbow trout that are trapped up behind Scott Dam in the hundreds of miles of excellent cold-water habitat that exists up there in the Mendocino National Forest,” she asserted. “Those rainbow trout are really, really similar to steelhead. And what genetic researchers have found is that those trout have the alleles, the genetic coding, that would allow them to, one, become anadromous again, so to become steelhead, and two, to adapt the life history that is summer-run steelhead. So, to put it really simply, there are trout up behind Scott Dam that, if given the opportunity to reach the ocean again, their progeny could become summer steelhead.” There’s a theory that the history of the summer steelhead is closely tied to a special feature of the Eel. Hamann said that a lot of the trout with the summer steelhead alleles can be found just behind a formation called Bloody Rock. “The theory is that back before Scott Dam was in place, when summer steelhead were able to make it up to that portion of the watershed, because they had a head start on their winter counterparts, they would already be in the upper parts of the headwaters when the rains come and when the flows are really high. So they were able to pass this barrier and jump the ten or fifteen feet or so to get up beyond Bloody Rock. But then when their winter-run counterparts got there, the flows were higher and they weren’t able to make it past that barrier. That’s the theory behind why we see the summer-run steelhead genetics in the trout just behind Bloody Rock.” There may not be a lot of water coming through the diversion this year, though no one knows for sure what the future holds for Scott Dam. To prevent Lake Pillsbury from getting too low, PG&E has asked regulators to grant it a variance to release a minimum instream flow of five cubic feet per second, or cfs, into the East Branch of the Russian River, which flows directly into Lake Mendocino. That’s the same as it was last year, but less than the 25 that some water sellers were expecting this year. The Potter Valley Irrigation District is entitled by contract to up to fifty cfs. Right now, 75 is coming through the powerhouse, which is currently not capable of generating electricity, and Potter Valley is using 19. Pauli said PG&E has requested variances since about 2015, to protect the infrastructure at Lake Pillsbury, which filled this year after heavy winter storms. “They did not convene the drought working group like they have in the past, which is basically all of the stakeholders who are involved in this process,” she said. “They went ahead and filed a variance after consultation with the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Round Valley Tribes, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and suggested to FERC (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) that what they wanted to do was to reduce the flows at all of these points in the project from normal…and then they would watch Lake Pillsbury and see how it looked in terms of whether or not it was getting low too quickly.” There’s not much chance of snowmelt making its way into any body of water, natural or engineered. Last month, snowpack across the state was at 38% of its average for this time of year. On Friday morning, just northeast of Lake Mendocino, only a few of the highest peaks still bore a smattering of snow. The Eel is a complicated river, flowing through rugged wilderness bearing few signs of human habitation. And it may have a special advantage, when it comes to climate change. Hamann says the cold water, which makes it ideal habitat for salmon, isn’t entirely reliant on snowpack. One of the creeks that flows into the Eel River right near Bloody Rock is called Cold Creek, and another is called Five Springs Creek. “The sources of the cold water in the headwaters aren’t necessarily just from snowpack, but they’re largely from these springs that feed the water,” she said. “And that’s why, as researchers have found, over and over again, and as many of our friends from the Round Valley Tribes and other indigenous peoples know, there is abundant cold water up there, even in hot and dry summers.” The deadline for public comment on PG&E’s request for a variance is June 9.
May 23, 2022 — Well over 120 people, representing political, business, and arts and history interests, turned out for a behind-the-scenes tour at the Mendocino County Museum on Friday night. There was even an impromptu concert, featuring flute, kazoo, harmonica and guitar by musicians Malakai Schindel and Kyle Madrigal. The event doubled as a mixer for the Willits Chamber of Commerce, and did triple duty as a show of support for the museum, which is in danger of losing its funding amidst budget woes. The county just hired a new curator three weeks ago, a few months after Karen Mattson’s promotion to museum Administrator. Lindsay Dick, who has a masters degree in Museum Studies and came to Mendocino from Oregon for the curator position, doesn’t even have a badge with her name on it yet. “It’s a lot of detail work,” she said. “It does sound like anybody could be it, but you have to be specialized. You have to know how to take the pests and how to help mitigate them, and keep them at bay…you’ve got to have the skills to do that.” Deb Fader Samson is the Director of the Cultural Services Agency, which includes the museum and the libraries. She believes she has reason to believe that closing the museum won’t save any money. County estimates for museum operations are half a million dollars a year, with $20,000 of revenue. But, “during one of the times when the museum wasn’t being staffed at its fullest, we wound up having a roof leak and a lot of the textiles got ruined,” she said. “It cost over $370,000 to make the repair, and then do all of the mold remediation…If you shutter the place, and nobody’s here to watch that, that could happen again.” Fader Samson added that she does not believe the museum saved any money by being closed during the pandemic, because staff was redirected to other work. Volunteer Brent Walker was stationed in between a display of fancy hats from an early 20th century Ukiah milliners’ shop and the wreck of Judi Bari’s bombed car. He’s one of the people working on getting the Friends of the Museum group underway again. “Covid kind of slowed us down a bit,” he acknowledged. “But we’re now at the point where we’re ready to branch out and get out in the community, and we’re looking to hear from people who are interested in being involved.” The backgrounds of the volunteers are as varied as the collections themselves. Volunteer Scott Ferleman knows all about the history of McNamee’s General Store, which was the center of commerce in Fishrock for well over seventy years. He’s proud to be known as the “Tool Guy” around the museum, due to his own work history. His first job was disassembling a merry-go-round, which led to building roller coasters and other equipment for amusement parks. As soon as he retired, he said, “The first thing I did was come down here to the museum and say, I’d like to spend more time in here and volunteer.” Willits Mayor Saprina Rodriguez said the Willits City Council is planning to take up a resolution at its meeting this Wednesday, asking the Board of Supervisors not to close the museum. “The fact that they would even consider cutting this at all is disturbing,” she said. “And then without having done a proper analysis of what the savings would be to the county.” Rodriguez says she’s been receiving torrents of messages from worried constituents. “Knowing that Visit Mendocino is going to receive more money in Transient Occupancy Tax than had originally been budgeted,” she said, “there might be some hope that they would put some money forth to save the museum.” Lisa Kvasnicka, president of the Willits Chamber of Commerce, says the museum has the support of the business community, too. “Tourism is huge,” she said. With covid, “We’ve been without a lot of the commerce from tourism…a lot of doors have been closed, a lot of businesses have been lost. But people are out and about, and they want to see what’s out there. This museum gets a lot of tourists.” With events right across the street at Recreation Grove, Kvasnicka added, “I think it’s a win-win for the city. And I think we have support. I think it was shown tonight, by the numbers.” It’s unclear how much peril the museum is actually in. Supervisor John Haschak has come out as a strong supporter of keeping it open, and Supervisor Dan Gjerde said he thought it would be “a bit radical” to shut it down. An unknown amount of cannabis tax may appear in the county’s coffers on May 31st. Schindel and Madrigal made their thoughts clear, as Schindel set aside his flute for a few moment to urge the Board of Supervisors to “keep this vital piece of our heritage alive!” The budget hearings, which are open to the public, are on June 7th and 8th.
May 20, 2022 — The pandemic is not over, with small outbreaks, high transmissibility, and new, highly contagious variants. But with treatments available and hospitals not seeming to be at risk of getting overwhelmed, new health orders are not likely to appear on the horizon soon. Public Health Officer Dr. Andrew Coren shared his recommendations earlier this afternoon, which included universal indoor masking and staying up to date on vaccines and boosters. High-risk individuals who test positive, he said, should immediately request treatments from their providers, because treatments need to be administered within five days of the onset of symptoms to be effective. The county is currently in the orange zone, for substantial transmission, but is rapidly tipping into the red zone, for high transmission. Coren tried to convey the nuances of a pandemic that is dragging into its third year, saying, “Orders is not where we’d like to go…but a lot of things have changed since we had all those orders,” one being that the community has learned to protect itself. “What I heard this morning is that many people think covid is over,” he said. “We need to emphasize to people that covid is not over…we’re rising in numbers. We haven’t yet seen the mortality numbers, but they may come.” As the pandemic continues, so, too, does the likelihood of more variants. “None of us are interested in imposing orders when people know what to do,” he concluded. Test-to-treat sites, where people can receive treatment as soon as they test positive, are starting to be available in the county. The OptumServe sites are supposed to offer test-to- treat services, dispensing a prescription for treatment to qualified patients after a telemed call with a provider. That option at the testing site on the fairground in Ukiah is subject to nursing availability, which Coren said, “OptumServe is working on correcting.” He added that the clinics are applying for waivers from the state to offer test-to-treat services. Redwood Coast Medical Services, the clinic in Gualala, has already received its waiver to offer treatment immediately after testing. Coren said there are currently five outbreaks, each involving fewer than five people, including one at the county-run animal shelter in Ukiah. Nursing homes, two homeless shelters, and a charter school are included among the outbreak sites. The commonplace use of at-home rapid tests has contributed to the difficulty of tracking the numbers of infections that do not result in hospitalization or death. But wastewater testing can give a rough idea of how widespread the virus is in a community. Wastewater surveillance is not yet taking place in Mendocino County, but Coren said the county is working with the state Public Health Department to get some grants to cover the cost of the apparatus and the analysis of the samples. There is no timeline for when or if that would be available. The school year is wrapping up, and policies at schools are up to the individual districts. Coren said the schools are strongly recommending masks, and most of them are using modified quarantine, where the infected person quarantines at home, but those who have been exposed can continue to participate in in-person activities. School superintendents or principals can impose stricter quarantine measures, but Coren noted that, “The education that the children miss and the social interaction that they miss is very significant, and we’re really encouraging keeping people in school and doing these in-school quarantines.” The next covid briefing from Public Health will be June 17.
May 20, 2022 — Mendocino County is set to receive $57 million for last-mile broadband internet infrastructure. With the passage of Senate Bill 156 last year, which provides more than six billion dollars for broadband in the State of California, the county is considering 27 projects in unserved communities, where it must spend the money before January 1, 2027. The plan is for the county-led last mile projects to be taking place as the State installs middle mile infrastructure along the state highways that criss-cross the county. Supervisor Ted Williams said the two sets of projects are funded slightly differently, with the county not receiving the actual money to fund its portion of the work. “That $57 million won’t come in the form of a check to the county,” he said. “The model has us steering these funds to be used in the way we think best serves our county. All five of us (county supervisors) should be thinking about how to accomplish the goal of ubiquitous broadband.” He said a previous effort to map projects to serve the unserved showed approximately $550 million worth of projects, “so on one hand, $57 million is historic…it’s also 10% of what we were originally looking at.” He hopes that, with lots of cheap fiber available, small internet service providers will step in to offer service to people in outlying areas. Jeff Tyrell, the Administrator of the Broadband Alliance of Mendocino County, provided more detail, cautioning that $57 million doesn’t go as far as it used to. The cost of the 27 last-mile projects came out to $69 million. But Tyrell said that estimate did not exclude the middle mile projects, which will be paid for by the state. “So I’m confident that under those cost structures, if they're accurate, the real total of those 27 projects would come in line with the $57 million,” he said, but added that the cost of fiber has risen by 15% in the last year, and labor costs may have doubled. Carrie Shattuck, a frequent critic of the Board, wondered if the new service would overlap with areas that are already served by the incumbents, like AT&T and Comcast. The Board hopes that the cheaply available, government-owned fiber soon to be installed along the state highways will encourage competition, resulting in lower prices for consumers. Shattuck pointed out that $57 million for 27 projects comes out to just a little over $2 million for each project. “I'm sure it’s going to cost far more than that, just in the Covelo area alone,” she said, not to mention environmental studies and permits and the possibility of hiring outside consultants. “In the long run, is that even going to come close to the amount of money that’s needed to get this to these areas?” she asked. Williams agreed that the money is unlikely to fulfill every need, but said the alternative is sending the one-time money back to the state. As to cost overruns, Shattuck wondered if the county would be required to fulfill contracts if the money runs out in the middle of a project. Williams does not believe those overruns will impact the county. The planned trenching to install fiber along Highway 162 leading to Covelo is part of the state middle mile project, not the last mile work that the county is responsible for organizing. Supervisor John Haschak told Shattuck that “If the middle mile is all covered by the state, in theory, that means that we will complete those routes that were on state highways. We just need to decide what the final mile is with the $57 million.” Tyrell said the environmental studies would not eat into the $57 million award, explaining that “The Local Agency Technical Assistance grants, which provide the environmental studies, is supplemental to the federal funding account of California Advanced Services Fund. So you don’t have to do the environmental studies or the feasibility studies out of the last mile dollars. The $57 million remains intact. And all of it is grant funded. None of what I spoke about today comes out of county dollars, except for the staff time of existing employees.” Projects could start as early as July of this year.
May 19, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors considered proposing a sales tax to fund firefighting efforts and water projects this week. The Board cannot impose a tax, but it can draft an ordinance and put it before the voters on a ballot. In this case, the tax initiative would appear on the November ballot, which could also feature a quarter-cent tax initiative to fund the libraries. Measure B, the tax to fund mental healthcare facilities, is due to decrease from a half cent to an eighth of a cent this year. The Supervisors hope to make up the difference with the new tax, which Interim CEO Darcie Antle calculated would bring in about $7 million a year. “The Measure B tax that currently comes in on an average has been around $9 million a year,” she said. “If you start with the $9 million, the three-eighths is $7 million.” Supervisor Dan Gjerde told his colleagues he is not the voter who needs to be persuaded, but he’s also not convinced the Board can sell it to a two-thirds majority of the electorate. “The voters are not going to rubber-stamp a tax that this Board of Supervisors puts on the ballot,” he cautioned. “I think we should approach this with some humility.” He reminded the Board of the referendum effort to collect signatures demanding that a new cannabis ordinance, Chapter 22.18, be rescinded. “It was likely to succeed at overturning that ordinance,” he recalled. The demand to rescind never made it to the ballot. Instead, the Supervisors, who had voted 4-1 with Supervisor John Haschak dissenting to pass the new ordinance, agreed to rescind it without a campaign fight. “I don’t think we have the credibility to go to the voters and say, of all the ways that you can spend your tax dollars, this is the way,” Gjerde continued. He said he thinks there are good arguments to be made for funding water and fire services, but that he believes successful tax initiatives come from the electorate, like the volunteer library supporters, who are busy gathering signatures at all the usual venues. “I think they’re the ones who are showing the way to do it,” he opined. “It’s not by rounding up three or five votes on the Board of Supervisors, because that is a path to nowhere.” Ron Edwards, a cannabis advocate who keeps a close eye on the Board, suggested an argument. “Is this enough money?” he asked. “It seems like the need might be much greater…if you guys could dig into it deeply to find out exactly what the need would be, I think that would be a better sell for the public.” Supervisor Glenn McGourty thought the tax could have a lasting impact, just as the future of one legacy project is at its most uncertain. “What we’re really going to need is to have the ability to study and be at the table, particularly with the Potter Valley Project,” he said. “What I’m hoping that we do is chart a path forward for the next hundred years. Because we’ve been living on about a hundred years of legacy decision-making in Mendocino County on water. And our time has literally run out. For instance, we’ve had all this wonderful free abandoned water from the Potter Valley Project, which has helped us fill Lake Mendocino and provided very inexpensive water for water users from here clear down to Marin.” One voter was in full support of the proposal. John Reardon, who sits on the boards of the Russian River Flood Control and Water Conservation Improvement District, as well as the Inland Mendocino County Water and Power Commission, told the board he supports using some of the tax revenue to sustain water supply reliability. “Inland Water and Power is in the middle of a battle to try and secure water through the Potter Valley Project,” he noted. Emily Tecchio spoke in support of the proposal, on behalf of the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council. “Something we have noted, as an organization, is that water for fire suppression is a huge need, and something that is pretty difficult to fund through other various mechanisms,” she told the Board. “So we hope that is considered as well.” Volunteer firefighters were on hand to make a case for their allocation, if the voters approve the tax. Dave Latoof is Chief of the Mendocino Volunteer Fire Department and current president of the Mendocino County Fire Chiefs’ Association. “They know I’m here,” he announced. He expects that most of the voters in his fire district, which straddles the Fourth and Fifth supervisorial districts on the coast, would support a tax that helps fund firefighters. “Please consider a generous amount to fire services,” he urged the Board. “Fire is very popular right now in this county. I think you can ride on that popularity, along with the water…you can’t fight fire without water, but all the water in the world won’t do any good without firefighters.” Gjerde cautioned that there are voters who will oppose the initiative, saying, “I probably have voted against a few taxes, but probably pretty rarely…when it takes a two-thirds, the person who votes no has twice the voting power as the person who votes yes.” The Board agreed that Supervisor Ted Williams will work with staff to flesh out the particulars of allocating the tax to fire, while McGourty will take on the details about water. An initial draft of the item will return to the full board on June 8th.
May 18, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors heard yesterday morning from museum supporters, frustrated cannabis growers, the public health officer, and supporters of a letter asking that PG&E halt its enhanced vegetation management program until it provides more information.
Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren called during public comment to warn that the pandemic is not over. Case rates have tripled, and the newest variants are highly contagious. Coren advised masking indoors and maintaining social distance. Dusty Whitney of Willits, who donated his collection of historical items to the county museum, and Troy James, of Roots of Motive Power, urged the Board not to close the museum during upcoming budget hearings. James said access to the museum’s library is essential to maintaining the historic train cars and other equipment at Roots of Motive Power, saying, “I just don’t think the savings are worth the loss of the value of history.”
The Board agreed unanimously to send a letter to Governor Gavin Newsom and the Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety, complaining about a lack of clarity regarding PG&E’s enhanced vegetation management program, including how it is regulated, what landowners’ rights are, how effective it is in reducing wildfires, and what its scientific basis is. In the interests of disclosure, I spoke in support of the letter, as did Walter Smith of Willits, who has established an email clearinghouse of information about PG&E’s practice of clearing trees from around power lines. He related some of his experience, convincing crews not to remove trees from his property. “If you thought a tree shouldn’t be removed, you had to state that you didn’t want it removed,” he said. “PG&E called back and said you had to be a team player, and feel for your neighbors. As though all the people that they killed, they’ve been feeling good about neighborhoods.” The Board agreed to modify the letter with some additional items from Supervisor John Haschak requesting that PG&E work with the Fire Safe Council and other local agencies on healthy forests, to present plans for watershed mitigation and erosion control, plus support for burying the lines. “What we’re seeing is clear cuts near streams, waterways, everything like that, and no plan for how to mitigate that,” he said. The Board also approved an amended item about routine vegetation management in Faulkner Park, incorporating an email from PG&E government liaison Alison Talbot, assuring Supervisor Ted Williams that no redwoods will be removed from the park. Previously, the Board approved the item with a PG&E document that said two large redwoods would be subject to felling or topping. And two company representatives offered conflicting statements, with one saying no redwoods would be removed and another saying that only small redwoods would be removed. The amended notice of tree work notes that the two large redwoods will be subject to limbing only.
Though the consent calendar is supposed to consist of non-controversial items, it took two hours to get through it yesterday, largely because it contained the cannabis department report. The June 30 deadline to apply for state annual licenses is fast approaching, and growers are worried that those who are still caught up in the bureaucratic tangle will not get the local authorization they need to satisfy state requirements. Cannabis Department head Kristin Nevedal attempted to provide some reassurance, saying that, “The State is working closely with the cannabis department here in Mendocino. And we will be providing them a list of the outcome of the reviews of all the applicants in the portal. They’ll use that list of those who have completed their applications through the portal as local authorization. In the meantime, those who are eligible for renewal are having their renewals processed by the (State) Department of Cannabis Control. And the fact that they are in the corrections portal does not impede their ability to renew their provisional license.” Nevedal said her department is behind schedule in completing review of the applications, but that she anticipates finishing them by the first week of June. She reported that her department is checking to see if people applying to renew their permits have paid their taxes. Haschak questioned her about concerns raised by the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance in a recent letter, asking if she thinks all the people whose applications are in the portal, or under a review process, will be eligible to have their licenses renewed by the state. Nevedal said the state’s renewal process is automatic. “We were told clearly in a State call that there has been no hangups of provisional license renewals due to portal status,” she emphasized. Williams lost patience. “I don’t think this process is working,” he announced. “This is a consent item (with) extensive public comment. The Board can’t take action. It looks like the committee that’s working on this, asking questions that should be asked offline, should be direct with the director and with the stakeholders. The process should be, stakeholders meet with the ad hoc committee. The ad hoc committee brings shovel ready action to the Board via the agenda. I don’t know what to do with it. But I don’t want this process to go on. We’re not getting anywhere. I’d like to hear from the ad hoc. Do you think this process is working? Do you want to continue as is? Do you want a different makeup? What do you need? And I’ll tell you, if you don’t want to do it, I’ll bring action to the Board, and it’ll be to issue permits to everybody who’s tried in good faith, without a sustained code violation, presume they’re operating legally, give them their permits, and get cannabis out of here. We can’t spend every meeting talking about cannabis for an hour.” Haschack and Supervisor Glenn McGourty, who make up the cannabis ad hoc committee, tried to explain why the committee is not making rapid headway with the numerous cannabis issues they hear about from community members. “I’m saying just issue the permits,” he said. “We have enough toner and paper here. Let’s get it done. I don’t want to talk about cannabis permitting anymore. I’m over it.” The Board agreed to direct staff to bring back an answer to the question of whether or not the county has the most streamlined process for handling cannabis permits, and if not, what the alternatives might be, with the pros and cons.
May 17, 2022 — The candidates for County Superintendent of schools, incumbent Michelle Hutchins and challenger Nicole Glentzer, presented their positions at a forum at the Little Lake Grange in Willits on Sunday afternoon. Both candidates are former school superintendents, and each brings a wealth of endorsements to the race. Hutchins counts state leaders, two county supervisors, retired sheriff Tom Allman and the Mendocino College president among her supporters. Glentzer has the backing of the school labor unions, including the employees of the Mendocino County Office of Education, four school superintendents, and two other county supervisors. In her opening statement, Hutchins spoke about building a new system at MCOE, saying, “Before my first term, the Office passed state money directly to districts, instead of providing the services prescribed by the California Department of Education. This resulted in outdated resources and low student achievement. I changed that. I created a new management team and built the capacity to serve all twelve districts and twelve charter schools effectively and efficiently.” Glentzer said if elected, she would foster more local collaboration. “I would be much more targeted in reaching out to our district leaders and to our charter school leaders,” she said, recalling that when she first became the superintendent of the Potter Valley School District, she was introduced to key people and assigned a mentor. “They provided so much support. And that’s an area I would like to change,” she declared. Hutchins identified stagnant educational scores as her most pressing concern, and spoke about how she is addressing the problem. She said that currently, if one sub-population of students falls behind, the state provides the County Office of Education what is called differentiated assistance, an approach she regards as reactive, rather than proactive. “That needs to switch to a more preventative approach,” she said; “where we’re not waiting for students to fail, and instead guiding districts with an improvement mindset from the beginning.” She said all 58 county superintendents of schools have asked the State Legislature to change the way differentiated assistance is funded. “And that successfully made it into the May revise,” she concluded. Glentzer doesn’t believe any of the issues can be addressed without adequate staff. “So we need to work on recruitment,” she emphasized. “We need to work on the mental health of the people who are currently in our school districts. And we need to give them the support that they require…I’ve kind of defined the last several years of my career in supporting the adults in our educational system.” She added that schools provide students with things they don’t all get at home, asserting that, “One of the strongest indicators of student achievement is the family. Do they come from money? Do they speak English? Do they have a house? Those are not things that schools can control, though. But that has the biggest influence on student achievement. So that means that the role of the school is to be the great equalizer for students, to focus on equity.” She said Fort Bragg and Ukiah school districts provide students with “really cool tools…so that the cool things that wealthy kids get, poor kids get, too.” When the candidates were asked if they had supported students returning to school in 2020-2021, Hutchins provided historical context for her advocacy. She reminded the public that MCOE had crafted a “road to reopening” workbook, that laid out how the schools should return to in-person learning. Then, the day before Ukiah Unified, the largest school district in the county, was scheduled to reopen, the Governor retroactively placed the county in the purple tier, which shut down all reopening plans. “We called the Governor, and we made a big stink,” she said. “So much so that it was recorded on EdSource, and you can see the interview…so it made state-level news. Unfortunately, the Governor held firm, and would not allow those school districts to open, despite the noise we made.” Glentzer highlighted her work on implementing safety measures, including vaccine clinics. “I was definitely part of pushing hard to get students back into school,” she said. “We had work with our unions to do, and we had work with our parents and students to do. It was super challenging.” She said that, as a bilingual Spanish speaker, she helped families register for vaccinations, to bring staff and students back safely. “It was very apparent that through remote learning, students were really suffering,” she said. “And we needed to do everything we could to get them back into school.”
May 16, 2022 — The candidates for Third District Supervisor and County Superintendent of Schools took questions at the Little Lake Grange in Willits yesterday. Incumbent Third District Supervisor John Haschak and challenger Clay Romero differed on most issues, though each expressed support for the local cannabis industry, and they agreed that they would prefer to keep the county museum in Willits open. Haschak has the endorsements of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance and the Covelo Cannabis Advocacy Group. In his opening remarks, Romero spoke about being “very critical of government mandated lockdowns.” His website declares that masks have “very limited effectiveness,” and goes on to provide a popular piece of medical misinformation that wearing a mask for more than an hour will lead to other diseases. Romero emphasizes the importance of promoting business and easing regulatory burdens, and highlights his commitment to public safety by writing that, as a property owner along the Firco road, he worked with CalFire on an emergency access route that would allow firefighters access to Brooktrails during an emergency. The first question on voters’ minds at the grange yesterday was about how candidates plan to prepare for a long-lasting drought. Romero offered two points, saying that, “A significant amount of the water that’s available is out at Lake Pillsbury. I would be in favor of raising Scott Dam to see if we could capture more of that water...but we do need to be prepared with what we have…I know that the rains will come again.” Haschak does not expect wet conditions to return, due to climate change. He also spoke about funding for water projects, in the context of his work on the drought task force with Supervisor Glenn McGourty, including an ongoing project to draft a policy about extracting water from one location and trucking it to another. He said the county has received $23.3 million in state grants for various projects, but that, outside the Ukiah groundwater basin, “we haven’t had the knowledge of what we have in our aquifers and the quality of that water. So we really need to work on getting grants to get that kind of knowledge…especially in Covelo, Laytonville, Willits,” he reported. The candidates have decidedly different views on climate change, with Romero expressing reluctance to allocate county money to counter or prepare for it. “I think it’s probably ill-conceived,” he said. “I think it’s a mistake to be addressing something like this and identifying money to be spent on something that ultimately would lead to no fruition at all…because when you’re talking about the globe, what about the incredible environmental damage that’s going on in China? They don’t seem to be even remotely concerned with what we’re calling climate change.” Haschak is a believer in climate change, saying that, “If we don’t do anything, we are all going to perish from it.” He said he was proud of the Board of Supervisors’ unanimous decision to allot $2 million to carbon reduction initiatives like solar panels. He added that he serves on the Mendocino Council of Governments (MCOG), which is working on installing more electric car chargers, and that he and Supervisor Dan Gjerde are working with Sonoma Clean Power to get customer rebates for energy efficient appliances. Some questions went unanswered by either candidate, with Haschak taking up his allotted time to explain the complexities of an issue and Romero providing answers that were lean on detail. One question, about whether or not the candidates would enforce state laws, even if they disagreed with them, referred directly to frustration over pandemic restrictions and their as-yet unquantified fallout. Haschak said that, “Certainly, if a law is passed, we have to abide by it because it’s a state law. But the process is, we try to amend it, make it so it serves our needs way beforehand.” As an example, he added that the state budget has just come out, “and there were some things, such as the elimination of the cannabis cultivation tax, which the County of Mendocino had promoted and lobbied for.” Romero provided a counterpoint, assuring the public that, if elected, “I would really much rather be representing and looking out for the interests of the people I represent, over some meddlesome state agency. I’m here to represent you. And I’m certainly not going to be put upon by any agency, whether it’s state or federal. Now, I may not have a choice in the matter. Maybe they’ve got something over my head, as surely as a rock hitting me in the head. But ultimately, when it comes right down to it, I’m still a citizen of this county, of this state, of the United States. And I will pen a letter that will be in the best interest of the people, that they are not put upon by a law that I find harmful or detrimental to you.”
May 13, 2022 — PG&E has been removing trees and other vegetation from around its transmission line that runs alongside Highway 20 between Willits and Fort Bragg, including 115 acres of land belonging to the Jackson Demonstration State Forest, which is managed by CalFire. The work began last summer, and is about halfway done. CalFire sold a little over a million board feet of merchantable redwood and mixed conifer logs to PG&E, which then sold the logs to Mendocino and Humboldt Redwood Company, in a contract that was approved by the California Public Utilities Commission. Walter Smith is a landowner in Willits who has objected vigorously to PG&E’s plans to cut down trees on his property. “I think it’s a double standard,” he said, of the fact that PG&E does not buy most of the trees that it removes from most landowner’s private property. “On the other hand, would it create more of an incentive to cut more trees if landowners were being paid for them?” Deanna Contreras, with PG&E, said the utility is paying a stumpage fee to JDSF, which the company does occasionally when removing trees from large parcels of public lands where it is possible to harvest the trees in a way that is acceptable to sawmills. She said “CalFire, as the owner of the property, submitted a public utility right-of-way exemption to support PG&E’s work.” CalFire is the agency that approves exemptions and is responsible for implementing the Forest Practice Act, which regulates timber operations. Kevin Conway, the manager of CalFire’s demonstration state forest program, agrees with PG&E that clearing the lines is not a timber operation. “Instead of a timber harvesting plan, we used a public utility right-of-way exemption, which is an exemption in the Forest Practice Rules that recognizes that there are certain areas of the forest where the primary purpose is not the growing of forest for various benefits, but is for another use,” he said, “In this case it is for the safety of the transmission lines that are going across the forest. Some of the differences that we have within that, from our primary timber harvesting plan, is that we are only removing trees that are identified as danger trees, so those that have the potential to strike the lines. We also have worked into our contract additional fuel reduction for PG&E to perform that is outside of their corridor right-of-way. Many people that have been driving along Highway 20 have probably seen that the fuel reduction stretches into the adjacent forest, and that was very important for CalFire to make sure that we’re not only protecting that narrow PG&E right of way, but that we’re extending that protection a little bit wider to help us from having any fires that start in there extend out into the forest.” John Andersen, the Director of Forest Policy for Mendocino and Humboldt Redwood Company, said his firm was the successful bidder on the JDSF logs felled by PG&E last year. About 600,000 board feet have been delivered so far. He is expecting another 800,000 board feet by the time the work is done this year. Some of the wood is going to the mill in Ukiah, which can take a log up to 28 inches in diameter. Larger logs are destined for the mill in Scotia, in Humboldt County. Conway says the lumber sale makes sense for JDSF. “By structuring it as a timber sale,” he said, “normally when PG&E removes the trees, they fall the trees for the benefit to the lines, but as the landowner, the State of California, CalFire and JDSF, owns the logs still. So it would be our responsibility to remove those and merchandise them and retain any value associated with them. By packaging this up as a larger project that goes across the lines from JDSF, we were able to have PG&E actually assume responsibility for merchandising those logs that were being removed for the safety and reliability of their transmission lines, and return some of that value to Jackson. We expect this to generate about $140,000 in revenue to CalFire, and that is in addition to the benefit being provided by the fuel reduction work being done by PG&E, both within their corridor and within that expanded area that we’ve asked them to do…it’s a relatively small scale by JDSF standards, a little over a million board feet of timber that’s being removed, about half of that being redwood, and the other half being Douglas fir, Grand fir, hemlock, some of the other miscellaneous conifers.” Contreras said the stumpage fee arrangements are very rare, though some landowners with large parcels and trees that can be sold to sawmills could request a similar arrangement. She wrote that “Any funds PG&E receives from the sawmills in exchange for the wood will be used to partially offset PG&E’s Stumpage Fee payments and PG&E’s costs of performing the vegetation management work there, which will far exceed any payment PG&E receives for the wood it delivers to the sawmills.” Smith remains skeptical. He says cutting in the mixed canopy forest won’t solve the problem of PG&E’s regular catastrophic wildfires. “Getting back to the whole issue, stop cutting down all these trees that don’t need to be cut down,” he said emphatically. “That’s problem number one. And the forest is not the problem. It’s the lines. And even some of the fires that have been started by PG&E, including the Paradise Fire, is because of poor, un-maintained equipment.”
May 12, 2022 — The Redwood Valley Municipal Advisory Council held a hybrid meeting last night on zoom and at the grange. The council agreed to form a committee that would educate community members about local water issues, and advocate for Redwood Valley’s interests as water resources dwindle. The council decided to recommend that a cannabis grow not be allowed to increase its area of operations, due in part to a lack of information about where it would get its water. Lieutenant Jason Caudillo from the Sheriff’s Department warned of a possible increase in criminal activity as the Redwood Trail progresses. Caudillo also said the future of the sheriff’s sub-station at the Measure B-funded training center in the former Jehovah’s Witness church on East Road appears to be uncertain, as the cost of repairing extensive water damage to an outbuilding mounts. Asked when the sheriff’s sub-station would open, Caudillo said damage caused by a broken pipe would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair, so “I do not have an answer for you.” The Sheriff’s Department paid one-third of the $389,000 purchase price of the property in 2019. Too much water is rare in Redwood Valley, where ag water has been shut off, and the community only has rights to surplus water from the much-reduced Lake Mendocino. The water district has rationed water use to 55 gallons per person per day. Council member Adam Gaska talked about why he’s joining the committee on water issues, in a town that overlooks the lake. “Redwood Valley has zero right to that water,” he emphasized. “Twenty years ago, when Russian River really started signing up people for contracts, I remember Danny Thomas had written up this missive that had said, whisky’s for drinking, water’s for fighting. And I think I was like twenty at the time, and I’m like, it’s gonna get serious.” Supervisor Glenn McGourty filled the council in about how much water is coming through the controversial Potter Valley Project, which is limping along with a missing transformer that curtails the amount of water that comes into the Russian River from the Eel through a diversion tunnel in Potter Valley. “You will see Lake Mendocino come up a little bit, primarily because of the water that’s coming through the Potter Valley Project, even at the low rate that it’s flowing in at the moment, it’s still coming in, and will continue through most of the summer, but at a reduced rate,” he said. “Normally, we’d expect about fifteen to sixteen thousand acre feet to come through, and it’ll be more like four to seven thousand.” The Municipal Advisory councils, or MACs, were formed in unincorporated parts of the county so that community members could have a venue to form cohesive approaches to planning concerns. They generally have the ear of their county supervisor, and they receive alerts about certain kinds of permits, so they can make comments to various governing bodies. They are not legislative bodies, themselves. Gaska thinks the MAC is the best local venue to educate community members about a variety of complex issues, including water policy. “Our business is communication. It is people having a voice,” he said. “RVMAC, we can’t promise you anything. But we allow you the space and the time to be heard. Which is important, because then we also decide who else needs to hear that. Is it Glenn? Does Glenn need to hear that? Does Jason Caudillo from the sheriff need to hear that? And they’re here. That’s what our board does.” Water played a significant role in the council’s lack of enthusiasm for a request from a cannabis permit holder to double the grow size to 10,000 square feet of outdoor cannabis. A map showing 14 hoop houses led to confusion about whether the request was to change the whole grow site to outdoor or grow some outdoors and some in the hoop houses. Council members Chris Boyd and Marybeth Kelly had additional reasons for opposing the permit’s approval. “All of a sudden, we'll see huge increases in water trucks going up the road,” Boyd said. “And with all of these problems we’re having with water, we don’t need to add noise pollution and diesel pollution to the picture. So I’m not for this.” “Not to mention the state of the roads,” Kelly added. “Road E is one of the worst.” McGourty reported some of the things that the Board of Supervisors is considering as the county works on an ordinance to regulate water hauling. He favors requiring permits and business licenses for wells that are the source of water for water trucks, and giving Code Enforcement the responsibility of checking water truckers’ documents. But, he pointed out, many people with some illegal cannabis also need water for legitimate domestic uses. “So how do you separate that out?” he asked. “Do you say no to health and public safety because they have a cannabis grow? So those are some of the things we have to work through.” Council member Sattie Clark said she believes that regulating water use, through policies based on rigorously gathering information, isn’t all about busting illegal cannabis growers. “We all need to be looking at our water in a more holistic sense,” she opined. “Because it’s kind of like, whoever takes it, gets it. And this conversation that we’re having about hydrological studies for new wells, et cetera, is really just good management of our water resources…we need clarity about where this water is going and whether it’s sustainable, whether it’s healthy for our community as a whole.” McGourty encouraged the council to seek state money, saying that, while the county is broke, the state is flush with cash, and likely to spend some on small disadvantaged communities. Redwood Valley has gotten some relief for a major disaster. After the fire of 2017, PG&E awarded the MAC a $10,000 community planning grant. Boyd said the MAC decided to spend $5,000 of that grant on a new heating and cooling system for the grange, which became a hub in the wake of the fires. “Part of what we discovered in going through the fire and the emergencies is that the grange is a central locus for the community when we go through any emergency,” she declared.
Local innkeeper Ken Taylor works to reduce his reliance on groundwater with the help of Localizing California Waters, a non-profit. He also advocates with other local businesses and residents to develop individual property level solutions that will help with the ongoing drought and create a healthier environment going forward.
May 10, 2022 — Incumbent Ted Williams and challenger John Redding are vying for the Fifth District Supervisor’s seat in next month’s election. They presented their positions at a League of Women voters event last week, fielding questions about healthcare, fire preparation, drought, and economic development. A major issue on the coast is the uncertain future of the Mendocino Coast Healthcare District, and whether or not to dissolve it. Redding, who is Treasurer of the district board, fears that the county, which is struggling to balance its budget and has failed to collect millions of dollars in cannabis tax revenue, could take charge of healthcare on the coast. At stake is what he believes is local control over the decision to bring the existing hospital into compliance with seismic codes, build a new hospital, or rely on clinics. “What I’m not in favor of is dissolving the Healthcare District,” he said. “That would mean the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCo) would, without a vote of the people, dissolve the Healthcare District, and the successor agent would be the county. And they would seize our money, our taxes, our land, and there would be no representatives anywhere close to the coast to provide governance,” Williams countered that local control involves a lot of dysfunction on the district board, and doubled Redding’s estimate of $50 million to build a new hospital. “I tune in to those meetings,” he said. “I see a lot of bickering. I don’t see much progress. There's complaints going to the Grand Jury and FPPC (Fair Political Practices Commission) and questions about was an attorney hired…and I think it’s casting a shadow over the real discussion that needs to happen. A new hospital could cost $100 million, plus. Might only generate $2 million revenue… It’s really a challenge for the segment of our population that can’t afford to go to Ukiah or Santa Rosa for regular healthcare.” When it comes to abortion rights, Williams is a staunch supporter, saying restrictions on abortion limit a woman’s right to participate in society. Redding said that, while he is pro-life, he does support the right to choose. He said that when the Healthcare District board was presented with a proposal to allow the clinic to perform chemical abortions, he voted in favor of it. “I would not in any way limit a woman’s access to abortion, and I think I’ve proven that with my vote,” he said. Fire and drought are region wide issues that are top of mind as summer approaches. Though he is dubious about relying on the state, Redding thinks huge wildfires are largely the state’s responsibility. He cited the state’s years’-long policy of preventing wildfires by clearing and logging, saying, “This is really a state problem that affects us…we really need to put pressure on the State of California to follow through on its commitments.” Williams, a volunteer firefighter, invoked historical factors as well. But he also advocates a local response, saying, “”It’s our problem, because we live here, and fire may be in our backyard.” He highlighted defensible space and chipper programs, adding, “There are also opportunities to coordinate the funds that are available to get local workforce out, putting people to work, who desperately need work.” Both candidates support the idea of water storage, which is emphasized in the governor’s drought strategy. But while Williams touted the county’s success at winning a $5 million state grant to build water storage in the town of Mendocino, Redding tied storage into his emphasis, which is encouraging private economic development. “To rely on government grants makes me uncomfortable,” he said, recalling a former boss who told him, “hope is not a business plan. And when you’re hoping that you’re going to get a grant from the State of California or the federal government, that’s not a business plan.” Redding suggested hiring an economic development coordinator and supports funding West Business Development Center, which the Board of Supervisors agreed to continue doing last week. Williams agreed that economic development is a glaring need, but opined that, “the county’s role in that needs to be to provide infrastructure where businesses want to exist, where people want to live.” He added that he is reluctant to shift financial resources away from core services like road maintenance, public safety and social services, “all of the services that the most vulnerable people rely on, and the services that would attract businesses to our area.” The candidates differed on the nature of the board’s relationship with the sheriff’s office, with Redding associating Williams, and an attempt at a system-wide audit of the sheriff’s department, with efforts to defund the police. Sheriff Matt Kendall has since endorsed Williams.
KZYX will have more election coverage this month. This Thursday, May 12, from 3-4 pm, we’ll hear from Assessor/Clerk/Recorder Katrina Barolomie and Pat Dunbar, from the League of Women Voters. On Monday, May 16, from 6:30-8pm, we’ll host a debate with Fifth District candidates Ted Williams and John Redding. And on Monday, May 23, frome 6:30-8pm, we’ll host a debate with Third District candidates, incumbent John Haschak and challenger Clay Romero.
May 9, 2022 — The Faulkner Park crisis has subsided for the time being, in the wake of a community meeting and a consent calendar vote at last week’s Board of Supervisors meeting. About a dozen members of a group called Friends of Faulkner Park gathered on a sunny Friday morning to hear from high-level PG&E representatives about company plans to remove dozens of large redwood trees that are near the power lines running along Mountain View Road just outside of Boonville. Faulkner is a much-loved county park, and the Friends, county workers, and Fifth District Supervisor Ted Williams had already succeeded in extracting an agreement from PG&E to hold off on tree removal and look into what it would take to bury the quarter mile of power line. A government liaison also provided assurances that she would maintain communication about the company’s vegetation management plans. The original slew of yellow X’s indicating which trees were slated for removal were part of the company’s enhanced vegetation management program, which involves aggressively clearing the lines. PG&E North Coast Regional Vice President Ron Richardson told the group that their advocacy had paid off, saying, “We’ve paused on the removal of these trees…part of that is a thank you to you. Because when you guys seen the X’s, it got our attention, we got out here, we looked at it, we brought leaders out here to look at it, and that’s what drove us to say, hey, we need more data points.” Richardson also said that Faulkner Park is not at the top of the list for areas in this region that are risky enough to underground power lines right away. Currently, Middletown in Lake County and Wallace Creek in Sonoma County are first up for burying lines. He estimated that the cost of undergrounding the quarter mile of line that runs through a section of the thirty-acre park would cost $750,000 to a million dollars. The county plans to repave the road in the next few years, which he said was valuable information, indicating that the underground option is not completely beyond consideration. Richardson said the company does have plans to harden the lines with Enhanced Power Safety Settings, a sensitive circuit breaker that lowers the arc if the lines are damaged, which is supposed to reduce the risk of fire from sparks. That program is scheduled to start this summer. PG&E also plans to start using a new risk-assessment tool to determine whether contractors will take a tree down or trim it. The tool, which is still in development, is supposed to take into account the species of the tree, the angle of its lean if it is not standing up straight, and whether it is stressed or dying. But the assessment seems to be based only on characteristics of individual trees. It is unlikely to take into account the role each tree plays in its environment, or how its removal would affect the other trees around it, possibly making those trees more vulnerable to falling down or even creating conditions that could make fires worse. The length of the pause and what would precipitate ending it were also not clearly laid out. The new tool is expected to start being used in about a month. Community members were skeptical about the efficacy of the new tool, laughing heartily when Williams asked if they could wait for the next iteration in the event that the new one doesn’t work. Anderson Valley Fire Chief Andres Avila wrote an analysis of fire behavior in Faulkner Park, explaining why he believes the trees should stay standing. But he also implored PG&E to consider additional values when making its decision, like its importance to kids in the community, its history, and its unique environmental qualities. He spoke about how Faulkner Park, which is mostly cool and heavily shaded by large redwood trees, is at low risk from active fire behavior caused by an incipient fire, the kind that would start inside the park from a power line. He argued that removing the trees would allow new, smaller, oily brush to flourish and present more of a fire hazard than the large trees. “It’s much easier for a line strike to come down and take off into those and then ladder fuels going into the bigger fuels,” he said. While acknowledging that no solution is 100% guaranteed to offer perfect safety, he stated, “I disagree with tree removal here.” PG&E pledged not to remove redwood trees from Faulkner Park, but clarified that contractors will continue to perform routine vegetation management, which could involve removing smaller trees. On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors approved a notice of tree work to trim 16 trees of various species and inspect three others to determine if they are to be topped or felled. Two of those trees are doug firs under two feet diameter at breast height, and one is a large redwood.
May 5, 2022 — During a third-quarter budget workshop this week, the Board of Supervisors hashed out where to make cuts in a county budget with significant projected shortfalls and very little information about the cannabis department. While county staff estimates that $6.8 million in cannabis tax revenue has been uncollected, the cannabis department was one of three that has not yet turned in its projections. Another installment of cannabis taxes is due at the end of May. The combined health plan deficit for this year and last year is $6.2 million. The Executive Office presented an operational budget that would have been balanced if not for that deficit, and asked supervisors to decide where to make adjustments. Interim CEO Darcie Antle summarized the basic cuts she was seeking. “We’re looking for $3.3 million,” she said. “And if you close the museum, that reduces it, and then if you don’t fund the parks at $1.6 (million), that would reduce the $3.3 (million) even further. So at that point, you’re down to needing an additional $2 million, and so then we sort through these other items as you would like.” The museum, which costs over half a million dollars a year to run and brings in $20,000, appears to have been spared. Even if it were closed, preserving artifacts and maintaining the building would continue to incur costs. Supervisor Dan Gjerde offered some suggestions for adding more money to the museum’s coffers, like tapping those who have donated artifacts for monetary donations, or offering the option of contributing to an endowment. He noted that he found it “a bit radical” to cut the museum, but that, “I think we do need to have, as a full Board, a better understanding of what the long-term strategy is for the museum.” Supervisors also considered cutting parks, which would entail laying off staff. Supervisor Maureen Mulheren laid out the quandary regarding the parks, saying, “It’s my understanding, from having served on the ad hoc and then bringing that item back twice to this Board, that there were no parks that we wanted to close. So if we don’t find a way to fund them, they have to be closed. We can’t have it both ways.” General Services Agency Director Janelle Rau said her department is asking for $4.8 million for parks over the next three years, based on a needs assessment of the parks and what it would take to restore them to a safe condition. She said the county’s more than sixty parks have been fiscally neglected since the 1980’s. Bower Park in Gualala is currently closed due to a number of hazard trees. Supervisors discussed other funding mechanisms, like special districts and assessing which parks could bring in revenue by offering concessions. But parks are unlikely to generate revenue for the county. Half a dozen departments are projected to come in more than $100,000 over their net county cost assignments, with the sheriff in the lead at $1.4 million. Antle told the board that the county reserve, which includes designated funds, comes out to $20 million. She added that an ideal reserve would be three months’ worth of county expenditures, which would be $48 million. The one-time American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA funds, are likely to be used for a variety of purposes, from parks to funding the sheriff’s hiring bonuses and backfilling the District Attorney’s budget. Deputy CEO Sarah Pierce told the board about plans for the $16.8 million award, which was intended to alleviate the long-term impacts of the pandemic for hard-hit communities. The county has already obligated $4.8 million, leaving about $12 million. “Of that $12 million, ten can be used on county core services, and then the remaining can be used on staffing to pre-covid levels, and parks is an eligible expense,” she said. Mulheren asked her colleagues if they would consider setting aside some of the ARPA money for grants to community organizations, and Gjerde said he would only support that if it were divided among the five supervisorial districts. Supervisor John Haschak suggested using some for community health workers, but the board did not give direction on either suggestion. Antle told Haschak that the only other possible source of revenue is the cannabis tax, some of which is not yet due. “At this point, we have met with all the departments, per your request on the 19th,” she said. “And the departments that I mentioned, which is a couple of handfuls, were able to come back with some money. At this time, there are no areas that we are aware of that could be reduced. The only other is if the cannabis revenue does come in,” by May 31st. Supervisor Ted Williams summarized his view of a few budget scenarios, saying that, after cutting $1.5 million from parks, the county would need to cut $2 million from its budget if it does use ARPA funds, and $7 million if it does not. And he said it’s time to stop relying on cannabis tax. “This strikes me as a structural deficit,” he said. “I don’t see this as a one-time. We were living on cannabis revenue, average about $5 million a year. That game is over. Cannabis is now in the legal market, where the price will just be set by marginal revenue intersecting with marginal cost, in a county ordinance that only allows 10,000 square feet, figure 28 grams per square foot, at declining market price. That revenue is not coming back. And so the past couple of years we’ve lived on revenue that we should have treated as one-time, but instead it’s been used to augment the county for staffing. This coming year we don’t have that revenue. We’re probably not going to have it again.”
May 4, 2022 — Two Measure B-funded facilities opened last week. The Regional Behavioral Health Training Center on East Road in Redwood Valley opened on Tuesday, after being remodeled. Some pieces of equipment, like a media cabinet for hybrid meetings, a virtual reality training program, and gun lockers, are expected to arrive soon. The Critical Residential Treatment Center on Orchard Street in Ukiah is now fully licensed and opened last Monday, serving three clients. The facility has eight beds that will be available for 30 to 90 days by adults who are in a mental health crisis but have not received a 5150, the designation that would lead to an involuntary 72-hour hold. Sarah Livingston, the crisis program director for Redwood Community Services, which is operating the CRT, said the facility fits smoothly with respite care. She said the facility will include peer support, case managers and rehab specialists, many of whom come from the RCS Madrone House, which is a respite center. “A respite house is set up to be immediate respite for someone who is just on the other side of a 5150,” she explained. “And so that’s been used for immediate stabilization, ideally for up to seven days. The CRT is where we take it one step significantly further. That 30, 60, 90-day model where we’re doing significant psycho education and other programming and allowing people to really get back on their feet as they stabilize.” Livingston said clients will be encouraged to take part in daily life outside the facility. “I think there’s this misunderstanding by quite a bit of the community, where they thought it was a locked facility,” she noted. “It is not a locked facility. Ultimately we want people to choose to be there, and they do have 24/7 support.” Livingston added that there will also be therapists available, though not always on site. “We can get folks into a pretty quick psychiatric appointment,” she added. She expects the facility to be fully staffed in another thirty days. “And I am certain we will fill those eight beds very, very quickly,” she predicted. Once it is fully staffed, RCS plans to contract with Lake County to offer a bed to one of its crisis patients. The CRT was designed and built by architecture firm Nacht and Lewis for $2.6 million, a combination of Measure B funds and a $500,000 grant from the California Health Facilities Financing Authority.
The training center in Redwood Valley, formerly the location of the Jehovah’s Witness Church, was the first facility purchased with Measure B funds. The purchase price was $389,000, a third of which was covered by the sheriff’s office. A small building and a garage have been dedicated as a sheriff’s substation. Sheriff Matt Kendall said he is waiting for the floor and drywall to be repaired after water damage caused by a broken pipe. But when he is able to use the building, he’d like to use it as a terminal for a dual response team with a deputy and a mental health specialist. Dr. Jenine Miller, head of the county’s Behavioral Health Department, was on hand for the ribbon-cutting and a tour. She expects that the new training center will allow county departments to send more staff to more trainings nearby, rather than sending a limited number of people to be trained outside the county. As far as how sustainable the center will be, Miller said, “this really is the first year to look at how does the facility sustain itself, how much are we getting from the trainings versus how much are the costs to maintain the facility.” She plans to work with the General Services Department to present a plan to the Board of Supervisors, detailing the ultimate yearly costs of all the county’s Measure B-funded facilities, including the CRT and the Psychiatric Health Facility, which the Board decided to build at 131 Whitmore Lane in Ukiah. Retired Sheriff Tom Allman, an original Measure B Committee member who remains the sheriff’s representative on the committee, said he hopes a $100,000 piece of virtual reality training equipment, paid for by the state, will be available by the end of June. He is looking forward to using the venue for trainings that he hopes will raise the standard of local law enforcement officers. The Measure B sales tax will drop from a half-cent to an eighth-cent next year. “That money can be used for training and improved mental health services,” Allman said. “But there will still be costs to the departments.” One of the three-day trainings cost $12,000, but Allman said, “We want to spend that money. So we can have the best-trained first responders out on the street.”
May 3, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors is holding a budget workshop today in preparation for budget hearings on June 7th and 8th. At the hearings, community organizations will have an opportunity to make a case for why they should receive a portion of a $16.8 million award from the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), intended to alleviate the long-term impacts of the pandemic. Though the United States Treasury Department urged local governments that received the funds to engage the public in deciding how to allocate them, public outreach has been minimal so far. And although the deadline for allocating the money is a year and a half away, organizations providing direct services to those who’ve been hardest hit may have only a few leftovers after the budget hearings, according to Interim CEO Darcie Antle, who spoke to KZYX on April 27. “Currently, we’re under the Board’s direction to look internally first,” she said. “And then when the Board considers the 22-23 budget, if there’s funds available and left over, depending on how they want to spend this ARPA money, there could be opportunities. And I know obviously one of their priorities is public safety, which includes fire.” Close to five million dollars of the award has already been obligated, some of it to the Community Foundation and North Coast Opportunities, which used it to provide food and childcare during the pandemic.* A little over $60,000 went to upgrade the audio and telecom systems in the Board of Supervisors chambers to allow for more accessible hybrid meetings. But another $266,000 was spent on remodeling the chambers, plus $40,000 for an automatic door system,and $35,000 is slated for the purchase of seven metal detectors. Eduardo Garcia is the senior policy manager at the San Francisco-based Latino Community Foundation, a statewide organization that advocates for the civic and economic power of Latinos, many of whom continue to be disproportionately affected by the fallout of the pandemic. The Foundation awarded $1.4 million to smaller Latino organizations around the state advocating for transparency and a public process for the equitable distribution of the one-time funds. Garcia says Mendocino County is not alone. “A lot of these decision makers are using these funds in very questionable ways,” he said. “One troubling trend that we’ve observed across the state is that city and county leaders are spending these dollars, these flexible, unique dollars designed to help California speed up its health and economic recovery, they’re spending this money on police. Which is very concerning, because we know that what our communities need is access to resources to help overcome the hardship that has been the last couple of years.” Antle said with inflation and the loss of cannabis tax revenue, the county budget is lean. “We’re currently trying to work with all of our departments to see how we can keep them full,” she said. “Full meaning fully funded for the coming year, without having to take cuts in certain areas. And it is likely that the Board will have to make some difficult decisions.” Garcia wants the public to participate in those decisions, including organizations like UVA, Vecinos en Acción, an inland Mendocino County Latino advocacy group which is the recipient of one of the Foundation’s grants. “This is not a simple civic engagement process,” he acknowledged. “And so Vecinos en Accion and non-profit organizations can work with city and county leaders to design a process in which they can collect community input. Obviously providing translation across outreach strategies is critical to reach the hardest to reach communities. There could even be workshops. We have partners in Calexico that helped design community workshops to engage members of the community about ARPA budgeting. So there are a myriad of different outreach strategies that city and county leaders can employ to collect community input. But these processes have to be designed with trusted community members.” Juan Orozco, co-chair of UVA and a Ukiah City Councilman, says UVA is poised to do just that. “We look into health equity, and what is it that the community needs, and we do surveys, and then provide the information to people,” he said. Garcia has seen organizations advocate successfully. “There are city and county leaders in certain parts of the state that have adopted, or that are trying to create more transparent processes,” he said. “And some of that has been the result of community organizing led by Latino non-profit organizations. For example, in Merced, in the city council, an organization called 99 Roots successfully advocated for a one million dollar youth jobs program, designed to essentially invest in the workforce development of young people. Knowing that Latino workers during the pandemic were overrepresented in industries that were considered essential; that maybe weren’t paying the very best wages; that were putting workers in very vulnerable situations, right? Earning low wages, taking care of families…Latino women had to drop out of the workforce in really high numbers, because it’s very expensive to send your children to childcare when schools are closed.” Garcia expects local governments can look forward to more awards soon, from the federal infrastructure plan and the Community Economic Resilience Fund, a covid recovery program that’s still being developed. With a participatory process in place, he believes, “There’s so many opportunities to engage the community so that every Californian has an equal opportunity to share in the state’s prosperity.”
*Molly Rosenthal of North Coast Opportunities provided more detail about the sources of the ARPA funding NCO received and what it was used for. While NCO did receive $1.7 million of American Rescue Plan Act funding, some of it came from state and federal sources to support Head Start and Rural Communities Child Care. The County of Mendocino provided $587,560 of ARPA funds that NCO used the funds to rally more than 250 volunteers for the vaccine clinics, quarantine food delivery, and other pandemic response activities; deliver fresh food boxes to households through the MendoLake Food Hub; and provide financial assistance to households economically-impacted by the pandemic.
While applications are now closed for financial assistance, The City of Ukiah’s Utility Bill Assistance Program is providing support for Ukiah residents with past-due utility bills of up to $1,000. Visit cityofukiah.com for more information.
Photo of a walk-through metal detector courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Walk-through_metal_detector.jpg
May 2, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors will hold a budget workshop on May 3 to prepare for next month’s third quarter budget hearings. Inflation is up, but revenue seems to be available — if there were enough staff to collect it. Supervisor Ted Williams gave a preview of tomorrow’s meeting. “We’ve been meeting with each department, and looking at if they have any outside contracts that they can cut, kind of nickels and dimes,” he said. “Frankly, I don’t think we’re finding a lot. A lot of those departments already came in with lean budgets. There may be some services that we can halt, but not without a real impact on the services provided to the public.” Patrick Hickey, the field representative for Local SEIU 1021, which represents most of the county government’s unionized workers, suspects the situation is not quite so dire, and cautions that more information is needed before making big financial decisions. “What their information showed is that the majority of their revenue streams, property taxes, sales taxes, transient occupancy taxes (ToT), are increasing,” he said. “They're projecting that the cannabis tax may drop significantly. So that’s certainly a concern. But they don’t have a handle on it, as far as we can tell, on the numbers and on the data. They still haven’t released their audit from last year, which normally for counties comes out in the fall. So we really need to have a look at that before we start setting our budget for next year.” Hickey especially wants more detailed information about the reserve funds, which he believes are robust. The county is in negotiations with all its bargaining units, which always advocate for filling vacant positions with qualified people, and paying them a competitive salary to keep them on the job. Hickey listed a few of the departments he thinks could generate revenue if they were fully staffed. “Environmental health specialists are a fundraiser for the county, basically,” he said. “Positions in the treasury or tax collector and auditor-controller’s office that make sure that we’re collecting all the funds that are due to the county. A number of those department heads have said they’re not able to necessarily do an effective job at tracking down all the taxes that are due because they don’t have the staff to carry out those assignments.” Union president Julie Beardsley added that some other key positions are funded mostly by state and federal money. “In behavioral health, there are clinical positions that don't offer a competitive salary, so it’s really really difficult to hire people,” she argued. “In public health, nurses, social services, social workers.” “I’m actually with the union on this,” Williams said. “I think if we do any hiring, first it should be in the areas that are revenue generating. If there’s money that we’re not collecting, maybe that staff will be more than paid for by the revenue that they’re able to collect.” But he said there is a bit of a general fund match for the state-funded positions. “Some of the non-general fund departments still have a hit on the general fund,” he said. “It may not be much, but when you have zero dollars to work with, if we’re paying ten or twenty percent of that overhead, we just don’t have it.” He added that the lack of competitive wages results in the county not having “a pool of applicants showing up, eager to take on those jobs. If we were to pay more, that would be out of the county general fund.” And Williams said that if the county raised the wages for an analyst in a mostly state-funded department, it would have to raise the wages for other workers with the same designation in departments that are funded solely by the general fund. At the Board of Supervisors’ meeting on April 19, the board agreed to make paying cannabis taxes a requirement for renewing permits, and to consider lowering the minimum tax rate. Interim treasurer tax collector Julie Forrester said delinquent cannabis taxes hadn’t been pursued, and made some suggestions for how to go about doing that. Williams said the tax collector is elected, and the Board of Supervisors does not direct her how to run her department. “My personal view is, we need to have a process that doesn’t have finger-pointing,” he opined. “It needs to be collaborative.” The county doesn’t have exact numbers on how many properties are not on the tax rolls, “but we know some are. We know some that are charged vacant land rates, versus the tax on a three-bedroom house built in the last decade.” The protocol for updating the tax rolls has not yet been established. And Williams is leery of taking action that could cost people their homes if their living situation involves a zoning violation. “And we’re broke,” he said. “We have less revenue that’s projected for the coming year than we had last year.” Hickey remains skeptical of the sense of emergency that often characterizes budget discussions. “So much of these projections that the county’s talking about are speculative,” he said. “It’s really over the next number of months, as the county goes through its budgeting process, that we’ll get a little bit more clarity on where we’re really at,” he predicted. “And I think it’s going to turn out to be better than some of the gloom and doom numbers that the county has been bandying about. I think the county is in a much better and healthier position than they’re letting on.”
Since the appointment of anti-abortion Justice Amy Coney Barrett secured a conservative super-majority on the US Supreme Court in October 2020, women’s rights advocates have warned that Roe V Wade, the 1972 court decision that affirmed the right to abortion, was in danger of being overturned.
On Monday, the online newspaper Politico dot Com published a leaked draft decision in a case currently before the Supreme Court challenging Mississippi’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks, known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The 98 page draft was written by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, and completely rolls back Roe vs Wade, and another important case that protects the right to abortion, paving the way for abortion bans across the country and potentially a federal ban on abortion if conservative legislators gain a majority in Congress in future elections.
April 28, 2022 – The Youth Leadership Coalition, a teen program of Redwood Community Services’ Arbor Center, successfully lobbied Ukiah’s City Council to pass an ordinance banning the commercial sale of nitrous oxide canisters, known as whippets, within the city limits. Whippets, which have become a popular party drug among young people, deprive the brain of oxygen and can cause strokes, leading to death or lifelong disability. The nonbiodegradable canisters are also an environmental nuisance. The ordinance went into effect in March, and prohibits Ukiah city businesses operating under a tobacco retailer’s license, from selling the drug. The Youth Leadership Coalition is now staged to assess the success of the mandate and plans to address the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors in an effort to bring the ordinance to a county level.
April 27, 2022 — In August of last year, Mendocino County received about eight and a half million dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act, which the President signed into law to help local governments recover from the economic toll of the pandemic. The county will receive the other half of its s$16.8 million award this summer. The funding can be used to cover a broad array of costs, from paying essential workers to providing government services to investing in infrastructure. The guidelines urge local governments “to engage their constituents and communities in developing plans to use these payments,” much as the PG&E settlement funds were distributed last year. But thus far, the public has not had the opportunity to contribute to the decision-making process about how to allocate the ARPA funds. $4.8 million has already been allocated for infrastructure, public health and direct assistance. During the fiscal review last week, the Board of Supervisors heard suggestions to use the remaining funds to provide county services and hire new staff to pre-covid levels. But Juan Orozco, a Ukiah city councilman and co-chair of UVA, Vecinos en Accion, an advocacy group for the Latino community, thinks the money should be used for much more basic needs. “With not having a job, with not having income, you lose housing,” he pointed out. “If you’re renting, of course, and even if you’re buying a home and you don't have any income, how are you going to pay your mortgage? People don’t even have food.” Sarah Marshall, the UVA coordinator, agrees. There’s some organizational heft behind this position. “The ARPA funds are supposed to go to support communities that have been most impacted by covid,” she declared. “So UVA hasn’t received any ARPA funds yet, but we did just receive funding from the Latino Community Foundation that is meant to be spent to advocate for the transparent distribution of ARPA funds in our community.” Marshall added that more than 100 grassroots organizations applied for the grant, which is called the Latino Power Fund, and 35 were selected, with awards totaling $1.4 million, all working towards trying to secure a fair share of the ARPA funds. UVA Program Coordinator Maria Avalos explained what UVA plans to do with its portion, which is about $50,000. “We hope to hire someone to become an advocate,” she said, “that will be looking into where ARPA funds in the county are going to, and making sure that it is being equally dispersed and going toward the Latino community and Spanish-speaking communities.” Julie Beardsley is President of Local SEIU 1021, which represents most of the county government’s unionized employees. She’s open to broader uses for the ARPA money, but she wants transparency, too. “I know that there’s been some talk about using the $16.8 million to backfill the deficit,” she said. “It can be invested in things like improved water systems and sewage, broadband infrastructure. It can include assistance to small businesses and households in hard-hit industries to help with economic recovery. So I’d like to see some community input on what happens with these funds, rather than having the county say, we have a deficit so we have to backfill.” The ARPA award is just shy of the $18 million the county budgets for one month. Supervisor Ted Williams, who has spent the last few weeks in budget meetings with county department heads, says the money is vital to the county’s core mission. “I think a lot of the ARPA funds will be used to balance the budget, to make ends meet,” he said. “The alternative is we could give that money to community groups that probably have really great projects, or we could allow potholes to develop…we could stop road maintenance altogether. The ARPA funds, whether you’re looking at the $10 million or the full $16 million, if that's not used to plug the financial situation at the county, the cuts and services would be severe. I wish we could treat the ARPA funds like we did the PG&E funds, but I don’t think that’s what the public wants, when we look at the services that would be lost.” One local organization that’s still providing pandemic-related economic relief is North Coast Opportunities, which got $1.7 million in ARPA funds to offer direct services like keeping all eight of its Head Start child care centers open during the shutdowns. It also rallied volunteers to deliver food boxes to people in quarantine and work at vaccination clinics. Molly Rosenthal, the NCO Communications Director, says part of the money is now being used to restart an essential service that’s lost a lot of providers in the last two years. “Our rural communities childcare program supported providers who have closed and are working toward reopening and connecting working families with affordable childcare,” she said, which is “particularly important as things open up and parents head back to work…those families do need access to affordable childcare.” The economic fallout from the pandemic continues to be severe, particularly for those who were on shaky financial footing to begin with. To hear more about ARPA funding, you can check out a special edition of today’s 9:00 am public affairs on jukebox and on the kzyx news podcast, where we heard more from UVA and spoke with Interim CEO Darcie Antle and Laura Diamondstone, a retired epidemiologist and public health advocate.
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
The American Rescue Plan Act was signed into law last year, awarding federal money to local governments to help alleviate the long-term economic and public health effects of the pandemic. The US Department of the Treasury urged an open community process for the distribution of the funds, but Mendocino County plans to use the money to balance the budget. In a special public affairs show, we heard from Laura Diamondstone, a retired epidemiologist and public health advocate; UVA Vecinos en Accion, an advocacy group for the Latino and Spanish-speaking communities in inland Mendocino county; and Interim CEO Darcie Antle, about potential uses for the money and what some of it has already been used for.
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
April 26, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors voted last week to require payment of cannabis taxes to renew permits, and asked the Executive Office to come back at a future meeting with more numbers about what it would mean to lower the tax rate. In 2016, Mendocino County voters passed Measure AI, an ordinance stating that growers are liable for a 2.5% tax on their gross receipts, which amounts to a yearly minimum of $1200-$5000, depending on the size of the grow. With the price plummeting, the cannabis business sector across the state has been clamoring for tax relief. Supervisor Ted Williams argued for a reduction, saying, “It almost doesn’t matter if theoretically, the arithmetic of however many cultivators we have times about $5,000, what that would generate for us, if we put them out of business.” County staff estimates that currently, $6.8 million in cannabis tax revenue has been uncollected, but between calendars not aligning, a software system that requires an expensive update, and a few missing pieces in the procedure for collecting, hard numbers are hard to come by. Supervisor John Haschak summarized the knowledge gaps, telling his colleagues that, “I’m just trying to figure out the implications to our budget if we do this. We have so many unknowns that it’s really hard to say what’s going to happen with it. And then if we require tax compliance, at this point, we don’t know how many people we would make pay who aren't paying right now.” Williams asked Acting Treasurer-Tax Collector Julie Forrester how many people in the cannabis program are currently delinquent on paying their taxes. She told him that for the calendar year 2021, there are 551 cultivation permits that are unrecorded, 97 flat tax payments that were unrecorded, and eight dispensaries — or about half of the permit holders. Forrester said operators will have another tax bill at the end of May, in what’s called a true-up, “Which amounts to a little over $3 million. In my understanding, historically we’ve collected about half of that true-up. We have that, and then…we have about $185,000 in the flat tax that’s unpaid.” Forrester added that “there hasn’t been any further delinquent collections of defaulted cannabis taxes to date. There’s been so many changes to the program. There’s been no actual pursuit so far of the defaulted.” Forrester told the board that collecting the cannabis tax would not be easy, cheap, or fast. With an audit, she said, her department could estimate which taxes were due, record a lien, and implement collections processes. She added that she would need to know if a lowered tax would be categorized as a reduction or a credit against the taxes due, because that would affect the kind of update she would need to request for the property tax software system. “And I would expect that to be quite a complicated program and with a hefty cost, and not a quick turnaround,” she cautioned. But idiosyncratic software is not the only obstacle. Forrester requested more board direction for her department, which she calls the TTC. She said she had requested clarification on the ordinance, particularly what it means that the TTC is allowed to increase the tax; what it means for the TTC to assess penalties and interest; and if it can also waive them. County Counsel Christian Curtis explained that since the cannabis tax was a voters initiative, the board can tinker with it to a degree. “As long as you’re keeping the same basic structure, you’re allowed to go lower,” he said. “You can’t go above the maximum that the voters approved, and then if you change the tax structure so you’re no longer going on gross receipts, you know, excise per pound, but if you’re going lower, you’re fine,” he assured the supervisors. Monique Ramirez, of Covelo, thinks it’s time for the voters to revisit the tax. “I just think it makes sense to base it on what you’ve actually sold, and that’s the percentage that you pay,” she said. “Just to give you a glimpse of what it’s like for me, as a specialty cottage operator, I have only sold six pounds of flower in the market so far, from my 2021 harvest. I am living off my savings. Thank God we have chickens.” Michael Katz, the Executive Director of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, supports a reduction before agreeing that paying taxes should be a condition of permit renewal. When Williams asked him if MCA supports requiring tax compliance; “in other words, in order to get your permit renewed, you have to pay your taxes;” Katz replied, “I think MCA would support this reduction for 2021 through 2023, and with that reduction, I think we would be willing to discuss that…we should be talking about how to keep people in this program, and not fine them out of it or structurally policy them out of it or overlay them out of it. Let more people in.”
April 25, 2022 — PG&E is now operating the Potter Valley Project under an annual license, after a mystery applicant was turned down cold. And forest health enthusiasts gathered at a Buddhist monastery in Leggett over the weekend to strategize how to build fire resilience using grant funding and local labor. On Thursday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission granted PG&E a license to operate the project until next April, writing that the Federal Power Act does require the Commission to issue an annual license to the current licensee, “under the terms and conditions of the prior license until a new license is issued, or the project is otherwise disposed of…” The brief notice concluded that “PG&E is authorized to continue operation of the Potter Valley Project, until such time as the Commission orders disposition of the project.” On Friday, the Commission informed Antonio Manfredini, who had applied for the license on behalf of a business called PVP 77, that it was rejecting his application because it was late; he had not done any of the initial consultations or studies that were required; and the “application patently fails to conform to the requirements of the Commission’s regulations.” The applicant has 30 days to request a rehearing.
UPDATE: Manfredini filed an appeal on Monday morning, arguing that “The License Application submitted continues the process initiated by PG&E (P-77-285) on 4/62017 and continues the process initiated by The NOI Parties (P-77-298) on 6/28/2019.” The appeal refers to PG&E and the NOI parties as “Proxy.” A coalition that included The Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission, Sonoma County Water Agency, California Trout, and the County of Humboldt, notified FERC in June of 2018 that it was calling itself the Notice of Intent (NOI) Party, and that it intended to file for the license to the Potter Valley Project.
Environmental groups are expecting a further order from FERC to surrender and decommission the project, though very little information is available about what that means exactly or how long it will take. Clifford Paulin, who is legal counsel for the Potter Valley Irrigation District, was not surprised that FERC granted PG&E the annual license. For him, the remaining uncertainty lies in the big-picture conditions of the drought, as well as details about the pikeminnow reduction program and how additional conditions to the license, if any, will be implemented. Paulin said that, while the irrigation district’s contract with PG&E entitles it to 50 cubic feet per second, the district’s directors acceded to PG&E’s request to stay on a demand-based system, only asking for the amount the district can sell to its customers. This is calculated in part to protect the infrastructure at Lake Pillsbury and Scott Dam in Lake County. It also means that the only additional water going into the Russian River and Lake Mendocino from the Eel River will be the minimum instream flows required by the National Marine Fisheries Service to protect salmonids in the Russian River. Paulin thinks the wild card application may have been part of what caused the delay in FERC’s announcement about the annual license, but said he didn’t “see Manfredini being much of a factor’ otherwise. Curtis Knight, the Executive Director of the environmental organization California Trout, described the granting of the annual license as “a big step,” which “everyone knew was coming…the only weird note was Manfredini.” CalTrout is one of the parties that was working with Russian River water users to apply for the license, but was unable to raise enough money to pay for the studies. Now it’s signed on to a notice to sue PG&E under the Endangered Species Act, claiming that the fish ladder at Cape Horn Dam causes unauthorized take. Still, Knight expects that the Manfredini “distraction won’t amount to much;” and is looking forward to a timeline for the surrender of the project. He hasn’t given up on working with Russian River water users, but said “It may have to get a little messy first,” before FERC defines the process of decommissioning the project.
In the north county, two environmental organizations gathered at the Rangjung Yeshe Gomde Tibetan Buddhist Monastery in Leggett to brainstorm plans to resist the ravages of climate change and further the vitality of the Eel River through forest management. The Northern Mendocino Ecosystem Recovery Alliance has joined with the Eel River Recovery Project to push for a major shift in preparing for fire and bringing it back to the landscape. Eli Rider, of the Leggett Valley Volunteer Fire Department, and Will Emerson, of the Bell Springs Fire Department in Laytonville, are inspired by a $4.9 million grant from CalFire to carve a fuel break into Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands in the Red Mountain wilderness, off of Bell Springs road. The grant is being administered by the Mendocino County Resource Conservation District. In addition to a proviso that would keep the use of heavy equipment to a minimum, Rider says one of the requirements for keeping carbon down is hiring local people. “There’s a large grant in the Red Mountain area and the Usal forest to create shaded fuel breaks,” he said during a pause in Saturday’s activities. “They have written into the grant a triple bottom line, which is trying to lower the carbon footprint of the project. Having a local workforce will accomplish that by not having to truck a bunch of equipment in from far away…we are in the process of a workforce development program to train and hire local workers.” Emerson hopes the project will expand from what Rider explained was the most obvious place to start. Work on phase one of the project is expected to be performed over the next three years, with planning for phase two scheduled to start next year. “We’re hoping that fuel break will continue over to Bell Springs Road, and then hook in with other projects up and down Bell Springs Road, so we establish some really good fire breaks around our communities and through them, so that we could stop a larger fire that might come through,” Emerson said. Rider added that Red Mountain was a logical place to start because BLM biologists and staff from the Redwood Forest Foundation Inc. had already conducted the biological assessments and archaeological reviews that were needed before work could begin. “It was ready to be implemented,” he concluded. Pat Higgins, the Executive Director of the Eel River Recovery Project, is a fish guy who’s been pushing for forest health as key to revitalizing the river for years. He sees enormous potential for the new approach — if it’s done right. “It’ll be a huge undertaking, to restore forest health in the traditional Indian sense of harmony on the landscape,” he predicted. “And once that happens, you have to use control burns, and you have to stay on it. We’re looking, actually, not just for economic opportunity, but a change in perspective, a commitment to stewardship. And this could happen in a way that is economically viable — depending on how we organize.”
April 21, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors went over budget priorities in a preliminary fiscal review this week, where they learned details about the projected deficit and discussed belt-tightening measures. Interim CEO Darcie Antle summarized the most significant projected shortfalls, saying non-departmental revenue had had to be cut three percent, or $4.3 million, to meet the revenue projections for 2022-23. The health plan deficit is $5.7 million, not including the $2.5 million that have been incurred but not reported. “And as you know, there has been a decrease in cannabis tax revenue,” Antle remarked. The county got a significant cushion last year from ARPA, the American Rescue Plan Act, a nearly $17 million grant intended to aid those most hard-hit by the pandemic. Instead, the board agreed last year to consider using ten million dollars of the grant to provide county core services and infrastructure, with $1.7 million of it to hire new staff, in the hopes of increasing staff to pre-covid levels. Almost one and a half million has already been allocated to vaguely defined support for public health covid response, and another $1.1 million to address negative economic impacts. The fiscal team suggested using further ARPA funds to alleviate the health plan deficit. Supervisor John Haschak expressed some misgivings, saying, “The original intent of the ARPA money was to have real community input into the process. And it doesn’t sit well with me that we haven’t done any community outreach with the ARPA funds and how they're going to be spent. Obviously we’re in a time when we need to fix our budget. But I think we should have been doing community outreach and seeing how the community wanted to use this. Because it was meant for covid relief.” Deputy CEO Tim Hallman painted an overall picture that was not encouraging. Actual year-over-year revenues are down, he said. “From last year to this year, just in the budgeting alone, we’re looking at a $1.4 million decrease, which does not include cost of living increases… So even though our costs have gone up, our revenues have gone down,” he concluded. And Deputy CEO Cherie Johnson spoke about the projected $5.7 million deficit in the health plan. “We are researching plan changes and potential increases to premiums,” she told the board. The projected $5.7 shortfall is based on end-of-year claims that will be coming in, and it does include last year’s $1.1 million deficit. Hallman elaborated on the projected shortfall in cannabis tax. “It is showing close to a $4.5 million dollar decrease over what was collected in the 20-21 fiscal year,” he reported. “This of course is going to have a huge impact to the net county cost and its allocations.” Michael Katz, the Executive Director of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, took the opportunity to highlight the contributions of the cannabis industry to the local economy. “I’m drawn to the information provided in the budget document that shows that in fact the cannabis tax for the year 2020-21 wound up coming in at about $6.4 million, which is about $800,000 more than was previously projected,” he said. “It just goes to show that if you look at the trajectory of the consistent increase in cannabis tax revenue up until this point, that despite the challenges that we’ve had, our community continues to contribute more and more to this county, in the tiniest footprint imaginable, only 290 acres of licensed cannabis cultivation. And so when you’re talking about the budget and how can we identify items that are revenue generating, it’s pretty clear that doing everything in our power to save the existing licensed operators in the cannabis program…is the best immediate chance that this county has to maintain the revenues that it has come to expect from this community.” Patrick Hickey spoke on behalf of SEIU 1021, which represents most of the unionized county workers, to request a big-picture view of the budget. “From the presentation, we can’t determine if we have a structural deficit, or are just experiencing a routine shortfall,” he declared. “There is no mention of the county’s general fund reserve. The reserve is specifically for these sorts of situations. How much is currently in the general fund reserve? These funds are supposed to smooth out the dips and bumps along the way. The ARPA monies are not the only funds the county can access. The Board has identified a number of promising sources of ongoing revenue for beefing up property tax and TOT (transient occupancy tax) enforcement. The county has a number of unfilled positions that are revenue generators. Filling these should be a top priority. We need to remember that a large part of the county’s budget is not covered by the general fund, but comes from other sources.” Antle provided more detail on the county’s reserve funds, informing the public that the general fund reserve is at $12 million, while monthly expenses are $18 million. “And then the overall reserve is close to $20 million,” she added, which includes the HHSA and other restricted uses. The budget workshop and the third quarter report will be on May third, with the budget hearings taking place over two days on June seventh and eighth.
April 20, 2022 — Attendance was low at the first hybrid in-person zoom Board of Supervisors meeting in two years yesterday. After public comment, which ranged from unresolved issues in the cannabis department to dissatisfaction with the covid response, the Board received an update from state officials on the scientific review of Jackson Demonstration State Forest, which the Board requested last year. At the close of the presentation, the board voted unanimously to request representation on the Jackson Advisory Group, or JAG, though it hasn’t been determined if that means an appointed representative or a supervisorial liaison. The JAG advises CalFire and the Board of Forestry on the management of JDSF. Last month, two new members joined the group. Reno Franklin is the chairman of the Kashia Band of Pomo Indians in Sonoma County, and has served on the National Indian Health Board and is a member of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. Joanna Nelson, the director of science and conservation for the Save the Redwoods League, joined the JAG with the intent of advising “on the development of improved, science-based restoration management practices,” according to an announcement by the conservation group. There was no written material accompanying the presentation by Deputy Director of California Natural Resources Jessica Morse and Demonstration Forest Manager Kevin Conway, of CalFire. Morse spoke about who will be involved in the scientific review. Dr. Elizabeth Forsberg, who is a PhD scientist with the Nature Conservancy, was appointed to the Board of Forestry in September. She will be running the management sub-committee of the Board of Forestry. “As to this board’s request specifically around reviewing the science, the forest and wildfire resilience task force at the state has a science advisory panel made up by PhD forest scientists from the UC’s and other institutions, and we’ve asked them to do a scientific review of the Jackson,” Morse said. “That study is underway right now, and they’ll be reporting back to us in the coming months.” Marie Jones, a member of the Mendocino County Climate Action Advisory Committee and a county planning commissioner, wanted more detail. “I would love to actually see what the proposal is for the scientific study of JDSF,” she said. “It sounds a little haphazard, and like the advisory group will actually be doing some of the work. Is it possible to provide us with an outline of the proposed study so that we can look at it and be sure that our issues will actually be looked at?” Morse reminded supervisors that the board of forestry voted last year to review the JDSF management plan with an eye toward tribal co-management. But David Martinez, a longtime activist with Winnemem Wintu heritage, said he hasn’t seen evidence of it yet. “I’ve been out into the forest many times, especially in the Caspar 500 and Soda Gulch,” he said. “What I see is the road building and the destruction of sacred sites, cultural properties, and I see the proposed destruction of cultural gathering zones. And it’s all been approved and okayed. It is not okay to destroy the historical properties of the Pomo people. And the Yuki peoples. Everything in their management plan says they can do these things because it is necessary for forest product production. This has to change,” he insisted. That might be possible, with a different funding stream. Morse said this year there is a $10 million budget for the demonstration forests, “so that there’s not any pressure to be able to harvest trees. We’ve asked for additional funding in this year’s current budget before the legislature so that these demonstration forests can just have a steady income, so that their costs are covered and that they can be these world-class forests that we need them to be.” She added that, “There are some studies happening on carbon sequestration and climate resilience that these new investments are going to be focused on.” Conway said Calfire plans to use some of the money for a fuels reduction project on road 408-409 near the Caspar scales; improve trail signage; and conduct fire resiliency work, like completing a long-planned fuel break along Three Chop Ridge, and re-introducing prescribed fire to the forest. “We’re also going to be engaging with some scientists to try to answer some of the questions that the community has about our forest management and climate change,” he said. He also reported on CalFire’s efforts to engage the community, including the activists who have brought the logging to a standstill. “We have not entered into any timber sales in 2022, in order to give us an opportunity to give a public tour of the sales prior to going out,” he said. “We have also been slowing down our submittal of new plans…we had three members of your climate action advisory committee come out and look at the forest. We’ve done five community tours.” But Jones remained dubious about what she called the mission of the forest. She said that, “The climate action committee was taken on tour of the site by the Mendocino Redwood Company,” a prominent lumber company in Mendocino and Humboldt counties. “The fact that CalFire notes this as a project that they did illustrates to me the lack of separation of the forest industry and CalFire’s management of JDSF. A lot of the talk this morning was about, seems like CalFire thinks there’s a problem in communication. And I don’t really think that’s the problem. I think the problem is much more fundamental than that. And it’s the mission and the role of this publicly owned property that composes 50,000 acres in our county, and the value that it can provide in terms of addressing climate change, providing jobs in the tourism and recreation industry. And those things are negatively impacted by the relentless focus on cutting down trees.”
April 19, 2022 — The license for the Potter Valley Project expired on Thursday, April 14. By Friday, a coalition of environmentalists and fishermen had filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue PG&E, the project owner, under the Endangered Species Act. The main complaint is that the fish passage facility at Cape Horn Dam in Potter Valley causes unauthorized harm to endangered fish, by preventing their passage when the facility is clogged, or making them vulnerable to predators as they try to climb the ladder. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has authority over the project because its stated purpose is generating hydropower, has not yet declared if it will order PG&E to surrender and decommission the project, or if it will allow the utility to continue operating it on a year-to-year basis, as the company has said it plans to do while it recoups the cost of an expensive piece of replacement equipment. Redgie Collins, the Legal and Policy Director for CalTrout, one of the groups intending to sue PG&E, says that, with the expiration of the license, “PG&E no longer has take coverage for listed species, meaning that they can no longer harm, harass, directly kill or injure salmon (or) steelhead at their project site. The current fish passage operation is functionally broken and leads to take. It’s time for PG&E to realize that this project does in fact take fish.” Last month, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) wrote a letter to FERC, saying that the Project is causing take of fish on the endangered species list, in a manner not anticipated in that agency’s 2002 biological opinion. The biological opinion allowed the project to operate if it met certain conditions. Collins added that, “Along with the license, NMFS’ biological protections also expire with that license, meaning that PG&E is now vulnerable to litigation we are bringing.” PG&E said in a statement that, “The potential claims described in the notice are without merit. PG&E is strongly committed to environmental responsibility, and we are operating the Potter Valley Project in full compliance with the National Marine Fisheries Services’ (NMFS) Biological Opinion (BiOp) and its incidental take statement, which is incorporated into the Potter Valley license. Upon expiration of a license, the Federal Power Act requires FERC to issue an annual license, which renews automatically, with the same terms and conditions for the project, until it’s relicensed, transferred or decommissioned. That means PG&E will continue to own and operate the Potter Valley Project safely under the existing license conditions until the project is transferred or FERC issues a final license surrender and decommissioning order.” The project is currently unable to produce power because of a damaged transformer, which could take two years to rebuild. Alicia Hamann, the Executive Director of Friends of the Eel River, which has been at the forefront of the fight to remove the dams, describes the Eel as “a river of opportunity,” with 280 miles of habitat for genetically diverse fish that haven’t made it to the ocean since 1922, when Scott Dam was built. She’s not entirely opposed to a continued diversion of water from the Eel into the Russian River. “The genetics for summer steelhead live on in rainbow trout that are trapped behind Scott Dam,” she said. “This means that there’s potential for the offspring of those trout to essentially become summer steelhead once again, if they could just reach the ocean…there’s still an opportunity for an ecologically appropriate diversion. By that, I mean one that operates without a dam and runs during the wet season, when the Eel has water supplies to spare. At this point, it’s up to Russian River water users to decide how much they want to continue the diversion, and to come together to fund and implement a plan.” That might be easier said than done. On the day the license expired, Janet Pauli, of the Potter Valley Irrigation District, reported on the results of early surveys to the Inland Water and Power Commission. The IWPC had hired a consultant who polled Russian River water users. “It ended up being a polling base of about 23,000 people,” Paulie said. “I think they did nearly 400 polls of individuals. “The goal was to see if people had an understanding of their water supply, where it comes from, potential vulnerability with regard to the Potter Valley Project, how they felt water supply was being managed, or if they even knew. At the end of that poll, it was determined that to get a two-thirds vote for a parcel tax would be tough. Might not be successful. And would not, in all likelihood, generate the kind of funding that we believe we’re going to need moving forward in this next phase of the project license.” It’s impossible to be unaware of water conditions in the Eel River basin, according to Adam Canter, the Director of Natural Resources for the Wiyot Tribe at the Table Mountain Bluff Reservation in Humboldt Bay. The tribe is not party to the intent to sue PG&E, but is not taking the option of a lawsuit off the table. “We’re excited that the license is expired,” Canter acknowledged; “but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we can celebrate and walk away and not have to continue to put pressure on PG&E and FERC to move forward with actual decommissioning and dam removal…it’s been really bad the last five or ten years, and I think it’s hard to ignore, just the reduction in flows, the toxic algae blooms, the reduction in the number of fish returning to the river. It’s just more visible on the Eel River basin side.” The uncertainty over what FERC will do next is not the only mystery surrounding the Potter Valley Project, which is FERC docket number 77. One day before the license expired, Antonio Manfredini, an agent for a business called PVP 77 LLC at PO Box 777 in Roseville, filed an application for the license. They missed the 2019 deadline to file a notice of intent, and Manfredini and PVP 77 don’t show up on an international database of businesses. No one answered the phone number listed on the application.
Photo credit: Scott Dam, Kyle Schwartz, CalTrout
April 18, 2022 — Three environmental organizations are suing CalFire over the approval of a timber harvest plan by Mendocino Redwood Company which they say violates Measure V; would degrade the watershed of Russell Brook, which is a tributary of Big River; and would damage spotted owl habitat. The Center for Biological Diversity, the Environmental Protection and Information Center, or EPIC, and the Coast Action Group, filed in the Mendocino County Superior Court earlier this month, asking a judge to set aside the approval of the plan. It’s the first legal challenge invoking Measure V, the 2016 citizens’ initiative which declared that intentionally leaving dead standing trees is a public nuisance. Mendocino Redwood Company, which uses the herbicide Imazapyr in a practice called hack and squirt, or frilling, to kill tanoaks, maintains that the practice is a legal agricultural method under the Right to Farm Act and other local codes. Tom Wheeler, the executive director of EPIC, wants Measure V enforced. “I’ve been disappointed that Mendocino County has not, on their own initiative, gone and tried to enforce Measure V,” he said. “Because I believe the large industrial timber companies have used their legal muscle to bully the county into not taking legal action against them. And so I hope we can add some legal clarity about how Measure V is applied, and that through our lawsuit we can give the county greater confidence in their ability to litigate this.” In the summer of 2019, Xavier Becerra, who was the State Attorney General at the time, declined Mendocino County’s request for an opinion on the legality of Measure V, due to an unspecified conflict of interest. CalFire also uses hack and squirt in study areas within the Jackson Demonstration State Forest. Wheeler elaborated on the role of Measure V in the lawsuit over the harvest plan, which covers 993 acres. “So we are not enforcing Measure V, because we cannot, per the terms of Measure V. The county is responsible for enforcing the nuisance measure there,” he specified. “But we are saying that CalFire, in approving a timber harvest plan that includes hack and squirt, that that is a violation of the Forest Practice Rules.” But Justin Augustine, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, said the lawsuit is about more than a citizens’ initiative that’s never been enforced. “Separate from the Measure V issue, we are also pointing out in our complaint and in this litigation overall that this hack and squirt and killing of tanoaks, it’s not just a Measure V problem. It’s an ecosystem problem, because these tanoaks are a major aspect of the integrity of our redwood forests.” While tanoaks are thought to compete with trees that produce high-value lumber, Augustine argues that they also produce up to 200 pounds of acorns a year, which is a vital food source for wildlife. Regarding the Russell Brook lawsuit, a CalFire spokesperson said in an email that, “CAL FIRE cannot comment on a project that is currently under litigation. The Timber Harvesting Plan was reviewed by an interdisciplinary team pursuant to the Forest Practice Act and Rules, was found to be in conformance with those rules and was determined to have mitigation measures in the plan to ensure there would not be any significant impacts to the environment.”
Measure V was championed by Ted Williams, before he became the fifth district supervisor, while he was chief of the Albion Little River volunteer fire department. It was opposed by Jim Little, the Laytonville fire chief, Bruce Strickler, a retired CalFire Deputy Chief, and Marc Jameson, the retired deputy chief and demonstration forest manager. Mendocino Redwood Company claimed that there have been instances where firefighters successfully controlled fires in areas where tanoaks had been treated with herbicide, including the 2008 Mendocino Lightning Complex fires. But Augustine doesn’t think the current THP includes enough protection for large old trees that were spared from an earlier plan in 2004. “They’re projecting this idea that, don’t worry, we’ll protect these trees, but they have not disclosed what in fact they are going to do with each individual large old tree. For example, they state in their timber harvest plan, which was approved, that their biologists will determine which ones stay and which ones will go, and to us, that’s really the fox guarding the henhouse,” he said. “And not what CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act, is all about.” Wheeler added that the results of surveys for botanical species and northern spotted owls were not made public before the plan was approved. “The public has been denied that opportunity to understand what is at stake,” he complained. Both organizations have challenged timber harvest plans in the past. “We’ve won some and we’ve lost some,” said Augustine, of the track record for the Center for Biological Diversity. “And hopefully, this one will add to the win bag.”
April 15, 2022 — Around late March as I drove into Mendocino Village, I saw a new sight: two of the biggest flags in rich brilliant color, dancing in the strong wind. Flags in the town of Mendocino are normal for the music festival, art events, to direct to one of the many weddings that the rustic and charming backdrop of Mendocino plays host to. This pair struck an immediate chord with this journalist, however, when I realized the significance of their colors: one yellow, one blue, side by side. As I kept driving, I saw several more. Today there are literally dozens of pairs all around town. You really cannot miss them if you drive or walk around the town of Mendocino. I have been curious about their sudden appearance and apparent ability to multiply. So I talked with the person behind the idea for the flags around town, local resident David Gross. We met at the Rotary Park in Mendocino, on the corner of Main and Lansing Streets on a sunny early morning with birds chirping in the background and the air warming us as we sat at a comfortable well worn picnic table.
April 14, 2022 — The California Deptartment of Fish and Wildlife has announced that the commercial Dungeness crab fishery in the entire state of California will close two months early, at least until mid-November, due to five humpback whale entanglements in crab gear along various parts of the coast. The commercial fishery from the Sonoma-Mendocino line to Mexico closed last Friday, and the rest of the commercial fishery, from there to Oregon, will close next Wednesday. The CDFW is also asking recreational crab fishermen to remove their traps from the water as soon as possible, but no later than April 24th. Recreational fishermen will still be allowed to use hoop nets and snares. Ryan Bartling is a senior environmental scientist with the CDFW marine region. With five entanglements in about a month and a half, “We are in uncharted territory,” he conceded. Three of the whales were confirmed to have been entangled in California commercial Dungeness crab gear, while the other two were not identifiable, but “the gear is consistent with what could be California commercial Dungeness crab gear,” he said. Anna Neumann is the harbormaster at Noyo Harbor in Fort Bragg. She paid for her masters degree in fishery policy partly by fishing for Dungeness crab. Changes in naturally occurring domoic acid, which doesn’t harm shellfish but is toxic to humans, have shortened many but not all of the crab seasons since 2015. And whale entanglements do appear to be increasing. “There are several theories out there as to why that is,” she reflected. One is that increased reporting means, “We simply have more eyes on the water. We’re looking now, whereas perhaps before we haven’t looked in past years. Or, with a recovering humpback population, “More whales are coming into the gear. Or it could really just be that we’re fishing more heavily, and the entanglements are just a direct increase of the overlap between the whales and the later season periods that are starting to happen as domoic acid is pushing seasons later and then the closures are kind of truncating the season into this very small period of time.” Bartling says new types of gear are being developed to reduce the risk of entanglements, like weak-link technology, that would cause lines to break if whales encounter them. There is also a kind of “ropeless gear,” which does have ropes and buoys. But the gear would be stowed on the ocean floor inside the traps, to be released according to a timer or remote control. Neumann says the biggest problem with ropeless gear is that fishermen rely on surface buoys, which are attached to the traps on the ocean floor with long lines, to let them know where other crews’ traps are. That’s important information, because if crews drop their equipment on a set of gear that’s already set, the two sets of gear could get entangled with each other, causing the loss of expensive assets, litter in the ocean, and traps that continue “ghost fishing.” “Even just tending your gear,” Bartling says, “or day tending, where they go out and set the pots and pull them in before they leave the fishing grounds…would probably help minimize the risk as well.” Neumann added that, “There are other ideas that have been floated through” a Dungeness crab working group that includes crab fishermen and CDFW scientists. Some are as simple as changing the color of the lines, since whales are colorblind to certain colors, and can’t see the blue or pink line used by crab fishermen. In the meantime, Dungeness crab fishing will not start up again until mid-November or early December. Neumann said fishermen based in Noyo Harbor will be doing “a little bit of everything,” depending on what kind of permits they have. She expects some will fish for salmon in California, Oregon, and Washington, bottom fish, go after open-access rockfish, or open-access lingcod and blackcod. “So they’ll all pivot into their respective fisheries,” she predicted. “And it’s really important to realize that the top two fisheries in California are Dungeness crab and market squid,” which isin Southern California, so, “They can’t pivot into the other top California fishery,” she concluded. Meanwhile, conditions for whales are looking up. “Their populations are recovering,” Bartling said. “There’s good foraging opportunity for them right now. There’s a lot of data around anchovies and sardines. The NOAA flight indicated there were some humpbacks foraging for krill at the shelf break. So: good news for whales. I would expect to see more whales beginning to arrive over the next few weeks.”
April 13, 2022 — Ballots for the primary election will be mailed out to voters at the end of this month, and sample ballots are now available at the Mendocino County elections page. The election will be especially lively in the fifth district, where Supervisor Ted Williams is facing challenger John Redding, and a bond measure for the Anderson Valley School District will be decided. Third District Supervisor John Haschak has an opponent in Clay Romero, and Michelle Hutchins, the current Superintendent of Schools, is squaring off against Nicole Glentzer. But many incumbents are facing no opposition, including Sheriff Matt Kendall, District Attorney David Eyster, Assessor-Clerk-Recorder Katrina Bartolomie, and four superior court judges, Ann Moorman, Keith Faulder, Victoria Shanahan, and Cindee Mayfield, all guaranteed six-year terms. Chamise Cubbison is running unopposed for the newly created office of Auditor-controller/Treasurer-tax collector. At a League of Women voters Q&A last night, Bartolomie said that voters can cast ballots at polling places, where they can also sign up for same-day registration, and they can also drop their ballots in drop boxes outside the county building at 501 Low Gap Road in Ukiah, or at the civic center buildings in Ukiah, Willits, Fort Bragg, and Point Arena. There is also a dropbox at the county fairgrounds in Boonville, which is available during office hours. The only ballot measure is Measure M, a proposed $13 million obligation bond for the Anderson Valley School District. The interest cost on the bond is expected to be $9 million. Louise Simson, the Anderson Valley Superintendent, told attendees that the measure requires 55% of the vote to pass. The tax would be $60 per $100,000 of assessed property value. Simson said she has raw sewage coming up onto the playground, leaking roofs, and classrooms with no running water for children to wash their hands. There is still $7 million available from a previous bond called Measure A, but it won’t be available until 2039. Measure M would be a 30-year obligation, but Simson expects that construction could get started fairly quickly. “With the interest rate environment changing, it would probably be a two-series bond,” she said, with the first series most likely coming available in the first year, and significant construction within three years. Property values in Anderson Valley are low, she noted, because of low turnover, but gentrification could add to the taxable property values. Simson is also tapping other sources of state and federal funding, including $40,000 in hardship money for gym heaters. She said she is also eligible for $600,000 for other projects, and she got some covid money to replace air conditioners at the high school. She’ll be offering tours of the campuses in May. Bartolomie laid out the rules for electioneering, observing, and exit polls on the actual day of the election, should people choose to show up at a physical location. Observers can watch the proceedings and ask questions of Bartolomie and the inspectors or judges, but not other poll workers. “They have to sign in, they have a little badge they have to wear, and then they have to sign out when they’re done,” she said. Electioneering, which includes wearing buttons or items of clothing urging voters to make up their minds one way or the other, is forbidden within 100 feet of a polling place. “Up in Willits Community Center, we had someone park a campaign van across the street,” she recalled. “So we had to get out and we had to measure, and they had to move it up the street a little bit. As long as it’s not within 100 feet, they’re okay.” Exit polls after the ballot has been cast are allowed, and voters can always decline to participate. “They just can’t talk to them inside the polling place, asking them how they’re going to vote, or what they’re going to vote for. But that can happen outside,” she specified. “Sometimes the media will come, and they’ll say you know, you voted, do you mind sharing your voting experience…You don’t have to answer, you can say, I’d rather not participate, and you can go on about your business.”
April 12, 2022 — With pandemic restrictions lifting and spring in the air, people are gathering again, planning events both recreational and civic-minded. In Covelo on Saturday, volunteers set up tables in the park outside the library to attract more helpers to their various causes and to drum up enthusiasm for upcoming events like the Big Time and the Blackberry Festival, both of which have been on hiatus for two years. One organization that’s been more active during the pandemic is the food pantry, a program of the Round Valley Indian Health Center. Joel Merrifield, Sr, who is also a tribal councilman, was on the lookout for volunteers to help prepare and distribute the food, and even deliver it to people living off-grid, way out of town. Merrifield estimated that before the pandemic, the food pantry served about 100 families a month, but that in the last two or three years, the number has risen to about 150. “Some people feel like they’re taking away from somebody, but we help break the stigma,” he said. The food pantry moved to the Round Valley Indian Tribe’s Health and Safety complex at 76300 Grange Street in downtown Covelo about 15 months ago. Another organization with a big presence in town is Friends of the Library, represented Saturday by librarian Pat Sobrero. The Friends provide funding for materials and programs, and serve as an umbrella for the Blackberry Festival and local radio station KYBU. “They also own this whole property where the Farmers Market holds their market every Friday afternoon,” she said. “So they do a lot of things for the community.” She added that, “The Friends are largely a fundraising operation that hasn’t done any fundraising for the last two years. So pretty soon, they’ll be starting their fundraising opportunities, and we’re looking for volunteers to help with that.” Charles Sargenti, the presiding officer of the Municipal Advisory Council, was trying to rustle up some interest in local politics. “Our primary function is to advise our supervisor, John Haschak, on issues affecting the valley,” he said; “but we like to do more than that. We like to be a place where residents can come together and talk about issues that are bothering them and brainstorm and try to come up with things to do about them.” The big knotty issue the council is thinking about right now is a water system for the unincorporated town of Covelo, which has sewer service but not water. Without a water system, it’s hard for businesses to rebuild after the fires, because there are no hydrants, no sprinklers, and not enough pressure to make the infrastructure effective if it were available. “So that’s something that I’m really excited about,” Sargenti concluded. The next meeting, at 6 pm on May 4, will be a hybrid in-person zoom affair. Sargenti thinks the pandemic-induced reliance on zoom has had the benefit of allowing people, including representatives of far-away agencies, to attend meetings in a location that has always been remote. But other volunteer-seekers were focused on bringing people together in person for a beloved summer festival behind the flour mill, which has been quiet for the last two years. Marylou Milek was manning a booth for the Round Valley Blackberry Festival, which will be celebrating its 39th year on August 20-21. “We skipped two years, but we counted one of them, because we had a virtual Blackberry Festival on our local radio station, KYBU,” she recalled. Lew Chichester, a de facto representative of most of the above-mentioned organizations, stepped into the local KYBU radio station to share a plug for another much-anticipated in-person event. The local Big Time, organized by Round Valley High School students, is also back after two years of loneliness and covid. Chichester listed the stick games, Native dancers, inspirational and comedic speakers, booths, and food that will be at the high school campus on Friday, April 15, from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm. It is worth the drive, he assured an out-of-towner, adding that, “It’s inspirational, it’s wonderful, it gives me, every once a while, the realization that this is actually a really exciting and cool place to live.”
April 11, 2022 – Libraries are often thought of as places to check out books or engage in a quiet read. However, Mendocino County Libraries provide more than just what can be found on their shelves. Each branch offers well beyond what could be considered traditional library services. Zip Books, WiFi hotspots, 3D printers and California State Park Passes are offered through the library and available to all Mendocino County library patrons.
April 8, 2022 — As drought parches the land and fire season approaches, community groups are trying to figure out how to get more water to quench more fire. In the absence of small natural oases that used to be plentiful, that often means building huge expensive tanks, like the one envisioned by a coalition in the north county. The Leggett Fire Water Project is an effort to build a large steel tank at Tan Oak Park, just off of Highway 101 between Leggett and Laytonville. Jessica Roemer is the Executive Director of Tan Oak Park, which is owned by a non-profit called Families and Friends United by AIDS. The organization bought the park as AIDS was raging around the world. Now, as another pandemic recedes, Roemer is thinking about how the park can be put to service in another pressing crisis.
April 7, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors took on criminal justice, trash, and housing at this week’s meeting, though a hearing to consider a permit to convert a Willits-area motel to apartments was postponed until May third. The board approved a pre-trial pilot program to monitor people who have been booked into jail, can’t afford bail, and are likely to show up to their next court date if they are released from jail. The monitoring would include a range of measures like cell phone reminders about court dates to in-person visits by a probation officer, ankle monitors, and drug testing, so that people who have not yet been tried could stay out of jail. The probation department would receive the one-time state funds of about $406,000 to hire more personnel and buy more equipment, like ankle monitors and computers. The Board already approved three more full time employees for the probation department, and if those hires succeed, the county would have to rely partly on the general fund to pay for their ongoing employment. Mendocino County does not currently have a pre-trial monitoring program, which means that often people who have been arrested wait for their court dates in jail. But last year, the Supreme Court of California decided that the state’s bail system was unconstitutional, because bail is set according to a county schedule according to the crime, rather than the defendant’s record or ability to pay. In 2017, Kenneth Humphrey was arrested in San Francisco for robbing an elderly man of a $5 bottle of cologne. He couldn’t pay his bail, so he spent a year in jail waiting for his court date. A public defender and a civil rights group appealed his case, and now courts are supposed to consider several factors when calculating a defendant’s bail. One is public safety, and another is the arrestee’s ability to pay. Chief Probation Officer Izen Locatelli told the board that the county has had a couple of short-lived pre-trial programs. The most recent, which ended in 2015, included assessments but no monitoring. “Since that time, there’s been no pre-trial release program operating in Mendocino County,” he reported. “And we’re one of about six or seven counties that have no type of operating pre-trial program.” Present release options include field citations, where the person cited is not actually taken to jail but is expected to appear. Arrestees can also be released from jail if they promise to appear. Most commonly, people post bail. They can also be set free on their own recognizance at an arraignment. “You’re not monitored, you’re not supervised, you’re out on your own recognizance, and you’re supposed to follow the terms set by the court as you go through the proceedings,” he elaborated. Locatelli can’t say for sure how many people would participate in the program, though he estimated it could be 40-60. And he told Supervisor Glenn McGourty the current criteria for assessing defendants is ambiguous. “The candidate that you’re looking for is somebody with a minimal prior history of criminal conduct, but they’ve committed a felony,” he said. “The court essentially brings the person before them at arraignment and tries to make decisions on whether they should be released or not. Those decisions are made on the fly, a gut instinctual feeling. There’s no assessment that they’re looking at. They don’t have any criminality studies except for what the DA has at that time. So this assessment, which is on a validated assessment tool, would give the court a better understanding if they should be released or not on pre-trial. You know, $20,000 bail might be impossible for someone to afford, if they don’t have a job. So you want somebody who’s going to be released from custody, they’re essentially being taken care of by the county, there’s less liability, they’re back in the community potentially going back to work and contributing while they go through the court process. But you also don’t want to release them with no supervision, monitoring expectation, terms. That also doesn’t warrant public safety.” The board approved a memorandum of understanding with the courts to implement the program through June of 2024, and authorized the probation department to receive the funds from the state. Interim CEO Darcie Antle said the executive office is starting to prepare the budget this week, and will present details at a supervisors’ workshop on April 19.
On May 3, the board will hold a hearing regarding an appeal of a minor use permit to convert the former White Deer Lodge motel into 21 units of affordable housing. The property, just south of Willits at the top of the grade, is owned by the Church of the Golden Rule. Julia Krog of Planning and Building signed an initial study last month, declaring the department’s intention to prepare a negative declaration for the project. But Joe Cooper of Redwood Valley appealed the categorical CEQA exemption, arguing that there is no proof of adequate water supply, the project does not comply with seismic laws, and that there is no proper assurance that the proposal is an affordable housing project. Proper notice was not established this week.
And the board formed an ad hoc committee composed of Supervisors Maureen Mulheren and Dan Gjerde to form a pilot program to clean up illegal dumping, including issuing vouchers to people to cover their dump fees. MendoRecycle, which has a website where residents can pinpoint the location of illegal trash, is currently looking for a new General Manager. According to a presentation attached to the agenda, the agency plans to start working again with the jail and the probation department to clean up illegal dump sites.
April 6, 2022 — As the county faces the possibility of a multi-million dollar shortfall, the Board of Supervisors gave the go-ahead to the assessor’s office to devise a program to assess taxes — but not penalties, on unpermitted structures that are not currently on the tax rolls. The Board also approved a program to grant hiring bonuses up to $20,000 for the sheriff’s department. Supervisors agreed to amend the local tobacco retail ordinance to expand the prohibition on flavored tobacco products to include menthol cigarettes. And residents on three miles each of Spy Rock and Bell Springs Road can expect chip seal over the next five years, rather than dust-off. Supervisor Ted Williams, who sponsored the item about updating the tax rolls, invited Redhawk Pallesen to share his research into properties that have been assessed far below value and which he believes are shortchanging the county’s coffers. Pallesen said he had used publicly available data to calculate that approximately 3,000 homes in the county are unpermitted. “Using current tax rates, this means that there’s about fifteen million dollars annually in lost revenue for the county,” he reported. Palleson said the census, which requires a physical address, only counted two of the approximately thirty homes on his road. He then expanded the search to about a mile and a half of his property, which he reported resulted in 47 unpermitted residences, 39 of which included unpermitted cannabis operations. He did not include other improvements that would have enhanced the assessed value of the property. Assessor/clerk/recorder Katrina Bartolomie told the board that her office does not share its findings with Planning and Building, and that adding structures to the tax rolls would not trigger code enforcement action due to a lack of permits. She also stated that her office would only use a satellite system if it was impossible to gain information about the property any other way. Ron Edwards was skeptical. “I really need to call foul on this one,” he said, pointing out the lack of any attachments to the presentation that would have provided some detail in writing to the public. “This really should be an education program,” he went on, adding that many people don’t realize that their ability to finance their property is dependent on the structures being legal. “You know, you are opening this up, with the cannabis program, to see what the unintended consequences are when you go down this road. And it’s just going to be horrendous.” The board agreed to ask Bartolomie and the Executive Office to come up with a plan to assess the properties and collect taxes on them, but, as Bartolomie noted, “We can’t move forward on this at all until we have staffing.” Bartolomie has had one applicant for the position of assessor’s aide, and is trying to bring up her clerical staff, as well.
The sheriff’s office is also attempting to solve its staffing shortage. Pending a formal meet and confer with the county’s labor negotiator, the board agreed to allow Sheriff Matt Kendall to offer a $7,000 signing bonus to recruits who paid their own way through the police academy, and a $20,000 bonus to full-fledged law enforcement professionals coming into the department from another agency. Kendall told the board that he recently lost a deputy who left the department for higher pay elsewhere. He told Supervisor Dan Gjerde that an initial meeting with law enforcement groups indicated that the view of his proposal was favorable. “If we approve this, is this going to create morale problems?” Gjerde asked, wondering if long-time deputies would resent newcomers for getting a bonus while they get nothing extra. Kendall told him that his undersheriff had met with the Deputy Sheriffs Association and the Law Enforcement Managers Association and was told that “they were not upset about it, because it would help them get their days off.” If the proposal meets the approval of the labor negotiator, Kendall will try to attract more deputies and report back to the board in a year.
Sheriff’s deputies will be authorized to enforce the amended tobacco retail ordinance, which is cracking down on flavored tobacco, including menthol cigarettes. The tobacco prevention program of Public Health is also working with the cities to ban flavored cigarettes, citing studies that prove flavors increase addiction among young people. Supervisor Maureen Mulheren supported the amendment, but said she thought it didn’t go quite far enough to solve the problem. “We are not focusing enough on the reasons why people choose to smoke in the first place,” she said, raising the issue of people using substances to alleviate depression, anxiety, and other mental health problems. She also pointed out that it’s possible to order tobacco products online, and that neighboring counties do not ban menthol. “WIthout a united front, people can simply go to another location to purchase products,” she said. But, in views of an anticipated federal ban on menthol, she concluded, “Hopefully that will help solve some of the problem of crossing jurisdictional lines.” Williams supported the amendment, too, though he said he shared some of Mulheren’s concerns and hoped she would help clarify how to report outcomes. “You look at countries that have decriminalized drugs and you see a drop in drug use,” he mused, acknowledging that, “The difference is street drugs aren’t backed by advertising and marketing firms that you see in corporate tobacco. So it’s not completely apples to apples. But I would like to track to see what positive effect do we see from this change. Where is it falling short, and what are the logical next steps, based on those findings?”
April 5, 2022 — A new alliance of environmentalists, fire departments, and landowners in northern Mendocino county is seeking to make forest resilience a priority for changes in the climate, economy, and social structure. About fifty people showed up at the kickoff event for the Northern Mendocino Ecosystem Recovery Alliance at Tan Oak Park in Leggett on Sunday. Kerry Reynolds is the Organizational Development Director for the Trees Foundation, which is the fiscal sponsor of the new Alliance. She notes that a lot more state money has recently become available to forest health projects, now that heavily populated areas are suffering the impacts of wildfires.“The funding is available,” she noted. “Finally. Even the Bay Area was having that total smoke-out and red skies, so there’s no place in California that’s not impacted by wildfires, obviously.” Will Emerson is the chief of the Bell Springs Fire Department and chairman of the board of the new Alliance. Prescribed fire will be a big part of the strategy to prevent raging infernos. Emerson says he hopes restoring the health of the forest will also provide paid work for his volunteers. “Firefighters are realizing that every time they put out a fire, they’re creating a debt,” he explained; “that really, the land needs to burn at some point, but you don’t want it burning in August when it’s a hundred degrees and the wind’s blowing. So, better to burn in the winter. All these forests are adapted to fire, if we let them. And all the suppression that’s happened in the last hundred years has just meant that there’s this huge buildup of fuel, and we’re paying the price now…we formed this organization around the three local volunteer departments of Piercy, Leggett and Bell Springs. Fire departments, especially volunteer fire departments, are great community organizations. It’s like our community is centered around them.” During the morning session, Emerson told the group that he can “hear the air hissing out of the bubble” that has sustained the economy of the Emerald Triangle. “People are going to have to find other work besides growing,” he acknowledged. “And it’s probably going to mean more work and less money. But it’s good work. There’s these mutual problems of an overgrown forest, climate change, and a weakened economy. So let’s combine them, and get people working in the forest, making it healthier.” Michael Furniss, of Cal Poly Humboldt, agrees. “We’ve been talking about the need for fuel treatments for decades, but there’s never been any money for it,” he began. “A little bit here and there, but nothing that scales with the problem. And now, after these big fires and really terrible fire seasons the last few years, and cities burning up and the Bay Area getting smoked out, the money is now flowing, big time. So it’s a new day. It’s a time when there’s going to be a whole industry here of building fire resistance and resilience in these forested communities.” As a soil scientist, Furniss does advocate low-level broadcast burns to reduce the excessive buildup of fine fuels, but he encourages less burning and more sequestration to improve the health of the soil and, ultimately, the forest. “Any kind of logging, especially the thinning that everybody wants to see now, and these fire resilience treatments, you generate a lot of slash, a lot of excess wood,” he observed; “and what are you going to do with it? In terms of climate, we want to limit the amount of greenhouse gasses that go into the atmosphere. It’s really important, even though these are not from fossil fuels, they’re carbon dioxide, there’s some methane, there’s black carbon, which is really bad for atmospheric heating, so to the extent to which we can sequester that carbon, in biochar or in chips that we just spread around the forest floor…and that’s not what we typically do. We pile it up and burn it. And it just goes away. Look, the pile’s gone! But it’s not gone. It’s in our atmosphere now, and we’ve recognized that to be a big problem for humanity; for the whole globe, really, and everything that lives here.” He acknowledged that, while careful seasonal burning is useful for keeping down excessive buildup of fine fuels, it is possible to overdo it and decrease forest productivity. “But the main problem with that is if you keep doing it,” he cautioned. “And if we do it just in small areas, in these shaded fuel breaks, it’s probably worthwhile. But if you continue to clean off the forest floor with this duff and fine woody material you get a longtime decrease in soil productivity…The key thing, though, for these little creatures that run the world, is to leave some large wood in place. And those are biological oases.” Fire suppression will still be part of the equation, though. Emerson said his department just got a grant from the Mendocino County Firesafe Council to buy three 2,500 gallon water tanks, which he plans to install at strategic points along Bell Springs Road. And Jessica Roemer, the Executive Director of Tan Oak Park, said the Leggett Fire Water Project has raised about a third of the anticipated $115,000 it will take to install a 62,000 gallon water tank at the park. “We used to have drafting pools along the rivers and other places to get water,” she recalled. “They’re no longer in existence. We’re eight and a half miles south of Leggett, fourteen miles north of Laytonville, and this will be the only water source for several miles around Highway 101. With that amount of water, it can fill up either twenty 3,000-gallon tankers, or 120 attack units. And for initially knocking a fire down that’s close to the highway, having water available might be the difference between saving all of our communities and not having them.”
April 4, 2022 — As PG&E’s tree-cutting crews move into more neighborhoods, some property owners are slowly starting to think in terms of an organized response. But the enhanced vegetation management program, with its multitude of contractors and the lack of education or publicly available documents, is bewildering to most landowners. Lauren Robertson is a resident of Pine Mountain in Willits. She described the approach she’s seen in her neighborhood. “PG&E has been masterful at dealing with people individually,” she opined; “doing favors for some property owners. And as soon as they do a favor for a property owner, that property owner is suddenly not mad anymore. And that’s a little disturbing.” Robertson is scrupulous about hardening her property for fire safety. “We could bury our houses also, and that would prevent fires from burning our houses down,” she reasoned. “But we’ve hardened our houses. And I think that’s what PG&E is not doing. They’re not hardening their lines. Or hardening their infrastructure by cutting down trees.” A recent report by acting State Auditor Michael Tilden blasted the privately owned utilities and the agencies that are supposed to regulate them. Tilden wrote that the Energy Safety Office, which is part of the California Natural Resources Agency, approved PG&E’s 2021 safety plan, in spite of its own review, which “found that the utility failed to demonstrate that it was properly prioritizing other mitigation activities, particularly power line replacement and system hardening efforts,” like insulating bare cable in high-risk areas. Tilden added that, “The CPUC does not consistently audit all areas in the utilities’ service territories, it did not audit several areas that include high fire-threat areas, and it does not use its authority to penalize utilities when its audits uncover violations.” “There’s no authority that can tell them what to do. They can just do whatever they want,” according to Walter Smith, a former logger who turned his attention to international deforestation prevention efforts in the 1990’s. “We all know that corporate power is a problem. And now it’s right in our face.” Smith was also instrumental in starting the Mendocino County Climate Advisory Committee in 2019. For the past month, he’s been spending three or four hours a day researching the public resource code, making phone calls, and sharing his findings with an email list that includes dozens of environmentalists and political representatives in Mendocino and Humboldt counties. So far, he’s succeeded in keeping crews out of an old-growth grove that’s especially important in a millennial drought. “This whole hill was left as old growth,” he said on a recent afternoon, as he led a reporter into the deep, cool shade of the grove. “Because underneath, at the bottom of this hill, is an underground river, which we get our water from, and all these houses get their water off of that same one. The old-timers knew to protect the water, you gotta keep shade on it, and you gotta keep the old-growth trees on it.” Smith is especially perturbed by the damage that was done to an old madrone, when crews felled a tree from his neighbor’s property into the grove, tearing limbs from the old struggling hardwood and leaving debris from the felled firs all over the forest floor. “This tree, in terms of this neighborhood, is a heritage tree,” Walter related. He said neighborhood kids used to sit high in its branches and feel like they were “at the top of the world,” or swing out over the underground river on a rope swing. “So this old tree meant something, other than just being an old tree in the forest,” he concluded. “It was a home base, if you will, for children on this hill.” Marie Jones is the chair of the Mendocino County Climate Advisory Committee, which recently drafted a letter imploring the Board of Supervisors to petition the Governor and the Office of Energy and Infrastructure Safety to call a halt to the program long enough to get some answers, “on a range of issues,” she began. “So one is, what are landowners’ rights regarding tree removal? A lot of people don’t realize, but landowners can actually say, no you can’t remove these trees from my property. And also, if PG&E’s tree removal results in significant devaluation of your property, you can actually require PG&E to pay for that devaluation. We’re also very concerned about whether or not there really is a scientific basis for tree removal. I think it’s an easy fix for PG&E because it’s relatively inexpensive compared to upgrading their systems. But in the long term, it’s also very ineffective, because it does increase the fire risk, rather than reducing it.” The organized response is slow-moving and small-scale. But Randy MacDonald of Pine Mountain is holding out until he gets the documents and contracts and signatures he expects from any serious, legitimate project. “They have not been able to provide that,” he reported. “Now it’s been two weeks, and I said, get back to me when you have all the paperwork. And they have not gotten back to me, and I’m just getting more and more educated here.” On Thrusday afternoon, MacDonald’s neighbor Bobbi Mallace sat on her porch looking at what remains of the trees that used to shade her home and provide privacy from the road. “Obviously, we can’t move it,” she said. “So we’re dependent on PG&E, which tells us they’re going to pick it up. If they pick it up, great. If they don’t pick it up, it’s going to stay there and become a fire hazard…I don’t feel safer.” Asked if she thought there was any kind of legal response, Mallace said the only one she could come up with was a class-action suit. But “you’ve got to have a class,” she pointed out. “Because fighting PG&E has got to be a pretty big class. Alone, I don’t think you could do a thing.”
March 31, 2022 — Ukiah was rocked by two murders in six days, less than a half a mile apart. Both victims and both suspects were mentally ill, homeless, or both. Now Redwood Quality Management Company, which oversees the county’s mental healthcare contracts, is planning a 16-bed Medi-Cal certified mental health rehabilitation center for the acutely mentally ill, a block from the critical residential treatment facility, which is fully built but not yet serving clients. Camille Schraeder, the Chief Programs Officer for RQMC, thinks the Medi-Cal funded center, which she hopes to open in late 2024, will free up more money that the county can use for other mental healthcare services. That’s because the county uses state realignment funds as a 40% match for Medi-Cal payments. So if patients are sent to facilities that are not Medi-Cal certified, the county has to pay the whole cost with realignment money. Schraeder reasons that if patients go to a facility that is Medi-Cal certified, the county will save 60% of its realignment allocation. She’s applied for a state grant she hopes will cover some of the construction costs. She says she’s building from scratch for a few reasons. “An MHRC (mental health rehabilitation center) is a 16-bed residential treatment facility that has intensive nursing and psychiatry. That’s what it has,” she explained. “We wanted it to be co-located with the medication, psychiatry, and therapy outpatient clinic as well as intensive substance abuse. So first and foremost, we need to have it do both. The clinic, and the MHRC. Secondly, we didn’t want to do what has previously been highly criticized in our community, which is to put something that is that intensive, with 16 mentally ill clients, on State Street.” In the meantime, the county psychiatric health facility, the critical residential treatment center, the rehabilitation center, and the new jail for mentally ill inmates are all in some stage of preparation, though none is available yet. They are all in Ukiah, which is in Supervisor Maureen Mulheren’s district. She listed four teams of outreach workers striving to engage mentally ill homeless people. She also pointed to the county’s success in getting people off the streets and into assisted living in Live Oak apartments, the former Best Western hotel, where residents receive a wide variety of social services. But she described an impasse. In spite of what she described as the county and its partners doing “an incredible job” of providing services to people who are ready, she said, “We have people on the streets that are not ready to accept services. And one of the biggest challenges is of course the laws in California. It’s not illegal to be homeless. It’s certainly not illegal to have mental health issues. But there’s not an opportunity then to get people into the services that might help them get out of their situation and off of the streets.” Schraeder thinks the proposed rehabilitation center could be part of the solution —though housing and staff are key components that will have to come together, too. She foresees referrals from the critical residential treatment facility, where people would stay for short-term crises. But she believes some others may be candidates for a temporary conservatorship — or court-ordered treatment, if Newsom’s proposal for CARE courts meets with the approval of the Legislature. “They really need longer term treatment to address their mental health disorder or their intensive substance abuse disorder,” she began, describing what she sees as potential clients for the rehabilitation center. “At that point, they would ask for a temporary conservatorship…once they were conserved, the public guardian would consider placing them at Anchor Health Rehab Center,” where residents would receive intensive case management, psychiatry, and board and care supervision. “Engagement is the piece,” she declared. Referring to the stabbing in the parking lot near the county’s Social Services building and Wells Fargo bank in Ukiah, she said, “Clearly everybody must have been trying to engage, must have been trying to get (the suspect) into care, and in America, you have free will.” If the Governor’s CARE courts proposal becomes law, local courts will be able to compel people who are severely mentally ill into treatment plans. It builds on Newsom’s $12 billion housing investments, but oversight, court costs, and other elements will need new state funding. The laist reported that the ACLU has raised concerns about the possibility of civil rights violations if people are forced into treatment. Mulheren has some local historical context. “I was just a child when the facility in Talmage was closed,” she recalled, referencing the Mendocino State Asylum for the Insane, now the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. “I hear a lot of people talking about this pendulum that has swung, especially in the state of California, where we were housing vulnerable individuals, we were not treating them humanely, and we took this initiative where people should not be forced to live in conditions such as that. And they were released and the funding was set aside and used for other things, and I think that what we see as a state, certainly what Governor Newsom has recognized, is that the people that we have the most safety concerns about are not left to the streets. I think it’s time for the pendulum to swing back.” One thing is sure, Mulheren concluded: “The way that we have been doing things is not working. So we really need to figure out how we work together. How we shift.”
March 30, 2022 — ruth weiss, Queen of the Beats, always had a special connection to the majestic trees on her property at the end of the Albion ridge. Before her death, she crafted a conservation easement with the Mendocino Land Trust to protect those trees in perpetuity. We’ll hear from ruth weiss herself, reciting some of the poetry she composed in the company of her beloved trees, and Amy Wolitzer of the Mendocino Land Trust, describing the property, the trees, and the specifics of the easement.
March 29, 2022 — On April first of last year, four Ukiah police officers beat a naked, mentally ill man on South State Street, inflicting 54 punches, four knee strikes, and a kick to the head. Officers emptied an entire can of pepper spray in Gerardo Magdaleno’s face and deployed their tasers four times. The incident was captured on multiple bystander videos. It was also recorded by a body camera worn by one officer and a dash camera in another officer’s car. Those videos were released in December. Earlier this month, the city announced that an independent investigation had “concluded that there is no sustained finding that Ukiah PD actions violated the Department’s use of force policy.” Now the case has been settled for $ 211,000 plus attorneys’ fees of approximately $92,500, according to Magdaleno’s attorney, Izaak Schwaiger. The case is now dismissed, and Schwaiger added that “The City has not indicated it will change any of its practices or policies.” But new Police Chief Noble Waidelich says there have already been changes to the department’s ability to respond to mental health crises, and he’s planning further trainings to better prepare officers for encounters with mentally ill people. The city and county share a mobile crisis team that currently has two crisis workers and is available seven days a week. As of mid-February, the team had responded to fourteen calls within city limits. An internationally recognized criminologist specializing in autism in the criminal justice system is offering a seminar for first responders next month. That’s through the Redwood Coast Regional Center, best known locally for providing services to families and schools for children on the autism spectrum. But in the days after the beating, the police department lost credibility with some members of the community. Justin Wyatt, the chief at the time, posted a brief Facebook video and did not grant interviews about the matter. A police department press release characterized the taser deployments and multiple bursts of pepper spray as “hands-off measures,” stating that they were ineffective and that “The Officers then attempted to gain compliance by delivering numerous distraction strikes to the suspect’s head.” One man who marched in support of Magdaleno and against police violence last year expressed his disgust. “That was pretty offensive,” he said. “You could look at it and understand exactly what they’re doing…it sounds like something made up to justify police looking for an excuse to punch the man in the face. Waidelich is not at liberty to discuss the investigation into the Magdaleno case, but he insists his department is looking ahead. In an interview last week, he called for a culture shift and talked about what he’s doing to get there. “I think this comes back to the crux of where we need to go as law enforcement as a whole,” he reflected; “which is treating people like human beings, treating them like people. Back to the Magdaleno matter, just taking time. Since that incident, we’ve partnered with mobile crisis, so now we have the ability to have mobile crisis workers respond. We’re also working with the county to set up a program called Heads Up. Basically, what the plan there would be is as our officers become better prepared to identify people in mental crisis or even chronic homelessnes, we’re going to have a referral program that we can refer that person to the county and allow the experts, the people who have the better training to determine what service provider could best go out and engage that person.” As far as the concept of a public safety oversight committee, Waidelich declared that, “That doesn’t necessarily scare me. I would say, well, let’s review models for small agencies and how those work. Along the lines of our equity and diversity committee, if we can demonstrate to those people the work that we’re doing and the value in it, that only goes to my aid, in terms of credibility in the community.” Waidelich said he’s working on gathering letters from community groups and the city manager to implement a training called Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement, or ABLE, which is designed to teach officers to intervene when they see a peer or even a superior engaged in misconduct. He’s also introduced a voluntary special considerations form, which therapists or loved ones can submit to the department on behalf of someone with a behavioral health diagnosis. He hopes this will give officers a heads up when they are dispatched to a situation involving a mental health crisis. “They could outline the person’s information and then whatever things we should be concerned about, whether that’s wandering or maybe hostility towards law enforcement, and then we’re goin to retain these and track those with the address of the person. So if we went to 123 Main Street and John Doe was there, it would trigger in dispatch an alert to this form and potentially give the officer a little bit more information about what they might be dealing with,” he explained. The form is for department use only, so the information would not be made public. He plans to debut it as soon as the form is translated into Spanish. LIke law enforcement departments nationwide, Ukiah struggles with recruitment and retention. About half the force has been hired since 2018. Still, there are legacy problems. Kevin Murray, a former officer charged with multiple sex crimes, is set to go on trial in mid-May. In the meantime, Waidelich hopes his efforts will keep violence off the force, rebuild community trust, and save the city from further hefty payouts.
March 28, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors and County Counsel cross-examined two principals of a former mental healthcare contractor last week in hopes of learning how to lay hands on documents the county needs to satisfy a state audit. The county is obliged to provide specialty mental healthcare to Medi-Cal patients, which it does using state realignment money as a 40% match for federal Medi-Cal funds that are distributed by the state. Last year, the county received about $9.5 million in realignment money, approximately three million of which was used for conservatorships. It’s possible the state could withhold realignment money if the county can’t produce records to show that mental healthcare rendered almost ten years ago was billable according to state specifications, which could deprive the county of some of the match it needs to get Medi-Cal money. But the records were shredded two years ago, and the deadline to file legal action against the contractor is fast approaching. Last week’s cross-examination was conducted under a legislative subpoena, which compelled testimony about who else might have copies of those records, including subcontractors and the county itself. From 2013-2016, a contractor called Ortner Management Group provided oversight of contracts for mental healthcare for the county’s adult Medi-Cal patients. The mental health director at the time, Tom Pinizzotto, had previously been a member of Ortner. Pinizzotto’s connection to the group led to a 2014 Grand Jury report into the appearance of a conflict of interest, but stopped short at asserting that he had actually used insider information for his own benefit. Ortner and Pinizzotto both stepped down from working with the county in 2016. Ortner Management Group, or OMG, has since dissolved. However, at last week’s hearing, former CEO Tom Ortner and former CFO Melissa Lance, who used the name Melissa Callicott during the group’s years with the county, were represented by the same attorney, Dominic Signorotti of Walnut Creek. Ortner and Lance testified that records were kept in Quickbooks and on computers they no longer have, then printed out and shredded. Contracts with providers, according to Ortner, were documented on paper and kept in three-ring binders, which he shared with the county. Ortner had a suggestion for County Counsel Christian Curtis when asked where he would look if he were to attempt to reconstruct the general ledger, or the master accounting documents. “If I were to do something like that, I’d ask the county for their information,” he said. Former CFO Lance testified about how the company kept track of other aspects of the business during the three years it worked with the county, saying she recalled preparing cost reports for subcontractors but not for OMG itself. Asked if anyone at OMG prepared financial records for the purposes of Medi-Cal compliance, she said “No,” and added that OMG also did not have a contractor who performed that work. “We were provided Gary Ernst from the county to assist with the preparation of the cost reports,” she testified. After the testimony, Curtis told kzyx that Medi-Cal requires that records be maintained for ten years after the audit is completed. Since the state has not yet commenced its 2013 audit of the county’s mental healthcare billing, the clock hasn’t even started. There is a point of debate if Ortner was obliged to maintain records after the company dissolved. Curtis did advise the board that the period of time within which the county can take legal action against the company expires in June, but it’s unclear exactly what the legal remedy would be. It’s also unclear exactly what consequences the county would face if it fails to provide the documents, in terms of financial losses or its ability to provide mental healthcare using state and federal money. Supervisor Dan Gjerde, who was the only supervisor on the board at the time Ortner was hired, questioned Lance about her testimony regarding the company’s lack of expertise in billing for Medi-Cal. He said that the main reason the county hired Ortner to provide contract oversight was that in previous years, the state had found millions of dollars in audit exceptions due to improper documentation. “So I was really surprised to hear earlier in your testimony that you as the Chief Financial Officer of the company did not have expertise in Medi-Cal billing but were relying on one or two county employees,” he said. “Were there other people working for Ortner that were in fact guaranteeing that the billing provided to the state was not going to be subject to a negative audit exception?” Signorotti interjected to say that the question was argumentative and that it misstated Lance’s testimony. “What I understood is that I was to report all of the billing to the county fiscal clerks,” Lance clarified. “And I did that in the format that they requested, accurate and complete, and then they took that information and they billed Medi-Cal directly. The county fiscal people, not OMG. We provided all the details in the billing format that they requested, and they billed Medi-Cal. So we had no control over what they billed.” Curtis said he did think some of the information obtained in the subpoena was useful, and declined to comment on the county’s intentions regarding further legal action.
The Intertribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council is an association of ten Native American Tribes from Northern California that aims to reclaim, steward, and restore ancestral lands and waters in northern California. Founded by Mendocino and Lake County tribes in 1986, the Council is the first-ever intertribal land protection organization.
Judy Leach, President of the Adventist Health Hospital in Fort Bragg, explains ongoing improvements to the patient record system and why it matters; discusses staffing concerns and the impact the pandemic has had on the transition from a public to private hospital.
Judy Leach, President of the Adventist Health Hospital in Fort Bragg, explains ongoing improvements to the patient record system and why it matters; discusses staffing concerns and the impact the pandemic has had on the transition from a public to private hospital.
Additional subjects in the full-length interview include insurance access for the coastal area, and entry level job openings as well as Judy’s thoughts on Sherwood Oaks, Fort Bragg's only nursing home.
March 21, 2022 — Today is the first day on the job for interim CEO Darcie Antle, whose one-year contract for salary and benefits totaling $338,000 was approved unanimously at last week’s Board of Supervisors meeting. Former CEO Carmel Angelo’s last day on the job was Friday. The board also discussed crafting an ordinance or revitalizing existing rules to regulate water hauling in a way that would ideally curtail diverting water to illegal pot grows while not preventing access to drinking water. And, in an effort to transition away from fossil fuels, the board agreed to start the process for a pilot program to enter a master equity lease plan with Enterprise Fleet Management to replace some of the 55 vehicles in the Social Services Department with hybrids by next year. Staff analysis projects a savings of about a million and a half dollars over the next ten years. Twenty-three of the department’s vehicles are currently eligible for the new lease program, which will consider hybrid options whenever possible. The final draft of the plan is expected by July of this year. The board has directed staff to transition to an all-electric fleet, but more charging stations will be necessary to run all of the county’s nearly 400 vehicles on electricity instead of fuel. At this time, the county government has installed three charging stations with four working chargers at two locations. According to the staff report accompanying the item, it cost $36,000 to install two stations at the jail, both of which are expected to be out of commission for most of next year as construction on the new jail gets underway. The third station, at the crisis residential treatment center in Ukiah, cost about $20,000. Yearly maintenance and data storage at each station is estimated at about $3000. County staff estimates that it would take three to five years to have charging stations at all county offices. Water was also top of mind. Tomorrow’s forecasts for inland Mendocino County are creeping into the eighties, hinting rather broadly at a long, hot, dry summer. Supervisors John Haschak and Glenn McGourty, who are on the drought task force, agreed to form an ad hoc committee dedicated to figuring out how to re-establish a stand-alone water agency. Supervisor Ted Williams emphasized the main lesson from the morning’s budget presentation. “There’s no way to bring this back without a funding plan,” he pointed out. “And I think today we have negative general fund…and you could either propose making some cuts, adding an assessment or a tax, or finding another creative means to source revenue. But I think that the logical next step is, before we can say yes, we need to see where the money is going to come from.” The board agreed to add members to a steering committee to work out how to fund the agency McGourty and Haschak also presented the outlines of an idea to regulate water hauling, a water policy that Haschak explained residents of Covelo and Redwood Valley especially have been calling for. “We’ve heard about these water trucks going at all times of the day, all times of the night,” he reminded his colleagues. “Extracting from sometimes legal sources, sometimes illegal sources, but a lot of times, it’s just unregulated.” The county already has ordinances regulating water extraction and the sale of drinking water. McGourty proposed requiring water sellers to meter their wells and document water sales. Haschak also suggested hefty fines for violations, starting with $1000 for the first violation and climbing to $5000 after three violations. “Because we want to make it so people don’t just say it’s the cost of doing business and continue on,” he explained. Howard Dashiell, the director of the county dept of transportation, assured the board that there is enough money left over from last year’s state grant to haul residential drinking water from Ukiah to Fort Bragg. Private haulers can then carry it to other communities on the coast. State-funded water haulers have to adhere to strict permitting standards. But Williams worried that even enforcing the ordinances that are already on the books could prevent children in his district from having enough water to practice proper oral hygiene. “We may put drinking water companies under,” he opined. “On the coast last year, we had water hauled from inland. I feel pretty bad about the line items for that. It was expensive. And I feel bad about the carbon footprint of hauling water across the county. This year, fuel prices may be double, and we may be looking at more wells going dry…I think what you’re proposing may fix some illicit cannabis nuisance problems in Covelo, but may punish Comptche...I know everybody should be following the books and have a well and maybe a use permit and so forth, (the) reality is that’s not where we’re at. We probably have a lot of water hauling, in the millions of gallons, that’s keeping kids brushing their teeth with drinking water, that could be impeded by this effort.” Environmental activist Ellen Drell called in to say that she is part of a group drafting a proposed ordinance that she believes will address potential groundwater overdrafts, and urged the board to hold off on making a decision right away. The board agreed that the ad hoc committee should talk it over with more members of the community, including farmers, growers, and environmentalists, before making another proposal.
March 17, 2022 — As of last week, Sherwood Oaks, the only nursing home on the coast, is under new ownership. The buyers, Lucy Xie and Ronald Baldwin, are also the owners of two licensed nursing homes in Hayward, Serenethos Care Center and Saint Anthony Care Center. Although Sherwood Oaks has a license for almost 80 beds, over the past year, the pandemic, a million and a half dollars’ worth of deferred building maintenance, and a national shortage of nurses caught up to it. The facility now has enough staff to care for 32 residents. In the middle of December, Dr. William Miller, the Chief of Staff at Adventist Health Mendocino Coast, laid out three levels of crisis and told the board of the Mendocino Coast Healthcare District that without emergency staffing, the facility could close by the first of the year. New owner Lucy Xie, who is also an RN, said she found out about Sherwood Oaks by reading the Miller Report, Dr. Miller’s regular column on local healthcare. She and her husband talked to some people they knew in the industry, took a trip to Fort Bragg, and decided within just three days to purchase the nursing home. Earlier this week, she said she had already addressed procedural deficiencies at the facility and is planning to upgrade the kitchen as the first of many projects to improve the building. She’s confident that she’ll have the building’s deferred maintenance projects completed by the end of the year. She added she faced similar challenges when she took over the other two nursing homes, but now, with a national shortage of nurses, the biggest hurdle will be hiring staff.
March 16, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously yesterday to open the chambers to the public on April 19. Remote attendance will continue to be an option, and masking and social distancing will be implemented. Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren pointed out that Mendocino County is now a low-transmission community, with mask mandates lifted at schools and hospital beds now widely available. But Interim CEO Darcie Antle opened her quarterly budget report with covid at the top of a long list of why the county is suffering a multi-million dollar deficit.
March 15, 2022 — Outgoing CEO Carmel Angelo received accolades from colleagues at the county, state, and congressional levels, as well as some criticism from local gadflies, at her send-off in this morning’s Board of Supervisors meeting. And an agreement with Redwood Community Services to operate the Critical Residential Treatment mental healthcare facility in Ukiah passed narrowly, with Supervisors Glenn McGourty and John Haschak dissenting.
Ukiah High School Sophomore Cat Karpov Kinrad and twenty other teens participate in the Restorative Justice Youth Council, a newly implemented program sponsored, in partnership, by Mendocino’s Juvenile Probation Office and the Arbor of Redwood Community Services. The Restorative Justice Youth Council is a youth driven program designed to repair the harm caused to all individuals in juvenile crime by encouraging open communication between justice-involved youths and victims, and holding conflicted youths accountable for their actions. It keeps kids out of the parole system and positively connects them to their communities.
The 2022 Whale Festival March 12 – April 3, sponsored by the Noyo Center for Marine Science, has a mixture of events that will please families, the science minded and those looking for a little adventure this Spring. Sue Coulter talks about the upcoming activities and gives us some insight into their expansion plans at Noyo Harbor.
A life well lived was enjoyed by Ukiah’s accomplished artist Adele Pruitt, who died late last month at the age of 99. An accomplished painter, art teacher, conservator, restorer, and educational reformer, Pruitt was a respected member of the Mendocino art community whose impressive breadth of work and accomplishments merit recognition. Jayed Scotti, Pruitt’s longtime student and co-worker, remarks on the qualities that made Pruitt a remarkable individual.
March 8, 2022—Anna Neumann is well known along the coast for her many leadership roles in the fishing industry. She has taken on a new role as harbormaster at the Noyo Harbor. In this interview she explains the role and challenges of being a harbormaster, how the harbor is funded and her plans for the future.
Mendocino County Public Broadcasting Board President Tom Dow talks with General Manager Marty Durlin about how the station made the decision to purchase a new home, and how how the property at 390 West Clay Street was chosen and financed. This is the first in a series of KZYX Building Reports.
March 7, 2022 — The county indoor mask mandate is now a strong recommendation, though the most recent health order consists largely of reasons residents should follow Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren’s advice to continue masking in indoor spaces. Businesses are still authorized to request that patrons mask up, and Coren expressed confidence in the community’s judgment after years of education about maintaining the health of the people around them. People do appear to have taken more responsibility for their own testing, which has led to fewer publicly available data points. But Coren stressed that he believes that local hospitals are now less likely to be overwhelmed by covid patients. Schools continue to follow the advice of the California Department of Public Health and the Department of Education, and are not expected to change their masking policy until the fourteenth.
March 3, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors took up a full slate of cannabis issues at its March 2 special meeting, including fallowing, the tax code, an appeals process for application denials, and the proper uses of a seventeen and a half million dollar state grant, which is supposed to help local growers secure annual state licenses. Supervisors directed County Counsel and cannabis program staff to look into what it would take for growers to take a leave of absence from cultivating, without continuing to pay the minimum cultivation tax. The tax was approved by the voters, so any changes will have to be effected with a certain level of finesse. Supervisors also tried to hammer out an appeals process that would cover every contingency. The ad hoc committee even took a break with outside legal counsel in an attempt to work out something that would include all applicants; whether they are in the portal or not; the terms of cost recovery; and whether or not applicants appealing a denial should be allowed to continue growing during the appeal. They expect to review various options at a meeting in May. Cannabis industry representatives called for more transparency and stakeholder meetings with the county cannabis department, but Cannabis Program Director Kristin Nevedal responded that she recently began holding Friday morning meetings about various topics of interest to those in the program. The program has now been promoted to the status of a department, and is attempting to increase its staff of nine to twenty. The name change does not incur additional costs, but it signals that cannabis is no longer within the purview of other departments, as it has been in the past. Letters about tree removal also came up during public comment on off-agenda items. Last month, the cannabis program sent some applicants letters and aerial images of areas where trees had been removed. The letters stated that if applicants failed to provide credible evidence like documents from a licensed professional and lists of the species that had been removed within two weeks, their applications would be denied. Cannabis attorney Lauren Mendelsohn blasted the program for its handling of the issue, calling it “arbitrary and unacceptable.” Nevedal said that a subscription to Planet, the aerial surveillance service utilized by CDFW, could provide archival footage and answer questions about vegetation management. The subscription is $350,000 a year, and is one of the items she proposes to pay for with the local jurisdiction assistance grant. That set off alarm bells for Michael Katz, Executive Director of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, who said that “The grant application did not allow for funds to be used for enforcement, and yet, included in the satellite imagery text is that the tools are crucial for managing complaints about participants. So that’s one specific item that certainly is, on the face of it, related to enforcement.” Nevedal said that often people call in complaints about things that aren’t actually happening, and that the imagery could be used to discredit false complaints. Katz also worried about grant money being used to hire full time staff, asking what they would do once the money runs out. Nevedal said cost recovery was written into the budget, and that she expects there will be plenty of work at the cannabis department, what with processing another grant, renewing phase I and phase II applications, and moving into phase III. And she expects the department to play a key role in the county’s economic future. “I’m confident we’ll need staff going forward, as the program expands,” she said. “And I certainly hope that we’ll see changes at the state level that will allow our cannabis businesses to stabilize…I think there’s a lot of opportunity in the future, and I don’t think twenty staff is out of the question, going forward.” Supervisors and county staff blamed much of the difficulty on the mismatch between the state’s regulations, which require extensive environmental review, and 10a17, the county’s cannabis ordinance, which includes a mitigated negative declaration. Supervisor Ted Williams had a question for Nevedal and County Counsel Christian Curtis during one discussion about an attempt to align county policy with state requirements. “I don’t like the recommended action today,” he declared. “If we pause and we have stakeholder input and we have meetings and we decide to go a direction contrary to where the state is trying to steer us, what have we gained?...It seems like we’re all over the place. Do you see room for negotiation with the state, and if not, why would we hold stakeholder meetings? It sounds like a checkmate.” Nevedal said she did not think there was “a heck of a lot of room for negotiation with the state” on its requirement. The Mendocino Cannabis Program holds public meetings every Friday morning at 8:30 am. On March 4, the topics will be program updates, CEQA, and appendix G, a checklist devised to satisfy the state’s environmental requirements.
March 2, 2022 — With local mask mandates set to expire by March fifteenth, the Board of Supervisors is preparing to hear an agenda item about opening meetings to the public. And the board took the first step in diversifying its retirement investments, by agreeing to work up a resolution to start investing some of the county’s five million dollar pension fund with Public Agency Retirement Services, a multiple employer trust that supervisors believe will give them more flexibility than the funds that are in the Mendocino County Employees Retirement Association, or MCERA, which includes retired employees of the court and cemetery districts as well as the county. The board also voted to increase County Counsel Christian Curtis’ compensation and benefits by an estimated 32%, to $327,000 per year and promote him from interim to serving County Counsel. He has been in the interim role since Katharine Elliott’s departure in 2019. A newly created grant-writing division will likely play a large part in a program to secure funding to build housing in communities that want it, especially workforce housing. Supervisors agreed with Planning and Building staff, who asserted that, even more than general plan amendments, the county needs to build out infrastructure for multiple users, especially for water and sewer, if it hopes to accommodate growing housing needs. The Board voted to adopt a resolution recommending social distancing for public meetings, which means zoom, but only after agreeing to revisit the matter with a presentation by public health officer Dr. Andy Coren at a meeting in two weeks. Supervisor John Haschak broached the issue, saying, “It’s time to open the chambers.” The item will be on the agenda on March 15.
Supervisors Dan Gjerde and John Haschak agreed to serve on an ad hoc committee to work on the details of the investment with PARS, or Public Agency Retirement Services. Gjerde believes that the new service will give the county more control and more benefits from its pension fund than it now enjoys with MCERA, which includes other organizations.
March1, 2022 — Caspar 500, a timber harvest plan in Jackson Demonstration State Forest, has been the site of a lot of activity that’s neither logging nor protests in the last few days. KZYX Program Director Alicia Bales and reporter Sarah Reith review the events.
February 28, 2022 — Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren delivered an optimistic covid briefing on Friday afternoon, saying that, in spite of a new variant that’s edging its way into the state, he expects to see a significant drop in hospital admissions by the end of March. He may reconsider the county’s universal indoor mask mandate in the next week or so, and he has high hopes for the community health worker model in educating the public as the disease moves towards being an everyday endemic presence in not quite back to normal life. He expects treatments to play a significant role, though presently they are only effective if administered in the first few days of the illness. The state is moving into what’s called a SMARTER plan for handling the pandemic, starting with shots and masks but including elements of awareness and education too. The current number of people in the county who have died from covid is 123. The mask mandate remains in effect locally because hospitalizations remain high. There was one day last week when county hospitals had ten covid patients, and only one ICU bed and four med surg beds available. Coren reported that the outbreak in the jail is over, with no new cases in the last two weeks. And the number of infections among students in public schools has dropped to nearly zero, though there have been a few cases among school staff.
February 25, 2022 — Members of Ukiah’s Diversity and Equity Committee learned about state and federal programs to pay down utility bills for customers whose accounts fell into arrears during the pandemic. They also heard about existing practices to communicate with people who don’t speak English, and made suggestions for improving communications in general.
Committee members also examined a posting for a job advertised by the city, and mulled over ways to make it more inviting to racial minorities and people with disabilities.
February 24, 2022 — Trees along the Mendocino and Sonoma coastline have been falling victim to a rogues’ gallery of foes in the last twenty years, according to Chris Lee, a forest pest specialist with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Lee spoke to the Mendocino Coast Audubon Society earlier this week about the many factors that have been decimating the coastal trees, including pests, drought, climate change, and land management practices. Bishop and Monterey pines have been especially hard hit, but tanoaks and madrones have also played host to a variety of pathogens, many of them invasive. While Lee said more data points are needed to make decisions about how to respond, his study revealed pathogens that thrive in changing conditions. That’s part of the story about a stand of old Bishop pines on the Sonoma side of the Mendonoma coast, which is where Lee said the puzzle pieces of local tree mortality came together.
Feb 23, 2022 — The Mendocino County Cannabis Program is holding public meetings separate from the Board of Supervisors, where participants can explore the often-confusing minutiae of ever-changing cannabis policy in a venue of their own. February 18 was the first Friday morning meeting, where applicants discussed fallowing permits, or what it means to take a break from cultivating without walking away from the program altogether. Much of the discussion revolved around taxes, since participants in one of the fallowing options would continue to be liable for the minimum cultivation tax. And some growers said they’d need a more gradual process for the fallowing to be beneficial.
February 18, 2022 — As conditions in the ecosystem change, environmentalists and land managers grapple with increasingly difficult questions about what it means to be stewards of the forest and its inhabitants. A team of scientists from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is engaged in a study involving the lethal removal of barred owls, which have been out-competing the iconic and endangered northern spotted owls. Barred owls originated in the eastern United States, and they’re larger and much more aggressive than the local birds. They’ve replaced over a dozen pairs of spotted owls in the Jackson Demonstration State Forest, leaving only one known pair.
February 22, 2022 — A state regulatory agency rebuffed a local group’s complaint about PG&E cutting around power lines last month. The California Public Utilities Commission told the Redwood Valley Municipal Advisory Council that the work around the powerlines on Road A off of Highway 20 “is not in violation of the rules or regulations of the CPUC,” and that the program reduces the risk of fire. Dolly Riley, chair of the Redwood Valley MAC, detailed the journey of the rural neighborhood’s attempt to get the utility to use some other means to increase safety.
February 21, 2022 — It was cold and windy at 9am on February 15, at the Ten Mile Courthouse on Franklin Street in Fort Bragg, California, where four activists appeared in court. Six activists in total were “citizens arrested” January 10 in Jackson Demonstration State Forest while protesting the timber harvest plan known as Red Tail. This is the first interaction the protesters have had with law enforcement. The four cases are still under review and the other two protesters’ cases are on the docket for February 22. They were blockading an entrance to the logging site. The Save Jackson Coalition activists are calling for a halt to all logging while the forest timber management plan is being reviewed. I spoke with the protesters here for their court appearances and the dozen supporters on site, many holding signs on the sidewalk to show their support.The six activists were given citations for trespassing and false imprisonment, which all are contesting. An activist who calls himself Silver Fox described his experience. “The odd thing about it is that I was not in the restricted area at all. I was in front of the gate, but I was cited for trespassing. The more bizarre charge is false imprisonment. The gate was open behind me so the loggers could have walked past. We are trained non-violently not to impede them in any way, so these charges are very, very strange.” There is a deeper story, and it's why the six felt it was important enough to get arrested. Here's where this issue goes far beyond personalities, and semantics. Lifelong local Michelle MacMillan says that Big River (an estuary in Jackson State Forest) was her backyard growing up. She has come back now to help the Jackson defense with an education in political economics and environmental anthropology. “The six forest defenders that were arrested were arrested in the Red Tail Timber Harvest Plan, which is an old forest development zone, which means there is limitations on the amount of trees they can remove. And the timber harvest plan exceeds those limitations. Letters have been sent, and official statements have been made. But the plan was allowed to proceed regardless.” On June 18, 2019, Governor Gavin Newsom issued Executive Order N-15-19, which acknowledges and apologizes on behalf of the State for the historical “violence, exploitation, dispossession and the attempted destruction of tribal communities” which dislocated California Native Americans from their ancestral land and sacred practices. …to seek opportunities to support California tribes’ co-management of and access to natural land that are within a California tribe’s ancestral land and under the ownership or control of the State of California.” On November 16, 2021, the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution asking for a scientific review of the management at Jackson Demonstration State Forest, with an eye toward meeting environmental goals laid out by the governor. Naomi Wagner, friend and colleague of Judi Bari’s, referred to this order when she said, “In Jackson Forest we have these big old trees, that we need for carbon sequestration, we need them for fire resilience, and we need them for the cultural and spiritual aspects that are found in the archaeology there. Our coalition is Save Jackson forest and we are led by the Pomo tribe, because this is their ancestral territory, so we really take our direction from them, and the direction we are going is actually the direction that governor Newsom is taking.. he has made a directive last fall to all the state land agencies to start doing co-management with the tribes, which means including them in all aspects of managements and listening to the tribes when they talk about traditional ecological knowledge so that’s what we are trying to promote and support in Jackson now, for the directive to be implemented by the board of forestry and by Cal Fire, they are the problem really, they are just dragging their feet, they are stalling, they are not wanting to implement it, and so we have to keep the pressure up. “ On January 19, Calfire Deputy Director of Natural Resources Matthew Reischman said, “Due to delays … no additional timber sales will be offered in 2022.” But this is just a temporary respite for the forest. Save Jackson Coalition responded by saying, “A temporary halt in sales is a great first step. Now we need an official moratorium, and a commitment to fully review the management plan.” For example, Caspar 500 is still under consideration for future logging operations, which is an essential watershed area for any possible future salmon recovery efforts. Long time local Veronica was at the courthouse to support the protesters, and this is what she has to say: “Caspar 500 is in my backyard. A responsibility that this community needs to take on is that this is our forest, this is our home and if the amount of logging continues in JDSF, we are not going to have anything left for our children and our grandchildren. “ Sara Rose, co-founder of Mendocino County Youth for Climate, was on hand to speak to the topic. MCYC is “A local group of concerned youth. We are working with the coalition to save JDSF for our future because we know this is the largest state demonstration forest, it contains the best carbon sequesters in the world – second growth coast Redwoods – and we need to ensure they can be standing to sequester as much carbon as they can, to help mitigate the climate crisis as much as possible.” MCYC plans to join a statewide school strike on March 25, when students will travel to Sacramento for a rally to raise awareness and support for saving the redwoods.
February 16, 2022 — Experts on the Potter Valley Project gave Farm Bureau committee members an update Tuesday night, providing details about flows, preparations for a ballot measure to levy a special tax, and the as-yet scarce information that’s available about what’s next. Devon Jones, the Executive Director of the Mendocino County Farm Bureau, laid the groundwork with some background and up-to-the moment specifics about how much water is coming through the East Fork of the Russian River into Lake Mendocino. Operations at the powerhouse have been significantly reduced due to a transformer failure, which means that since July, water can only come through the project using a bypass channel. That has been around 45 cubic feet per second (cfs), with five cfs contractually obligated for Potter Valley, a 35 cfs requirement for the East Branch leading into Lake Mendocino, and a five cs buffer. Jones reported that when she checked the Calpella stream gauge right before the meeting, she observed that 60 cfs is flowing into Lake Mendocino, probably due to some natural accretion from area creeks. “But this is a substantial reduction from what we would normally see during winter months being diverted for power production coming into the East Fork of the Russian River,” she reminded Farm Bureau members. PG&E still owns and operates the hydropower plant and system of dams and reservoirs that divert water from the Eel into the Russian River. But the license expires in mid-April, and PG&E wants to get out from under the unprofitable endeavor. A regional group that was trying to raise money to study the feasibility of taking over the license announced last month that it will also not be filing an application. (The coalition consists of the Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission, which is a five-member joint powers authority consisting of local government and water districts; the Round Valley Indian Tribes, the County of Humboldt, Sonoma County Water Agency, and the environmental non-profit California Trout.) The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is expected to lay out the parameters of what’s likely to be a surrender and decommissioning process once the current license expires. But as Janet Pauli, Chair of the Inland Water and Power Commission explained, that process could take years, during which time PG&E plans to operate on a year-to-year license. The utility has stated that it expects the design and replacement of the transformer to take two years, and that it can recoup the costs after another five years. Possible supply chain disruptions add another element of uncertainty to the process. “They have to continue to run the power plant with the license that’s currently in place on a year-to-year basis,” she said, clarifying that the project is likely to keep operating even if it is in the process of being surrendered. “If it’s going to be surrendered, it has to be absolutely surrendered before they can give up that responsibility,” she emphasized. In another scenario entirely, there is also the possibility that PG&E could salvage the equipment or sell it to another entity that’s interested in taking over the project. However, no one other than the regional consortium of local governments and CalTrout expressed an interest when PG&E announced it wanted to offload the infrastructure. While it is physically possible to increase the amount of water flowing through the project by way of a bypass channel, Pauli said the company is being scrupulous about adhering to the terms of its license. “PG&E has not agreed to increase the bypass flows,” she said. “Fisheries agencies wanted to increase the minimum flows on the Eel River to 300 cfs. In other words, no increase in diversion through the project unless they had 300 cfs coming out of Lake Pillsbury. We dropped below 300 over two weeks ago now, and it continues to diminish. PG&E is not willing to do something that’s not currently allowed in their license.” Pauli added that there was public pressure, too. About thirty letters came in, half of them urging PG&E to increase the flows and the other half arguing against it. Humboldt County and CalTrout, both members of the regional consortium that was trying to take over the license, did not weigh in either way. While many parties regard the removal of Scott Dam in Lake County as a given, the Lake Pillsbury Alliance is prepared to fight for the continuing existence of the lake behind the dam, arguing that it is key to putting out fires in the region. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife funded a study of several different scenarios and methods for continuing the diversion without the dams, but those would not include diversions during the summer. Meanwhile, Pauli said efforts are underway to gauge the public’s knowledge about the water they use, and how much they’re willing to pay for it. A consulting company is sending out polls to property owners within the bounds of the Water and Power Commission’s five member agencies, to determine the viability of putting a special tax on the ballot in November. In the meantime, each of the agencies in the Commission are asking their boards for $50,000 to secure the water supply. The County of Mendocino was first to approve its share unanimously, and at last week’s Commission meeting, Pauli said the money is in the Potter Valley Irrigation District’s budget. The Russian River Flood Control District approved half on a split vote. A staff report for the Ukiah City Council meeting on February 16 recommends that the Council request a written scope of work for the funds before agreeing to contribute. The Redwood Valley County Water District will discuss the matter at its meeting on Thursday February 17. District representative Bree Klotter asked Pauli to talk to her board about what the money will be used for, reminding the Commission that Redwood Valley is a cash-poor district. Pauli sympathized, saying, “That’s why we’re hoping this ballot measure is successful, because carrying this burden on the shoulders of these agencies is a burden, and it has been. And we’ve been doing this for a long time, and I think we’ve done an excellent job. But we do need some help from others in the community who are dependent on this water.”
February 15, 2022 — The drought is off to an early start, all around the county. Already, no water is available for agricultural use in Redwood Valley. Fort Bragg has 30% less water than it did this time last year. There is still money available to haul water from Ukiah to the coast again, though a water storage proposal for the town of Mendocino did not get funded with the last round of drought grants. In Potter Valley, fifty cubic feet of water per second is flowing through the powerhouse, which is limping along with damaged equipment. However, users expect 140 cubic feet per second to come through via a bypass channel, starting next month. And things are looking dry in Fort Bragg too, according to John Smith, the city operations manager. Though the city has received more rain this year than last, he said it won’t be enough to recharge the groundwater unless it rains every day for the rest of the winter. Howard Dashiell, the director of the county Department of Transportation, reported that there is still about 667,000 gallons of water in the holding pond in Fort Bragg from last year’s water hauling program. “As the summer goes into the fall, we could haul again,” with funding from the State Department of Water Resources, he said. Lake Mendocino was at just 42,594 acre feet last week, which is about 62% of the target water supply. Still, water must continue to be released in order to satisfy requirements set by the National Marine Fisheries Service to supply water for habitat.
At a meeting of the Inland Water and Power Commission right after the drought task force, John Reardon, of the Russian River Flood Control District, gave a quick preview of another possible water storage option that’s being explored on Hensley Creek. He said a biological survey found no endangered species. “There’s reason for guarded optimism there,” he said, adding that he expects the official report to be available in a couple of weeks. Sean White, the director of water and sewer for the City of Ukiah, reported that pear orchards and one vineyard are already irrigating with recycled water. While some fruit trees are already blooming, Chair Janet Pauli said she’s seen dormant watering in other parts of the state, too. “One of the lessons that those of us who farm learned last year is that the drought was so severe we believe we actually had drought-related damage during dormancy, that we could have avoided if we’d had more ground moisture,” she said, adding that during a recent trip along the I-5 corridor, she observed farmers watering walnut orchards that appeared to be completely dormant. With water growing ever more precious, illegal diversions are ever more sternly frowned upon. Supervisor John Haschak gave listeners a heads up that the board is planning to consider an ordinance to regulate hauling water next month, which would require people extracting water and taking it elsewhere to have a permit, business license, hydrology study, and proper tracking logs. The proposed ordinance includes hefty fines for violations. The meeting ended with a final piece of advice — or maybe a secular prayer, from the two supervisors on the drought task force: Think rain, they urged, before logging off. Think rain.
Cindi Jo Willey lives on Point Cabrillo Drive property that has been in her family since the 1870s, when her great great grandparents settled here from Portugal.
Through the years, the property has seen many uses. In what was once an auto body and repair shop, Cindi Jo and her husband created her quilt studio, which contains two long arm sewing machines and other sewing equipment, fabric, thread and projects. In the early 2000s, Cindi Jo studied graphic arts at College of the Redwoods in Fort Bragg, adding to her quilting skills.
The next step was to apply her new education to the quilting business that seemed to be growing of its own accord.
One of her accomplishments was to create a “sock monkey” quilt, based on the popular stuffed toy.
Among her many other community activities, Cindi Jo contributed to a KZYX quilt which will be raffled later in the year to benefit the building fund. In a design pieced by Sallie Brown, using KZYX bandannas created by Willi Moore, Cindi Jo did the quilting.
February 11, 2022 – The Russian River serves as muse for Sonoma County artist Richard McDaniel in his latest series entitled The Russian River and its Watershed, on display now through March 18th at Ukiah’s Mendocino College Art Gallery. After years of journeying into sections of the110 mile river, McDaniel creates vibrant oil paintings of scenes and seasons of the Russian River as it flows from its headwaters in Mendocino County through valleys, pastures, vineyards and ravines to Jenner’s estuary in Sonoma County where it ultimately meets the Pacific. After a two-year Covid hiatus, Lisa Rosenstreich, Mendocino College art professor and gallery manager, is excited to finally showcase McDaniel’s artwork at the College Art Gallery.
February 11, 2022 — Indoor masking orders remain in effect in Mendocino County at least until mid-March, due to strained hospital capacity. Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren said he “stayed up long hours” deciding whether or not to go along with the state in loosening mask requirements. But after meeting with hospital officials, he decided that, although covid case numbers have dropped, relaxing the rules was not an appropriate response to local conditions.
February 10, 2022 — With the international movement to return tribal lands picking up steam, a local tribe is strategizing how to have more of a voice in the management decisions of Jackson Demonstration State Forest, which one ethnohistorian argues is an Indigenous cultural landscape in its entirety. “You have to get out of the mindset of just a site, and into understanding how the whole environment is a site,” said Victoria Patterson, who has filled several volumes with oral histories of local Native American people and curated an interactive exhibit at the county museum about tribes. The Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians has sent a letter to Governor Gavin Newsom’s office requesting a moratorium on all timber harvest plans during tribal co-management and management plan revisions. The Board of Forestry decided last year to revisit the management plan to address Native American concerns about biological and cultural resources. Polly Girvin, who is authorized to represent Coyote Valley in government-to-government consultations, spoke earlier this month about the main disruption to tribal sites during logging operations. “All of the sacred sites at Jackson State Forest have been systematically and consistently damaged and re-damaged by road-building activity,” she explained. “Back in 1999 the state commissioned a report. The Betts Report had archeologists out here surveying for the sites. They were in such an appalling state that the archeologists working for the state said there should be no more cutting around these sacred sites until you re-survey their boundaries, and until you come up with a road maintenance plan that will protect them in the future.” JDSF is unceded tribal territory, associated with Pomo and coastal Yuki tribes. There are village sites and evidence of campsites throughout the forest. A waterfall known to have been used for purification has been compromised. But Patterson says the forest is more than just a few sites. “The area was used for literally thousands and thousands of years,” she said. “And it was used by hundreds of people walking back and forth to the coast, yearly or bi-annually or even more frequently, to gather resources that were available on the coast, or to trade inland resources to coastal resources. And as they traveled across, of course they’re walking, and so they were camping, and they were spending the night, and they were gathering things as they walked around and then they went to the coast, where they had summer camps, drying seaweed and fish and so on, and then you had the return to the lowland villages in the wintertime, and so it’s not just like, they would go to the coast for the weekend and then come back home. The whole thing was the home. The whole thing was part of a life cycle, a yearly seasonal round if you will, of gathering.” Girvin says that’s significant, in light of policies stemming from a 2019 Governor’s order. “Pursuant to a state policy edict that came out after the creation of the Truth and Healing Council, all state lands that are the ancestral territory of tribes can be co-managed by the tribes,” she noted. “And that is now in the Governor’s 30x30 policy plan. It goes so far as not just co-management, but actual return of land to tribes.” Patterson hopes more historical understanding will lead to a wider variety of protections. She thinks the appropriate response to the knowledge about sites should be more archeology in JDSF, which she expects will lead to further knowledge. Even Three Chop Village, a well-known site, has not yet been fully investigated. “We’re just discovering more, and as dating techniques become more technical and more accurate, we begin to see the record go back and back and back of when people lived in the forest,” she said. “The idea is to protect the forest. To protect not only the trees, but also the cultural resources. Which involve not just the plants and the animals and the basketry materials and the medicinal materials. But also the cultural connection to those places. The spiritual connection to those places. The mythological connection to those places. All of that has to be considered in a cultural landscape.” When it comes to using that knowledge to contribute to efforts toward tribal co-management and control over the land they historically used, she said, “The idea is to create a conversation between CalFire and the tribes to determine what activities should take place and how they should take place in the forest…what does it mean to run a bulldozer through a house site? What does it mean to destroy a so-called lithic scatter, which is of no merit monetarily, to take away that knowledge from the people whose people it was?” Patterson noted that this is a historic moment for tribes: “Indigenous land returns are happening everywhere, including on the Mendocino coast,” she pointed out. “You have the example of over 500 acres being added to the Sinkyone Intertribal Wilderness by the Save the Redwoods League, which just happened a couple weeks ago. You also have the new tribal non-profit being formed to manage Blues Beach (just outside Westport), from CalTrans. And it happened a number of years ago to Kashia (Band of Pomo Indians. The) Kashia tribe got back some of their land. So this is a movement going on everywhere because it’s the right thing to do. The land was stolen from Native people.”
Coyote Valley Chairman Michael Hunter is leading tours of JDSF at the end of the month, on Sunday the 27th and Monday the 28th.
February 8, 2022 — It’s hard to get new paintings by an artist who’s been dead for 85 years, but that’s what the Grace Hudson Museum in Ukiah did a few weeks ago. A new exhibit, “The Art of Collecting,” features sixteen paintings by the eponymous artist, donated by a museum on the other end of the state. Director David Burton talked about what happened when he picked up the phone last spring. “Back in May, 2021, I got a phone call from the director of the Palm Springs Art Museum,” he recalled. “And he said, we’ve just gone through a process of doing some strategic planning for our collections, and we think the Grace Hudson paintings we have here might have a better home with you guys in Ukiah. Do you want them?” People who work in museums are always putting together pieces of the past, trying to figure out how to tell the old stories in a new light. Curator Alyssa Boge found that the recent additions bring another perspective to familiar subjects. One of her favorite parts of the exhibit is a series of portraits of John Scott, a Pomo spiritual leader who appears often in Hudson’s work. She painted him in full-color oils as well as bitumen, the liquid tar found in asphalt and thinned with turpentine. “So you can see three different paintings of him, right in a row, which I just kind of love,” she enthused. In the full-color rendering, John Scott is wearing traditional regalia, like the Wy-Li, a woman’s portrait the museum acquired at an auction. It’s regarded as one of Hudon’s finest. “She is wearing a turkey-feather topknot,” Boge explained. “Grace painted a few women wearing a turkey-feather topknot, but this is the first one to enter our collection, which makes it really exciting — and what also makes it exciting is that we have the turkey-feather topknot that Grace painted, most likely…Grace probably would have commissioned someone in the Pomo community to make it for her so she could use it for her paintings.” Burton explained why the museum is careful not to display objects that are actually used in ceremonies, saying, “Certain dances are more for the tribe and not for outsiders, and often regalia that’s worn in those ceremonial dances really shouldn’t be displayed as part of museums or used for a model when a painting is done, which is probably why Grace had this particular one that we see in this painting commissioned.” Museums used to preserve artifacts by dousing them with mercury and arsenic, which made them unsafe to handle. The baskets in this collection were put in a freezer to destroy any pests that may have been inhabiting the fibers or the feathers that adorn them. Some of the pieces are a combination of recent vintage paired with older items, like a tule basket that looks a little like a miniature canoe, stocked with round clay projectiles. In 2010, former Museum Director Sherrie Smith-Ferri commissioned the artist Bev Ortiz to make the basket, while the balls are authentic hunting weapons collected by Grace’s husband John Hudson. “This is a basket that men would use for duck hunting,” Boge explained. “They would use a sling made out of dogbane cordage and tule, and they would sling the balls at the unsuspecting waterfowl. And so this is a hybrid piece of those clay balls that we already had in our collection, versus something we commissioned for an exhibit. So it’s kind of a unique piece in that regard.” The exhibit, being about the art of collecting, ranges widely through the literary and artistic accomplishments of all kinds of people associated with Grace Hudson, be they Pomo basket-weavers, singers, or her own relatives. Since Valentine’s Day is this month, the exhibit also includes a love letter to Hudson’s grandmother Clarina Nichols from her second husband, the newspaper editor George Nichols. Newspapers, writing, photography and social activism had all been in the family for generations by the time Grace Hudson had established her professional reputation. So, it seems, were women with careers. Boge picked up on the story after the correspondence, when George fell sick and Clarina took over his editorial duties at the newspaper. “It was of course quite rare for women to do that,” she noted. “And it also really made her, I think, feel more confident to speak out about the issues that she cared about. And she was really well recognized as a women’s rights activist.” The exhibit, with its new and old works of art, will be open through April 10. “As we were talking about our Pomo collections, it is important for us to make them accessible to Pomo people,” Boge added. “So if anyone is interested, they can send me an email, call the museum, leave a note at the front desk, and we’d be happy to set up a time for people to get back in the collection and see some of the materials that we have.”
February 7, 2022 — The omicron surge seems to have peaked, though the variant can be hard on children. And more than 200 staff and inmates at the jail have been infected. None have died or been hospitalized, according to Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren. At Friday’s briefing, Coren reported that while hospitalizations have plateaued, there was one newborn infant from Mendocino County being treated at UCSF. He presented some numbers of the pandemic’s overall effect on children. While reported case numbers are falling, county hospitals were near capacity last week, a metric that public health is relying on more heavily than numbers in assessing the pandemic. WIth a seven-day lag, Coren expects numbers to fall another 30% this week. Mendocino County’s vaccination numbers are slightly behind those of the state, while the country as a whole lags behind other wealthy nations. Therapeutics are beginning to be available in the county, though they are still scarce. Coren said some are suitable for treating children. Coren ended by urging people again to vaccinate children, wear medical-grade masks, enjoy being outdoors, and prepare for the next surge.
February 3, 2022 — The state Department of Cannabis Control is proposing to adopt a conflict of interest code, in keeping with the Political Reform Act, which prohibits public officials and government employees from using their positios to influence policy decisions that could benefit them financially. The public comment period on the proposed code, which lays out disclosure categories for decision-making employees, opened last week and is open until March 15. Genine Coleman is the Executive Director of the Origins Council, a statewide cannabis advocacy organization. She thinks the proposed code has a lot of potential for protecting professional reputations and engendering trust in an industry that’s still fraught with uncertainty. In a parallel development this week, Mendocino County Cannabis Program Director Kristin Nevedal announced that she’d resigned from her volunteer positions at two advocacy organizations, one of which she co-founded. Though one of them is an industry association, Supervisor Ted Williams, who played an active role in bringing Nevedal to the county, said those positions were what assured him of her expertise in cannabis policy. The cannabis program had exhibited a failure to thrive in various county departments, under a string of unqualified people. Nevedal made her announcement to the board of supervisors, after informing them that the state had just notified her that it was more than doubling the equity grant funding to the county.
February 4, 2022 — The fate of the Potter Valley Project took a few more turns this week, with a regional coalition declaring it will not file for the license application and PG&E taking steps to operate the project under an annual license until the next development. PG&E, which owns and operates the project, announced in 2019 that it would not renew the license or continue to try to sell it. A regional coalition that includes Mendocino and Humboldt counties, California Trout, Sonoma Water Agency and the Round Valley Indian Tribes was the only entity willing to take on the license, which involves multi-million dollar studies and ongoing maintenance and operation costs. In July, a transformer bank went down in the powerhouse, which severely curtailed the amount of water the project is able to divert from the Eel River into the Russian River. PG&E estimates it would cost five to ten million dollars to custom-engineer a replacement and take two years to replace. On Monday, the coalition sent a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, admitting that it was unable to raise enough money for the required studies and that it will not file an application by the time the current license expires in mid-April. Two days later, PG&E informed the coalition leaders that it had decided to “return the powerhouse to full operational status.” PG&E spokesman Paul Moreno said that, although the exact costs are unknown, the company expects to recoup the costs of the repair within five years. Alicia Hamann, Executive Director of Friends of the Eel River, is advocating for a speedy decommissioning process. She has some idea of who will pay for the repairs. “The main transformer bank actually failed in July,” she said. “And there weren’t many folks who were made aware of that right away. So when we found out, Friends of the Eel immediately sent a letter to the California Public Utilities Commission, notifying them that this was happening and giving them a heads up that PG&E may try to replace this infrastructure, and then may seek their approval to get recovery of those costs on the backs of ratepayers, which we think is just totally inappropriate.” Congressman Jared Huffman, who convened an ad hoc committee dedicated to making recommendations about the Potter Valley Project, doesn’t think the repairs will have an effect on the timeline of what he views as the inevitable decommissioning of the project. While he said in the short term, “it’s a sigh of relief for Russian River water users,” he suspects the company made “a cold-blooded business calculation” and decided to make some money generating power “during X number of years it takes to decommission.” With the coalition out of the running for taking over the license, PG&E is responsible for the facility, and Huffman doesn’t think FERC will let them out of their obligations “quickly or cheaply.” Janet Pauli, chair of the Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission, said “even if everything had gone perfectly,” it’s doubtful the license would have been completed in time. During the last application process, which lasted from 1972-2006, PG&E operated on annual licenses for eleven years. For now, though, Pauli says, “protecting the diversion has to be our main concern.” The Commission is itself a coalition consisting of the county of Mendocino, the city of Ukiah, the Potter Valley Irrigation District, the Redwood Valley County Water District, and the Russian River Flood Control and Water Conservation District. It’s asked each of its five members for $50,000 to pay for the legal expenses it’s incurred in its efforts to satisfy the requirements to apply for the license. Now it’s pursuing the water rights associated with the project. Just this week, a consultant, Brian Godbey and Associates, sent out a survey to people who are dependent on project water to find out if they’d be willing to pay for it. All of the expenses to secure the water since 2019 have been paid by the public entities in the Commission. Darren Mireau, the North Coast Director for California Trout, thinks there may be a way to continue the diversion without the project. Last year, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife funded a study of three alternatives for diverting water. Mireau favors a scenario that involves removing both dams and pumping water. Operation and maintenance costs are estimated at about $200,000 a year. “Any water management, any water diversion at that location is going to have some operations and maintenance costs, that’s unavoidable,” he said, shortly after the study was released. “The advantage of the full removal of Cape Horn Dam with that pumped diversion approach is you get all of the obstruction out of the river that might impair fish passage…it does shift the cost, I think, to the water users, instead of the fish side, where it appropriately needs to be. In other words, we’re committed to that water supply reliability, but I think the water users have the obligation to pay for it. And if pumping is the best way to do that for fish passage and fishery recovery in the Eel River, I think that’s the best approach.” Back in November, Pauli predicted the uncertainty that would set in if the coalition gave up on the application. “If we go into the surrender process, the partners that are currently working together in this licensing would no longer be negotiating with FERC. We would become interveners in the FERC process that would mainly be between PG&E and FERC to decide the future of the diversion and all of the infrastructure,” she said. As part of its license requirements, PG&E biologists have rigorously documented the Eel River basin, from the condition of the fisheries to how often a beloved pair of bald eagles uses which of its nests. Mireau thinks that scientific explorations will continue, even after PG&E departs. “CalTrout has looked at this licensing, or now termination of the license for the Potter Valley Project as a real opportunity to bring attention to the Eel River so we can justify bringing in additional funding to support scientific research and monitoring,” he noted. “Those are all ongoing, but this is a moment in time for this watershed to get some extra attention. And that’s why we have, in part, put so much energy into the relicensing process.”
February 2, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors repealed two cannabis policies yesterday, which was also almost the first time cannabis has been included in the crop report. The facilities ordinance was repealed without comment on the consent calendar, after a legal challenge from the Willits Environmental Center about the ordinance’s compliance with the state’s environmental regulations. The board also terminated the moratorium on phase three cannabis cultivation permits. Cannabis advocates expressed measured optimism, saying that would-be permitted growers have been waiting years to apply, but pointing out that many applicants from earlier phases have spent those years in the application process. The state is stepping in with some funds. Cannabis program director Kristin Nevedal announced that the state approved the county’s application for a $17 million grant to help applicants meet environmental requirements. Another $2.9 million in equity grant funding has also been bestowed on the county. Nevedal added that she does not expect the state to claw back the $2.2 million of equity grant money it awarded the county in 2020, as long as applicants have their documents in by the end of the month. In a non-cannabis related development, supervisors unanimously agreed to allocate another $50,000 to the Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission for expenses related to the Potter Valley Project. The agenda, which was published last week, specified that the money would be used to continue working toward the potential licensing of the project. PG&E, which owns and operates it, is not renewing its license, and only one group has expressed an interest in taking it over. The Inland Water and Power Commission is a five-member joint powers association that is one member of a larger group, called the Notice of Intent Parties, which has been trying to get the money together to fund the necessary studies to apply for the project license. Just yesterday, the group informed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that it will not file a final license application. The letter to FERC says that since November, the group has received two grants from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the California Department of Water Resources to evaluate strategies to manage fisheries and water resource management in the Eel and Russian River basins, as well as the feasibility of continuing the diversion in a license-surrender scenario. The group has racked up substantial legal fees, though Supervisor Glenn McGourty said efforts to track down federal money or get PG&E to pay for the studies have been disappointing.
January 31, 2022 -- "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is ready for the boards, again. After sheltering in place, vaccines, masks, social distancing, and a limited audience, the drama crew at the Mendocino College Theater are opening their doors on Thursday, February 3, for another chance at the spotlight. The show runs through February 13 -- barring unforeseen events.
January 28, 2022 — The Fort Bragg City Council heard a presentation this week from a citizens’ commission charged with researching the history of Fort Bragg, its namesake Braxton Bragg, and making recommendations about whether or not the town’s name should be changed. The commission, which met 31 times and spent more than 60 hours discussing the matter, made six recommendations, many of them concerning further dialogue and education, but none of them directly having to do with changing the name. The City Council took no action on the matter.
January 27, 2022 -- The Plateau, a housing development in Fort Bragg offering 69 affordable units, including some for people experiencing homelessness, is near completion and accepting pre-applications until February 2. Applications are available at the Mendocino County Community Development Commission's office in Ukiah at 1076 North State Street in Ukiah, or at their website, cdchousing.org.
January 26, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors unanimously selected Assistant CEO Darcie Antle to serve as interim CEO following Carmel Angelo’s departure in March, praising her fiscal acumen and thanking Angelo for her fourteen years of service to the county. The Board also made a long-awaited unanimous decision about the location of the puff, or psychiatric health facility. After a presentation from Eric Fadness of Nacht and Lewis, the firm that drew up plans for the new jail and the Crisis Residential Treatment facility, the board chose to spend just over nineteen and a half million dollars to demolish the building at 131 Whitmore Lane, which is just outside Ukiah city limits, and build a new facility on that location. Fadness said that the building, which was once a skilled nursing facility, has a lot of deficits. In addition to a badly designed flat roof, the windows are breakable, the fixtures and wall-mounted air conditioning units pose a suicide hazard, and the building is not entirely ADA accessible. The county bought the building at a deep discount using state money at the beginning of the pandemic. The original plan was to use it as an alternate housing site for people who didn’t have anywhere else to quarantine. It was also eyed briefly as a recovery and wellness center. Fadness estimated that it would take a little over three years to build the sixteen-bed facility, which will be staffed by a company called Telehealth. The construction and a portion of the operational costs will be funded by Measure B. Covid numbers are higher than they have been at any other point during the course of the pandemic, though positive results from rapid antigen tests are not always included in the official tally. There were no ICU beds available in local hospitals yesterday, and Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren told the Board of Supervisors that nursing registries have few available people to send to hospitals in need. One hundred thirteen people in the county have passed away from covid, and Coren expects the number to rise in the next few weeks. There are currently seven outbreaks in the county. None of them are at schools, though absences of students and staff have mounted, due to community transmission.
January 25, 2022 — Activists held two days of public actions against logging in Jackson Demonstration State Forest on Sunday and Monday, starting with the first of a series of tours offered by a tribal leader. Michael Hunter, Chair of the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians, led about a hundred people through areas that are slated for logging as well as one that was logged four years ago near Caspar. The Board of Forestry is reviewing its management plan with an eye toward tribal co-management, and Hunter is working on building alliances in Indian country. Polly Girvin, who is authorized to represent Coyote Valley in government-to-government consultations, said road-building for logging has long threatened historical tribal sacred sites.
January 24,2022 — The covid outbreak at the jail continues, with 62 cases among the inmates in the last two weeks. Some have recovered in custody, while others have been permitted to finish their isolation periods at home, according to a sheriff’s office press release. Forty-five inmates with covid remain in the jail. Covid testing is now part of the intake process, and new inmates are quarantined for ten days. Inmates and staff are tested twice a week with antigen, or rapid tests. Since last month, 29 jail employees have also tested positive. According to the sheriff’s office, staff and inmates have reported only minor symptoms. At Friday’s covid briefing, Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren said that, in addition to the jail, there is also an outbreak at an elder care facility in Ukiah.
January 21, 2022 — Reporter Stacey Sheldon takes a tour of the fish hatchery at the Coyote Valley Dam, with Facility Manager Danny Garcia, who calls himself a "Proud Papa" to the many anadromous fish he has sent out into the world to propagate the species.
January 20, 2022 — Timber sales in Jackson Demonstration State Forest are ongoing, despite a decision not to add any new ones this year. The five timber harvest plans that started last year are still in operation, according to Kevin Conway, the State Forests Program Manager. These include Parlin 17, the Chamberlain Confluence, Red Tail, Soda Gulch, and the Caspar 500, where operations were shut down in the summer and remain dormant. Conway said there is no set date yet for picking up again in Caspar 500, saying that resumption of operations in the spring depend on the agency completing mandatory Northern Spotted Owl surveys. He added that the decision to not offer additional timber sales this year is to prevent further closures of the forest. CalFire usually operates between 3-6 timber sales per year, and Conway noted that, “Many of the operations above were not completed in 2021 as scheduled and have been extended into 2022.” At the January 18 Board of Forestry meeting, Matthew Reischman, CalFire’s Deputy Director of natural resources, acknowledged that the agency had taken what he called “a tactical pause.” However, he emphasized that CalFire is not contemplating a moratorium on logging, as the coalition of activists and tribal leaders have been demanding. The Board of Forestry agreed late last year to review the management plan for Jackson, which Vince Taylor, a member of the public who keeps a close eye on Board of Forestry proceedings, says is a replica of the plan from the year 2012.
January 19, 2022 — “No additional timber sales will be offered in Jackson this year,” according to the Board of Forestry Director’s report for this month’s board meeting. A brief item in the written report notes delays in last year’s operations and interruptions by protestors. Logging in the Caspar 500 Timber Harvest Plan, which was heavily populated by protestors, has been on hold since June. Protests in Jackson Demonstration State Forest have been effective at shutting down logging, halting timber sales, and now, getting protestors arrested. On January 10, half a dozen activists became the first to be cited since protests began in Jackson, starting with a citizens’ arrest directed by the head of a private security firm. The arrests did not include physical contact, though a logger performing them was filmed asking a female protestor about her recent sexual activity. An environmental law firm that has been critical of logging practices in Jackson sent out a letter on January 18, demanding that CalFire “reassert control and firmly prohibit private security officers in JDSF.” John Andersen of Mendocino Redwood Company confirmed to kzyx in October that the company had hired Lear as a safety contractor. Private security has been expressly forbidden by Bruce Crane, CalFire’s chief legal counsel. In a letter last summer, he told a local logging company that the agency cannot cede law enforcement authority to private security companies or other law enforcement entities. We’ll hear from one of the activists who was cited, a staff lawyer with EPIC, the Environmental Protection and Information Center, and a longtime neighbor to JDSF, describing the area where protestors were arrested, his view of the timber harvest plan, and a photograph he took of Sara Constance Rose, co-founder of the Mendocino County Youth Climate Group, standing in front of a redwood log deck in Red Tail recently.
January 18, 2022 — Fort Bragg received almost $9 million last month in state grant funds to secure one of its two main water supply lines. The city also brought a desalination plant online last year to supplement its water supply during future droughts. Reporter Michelle Blackwell talked with John Smith, the Fort Bragg Director of Public Works, about both projects.
January 17, 2022 — Neighbors and bird-watchers successfully faced down PG&E to defend a bald eagle’s nest in Potter Valley last week. On Wednesday night, Tim Bray, a kzyx programmer and member of the Mendocino Coast Audubon Society, sent out an alert that PG&E planned to cut down the aging Ponderosa Pine that contains the nest, located on a road that runs parallel to the Eel River, not far from Van Arsdale Dam. Bald eagles are no longer on the endangered species list, though they are federally protected. PG&E biologists monitor the area extensively, as part of the licensing requirements for the Potter Valley Project, and their records show the nest has been used since 2011. It is common for bald eagles to build alternate nest sites, and according to PG&E, this pair last used its other nest in 2016. Locals, including Joseph West, a tenant on the property hosting the main nest, say it’s been there for decades. “Lately, I’ve been watching them for seven, eight days, bringing material into the nest,” he reported on Thursday. “I've seen the female sitting above it quite often, looking down into it. They’ve definitely decided that this is where they want to spend their nesting season. They’ve been using this tree, I’d say three out of five years, for the past 25 years” But the tree is in decline and close to a distribution line, which PG&E argued posed an imminent fire threat. Joseph Seidell, another tenant on the property, reported the company for poaching. “We’re in full belief that this is a nesting pair, there could be eggs in the nest, they haven’t told us that there’s not,” he explained early Thursday. “So therefore I felt impelled to make a claim that these birds were going to be killed, or poached…and I was able to call CalTip and report that PG&E was going to take this nest down.” He also hired an independent arborist who examined the tree and concluded that, while it does show signs of a beetle infestation, it shows no signs of structural deficiencies and is a good candidate for mitigations other than removal. Earlier this month, PG&E applied for and received an emergency permit from U.S. Fish and Wildlife to remove the tree before breeding season started on January 15. The property owner, who did not want her name used, complained that the timeline to make a decision was unfair and she wanted to see the permit, which she never did. West summed up much of the general feeling, saying, “Our whole issue is, why did you wait for so long, and why now, that they’re nesting, is this such a big deal?” The presence of the nest does constrain other tree work in the vicinity, according to PG&E spokeswoman Deanna Contreras. While all work is not prohibited, crews would have to use hand tools or low-decibel chainsaws. “During nesting season, there are federal guidelines that we need to follow when it comes to bird activity in an area, yes,” she confirmed. On Thursday morning, a chipper crew and a PG&E biologist arrived with a printout of the email exchange between PG&E personnel and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist, explaining why she agreed to grant the permit. Kate Marienchild, author of “Secrets of the Oak Woodlands: Plants and Animals Among California’s Oaks,” was on hand with some friends. As the chipper truck idled on the other side of the locked gate, Marienchild provided a naturalist’s description of what happened next. “I just saw an adult bald eagle land on a nest on a tall pine tree on the north side of the Eel River in Potter Valley, and perch on that nest for about five minutes, and then fly off,” she reported, within moments of watching the eagle soar off toward the river. The crew turned around and drove off in the direction they came from, as Marienchild laughed and cheered. But it wasn’t Saturday yet. By 9:00 Friday morning, about 15 neighbors were on the scene to help the tenants block the gate. But crews never arrived. An outreach team, consisting of Contreras, an arborist, and the biologist, tried to persuade Seidell to open the gate, at one point saying that, if the tree remained standing, the company would cut the power. The tenants were unfazed. They have generators, backup generators, propane, and wood stoves. Also, Joseph West explained, “I have an attorney who says that the facts are that PG&E can be sued heavily for turning power off after leaving it this late to do anything about this tree. And we have an arborist who says it’s not an immediate threat anyway. An independent arborist. Not one of the tame PG&E ones.” His brother Paul added that he believes, “that this is just their standard threat to have their way and get their tree service in here to cut the tree and to intimidate the residents.” Seidell said he would rather not have to use a generator, but that the sacrifice was worth it. Marienchild was not on the scene that day, though a field representative from Senator Mike McGuire’s office did make an appearance. Both Marienchild and Bray had come to terms with what appeared to be the inevitable outcome. They both pointed out that eagles are making a comeback, and agreed that this pair might have a good chance of using the other nest site this year if the pine came down. And, though she would prefer the tree live out its natural life, Marienchild suggested that it might actually be better for the birds to get started refurbishing their alternate nest while they are still relatively strong and in good health. Bald eagles add to their nests every year, and it’s not uncommon for the nests to get so big and heavy, they break their supporting limbs and fall to the ground. Nevertheless, by 1:00 on Friday afternoon, after several rounds of attempting to persuade the property owner, tenants, and supporters to open the gate, Contreras announced the company’s determination. “We’re not going to cut the tree today,” she declared. She confirmed that PG&E will also not apply for another emergency permit from U.S. Fish and Wildlife during nesting season, saying, “We’ve all determined that after the 15th, it just wouldn’t be in anyone’s best interests, because of nesting season.” McGuire weighed in on Friday night, issuing a statement saying, “We appreciate all sides coming together to resolve this situation. Rightfully so, there was a lot of concern among Potter Valley neighbors and community members. I’m glad the eagles can now start the nesting season in peace.” Seidell plans to use the reprieve to study the viability of the tree and look into what it would take to bury the line going past it. His work on this is not done, “but I’m so happy that we were able to stand as a community for this, ” he said, shortly after learning that the tree would remain, at least until the end of summer. “The birds can rest easy today in their nest…I’m pretty happy. I feel like crying.”
January 13, 2022—County CEO Carmel Angelo told the Board of Supervisors last week that she is moving up the date of her retirement, from October of this year to March. Supervisors Maureen Mulheren and Dan Gjerde spoke with kzyx earlier this week about their work comparing the CEO versus the CAO model, and some of their thoughts on finding Angelo’s successor. They’re on an ad hoc committee charged with providing the rest of the board with the information they need to craft an ordinance laying out which model the county plans to use in the future. At this point, the ordinance will be most useful as a job description for candidates. Mulheren and Gjerde plan to present their findings at the next meeting on January 25th. Gjerde, the only supervisor on the board right now who is not in his first term, called Mendocino County’s current ordinance “a bit of a hybrid.” “The principle difference between a CEO and a CAO is under a CA ordinance, supervisors have a little more management, or oversight anyway, of the departments, because they perform annual performance reviews for most of the department heads,” he explained. While Mendocino County’s ordinance specifies that supervisors do conduct these reviews in closed session, Gjerde added that during his nine-year tenure, those reviews had been a little inconsistent. He and Mulheren are planning to recommend a special two-day annual meeting for those reviews, probably at the beginning of the year. If the board does not find a successor for Angelo right away, he thinks there are strong interim options, including Assistant CEO Darcie Antle, head of the finance team that has been successful at bringing in grant money after the fires. “But the full board needs to discuss all of our options before making a decision,” he noted. Mulheren and Gjerde both served on City Councils before becoming supervisors. They reflected on the options of hiring Angelo’s replacement from within the organization or conducting an open recruitment. “That looks like a lot of different things,” Mulheren said, “including that there are multiple positions available across the state, where you are generally trying to attract a small pool of people that are qualified to take on those CEO/CAO positions.” Mulheren and Gjerde both served on City Councils before becoming supervisors, and participated in hiring city managers. Gjerde recalled that during his tenure with Fort Bragg, the City Council had mixed results in hiring two city managers from outside the organization, and that he was pleased with the internal hire. “It depends on the personnel that you have internally, and the risks that you can face, bringing in someone from the outside,” he reflected. “You could hear nothing but praise for someone from the outside, and maybe some of those other agencies may want to see them leave.” Gjerde praised Angelo’s fiscal acumen, saying he believes her legacy will be leaving the county more solvent than it was when she took the helm twelve years ago. Angelo herself sounded a note of caution about the budget, which has seen infusions of state and federal money due to disasters in the past few years. “At some point, the government is going to stop printing money, and we won’t get it,” she declared. “And we were an impoverished rural county before all of these disasters, when all of this money started flowing, and that’s what we will go back to. So I think the board needs to be very clear and really look at the projects over the next three to five years, and honestly, stop spending.” In an in-depth, hour-long interview with kzyx programmer Karen Ottoboni on Wednesday, Angelo listed cannabis as the one growth sector in the county. But she agreed that there are not a lot of grounds to be optimistic about the cannabis markets right now. “I think that we are in a very sensitive spot,” she said. “I don’t think that the cannabis dollars are going to continue to flow…I don’t think that our cannabis program has been very successful when you compare it to surrounding counties…I don’t know that we’re going to be able to pull ourselves out of this hole. We just started out lagging.” But she believes staff and supervisors are in a good position to continue building alliances across the state. Supervisors are serving on influential statewide bodies, and she said that when she goes to meetings of the RCRC (Rural County Representatives of California) and CSAC (California State Association of Counties), she takes her staff with her, “And the reason I bring them is so that they will make those connections themselves. So when I’m no longer going to CSAC and RCRC, come April, the staff, my team, that have been here, that have been developed, they have those connections, and they will continue with those connections.” Mulheren added that she is optimistic about the board and staff working together on some big projects in the new year, including the strategic plan, working out the CEO/CAO ordinance, and consolidating the auditor and treasurer and tax collector’s offices.
January 14, 2022 — Since the beginning of December, over 100 fulmars, a long-lived gull-like seabird with a remarkable nasal apparatus, have become stranded on California beaches, including the coast of Mendocino. Reporter Michelle Blackwell spoke with Sarah Grimes, the Marine Mammal Stranding Coordinator and Educator at the Noyo Center for Marine Science, about the phenomenon and what makes these birds so special.
January 12, 2022 Project Sanctuary, a non-profit organization assisting victims of domestic and sexual assault, will launch an upcoming educational program on the topic of teen dating violence. With prevention as the goal, Project Sanctuary plans to raise awareness on the topic with school visits in February, and an art contest at the end of January. This two-pronged strategy aims to educate the youth on the dynamics of unhealthy relationships in an effort to stop dating violence. Dating violence is a major adolescent health concern. Youth 16-24 experience the highest per capita rate of intimate partner violence of any age group. We’ll hear from Judy Albert, Project Sanctuary therapist, about toxic relationships and keys to healthy ones.tifies the key to creating healthy relationships. January’s art contest kicks off Project Sanctuary’s teen dating violence campaign. Local teen artists are asked to create and submit artwork that represents healthy relationships by January 24th, and the winning artwork will be used as part of Project Sanctuary’s social media platforms and curriculum throughout the month of February. Angelica Limon, prevention educator for Project Sanctuary, initiated the contest.
January 11, 2022 — Organic waste reduction is the focus of a sprawling piece of state legislation due to go into effect this year. SB 1383 requires jurisdictions to drastically cut down on the amount of edible food and food-based waste that goes into the landfill and causes methane gas pollution. In order to contribute to the statewide goals, local composters expect to increase their tonnage by 40%. Solid waste haulers will be responsible for making sure their customers know what goes into the green bins, and starting in 2024, jurisdictions will be expected to start enforcing local ordinances. Cold Creek Compost in Potter Valley currently has organic waste contracts with Mendocino county and the cities, as well as a few in Lake and Sonoma counties. The company is currently permitted to process 50,000 tons of material per year. Sean O’Rourke handles the business’ licensing and permitting as it applies to increase its capacity by 40% and attempts to start another facility in Sonoma County. Amber Fisette, the Mendocino County Deputy Director of Transportation overseeing the Solid Waste Division, says the county is on track, when it comes to composting facilties that take food scraps. And in a few months, Cold Creek won’t be the only game in town…
January 10, 2022 — The county has entered the “omicron blizzard” that’s affecting the rest of the country, according to Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren. The only known outbreak at this time is at the jail, where fifteen staff and two inmates have tested positive. There have been 45 exposures at schools, but Coren declined to shut down the Fort Bragg school district after extra-curricular activities resulted in positive tests, saying he did not think it was warranted at this time. Northern California does lag behind the southern and central regions of the state, and omicron, while highly transmissible, appears to be less severe than previous variants. But Coren explained that he is hesitant to be optimistic yet, because the long-term effects of the disease are still unknown. And people keep dying from the virus. As of last week, 106 people were reported to have died from covid in Mendocino County (updated to 109 as of January 10). A new health order, effective February first, adds booster verification to vaccine or testing requirements for emergency and law enforcement personnel, and now includes those working in dental offices and pharmacies. Another health order, also following state and national trends, shortens isolation or quarantine periods from ten days to five days for people who have tested positive or had a close contact with someone who did — provided they test negative and wear a surgical grade mask for the remaining five days. N95 or medical masks are highly recommended, and indoor masking orders statewide have been extended to February 15. Coren also said he has closed a previous masking loophole in the local protocol, which allowed people who are presenting or performing for a vaccinated audience to take off their masks. That is no longer the case. The main strategy for carrying on with a semi-normal life, in terms of employment and social engagements, is testing. But tests, particularly rapid tests, are in short supply. Even PCR tests are running low. Coren said the county distributed 14,000 rapid tests before the holidays, and that local school districts got their allotment ahead of many others in the state. But employers can impose testing requirements beyond those issued by public health departments. State orders are often based on CDC findings and are duplicated in local orders. Testing requirements, sometimes even for those who are fully vaccinated with all three shots, can leave people scrambling for a test they need to get back to work but can’t find. Rapid tests only became widely available to the general public in the US a few months ago. Now their scarcity is just the latest in pandemic-related supply chain woes.
Jan 7, 2022 — Candlelight vigils took place all across the country last night, in commemoration of the one-year anniversary of the attempt to overturn the presidential election and take over the Capitol by force. Many of last night’s vigils took the form of a call to action, from ending the filibuster to indicting Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani to supporting Senate bills designed to increase access to the ballot. In Ukiah, 60-70 people gathered in front of the courthouse shortly before dark to listen to remarks by local leaders and a few songs by the Raging Grannies. Ukiah City Council member Juan Orozco and organizer Steve Scalmanini read the details of four Senate bills they urged attendees to support. Third District Supervisor John Haschak shared his thoughts about truth and reconciliation, and the importance of agreed-upon facts. The vigils were sponsored by what Scalmanini called “scores” of organizations, including Public Citizen and Common Cause. He said the initial goal was to have 150 vigils across the country, but that the number swelled to about 300.
January 6, 2022 – Mendocino College’s Theater Arts Department in Ukiah now offers a new, one year certification program in technical theater. This program, called Career in Technical Education, or CTE, teaches stagecraft, sound, lighting, costuming and set design to prepare students to work as behind the scenes professionals in the entertainment industry. Students enrolled in the program take a variety of technical theater courses taught by instructors in the Theater Arts department: Professor Steven Decker teaches stage craft, lighting and set design courses, Professor Rodney Grisanti offers courses in sound engineering, instructor Kathy Katz teaches costume design and construction, and shop foreman David Wolf assists students with building and installing sets, lights, and sound equipment. Steven Decker, Professor and Technical Director of the Mendocino College’s Theater Arts Department, developed this one year Career in Technical Theater program.
January 5, 2022 — The question of a conflict of interest between the sheriff’s office and the Board of Supervisors has been decided. According to a court order signed by presiding Judge Ann Moorman on December 30, there is a conflict of interest with the County Counsel’s office advising the sheriff on issues surrounding information and technology, but not the remaining matters. That includes the question of his personal liability for incurring non-emergency costs that have not been approved by the Board.
The judge also denied Sheriff Matt Kendall’s request to hire the law office of Duncan James. And she characterized the Board’s decision in November to hire Southern California law firm Manning and Kass as defiant, interpreting it as “an effort to circumvent the court process.”
After a three-week break, the board reconvened for their first meeting of the year, albeit remotely. In the morning session, they voted unanimously to withdraw a contract they approved with acting County Counsel Christian Curtis in the consent calendar at last year’s final meeting.
And the Board unanimously approved a $95,000 memorial to fallen law enforcement officers, which will be installed near the flagpole at the sheriff’s office. The monument will be funded with asset forfeiture monies, but the question of where the additional $20-30,000 cost of installing it will come from is still uncertain.
Yesterday’s meeting focused largely on organizational details. Supervisor Ted Williams is the new chair, and Supervisor Glenn McGourty is the new vice chair. The Board approved a continuation of remote meetings, in light of the fact that a state of emergency due to covid-19 is still in effect.
The question of a conflict of interest between the Board of Supervisors and the sheriff has been bubbling away since last summer, when Kendall cited four reasons he believed the Board should authorize payment for outside legal advice. Two were related to his information technology infrastructure, which he feared would be compromised if it was consolidated into the county’s larger IT system. He also complained that his department’s budget had been reduced. But the biggest issue was a suggestion during budget hearings that he could be held personally liable for cost overruns that had not been approved by the Board.
In her write-up of the matter, Judge Moorman concluded that there would be a conflict of interest if County Counsel advised the sheriff about “the law and possible avenues of recourse to resist efforts at partial or total consolidation” of the sheriff's IT department. The sheriff is required by law to satisfy staffing and security requirements that other county departments do not.
But Moorman found no conflict of interest regarding the sheriff’s budgetary allocation, which was supplemented by PG&E settlement funds. Moorman wrote that “There is no evidence of a subsequent request to the BOS to re-visit that shortfall, but even if there was and no change was made in the budgetary allocation, that does not give rise to a conflict of interest on the part of County Counsel in advising the Sheriff on the budget process…this conclusion is buttressed by the lack of evidence showing County Counsel has much, if any, involvement in budgetary process or the specific budgetary recommendations to the BOS.”
Moorman remarked that “The Sheriff’s decision to seek separate counsel on this issue was motivated by the unfortunate fact that one or more members of the BOS have publicly seemingly threatened to hold him personally liable for any such expenditure(s)” under county policy, which is aligned with Government Code 29601.
She decided that it would be reasonable for Kendall to seek advice about incurring “unapproved non-emergency expenditures,” but that the general concern does not rise to a conflict of interest until an actual request or expenditure is made.
At their last meeting three weeks ago, the Board approved a four-year contract with Acting County Counsel Christian Curtis, to retain him as head of the department with an annual salary of $192,436. For two years now, Curtis has been compensated at the same rate he was paid as the assistant to former County Counsel Katherine Elliott, who left her position in September of 2019 to take a job with Nevada County. According to Transparent California, in 2019, Curtis was making $179,363 in salary and benefits.
His new contract was on the consent calendar in December, though it was pulled for separate consideration. This led to a complaint with the District Attorney about a possible Brown Act violation.
Williams explained why he asked his colleagues to rescind the contract and re-approve the last meeting’s consent calendar without the controversial item. “While I do support County Counsel being compensated as such, and I understand that his wages are based on his position prior to his appointment as County Counsel, I think it’s best for the county that in an abundance of caution, we have a clean record,” he said. The proceeding garnered the approval of Amy Ackermann, an outside attorney hired by the county to oversee the correction.
In another item regarding the sheriff’s office, Kendall asked the board to approve a contract with Bell Memorial, of Clovis, California, to order a monument to fallen law enforcement officers, consisting of three large stones with the names of nine who have been killed while on duty. Undersheriff Darren Brewster laid out the sources of the funding.
“The Bell Memorial cost is a little over $95,000 for the monument itself,” he told the Board. “That money is comprised of non-general fund dollars. Sixty thousand of that comes from the DA’s office, and the remainder of that would come from our asset forfeiture funds. I’m guessing the rub with the Board on this is the installation of the Peace Officer Memorial, which I’m guessing is between twenty to thirty thousand to install. If the county is unable to finance that, we can come up with our public donation and asset forfeiture money to pay for that as well.”
McGourty tried to move approval for the contract with up to $25,000 from the general fund for installation, but it was unclear where exactly the funds would come from. Brewster reiterated his confidence in the generosity of donations and referred to recent high value asset forfeitures. With supply chain uncertainties and the price of marble climbing steadily, the board voted unanimously to approve the contract without specifying how the installation would be paid for.
January 4, 2022 — There’s something missing from the Ukiah Farmers Market this time of year…like the market itself, which will be coming back next Saturday, but without one important fixture. The Ukiah Bike Kitchen is heading into its tenth year of fixing bikes for free, coaching aspiring mechanics, and amassing enough bike parts to cancel out global supply chain woes.
I’ve never actually taken my 1983 pink Bertoni road bike to the Farmers Market stand, but I love the idea that on any given Saturday, I could. Devin Vagt, one of the Bike Kitchen’s main volunteers these days, assured me that, come spring, that much-missed opportunity will be available again. In the meantime, his two-car garage, which contains exactly no cars, is the Bike Kitchen’s winter headquarters. He handed me a headlamp when I showed up after dark in a light rain, to enthuse about bikes. So the Bike Kitchen still exists. It was founded in 2012 by Lucy Neely and Jen Smart, who worked what Vagt calls ‘grant magic’ to score the money they needed to buy a tool kit, bike trailer, and hire mechanics from Dave’s Bike Shop to train the first volunteers. The Kitchen has donated bikes to the Boys and Girls Club, fire survivors, and the Hopland Tribal Youth Center. And the organization pays a small amount to interns who have volunteered for six Saturdays. But there’s something about working on bikes that’s simultaneously so wholesome, so obsessive, and, it turns out, almost transcendental.
Vagt muses on the meditative qualities of truing a wheel, what is kitchen-like about the Bike Kitchen, and learning to accept new features on the roadscape.
January 3, 2022 — It’s a busy time of year for fish in the Eel, with steelhead running, chinook hatching, and coho bouncing back, according to Pat Higgins, director of the Eel River Recovery Project. Ocean conditions have started to improve since the warm water blob of 2015 upended the near-shore ecosystem. That’s a big help for anadromous fish that travel between freshwater and salt throughout their life cycles. Higgins says that, while the numbers are nowhere as plentiful as they were ten years ago, it is the best run in five years.
December 31, 2021 — Toby Keith’s anthem to military valor, “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)” was on the radio in Officer Alex Cowan’s police car the day his dash camera recorded him beating a naked, mentally ill man in Ukiah. As Cowan’s colleagues iced their bloodied hands in the aftermath, the singer crooned, “A mighty sucker punch came flyin’ in from the back. Soon as we could see clearly through our big black eye, Man, we lit up your world like the Fourth of July.” The police videos were released Thursday, as a civil lawsuit in federal court winds its way towards trial.Gerardo Magdaleno, who suffers from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, ran out of psychiatric medications on April first of 2021. He was standing on South State Street, alone, unarmed, and wearing nothing but a wristwatch when Ukiah Police Officer Saul Perez pulled up and shot him with a taser within less than a minute of telling him to get on the ground. According to an amended complaint filed in the US Northern District Court of California last month, Ukiah police officers tasered the severely disabled man four times, punched him 54 times, kneed him four times, once in the groin, kicked him in the head, and emptied an entire can of pepper spray in his face, which amounts to 20-25 applications. Multiple bystander cell phone videos of the incident immediately began circulating on social media. But on Thursday, video from Cowan’s dash camera and Officer Perez’ body camera were distributed to the public.. The civil lawsuit names Officers Saul Perez, Jordan Miller, Alex Cowan and Lieutenant Andy Phillips as defendants. Former Ukiah Police Chief Justin Wyatt and the City of Ukiah are also being sued. Previously, only Perez, who was the responding officer, had been identified. The lawsuit claims discrimination on the basis of a disability, wrongful arrest, excessive force, and inadequate training. Magdaleno’s attorney Izaak Schwaiger wrote that the City of Ukiah and former Chief Wyatt failed to train officers properly to accommodate the needs of the mentally ill, ”despite police interactions with mentally ill individuals being a commonplace occurrence.” He is seeking damages, attorney’s fees, and “injunctive relief requiring the City of Ukiah to adopt national best practices with regard to policing people with disabilities.” Much of the complaint is a description of the videos, including a tally of the blows, taser strikes, and pepper spraying. During an interlude that Perez described on his police radio as “a standoff,” Magdaleno stood up, looked at the sky, and began to whistle. Officer Miller arrived, did not turn on his body camera or his dash camera, and immediately shot Magdaleno with his taser. “You got a taser?” Perez asked him. “Go ahead and deploy it. Yeah. Zap him. I already hit him once.” Miller hit him twice, and both officers shouted at Magdaleno to “get on the ground! Get on the fuckin’ ground!” Cowan arrived just as Miller was administering two knee strikes to Magdaleno’s buttocks. He got out of his car, ran over to where Perez and Miller were holding onto Magdaleno’s arms, and punched him in the back of the head. The day after the incident, the Ukiah Police Department issued a press release containing several characterizations that are not supported by the department’s own videos, including a claim that there were “numerous citizens, including children in the immediate area.” The blows to the head were described as “distraction strikes,” and the statement assured the public that “the technique was ceased” as soon as Magdeleno was handcuffed. But Cowan’s dash camera showed the three officers kicking and punching Magdaleno as he lies unresisting on the ground, being handcuffed. Miller and Perez lift him off the ground briefly, one on each arm, and Cowan shoots him in the back with a taser. Lieutenant Andy Phillips arrives and the men flip Magdaleno onto his stomach. Miller throws himself onto Magdaleno while the other three immobilize him. He proceeds to punch him four times and slap him twice, all in the back of the head. Shwaiger’s complaint registers that the three officers and one lieutenant held him on the blacktop for almost four minutes, during which Magdaleno uttered a phrase that has become familiar in police encounters that end badly. “Let me breathe,” he implored the officers who were wrapping him in a leg restraint and removing the taser barbs. “You can breathe,” an officer assured him, then added a piece of medical misinformation: “You can talk, you can breathe, bro.” The officers were not unharmed. Miller and Perez suffered multiple abrasions on their hands, which paramedics treated at the scene. “I’m pretty sure I hit his fuckin’ tooth, dude,” Perez remarked. “It hurts so bad.” A colleague congratulated him on his “smart move,” in waiting for backup to arrive before tackling Magdaleno. “Yeah, I didn’t want to take him by myself,” Perez laughed. Assistant City Manager Shannon Riley said Ukiah city staff are not able to discuss the matter, since a civil lawsuit is pending in federal court. It is one of many lawsuits that have been filed recently against the city, the police department, and individual members of the force. Izaak Schwaiger, Magdaleno’s attorney, has sued the City of Ukiah in the US District Court before, along with former Ukiah Police Sergeant Kevin Murray, alleging he attacked a disabled veteran named Christopher Rasku. In a separate matter, Mendocino County District Attorney David Eyster has charged Murray with sex crimes, burglary, and possession of methamphetamine, in multiple incidents between 2014 and 2020. In yet another court case, former Detective Isabel Siderakis is suing the city, the police department, and Kevin Murray for discrimination, sexual harassment, and retaliation, claiming among other things that Murray attacked her during an out-of-town training and the department failed to take her complaints seriously. And earlier this month, Madisyn Carley, the daughter of new Ukiah Police Chief Noble Waidelich’s ex-girlfriend, filed a civil suit against Waidelich for domestic violence alleged to have occurred between 2011 and 2015. The matter was investigated by the sheriff’s office, but Eyster declined to prosecute, citing the lack of credible evidence. Riley said the Magdaleno matter is still being handled by an independent investigator. When he concludes his investigation, he will turn it over to the District Attorney, who will decide whether or not to prosecute it as a criminal matter. And the county is using Measure B funds to hire a part-time mental health worker who has been helping the Ukiah police for a few weeks now. The city has hired Dale Allen, of San Francisco law firm Allen, Glaessner, Hazelwood and Werth, to defend it in the Magdaleno case. Reached by phone yesterday, Allen said that during the course of litigation, he expects the officers to explain the use of force, what they did, and why they did it. He declined to say how much the city has paid him or what his hourly rate is, citing business privacy. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for September of 2022. Allen said there is a “huge, huge backlog of cases due to covid.”
December 30, 2021 — The drought is still on, in spite of the recent rain and snowfall in the region. But next week, the town of Mendocino, where the situation was desperate just a few months ago, could see a loosening of drought restrictions from a drastic mandatory reduction to a still-significant but much smaller and merely requested reduction. On Wednesday, Ryan Rhoades, the superintendent of the Mendocino City Community Services District, said rain measurements for the current rain year were about 19.03 inches, “which is very good for this time of year.” At a special MCCSD meeting on January 3rd, he plans to recommend changing the status of the water shortage emergency from a Stage Four to a Stage Two. Stage Four has the most stringent measures, including a mandatory 40% reduction, while Stage Two includes a request that residents reduce their water by 15%. Rhoades said that is a reduction from the amount that people were using prior to the drought, no the already-reduced amount. “It’s just reminding people that we’re not completely out of the woods,” he explained. “Please continue to conserve and be responsible with water.” He added that, “people did an incredible job,” complying with the mandatory reductions over the summer. Rhoades is also grateful for the water hauling program that the county and the cities of Fort Bragg and Ukiah pulled together at the end of the summer. The program provided water to people all over the coast, not just in his service district. According to a report that Howard Dashiell of the Mendocino County Department of Transportation presented to the Board of Supervisors earlier this month, a total of 1,291,100 gallons of water were hauled from Ukiah to Fort Bragg. 51% of that was hauled for residential use. The county received a $2 million grant from the state to reimburse its costs for the program, but Dashiell said he expects the costs to come out to $325,000-350,000, including staff time. He estimates that less than $100,000 will come out of the general fund to cover commercial water. The remaining grant money will be available to the county until February of 2023. In the meantime, the MCCSD recently applied to the State Department of Water Resources Urban and Multibenefit Drought Relief Program for over eight million dollars’ worth of grants to upgrade the town’s recycled water system and increase storage. The governor highlighted both strategies in his drought declaration this summer. Rhoades specifically wants to provide more recycled water to the school district, which “reduces their need for potable water for other uses,” he explained. “Basically, it leaves more groundwater for neighbors and other residents.” The other program he’s applied for is an emergency water storage reserve, or a 500,000 gallon storage tank, and money to drill ten wells to fill the tank, as well as an emergency intertie to the school district. The MCCSD didn’t make the cut for the first round of grants, but should find out in February if its projects will be funded in the second round. In the meantime, Rhoades urged everyone to store as much water as they can. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be a 5,000 poly-holding tank or a three-story redwood water tower,” he pointed out. “If you’re using it for human consumption, you want something that is rated and safe to store the water in. But if it’s for agricultural needs, whatever containers are available. And it’s one of the fastest things you can do. Because the projects we’re proposing to do are going to take years to develop.”
December 29, 2021 — Save The Redwoods League Director of Land Protection, Becky Bremser discusses the League’s recent efforts to save 5 miles of coastline and 2250 acres of coastal redwoods in northern Mendocino County.
December 28, 2021 – Art Center Ukiah has laid plans to bring in some new artists in the new year. Art Center Ukiah is a non-profit art gallery, run by volunteers, tucked behind the Corner Gallery on State Street in downtown Ukiah. With a mission to support local artists and display local art, the Art Center has ambitious plans for the New Year and hopes its imminent series of exhibits and workshops will entice more people to visit the gallery and participate in upcoming community events. Laura Fogg is a local artist who serves as a volunteer board member of Art Center Ukiah. She explains that the Art Center wants to increase community involvement in the new year. Fogg strategized to design exhibits for the 2022 season that would involve more community members: she reached out to diverse organizations and community leaders and asked them to curate exhibits and workshops on the themes of their choosing to be displayed in the Art Center gallery.This collaborative method yields fresh and provocative results. For example, the National Alliance for Mental Illness, NAMI, will sponser an exhibit on suicide and mental illness. The Pomo Nation will offer an exhibit on sovereignty and safety, and Ukiah City Council Member Juan Orozco will organize an exhibit on immigration. Each of these exhibits will offer free community workshops, too. Fogg offers more details on each upcoming event in the audio report.
December 27, 2021 — Oscar’s Place, a donkey sanctuary in Hopland named for a cat, is populated by guinea hens, medieval artillery, and dozens of soon-to-be reality TV stars. Ron King is a former New York fashion and media executive who lost his job in the pandemic and decided to devote himself to rescuing donkeys. The 75-acre ranch is named for the memory of a much-beloved pet. Donkeys are charismatic, with their quizzical expressions, big hairy ears, and dainty hooves. They are equines, but their brains, their guts, and their hooves are entirely different from those of a horse, which means they require a different kind of care. They are also profoundly emotional. “They form very strong bonds with each other, and with their human caretakers,” King said during a tour of the premises on Friday morning. Oscar’s Place has had just over eighty donkeys come through. Twenty-nine have been adopted, and six are permanent residents. Not many are available for adoption at the moment, since King wants to make sure they are successfully rehabilitated, both physically and emotionally; that potential adopters have the resources and the fencing to take care of them properly; and that they will be treated as pets, rather than beasts of burden. He also won’t adopt out pregnant females. Most importantly, he will only home them in pairs, even if they are destined to be companions for other animals. “I have promised these donkeys a safe, happy, and healthy life, and I believe that retirement is probably part of that,” he said. “I think donkeys probably do enjoy having a job, but it has to be pretty light. The primary reason people adopt donkeys is to be a pet, and secondarily, they’re great guardians.” While the donkeys he introduced to a visitor were affectionate and docile, nuzzling for treats and leaning into shoulder rubs, King says “donkeys are fierce.” Their bonding tendency means they will protect their friends and family, starting with a unique bray that is often enough to send coyotes in search of a meal somewhere else. Next, they charge. “Usually, a thousand-pound animal charging will deter it,” King explained. “If the coyote still continues, donkeys’ back hips are double jointed. They can kick sideways and backwards. And so if you ever google Donkey vs. Coyote, which I do not recommend, the donkey always wins.” For all that is endearing, unique, and fierce about them, the species is a bit of a modern-day castoff. “Most ancient cities around the globe were built on the backs of donkeys,” King reasoned. “And then we got tractors. Now, in this century, horses win races. Cattle feed a food system. Goats produce milk and meat. So they all serve a monetary value to humans. Donkeys have no monetary value. They’ve just been used, and then discarded. So the donkey has very few advocates.” Viejo, King’s personal pet donkey, is one of the permanent residents. He and his friend Sandy got a vigorous rub as King talked about what he knows and doesn’t know about the animals who show up on the ranch with a variety of conditions. Donkeys end up at auction houses, where their buyers almost inevitably slaughter them, for a variety of reasons. Either their owners or the owners’ heirs surrender them, or people illegally round up wild donkeys and sell them for quick cash. King suspects Viejo was surrendered, because “he came off the truck friendly. I think he is just about perfect.” Sandy, who is heavily pregnant, is food-motivated, so, according to King, “she acts like she’s being sweet. She’s just trying to manipulate you into giving her some food. If you don’t, she will leave you.” King hasn’t entirely lost his fashion sense. He is fully aware that he and Viejo, both silver-haired partial brunettes, go well together. “Photographers seem to like us because we have the same color hair,” he divulged, planting a kiss on Viejo’s forehead. His media senses are still keen, too. Starting in 2022, he promised, “the donkeys are going to be reality TV stars. Several different production companies approached us, and it was very important to me that we understood what our northern star was and what kind of story we’re going to tell. It’s really going to be stories of compassion and joy and some of the heartache that comes from running a donkey sanctuary.” He already knows who the biggest stars are going to be. They’re just outside a high-ceilinged barn, echoing with the cries of guinea fowl. The guineas are supposed to protect everyone from rattlesnakes, and sure enough, at 10:00 in the morning on Christmas Eve, there wasn’t a rattlesnake in sight. They’re not the stars, though. “Donkeys are pregnant for 14 months, so we already know how many babies we’re going to have next year, and that number is 23,” he announced, leading the way into the maternity pasture. “Donkey babies are adorable, and make for really good TV.” They also come in a variety of sizes. Hershey, who is the size of a really big dog, is probably half mini. Which brings us to the medieval artillery. Sonsa is a baby, too, at two years old. But she is a Percheron, a giant horse that was bred for doing battle with soldiers wearing chainmail and wielding lances. “A pushy Percheron is quite a different thing from a pushy donkey,” King observed, trying to dissuade her from running down a visitor out of sheer curiosity and exuberant friendliness. Her journey from the auction house to Oscar’s Place should resonate with anyone who ever went to the pound to pick up a lapdog and came home with a pitbull. “I went to the auction in November to rescue donkeys,” King recalled. “And this one chose me. I just fell madly in love and decided I needed to follow my heart, even though it wasn’t really our mission, so here she is.” King is planning to bring in a trainer, and eventually put Sonsa to work, giving donors cart rides and helping round up donkeys on vaccination day. In the meantime, he’s focused on the mission, which is kind of a long, elaborate way of saying thank you to a species that’s been carrying our burdens for a very long time.
December 23, 2021 — Noble Waidelich, Ukiah’s new police chief, is being sued in civil court this month for domestic violence that is alleged to have taken place between 2011 and 2015. Madisyn Carley, who is now 20 years old, claims that on numerous occasions, she witnessed Waidelich abusing her mother, Amanda Carley. She is seeking compensatory and punitive damages for wage loss, medical expenses, and loss of earning capacity, in addition to emotional distress. Noble Waidelich and Amanda Carley were then living together as a couple. Amanda Carley was also a law enforcement officer, in the Mendocino County Probation Department. Waidelich did not respond to an email request for comment on this story earlier this week. Anyone accused of a crime is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Michelle Roberts is the director of the Fort Bragg office of Project Sanctuary, a non-profit organization that advocates for, counsels, and houses families who are seeking to escape domestic violence. She told kzyx that law enforcement families experience a high rate of abuse. “Unfortunately, it’s actually quite prevalent, more so than some other professions,” she said. “Both law enforcement and actually military have high rates of domestic violence…there’s varying data, some of it is old, it’s not really really current, but it’s estimated that as many as 40% of law enforcement families have experienced domestic violence.” Concerns about violence and misogyny are not new to the Ukiah Police Department. Former UPD Detective Isabel Siderakis is suing the city, the department, and former UPD Sergeant Kevin Murray for sexual harassment and a hostile work environment. Siderakis claims Murray assaulted her during an out-of-town training and that superiors were unresponsive to her complaints of harassment and discrimination. Murray is no longer on the force, and the District Attorney has charged him with sex crimes against two other women, burglary, and possession of methamphetamine. And in April, multiple videos of Ukiah police officers beating a naked, mentally ill man on the street circulated around the internet. The city and the department did not release any information about whether the officers had been disciplined or suspended, but the responding officer’s name continued to appear on police logs.
Waidelich joined the force in 2005 and was promoted to chief in September of this year, following the departure of former Chief Justin Wyatt. Waidelich was investigated twice for domestic violence against Amanda Carley at the time the abuse is alleged to have occurred. In April of 2015, an investigator with the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office responded to a report by school officials that Amanda Carley’s 13-year-old daughter had told them she had witnessed her mother’s boyfriend head-butting and pushing her. In a 47-page report, investigating officer Andrew Porter wrote that he interviewed Amanda Carley on April 20th. He described her minimizing, evading, changing her story, and denying that she knew the meaning of the term ‘head-butt.’ District Attorney David Eyster told kzyx this morning that on May 4 of 2015, his office returned the investigation to the sheriff’s office for insufficient credible evidence.*
The daughter does not appear to have been close to her mother’s boyfriend. Porter’s report includes a text exchange between Waidelich and the teenager, where she wrote, “Do u realize how happy we were before uLu (sic) ruined all of us.”
Roberts, of Project Sanctuary, says children are deeply affected by domestic violence. “It has a profound effect on them,” she said. “It can impair their learning abilities, it will impact their social skills, it creates a lot of depression and anxiety in children that witness this violence. I mean, think about it, children are innocent victims. They have no control, or very little control, over their own lives.” Project Sanctuary does offer services to children experiencing domestic violence. In his report, Andrew Porter wrote that prior to his investigation, Waidelich had been subject to an internal police department investigation by Bill Cogbill of Santa Rosa. This investigation had been prompted by colleagues reporting that they had witnessed abuse or that Carley had confided in them, but nothing came of it because Carley denied she was being abused. Porter wrote that his final interview with Carley was on August third of 2015. Four months after the initial, evasive interview, he wrote that she came back to his office, admitted that she had not been truthful, and sent him pictures of injuries she had sustained going back to 2012. On August 18, he sent it back to the District Attorney’s office, but it was never prosecuted in criminal court. Roberts says it’s typical for people experiencing domestic violence to deny it. And leaving the dangerous situation is a decision that has its dangers, too. “The best thing you can do is let your friend or colleague know that you care, and that you want to support them,” she said. “I would say one of the best things to do is to listen, to ask them what they want you to do, how you can help them, and let them be the lead in what happens. People often don’t understand that there’s many reasons people stay in abusive relationships, or that it takes them a long time to get out,” she reflected. “Part of it is fear. Victims are at greater risk of serious injury and death after they leave. There’s also just shame and embarrassment. Sometimes there’s custody of children involved. Sometimes there’s economic hardship involved. So it’s complicated.”
If you need help with domestic violence, you can call the Project Sanctuary crisis hotline 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, at 964-HELP on the coast or 463-HELP for inland Mendocino County.
*The evening version of this story was updated to reflect information provided when DA Eyster returned our call from the previous day.
Dec 22, 2021 — Fees for many county services are due to go up in mid-January, leading to sticker shock after years of unchanging prices. Last week, department heads made their various cases to the Board of Supervisors as to how bringing up the cost of fees is the only way to achieve cost recovery, or in some cases, retain staff. Environmental health, the sector of public health that covers everything from land use to body art to Boy Scouts facilities, told the board that many of its fees were last adjusted in 2010, when they still didn’t achieve full cost recovery. The covid response was not factored into any of the requests to increase fees. Most of the presentations included highly technical educational material as well as pitches for why they deserved higher fees. Kirk Ford, with hazardous materials in environmental health, explained that his department is seeking fee increases. He wants a 33% increase for underground tank inspections, from $15 to $20, and a 170% increase in the hourly cost for a hazmat spill response requiring two people, from $270 to $730. Back in 2010, the Board decided that full cost recovery would be a major goal in setting the fees for county services. The calculations include the salary and benefits of the person doing the task that’s paid for by the fee, as well as the services and supplies that are needed. Nash Gonzalez, the head of Planning and Building Services, told the board that his department has increased its productivity by 30% in the last year, partly due to the presence of a contractor in the coast office. The department has also hired another planner, who is training in both the coast and inland offices. When Supervisor Glenn McGourty asked about what impact it would have if the county waived the fees for solar installations, Gonzalez said that could cost $175,000 a year or result in the loss of two positions. Brian Hoy, the supervisor of the Consumer Protections department of Public Health, argued for raising fees to hire more staff and pay them well. He said his department is down two people, but found three good candidates. Still, Supervisor John Haschak wondered if raising the fees so much, so suddenly, might discourage people from getting the permits and licenses they need to comply with the law. Gonzalez told him incentives were still outstripping disincentives.
December 21, 2021 – Wondering what to get yourself or that special someone for the holidays? How about the free gift of a COVID 19 vaccination or booster shot? As Mendocino County experiences new, more transmissible COVID 19 variants, it is more important than ever to protect yourself and your community by getting vaccinated and boosted to fully fortify your immune system to stave off severe symptoms of COVID 19. Mendocino Public Health will offer a holiday vaccination clinic at the Fairgrounds tomorrow, Wednesday, December 22 from 1-5pm for 1st, 2nd and booster doses of Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson and Johnson. Walk-ins are welcome, or appointments can be made at Myturn.ca.gov. A parent or guardian must be present to sign a consent form for minors 12-17 years of age. Adventist Health ER Doctor Drew Colfax, who has been treating COVID patients in Ukiah’s emergency room for almost two years, explains that the new variant of COVID 19, Omicron, poses a significant threat to our community as immunity garnered from vaccines decreases after 6 months, and the new variant is easily transmissible. Dr. Colfax says that a booster shot will restore waning immunity to a more robust level. Dr. Colfax encourages Mendocino County residents to step up and get their boosters.For those who feel that their natural immunity may provide enough protection, or that immunity garnered from a previous infection will stave off severe illness from new variants of COVID 19, Dr. Colfax warns that this will not provide protection against Omicron. Booster doses for all vaccine types, Pfizer, Moderna, J and J are now available in Mendocino County for all adults 18 and up. You can visit your local pharmacy, physician or public health vaccination clinic. Appointments may be needed. For those looking for an easy, fast walk-in option, Mendocino Public health has been offering a weekly, walk-in vaccination clinic at the Ukiah Fairgrounds since July, 2021 According to officials running the program, each of these clinics averages around 300-500 people who are there to get vaccinated or, more currently, to receive their booster shot.
As an incentive, a $25 gift card to either Black Oak, Mama’s Cafe, U Top It, Mendocino Book Company, Gateway Games, Sword and Board or Schat’s will be given to each individual who gets a shot at the County clinic at the fairground. Remember, you do not need to be a Mendocino County resident to take advantage of this clinic. If you have out of town friends or family visiting, encourage them to join if they have not yet been vaccinated or boosted. Everyone 12 and up can enjoy this unique holiday outing!
December 20, 2021 – Sometimes the government does work to better serve its people, and when this happens, it is cause for celebration.Therefore, a celebration was held on the afternoon of December 16th when government officials and community members joined together to commemorate the grand opening of the new Crisis Residential Treatment Facility of Mendocino County. Members from the Measure B committee, Behavioral Health, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Mendocino’s Board of Supervisors, and Redwood Community Services stood together under grey skies to witness the red-ribbon cutting officially opening the new facility on Orchard Street in Ukiah. Neither the rain nor the chill could dampen the palpable joy and sense of accomplishment felt by everyone in attendance who had played a part in bringing this much needed mental health care facility to fruition. Measure B was instrumental in funding the facility. Back in November 2017, over 83% of Mendocino County residents approved to raise the sales tax to finance the construction of behavioral health facilities, and to fund operation costs and services to treat mental illness and addiction. The new Crisis Residential Treatment Facility is one of the first tangible results of Measure B. Funded by Measure B and the Investment in Mental Health Wellness grant, the new facility offers social rehabilitation services in a safe, welcoming, non-institutional, residential setting. The lovely, homey establishment offers an open floor plan featuring a reception room, nurse’s station, bedrooms, bathrooms which are all centered around a large dining room and kitchen area flooded with natural lighting from large windows that look out to the spacious backyard patio. Former Measure B Committee member Jan McGourty, current chair Donna MoschettiBehavioral Health Director Dr. Jenine Miller, and retired sheriff Tom Allman all worked many years on the Measure B committee to bring the CRT to fruition.
December 17, 2021 — The Potter Valley Project is in a phase of uncertainty, but a recent feasibility study could be a blueprint for a future that includes a diversion without dams. The deadline for the license application is coming up in mid-April, and PG&E, which owns the project, has made it clear that it does not intend to renew. The coalition seeking to take over the license hasn’t come up with the money it needs to fund the necessary studies. And PG&E is not paying for a costly repair at the powerhouse that drastically reduces the amount of water the project is able to divert from the Eel River into the Russian River and on into Lake Mendocino. The new study, a technical memorandum funded by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife with cannabis taxes, posits a few strategies for decommissioning the dams and building structures to continue seasonal diversions. Darren Mireau, the North Coast Director of California Trout, signaled that he favors the rapid removal option with pumping. (CalTrout is a member of the Two-Basin Partnership, the coalition of entities that has filed a notice of intent to take over the license, but Mireau is not speaking on behalf of the entire Partnership here.) He says sediment, both of the sandy and the rocky varieties, will play a large role in how any of the alternatives is carried out. Sediment buildup that reduced the capacity of the van Arsdale reservoir behind Cape Horn Dam was a large part of the reason Scott Dam and Lake Pillsbury were built in 1922, 14 years after Cape Horn. “You’re goint to have an impact with sediment release, and you could do that once, or you could do that four times,” he said of the rapid removal option, as opposed to the phased approach, which would take place over four years. “And each time has about the same caliber of impact. So it seems reasonable to do it all at once and get past the impact, and get the dam out.” Since the point of dam removal is to protect fish, Mireau added, “We would time it in a way that most of the fish are coming up the Eel River and heading into tributaries, so they’ll be distributed out of the effect zone…like I said, this is a feasibility level study right now, so a lot more detailed study will unfold.” Some options include a partial removal of Cape Horn Dam, but Mireau was unambivalent about CalTrout’s position on Scott Dam. “We will certainly want to remove — or have PG&E remove, to be honest, the entirety of Scott Dam,” he emphasized. “It needs to go. With regard to Cape Horn Dam, it’s a little trickier, because it’s the diversion point for water going into the Russian River, and we’re committed to maintain that reliable water supply…this study is actually groundbreaking for us, because we now have three reliable infrastructures that we think would safely and reliably provide that water supply to the Russian River.” Of the three alternatives, the pumping option would be the cheapest to build, at an estimated cost of $20 million, as compared to $35-$48 million for channel-building options. But the annual projected operations and management costs for the pumping scenario range from $309,000-$359,000, including water delivery costs to Potter Valley of about $284,000 per year. Annual O&M costs for the other two options range from $50,000-$200,000. But Mireau doesn’t have a problem with water users paying the price for the commodity. “Any water diversion at that location is going to have some annual operation and maintenance costs,” he said. “That’s unavoidable. The advantage of the full removal of Cape Horn Dam with that pumped diversion approach is that you get all of the obstruction out of the river that might impair fish passage.That alternative for Cape Horn Dam does that the best. And it does shift the cost, I think, to the water users, instead of the fish side, where it appropriately needs to be.” Reached by phone, Congressman Jared Huffman acknowledged that PG&E ratepayers are likely to get stuck paying for any alternative that ends up being implemented at the project. But he said ratepayers are already paying for hydropower costs, and PG&E is currently operating the Potter Valley Project at a loss of about $9 million a year. What happens next depends on the federal regulators. If surrender and decommissioning is the way forward, it will depend on an order from the Federal Energy and Regulatory Commission. The Two-Basin Partnership is likely to withdraw its notice of intent to apply for the license, according to Mireau. “We’re reasonably certain that will happen in ‘22, at least by the expiration date of the license itself, which is April 14, 2022,” he said. “And then FERC will turn and order PG&E into that surrender and decommission process…and then it’s PG&E, the license holder’s obligation to respond, start developing a plan for that decommissioning, and go forward from there.” Huffman said that, although surrender and decommissioning scenarios do differ, a dam that blocks anadromous fish passage, as Scott Dam does, would have to meet a set of regulatory standards so significant that, “When you add it all up, you see where agencies have weighed in, (and) the only way to meet standards is to remove the dams.” The last relicensing of the Potter Valley Project took 34 years. Mireau thinks time is of the essence for the fish, which are drawing nearer to extinction. Huffman hopes the condition of Lake Mendocino and the crippled transformer in the powerhouse “should create a great sense of urgency.” He also noted “a reticence to give up on the license application.” But if the partnership doesn’t withdraw its notice of intent to apply, FERC is likely to wait until it misses the application deadline in April, just as the dry season is getting underway, before making the pivotal order. “One or the other will happen,” Mireau predicted.
You can find more documents about the Two-Basin Partnership at twobasinsolution.org
December 16, 2021 — The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors approved the contract, including a $3 million increase, with the medical provider for inmates at the county jail this week, with the proviso that the contract be amended to include a mental health clinician. Dr Jenine Miller, the head of the county’s Behavioral Health Department, agreed to work with NaphCare, the provider, on those amendments, and report back to the board in 60 days. Supervisor Ted Williams asked Miller for her assessment of the mental healthcare in the current contract. “Are we completely in compliance, in providing a level of care that meets standards?” he asked. “Without a mental health clinician and expanding mental health services in the jail, no, we’re not,” she replied. “If we approve this contract, with adding the clinician, we’ll be closer to where we need to be, mental health-wise.” She added that there is a number of ways in which the matter can be investigated, if a patient inmate claims they did not receive services. However, there has been at least one instance of a former inmate who complained about requesting a mental health assessment and not receiving it. Williams said some of his constituents have told him that they fear retribution if they report problems in the jail. Miller said that, in addition to a mental health clinician, she would need to take a much closer look at the details of the treatment. “I have made it clear with NaphCare and the jail, for me to really get on board with their contract, we need to do audits,” she insisted. “NaphCare and the jail have agreed, they would be fine with Behavioral Health doing a quarterly audit.” Dr Jeff Alvarez, the Chief Medical Officer at NaphCare, added that the National Commision on Correctional Healthcare does conduct an independent audit every three years and would be back onsite this year. The mental healthcare portion comprises 17%, or less than a fifth, of NaphCare’s contract. Another 17% is the jail-based competency treatment program, which is funded by the Department of State Hospitals. A significant percentage of the inmates are receiving some form of mental healthcare. Dr. Amber Simpler, NaphCare’s Chief Psychologist, broke down the numbers as of Tuesday morning: out of 305 patients, 120 were on antidepressants; 111 had had an evaluation outside of the initial intake process; “and we know about 58 of those individuals were on anti-psychotic medication,” which is the first course of treatment for schizophrenia spectrum disorders. About 46% of the people who had been in isolation also had mental health issues, she reported. Williams pressed to find out how many mentally ill inmates are isolated, often without medication. Simpler said deciding who ends up in what kind of housing is beyond the scope of NaphCare’s responsibilities, but they do inform jail staff if isolation is contra-indicated. Lt. John Bednar, who works in the jail, did not have statistics on how many people have been placed in isolated housing this year, but that their predicament is discussed at regular meetings. “No one is placed on administrative separation for being mentally ill,” he said, adding that inmates are isolated if they are violent or “because they have been, or potentially could be, victimized in the general population setting.” With the contract expiring at the end of the year, not approving it wasn’t really an option. Williams moved approval of the amended contract through the end of 2022, “and direct Dr. Miller to coordinate an amendment to provide mental health services at an appropriate level of care and review mental health patient statistics and report back to the board within 60 days,” he specified. The motion passed unanimously.
December 15, 2021 — About a dozen activists from a coalition that’s been pushing for a moratorium on logging in the Jackson Demonstration State Forest held an impromptu meeting with Assembly member Wood and Senator Mike McGuire’s field staff in downtown Ukiah Tuesday, asking them to convey their concerns to elected officials. Among them were Polly Girvin, an authorized representative of the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians for government to government consultations with the state; and an activist who said he had been struck by a vehicle while blockading a road early Friday morning. “Vehicular attacks on protestors are very much in vogue,” said the protester, who goes by the name Mama Monkey. “Myself and other citizens were spread across Road 300, just east of the confluence of Roads 300, 350, and 360, near the egg-taking station,” said Mama Monkey. “We were preventing loggers from entering the Red Tail timber harvest plan, and a white four-door Toyota Tacoma with a camper shell and a heavy-looking black metal bully bar after-market front bumper came towards us (we were all wearing high visibility yellow safety vests and making our presence very obvious) and the truck came towards us really quickly, and kind of screeched to a halt just within a few feet of other folks in my group, then reversed direction and altered course to point towards myself…my suspicion is that the person driving miscalculated, expecting me to move out of the way, because I was a little bit more isolated on that side of the road, but I did not move, and I think when he realized that, he started to attempt to slow down, but he was not able to stop in time to prevent his bumper from hitting me in the chest.” In June, Sheriff Matt Kendall wrote a letter to then-CalFire Director Thomas Porter and the Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, saying he was concerned about public safety issues arising from people blocking roads in the forest. He urged the state to take action “to secure a safe working environment,” writing that, “My office cannot take over issues which are the responsibility of the State of California.” In July, Anderson Logging, which was under CalFire orders to stop working in the Caspar 500 timber harvest plan, told Mendocino Unit Chief George Gonzalez that the company wanted to hire private security to protect its workers. CalFire Chief Legal Counsel Bruce Crane told Myles Anderson and his lawyer that according to the Public Resource Code, “CAL FIRE cannot cede control of activities on JDSF, for law enforcement and security purposes, to any person or entity at any time.” Mama Monkey tried to file a report with the Sheriff’s office and California Highway Patrol over the weekend, then overcame initial reluctance and filed a report with CalFire Monday morning. Cal Fire confirmed as much, but did not provide details, as the investigation had just been opened. Mama Monkey provided details of the incident to Wood and McGuire’s representatives. They did not go to the hospital after the encounter, and chose to keep their medical information about the aftermath private. “I’m there to protect the trees for the well-being of everyone, of the loggers just as much as myself, for their children just as much as my children,” they declared. “It’s very sad that certain parties are acting violently, and I feel it’s my duty to make sure they’re held accountable, so they don’t continue to escalate violence.” In his letter last summer, Kendall wrote that he fully supports the right to civil disobedience, but that safety cannot be ensured if activists continue to protest in an active timber sale. “We can see where this is leading, and the outcome will be tragic if action isn’t taken,” he warned. As for Mama Monkey, “What I want is a moratorium on logging within Jackson Demonstration State Forest.”
December 14, 2021 — Sherwood Oaks, the nursing home in Fort Bragg, is in a serious crisis, according to a report by Dr. William Miller, the Medical Director and Chief of Medical Staff at Adventist Health Mendocino Coast. At last night’s meeting of the Mendocino Coast Healthcare District, he told the board that the property, but not the nursing home itself, is in escrow, and the nursing home is desperately short-staffed. Miller said if the California Department of Public Health does not provide emergency nursing staff, the facility could close by the new year. The home also lacks a director of nursing. And Will Maloney, the administrator, is retiring next week. Miller said family members of the 36 residents currently on site would start receiving phone calls apprising them of the situation this morning. He reported that several meetings yesterday yielded assessments of immediate, mid-range, and long-term levels of crisis. After the staffing, there are serious issues of about $1.5 million worth of deferred maintenance on the property and $2 million in outstanding fees due to the state. He sounded something close to a note of optimism when Director Norman Devall asked him if it was possible that the facility would be closed by January 1st. “If the State does not step up and provide emergency relief nursing, then there is that potential,” he acknowledged. “I find it hard to believe that the State would allow that to happen. They did step up and provide the necessary RN staffing during the covid outbreak. I know that the county is very concerned about this, and they are reaching out to their partners in the State to make sure that that never happens. But that is obviously the concern.” The party interested in purchasing the property is Schlomo Rechnitz, who owns 81 nursing homes in the state of California. Rechnitz is the subject of a multi-part investigation by CalMatters reporter Jocelyn Wiener, who has documented multiple instances of how the state’s irregular licensing practices have set the scene for poor infection control protocols, lack of oversight, and multiple injuries and deaths at facilities owned by Rechnitz and his affiliates. Earlier this month, Rechnitz’ lawyer, Mark Johnson, confirmed in an email to KZYX that an affiliate of his client is in negotiations to purchase the property and the building where Sherwood Oaks is located. He added that, “The nursing home remains with the current operator. If and when the transaction is completed, my client will have no role whatsoever in operations of any facility on that site. My client’s role will be solely that of a landlord.” The property’s total assessed value, according to Parcel Viewer, is about $2.8 million. It was last sold in May of 2003. The owner is RBJ and Associates, LLC, which, according to Open Corporate, is linked to Richard Azevedo, of Auburn, California. None of the five phone numbers associated with his name were in working order earlier this month. The property has not been sold yet, according to the county recorder’s online database, which is updated regularly. Miller said it was key to find out how much Rechnitz is willing to put into fixing the property, which is not in great shape. “I do want to say that everything at the moment is in operation, is functional, that the care is safe and good,” he began. “However, these things are challenging in the way that if any of them got worse or broke down, that could potentially lead to some serious problems.” There is an outstanding court order for the facility to come into compliance with ADA requirements. The deadline for that passed about a year ago, and Miller said the upgrades would be about $120,000. The generator also needs to be replaced, which is “about a $200,000 ticket item.” The boiler needs to be replaced, for another $200,000. The heating system needs to be modernized with electric heat pumps, for $500,000. The roof needs to be replaced, at an estimated cost of $150,000. There is also an eight-inch subsidence in the parking lot and underneath a wall in the kitchen, due to an underground fuel tank which was improperly decommissioned in the 70’s, “so now the thing is rusted and collapsed,” Miller explained. “That obviously means that that wall might be condemned. I don’t think the whole facility would be condemned, but possibly the wall and part of the kitchen.” Miller added that a contractor has proposed a solution, which has not been approved by the agency responsible for maintaining safety standards at medical facilities, so an estimate of that repair is not available. Without immediate staffing, though, the residents will have to be relocated, and there is not another qualified facility on the coast. With an aging population, a nursing home could be a flourishing business, but the majority of the Sherwood Oaks residents are on MediCal or MediCare, neither of which offers nursing home operators an appealing margin. Medicare covers 100% of the first 20 days of a stay, with 100 days total, at a much lower rate after the first 20. However, Medicare has never paid for nursing home care, and MediCal pays for about ⅓ of the cost of a nursing home bed. “It has to have a better payer mix, in which private insurance covers the rest, ” Miller said. “In other words, if they have enough good-paying patients, that offsets the MediCal patients.” And most health insurance doesn’t pay for nursing homes at all. Still, Miller thinks the long-term solution is building an entirely new nursing home. “Personally, I think it should start off as a not-for-profit facility,” he opined. “Obviously, building a new nursing home is going to take years, so that solution is one that can only occur, or really be discussed, after we get the immediate challenge addressed.”
December 13, 2021 -- What began as an act of civil disobedience in front of a store turned unlawful on Saturday, December 11, when 15 maskless protestors and their children boldly entered The Ukiah Natural Foods Co-op in Ukiah, California, to demonstrate their fury over the need to wear a mask and follow COVID protocol to shop inside the store. Apparently unsatisfied with the Co-op’s online shopping and curbside pick-up option for those who cannot or will not wear a mask, the maskless protesters began their action in front of the entrance doors to the business, holding signs reading “Fauci is a Facist”, “The Mandate is the Beast”, and “Freedom over Fear”. The protest grew unlawful when the group entered the Co-op to purposefully disrupt business. For almost an hour, the angry mob occupied the store. They blocked aisles with their shopping carts so customers could not shop. They allowed and encouraged their children to roam freely through the store opening packages and eating food without paying, they damaged merchandise by filling plastic bags with copious quantities of bulk items which were later abandoned in their carts, and they harassed the staff and customers with fallacies comparing the conditions and policies of the Co-op to Nazi Germany or the Jim Crow era of segregation. Grey Wolf was working at the Co-op cafe during the protest. He described what took place during his work day. “We were flooded with a group of people who refused to wear masks. They were demanding that we check them out. They gathered in a wall by the cash registers and refused to leave unless we checked them out.” The protestors’ tactic is to fill their carts with groceries and inundate the cashiers, who are not permitted to sell items to unmasked individuals. This serves to disrupt business as compliant shoppers are not able to access available cashiers. Ten phone calls and sixty minutes later, the Ukiah Police Department arrived on scene. The protestors left the business, and got a talking-to from the police. When the police left,the protestors cheered for their perceived victory, took a series of group photos holding their signs in front of the store, and took off in their cars. Traumatized, the Co-op staff were left to clean up the mess, discarding a hundred dollars or more of half-eaten food items, and reshelving salvageable merchandise.
Unfortunately, the scene was not unfamiliar to Grey. “This is the second time it’s happened in the last month by the same group of people.” Grey, along with other floor staff, had to manage the mob's angry questions. “They were asking questions about what the policies were, what the details were, had any of us read the mandate.They were throwing out comments, calling people Nazis and asking us if we knew anything about the Civil Rights Movement or 1930’s Germany. It was a lot of angry, hateful energy.” Grey notes that the Co-op employees are community members who have no control over Public Health protocol. “There are a couple of high school students who work as cashiers. We have moms. These are the people who work here.” Grey wants the protestors to know that the employees, who had to take the abuse and clean up the mess of over 100 dollars’ worth of trashed merchandise, are not responsible for the mask policy. “I fully respect your right to protest peacefully outside,” he said. “But coming inside, disrupting the flow of business, and agitating the workers who do not have control over this rule, is not respectful.” Sylvia Fogel is another Co-op employee. She explained that the protestors realize that the Co-op will not sell items to unmasked individuals, so the protestors fill carts with food, wait in line to pay, get denied service, and leave the cart and its items behind to be dealt with by store employees. Some of the items had been opened and half-eaten. As a stocker for the store, Fogel was burdened with cleaning up damaged merchandise and throwing away half-eaten food. “They are very disrespectful when they come in. They say things like, ‘It’s illegal to tell us to wear a mask. You’re discriminating against us.’ It makes me really sad for the people who actually have been discriminated against because it’s not discrimination and you are misrepresenting the term. That is not o.k.” Fogel shared how the presence of these unmasked marauders affects her. “I live with my 90-year-old grandma and I worry about her health every day going to work. My household needs my income, so I can’t quit. It scares me when people like this come in. You are putting my Grandma’s life at risk every time!” Fogel found the behavior of the unmasked children particularly disturbing. “The children were even opening up chip bags and running around the store eating them and puffing up their chests at one of our cashiers. It is so disrespectful. It is scary to me that someone would teach their children that.” Aubrey Lowther, another Co-op employee who was working as a cashier during the protest, described the impact of the mob. “This is the second time that these folks have come through. When it happens, I think about how I have a partner who is immune compromised and I know a classmate who has lost an immediate member of their family to Covid. I worry that when these folks come in, they don’t think about who we go home to.” Lowther offered a suggestion to help us move forward as a community. “We all want the same destination. We all want to reach the end of COVID, and be able to be in contact the same way we used to be. But we are not there yet. It’s through our collective efforts, and collectively being as safe as we can and following guidelines, that will let us reach that destination, together.”
December 10, 2021 — Trails and railroads have been top of mind lately. Last month, the Skunk Train made a controversial move to purchase the Georgia Pacific mill site in Fort Bragg. And the master planning process for the Great Redwood Trail is poised to get going in the new year — under the shadow of the Coal Train, which could stall progress on the trail’s federal application indefinitely. In the meantime, some cities along the former railroad are quietly building segments of trail adjacent to the tracks that run through town, adding benches and plants, turning the old easements into parks. The City of Ukiah has built three segments of the trail, from its northern boundary to Commerce Drive, just south of the airport. Earlier this year, the city got a three and a half million dollar grant from the California Natural Resources Agency’s Urban Greening program to build another two miles south, to Taylor Lane. Andrew Stricklin, the Associate Engineer with the city’s Public Works Department, spoke Thursday morning about the next phase of the trail.
December 9, 2021 — The Ukiah Unified School District has partnered with Mendocino County Public Health to host COVID-19 Vaccination Clinics at local elementary schools in November and December for children ages 5-11. The final clinic for this round of first shots took place Thursday, November 9th, at Grace Hudson Elementary school from 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
December 8, 2021 -- We revisit the controversial sale of the Georgia Pacific mill site in Fort Bragg to the Skunk Train and its parent company the Mendocino Railway with George Reinhardt, an associate at the non-profit, The Noyo Headlands Unified Design group or NHUDG. NHUDG has been advocating for the mill site clean-up and environmentally friendly reuse plans for over a decade.
December 6, 2021 — A local tribe learned last week that CalFire has decided to review its management plan of Jackson Demonstration State Forest, with an eye toward tribal co-management with the Sherwood Valley and Coyote Valley Bands of Pomo Indians. Polly Girvin, a longtime advocate for Coyote Valley, says the tribe is ready to get specific. “We have a plan in hand, at our fingertips,” she said. “A habitat management plan, crafted with the Save the Redwoods (League). We are going to be presenting amendments to the Forest Practice Act, amendments to the regulations of the Forest Practice act, and the habitat management plan.” The review is part of a lengthy process, which hasn’t started yet. But last year, Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order encouraging State agencies to move toward co-management of tribal ancestral lands that are under the ownership or control of the State. It’s part of an acknowledgement of the violent dispossession of Indigenous people, and it emphasizes access to sacred sites and cultural resources. There are ongoing government-to-government consultations with the Tribe, but Priscilla Hunter, the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for Coyote Valley, says they haven’t been transparent. “Especially regarding our sacred sites,” she said. “They only tell us so much, and then we come back a second time to review the site...the sites that we have visited have been driven through with trucks, tractors, and they want to use those same roads to continue to destroy our site.” The Tribe has asked for a moratorium on logging in JDSF while the management plan is being amended. The Governor issued his executive order about tribal co-management in September of last year. At this year’s September meeting of the Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, also known as CalFire, outgoing director Thomas Porter recommended a review of the JDSF plan, years ahead of when it was originally going to take place. And Porter said there’s money to carry out co-management and scientific management practices. “Co-management in the context that I am talking about means access to and ongoing dialogue of culturally important plants and animals, and how those can be managed in conjunction with each other’s desires and needs on the landscape,” he told the Board during his Director’s Report. “I think that under the current administration and the direction the State is going, related to tribal engagement, I think that it warrants a review before its regular time for renewal….in the Governor’s budget, we the Department are going to see a $10 million placement of funds that is directed at Demonstration State Forest management, in science as well as increasing the staffing to get back to a place that we haven’t seen since the 1900’s.” Girvin says the tribes could use some staff, too, especially independent archeologists, “because each tribe on its own, they do not have archeologists, cultural resource protection staff,” she said. “What has happened to date is, Tribes have been inundated with THP’s (Timber Harvest Plans), saying there are sites on them, with no ability to have staff to respond. So we’re really going to be demanding some, I would say, reparations. If they’re not going to give the land back, then at least give us some mechanism to help defend the cultural resources there.” Plans for the review of the plan are in the earliest stages, in a newly-created sub-committee to an advisory group that meets twice a year. Two months after the Board of Forestry accepted Director Porter’s recommendation, the Jackson Advisory Group created a sub-committee consisting of JAG members Charlie Schneider and Amy Wynn to start the fact-finding process. State Forests Program Manager Kevin Conway said the sub-committee will bring its information back to the full advisory group at its next meeting in April or May, and, from there, the JAG will develop recommendations to take to the Board of Forestry. Girvin and Hunter said they learned about all this from a third party, in spite of the ongoing government-to-government consultations. Girvin wants those consultations to move beyond the JAG. “We have to go to the very top,” she declared. “To effectively look at changing legislation is on our agenda…we will not be the sub-committee of the Jackson Advisory Group...we’ll soon have to establish a protocol for our government-to-government consultation expanding to include co-management.” Reached by phone on Friday, Keith Gilless, the Board of Forestry chair, said he has not yet received the materials for the review, but that it has been in the Board’s work plan and that he himself has had a long interest in tribal co-management of public lands. He hadn’t yet seen the November 15th resolution by the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors to ask the Governor for a review of the plan for JDSF, but he expects the Governor’s office will send it along. In September, he told Porter he thought the request for a review of the scientific management was entirely in order. “We have a lot of places where we can do various things,” he mused; “but we don’t have any other place, from my point of view, as a forest scientist, that is really on a par with Jackson to inform our management on the North Coast. So it is a critical issue, and I’m quite responsive to your request.” But Girvin says tribal co-management and this view of scientific management are not exactly the same thing, which is why she’s advocating for an independent archeologist. “Our protection mechanisms in the Forest Practice Act are whether the State historic preservation office’s archeologists think a site is worthy of extracting information from,” she said. “Not protection. Scientific extraction. So we were not at the table in ‘73 when this bill was enacted, the Forest Practice Act. We're here today, we have a team, and we will probably have to augment our team with an independent archeologist. Not Cal Fire and the timber industry archeologist determining what is sacred. No. That has to stop.” At a recent sacred ceremony in JDSF, Hunter recalled, “We brought some singers in. When we got in, where we were going to start, it started raining. And it just poured. I was like, there it is, guys. Our prayer has been answered. And the prayer is going to carry it further, each time.”
Skunk Train president Robert Pinoli answers questions about their acquisition and plans for the Georgia Pacific Mill Site in Fort Bragg and the City’s lawsuit, short broadcast version.
In this segment Skunk Train president Robert Pinoli answers questions about their acquisition and plans for the Georgia Pacific Mill Site in Fort Bragg and the City’s lawsuit.
December 2, 21021 — Tax revolts have a storied place in American history, going back to the Boston Tea Party, when the Sons of Liberty set off a revolution by destroying an entire shipment of British tea to protest taxation without representation. More recently, Flow Cannabis Company co-founders Michael Steinmetz and Flavia Cassani invited California cannabis businesses to join them in withholding cultivation taxes until they see real, actionable change, presumably in California’s cannabis tax structure. In a recent article in Medium, they declared that they would recommend to their board that, instead of paying the tax, they place the estimated amount in an escrow account until the change takes place. Steinmetz did not respond to an email or a phone call asking him to comment for this story, though he did speak with the Sacramento Bee shortly after the editorial appeared. The California Department of Tax and Fee Administration recently announced that taxes on flower, leaves, and fresh cannabis per ounce will go up next month, due to inflation. All three taxes rest squarely on licensed cultivators. And so does the risk in the strategy of withholding the tax, according to Omar Figueroa, a longtime cannabis attorney in Sonoma County. “Cultivators are required to pay the cultivation tax when they transfer the cannabis to distribution companies like Flow Kana,” he explained. “So if the distributor does not pass those taxes along to the state (because the distribution companies are supposed to be surrogate tax collectors for the state), if they fail to do their duty, they are putting the cultivators at risk. So cultivators would be wise to make sure that they get receipts showing that they remitted the taxes to the distribution companies, so that they can clear themselves from liability.” There can be severe consequences for failing to pay the cannabis cultivation tax. Under the revenue and taxation code, any licensee who does not pay their taxes is subject to a penalty of half the amount owed, plus the taxes they owe, and could lose their license. “I don’t know who gives them legal advice,” Figueroa added; “but there’s no provision that says if you put the taxes not paid into an escrow account, you don’t have to pay penalties and you don’t get revoked. There’s no such provision in the law.” Local cannabis policy and trade associations are sticking to old-fashioned advocacy and organizing to address the cannabis tax structure.The Origins Council is a non-profit education, research and policy advocacy group that partners with cannabis trade associations, including the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, all over the state. Executive Director Genine Coleman says there is a robust conversation about the tax structure in Sacramento, and she’s optimistic about the next few months. And Michael Katz, the Executive Director of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, says the tax increase does come at a tough time. “This year, even more than last year, there have been challenges in the marketplace due to prices going down (and) substantial oversupply, that didn’t even exist when the previous tax increase was avoided,” he reflected. “The community is really aware of this tax increase and it has really created a lot of frustration.” He gets it, but he’s taking a measured approach to change-making. “The full industry understands the frustration,” he went on, before listing the strategies organizations like his are adopting to address the industry’s top priorities: “ And that includes addressing cultivation taxes immediately, expanding market access immediately (and) providing an opportunity for license fallowing, which would enable cultivators to not continue to pay and operate their cannabis businesses and pay on their licenses, but be able to continue working toward full compliance in such a way that they would not be removed from the program while they’re taking a pause on their cultivation or businesses practices,” he summarized. “And, again, things like normalizing cannabis cultivation as agriculture, which would create parity for cannabis farmers and other farmers, and provide more protections and support just on a fundamental business level. So how do we really approach these issues, with the goal in mind of creating actual change that’s going to benefit folks without having unintended negative consequences that may hurt these people who are already burdened by this system?” As for Figueroa, he respects those who resist a system they view as unjust. But he doesn’t think Flow Cannabis Company is in the same league as the great conscientious objectors. “My mentor Tony Serra was a tax protestor, and went to federal prison three times for refusing to pay war taxes,” he said. “But I don’t think that’s the same situation. Here we have a profit-seeking entity, Flow Kana, that’s all about making money. They’re not objecting to the taxes being used for militaristic purposes. Their objection is that they’re not able to profit enough.” He does agree that the cannabis industry is overtaxed, which he thinks is counter to the language and the intent of Prop 64. He plans to flesh out an idea to create a tax credit that would cancel out the cultivation tax, at this month’s Emerald Cup at the Sonoma County fairgrounds in Santa Rosa.
December 1, 2021 — Senator Mike McGuire’s dream of a 320-mile Great Redwood Trail from the San Francisco Bay to the Humboldt Bay is a few million dollars closer than ever to becoming a reality. At a town hall on Tuesday night, he exulted over the funds he plans to tap to bring the project to fruition. “We now have funding to be able to move the Great Redwood Trail forward,” he told listeners, elaborating that this year’s budget act included several items significant to the trail. One, he said, is that it appropriated enough money to pay off the remaining debt from the North Coast Railroad Authority, which owned and operated the northern portion of the railroad to be converted into the trail. Another is $10.5 million to pay for the master planning process, an intricate, years’-long procedure that will lay out the operations and management of the trail. But McGuire’s victory laps alternated with bouts of alarm over the coal train, which he assured listeners will never happen, though it must be taken seriously. The application for the outdoor recreational paradise he’s envisioned for years will be in direct competition with an application by out-of-state business interests to revitalize the railroad and run 800 loads of coal per day through the Eel River Canyon and the Humboldt Bay to overseas markets. McGuire said that the Eel River Canyon contains some of the most geologically fragile areas in North America, and reminded listeners that there are still train cars in the water from a massive landslide that covered the tracks in 1989. It wasn’t the first time. Shortly after the turn of the last century, McGuire said, “the first day that a train was on it, a massive landslide came down over the tracks.” He said the federal government shut down operations after the 1989 landslide. “You will never see a freight train going north through the Eel River Canyon,” he assured listeners. “You can’t make it work financially.” Still, he worries that the threat of the coal train could “tie up the Great Redwood Trail for years on end, saying that they’re going to be able to get this started. The bottom line is, you will ever get a damn train through the Eel River Canyon...and the last thing that we would want to see anyway is an 800-car coal train coming through the Eel River,” or the Russian River, which, between the two of them, supply drinking water to over a million people. Plans to railbank most of the northern segments still need approval from the federal government. Railbanking is building the trail on top of the tracks, which does make it possible to revert the railroad to its original purpose. McGuire said that has only happened on about 20 miles of the 25,000 miles of railroad that have been converted to trails across the country. The southern portion of the trail, from the Mendocino/Sonoma County line to Marin, will run alongside the railroad tracks, which are owned and operated by SMART, the Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit. The northern portion has been under the purview of the North Coast Railroad Authority. But in September, Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 69, a bill written by McGuire. Under the new law, as of March first, the North Coast Railroad Authority will be known as the Great Redwood Trail Agency. And starting in July, the State Coastal Conservancy will take over the management of the organization. Several segments of the trail have already been built. But details about how to build the trail in the backcountry, where to put restrooms, how to maintain fire safety, and numerous other concerns, will be outlined in a master plan which is scheduled to get going next year and take three to four years to complete. Karen Geier of the Coastal Conservancy indicated that figuring out what to do about tunnels could be some of the trickier aspects of the master plan. “If there are places where it’s just astronomically expensive to redo the tunnel and a reroute is feasible and makes sense, it’s something we should pursue,” she said. “We also need to look at the tunnels that are still open to make sure they’re still safe, and do a little bit more of an engineering analysis on the safety of the existing tunnels that are open. We’ll see how far we get with that in this master planning process.” Geier and McGuire agreed that current trail-building projects are not in conflict with the master plan. Many jurisdictions are already building trails along the route, including Ukiah, Willits, Arcata, Healdsburg, and Marin and Sonoma Counties. “We certainly don’t want this planning effort to get in the way of trail projects that are already moving forward,” Geier emphasized. “It’s exciting that we are already seeing trails constructed, and we want those to proceed alongside the master planning process that’s going to be happening.”
November 30, 2021 — The Wildlands Conservancy, a conservation group that buys large tracts of land for preservation all over the state, announced earlier this month that it had succeeded in purchasing close to 27,000 acres along what it calls the Grand Canyon of the Eel River: the $25 million Lone Pine Ranch, which Dean Witter’s family bought in the1940s. Lauren Schmitt, of our sister station KMUD, interviewed Frasier Haney, the Executive Director of The Wildlands Conservancy, about plans to protect the habita and open up the area to outdoor recreation in the next two years. We should note that the Witter family is a generous supporter of KZYX.
November 29, 2021 — In the two weeks since a mountain lion killed two goats at the high school farm in Boonville, the remaining goats have been listening to a.m. radio all night long, and scarecrows have been giving off offensive odors to deter further losses. But the long-term solution is a high fence, ideally twelve feet tall, with a five-foot visual barrier around the bottom so predators looking for an easy meal won’t be as easily tempted. Project Coyote, an organization dedicated to promoting coexistence between wildlife and humans and their livestock, has offered to get together volunteers to help build a more lion-proof fence at the eight-acre farm, which includes about 15 goats and a herd of sheep. The farm is at the Anderson Valley High school in Boonville, which is a populated area, but it’s also adjacent to a creek, in a corridor where similar attacks have happened in the past. In August, the Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 to end the county’s contract with USDA Wildlife Services, a relationship which, according to Supervisor John Haschak, had already ended. Haschak serves with Supervisor Glenn McGourty on a committee to develop a non-lethal wildlife policy for the county. Wildlife Services offered non-lethal services as well as trapping and killing, which led to lawsuits and controversy. According to Dr. Michelle Lute, the National Carnivore Conservation Manager with Project Coyote, attempts at getting rid of carnivores have far-reaching effects. “You see this a lot with coyotes and mountain lions,” she explained; “where you remove a resident adult, and it opens up a vacancy for a new individual to come in. That new individual may be younger, may not know how to hunt as well, so that can create increased conflict, where there was low potential for conflict in the first place. So that’s why we say the evidence suggests that removing individual carnivores can sometimes increase conflict, despite the purported purpose being to decrease conflict...and that’s why it’s been done, cyclically, for decades and decades, without reduced conflict.” Louise Simson, the new superintendent of Anderson Valley School District, is concerned about safety. She says that during the season when goats and sheep are giving birth, students and staff could be at the farm at all hours. “There was a similar attack, about five years ago, and the animal was trapped,” she said. “And we didn’t have any further incidents. But this is a safety issue, and that’s why I’m involved. I know it’s a very political issue, and there’s many points of view, but my job as a superintendent is to keep the kids safe and that’s why I’m advocating for some help...to me, if there’s an animal with an attack behavior — and this is not an isolated incident, there have been numerous incidents all up and down this creek; that the authorities need to take this into account and maybe look at this as a special situation, because it is on school grounds. However, if that is not to be, I have lots of folks who have given me a lot of advice and no resources. My school district has a $400,000 deficit in operating expenses next year. I’m happy to implement solutions, but those solutions need to come with funding.” Lute says that “if the school is interested in collaborating, we’d happily hold a workshop, virtually or in person, if possible, to talk about additional resources and protections at the school. And we can also help find volunteers if there’s a volunteer workday possible where some enhanced fencing could occur or the pasture and enclosure could be moved away from the creek. As I understand it, the goats are currently grazing pretty close to a creek, which is a natural corridor for all kinds of wildlife, including mountain lions, that like a lot of cover and want to stay away from humans.”
Ten days before the November 15 attack, the county put out a request for proposals from potential contractors to provide some non-lethal services. Haschak said, “that’s mostly for those animal encounters of the small type, like the skunk under the house or the raccoon in the dog pen. What we’re looking at, as far as a model, is that the person would go out and visit the site and then provide some expert opinions, but if the person really needs some infrastructure done, like a one-way door put in or some mesh or whatever kind of construction work, that would be outside the county’s purview. So that would be an opportunity for the person to make some more money, outside the contract with the county.” Haschak also suggested saving money by using recycled materials to build a sturdier fence and assembling a lending library of deterrence items so every farmer doesn’t have to stockpile equipment. Simson, the superintendent, says she’s open to partnerships, but when it comes to making improvements on school property, like building a bigger barn, there is a long permitting process that involves multiple agencies. But she thinks fencing is a little more doable. “I think that the fencing we could do relatively easily,” she reflected. “But that’s a huge expense. So if somebody came to me today and said, Louise, here’s a check for $100,000, put up that fence, I’d be on that in a minute. I’d look to my local partners in the valley to help us with that. Barns and things like that, that’s a different situation.” Asked if it would be feasible to have volunteers build the fence, she said, “If we had a structured partner who had an idea about how to systematically implement an improvement, we would work through that.”
by Stacey Sheldon
November 25, 2021--The City of Ukiah recently censored the message, “No Human is Illegal on Stolen Land” on the new mural in Todd Grove Park. The mural is the creation of the Ukiah Valley Youth Leadership Coalition, a teen program of the Arbor Center at Redwood Community Services. The teens, with the help of lead artist Josue Rojas, designed a large-scale mural on the theme of immigration, and painted it on the exterior walls of the park’s restroom. When Rojas and the teens arrived at the park on Friday November 12 to finish the mural, they saw something that shocked them.
Cat Karpov-Kinrad, one of the teen artists, explained that when the team showed up on Friday to complete the mural, they were greeted by a City official who informed them of the censorship. The teens saw that the message on the mural’s banner had been painted over. Karpov-Kinrad knew the message would be controversial, but did not imagine it would be censored before the mural’s completion.
Neil Davis, Director of Community Services for the City of Ukiah, assisted the Coalition in implementing the project and fulfilling the youth’s artistic goals. Together, the Youth Coalition and Davis moved forward on the project. But waiting for approval from the city’s design board and planning commision takes approximately 3 months. Because the Youth Coalition was working with timely grants to fund the project, grants that would expire before the 3 month approval process, Davis suggested the mural be put on boards and installed on the exterior walls of the restroom. This method would result in what would be considered temporary art and would not require the lengthy wait for approval.
Problems arose when the Youth Coalition realized they could not install boards on the walls of the restroom, and Davis gave them permission to paint directly on the restroom walls.
When objections to the mural’s message were received by the City, Davis was asked to stymie the mural’s progress as it had not received the proper permitting. Ironically, Davis was the one to spray paint over the mural’s message. He is hopeful that the City and the Youth Coalition can dialogue and arrive at a positive resolution.
Lead artist, Josue Rojas, spent months helping the Youth Coalition design and paint their mural. He traveled from his home in the Bay area and spent over a week in Ukiah, painting for hours a day, to help the youth meet their deadline to complete the project. His frustration over the censorship is palpable.
At the heart of the mural’s controversial message resides the word “stolen” and this word is, perhaps, the source of contention for objectors. Rojas recognizes the difficulty some may feel in acknowledging the painful truths of the mural’s message and our country’s history.
Like Neil Davis, Rojas is hopeful that the Youth Coalition and the City will work together and find a mutually satisfactory solution to reinstate the mural’s message, a message he believes can facilitate conversations to help unite humanity in a reverence for Mother Earth and one another.
by Alicia Bales
November 23, 2021--Jackson Demonstration State Forest is roughly 50,000 acres of public land in the heart of Mendocino County, managed by CalFire. Although these state-owned woods are enjoyed by hikers, mountain bikers, equestrians and foragers, JDSF is not a park. It was once industrial timber land, and continues to be logged by CalFire.
A coalition of groups, including the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians and the Mendocino Trail Stewards, have called for a different plan for Jackson State. This summer, direct action protests including tree sits effectively shut down logging. And last week, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to ask the governor to review the JDSF management plan in light of the most current science on climate change.
Although Mendocino County has been drenched by winter storms in recent weeks, the start of the rainy season does not mean the end of the conflict in the woods. From November 15th to April 1st, winter restrictions are in place to limit, but not stop, the work Calfire can do Jackson State. Crews are not allowed to use ‘ground based equipment’ like tractors or yarders, anywhere but on surfaced roads while soils are saturated from winter rains.
Kevin Conway is the Demonstration State Forest Program Manager for CalFire, and Erik Wahl is the Road Manager at JDSF. Part of their plan for winter operations in to install a multi-use foot bridge over Blue Gum Creek, a small watercourse in the heart of the Caspar 500 that flows into Caspar Creek. Last week they took KZYX News on a tour of the site, to clarify when and how the new bridge would be installed.
The Blue Gum Trail follows Road 669, and abandoned logging road that was built by CalFire around 50 years ago. The challenge for CalFire is how to deliver the two-ton new bridge to the Blue Gum Creek Crossing. Conway explained that crews can cut down trees and cable yard them under winter operations, and deliver the bridge to the crossing site at Blue Gum Creek. They can’t, however, install the bridge until Winter Ops ends on April 1st, due to winter restrictions on work close to waterways meant to prevent erosion into the creek.
It is unclear how logging crews will move the cable yarder into place this winter, since the landing area where they intend to locate the machine is covered with down trees, and they aren’t allowed to take tractors into the area to clear the site during the winter.
Wahl and Conway hope that if the community understands more about their recreational work, such as the Blue Gum Creek pedestrian bridge and other trail improvements, that are part of the Caspar 500 timber harvest plan, they might be more supportive of the overall logging plans and less likely to try to slow things down. That was the big message Kevin Conway took away from last Monday’s Board of Supervisors vote for a scientific review of the Jackson Management plan. He looks forward to "re-educating" the Board of Supervisors in a future workshop about Jackson.
by Stacey Sheldon
November 19, 2021-- On Saturday, November 20th, Willits’ Noyo Theater will host the Mendocino premier of a new documentary film called Lady Buds. The film follows six courageous women from the Emerald Triangle and Bay Area as they emerge from the shadows of the cannabis underground to go legal. But with big money corporations taking over the industry, these trailblazers must now, ironically, fight to survive in an industry they helped to create.
One of Mendocino’s own legacy cannabis farmers, Chiah Rodriques, is featured in this documentary. The process of shooting her storyline took more than two years and amassed over 500 hours of footage. The documentary crew set up inside and outside of Rodriques’ home on Greenfield Ranch, and filmed seasons of planting, growing and harvesting on her family’s farm, capturing intimate scenes of her family’s life. Rodriques did not predict the impact the filming would have on her husband and two teenage children. Despite the challenges, she was grateful to be a part of Lady Buds.
A common theme running through all six of the women’s stories in Lady Buds is the current challenges Emerald Triangle legacy cannabis workers face as Big Business slowly infiltrates the industry. Big Business harms local cannabis workers as their big money with investment backing allows them to control the market and dictate what sells and at what price. They can weather the economic storms, eat costs, and undercut.
Renee Petry, Mendocino accountant for Licensed Cannabis Cultivators and Nurseries, has witnessed the difficulty local farmers face in this new era of legalization and regulation. She encourages local industry workers to continue to attend meetings to help shape legislation, and she reminds farmers that they have useful skills that can translate into other careers if the farming aspect does not serve them any longer.
Lady Buds will be released in theaters nationwide on November 26th, and is also available on iTunes.
November 24, 2021 — Local disaster relief has moved to Ukiah. In September, almost five years after opening her doors in a Redwood Valley warehouse, Danilla Sands, the Director of Disaster Resources for United Disaster Relief of Northern California, moved into a new 7200 square foot building on Airport Park Boulevard. It’s in the old Mendocino Animal Hospital, and would-be veterinary clients still stop in almost every day, looking for medications or treatments for their pets. (The new location for the Animal Hospital is 290 East Gobbi Street.) A few other hints of the previous tenant remain, too, like images of paw prints running across the ceiling tiles in the reception area. There are also plenty of hand-washing opportunities, with a sink in every room. Sands, who got used to no running water in the warehouse, exulted over the amenities. “I know it seems kind of silly, like oh, a building with a restroom, but to us, that’s a big deal,” she explained, adding that the building has lots of natural light, central air and heat, washers and dryers, a kitchen, and break rooms for clients and volunteers. That’s in addition to meeting rooms, storage space, shelves, and yet more rooms for the clothing, furniture, toiletries and other items for people who have lost most or all of their possessions in a disaster. Disaster Relief helps survivors with short and long term recovery, or up to five years after the incident. Sands also runs Mendocino Action News and is an occasional contributor to KZYX. She keeps an ear tuned to the scanner, and now, with the proximity to the airport, she gets an extra heads-up when aircraft lifts off for an emergency. But her primary focus right now is on helping her clients, including about 20 people recovering from the Hopkins Fire. “Our most recent, I would say, would be Hopkins, Cache, and Broiler,” she said, reeling off the names of a few of last season’s fires. “But we’re also helping August Complex Fire, Oak Fire, and a couple others still,” she noted. In addition to helping survivors replace the items they lost, volunteers also help cut through bureaucratic red tape by applying for grants and rentals. “We feel like they have enough on their plate, so that’s what we’re here for,” Sands said. One of the first rooms, just past the reception area, is a playroom for kids. On Friday afternoon, the room was strewn with fake money and playthings. “They’ve lost all their toys,” Sands noted, peering in the door. “So they can feel safe and feel like a kid and feel normal while Mom is shopping, if they need.” It’s not all play, though. Clients who have lost everything still need to work — and some are expected to work from home. The new location has two offices where clients can work on their computers, “because some of them are still in these really tiny hotel rooms, some are sleeping in cars,” Sands explained. Clients can also meet there with the Red Cross, which does not have an office in Ukiah. Disaster Relief doesn’t wait for the state to declare a disaster before helping out. “That’s not a factor for us,” Sands said. “The only thing that would change is if it was criminal intent. So if somebody in your house intentionally set a fire, I could not help them out. But I would help out all the other innocent victims in the house.” There is a four-page needs list on the organization’s Facebook page. But right off the top of her head, Sands said rain gear is much-needed right now. And new pillows are welcome all year round. There’s also a room full of donated supplies to put together gift bags for immediate needs. When disaster strikes, Sands and other volunteers fill their vehicles with gift bags and camping gear. “We have a couple clients right now who are still in their cars,” Sands emphasized. “So they need a Coleman stove. They need a down sleeping bag. So we make sure they have those.” She’s grateful for everything the community has provided: washers and dryers, time, money, pallets of goods and a forklift to move them. But now, just in time for the holidays, she has one more item on her wish list. She’s mounting a capital campaign to raise the money for a down payment on the new facility. “The Heart of Gold campaign is to raise $100,000 to secure this building,” Sands said, listing a few of the reasons she wants to stay. “We know it’s a good location. Our donors will see the actual needs list, they’ll run over to the stores nearby, and it’s easily accessible. It’s right off the freeway, so semis can pull in easily to our parking lot, the forklift’s here...this is important.”
November 22, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors adopted a map reconfiguring the county’s district boundaries at a special meeting last week. And wildlife organizations are offering to help, after a mountain lion killed two goats on an outdoor school campus in Anderson Valley.
The redistricting effort is a follow-up to the census. It’s meant to even out the population numbers so there is no more than a 10% variation in the number of voters in each district. That’s to ensure fair representation, as is another top criteria, to avoid splitting communities of interest. Since the last census, the fourth district has lost population, while the third has gained. An early draft of the map proposed moving Laytonville from the third to the fourth district, but the community did not support that suggestion. The twelfth draft, which the board of supervisors adopted unanimously on Thursday afternoon, moves Bell Springs Road and part of Spyrock out of the third and into the fourth. In another adjustment, the Brooktrails boundary has shifted to the east. But the Russian Gulch boundary will stay where it is, and southern Caspar will remain in the fourth. Some more complicated multi-district shifts took place in Hopland and southern Ukiah. In an effort to make the fifth district more compact, the populated part of Hopland is now in the first district. Lief Farr, the county’s mapping specialist, explained some of the Tetris-like rearranging that went into redrawing the map. Sometimes two of the top criteria were at odds with one another, as in a brief consideration to add heavily populated areas on the northern and southern ends of Ukiah to the second district. This would have kept communities of interest together, but bloated the population of the city. Supervisor Glenn McGourty noted that the new map consolidates an agricultural community of interest, while preserving a multi-party alliance in terms of water interests. “I’m glad that we have the Russian River villages all together,” in the first district, he said, “which are Hopland, Talmage, Calpella, Redwood Valley, and Potter Valley; and finally, I’m glad that the fifth district still comes down into the Russian River watershed, because I think having three supervisors together working on and aware of Russian River issues makes more of an impact to Mendocino County.”
McGourty serves with Supervisor John Haschak on an ad hoc committee to come up with non-lethal solutions to conflicts that humans and livestock have with wildlife. The Board has voted to terminate the contract with USDA Wildlife Services, out of concerns that too many wild animals were being killed. During public comment, Louise Simson, Superintendent of the Anderson Valley Unified School District, told the Board that she has a problem. On Monday evening, she reported, two goats were killed by a mountain lion, and a third was injured. “I am super frustrated with this process for support,” she told the board. “I was able to get a hazing permit, which allows me to make loud noises at a mountain lion...this is a severe safety issue. The support I’ve been given on this is, build a bigger fence, a twelve foot fence, or build a bigger barn. Well, that’s not feasible. My school district is going to be operating at almost a $400,000 deficit next year. And I need some real time, real solutions to keep my students safe.” Dr Quentin Martins of Living with Lions, a research and conservation group in the Mayacamas Mountains, called in to caution that killing a big cat could create a territorial vacuum that often results in more loss of livestock. Although the school is in a populated area, he said its location at the confluence of Mill Creek and Donnelly Creek also makes it a prime thoroughfare for mountain lions. He suggested involving students in an educational project to protect the livestock. Dr. Michelle Lute, the National Carnivore Conservation Manager for Project Coyote, said she is already working with Haschak and McGourty on the non-lethal program. She applauded Dr. Martins’ idea, sympathized with the superintendent, and offered to help. “I hear the superintendent’s concerns about limited resources and how much she can change in the setup, but I just assure her that there are resources to help address the situation,” she said. “I like Dr. Martins’ idea about involving the kids in potentially a new project that would enhance the fencing, enhance the security in a number of different ways, so we can definitely talk about how we can all contribute and pool our resources and our expertise to address the situation.”
November 18, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors declined to approve a $3.5 million increase in the healthcare contract at the county jail this week, which would have brought the agreement total up to just over $19.1 million. But supervisors rebuffed a presentation by top management at Naphcare, which has been providing healthcare to inmates since 2017, calling the documents “thin” and asking tough questions about mental healthcare. NaphCare Chief Psychologist Amber Simpler told the board that about a third of the inmates are on psychiatric medications. But Dr. Jenine MIller, head of the county’s behavioral health department, took a question about what she thinks is missing from the contract. “We don’t have a clinician in Mendocino County Jail,” she said. “That was not part of the original contract. That is something I asked. How did we go without getting at least one mental health clinician within that contract...I think it is something that’s missing.” She added that when she spoke with the contractor in April, she received a quote that adding one to two mental health clinicians would cost anywhere from $160,000 to $350,000. Supervisor Glenn McGourty noted that the current budget allocates $570,000 to mental healthcare services in the jail. “What are we getting for that, and why doesn’t it include someone who does mental health assessments?” he asked. NaphCare COO Susanne Moore told him that money was for the competency restoration program, which trains inmates to understand their legal predicament so they can assist their defense attorneys and stand trial. Supervisor Ted Williams asked about reports he’s heard from his constituents about family members being kept in solitary confinement for long stretches of time without proper medication. He wanted to know why a psychotic inmate patient can’t be forced to accept psychiatric medications. “How many solitary confinements have to do with mental health, and what is the average duration in Mendocino County?” he asked. Simpler had no ready answer to the last two questions, but said the unmedicated solitary confinement was a combination of the physical layout of the jail, much of which is designed for “single cell placement,” patients’ rights, and bureaucratic finagling. “We offer medication, but there are restrictions as to whom we can compel to medication,” she said. “So it’s not that we’re not offering treatment...we have to respect patients’ rights when they say, I’m not going to take this medication,” even if that patient is psychotic. Simpler added that an order to force medication hinges on the jail based competency program. “In certain situations, we go through the steps to notify the courts. We get individuals who are involved in the jail-based competency restoration program. They will come attached with an involuntary medication order. But by and large, trying to involuntarily medicate someone outside of the framework takes a lot of steps, and we’ve been able to do that in some acute situations, but by and large, it’s not something the courts do easily, readily or willingly.” According to Miller, another holdup on forced medication is the professional requirements of the people in charge of declaring the patient inmate incompetent. In Mendocino County, the team that attempts to restore competency to an inmate does not include someone who is qualified to prescribe medications. So if the team fails to render the patient inmate fit for a trial, there is no one who can fill out an order for forced medication. This leads to another round of judicial involvement. “We then have to go back and ask NaphCare after the court order to go through the process to determine the forced order to medicate and then go back to court to get that done. And so it is slowed in Mendocino County because of the processes we have in place, and the professionals that we use don’t allow us to fast-track it as we see in other counties,” she explained In 2017, then-Sheriff Tom Allman recommended NaphCare to the Board of Supervisors because their bid was more than $400,000 lower than their competitor’s, California Forensic Medical Group, which held the contract at the time. And Allman noted that their insurance was better, carrying six million per incident. The Board voted unanimously to ask Miller to work with the sheriff’s office and NaphCare to craft an amendment to the contract that Miller feels she can endorse, before bringing it back to the Board again. They also requested the option of a psychiatric evaluation at intake.
November 17, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors authorized $50,000 for the sheriff’s independent legal advice this week. And on Tuesday, the Board voted unanimously to appoint an ad hoc committee, consisting of coastal Supervisors Dan Gjerde and Ted Williams, to look into creating local policy around short term rentals.
Sheriff Matt Kendall previously stated his preference for the local law firm of Duncan James, but the Board was not comfortable with his selection, and chose LA firm Manning and Kass instead. According to County Counsel Christian Curtis, “I think there was a statement that there was no lawsuit. The lawsuit that I’m referring to is the action that is in front of the judge right now, asking that the Board be compelled to provide the sheriff with his attorney of choice.” If the sheriff decides to pursue further legal action against the county, he can seek up to $50,000 worth of legal advice on three issues. One is the consolidation of his IT department within the county’s Information Services department; but the sticking point is a government code concerning the personal liability of an official authorizing a financial obligation on behalf of the county. Kendall fears he could be held personally liable for running up a tab during an emergency without receiving approval first. The sheriff can also call in the law firm for a second opinion about his authority on certain expenses. Because these are disputes between the sheriff and the Board of Supervisors, Kendall and Curtis agree that it would be a conflict of interest for Curtis’ office to represent both parties. Undersheriff Darren Brewster expressed the desire for a three-day meet and greet with the out of town firm, but Curtis noted that Manning and Kass had agreed to bill no more than four hours of travel time.
Meanwhile, housing remains an ongoing concern. Short-term rentals are all over the county, but on the coast, where tourism is a major industry, the rentals play a significant role in the local economy. Williams introduced the idea of putting an ad hoc committee to work on coming up with a policy. “I see the need for the county to re-evaluate how it regulates short-term and vacation units in residential neighborhoods,” he began. “We don’t need to get into the details today. This is just to form an ad hoc to look at the issue and bring back facts and options for the full board. I want to state that my preference is not to infringe on the rights of folks in their primary residence, meaning if they have an outbuilding that’s under-utilized, say their kids use it some of the time so they can’t rent it long-term, they bring in revenue at other times of the year...I don’t want to step on their rights. But I think companies, for example a corporation in Santa Rosa buying up housing stock in our county for the sole purpose of creating quasi-hotels is a risk to our community. So I’d like to bring back options and look at how we can better balance the rights of individuals and the rights of community.” Supervisor Glenn McGourty signaled his support, adding, “I think there’s some collateral issues on this, such as noise. This is something I wasn’t aware of, that we don’t have a noise ordinance for Mendocino County...I get complaints about people partying late into the night. If you move into a particular area with an expectation of quietness and serenity, and then having to sacrifice that for somebody who doesn’t even live full time in the area, that seems problematic to me.” Some local people do rely on short term rentals for their personal income. John Gorman shared his thoughts on a balanced approach. “You don’t want to kill the golden goose here, just screaming, deny all rentals,” he urged. Recent census data show that the fourth district lost population in the last decade. Gjerde said there has also been a consolidation of local people to the city of Fort Bragg, at least in part due to short term rental policy and the increasing number of housing units converted to short-term rentals. He noted that in the 1990’s the city of Fort Bragg banned new vacation rentals in residential neighborhoods, which has drawn more people from the outlying areas into town to compete for fewer and fewer available living units. “That’s one of the contributing factors to escalating the rental prices on the coast, is the loss of rentals or just options to buy a home on the coast,” he said. Johanna Jensen is a member of a coastal volunteer advocacy group called Housing Action Team. She shared results from a survey her group distributed, which squared with much of Williams’ introduction. “From the employees’ survey, a full quarter of them said that they are impacted by short term vacation rentals,” she said, and read from a selection of the comments from the survey. “Some of the stories they talked about were quite heartbreaking, things like, ‘vacation homes are destroying our community, my employer has enormous difficulty employing and retaining employees because of the lack of housing, and vacation rentals are not contributing any skills or benefit for anybody, and the bed tax collected is only diverting from the established lodging industry. The number of vacation rentals on the coast is absolutely disgusting. People moving here from the Bay Area are driving prices up and local greedy landowners and homeowners are cashing out, displacing local service workers, including medical and first responders. Community is being destroyed and local government is turning a blind eye, maybe because they got theirs and are out of touch with the residents who continue to struggle.’ I don’t believe you’re out of touch,” she concluded; “that’s their comment, but I really applaud you for taking on this controversial issue.” Supervisors voted unanimously to approve the committee to look into a policy on short-term rentals, which they anticipate will be a controversial agenda item sometime next year.
November 16, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on Monday to pass a resolution asking for a scientific review of the management at Jackson Demonstration State Forest, with an eye toward meeting environmental goals laid out by the governor. County supervisors do not have jurisdiction in the forest, which is managed by Cal Fire under the authority of the state. A moratorium on all logging within JDSF, long a demand of activists, was not under consideration. Priscilla Hunter, former Chair of the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians and current Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, opened public comment, with measured support. “This is a good first step,” she said; “however, there’s a lot of concerns that we have regarding fire, water, and one of our main issues is regarding the restoring of our sacred sites. And if they keep continuing to cut those trees down by those sites, they are continuing to destroy our cultural sites. We can’t even get in there to be able to go up and pray there and see where our ancestors held their ceremonies. It’s very, very hurting.” Fifteen-year-old Sara Rose, a member of the Coalition to Save JDSF, spoke about the future, saying, “The climate crisis has been a huge part of my childhood. I knew from a very young age that it would be the biggest threat to my future...if we do nothing, the climate crisis will be the end of humanity...JDSF is home to thousands of acres of second-growth coast redwoods. These trees sequester more carbon than any other trees on earth. Cutting them down would release hundreds of thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, exacerbating the effects of climate change unbelievably. If cut down, they will not regrow in my lifetime.” Marie Jones, the chair of the Mendocino County Climate Action Committee, told the Board that a wide coalition of environmental organizations supports the resolution, and added a few requests about the science. “That research should be peer-reviewed, transparent, and credibly managed by an independent third party,” she declared. Michael Jones, the UC cooperative extension forestry advisor for Mendocino County, called in from where he was conducting research in JDSF on prescribed burns, to say the current management plan is already being used to inform the state’s decisions on climate change. He said JDSF, and Parlin Fork in particular, is the only place where prescribed burns are taking place on a landscape level in the redwood forest. “For example, I have research ongoing here,” he said. “It’s on climate change, it’s on forest management, it’s on wildfire risk, it’s on prescribed fire, all these really high-priority topics. The narrative, and the way this resolution is framed, and the conversation we’re having, is completely ignoring the fact that, as I’ve stated now, the forest is already moving into the research that is informing the statewide policy directives.” When Supervisor Ted Williams asked Dr. Jones if there were any findings in the resolution that he found inaccurate, he said, “I actually do. I disagree with some of the language used. I think that the reductionist argument that the forest is managed primarily for commercial applications is a hundred percent incorrect. I don’t think there has been a THP (timber harvest plan) or a management plan that I have reviewed or been involved in that does not have an aspect of forest restoration, forest management, or research built into it.” But the majority of public comment was supportive of the resolution. William Lemos, co-chair of the Mendocino Trail Stewards, described some of what he’s seen in JDSF, recalling that, “In 2018, just across Road 409 from us, a number of clear cuts took place all the way up to Observatory Hill, and if you want to take a walk and look at those clear cuts, you’ll see slash piles remaining from that 2018 cut. And if you’ve looked at some of the research done by climatologist J.P O’Brien, he sent Google Earth pictures of what’s going on in Parlin Fork, and on that tributary, it looks like dozens of clear cuts are either in the process of happening or have already happened.” Kevin Conway, the JDSF forest manager for CalFire, assured the Board that the forest is in much better shape than it was when his agency took it over, in the 1940s. “So we’re concerned that adopting this resolution as written today will provide legitimacy to this false narrative,” he cautioned the Supervisors. And JDSF is the site of significant economic activity for some people. Bruce Burton, one of the co-founders of the Willits Redwood Company, told the Board that without logging in the Caspar 500 timber harvest plan, he’s had to bring in logs from Santa Cruz and Humboldt Counties. “That represented close to 50% of our consumption for the year,” he said, adding that locally-owned Anderson Logging, which his company had contracted to perform the work, “immediately had to find other work for 40 employees they had assigned to that task.” Supervisor Glenn McGourty said he didn’t want to stifle the timber industry or the science that’s already being done in JDSF, but, “It seems kind of strange, at this late date, that CalFire would be okaying clear cuts. I mean, clear cuts are so out of date for a redwood forest type as a way of management, it just seems really strange that anybody would even contemplate that. If we’re going to grow forests to grow quality timber and also sequester carbon, what we want to move towards is late seral stage forestry or something that mimics it, which is older trees.” The board voted 5-0 to ask the governor for a scientific review of the forest, but also committed to more meetings with the Jackson Advisory Group and CalFire.
November 15, 2021 — Community members working to save redwood trees in Faulkner Park met with PG&E representatives and Supervisor Ted Williams on Friday afternoon. Faulkner park is a small county-owned property on Mountain View Road, just a few miles outside Boonville. PG&E contractors have marked dozens of massive trees for removal, citing concerns that the trees will fall on the power lines and cause a fire. But a group of neighbors called the Friends of Faulkner Park has been vocal in its opposition, calling on the company to bury the lines underground, like the fiber optic cable that runs beneath the stretch of road alongside the park. Some have expressed support for direct action. There is no written assurance from PG&E that they will not cut the trees without approval from the Board of Supervisors. County staff attempted to garner a written confirmation of reports that verbal assurances had been made as early as last Tuesday, but were unsuccessful. However, on Friday, Alison Talbott, PG&E’s government liaison for Mendocino and Humboldt counties, told a group of about fifteen people, including Williams, that none of the contested trees would be cut this calendar year. The PG&E representatives were not allowed to take questions from the media, so this reporter was not able to make follow-up queries at the community meeting. Talbott said there will be routine maintenance, like the removal of a large dead madrone right next to the road. Eric Haggerty, the supervisor of the local vegetation management program, said that efforts are underway to look into the possibility of burying the power lines, though some community members were skeptical about the feasibility of installing the infrastructure it would take to service such a system. Williams said afterwards that he was satisfied with the company’s commitment not to cut the trees until the end of the year or, after that, following some collaboration. “Up to this point, I’ve been concerned that trees could be cut as a surprise and we would hear about it until after the fact,” he said. But representatives made no assurances that any work was contingent on the consent of the community or its elected representatives. “I think they gave us as much as they’re authorized to do under their corporate policy,” Williams conceded, expressing his confidence that the workers, some of whom live in the community, “have heard enough community input and have been able to relay it to the point that their bosses realize we have a problem. I think that may escalate it adequate to ensure undergrounding.” Williams was also told he will receive regular reports about routine work being done in the park. So if we hear chainsaws we’ve gotten assurance that they are just taking down the trees that look scary? “I hope so,” Williams said, inviting anyone who hears otherwise to call his cell phone at 937- 3500. He does not know, and representatives did not provide absolute clarity, on the status of any permits for work being done in the park. Clearing trees around power lines is legal under the Forest Practice Rules and several sections of the Public Resource Code. The PRC also requires CalFire permits or exemption notices for timber operations, and lays out certain stipulations about the treatment of slash, winter operation plans, and how to conduct a timber operation around a waterway. PG&E has received notices of violation from CalFire inspectors in multiple counties, including eight such documents from the Santa Cruz/San Mateo unit. According to one notice filed in October of last year in Santa Cruz county, the company had previously prepared utility right of way conversion exemption permits for this type of work prior to June of 2020, but not for more recent work meeting the same definition of timber operations. KZYX has not yet been able to independently verify the permit status of the proposed work in Faulkner Park with CalFire. Though uncertainties remain, some community members, like Steve Wood, who was in the park with his puppy, are cautiously optimistic. “It feels better to me than it did a month ago,” he said. “I have a deep skepticism about PG&E’s veracity when it comes to things like this, so I think I’m encouraged about things a little bit...and I hope the promise of regular reports makes it possible to keep track of where they are with this. But I’m not going to go home and say, okay, it’s all taken care of. That’s for sure. We’re a long ways from that.”
November 11, 2021--By Stacey Sheldon
November 11, 2021--The Ukiah Valley Youth Leadership Coalition, a teen program of the Arbor Center at Redwood Community Services, recently unveiled their latest public arts project: a new mural at Todd Grove Park. Thanks to grant money from Drug Free Communities and All Children Thrive, local teens of Ukiah Valley, with the help of lead artist Josua Rojas designed and painted a large scale mural on the exterior walls of the park’s restroom, turning the once unsightly spot into a vibrant work of art. According to Kate Feigin, Program Director of the Youth Coalition, the teens’ vision for creating the mural was, "No human being is illegal on stolen land.”
Sofia Knight, a prominent member of the Youth Leadership Coalition, elaborated on the process of fine tuning the mural’s message, noting that the teens initially explored the theme of immigration, which resulted in the realization that no one could be considered “illegal” anywhere, especially on stolen land.
Another active member of the group, Anastaysia Ray, said that, unless an individual is Native, "all of us are immigrants and we should not shame others about their right to live peacefully."
The colorful mural consists of three sections united by a background landscape. In the center of the mural are three larger than life figures representing Indigenous and immigrant ancestors. Spilling out of the Indigenous Ancestor’s heart center are blood red hearts that morph into protestors dedicated to the seemingly endless fight for justice and equality.
To the left of the looming ancestors is a panel representing the struggle of social justice advocates and environmental activists.
To the right of the ancestors is a panel honoring the resilience of Indigenous people and immigrant laborers. A Pomo dancer in traditional dress stands in the foreground of the right panel. This dancer is the favorite image of the youngest muralist on the project, six year old Amias Barajas.
Bay area lead artist and mentor Josue Rojas has dedicated his life to creating community art throughout the world. Rojas recognizes the power public art can have on viewers when it is designed to engage the community in conversations intended to help them think and evolve into more compassionate human beings. Rojas is impressed with the message of this mural, and by the teen’s passion and conviction.
The mural project has not only fired up Rojas, members of the Youth Coalition are also proud of their bold, artistic statement. The Youth Leadership Coalition meets at the Arbor in the Redwood Community Service Center on State Street in Ukiah. New members are welcome.
For Mendocino County Public Broadcasting, this is the KZYX News for Friday, Nov. 12. I’m Sonia Waraich.
Catastrophic wildfires are growing in size every year, threatening lives, communities and entire ecosystems. Historically, the U.S. Forest Service’s approach to managing fires was to suppress them at all costs. Now, the agency is recognizing that intentionally setting low-intensity fires in the forest can help control the way fires burn there in the future by leaving less flammable material on the ground.
A few weeks ago, the Forest Service reached an important step in being able to conduct prescribed fires more frequently in Mendocino National Forest. The agency released an environmental assessment for its prescribed fire and fuels management strategy in the forest. It’s been working on the assessment since 2019.
The assessment states that the agency can’t control the weather or the way Mendocino National Forest is laid out, but it can control one of the three variables related to wildland fires: the amount of flammable material, or fuels, in the forest.
It’s a sunny weekend in October and the U.S. Forest Service is leading a trip through the Mendocino National Forest. They’re taking a group of us through the burn scar of the August Complex fires that happened last year.
We get a panoramic view of the forest as we head uphill. Most of it is burnt, but there’s one noticeable patch of green that pops out in the otherwise charred landscape. Amy Galetka is a fuels specialist and she explains how that area is green because of an escaped prescribed fire, known as the Baseball Fire, that burned there a few months before the August Complex.
“The only other very small patch of green I found was from a prescribed fire we did in 2019.”
Galetka says more prescribed fire projects like that can ensure the forest stays healthy even if an unplanned fire passes through the area. But it’s going to take some time to get to the point where the agency can rely on prescribed fires exclusively. That’s because the forest was historically managed for timber production and, as a result, the way it’s structured doesn’t make much sense from a fire and fuels perspective.
“It was originally, I don’t know it was from the 60s or 70s, it’s fairly old, but it was set up as a timber project, so the units, as far as a pure fire and fuels standpoint, made absolutely no sense. They’re small, they’re not continuous. And pretty much none of them survived the fire well.”
“The hope going forward is to make the units that we bake make more sense together from a fire and fuels perspective, not necessarily just taking into account timber and then trying to make them more continuous.”
The environmental assessment for the prescribed fire and fuels management strategy in Mendocino National Forest is going to allow the Forest Service to do landscape-wide fire management instead of focusing on individual, smaller projects that don’t really end up influencing fire behavior much.
But you can’t start conducting those prescribed fires right away. The forest has become overgrown as a result of past management practices. Galetka says thinning needs to be done in those areas first.
“Prescribed fire, you have to have very set conditions. If it’s too thick, it’s going to burn too hot or too cold. So it’s really hard to control the fire if the fuels are too thick to begin with. It’s hard enough when the fuels are ideal to get the fire effects that you want and maintain control versus having fuels that are too thick and it just makes it that much harder. You need to have that many more staff to maintain things with prescribed fire. I mean, eventually, once you’ve had a few entries, you’ve done thinning, you’ve had one underburn go through, after that, yeah it gets easier and easier. You can start maintaining everything just with prescribed fire, and it’s not everywhere. Not everywhere needs to have some sort of mechanical intervention first, but most places will.”
Ann Carlson is the forest supervisor at Mendocino and she explains why it’s important to burn the slash that results from that thinning in burn piles.
“When we’ve gone back and done the visiting of where we’ve done treatment, if we’re only part way through the plan, like we thinned the trees and we have piles underneath, a lot of times you’ll see piles. But we didn’t burn the piles. Then when the wildfire came through, it actually ended up killing the trees. Even though they were nicely spaced, we had these loads of fuels that burned under a wildfire situation versus our controlled pile burning, which then, like you say, we get the right conditions and it doesn’t get too hot.”
“You rearranged the fuels, but did not reduce the fuel loading.”
“Yeah exactly.”
A draft of the environmental assessment is currently available for review until Nov. 22. You can visit KZYX’s Report For America partner The Mendocino Voice at mendovoice.com if you’d like to find out more about the Forest Service’s prescribed fire and fuels strategy for Mendocino National Forest.
For the KZYX News, I’m Sonia Waraich, a Report For America corps member. For all our local stories, with photos and more, visit KZYX.org. You can also subscribe to the KZYX News podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
November 12, 2021 — A resolution about the Jackson Demonstration State Forest will be on the agenda for a special Board of Supervisors meeting this Monday. Supervisors Ted Williams and Chair Dan Gjerde are sponsoring a resolution to ask the Governor to evaluate the environmental benefits, including wildfire resilience, of the current management practices in JDSF. The resolution also asks the Governor to align those goals with the state’s climate change commitments and to publish its findings in a report. The item will probably be taken up just a little after 9am. People who would like to comment can send an email to bos@mendocinocounty.org or sign up for a telecomment by filling out this form.
November 10, 2021 — Public meetings will remain remote, in light of increasing covid numbers. Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren told the board of supervisors yesterday he fears the rising tally could herald a new surge. And Supervisors agreed to convene an ad hoc committee consisting of Supervisors Ted Williams and Glenn McGourty to look into PG&E’s enhanced vegetation management program.
November 9, 2021 — This Thursday, residents around the Ukiah groundwater basin may see a helicopter flying low, hauling a large hoop. It’s part of a state-sponsored program designed to map the geological features of groundwater basins. Katherine Dlubac is an engineering geologist and the project manager for the Department of Water Resources’ stateside Aerial Electromagnetic (AEM) surveys. She laid out some of the ways that information from the surveys can be used, with the larger goal of implementing SGMA, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of 2014, which requires local jurisdictions to come up with plans to manage the resource. “It tells us about the aquifer structures,” she said; “where we have thick layers in the subsurface of sands and gravels that allow for water to flow, but also for water to be stored. It also tells us where we have layers of clays and silts, so fine grained materials that inhibit water movement. And so while the AEM data still needs to be combined with other types of data...what it can do is it can provide you a better picture of what’s happening in the aquifer...so that you can make those management decisions of whether you want to try recharging water in the area from the surface, or if you want to try injecting water into the aquifer to store it there as another type of reservoir.” Supervisor Glenn McGourty is part of the local Groundwater Sustainability Agency tasked with gathering as much information as possible to craft the plan. The Ukiah groundwater basin relies mostly on the Russian River, but is also fed by about 160 smaller tributaries. “Any data we get is going to be useful,” he said; “because you can’t usually see groundwater. You have to have some way of measuring it. Often it’s delineated by wells, so you don’t know for sure what you’re looking at. And there are a couple of mysteries, because we don’t really have uniform geology here in the valley. So the two mysteries are, where is the groundwater? And the second mystery is, how does it get recharged? The surface groundwater interface, as we call it, is the thing that’s really hard to understand.” Dlubac says the electromagnetic technology has been around since the middle of the last century, but it was used mostly in mining applications. After Prop 68, a Parks, Environment, and Water Bond passed in 2018, the Division of Water Resources carried out a pilot program in central and Southern California counties to gather data for their groundwater management plans. The survey taking place now will measure basins across the state for the next two years, taking what Dlubac calls “a snapshot” of their geological features. After the two-year survey of “coarse grid data,” she hopes to go back for a finer picture. “When we go in and start collecting fine grids of data, we can start to get more high resolution information about some of the space in between the coarse grid where we didn’t collect information,” she reported. “And that can support defining recharge areas, better understanding where we have clays in the subsurface, where we have subsidence, and other areas that can support the implementation of SGMA.” McGourty is interested in experiments that are currently underway in the Central Valley, on how to store water in the ground, rather than in surface reservoirs. Knowing what kinds of sediments are where could further that approach locally. “The idea would be to divert the river during really high flows and to inundate some parts of the basin where there’s fairly permeable alluvium, gravel, principally,” he explained, adding that the City of Ukiah already uses recycled wastewater to recharge the aquifer. “One of the things we’re not really sure about,” he reflected, adding to the mysteries still to be solved; “is what are the parameters of the river underflow and things like that. So any information about where water is coming from is of interest to us.” Dlubac expects the information from the survey to be available to local groundwater management agencies in about eight months.
November 8, 2021 — The online cannabis re-application portal closed late Tuesday night, amid confusion about the final requirements and the fate of incomplete applications. At this point, it’s not clear if those who re-submitted their applications online will be denied a permit if they are missing any documents. Michael Katz, the Executive Director of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, sent KZYX an email that an applicant received from the cannabis program in late October, saying that “ALL submissions will be reviewed! We will not be denying applications because we’ve had to ask for additional information that was not clarified ahead of time.” But on the day the applications were due, Katz flagged a line in a reminder email from the program with the opposite message, saying, “Once the portal closes no further materials can be submitted. Please be sure to check your submission materials prior to pressing submit as incomplete applications will be denied.” Katz said that among his members: “the average story is one of confusion, not feeling supported, and being forced to jump through new and poorly defined hoops.” Sarah Hake has heard a similar sentiment among her client base. Hake is the COO of Countervail Inc., which specializes in bookkeeping, tax preparation and legal compliance for people in the cannabis business. She said she was working on 40-50 portal applications for her clients right up to the deadline. She reported that the changing requirements were detailed and often came at the worst possible time, in the middle of harvest during a year when cannabis prices have plummeted. “What you’re telling us is if somebody is deemed incomplete, they’re going to be denied,” she said, outlining the situation. “And then you’re deeming them incomplete for things that they weren’t told were needed, or things that weren’t clearly communicated, or things like a bullfrog management plan, where there’s absolutely no documentation as to what that should include or what that should look like, so we’re all having to guess as to what that should be and then being told that’s not good enough.” Cultivators are required to pay a minimum tax every year, and Hake wondered if her clients would have to pay the tax, even if their applications are eventually denied. And she’s been told she might have to wait until after the first of the year to find out the status of some of those applications. “So now you’ve bumped these cultivators who may get denied through the end of the year into another year,” she said, envisioning the possibility. “Are you going to charge them the minimum tax for that? And they’re feeling taken advantage of in this way, that, oh, you’re just going to charge me the five thousand dollars, and then kick me out of the program. There’s a lot of frustration, and I think a lot of heartbreak and a lot of fear,” she concluded. Kristin Nevedal was promoted from cannabis program manager to cannabis program director on October 19th. CEO Carmel Angelo confirmed that Nevedal still reports directly to the Board of Supervisors. Katz wants more supervisorial involvement to resolve what he sees as a systemic lack of clarity throughout the cannabis program. “The board, minus Supervisor Haschak, has continually chosen not to pursue a committee of any sort to address the myriad issues that are facing the program,” he complained. “When the program manager was promoted to program director, there was no job description posted. The details of that job and what are specifically different about it from the program manager position, that was not provided. Given the confusion around every licensee’s status in the program at the moment, it would be our hope that the county would be willing to have these conversations openly and transparently.” But since the repeal of Chapter 22.18, the cannabis ordinance the board planned to replace 10a17, cannabis has not played its formerly prominent role on the Board of Supervisors agendas. There is a consent calendar item tomorrow about the submission of an application for an $18 million grant from the state Department of Cannabis Control. But most cannabis-related matters have been addressed during public comment, including reports from Nevedal, where supervisors can ask clarifying questions but cannot give direction because no formal discussion has been agendized. Supervisor John Haschak explained his understanding of Nevedal’s comments at the last meeting on October 26, the board’s intent, and how he’d like to resolve any confusion. “The intent of the board is really to get the people in and then process those,” he said. “And I thought that that’s what the cannabis program manager had said, was that they were going to process the ones that had been submitted, even though it’s not possible to deal with the thousands and thousands of documents at the time...So that’s what I hope happens. I think it’s the intent of the board to kind of separate those who aren’t serious about applying for a permit and those that are...there have been some changes in the portal,” he acknowledged. “It’s a new process. It’s technology at its best and sometimes worst, and so there are going to be glitches. I think that we need to have a working group of the board, an ad hoc group, to look at the issues, try to deal with them, and create a process for people to appeal whatever decision is made in the cannabis program. So that we can get as many people through the system who really want to get through and be legal and permitted. I think that should be the intent.” There’s not much appetite from the rest of the board for an ongoing standing committee to address cannabis issues, but Supervisor Glenn McGourty told KZYX he’d be willing to serve on short-term assignments with a specific and focussed purpose, like resolving the portal. Sarah Hake shared her wish list. “Let us know why you’re asking for the thing,” she began; “exactly what it is you want so we can hand you that document. And make it easy on everyone. Because nobody wants to be out of compliance. These people are doing this because they want to be in compliance.”
For Mendocino County Public Broadcasting, this is the KZYX News for Friday, Nov. 5. I’m Sonia Waraich.
Climate change is intensifying and the window to make changes that can stop that intensification is closing. Many scientists and engineers around the world are racing to invent or improve technology that can mitigate the worst impacts of the climate crisis. One of those technologies is being tested out in our own backyard in Jackson Demonstration State Forest.
A little gray fan is whirring on this contraption that looks kind of like an air duct standing at a 45 degree angle. It’s attached to a black barrel with a short, black plastic tube. Behind it, there’s a huge pile of slash, or chopped down trees.
“So this is where the residue comes down, and there’s this mechanical system here.”
Kevin Kung is a researcher from MIT and one of the people who built this prototype. He’s explaining how the residue that goes into the machine basically gets roasted through a special chemical reaction. Residue is just another word for slash and agricultural waste like coconut shells and rice husks.
“And as it goes up, we do inject air at certain places, it’s called oxygening torrefaction, that’s why you can sort of hear the whirring of the blowers, we’re trying to start those right now. Once it goes up, it gets collected in this chamber here, and that’s where the final product is.”
The final product is a charcoal-based fertilizer called biochar. That’s not the only thing the prototype makes, but has been a focal point for Kung and another researcher named Vidyut Mohan. The two of them started a company called Takachar to make
“Small-scale, low-cost portable systems that can latch onto the back of tractors and pickup trucks that could be deployed to rural, hard-to-access regions.”
This prototype offers big hopes for reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfires locally and air pollution globally. It takes things that loggers and farmers would otherwise burn, like slash and agricultural waste, and turns it into things they can sell like biochar.
“Biochar is simply charcoal that has been made intentionally for the purposes of adding to soil.”
Dr. Caroline Masiello is an expert on biochar from Rice University in Texas. She says people have been putting charcoal in their soil for thousands of years..
“When I moved to Houston, I went to the local nursery and I noticed they had big bags of charcoal out and I asked the guy, ‘Hey, so why are you selling charcoal?’ and he said, ‘Oh, you put it in the bad gumbo soil here and things grow better.’”
The charcoal-based soil amendments have different properties depending on the type of residue that’s being used to make it.
“Biochar made from forestry, from wood products, is going to be extremely low in nitrogen and phosphorus. So you’re not adding a nutrient to the system, but it does add reactive surfaces to the system and those reactive surfaces do a good job of holding onto nutrients.”
Biochar also reduces carbon dioxide emissions by taking residue that would have rapidly decomposed and turning it into a substance that decomposes more slowly.
“If the lumber industry has sawdust waste, that’s a great source for biochar because that material would decompose to CO2 very rapidly otherwise and if you convert it to charcoal then it’s not going to decompose to CO2.”
However, Masiello cautions you have to make sure the trees being used to make biochar weren’t already serving an important role in the forest for it to make sense as a climate strategy.
“You wouldn’t cut down an intact forest to make biochar.”
Back in Jackson State, Kung explains how most residues in the forest and on farms are often very loose, wet and bulky. That makes them difficult to transport and leads to farmers and loggers doing things that aren’t exactly climate friendly to get rid of them.
“So if you are on a farm, often what you have to do is burn down residues in the open air and if it’s in a forested area, the buildup of that residue can exacerbate wildfires. So in both cases it’s not only a waste but also a lot of pollution that could be caused because of the burning and so forth.”
The Takachar prototype being tested in Jackson State is supposed to incentivize putting a stop to that polluting behavior. And it isn’t just for use in forests. The technology has already been successfully used in a pilot program with 5,000 farmers in Kenya.
Now, the company has a couple of pilots running in Indian rice paddies alongside the one in Mendocino. Kung says the objective is to learn more about adapting what they’ve developed in the lab to real-world settings.
“Thinking about, well if people are using this kind of Bobcat, how does it load stuff? And if people are chipping things, then how could we potentially just take the output of that directly into our reactor. So we have to design in a way that’s appropriate for these other machine forms that are working onsite.”
Researchers are expecting to demonstrate the prototype for interested community members this spring.
To learn more about the biochar prototype, including how to work with the pilot program, visit KZYX’s Report for America partner The Mendocino Voice at mendovoice.com.
For the KZYX News, I’m Sonia Waraich, a Report For America corps member. For all our local coverage, with photos and more, visit KZYX.org. You can also subscribe to the KZYX News podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.
November 4, 2021--Sheriff Matt Kendall describes the arrest today of William Evers, who has eluded local law enforcement for many months. Evers was apprehended today in Albion with no injuries to himself or Sheriffs' Deputies.
November 4, 2021 — Time is running out for a regional entity to take over the license for the Potter Valley Project. The Two-Basin Partnership, a coalition of local government and conservation groups seeking to take over the license from PG&E, is unlikely to meet the deadline to submit its application. And funding sources for a costly study plan have not materialized. FERC (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) recently refused the Partnership’s request for a little more time.
On top of all that, a five or ten million dollar transformer at the powerhouse in Potter Valley is now defunct, causing further uncertainty. The inoperable transformer means that the powerhouse can no longer produce electricity, though a diversion of about 135 cubic feet per second is still possible, using a bypass structure.
In a recent letter to the Farm Bureau, Congressman Jared Huffman wrote that “With FERC denying the extension and with no near-term prospects for funding the $18 million study plan, the prospects for securing a FERC license are not good.”
Huffman wrote that without money for the studies, “FERC would terminate the license application process and the Potter Valley Project will default to surrender and decommissioning.” He added that in that scenario, “PG&E, rather than the Partnership, would have to pay for the necessary studies and infrastructure changes, including removing Scott Dam.”
But Janet Pauli, the chair of the Inland Water and Power Commission and a director on the board of the Potter Valley Irrigation District, says the surrender process is a black box. The IWPC is itself a coalition that is part of the Two-Basin Partnership.
“The licensing process is pretty cut and dried,” she said. “But with surrender, you assume that the power production part of the project would no longer exist. But as far as what remains of that existing infrastructure, at this point in time, we really don’t know.”
Redgie Collins is the legal and policy director for California Trout, a conservation group which is also a member of the Partnership. CalTrout has advocated for the removal of Scott Dam for years. Collins suspects that PG&E will choose not to repair the transformer. Opinions differ on whether the project would continue to come under the purview of FERC if it can’t generate electricity. But Collins thinks the water diversion from the Eel to the Russian River could continue without the power.The reality is that in all likelihood we’re moving to a surrender proceeding, which means that the powerhouse is coming out anyway,” he said. “We think that the water rights that PG&E holds right now are sufficient to continue the diversion regardless of power production...and those water rights, we think, will be adequate to move that water over without power generation.”
Pauli emphasized that there are still a lot of unknowns. “We don’t understand how any of the diversion structures that exist or are potentially going to be changed would function if Scott Dam is removed, and then the sediments behind Scott Dam would be released into the Eel River. It’s a tremendous amount of sediment that would have to make its way down the Eel River over time and certainly would impact our ability to divert water from the Eel into the Russian. And we have to look at which option is the best for fish passage, too. And I don’t think that that is clear yet. But the issue of diverting water through the project is not just the amount of water. Partly it’s when the water is diverted and when it’s available and how much we would be allowed to divert under certain hydrologic conditions and also with regards to the life cycles of migrating fish.”
Collins says that CalTrout has worked with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to engineer three possibilities for a diversion without the powerhouse, which he expects will be publicly available next month. Any plan will take successful negotiations at multiple levels. Rough estimates for the costs of the potential diversion structure range from $35-66 million, he said, depending at least in part on the outcome of settlement negotiations he hopes will take place between the Partnership and PG&E. Collins is optimistic that federal funding from federal infrastructure negotiations will be available to help ensure the Partnership’s two goals of water supply for the Russian River end of the diversion, and fish passage and habitat restoration for the Eel. “We’re hoping to tap into that growing zeitgeist, and actually fund this project through that work,” he said.
But using public money does not quite fulfill Huffman’s assurance that PG&E would pay for infrastructure changes. And there’s no guarantee that the company wouldn’t pass the costs along to ratepayers. “PG&E deserves to pay for every cent of this solution,” Collins agreed.They’ve been obstinate...so they’re going to have to pay for the $15-18 million that ratepayers could have avoided through an earlier payment to the Partnership. And frankly, their bad operation of this dam as well as other dams across the state has led them to a position where they’re going to rely on both their rate base and public and federal funding. I’ll be the first to say that PG&E is not a well-run company in this regard, and we’re extremely disappointed in their lack of leadership in this.”
November 3, 2021 — PG&E crews have been moving through public and private forest lands throughout northern California, taking down thousands of healthy trees within hundreds of feet of its lines. Many landowners believe that if they refuse to allow this work to be done, they, not PG&E, will be liable if the utility’s infrastructure causes a fire that spreads in the surrounding vegetation. But Harry Vaughn, a landowner in southern Humboldt, may have found a way to save the marked trees on land that’s been in his family for generations — and make PG&E pay for it. “We had all these people walking around our property without identifying themselves, and at some point, you just get pissed off,” he said. “You find out what your options are, because the landowner does have options.” Vaughn said PG&E contractors had been on his property almost every day for more than three months, often at odd hours with little or no notice. Crews marked almost 700 trees, many of them high-value Douglas firs. He estimated that he would suffer losses up to $80,000 if the company removed all the trees they had marked along one of the power lines. When I visited at the end of September, he led me around his mushroom farm, his shaded fuel breaks, a salmon restoration project, and a grove of tanoaks that he’s dedicated to scientific studies of sudden oak death. We paused next to a Douglas fir with a big yellow X on its trunk. The tree stood just outside the dappled shade that’s essential to the well-being of the shiitake mushrooms he sells at the farmers market in Miranda. Vaughn also has a non-industrial timber management plan on his 260 acres of mixed canopy. His situation may have taken a turn, with the help of the registered professional forester he hires to writes those plans. The forester also does contract work for PG&E, and has access to the company’s database of marked trees. He and his subcontractors are being paid by PG&E, so at this time, Vaughn is not picking up the tab for any of the work. Meanwhile, the foresters are now engaged in the lengthy process of reviewing the marks that PG&E crews have made. “They’re un-marking a lot of trees, because we’ve had all these arborists that have no training whatsoever in tree species, and they don’t understand forestry in California, and they don’t understand tree species,” Vaughn said. “I’ve had fir trees marked in the database as tanoaks. And it’s really hard to get that mixed up, but the people PG&E have hired can’t even tell the difference between a tanoak and a fir.” Another benefit to having a registered professional forester on staff, says Vaughn, is that he knows how to file a no-work order. “We now have established a no-work policy until we re-evaluate the nearly 700 trees on our property, that no work will be done until we evaluate the mark...now they’ve got to pay foresters to re-mark and re-evaluate. Meanwhile, we’ve got time. These trees have been here for decades. They’ve got time. We’ve got time. I don’t know what PG&E’s rush is.” Vaughn says his foresters will also be on site to supervise the work of the tree crews, once the evaluation is complete. He also indicated that he will only allow a limited number of vehicles and people on wet roads. “We can’t just unleash a bunch of people on our property,” he said. “And we don’t want to damage our roads. They’re wet right now.” He is also demanding that crews disinfect their spikes before they climb trees, so they don’t bring diseases into the forest. Nesting birds are a concern, too. “We have warblers and orioles that nest in these trees,” he observed. “And we can’t be having bird nests cut down. So if it goes into the spring, then we’ll probably have to not allow cutting during spring, during nesting season, until it opens up in June or July.” Vaughn has some advice and encouragement for other landowners. “Go through the phonebook,” he suggested. “Find out who your foresters are in your area, and just start making calls and find out if there’s a forester who will come out and evaluate. You don’t have to let these PG&E contractors on your property without recourse or a second opinion. Or, as we say in science, peer review. My background is in science, and not political science, so I believe in the scientific method and peer review, and not just accepting being bullied and intimidated by PG&E and their crews.”
November 2, 2010 — The city of Ukiah came alive for Dia de los Muertos, with live music, freshly-baked bread, and little girls in colorful skirts with skulls and flowers painted on their faces. Mayor Juan Orozco, who has a full time job as a math teacher, also took on the role of event planner in the lead-up to the celebration. I “We started the event last year, with just a little altar at the City Hall,” he recalled, ducking under an awning out of the rain as Mariachi Hernandez regaled the crowd with strings and horns. “And so we thought we would go all out this year. And every year I suspect will be better and better.” Linda Jacinto is an educator who promotes culture through the bilingual newspaper Dos Mundos. She took a few minutes as the event was getting underway to describe the scene. “You can definitely get a little bit of a feel of what it’s like for people when you’re in Mexico,” she noted. “You’ll see the flowers, so we have the marigolds up on the altars. You’ll see offerings on the tables as well, set up as an altar. You see people smiling, doing arts and crafts. We’re following all the safety protocols, we’re keeping our masks on, it’s an outdoor event. The music is starting to play, so it makes it more vivid, more alive, and that’s what Dia de los Muertos is all about. It’s just to have that hope, have that faith, that life continues, even though you don’t see a body. You don’t see someone here, but their essence is here, you’re connected, you’re part of the cosmos, you’re part of the universe, so you are definitely here forever. And that's the message of Dia de los Muertos: that you will forever live in someone's heart and someone’s memory and somenes’ being.” Ukiah City Councilwoman Josefina Duenas added that the worldwide pandemic has brought a shared grief to all of humanity. That makes it more important than ever to rejoice in the memories of the many people who have been lost in the last year and a half. “We were speaking about what has been happening since the beginning of the pandemic,” she reflected; “and I think that many of us have lost somebody. And we want to gather today as much as possible, thinking about our humanity, about our losses, but also just thinking about rejoicing ourselves, because somehow we are still here and the ones who have departed still have somebody who remembers them.” The two public altars were strung with flowers and mementos and photographs of departed loved ones, both human and animal. This year, images of young people were especially notable. “It’s incredibly sad,” said Supervisor Maureen Mulheren, who was a long-time Ukiah City Councilwoman herself. “Last year we also had a lot of people who passed from COVID, and that was the other important thing to remember, everybody who has lost their lives due to the pandemic. But we also have lost a lot of young people. And there are also some missing people.” She, too, thinks about the cultural importance of community grief and celebration. “I think for families that create an altar at home, it’s an incredibly personal and important way for them to celebrate their culture with their family. But when you have a community altar, you’re really bringing more awareness about the culture and the importance of events like Dia de los Muertos, days that remember everybody in the community.” The celebration was supposed to be outside Civic Center, but was relocated to the pavilion at Alex Thomas Plaza due to the rain. People trickled in slowly at first, but once the music started, every seat was full. Everyone was feasting on Pan de Muerto, little skull-shaped loaves of bread with crossed bones on top, and taking sips of warm ajonjoli, a sweet, thick drink with lots of cinnamon.
Mariachi Hernandez, a family of professional musicians, drove in the rain from Philo. The lights from the altars sparkled off their instruments and the lines of silver studs sewn into their gleaming black suits. Orozco first spotted them at the county fair in Boonville. Their presence was a special gift. “Mariachis are very expensive, but what they said to me is that this is a community event and it’s for the people and it’s a good cause. It’s to honor our loved ones, and we’ll do it for free if we have to,” he reported, grateful for their community spirit. “But we are compensating them, at least for gas and food,” he added. It’s an important day for the community to party with their loved ones, the living as well as the dead. Duenas pointed out that happiness can be complicated. And it’s okay to be happy for those whose suffering is over. “We rejoice when somebody is born, but we should also be rejoicing when somebody is gone, because seeing that person sick and suffering, it’s not human,” she said. “I mean, we should be happy to let them go. And that’s what we try to celebrate today. Just to be happy.” Meanwhile, Orozco was pleased with the turnout: with the music, the custom-made Pan de Muerto, and the children performing traditional dance against the backdrop of the altars. And he’s inspired by festivals in nearby communities. He wants everyone to have a good time on Dia de los Muertos. “I was down in Healdsburg last night, and it was like a concert,” he laughed. “So like I said here, we’re hoping that every year it will be better, and we really want all the community to come. You know, you don’t have to be Latino, because you have loved ones that passed as well. So please bring memories of your passed loved ones and share them with us, and just have fun with us.”
October 28, 2021--Mendocino College Repertory Dance Company will present its upcoming show, Open Air, November 5th, 6th and 7th at the Ukiah campus. Performance Director Eryn Shon-Brunner says the show's title is fitting, as all of the original pieces of this innovative dance performance will unfold outside in different locations on Mendocino College's Ukiah Campus.
The outdoor, roving show allows both the audience and performers to enjoy dance and the beauty of Ukiah’s college campus while adhering to Covid-19 safety protocols. Four pieces, ranging in tone from serious to comical to ritualistic, will be danced in four different locations throughout the grounds.
The first piece, called “Ragtime,” will take place in the heart of campus at the Pomo Plaza. College dance instructor and choreographer Kirsten Turner presents this 1960’s ragtime ballet as a nod to the famous 20th century choreographer George Balanchine, regarded as the foremost contemporary choreographer in the world of ballet.
The next dance, created by students Ari Sunbeam and Jay Haralson, is called “Raising the Bar” and is set on the steps of the College Library, one of the campus’ most stunning architectural buildings. Sunbeam’s choreography is inspired by his observations of nature, in particular the mating rituals of birds and other animals.
Following the silliness of “Raising the Bar” is a ritualistic dance choreographed by Pilates instructor Dena Watson Krast called “Cornucopia.” This piece is set under a beautiful grove of giant oaks adorned with colorfully dyed fabrics created by Mendocino College Costume designer Kathy Dingman-Katz, who oversees all the costume pieces in the show. The combination of natural beauty, costuming and dance make “Cornucopia” a feast for the eyes.
The final piece of Open Air, choreographed by Schon-Brunner, is called “In the Round” and is danced in an open, grassy field in the middle of campus.
Open Air begins each night at 5:00 pm, and tickets are free. The audience is asked to convene in front of the Mendocino’s large theater, called the Center for Visual and Performing Arts.
November 1, 2021 — The cleanup from the Hopkins Fire has a clear path forward now. The State has issued a proclamation declaring the event an emergency, which means the county can probably be reimbursed 75% of what it spends on remediating the damage, including what it’s spent so far. And the Department of Toxic Substances Control is scheduled to begin cleaning up hazardous waste in the burn zone tomorrow. The Redistricting Advisory Commission presented the eighth and ninth drafts of its proposed map to the Board of Supervisors last week, explaining that number nine would adjust the boundaries so that Hopland, which is now in the fifth district, would join Potter Valley and Redwood Valley in the first district. None of the maps has been finalized yet. The deadline for cannabis cultivation applicants to submit documents to the online portal has been extended to 11:59 on Tuesday night, due to power outages during last week’s storm. That deadline means that applications submitted by Tuesday will be eligible for consideration, not just those that had been reviewed by that time. And the misinformation campaign regarding vaccination and masking is in full swing. Numerous members of the public called in to the Board of Supervisors last week to share falsehoods about natural immunity and claim, erroneously, that wearing masks causes health problems. Callers made analogies involving Satanic rituals and the Nuremberg Trials, and used creative terminology like ‘natural killer cells’ to support their arguments about the vaccines’ efficacy. Travis Killmore, field coordinator for the county’s Prevention, Recovery, Resiliency and Mitigation or PERRM team, reported that just a few days before the atmospheric river threatened to sluice debris from the Hopkins burn scar into the Russian River, several organizations including the California Conservation Corps stepped in to provide emergency assistance….
October 27, 2021 — Community members who love Faulkner Park are considering a variety of ways to protect it from PG&E’s plans to cut dozens of beloved redwoods. The company fears that iconic old trees will fall on its poorly maintained infrastructure. Steve Wood, who has walked the trails for years, described why the small county park has such a special place in neighbors’ hearts, and how the trees continue to play an important role when they do fall in a natural environment. “This is one of the most gorgeous parts of the park,” he said, pausing near a marked tree. “A lot of wild azaleas here, huckleberry, all kinds of swamp plants, because this is the original Bear Wallow. I guess at one time, there were actually bears that came here and cooled off in the summertime...when these trees fall, they become kind of nurse trees for the azaleas and the trees that succeed them later on.” Just a few hours away from Faulkner Park, a handful of activists in the Humboldt Redwoods State Park has been dashing up and down Mattole Road for well over a week, halting as much of the work by PG&E contractors as they can. One of them, called Cat, had stationed himself between an old growth tanoak and a large Doug fir on Saturday afternoon, October 23rd, the day before the atmospheric river struck the region. It was already raining steadily. Crews were on lunch, but forest defenders were alert, strategizing how to interfere most effectively. “We’ve saved a lot of trees,” he reflected. “If we weren’t here, this place would have been pretty decimated. Already there’s a lot of trees down. They haven’t gotten to the old growth, but there’s a lot of old growth marked. We’re just trying to save as many trees as we can, until we can get more oversight.” Back at Faulkner Park, Jonas Mathie, who enjoys the trails with his dog, also expressed a desire for more transparency from the company. “I would just like to discuss it and find out where their thoughts were and how they came to this conclusion,” he said. “We the people own the park. With PG&E’s track record and not being a fair player, we should all be very concerned by this, and organize accordingly.” He agreed that “obviously” what is missing is a public comment period. There are no publicly available documents detailing the scale of the company’s timber operations under the enhanced vegetation management program. As of April 2020, PG&E’s near term process for utility maintenance activities to establish best management practices means that the company’s clear cutting (euphemistically referred to as an enhanced vegetation management program), does not trigger CEQA or any permit process. No agency is tasked with issuing take permits or conducting any environmental oversight. Although it has been well documented that the company’s poorly maintained infrastructure has caused multiple catastrophic wildfires, PG&E has been allowed to craft its own wildfire mitigation plan. And that plan consists largely of cutting down thousands of healthy trees, in waterways, on private land, in public parks, and on steep slopes from the border of Oregon to Bakersfield. Mendocino County Supervisor Ted Williams, whose district includes Faulkner Park, reported that PG&E representatives promise to share a cost analysis of its plans for the park with the public soon. But the company doesn’t have much of a track record of sticking with its budget, according to Nancy Macy, chair of the Sierra Club’s Utility Wildfire Prevention Task Force, which released a cost-benefit analysis of the program. “It came out that if you add up the costs of enhanced vegetation management, which is around two billion dollars a year, it costs a whole lot more to cut down the trees and pay the contractors and deal with the slash, than it does to rebuild the infrastructure,” she reported. The task force analysis found that this year, PG&E has already paid two and a half times what it paid for the program last year, which means that, as far as costs go, “we do not know. And that’s the scary thing,” Macy concluded. Some of the neighbors of Faulkner Park have raised the possibility of direct action, like thirteen-year-old Zane Colfax, whose willingness to build a platform in a tree met with approval from neighbor Michelle Parzik, who lives about two miles from the Park on Mountain View Road. There is a tree sitter in the Humboldt State Park, but much of the direct action there consists of walking up to crews who are about to cut down a tree and chatting with them, in order to make it unsafe for them to continue working. On Saturday, a forest defender called Farmer led me up a steep slope to meet some of his friends. His description was apt for any number of sites where PG&E crews are taking down healthy trees. “This could be the poster child for conditions you would want for fire safety,” he said, as the rain intensified. “And they’re planning to remove these mature hardwood trees. That’s going to open up the canopy, a lot of brush is going to come in and it’s going to become an actual fire hazard. And that’s what we’re trying to prevent. We want the lines undergrounded and or insulated. We want fire safety, and part of fire safety is a healthy mature forest without these understory flash fuels that are going to contribute to potentially catastrophic forest fires when the lines do go down. Because they will.” Farmer and his friends are outnumbered by tree-cutting crews. They spend a lot of time watching trees go down as they try to strategize which ons are most ecologically significant. Still, as he drove his old car from one momentarily successful intervention to the next, Farmer reflected that direct action is having some effect. “We’re really just a handful of folks,” he said, fastening his seat belt. “But we seem to be accomplishing a lot. They’re very stuck in this area. They haven’t been able to make the kind of progress they were expecting.”
For Mendocino County Public Broadcasting, this is the KZYX News for Friday, Oct. 29. I’m Sonia Waraich.
The drought’s been relentless in California over the past couple of years and the past fall was particularly brutal. Dozens of wells went dry in Mendocino. Dried out soil and fuels elevated the risk of wildfires. And reservoir levels and the streamflow in many rivers reached historic lows.
But this past weekend the rain came. There are now signs of recovery, but the situation has been so dire for so long that one rainstorm isn’t going to end the drought or fire season. Without more rain, things could dry out and go back to the way they were before the storm hit.
The county got anywhere from 4 to 13 inches of rain depending on where you were. That was enough rain for the city of Fort Bragg to rescind its drought emergency. But nearby, the town of Mendocino is holding off on declaring the end to its own. Ryan Rhoades manages the district’s water supply and he says the board decided to maintain its Stage 4 water emergency earlier this week.
“It’s still so early in the season and we don’t know how much more rain is coming. While we are happy, we’re cautiously optimistic. Hope for more rain, but prepare for more drought.”
Right now the National Weather Service says it’s too early to say whether or not wetter weather systems passing through the West Coast will extend as far south as Mendocino County. This could be the first rain of many or it could be the one of the only significant rainstorms of the season.
“Don’t let a little bit of early rain sort of fool you into thinking we’re totally out of the woods because the drought’s not going to return or the drought’s over because that may not be the case.”
Rhoades says what’s as important as the amount of rain that falls is the amount of time that rain falls over. Right now the soil doesn’t exactly have the capacity to absorb all of that water because the ground is hard and dry because of the drought.
“A lot of that water is just flowing over the surface and over the edge of the cliffs. That’s not helpful because it’s not retaining it in the aquifer.”
Despite that, the rain did help some.
“I had my first phone call and recorded report of a well that’s recovering. A well that’s been dry for the past couple of months is now producing again. The homeowner was ecstatic. He said, it’s been running for 25 minutes and we have water. So that’s great news. I hope to receive more reports like that.”
So far, Rhoades says two people have reported that their wells recovered. That’s good news, but, again, their wells recovering doesn’t necessarily mean the aquifer is being recharged.
“While lot of the wells in Mendocino are shallow and they’re under the influence of surface water, a heavy rain might make it look like their wells are recovering but the reality is when you get 4 inches in 24 hours, that’s not enough time for that water to really soak deep into recharge the aquifer.”
A similar situation is playing out with the fire season. The rainfall over the weekend allowed firefighters to contain over 90% of the remaining fires in Northern California. But Cal Fire’s Isaac Sanchez says it would be premature to declare fire season over, too. And the drought exacerbates the fire season.
That’s because the rain did help in the short term, but the long term is a different story.
“That’s something that we need, as well as the snowpack that started to accumulate up in the Sierras. But unfortunately, we’re not expecting much more rain coming up. There’s always a potential for something to change, but I know that we’re going to be dry for the next seven to 10 days with no prospects that I’m aware of at this point anyway, of follow up rain. And ultimately that’s what we want to see. We want to see several rain storms come through before we can really kind of, you know, take a breath essentially.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is forecasting it’s going to be dry in Southern California for the rest of this year and going into next. What happens with precipitation in Northern California is still anyone’s best guess. Regardless, it’s going to be hotter than usual across most of California.
“If we see another week or two weeks of dry conditions, warm temperatures. The rain that we experienced will, as far as the dead fuel moistures that are out there, it’ll be like it never happened.”
Like the rainfall, the temperature in Northern California can go either way over the next few months. But because Cal Fire is a state agency, Sanchez says it makes decisions around staffing based on what’s happening in the entire state. And the southern part of the state isn’t doing so well.
“We’re still within a drought, and it takes repeated rainstorm events for us to feel comfortable in reducing staffing and moving over to transitional staffing and winter staffing levels. But as of right now, unless there are follow-up storms that bring more precipitation we don’t anticipate that we’ll be doing transitional staffing because we’re expecting it to be dry for the rest of this year and early next year.”
Sanchez says people should stay prepared for a wildfire even in Northern California given the possibility things stay drier than what used to be normal.
“It’s not going to take long for that to dry out. So maintain that vigilance. Recognize that you have a role in preventing the next wildfire and, of course, be prepared in the event that a fire does break out in your area.”
For the KZYX News, I’m Sonia Waraich, a Report For America corps member. For all our local coverage, with photos and more, visit KZYX.org. You can also subscribe to the KZYX News podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.
by Stacey Sheldon
October 14, 2021--The City of Ukiah’s Community Service Department recently launched its 50 in 5 Arts Campaign. This ambitious project aims to install 50 pieces of public art throughout Ukiah in the next 5 years. The intent of the 50 in 5 campaign is to showcase Ukiah's creativity and culture through public art that reflects the unique wisdom, intellect, history and imagination of Ukiah’s people.
The project is the brainchild of Neil Davis, Ukiah’s Director of Community Services. He reached out to Alyssum Wier, Executive Director of the Arts Council of Mendocino County, for support. Together they crafted a vision and purpose for the project. Together they garnered grant money, created applications for artist proposals, and navigated through permitting and insurance bureaucracy to get projects underway and installed.
In Alex Thomas Plaza, Elizabeth Raybee’s Receptacle Mosaics uplevel the trash and recycle containers with colorful designs that celebrate Mendocino’s landscape and inform on disaster preparedness. The Pop Up Gallery under the Alex Thomas Pavillon is also a 50 and 5 installation. Local artist Annie Rugyt Bernard collaborated with Davis on the outdoor gallery. Bernard created the current exhibit of 5 mixed media pieces exploring themes of isolation and grief induced by the Pandemic. One piece, made with paint, pencil and fluorescent colors, is an illustration of a web of wires wrapped around each other like Celtic knots.
In stark contrast to the whimsical nature of the Sound Garden is the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Mural on the Arbor Building housing Redwood Services. Visiting artist Shane Grammer and the Hope Through Art Foundation recently guided local youth through the painting process of this powerful mural. With bold, blood red handprints in the background, and a larger than life portrait of Khadijah Britton in the foreground, the mural honors Britton who has been missing since 2018. This mural calls for greater awareness and justice for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s movement, and is part of a larger series of murals planned by the Ukiah Valley Youth Leadership Coalition.
In addition to these completed and installed projects, several other works of 50 and 5 are in progress: Lauren Sinnott is finishing up a masterpiece mural on Church street that presents a chronological history of Mendocino county, and Tim Poma, Lonnie Lopez, and Nathan Valensky will create a mural at Ukiah’s Skate Park.
October 26, 2021 — Faulkner Park is a little-known gem of Mendocino County, known for wild azaleas and a history of providing refreshment to bears. The forty-acre park, formerly known as Bear Wallow, is just a few miles up Mountain View Road outside Boonville. Now, neighbors are rallying to protect dozens of its giant redwoods from a PG&E plan to remove them, citing the safety of its infrastructure. Steve Wood has owned property adjacent to the park for 45 years and has always walked his dogs there. Last week, he led an impromptu tour along the Azalea Trail and pointed out some of the trees that were marked for removal. Pausing beside a pair of huge, fire-scarred redwoods that had grown together, he estimated the larger at about six feet in diameter. “It’s marked with a number and an X, which indicates they’re planning to cut it,” he noted. “As far as we know.” This pair of ancient conjoined twins is about 250 feet away from the power lines. Nine-year-old Laila loves the azaleas, and noted that Faulkner park celebrated its 91st birthday this month. She noted that the azaleas depend on the redwood canopy, and added, “I am here today because the redwoods should not be cut down.” She said she has been enjoying the park for about six years. About twenty neighbors, including five kids and a few dogs, gathered in the park on a drizzly morning to talk about how to protect it, from contacting state representatives to taking direct action. That’s what thirteen-year-old Zane Colfax says he’s prepared to do. “I don’t want to see these trees cut, especially when PG&E has other options,” he said. Mike Mannix, whose family has owned land nearby since the 1930’s, thinks it would be easier on the company’s bottom line to leave the park alone. “It’s a square forty acres,” he specified. “So we’re only talking about a quarter of a mile of road. It wasn’t that long ago that the fiber optic cable went from inland Mendocino County all the way out to the coast from here. I mean, we’re talking a chunk of change to take trees out, compared to how much it costs to underground a quarter of a mile of county road.” Asked if he has PG&E at his home or business, he said, “No, I don’t do business with PG&E. I find them unreliable and overpriced.” PG&E has received authorization to pass along much of the cost of its wildfire mitigation efforts, including vegetation management, to its ratepayers, plus 15-20%, depending on which account it lands in. Resident Donna Pierson Pugh thinks this may have something to do with the company’s approach. “I do think that perhaps they’re making a choice in doing the clear cutting and limbing, which is perhaps more attractive to them because of the ability or the option they have of passing that on to consumers, as opposed to burying of lines or putting the insulated lines in instead of the current lines,” she noted. A few days after the meeting in the park, Supervisor Ted Williams spoke about a meeting between county staff and company representatives, to ask PG&E to hold off on cutting until after some discussion with county government. “It looked like about 91 trees marked,” he reported. “These are good-sized trees. It would have a significant impact on the park, which is owned by the people, and I think PG&E can find another way to mitigate the fire risk without cutting hundreds of feet in either direction.” He is confident that “we’re going to be able to find a compromise.” He supports undergrounding the lines, but added, “The county likely doesn’t have the authority to force PG&E to underground, and I know they will cite significant expense. That said, in this case, we’re only talking about a fifth of a mile and I think they can find a workable solution that doesn’t involve taking out a redwood forest.” He said he thinks the role of the supervisors is to “steer the discussion,” but that “likely, we will need to involve our state reps.” Asked if he supports direct action like tree sitting and blockading the roads, he said, “I hope it doesn’t come to that...I hope we can have a rational discussion, sitting down to discuss options. Ultimately, it may come to that, and I support the people taking a stand. These are their trees. This is their park.” For David Severin, the potential crisis of the park is an opportunity for the neighbors to get together to do something about climate change and the future. He walked through the park before the community meeting, and said he saw a lot of work that he could do himself to “dress up the park and make it a lot friendlier,” like sprucing up plaques and walkways. “I have twelve grandchildren,” he added, “and I feel a really strong obligation toward those grandchildren and to the future that I’m handing off to them. And this park is important for that. For them.”
October 25, 2021 — Now that the census is over, a citizens’ commission is working with county staff to advise the Board of Supervisors on redistricting, or plans to readjust the boundaries of the county’s five districts. The fifth district will remain geographically complex, including the south coast, Mendocino and Albion, and points inland. But the fourth district has lost population, while the third is too big, so some adjustments will have to be made. The difference between the biggest and smallest districts can’t be more than ten percent. But in a geographically large county with a small population, it’s all about fine-tuning. The commission has added more meetings, one at 6:15 pm on Wednesday October 27th and another on November 3rd. The commission is also giving a presentation to the Board of Supervisors today (October 26th) at 1:30 pm, where commissioners hope to rustle up a little more public comment. The county must submit its final map to the state by December 15th, or the state could have a judge decide the boundaries. The deadline for the advisory commission to receive maps from the public is October 29th. The board will identify its preferred map on November 9th. You can submit your public comment by emailing redistricting@mendocinocounty.org. You can watch the meeting on the county youtube channel.
October 21, 2021 — The burn scar from the Hopkins fire could cause a lot of environmental damage if it’s not mitigated before a serious storm, though straw wattles are scheduled to be installed along the waterway today and tomorrow. And the county’s juvenile hall is preparing to house serious youth offenders who have previously been incarcerated at state facilities.
For Mendocino County Public Broadcasting, this is the KZYX News for Friday, Oct. 22. I’m Sonia Waraich.
Fire and forest ecologists virtually all agreethat prescribed and cultural fires will be an important tool to stop catastrophic wildfires from ripping through the state’s forests. But what should we do about forestland that’s already been burned by a fire? The U.S. Forest Service’s answer in the Mendocino National Forest is salvage logging. That’s a somewhat controversial practice when they cut down and remove dead trees to keep the amount of flammable material in the forest to a minimum.
Cynthia Snyder is an insect specialist and one of the people on a field trip through the parts of the forest where the August Complex Fire hit last year. She’s hacked off a piece of bark from one of the burnt trees nearby and shows us the insect boring holes and frass, or little wood scraps, they leave behind.
Those bugs are damaging the wood of those trees and making it harder for the Forest Service to find loggers to do the work. But research is showing salvage logging may not always be the best tool to use in every situation.
So the Forest Service is building on that research. Hydrologist Hilda Kwan describes the research project and the agency’s prescription: salvage logging some, all or none of the dead trees in a specified plot.
Silviculturist Radek Glebocki explains why this site specifically was chosen.
That was U.S. Forest Service silviculturist Radek Glebocki, hydrologist Hilda Kwan and entomologist Cynthia Synder on a tour of the parts of the Mendocino National Forest that were burned by the August complex fire last year.
For the KZYX News, I’m Sonia Waraich, a Report For America corps member. For all our local coverage, with photos and more, visit KZYX.org. You can also subscribe to the KZYX News podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.
October 20, 2021 — With the repeal of the latest cannabis ordinance and deadlines looming, legacy growers are facing more uncertainty than ever. Growers have until the end of the month to submit their applications — again — through an online portal, and the end of the year to get licenses from the state. The moratorium on Phase III growers under the original cannabis ordinance, which has been reinstated, expires in March. And growers have been shelling out tens of thousands of dollars on environmental consultants and engineers to satisfy the state’s requirements, especially from Fish and Wildlife. “It’s been a horrendous experience,” said Clifford Morford, a legacy grower who co-founded Heartrock Mountain Farm in Potter Valley with his son Daniel. They have been on the road to compliance for four years. Daniel is the optimistic one, though he compares the current historical moment to watching the Ranch Fire creep across the ridgelines to the edges of his farm, where fought it off with the help of friends and family. “I feel like something’s coming that’s going to change the face of the cannabis industry in California,” he reflected. He used another analogy to describe what he thinks the moment calls for: “It’s the fourth quarter,” he said. “And we’ve gotta throw a Hail Mary, gotta send one deep, score a touchdown, do a two-point conversion, and then maybe do a side kick and a fumble recovery and a field goal.” “I have less hope than Daniel does,” his father admitted. “He says we’re gonna make it, and we might. I’m gonna do everything I can to make it happen. But I have a feeling that one day we’re gonna wake up, and oh, it’s over. And they won’t care, the powers that be. It’ll be easier to administer their program with five big farms in Salinas and a dozen down in Santa Barbara, and they’ll grow all the weed we need, and everybody will be happy, except those that want the experience of smoking our weed.” The Morfords spent $12,000 to engineer two stream crossings in pursuit of a lake and streambed alteration permit (LSA) from Fish and Wildlife. That’s not quite half of what the LSA has cost them so far, since it includes work on a pond and some planning and replanning of culverts. Daniel says they’re still sitting on some product from last year, but not as much as some of their friends. They don’t even know what the price will be this year. As Daniel got up to let the dogs out, Cliff made a key distinction. “It’s easy to move it,” he noted. “It’s harder to get paid for it.”
Michael Katz is the Executive Director of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance. He hears a lot of stories like the Morfords’, and his optimism, too, is tempered with uncertainty. But he’s hanging a lot of hope on news from county Cannabis Program Manager Kristin Nevedal about a checklist that serves as the site-specific environmental review that growers need to get their state licenses. Previously, he reported, it seemed like 90% of the growers trying to get through the system using the checklist, called Appendix G, would not make it. That does not seem to be the case anymore, “and so while we don’t know exactly what that means,” he acknowledged, “we are still hopeful.” Appendix G might not work for everyone who is trying to get legal under a county ordinance that does not have a discretionary permit process, which the state requires. There is also some confusion as to whether the deadline to submit applications is October 30th, or if applicants whose documents have not been reviewed by that date will be left out in the cold. The online portal hasn’t entirely eliminated the application headache. Katz reported that, “dozens and dozens of folks who are trying to go along with what’s being requested are finding that things are changing, things that are seemingly not related to certain requests are being asked for, and so this confusion has led to people having to re-submit their submissions, multiple times.” Nevedal was not available for an interview. She is working on a grant application for the county to receive $18 million from the state to get the local cannabis program in shape. Katz thinks this money signals a good faith effort on the part of the state to help legacy growers in jurisdictions that are having a hard time reconciling their ordinances with Prop 64 and other state rules. Finally, Katz’ optimism, too, is tinged with an awareness of historical irony. “Capitalism is not really designed to support small businesses,” he observed. “People are definitely viewing this time period as another extinction event among the community of small operators, who started the movement to create cannabis availability to everybody. Without the small farmers in California, there wouldn’t be a legal cannabis market rolling across the world right now.” And small cannabis farmers will go to extraordinary lengths to keep doing the thing they love. Daniel Morford, who writes poetry and jokes and attends seminars on the consciousness of plants and people, reflected that, “probably the reason I’m more optimistic than my dad is he’s in the office doing the paperwork and I’m on the farm doing the farm work, so I’m up there in the mountains hearing nothing but wind through the trees, thinking to myself, I would torture people to work in an environment this peaceful.” He’s never been as happy for a season-ending rain as he is right now. It’s a historical event in history-changing times of drought, wildfire, and public policy. Katz, too, calls for historical perspective. “We have to not give up,” he insisted. “We have to continue working. My hope is what drives me, and our hope as a community is that we understand the challenge of this time period. I mean, we’re at the beginning of the end of prohibition.”
October 19, 2021 — As the difference between safety and security in the Jackson Demonstration State Forest is parsed with utmost refinement, one thing remains clear: the logging sites are dangerous. Two activists have complained of significant threats, one of them caught on video. EPIC, the Environmental Protection and Information Center, has sent a letter to Wade Crowfoot, the California Secretary of Natural Resources, asking him to restore peace.
And, although Cal Fire’s chief legal counsel Bruce Crane wrote on July 2nd that “The current JDSF closure order prohibits any private security, armed or unarmed, from entering JDSF,” two unarmed private security firms have been present in two sites. One was hired by a private company, while the other was paid upwards of $110,000 by Cal Fire for just over a month’s work.
Cal Fire, the Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention, manages JDSF, where protests against logging have been vigorous. Mendocino Forest Products, the sister company to Mendocino Redwood Company, purchased the contract to log Soda Gulch. They hired Two Brothers Logging to fall trees and Lear Asset Management for safety.
In a press release, Mendocino Redwood Company described the contractors as “licensed and bonded Safety Specialists…(who) are simply filming and alerting trespassers to the active operations.” Lear is a private security company best known for armed raids on trespass grows. John Andersen, the public policy director for MRC, confirmed that the company had hired Lear as a safety contractor, but said Trouette and his staff are not carrying weapons on JDSF.
Kevin Conway, the Cal Fire forest manager in JDSF, said safety managers are permitted on logging sites, but did not lay out the parameters of their duties, other than to specify that they must be unarmed.
The presence of the safety manager, or the Safety Specialist, did not rule out the possibility of a non-accidental death, according to one unidentified logger in Soda Gulch on October 5th. Michael Hunter, the Chairman of the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians, described the encounter to KZYX and shared the video of the incident.
Hunter said that as he stood near the loggers, “I recorded everything. I said hey. Please don’t kill me by accident today. And the old man says, oh, it won’t be by accident. I got that on recording, too, and I said, well, don’t kill by purpose either, please, ‘cause I don’t feel like dying today.”
Last week, Matt Simmons, a lawyer with EPIC, wrote in his letter to Secretary Crowfoot that on the same day, U’i Wesley, an activist and Native Hawaiian singer and dancer, had a separate encounter. She was parked by a logging gate when two masked men pulled up in a large black truck with no license plates. “They didn’t say who they were, they didn’t say we’re with the police, or we’re with Cal Fire. They just came up to her and said, you need to leave. And when she said that she wouldn’t, they responded by reaching into their pocket and throwing bullet casings at her face and saying, you know, it’s dangerous in here. And I think any reasonable person would feel that that was a death threat.” Reflecting on the fact that both recipients of the threats were people of color, Simmons said, “The really sad truth is that Mendocino, just like all of America, has been a place of violence against people of color for a really long time. And Jackson itself is Northern Pomo and Coast Yuki territory. And there’s a reason it’s not anymore, right? It’s because of violent acquisition by white settlers. And in some ways, it feels like we’re just sort of seeing a continuation of that.”
In a video he posted on Facebook, Hunter had a long verbal encounter with a man later identified as Paul Trouette, the head of Lear Asset Management. Simmons was skeptical about what he called a loophole allowing Trouette, a professional private security provider, to operate as a safety manager or Safety Specialist, in an area where private security is not allowed.
“Now what it looks like is that MRC has hired Trouette and are calling him a safety manager in order to have a loophole in the rules that require them not to hire private security. I did a little bit of googling on Paul Trouette, and I don’t think he’s the guy you hire to be a safety manager.”
Recently obtained documents show that Cal Fire itself hired a private security firm called Armorous to provide unarmed guards and a patrol car around the clock at the Caspar logging site from June 8th through July 5th. Payments for two guards overnight and three during the day came out to almost $111,000. Conway said that their presence did not violate the agency’s chief legal counsel’s opinion that “CAL FIRE cannot cede control of activities on JDSF, for law enforcement and security purposes, to any person or entity at any time as JDSF is required...to always be under the direction and control of CAL FIRE personnel.” Conway pointed out that this statement was part of a letter to the owner of a logging company who wanted to hire private security to protect his logging operations.
In contrast, Armorous was hired by Cal Fire and was acting under control of the agency as what he called a “force extender.” He also emphasized that the guards were not acting in a law enforcement capacity. He said they wore uniforms and did not carry weapons, and that their vehicle was marked. He said at the moment, there are no plans to bring the guards back into JDSF. Usually, he said, the public respects forest closures, and the current situation, where some portion of the public wants to put themselves and workers in harm’s way, is very new territory for the agency. He urged those who object to the logging to use the public process to express themselves.
October 18, 2021 — Efforts to take over the license for the Potter Valley Project have had some significant setbacks lately. One is an expensive equipment failure that could take up to a year and a half to repair. The other is that the Two Basin Partnership, a coalition of entities seeking to take over the license from PG&E, has not been able to secure the funding it needs for studies that are necessary for a final license application. The Partnership asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for some extra time to come up with the money, but FERC refused. Now the Partnership is worried that the Commission could ask PG&E to surrender the project. Meanwhile, with the license set to expire in mid-April, the Friends of the Eel River, who have long called for the removal of Scott Dam and eventually full decommission, think that their objective might be nearer than they expected. For Alicia Hamann, the Executive Director of Friends of the Eel River, the failure was a stroke of good luck. “Even with all the in-depth work we’ve done (on Scott Dam) looking at seismic stability and landslides and potential failure of the needle valve and problems with the foundation and all kinds of problems, the failure of the transformer bank is something we never considered,” she reflected. “So this just kind of goes to show that there are a great number of ways that this project is really aging, and really unreliable.” But Janet Pauli, of the Potter Valley Irrigation District and the Inland Water and Power Commission, which is part of the Two Basin Partnership, says that if PG&E surrenders the project without an heir, nobody knows what will happen next. Much of the uncertainty could be resolved with studies that would answer questions about what it would take to operate the project. But the source of the money to pay for those studies is uncertain, too. The Partnership had hoped PG&E would foot the bill, which the company did not do. And state and federal funds haven’t materialized, either. The Partnership’s current plan includes removal of Scott Dam and modifications to Cape Horn Dam, a plan that requires extensive examination. Pauli says it would take $12-15 million to complete all the studies that the Partnership has submitted to FERC in order to answer questions about water rights, the impacts of the sediment that would be released from Lake Pillsbury, the impact that removing the dam and lake infrastructure would have on Lake County, and what future diversions would look like. Initial due diligence on all those studies, she said, would take about a million and a half dollars. Now there’s another expense: the five to ten million dollars PG&E estimates it will cost to repair or replace the transformer bank at the powerhouse. Hamann expects that if PG&E gets stuck with that bill, the company could gte authorization from the California Public Utilities Commission to pass it along to ratepayers, plus ten percent. Right now, the project is diverting about ten cubic feet of water per second, a drastic reduction due to the drought. Pauli explained that greater water generation depends on the project’s ability to produce power. That has significant implications for Lake Mendocino. Under the current license, and with the ability to produce power, diversion through the Potter Valley Project could exceed 250 cubic feet per second (cfs). But “if they can’t produce power, they physically cannot put that volume of water through the powerhouse,” Pauli said. In the wintertime, minimum flows through the East Branch of the Russian River, plus contract flows for the Potter Valley Irrigation District add up to 45 cfs, “And that’s a far cry from the 270 or so cfs that they normally would be able to divert,” Paui noted. “That means the amount of water going into Lake Mendocino would only be the 45 cfs plus whatever other natural flow there would be from Cold Creek drainage in Potter Valley.” Hamann thinks the partners have had enough time . She wants them to withdraw their notice of intent to apply for the license, and let the dam removal begin. “What we would hope to see in a license surrender process is surrender, decommissioning, and then dam removal,” she said. She thinks “options for an ecologically appropriate continued diversion” are still possible, but “it just means the folks down in the Russian River who benefit from that water are going to have to pay up for some new infrastructure to be built.”
For Mendocino County Public Broadcasting, this is the KZYX News for Friday, Oct. 15. I’m Sonia Waraich.
It’s a Wednesday afternoon in late September and technicians from San Diego are installing a desalination unit at the Fort Bragg water plant.
Heath Daniels works for the city and will be responsible for operating the desalination system when the Noyo River’s water becomes too salty. The river water can become salty during king tides, which happen when the moon’s gravitational pull causes water levels to rise several inches. That’s been an issue because the river hasn’t provided enough fresh water to dilute the saltwater that gets into it during those events, which prevented the city from being able to pump water from the river.
For the moment, the rain’s eliminated the need for the city to use the desalination system.
Daniels says the desalination system is standing ready for when the streamflow in the Noyo does get too low again. City Manager Tabatha Miller told the Fort Bragg City Council on Tuesday that they did end up using it recently for a few days.
The rain and the arrival of the desalination system have left the city in a secure enough position to downgrade its drought emergency from a Stage 4 water crisis to a Stage 2 water alert.
Miller says the drought isn’t over yet, but people in the city don’t have to conserve as much as they were during the summertime.
There’s no need to get water trucked in from Ukiah anymore either. The city put a stop to that last week.
On top of all of that, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting Mendocino County has a pretty good chance of getting its usual amount of rainfall through the rest of the year.
The impacts of the drought might be less severe for the moment, but catastrophic wildfires are still raging across the state. Scientists say the solution is to fight fire with fire and now the state agrees.
Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law the last of three bills that are going to make it easier to conduct a prescribed burn on private land.
Lenya Quinn Davidson is with the UC Cooperative Extension and an authority on prescribed fires.
Experts recognize we need more of these fires on the landscape in California, so the state decided to make it easier for tribes and private landowners to conduct burns without having to worry about paying the firefighting costs if the fire got out of control.
Twenty million dollars was also set aside in the state wildfire budget for a prescribed fire claims fund.
Quinn-Davidson says the fact that you couldn’t get insurance made it really difficult to do a prescribed burn even with increased investment from the state. But she says the benefits of conducting prescribed fires can’t be overstated.
A prescribed fire project in Sequoia National Park was able to change the behavior of the wildfire there and protect the General Sherman Tree, which is the largest tree on Earth.
For KZYX News, I’m Sonia Waraich, a Report For America corps member. For all our local coverage, with photos and more, visit KZYX.org. You can also subscribe to the KZYX News podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.
October 13, 2021 — PG&E crews have moved decisively into the Humboldt Redwoods State Park. On Friday afternoon, chainsaws roared along Mattole Road, as forest defenders prepared a tree sit to protect old growth habitat trees. “These are our last big Douglas fir trees on the coast of Northern California,” said Gabrielle, a landowner who lives near the park and has worked in conservation for years. “Some of these have been saved, which raises the question: is anything ever really saved?” One of the activists, who goes by the name Farmer, outlined the situation. “Because so much environmental destruction is happening right now, we have to do a kind of triage,” he explained. “People sit in trees, people blockade roads with their bodies, people build structures to ascend in the middle of the road and they can’t be taken down easily. People do all kinds of stuff to stop logging out here...we’re almost always prepared to do it.” Forest defenders also monitor logging plans, but, he added, “In this case, in the PG&E situation, there are no plans to look at. There’s no reports to read. You can’t look at maps that tell you where the trees are going to be cut down. So it’s all completely opaque and all we know is what we see on the trees. All we know is the mark. And the mark, as you know, is unreliable.” One of the marked trees is a huge charismatic Douglas fir called Dotty, because of the spray painted dots on its trunk. Dotty towers over a grove of smaller trees, all of them also marked. Gabrielle described the tree and its surroundings. “It’s incredibly large, especially in comparison to what we have left,” she said. “In our watershed, which adjoins at the top of this hill in the Mattole watershed, we have about eight percent of our original forest left, probably less, so every tree like that is really significant and important.” She paused as a tree hit the ground, just out of sight down the hill. “As you can hear, it’s really large trees that they’re falling,” she remarked. “And it’s really sad because they’re storing incredible amounts of carbon and it’s counterproductive to be removing them at this time...where is the protection, and where are the people who are getting paid to protect them, and why is there no environmental impact report?” She added that the tree removal in the park “is already on land that people worked hard to save and did a lot of fundraising for, and contributions came from all over the country, all over the world, and people believe that this area was saved, and fragmenting it and destroying the canopy connectivity is really not okay.” Mander is one of the tree sitters prepared to take up residence in a tree that’s already a home to many. Their first night in the tree, they spotted voles and flying squirrels, important food sources for iconic birds of prey that also nest in the forest. Old growth trees that appear to be damaged have been marked for removal, but Mander pointed out that what look like flaws are ideal nesting sites for wildlife. “From where I am, I can see very complex crowns, old broken tops, really key habitat features,” they noted. “There’s a lot of moss and lichen, some are starting to accumulate canopy soil...in other areas of the state, they’re undergrounding a lot of the power lines, and I think it would be absolutely reasonable to ask them to do that, in protected old growth groves, in a state park.” So far, the tree sit has not been revealed to crews on the ground, but, Mander added, “That is what I and others are prepared to do, if they go after those trees.”
October 12, 2021 — By now, everyone in the region has noticed clear-cuts around PG&E wires, from Deerwood to Hopland to Humboldt and Sonoma Counties. PG&E’s ill-maintained equipment causes fires that kill people and animals, and burn down towns and rapidly dwindling habitat. In response, the utility is removing the vegetation that could catch fire if it comes in contact with the lines. The Sierra Club’s Wildfire Mitigation Task Force wrote a cost benefit analysis of how effective — and cost effective — the program is. Here’s the short version: “It’s really expensive. And it doesn’t work,” according to Nancy Macy, the task force chair. “How can it work? You can’t cut down every tree that may or may not, sometime in the future, have a problem.” The research team analyzed documents from PG&E and other utilities in California, and found that PG&E’s bare copper wires meet vegetation with disastrous results almost twice as often as other utilities. But in addition to undergrounding lines, the other companies are replacing bare copper distribution wires with triple insulated steel core cables and installing computerized circuit breakers for protection from broken wires. Southern California Edison has estimated that steel-core triple insulation for its lines costs $428k per mile. PG&E estimated that its enhanced vegetation management program of clear-cutting under the lines would cost $405k per mile. But by the end of August 2020, the program costs came out to $416 million. That’s almost half a million dollars per mile for a program that doesn’t even address the main causes of wildfire. The analysis “shows a meager 5% reduction in projected ignitions by PG&E unders its vegetation focused plan. Worth noting, PG&E will be spending over $4 billion in the period between 2020 and 2022, for vegetation management alone.” “I don’t think we were really surprised,” Macy reflected. “It came out that if you add up the costs of enhanced vegetation management, which is around $2 billion a year, it costs a whole lot more to cut down the trees and pay the contractors and deal with the slash and all of that, than it does to rebuild the infrastructure. PG&E has already paid two and half times as much as it paid in 2020, when it far exceeded its budget. “So we do not know (how much it will cost),” Macy concluded. “And that’s the scary thing.”
October 11, 2021 — Four years after the Redwood Complex fire displaced much of the community, and two years into the pandemic, the Redwood Valley Grange is still serving as a hub for people to come together over books, food, herbal tea, and art by people they know. We’ll hear from grange members about how the grange served the community in the aftermath of the fire, and what’s next.
October 8, 2021 — The debate about who is responsible for dangerous conditions in the Jackson Demonstration State Forest has heated up. Protestors insist that the logging is contributing to climate change while Cal Fire, which manages the forest, claims that protestors are endangering themselves and tree fallers by forcing loggers to stop working in the middle of a precarious task. Another concern that has been raised this week is the presence of a man who looks very much like Paul Trouette of Lear Asset Management in Soda Gulch on Monday. Mr. Trouette did not respond to an email from kzyx yesterday, asking him if he was providing private security on the site. In a long video that was live streamed on Facebook by Michael Hunter, the tribal chair of the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians, the man identified himself only as a “safety officer.” Lear is a private security contractor best known in Mendocino county for armed raids on illegal trespass cannabis grows in timberland. But private security, armed or unarmed, is not allowed in the state forest, according to Cal Fire chief legal counsel Bruce Crane. In a July 2 letter to Myles Anderson of Anderson Logging, Crane said “CAL FIRE will not allow private security, armed or unarmed, “protecting” Anderson Logging operations on the Caspar 500 THP,” or timber harvest plan. The Caspar 500 is a separate plan from the Soda Gulch area, which is not being logged by Anderson Logging. In an email yesterday, Anderson stated that his company is not affiliated with Soda Gulch and has no other contracts for logging on JDSF. He also said Anderson Logging has no contracts with Trouette or Lear Asset Management. But he has expressed an interest in hiring someone to provide security. On July 6, he wrote in a letter to Ronald Aruejo, the District Manager at the Department of Industrial Relations in the division of Occupational Safety and Health, that he was willing to hire a private security firm if Cal Fire could not or would not secure the Caspar 500 against protestors. He was responding to a Cal OSHA complaint that his employees “were falling trees towards other employees and other people in the woods...causing an unsafe work environment.” He argued that “When people approached the area in which we were working we stopped therefore we did not create an unsafe condition.” Kzyx program director Alicia Bales was in the forest on June 15 and recorded a variety of responses on the part of the loggers. She described one group of loggers who stopped what they were doing when activists approached. Moments later, she could be heard saying, “We are right here,” as chainsaw blared and trees cracked. Kevin Conway, the Cal Fire forest manager for JDSF, confirmed that Anderson Logging is not currently doing any work in the state forest. He said that Mendocino Forest Products has purchased the contract to log Soda Gulch, but he did not know which logging contractor that company was employing. Mendocino Forest Products is the sawmill for Mendocino Redwood Company, which owns 350 square miles of timberlands in Mendocino and Sonoma counties. An email to John Andersen, MRC’s director of forest policy, about who was logging Soda Gulch, and if the company had hired Trouette, elicited an automatic reply saying he would be out of the office until Monday.
Conway confirmed that CalFire’s stance “across the landscape” is that the agency does not want private security on JDSF. But he said CalFire does allow contract purchasers to hire safety observers, whose job is to document possibly unsafe conditions on behalf of the contractor. There are no specific parameters for the safety observer’s duties, but Conway did confirm that they are not supposed to be armed. The man interacting with Hunter in the Facebook video was also filming with a cell phone, but was not visibly armed. When Conway was asked about images of trees that are still standing and have had deep wedges cut into them, he suggested that protestors behave less recklessly and added that he was “disappointed that loggers have to walk away before finishing tree-felling operations.” He did not know who was providing safety observer services in Soda Gulch. The man who was counter-filming Hunter was not wearing any safety gear. Tom Wheeler, the director of EPIC, the Environmental Protection Information Center, says it’s important for protesters to document what they see in the forest. He classifies environmentalists like the Mendocino Trail Stewards, who create highly produced YouTube videos in the state forest, as citizen journalists, documenting hazards that it’s in the public interest to know about. “They’re going into the forest and they’re showing that Cal Fire is not cleaning up the slash after logging,” he said. “They’re leaving large slash piles which can serve as jackpots of fuel in the event of a forest fire, and really cause high-severity fire behavior if the fire were to hit them. The Mendocino Trail Stewards are showing the road construction work, which is going to bleed sediment into salmon-bearing streams. They’re showing that Cal Fire is marking these trees. These massive huge trees that are six feet in diameter, wider than I am tall. And that Cal Fire is claiming that they are cutting these for carbon sequestration. So it is perfectly within their right to document abuses by the government.”
October 7, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors discussed applications for over $20 million in state-funded cannabis grants this week. The $2.2 million dollar equity grant was awarded to the county last year by the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development. The much larger Local Jurisdiction Assistance Grant Program was approved as part of this year’s state budget as a way to help local governments move cannabis businesses into the regulated market. Mendocino County was one of seventeen cities and counties eligible to apply for a certain amount, in this case just a little over $18 million. But applicants to the smaller equity grant are frantic at the possibility that they won’t get their awards before the deadline in February. If the county doesn’t allocate the funds by then, the money will have to go back to the state. Equity grant applicants must be able to demonstrate moderate income, which is just under $68k for a household of two, and that they suffered specific harms from the drug war. About fifty people have applied for awards, which cap out at $50k. Twenty three of about fifty applicants have been approved so far. Supervisor Glenn McGourty asked cannabis program manager Kristen Nevedal if she was still suggesting that recipients get all the money up front, before the proposed projects are completed. Nevedal said yes, because a lot of the proposed projects couldn’t be completed before the clock runs out on the grant. “Those are really generous terms,” McGourty noted. “I’ve never seen grants like that before in my life.” Supervisors pondered eliminating the income threshold for the equity grant, or prioritizing various criteria. Though Nevedal said applicants typically use tax returns to prove their income, Supervisor Ted Williams said he wanted to make sure the awards were not going to anyone who had failed to file taxes. Nursery owner Ron Edwards took issue with bringing taxes into the discussion, and he and Williams had an exchange during public comment. “That’s absolutely possible,” he said, when Williams asked him what it means when someone grows 10,000 square feet of cannabis and reports zero income. “You could get bad clones from someone and you don’t pass the certificate of analysis,” Edwards offered as an example. “Remember, cannabis is reviewed more than any other product that goes to market, so there are a lot more ways for this product to fail.” Communications on the part of the county as well as the grower community could use some improvement, he allowed, but “we are here addressing the equity grant issue, and I think that’s what the focus should be.” The board agreed unanimously to prioritize applicants who are up to date on their taxes, with preference given to those who have already applied. The county itself has until November 15 to apply for the $18 million grant to get its provisional permit holders over the line to their annual state licenses. Williams had a couple of gripes, and suggested that the county send a letter to the state, saying the state system doesn’t work for the county. “It’s like the state sent us a puzzle, and it’s missing half the pieces,” he analogized. “I know it’s an eighteenth century approach, but maybe we should pass a resolution, send it back to the state, and just be open about it. We tried. This program doesn’t work for our county. What do you want us to do?” He also doesn’t think the money will go very far, with short-staffed county departments, the high cost of living, and expensive contractors, “if we could find one who would take this project. And you’ve got to wonder about anybody who thinks this is a good assignment. Eighteen million sounds like a lot. It’s not enough to get the job done...these are Band-aids.” But Michael Katz, the director of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, sees the grant as a sign that the state is taking the plight of small growers seriously. “I would say this is a significant Band-aid,” he opined. “It’s more like triage...so the state is not throwing their hands up. They’re continuing to move this conversation forward and that’s what we need to do for this substantial component of this community. We don’t get to throw our hands up and walk away.”
October 6, 2021--Mendocino County’s Ukiah Unified School District is proud to offer, for the first time ever, a Northern Pomo Language and Cultures class at Ukiah High School. Buffie Schmidt, of the Sherwood Valley Rancheria, serves as instructor to the 40 students she teaches. Both the school district and Schmidt hope this groundbreaking course will revitalize Pomo languages and traditions, and help reconnect native students to a legacy from which they have been disconnected for centuries.
October 5, 2021 — Protesters in the Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF), which is managed by CalFire, are facing increased hostility as the end of logging season approaches. Threats of legal action and at least one instance of what sounds very much like a casual death threat have emerged in the past few days. And a fight about activists’ First Amendment rights to document political activity is already underway. Michael Hunter is the chairman of the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians, one of several entities calling for a moratorium on logging in the state forest. On Monday morning, he was in Soda Gulch with about ten other activists, filming an interaction with loggers and another man, also filming, who identified himself as a safety officer. Hunter described the exchange a few hours later on a phone call from the forest. “They started up the chainsaws,” he recalled, “revved them up, revved them up. A couple hours later, they came back to the same spot, and we were still here, waiting. And they walked down there and did the same thing, again, acted like they were going to cut those redwoods, and I said, hey, ah, please don’t kill me by accident today. And the old man says, oh, it won’t be by accident.” Hunter shared the video with kzyx shortly after our interview. The logger’s response is off-mic, but clearly audible. “What these folks are doing when they go out into the forest is very brave,” says Tom Wheeler, the Executive Director of EPIC, the Environmental Protection Information Center, “because they are going out peacefully, they are asking the loggers to stop and they are being met with hostility and threats.” In addition to threats from loggers, Wheeler says protesters are facing CalFire’s mis-use of the law to quash their First Amendment rights. Last week, he sent a stern letter to CalFire Director Thomas Porter, detailing some examples. That was in response to a letter from Jackson State Forest program manager Kevin Conway, to the president of the Mendocino Trail Stewards, a group that uses social media to drum up support for anti-logging activities. In his letter, Conway told the Mendocino Trail Stewards president, Chad Swimmer, that he had been conducting activities in the state forest that require a special use permit. Swimmer has made several short YouTube videos about the beauty of the state forest and why he believes the trees should remain standing. They feature sweeping views of the forest, an action sequence with a couple of guys on mountain bikes and their dogs speeding along a trail, and a cellist playing a tune called “Requiem for a Fallen Tree,” while seated on a redwood stump the size of a small raised stage. Most of them appear to have been filmed with a drone. This, according to Conway’s letter, is an “unauthorized special use, (which) is a violation of State law and continuing to do so will result in criminal and civil action by the Department.” Wheeler argues that the permit requirement for filming is unconstitutional. “The pretext of a need for a special permit to stop their recording is obnoxious to the First Amendment,” he stated. “This is something that is just weaponizing these permits to silence critics of the Jackson. And so that is a clear violation of the First Amendment. The First Amendment does allow for something called time, place and manner restrictions. What you can’t do, though, is you can’t use these time, place, and manner restrictions as a way to covertly regulate the content of speech. ” Conway claims the protests can be hazardous, and that a contractor was injured last week after protesters came into the area that was being logged. But Hunter says the area is dangerous because loggers are cutting deeply into trees and letting them stand for an unknown length of time before felling them completely. In a video he live streamed on Facebook yesterday, he filmed his efforts to get the safety officer to inspect a tree that had a deep wedge cut in it. “So it puts us at risk as we’re out here,” he explained. “And then they can turn around and say that we’re trying to prevent them from fixing that. They’re trying to play that game...the wedge was here before we got here. I wonder how long it’s been there.” Wheeler identifies filming in the forest as journalism, a category of speech that enjoys extra protection. “Journalism is obviously changing,” he noted. “Local print media has significantly declined in the last two decades. And in its place we have citizen journalists that are starting to record and to document government abuses...and this is an important form of journalism...it is perfectly within their right to document abuses by the government.” A few minutes after he was informed that his death in the forest would not be accidental, Hunter learned that he was unauthorized to document in the area. In the video he sent kzyx yesterday, the safety officer who is filming Hunter as he films him can be heard saying, “You are in an unauthorized area, recording something...document.” Hunter is talking over him, saying, “unauthorized in a state forest. So they can do what they want to do behind the scenes.” To Hunter, the tribal chair, the idea that he would require authorization is especially galling, on grounds that are much older than the Constitution. “We’re Pomo,” he said. “This is our homeland. This is where we’re from. So the safety guy with the logging came up and said, you have to leave. How ironic is that? I have to leave this forest so he can continue to destruct it, to industrialize it.” Hunter’s video ends with the three loggers shouldering their chainsaws and walking away with the safety officer, up a hill and out of sight.
October 4, 2021 — Projected construction costs for a new jail building have gone up more than 14% in the last three years, an unprecedented increase driven by steel tariffs, supply chain delays and shortages of skilled labor. In spite of several efforts to reduce costs, the architect on the project told the Board of Supervisors last week that there is a budget shortfall of $3.6 million. In 2017, the county received $25 million from the state to build a new jail designed to meet the mental health needs of inmates. Originally, the county planned to contribute a little over a million dollars, but that amount climbed to about $2.8 million as delays piled up and costs increased. The project is currently expected to cost $31.1 million. Deputy CEO Steve Dunnicliff reported that disasters ranging from global to bureaucratic are playing out in the construction project that’s still about a year from breaking ground, “starting with rebuilding thousands of houses lost to wildfires, then tariffs on construction material and supply chain impacts due to the ongoing global pandemic,” he noted. “Additionally, the state’s project approval was extended due to a change in their process.” Eric Fadness, an architect with Nacht and Lewis, which is designing the jail, said the 14.5% increase in projected construction costs since June of 2019 is based on the California Construction Cost increase, which historically has increased each year at an average of 3.5% “So an increase of 14.5% “is unprecedented,” he concluded. “It’s sort of significant of the time we’re in.” Soft costs, like fees, testing, and equipment, have increased from $5.8 million in June of 2019 to about $6.4 million. Supervisor Ted Williams implied that he expects costs to keep rising. “Would you be as surprised as I would be if we could pull it off for thirty-one?” he asked Fadness, who concurred that, “I guess I would be at this point.” He recommended that the board set aside $4 million to meet cost increases that could keep accumulating in the future. CEO Carmel Angelo pointed out that the county could tap the reserve account, “and certainly any fund balance that we may have would be applicable, as well...I do not think that there is any additional grant money...my guess is that this would be all county money,” she reported. Supervisor Dan Gjerde noted that lumber costs have fluctuated, and wondered if that might indicate that overall construction costs could go down in the next year. He didn’t seem to find the shortfall insurmountable, noting that in previous years the county has had significant close-out surplus funds. “I don’t know if that’s going to be the case this year,” he acknowledged, “with the budget being closed out last year, but if that’s the case, maybe another million dollars here, another two million there, and next thing you know, you have four million dollars.” The current timeline for the project is to award a construction contract by August of next year, followed by a notice to proceed by the end of September. Fadness said he expects construction to be finished by spring of 2024 and for inmates to move in by early summer. Williams made a motion to accept the presentation, adding that “inherently in that is to ask staff to find four million dollars from somewhere.”
In another unanimous vote, the board approved a request by Dr. Jenine Miller, the head of behavioral health, to use $240 thousand dollars per year for the next four years from the Measure B fund for a crisis respite center in Fort Bragg. Miller said the facility would likely be on the campus of the coast hospital and have four to six beds, managed by Redwood Community Services. The proposal received support from the Fort Bragg City Council, the chief of police, and the Measure B committee, which passed the request along to the board. Miller also reported that construction on the crisis residential treatment center in Ukiah is expected to be complete by November. She added that a feasibility study on whether a psychiatric health facility should be located at a county-owned building on Whitmore Lane in Ukiah or be built from scratch should come before the board in January.
Mendocino County Public Health Officer Andy Coren, Lucresha Renteria of the Mendocino Coast Clinic in Fort Bragg, and an immunocompromised patient talk about the third Pfizer shot, now available on the coast for qualifying patients.
September 30, 2021 — Mendocino County will receive $600,000 from the state for cannabis enforcement, possibly as soon as next month. Senator Mike McGuire announced the allocation of $1.5 million of general fund monies at a press conference yesterday with sheriffs from around the north coast and Third District Supervisor John Haschak. Humboldt County will also get $600,000 for its enforcement efforts, and Trinity County will get $300,000. The money is earmarked for enforcement operations at grow sites that are diverting water illegally, harming the environment and sensitive species, and involve organized crime. McGuire emphasized that the money is not to be used for raids on small farmers working towards getting legal. “At no time will legacy farmers and small family farmers who are currently working through the permitting process, or those who are already permitted, be the focus of this campaign,” he said. “No way, no how.” McGuire said part of the purpose of the new campaign is to help prop up the legal market, which, as Supervisor John Haschak remarked, is out-competed by the illegal market. “Many cannabis growers are on the path to getting county and state permits for cultivation,” he noted. “Yet when these illegal grows are not following any rules, they aren’t paying the taxes and fees, and cutting corners at every step, the illegal market has the advantage.” All three sheriffs talked about the increase in violent crime, human trafficking, and the environmental degradation associated with illegal grows. Sheriff Matt Kendall, who approached McGuire about six weeks ago to ask for state assistance on enforcement, estimated about eight to ten thousand illegal grows in Mendocino County — and the sole priority behind them. “We’ve got some folks who showed up with a two year plan to make as much money as they possibly could, and that plan did not include did not include taking care of the environment, taking care of the folks around them, that plan did not include looking out for sensitive species,” he informed his listeners. Humboldt County Sheriff Billy Honsal spoke about the organized crime that’s moved into all three counties. “They’re playing the numbers,” he said. “When you look at how many search warrants we do every year, it’s in the hundreds. And so when there’s thousands and thousands of illegal grows, organized crime, they’ll take advantage of it...organized crime has moved in all over. Once it was trespass grows, now they’re buying up private land, all over the county...we’ve had unprecedented homicides, as well as gun violence, throughout the county...we were hoping legalization would push some of these people out, and it has not.” The money cannot be used to hire more sheriff’s personnel at the local level, but it can be used for overtime and per diem costs as the three sheriff’s departments assist each other on enforcement operations. And Kendall expects a lot more help from the Department of Cannabis Control and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. McGuire pledged that this collaboration, and this funding, “is just the start.” Kendall added in an interview after the press conference that he also expects assistance from CDFW scientists. These specialists are qualified to document the details of environmental degradation at illegal grow sites so the District Attorney can prosecute the damage as a crime. Kendall described the new campaign as still in the planning and handshaking phase, but he expects to be able to call on state law enforcement agencies and his neighboring sheriff’s departments soon. He hopes to knock out the large illegal grows in two years.
September 29, 2021 — Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren gave a sobering covid update to the Board of Supervisors yesterday. In the last two weeks, there have been eight covid deaths at two nursing homes, and the first child with the illness has been admitted to the hospital, leading to perhaps the most chilling possibility since late 2019. Though vaccines for children are just around the corner, Coren reported that the first pediatric hospital case “Raises the spectre of a pediatric pandemic.” A state-mandated vaccine requirement with some significant loopholes goes into effect for all healthcare workers tomorrow, though it was too late for the eight vulnerable people who perished at the two nursing homes, each with low vaccination rates. The staff who tested positive were predominantly unvaccinated, Coren reported. “So while the surge in Northern California is affecting predominantly unvaccinated ten to one, it is also having fatal consequences on those who are vaccinated and vulnerable who are in contact with the unvaccinated caregivers,” he added. The mandate for healthcare workers to be fully vaccinated by September 30 was issued by the California Department of Public Health on August fifth. Employees may decline the vaccine due to religious beliefs or for qualifying medical reasons. Other staff in health care facilities are also required to be fully vaccinated by tomorrow. As family members are no doubt planning funerals for vulnerable relatives who died after being exposed to those exercising their right to refuse the vaccine, one member of the public called in to inform the board that they and Dr. Coren will be held accountable for tyrannical policies that amount to human rights violations. Like many who oppose the use of public health restrictions to stop the spread of disease, she relied on language borrowed from civil rights struggles, referring to the order for bars and restaurants to place signs about their vaccine policies as segregation. But Coren has been tentative about issuing vaccine mandates, declining to speculate on whether or not policy solutions could stop the surge. Coren identified Redwood Cove in Ukiah and Sherwood Oaks in Fort Bragg as skilled nursing facilities that are currently experiencing outbreaks. Gabriel Barraza, the administrator for Redwood Cove, said that Currently, one resident of 41 at the facility is isolated after testing positive for covid 19, and that nearly 80 percent of their healthcare workers are fully or partially vaccinated. Dr. John Cottle of Sherwood Oaks sentout a message last week saying that 15 residents with covid-19 were in isolation, but with an 88% acceptance rate for the vaccine, only four of the 15 had symptoms that were significant but not severe. Cottle did not respond to an email requesting more detail on Tuesday. Coren offered one piece of information that was somewhat reassuring: though there have been a total of 28 covid explosures at Mendocino County schools, there have been no outbreaks at schools so far.
September 28th — PG&E’s plans to clear cut around power lines on private property are not limited to Mendocino County. This weekend, KZYX paid a visit to Harry Vaughn, a small landowner in Southern Humboldt, just outside Miranda, where crews have been marking trees for removal. Vaughn depends on the income he makes from farming mushrooms in the woods and from small-scale logging, “which is one reason I don’t really want the contractors to come in and destroy the value of my forest, where they would cut thousands of dollars of timber, and just leave it on the ground to rot,” he explained. Vaughn manages his 240 acres of mixed canopy for fire, sudden oak death, and sustainable logging according to a non-industrial timber harvest plan. He also farms more than twenty varieties of mushrooms in frames made from tanoak saplings in a patch of scrupulously maintained dappled shade between a fuel break and a dirt road. He was careful to acknowledge that we were on Wailaki land before we made our way over to a mushroom that looked like a small turtle balanced on a log. It was a bellflower, or winter variety, shiitake. He calculated that he can make upwards of sixteen dollars a pound for mushrooms at market. “I can grow mushrooms and grow trees and harvest trees to provide income for me and jobs for my neighbors,” the local loggers he hires to work on the property. He also uses a local mill to process the wood into lumber. Across the dirt road from the mushroom farm is a patch that’s been judiciously opened up to allow for different kinds of forest foods. But it’s still not nearly as opened up as the PG&E clear cuts in Mendocino County. “Once you remove the shade from the shaded fuel break, you end up with a brush field that’s more prone to fire, which is basically what PG&E is proposing to do, is create huge brush fields,” said Vaughn, who is a member of the local fire safe council and the prescribed burn association. Pausing at the sunny patch where trees had been thinned, he pointed out the native food-bearing species that thrive in that set of conditions: low-growing blackberries, black raspberries, huckleberries, and acorn-bearing oaks. “It’s making more food for me and more food for the animals,” he observed. In order to maintain it all, “I don’t want to open it up too much, because then the invasive species will come in and the fire danger really goes up.” PG&E’s enhanced vegetation management program received approval from the California Public Utilities Commission in 2018. The stated purpose of the work is to reduce fires, but there was no environmental review, and there’s been no agency oversight. Ag ponds and watersheds downhill of the clear cuts are in danger of getting clogged with sediment when the rain starts, and the four to six inches of chips left in pastures could have an economic impact on ranchers. But for Vaughn, the clear cuts would have a direct and devastating impact on his bottom line. Using the rough estimate of five hundred dollars for a thousand board feet for Douglas fir, he figured that he and his neighbor the logger could each make about two hundred fifty dollars from one high-value fir. One particular tree was marked with an inscrutable set of numbers and different-colored dots, plus a yellow X that seemed to indicate it had been selected for removal. It’s one of seven hundred trees PG&E contractors have marked on Vaughn’s property. He hasn’t worked up the exact loss plus damages he would incur if the company removed all the trees it deemed a danger to its infrastructure, but his estimate of the loss along one power line would be between sixty and eighty thousand dollars. “Seven hundred trees is a lot of trees to lose,” he reflected. As a professional woodsman, he doesn’t have a high opinion of how the company’s contractors work in the forest. “The contractors that refused to identify themselves told me the yellow X’s mean they’re going to cut that tree,” he said. “And then they said that the spots were just a trim, but I’ve noticed in some reports that you showed that spots mean trim it to the stump. Trim it to the ground, so nobody quite knows what their marks mean. And they haven’t explained that.” A few paces up the road, Vaughn pointed out where he had found several unattended PG&E contractor trucks in a turnout, one of them idling in dry grass. “So they actually posed a threat to us during fire season,” he reported. It’s not the only way the contractors have already endangered community members. Vaughn says they have come to his door during the pandemic without masks. “And I asked if they had been vaccinated, and they got in my face, and said it was none of my business,” he recounted. “The guy that got in my face actually had a Texas license plate, so he had a, maybe I’m biased, a Texas attitude.” Regional differences aside, Vaughn wondered why contractors are traveling such great distances to perform the work, and speculated that they are incurring massive mileage and per diem costs. In addition to providing his livelihood, part of the woods also serve a scientific purpose. Vaughn has a masters degree in watershed management, and showed me where he restored a tributary as part of a thinning project. In 2006, he devoted a grove of tanoaks on the edge of an oatgrass meadow to a UC Davis study of sudden oak death. Scientists came out this summer to re-survey the test plots, to monitor changes over time. Vaughn has also welcomed scientists from Oregon and England, who wanted to study the effect of sudden oak death on rhododendrons. As we crossed the meadow beneath the power lines, a small flock of turkeys slunk off down the hill. All the trees in the grove were marked for removal. “It’s kind of a shame, since we worked since 2006 and there’s been all this scientific research that is even across the big pond in England for the knowledge that we’re gaining here to have the PG&E contractors come through and cut down our success story on saving our tanoaks,” he said ruefully. Just beyond the test plot, a tall fir tree with a main branch like a bent arm was marching crookedly down the hill. It’s a technically flawed tree, though the crook of the arm is an ideal nesting site. It, too, was marked for removal, though it was hundreds of feet from a power line and much more likely to fall down the hill than up. Vaughn described it as a wildlife tree, and said a professional forester would know that and leave it alone. “That’s a problem with the enhanced vegetation management program,” he declared. “They’re hiring arborists that actually don’t know about forestry. And they’re practicing forestry in California without a license. And I think that that’s not right.”
September 27, 2021 — KZYX took a significant step forward in the quest to bring its main studio to Ukiah last week. The station now has a permit to install a tower at 390 West Clay Street, formerly the site of acupuncturist Grace Liu’s clinic. KZYX will maintain a satellite studio in Anderson Valley, but the current signal is threatened by the growth of trees between Philo and the transmitter on Cold Spring Mountain. Having a main base in the county seat has also been a dream for years. Craig Schlatter, the city’s zoning administrator and director of community development, approved the permit at a hearing on Thursday morning and spoke with KZYX later in the afternoon. “From a planning perspective, it’s a pretty strong project,” he said. “It really made a difference because the applicant had done so much on their own to work with the neighbors, and that’s a key component to any successful project.” Schlatter added that the application was accompanied by three letters of support, from the sheriff, Cal Fire, and the Ukiah Valley Fire Authority. One neighbor had an aesthetic concern about the tower, and asked that it be situated a little further back from the street and tucked behind some tasteful vegetation, which the applicant agreed to do. KZYX board president Tom Dow has spearheaded efforts to secure the building and the permits, including knocking on doors and talking to people to find out how to get off to a good start with the neighbors. On Friday afternoon, he granted the first interview from the new station — and a tour. Dow reported that one of the key elements of establishing a studio in Ukiah was getting the use permit to install a 90-foot tower to serve as a studio transmitter link. KZYX has a satellite dish that receives national programming, but the tower is necessary to transmit local programming from the studio. KZYX has been in negotiations with Grace Liu’s sons, who inherited the property after her death, and Dow expects bank transactions to be completed by the end of the week. He believes it will take several months to complete the planning and designing phase, which includes updating the electrical wiring, remodeling a bathroom to meet ADA requirements, and replacing the worn-out carpet. “Then we’ll have to order equipment, which will take some time to get,” he said. “Everybody knows these days supply chains are difficult...the goal will be that we’d start some work on this before the end of the year, and that we would be doing inside construction...through the first half of next year.” On that timeline, the station would be ready to operate by mid-summer of 2022. In the meantime, the interview continued with a portable field recorder, starting in a big empty room with a wall of windows and a view of City Hall. Airplane noise was audible overhead, so soundproofing will be part of the upgrade. “This will be a good room for something,” Dow concluded. “It is accessible from the front, so it will be easy for the public to come in.” The main building is basically that large room and a foyer, leading into a long skinny hallway with studio-sized rooms on either side, plus a bathroom and a kitchenette. There is also a covered courtyard with two picnic benches and a much smaller building that will probably serve as office space for operations, management, and administrative staff. “It’s a solid building and a good location on a nice property,” Dow reflected. “But we are going to have to do some upgrades to make it suitable for a broadcast studio.” Listeners will be hearing more details in the near future about the capital campaign, plans for improvements, and progress on the projects involved. As for Dow, he listed a few reasons he’s willing to take it on. “The more secure and reliable our signal is, the better, so that we’re there when we’re most needed, in terms of emergency or road closures, or nowadays, covid updates.”
More than 31 years after Earth First! activist Judi Bari was car-bombed in Oakland, an exhibit opens in the Willits museum, featuring the bombed car, artifacts of the time, and first-hand accounts and music in seven public presentations.
September 21, 2021 — PG&E’s failure to maintain its equipment and the vegetation around its infrastructure has led to massive conflagrations in the past few years. Now the company is trying to clear fire hazards around its lines in high fire risk areas. But are they going too far? And is the enhanced vegetation management program even effective? The program is exempt from environmental review and forest practices rules, so those answers won’t be available for some time. In June, company contractors cleared about 100 acres at the Hopland Research and Extension Center, which has been the site of ag and forestry research since 1951. I took a tour of the western boundary of the property with director John Bailey earlier this month. There are two sets of power lines, about thirty or forty feet apart, and he estimated that the overall cleared area on either side of those lines was about 150 feet wide. There are some ongoing projects at the property that involve studying the movements of deer and coyotes, Bailey is anticipating some impacts. “But it’s going to be a while,” he predicted. “It wasn’t like taking out any of the deer themselves, or radio collars or anything like that, but with a big wide-open highway through oak woodland, you’re going to see some changes in how the wildlife behave on the property.” PG&E crews also left six to eight inches of wood chips in pastureland along the lines. That’s not a problem for HREC, with its vast acreage and small flock, but Bailey said that the amount of bare ground overlain with wood chips would “definitely pose a problem if you were a smaller scale owner who was really economically dependent on that pasture productivity.” Erosion is also a top concern for him. There are ag ponds below the cleared area, which he expects will catch the inevitable sediment from some of the scars. “If the ponds weren’t there, then it would flow straight on into the river,” he concluded.
A few days after my visit with Bailey, I hiked around a hilltop about a tenth of an acre at the same site with Michael Jones, the University of California cooperative extension forestry advisor for Mendocino, Lake and Sonoma counties. We independently counted stumps on that one hilltop and each of us came up with 39 trees that were entirely cut down, including three trees that had had 90% of their branches removed. Four or five were pretty unhealthy, and there were a couple of big ones that were close to the lines and looked like they could have fallen on them. Jones said the oak woodlands in the area were already in trouble, with no young trees coming up to replace the mature blue oak. He described the change in the landscape as conversion from an oak savannah to rangeland. “If we know anything about clear cut and conversion,” he began, “if you don’t do follow-up vegetation management, then you get extensive fine fuels buildup, and the grasses and the shrubs come in aggressively, and the invasives come in really well, and you could have some other ecological impacts outside of the loss of the forest canopy structure.” Bailey added that “often invasive species are the first ones to colonize after a disturbance.” He listed barbed goatgrass, star thistle, and medusa head as potential or already-existing problem weeds. “There’s great potential in some of these areas that they disturbed that we’ll just end up with strips of goat grass, because that’ll be the first thing to come back in.” As for Jones, he’s not squeamish about vegetation management or thinning the forest. “I’m very much open to this idea of reducing fuels and fire risk, but what PG&E is doing is conversion. It’s really clear-cut and conversion along these right of ways that create really significant ecological impacts on the continuity of forest structure. These are like little clear-cut strips that hit right through habitat.” Even shaded fuel breaks, which he describes as “really powerful in helping us do fire suppression and defensible space management...still leave a portion of the canopy there. These are basically denuded of all their vegetation right now. It’s pretty aggressive, and frankly, it’s not sustainable,” ecologically or economically. Bailey said that over the course of about three weeks, he spent between 12 and 15 hours negotiating with a foreman of the vegetation management crew. He was able to convince him to trim some trees rather than take them out entirely, and he prevented the removal of some young trees that were part of a research project. But the public resource code is on PG&E’s side, and he was in a bind that a lot of landowners and property managers find themselves in. “I don’t want to be the place where catastrophic fires start, and it turns out that we pushed back too hard against PG&E, and they didn’t do what they said they should have done. So it’s this tricky balance of protecting your ecological values on your individual site, but also being aware of the larger societal value of having our distribution and transmission lines be as safe as they can.” And Jones points out that in a way, PG&E is fulfilling its social contract, in a society that has not prioritized adapting to a fire-prone landscape. “I’m not saying they’re not at fault,” he said. “The way they’ve approached working with fuels and vegetation in the past is certainly a huge factor here. And so I think there’s not only accountability for them, but as a society, there’s accountability on us, and we need to all sit down at the table and figure out how we can do this better.” There are a few other factors at work, too. Bailey reflected on drought, extreme heat, and the climate change that’s making giant, months-long fires a predictable reality. “We’re just reaching the point where we’ve created so many large-scale problems that the solutions themselves, whatever solutions we can come up with, create bad ecological impacts as well. We’re just in this era where we’re running out of good choices to make.”
A former resident of Little River, Troy Springer is a yoga teacher and healer, currently living in Ontario, Canada. She's just published her first novel and is starting a sequel.
For Mendocino County Public Broadcasting, this is the KZYX News for Monday, Sept. 20. I’m Sonia Waraich.
Prescribed burns aren’t happening on Forest Service land right now and it’s unclear when that’s going to change, but it needs to be sooner rather than later according to the people who study the intersection of forests and fires.
Last month, the chief of the U.S. Forest Service sent a letter to forest managers saying prescribed burns are effectively banned on Forest Service land because firefighting resources across the country are too strained. Prescribed burns will only be considered for approval if the regional forester and chief’s office sign off on it. And that’s only if the region is at a preparedness level of 2 or less.
An organization called the National Multi-Agency Coordination Group assigns those preparedness levels to regions and the country as a whole based on factors like the number of large fires happening at that moment and the availability of firefighting resources. Right now, the country and northern California are at a 5, on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the highest. Firefighting resources are basically at capacity.
But that decision didn’t go over too well with fire and forest scientists. Forty of them signed a letter asking Chief Randy Moore to bring decision-making on prescribed burns back to the forest and district levels. They say that makes more sense since conditions in some regions are ideal for prescribed burns right now and the window of time available for setting those fires is small.
Moore has yet to respond to that letter.
“Just because prescribed fires aren’t actively happening doesn’t mean that the Forest Service employees are not trying to get that on the landscape.”
Angela Chongpinitchai is Mendocino National Forest’s forest fires planner and fuels specialist and she may be difficult to hear at times because she was calling in from the front lines of the Dixie Fire. She says she can’t address the letter or speak for the chief, but says neither she nor the agency are strangers to the benefits of prescribed fires.
“It increases resiliency to pathogens and pests, it increases biodiversity of both plants and wildlife, it creates more desirable wildlife habitat in those mosaic patches and it maximizes carbon sequestration in the trees.”
Chongpinitchai says prescribed burns are still a priority for the Forest Service and it hasn’t stopped working toward expanding the use of prescribed fires on its land.
Last year Gov. Newsom and the Forest Service entered into the Agreement for Shared Stewardship of California’s Forest and Rangelands. Even though it’s not binding, the Forest Service and state agree to reducing wildfire risk on 500,000 acres of land each per year. Some of that risk reduction includes ramping up prescribed burns.
“Prescribed fire is something that’s great and it’s something that we try to promote. It’s much more challenging than I think folks understand. Even firefighters may not understand how hard it is to get a prescribed burn planned and implemented.”
The Mendocino National Forest has been working on getting prescribed fires started on 650,000 acres of the forest since August 2019. Right now the forestwide prescribed fire project is going through the environmental assessment process. The project will also need clearance from agencies like the California Air Resources Board and State Water Resources Control Board.
“This project specifically for the Mendocino is going to allow us more flexibility to have more windows of opportunity to get more prescribed fire acres accomplished each year. It doesn’t mean we haven’t been doing it, it’s just not at the level and scale that needs to be done to treat the acres of forest out west.”
Even after the assessments and the clearances, Chongpinitchai says prescribed burns can only happen within small windows of time, which is what the fire and forest scientists wrote in their letter. That window isn’t open yet for the Mendocino National Forest. Chongpinitchai says they need to wait for fuel moisture to increase, for winds to die down and possibly for the temperature to decrease, too. The variability of the landscape also has to be factored in since the two recent fires that swept through Mendocino National Forest altered the forest ecosystems.
“So with this project, we will have different goals depending on where we’re implementing it in the forest. So it could be something like cleaning up the fuels that are left from these catastrophic wildfires or it could be going in for the first time and introducing fire to a green area that has not had fire, but needs fire.”
In the meantime, the Forest Service has been implementing other fuels reduction projects that will complement the prescribed burns.
“It’s situationally dependent. Some areas will benefit from something like mastication or any other removal of fuel buildup and other places, you’re using prescribed fire hand-in-hand with those types of fuels treatments.”
For the KZYX News, I’m Sonia Waraich, a Report For America corps member. For all our local stories, with photos and more, visit KZYX.org. You can also subscribe to the KZYX News podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
For Mendocino County Public Broadcasting, this is the KZYX News for Friday, Sept. 17. I’m Sonia Waraich.
Mendocino National Forest is open to the public again after a historic closure.
The U.S. Forest Service ended the regional closure order at 13 of the 18 national forests in California at midnight Thursday. It reopened the parks a couple days early because of improving weather and fire conditions, at least in some parts of the state.
This was the second time in the Forest Service’s 116-year history that it closed public access to all its trails and campgrounds in California. The first time was on Sept. 9 of last year when the sky turned orange because of all the wildfires blazing across the state.
“Enacting a statewide forest closure order is not the decision that we at the Forest Service wanted to make. We went through options A through Y and when options A through Y weren’t working, we had to go to Option Zed, which in this case was enacting a forest closure order.”
Samantha Reho is a spokesperson with the Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest region, which includes California, Hawaii and Pacific Islands associated with the U.S.
“By enacting this closure order, it essentially gave our personnel and resources the time and space to be able to focus specifically on fire since this is a priority event time, as well as to make sure that we’re keeping those in our communities and our people safe.”
Access to visitors was initially closed late last month to reduce the likelihood of human-caused fires on National Forest land during a period of high fire risk and limited firefighting resources.
“The numbers change routinely, but it’s upwards of 70 to 80% of all fire starts are caused by human and human error.”
More than half of all wildfires happening in the U.S. right now are happening in California already. And even though the Forest Service doesn’t track search-and-rescue operations at the moment, a report from the Pew Charitable Trust done last year found an increasing number of visitors to National Forest lands has driven up search-and-rescue calls.
“So in a hypothetical situation if we had a hiker who was injured and needs to be medevaced, because of how strained resources are, we would have to take a helicopter or another vehicle and pull it away from a fire to be able to help that hiker and that’s not a risk we wanted to take.”
The Pacific Southwest’s regional forester, Jennifer Eberlien, made the decisions to close and reopen the forests and Reho says that neither decision was made lightly.
“This decision was made by the regional forester here in California, this was her decision, in consultation with the forest supervisors at each of the 18 national forests, as well as other partners that we have including the Pacific Crest Trail Association.”
There were three main factors that went into the decision to lift the regional closure order. First, the fire risk is lessening in the rest of the country so more firefighting resources are expected to become available for California. Secondly, a regional closure order makes less sense because weather conditions across the state become more variable going into the fall, so the agency is planning on tailoring closures and other restrictions to local conditions. Lastly, visits to the forests decline significantly after Labor Day, reducing the risk of human-caused fires.
Most of the forests that remain closed are in Southern California.
“Four of those forests, specifically in Southern California -- the Angeles, San Bernardino, Cleveland and Los Padres -- those will go under a slight extension through next Wednesday, Sept. 22 and the Eldorado National Forest is still under closure order due to the Caldor Fire and that goes through Sept. 30.”
Even in the forests that are open to the public now, fire restrictions are still in place. Forest supervisors can still limit the use of open flames like campfires, charcoal and propane gas. For visitors to Mendocino National Forest, that means campfires, camp stoves and other sources of open flames are prohibited through Oct. 31. You can’t smoke outside during that time either; smoking will only be allowed inside an enclosed vehicle or building.
Individuals who violate the open flame restriction can be fined up to $5,000 and groups can be fined up to $10,000. There’s also the potential for up to 6 months of imprisonment, as well as the possibility of both fines and imprisonment.
Even though Mendocino National Forest has reopened to the public, it’s important to keep in mind that trails and campgrounds that were closed as a result of the August Complex fires will remain closed until further notice.
While the national forests were closed, Reho pointed out many of California’s state and national parks remained open during the Labor Day holiday. California State Parks and the National Parks Service manage those lands and have different priorities than the Forest Service.
“The U.S. Forest Service is administered under the U.S. Department of Agriculture whereas the National Parks Service is under the U.S. Department of the Interior. … If you look at the National Parks Service, they really stress recreation and preservation of specific lands, whereas the Forest Service, we’re a lot bigger.”
Alongside its decision to close the national forests, the Forest Service made another somewhat controversial decision to temporarily stop prescribed burns while firefighting resources remain limited, but fire ecologists think that’s the wrong move. Tune in Monday to find out more.
For the KZYX News, I’m Sonia Waraich, a Report For America corps member. For all our local stories, with photos and more, visit KZYX.org. You can also subscribe to the KZYX News podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
By Stacey Sheldon
September 15, 2021--After a nineteen month closure due to the covid pandemic, school is back in session for Mendocino County's Ukiah Unified School District. Earlier this month, UUSD reopened its 16 schools throughout the Ukiah area to serve their population of approximately 6,000 K-12 students. The return to in person learning provides yet the latest challenge for students and teachers as they navigate their way out of isolation, distance and screen reliance to return to classrooms peopled with classmates, teachers, and the need to follow the social norms of an academic setting.
September 16, 2021 — The coalition of entities that wants to take over the license for the Potter Valley Project is asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to give it until May of next year to refine its plans. The project consists of Scott Dam and Lake Pillsbury in Lake County and Cape Horn Dam and van Arsdale Reservoir in Potter Valley. That’s where a diversion sends water from the Eel River into the Russian River and Lake Mendocino. The project is owned by PG&E, which decided not to renew its license in January of 2019. That led the Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission, itself a multi-jurisdictional entity, to team up with the Sonoma County Water Agency, Round Valley Indian Tribes, and environmental advocacy group California Trout to form the two-basin partnership to take over the project. The expectation has been that Scott Dam will be removed and Lake Pillsbury drained, but that the diversion would continue, in an effort to find a compromise between providing water to fish and the people who have grown to rely on the diversion. Redgie Collins is the legal and policy director for CalTrout. He spoke on behalf of his organization a few days ago.
September 15, 2021 — The People’s Referendum to repeal the new cannabis ordinance, Chapter 22.18, has been victorious.The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously yesterday to repeal the ordinance, rather than place the decision on the ballot for a special election, which was the other option. Supervisor Mo Mulheren spoke up first during a straw poll before the vote. “I was an active community member during Measure A,” she recalled of her time as a Ukiah City Council member in 2016 when Measure AF, the Mendocino Heritage Act, a fiercely fought citizens initiative that was widely opposed due to perceptions that it would allow for increased cultivation. “Watching this cannabis referendum on both sides behave in a way that’s detrimental to our community, I have no desire to place this item on the ballot,” she told her colleagues. Ron Edwards is a local nursery owner who has been involved in the ordinance process since the beginning. He stopped just short of saying I told you so. “I and other members of the community have pleaded with you, have brought you information, time and time again, around cannabis, and it seemed to just be rejected...I don’t know how to participate better. I don’t know how you were thinking. I don’t think the citizens know your train of thought...it was quite clear where the public was going with this referendum vote. Yet you steadily went forward with where you wanted to go. And I am just confused.” County Counsel Christian Curtis reported that case law is scarce and ambiguous, but the board is prohibited from crafting another ordinance that has the same essential feature as the one that’s now off the table. Kate Marienchild, who spearheaded the successful referendum effort along with Ellen Drell, said her legal counsel advised her that the board can bring back any item that was in 22.18 that was not specifically a target of the referendum. Proponents supported several environmentally conscious elements of the new ordinance. Marienchild suggested that this clears the way to including some of those elements in amendments to Chapter 10a17, the old ordinance, without running afoul of the law. “So you don’t have to worry about a lawsuit being brought by proponents of the People’s Referendum,” she told the board, if they kept restrictions on trucking water and laying down road base for hoop houses. She also said the group also recognizes “the urgent need of phase I growers to complete the county permitting and state licensing processes. And we are open to the introduction of discretionary land use elements into Chapter 10a17. We have no desire to delay the implementation of those elements for the permitting of phase I growers, and we join the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance in calling for them,” whether the board decides to amend the old ordinance or craft a new one altogether. Michael Katz, the executive director of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, submitted a detailed memo suggesting a variety of options if the board decided to repeal the new ordinance. One was to amend 10a17 to add a discretionary permitting process. He also asked that, if the board did decide to put the item on the ballot, they remove the provisions that would allow up to 10% of qualifying parcels zoned for ag and rangeland to be used for cultivation; not to open up rangeland for new cultivation; and to eliminate any expansion beyond what was allowed by 10a17. That maxes out at about a quarter of an acre, which supporters of the new ordinance argued is not enough for a financially viable business. The board was confident that the environmental safeguards built into 22.18 would satisfy concerns about detrimental effects on wildlife, watersheds, and sensitive habitat. But they adopted the ordinance before a state requirement for environmental review kicked in, which was a sticking point for those who opposed it. Now if they write a whole new ordinance, they will be legally required to conduct a review. Supervisor Glenn McGourty asked how much the board could work with 10a17, which Curtis described as “a difficult ordinance,” due to the ministerial permits and the mitigated negative declaration, which isn’t exactly the same as an environmental impact review. Curtis described the complicated structure of 10a17, which “managed to accomplish what it did with a mitigated negative declaration really does sort of tie the board’s hands in terms of the scope of any changes that you might be able to make, but also tied the board’s hand in terms of what was initially able to be authorized because the only things that were authorized had to be below a threshold of significance in terms of any environmental impacts.” Though a lack of meaningful enforcement and the proliferation of illegal grows in the last five years were driving factors in the success of the signature-gathering campaign, Supervisor Ted Williams claimed that, without tax revenue from legal growers, enforcement of illegal activities would be difficult to fund. He asked Supervisor John Haschak, who consistently voted against the new ordinance, if he had a plan for patching the hole in the budget. “I don’t see a workable path forward,” he said. “ I see it as more of the same. All the problems we had from the current phase I we’re going we’re gonna see in the phase III. And if we try to add more restrictions to an ordinance that’s already impossible to implement and enforce, we’ll just have more outlaws.” Supervisor Dan Gjerde laid out some of the economic factors beyond 22.18 that legal growers are contending with. “Currently I’m hearing it’s about $500 a pound from our cannabis manager, whether it’s legal or illegal,” he reflected. “And the $160 a pound is the state cultivation tax, so the profit is going away, unless the cultivators are also selling untaxed cannabis on the side. But nevertheless I think the voters of Mendocino County have really said that small is beautiful. And maybe it is. But small may be bankrupt as well.”
September 14, 2021--CalFire Mendocino Unit Chief George Gonzales took KZYX's Alicia Bales on a tour of the 257 acres of the Hopkins Fire burn zone. The toll of this fire is evident as soon as you cross the Moore Street Bridge over the Russian River to Eastside Calpella Road, where half a dozen houses were lost right along the river. From Eastside Calpella Road, they took Marina Drive up to Rubicon Court, Black Oak Drive, and Lake Ridge Road, and down to the Pomo Recreation Area where the fire burned right up to the water’s edge of Lake Mendocino.
Just around the time this story aired, the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office announced they had arrested a 20-year old man for arson who they suspect started the Hopkins Fire intentionally.
September 14, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors is set to discuss the referendum to repeal the new cannabis ordinance today. Petitioners gathered a qualifying number of signatures, which means the board can either repeal the ordinance themselves, or submit the decision to the voters for a special election.
Growers who struggled to get licensed under the previous ordinance (Chapter 10a17 of the county code) have submitted several rounds of paperwork. In some cases, they’ve paid tens of thousands of dollars to bring their properties into compliance with evolving regulations. Now they’re being told that the old county ordinance provides no hope of legalization under state law. Advocates fear that, without the new ordinance, which aligns with state requirements, the local legal cannabis industry will collapse.
But the promise of legalization, set in motion five years ago by 10a17, hasn’t materialized for non-growers either. What has proliferated are acres of plastic hoop houses, imported soil, water trucks, and violent crime. The failure to curtail flagrantly illegal activity has led to widespread skepticism about the county’s ability to enforce any ordinance.
I drove out to Covelo a few days ago. While I was driving around slowly looking for the addresses of people I was supposed to meet, I saw so many large grows I literally lost count. And I learned in a hurry to stick to my side of the narrow, winding roads. Even on Sunday, the wide heavy water trucks are underway. One man I spoke with said that sometimes, he’ll look out the door of his home by the river and calculate how much water is going by.
By the time I arrived, around 9:30 in the morning, he said he had already seen ten trucks hauling 2,000 gallons of water each, and another ten trucks hauling 4,000 gallons each. “So there’s 60,000 a day, right there,” he concluded. I told him what I had seen as I drove through town, and he said, “out here it’s even worse. The abuses are even worse, because you can’t see it. It’s all in the hills, and it’s hidden.”
Wells are going dry all over the valley. Robbie Wyre, a member of the Round Valley County Water District, reported that the well for the trailer park in town has been dry since last Tuesday. He estimates between 100 and 200 people depend on water from that well. Update: On Tuesday afternoon (September 14), a representative of Housing and Community Development said an inspection on September 9 showed no violations and that the well was functioning. KZYX reached one of the owners listed by the county. He expressed surprise that he was still on the title. KZYX was unable to reach the other party, and the phone number listed on the website for the mobile home park was out of order. Here is the full statement from HCD:
“HCD received an anonymous complaint and inspected the mobilehome park on September 9, 2021. The water well had water and was functioning on that date – no violations were found and the complaint has been closed. HCD has not received any other complaints as of today, September 13. HCD’s priority is to protect the health and safety of mobilehome park residents – if another complaint is received we will perform additional inspections.”
One woman in town noticed that her artesian well is beginning to sputter, “and I’ve never had a problem with water,” she said. “Without water, there’s no life. Nobody can live here without water.”
Most of the people I spoke with wanted to remain anonymous, and some were even afraid their voices would be recognized. “It’s pretty intense out here now,” said the man who counted water trucks. “It’s scary, because there’s so much money behind this, and there’s so much at stake. It’s a bad situation, and it’s getting worse every day. Every year.”
Another woman, who’s been running cattle in the valley for years, said she was looking for stray cows one day when a man “came racing out on a four-wheeler with this gun...and we just very friendly-like asked if he had seen some cows, and he was like, oh, yeah, yeah...but there’s nobody out there. I don’t know why he’s running around with this gun with a huge magazine in it, very obviously illegal.”
The county has started staffing up for a multi-department enforcement effort involving aerial surveillance and property liens. But that’s expected to take years to roll out. I asked the rancher if she had a firm opinion about either one of the ordinances. “Everything has to be enforced,”she said emphatically. “And if it is not enforced, it doesn’t matter. In fact, people around here are just used to the fact that nothing will be enforced. For hundreds of years, that’s been the attraction of Covelo. You know, it’s lawless.”
Like badly regulated industries everywhere, environmental degradation and labor law violations abound. The river runs through the property of the man who watches a steady stream of water trucks heading into the hills. He reported that he cleans up everything from toilet paper to shampoo and detergent bottles. “These people have no sanitary facilities on their grow ops,” he explained. “So they come to the river to bathe and wash their clothes. And do their sanitary, you know, defecate.” He also worries about the effects of the illegal rodenticides on the wildlife.
The rancher suspects she has first-hand knowledge of those effects. She discovered an expensive bull that had died abruptly after writhing, “which is suggestive of poisoning,” she said. “And we don’t know if he got into their pesticides, or what happened. I think we’re just going to have to keep them farther away from where people are...it just limits the amount of ground where we can actually run the cattle.”
In the quasi-regulated environment, the outlaws are bolder than they used to be. The woman with the sputtering well described the local, small-time growers as “really good people, community minded, and wonderful members of this little town. Perhaps they were more discreet. It wasn’t so in your face. But now, who am I to say what’s legal and what’s not, but I see it expanding to a point that just seems out of control.”
September 10, 2021 — Public Health reported three more deaths from covid-19 this week, all of them under fifty, all of them unvaccinated. The youngest was a 36-year-old woman from Ukiah. A 43-year-old Covelo man and a 47-year-old man from Ukiah also succumbed. And the county reported 77 new cases yesterday. Program director Alicia Bales spoke with Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren Thursday afternoon, when there was only one available ICU bed in the entire county. By Friday afternoon’s briefing, there were three available beds. Core reported that hospital staff are exhausted, and help from the state is “tapped out.” Coren also spoke about an order he had been contemplating to require proof of vaccination for indoor dining establishments, an idea that did not receive a warm reception from the local business community. He is now considering a recommendation that restaurants and bars require verification of vaccination from employees and screen the vaccination status of patrons before they come inside. He will also require that establishments post signs about their vaccination policies. The county fair is proceeding, with vaccination clinics outside the gates. The vaccines are still highly effective. “The threat that I don’t think is recognized by the people who are not getting vaccinated is that they are the field that this virus is growing and multiplying and mutating on,” Coren reflected.
School is back to in-person learning, and the Ukiah Unified School District Board of Trustees met in person at their office in Ukiah last night, though the public was not in attendance. One item that has been in the works since well before the pandemic is an effort to offload surplus properties that used to be schools. Two decommissioned schools in Hopland and Redwood Valley were declared surplus in 2018. Last night, the board voted unanimously to begin the process to exchange the Redwood Valley property with GMB Realty, run by Gary Breen of Hopland winery Campovida and Emerald Sun, a multi-use cannabis facility on the south end of Ukiah. Steve Barekman, the school district’s chief business officer, explained that “It’s really hard for school districts to sell property. The state doesn’t really like us doing that...what’s going to happen is, we find a buyer who wants our property, we’re going to find a property we want, they’re going to acquire that property, then we’re going to do an exchange, a trade. Thus the term exchange agreement.” The building acquired by the school district could be used for a variety of purposes. It could be a future school site, a warehouse or a revenue-generating property. Two Redwood Valley residents called in to object, including Estelle Clifton, who said the site, at 700 School Way, is prime real estate. “It’s really a large chunk of land in an ideal location,” she said, adding that the site was donated years ago for the community’s benefit, “but there’s no recouping that kind of a loss. Barekman said the costs of rehabilitating the property would be prohibitive, describing them as “astronomical.” The ADA requirements on a steeply sloped section of the property he added, would be “insane.” He told the board that the estimated cost of rehabilitating the decommissioned campus in Hopland, which is much smaller, was well over three million dollars, and that he suspected that the cost of recommissioning the much larger and topographically more complicated Redwood Valley site would be many times as much. Trustee Bea Arkin said the board has explored other options, to no avail. “It’s not okay to keep the building there just because it’s a wonderful memory,” she said. Trustees hope that the property will be used for housing, and Chair Megan van Sant sought to assure the public that the buyer had agreed not to use the property for cannabis-related purposes. The school district now has an exclusive agreement with GMB realty, which has a 270 day window to perform its due diligence on the property.
September 9, 2021 — The PG&E settlement funds from the fires that devastated Redwood and Potter Valleys have been allocated, and some in Redwood Valley are disappointed at the amount that went back into the community that was most affected. At last night’s Redwood Valley Municipal Advisory Council meeting, Deputy CEO Darcie Antle explained that some of the items requested by the community can be funded by another source. And a plan to use another portion of the money to haul water from Ukiah to Fort Bragg is not as solid as it sounds. Nevertheless, Antle tried to reassure community members that if any of the settlement money is used for that plan, the intent is to restore it, using tax dollars generated by coastal businesses. But MAC member Sattie Clark emphasized a belief shared by many in the community. “We consider a lot of the allocations to be inappropriate,” she said. “Because we were not incorporated...you got all of that money. And it was to repair Redwood Valley and mitigate the damages caused by the wildfire, in our opinion. And so I want to make it clear that a lot of us don’t have a problem with the four hundred some thousand dollars for Building and Planning. We have a problem with pretty much the whole thing.” Community services like the water and fire departments did get some money, but Clark said Redwood Valley only got 16% of the allocation from the settlement funds. “It’s as if nobody at the county, the CEO, county counsel, nobody read our letter,” she concluded. “I have to say, we’re very disappointed.” Three million dollars of the $22 million settlement fund was set aside to be used for immediate disaster spending. On August 24, the Board of Supervisors authorized half of that money for the water hauling program, which would benefit businesses that are literally drying up as wells fail. Chair Dolly Riley expressed her thoughts. “A better expenditure would have been to look at the agricultural water for Redwood Valley, which has totally ceased,” she opined. “People’s vineyards are dying, and the fact that people on Redwood Valley municipal water only get 55 gallons (per person, per day). We get a couple flushes and a shower and some cooking, and that’s it. And here we have people on the coast who are coming as tourists, and they can just go through the water.” Antle tried to provide some reassurance, saying that the plan is for the settlement funds to be paid back with transient occupancy tax, or bed tax, from businesses on the coast. “Because 74% of those funds come from the coast,” she said. “So right now, in order to enter into contracts and move things forward, the only cash we had was in the PG&E” settlement fund. Elizabeth Salomone, the General Manager of the Russian River Flood Control and Water Conservation District, is a little skeptical about the plan to haul water from Ukiah to the coast. “The chances of this being pulled off are not great,” she said. Justine Frederickson, of the Ukiah Daily Journal, reported that the water hauling program began Wednesday. Antle said Wednesday night that the county had only found one hauler. On Thursday, the county sent out a request for three more water haulers to participate in the program.
Antle also went through the funds that are being used specifically for Redwood Valley. She said that the Board of Supervisors has approved requests to use money from the American Rescue Plan Act, also called the covid-19 stimulus package, for fire hydrants and cleaning up Mariposa Park. Mendocino County was allotted close to $17 million from that fund, and half of it was awarded early last month, according to the August 17 CEO report. But Antle reported that immediate funding from the PG&E settlement in Redwood Valley is going toward fire, water, and improvements at the grange, including over $200,000 for the Redwood Valley Water District and $250,000 for HVAC systems, ADA accessibility, and flooring at the grange. Supervisors also approved $150,000 for locks on fire hydrants. The county Planning and Building Services Department will receive about $413,000 to upgrade its services, though permit fees during the rebuild after the fire were only deferred, not waived. Antle defended that decision, saying county staff spent a lot time mitigating subsequent disasters, especially the over-excavation by Army Corps subcontractors.
September 8, 2021 — Sheriff’s deputies had a second close encounter early Monday morning with the red bearded burglar who is suspected of breaking into a string of remote cabins on the coast. The encounter was so close, according to Sheriff Matt Kendall, that a K9 handler had his hands on the suspect before he escaped again. Kendall said deputies cornered the suspect, believed to be forty-year-old William Evers, in a cabin on Navarro Ridge early on September sixth. At about 4:30 in the morning, Kendall reported, Evers “came squirting out the door,” and the deputy grabbed him. A scuffle between the two men and the dog ensued, and the dog accidentally bit its handler, whereupon Evers escaped. He was last seen running toward the Salmon Creek drainage. Kendall added that a SWAT team member who was also injured during the attempted capture put some ice on his knee and both deputies are back at work. Evers is wanted for burglaries, but also for shooting at a deputy on the night of May 12, when a patrol deputy interrupted him burglarizing a residence in Elk. Evers ran, the deputy chased him, and Evers fired on him with a handgun. The deputy fired back, but no one was injured. Evers is also suspected of stealing a rifle in February. Evers is considered armed and dangerous. An injured deputy right now would be a serious blow to the sheriff’s office, which is down to 23 patrol deputies. That’s significantly less than the 40 working patrol deputies the department would have at full staffing, and doesn’t count the sergeants and lieutenants. The sheriff’s office has 96 employees, including bailiffs, part time workers, and jail personnel. Late last month, Captain Gregory van Patten wrote a letter to the board saying that, due to the staffing shortage and the pandemic, the sheriff’s office is “going to be forced to reduce some services to ensure that we have the ability to provide public safety...the Sheriff’s Office will not be responding to Mental Health related calls for service unless there is an immediate life-threatening situation to the public.” The sheriff’s office will only respond to non-threatening mental health situations if it is a dual response, which includes a deputy and a mental health professional. At last week’s Board of Supervisors meeting, Dr. Jenine Miller, who heads up the county’s Behavioral Health department, asked the board for a million dollars for more mental health crisis responders. She said her department needs to purchase caged vehicles and phones with signal boosters and bluetooth for staff in remote locations. She plans to contract the work with Redwood Community Services. Her office has also applied for a variety of grants for mobile crisis response. “We’ll also be looking at additional funding sources that may or may not crop up,” she assured the board; “but at this time, this is not something within Behavioral Health’s budget.” Supervisor John Haschak asked Miller how she plans to fill the positions, pointing out that the board has already approved three positions for a MOPS (mobile outreach and prevention) program. “How can we staff these new positions if we can’t staff the ones we’ve already said we wanted to staff?” Miller told him she was stepping up recruitment efforts and opening up the job to another classification. Supervisor Ted Williams asked Kendall what he thought about a suggestion for swelling the ranks of local law enforcement. “If this is an innovative approach of using a different tool, then I’m in favor of it,” he said; “but if this is because we don’t have adequate staffing and we can’t find people to hire, it strikes me that we should ask the state for mutual aid.” Kendall said there’s no funding for mutual aid this year and that all available mutual aid is being sent to fires across the state. And many counties are in the same position as Mendocino: “Most police agencies have a large vacancy rate right now,” he said. “Huge vacancy rate. Some of them are running into the mid fifty percentages.” He attributed this to the fact that the police academy should have graduated two classes since the onset of covid, but, because the academy has been closed, retiring cops aren’t being replaced with new graduates. In another sign of how larger events hit close to home, two bailiffs and a dispatcher are in Plumas County, offering mutual aid to the fire response there. The board approved Dr. Miller’s request for a million dollars for more crisis workers, and added a direction to staff to work with the sheriff’s office to request mutual aid “in regard to the low staffing level during a declared emergency.”
September 6, 2021 — The promised battle between the sheriff and the Board of Supervisors has entered the phase of inconclusive meetings and lengthy court filings. In July, Sheriff Matt Kendall asked the board to authorize $50,000 to hire local attorney Duncan James so he could fight a policy that would make department heads responsible for exceeding their budgets. He’s also stated that the county is trying to take over his IT department, which he believes is an infringement on his rights and duties as sheriff. Kendall and County Counsel Christian Curtis agreed that it would be a conflict of interest for Curtis to represent Kendall, since Kendall is disputing the county, which Curtis represents. But the question of the exact nature of the conflict remains. Kendall argues that his department, which regularly exceeds its budget, is structurally underfunded, particularly when it comes to overtime. He stated in a court filing at the end of July that his office is underfunded this year in excess of $2 million, and that he’s worried his ability to solve crimes is hindered by “the county threatening to sue me personally to recover any budget overage.” (Earlier in the filing, he stated that the CEO’s budget recommendation to the Board of Supervisors included a reduction of approximately $1.5 million dollars.) In a court filing last week, Curtis reported that at the close of budget hearings in June, the board adopted a budget that “gave the sheriff everything he had asked for other than $1,275,500 for vehicles and equipment and the $255,000 for salary and benefits.” On August 3, the board funded the request for vehicles and equipment with money from the PG&E settlement, leaving only a quarter million dollar shortage in salary and benefits, not an excess of two million dollars. Kendall was hostile to a recent proposal for an independent financial audit of his office, leading Supervisor Ted Williams to point out that the board has not seen data to back up his claims of underfunding. Kendall told the board he wants Duncan James to represent him because of his lifelong friendship with James and his family as well as the experience of James and his associates in government litigation. James served as District Attorney for ten years, and told the board that the county counsel’s office was created upon his request. Doug Losak, an associate at his firm, served as County Counsel for twelve years. Curtis argued against the appointment of Duncan James, citing a protracted, expensive battle between the City of Ukiah and the Sanitation District when James represented the District. Curtis also advised against hiring James because James is currently representing Harinder Grewal, the former county Ag Commissioner, in Grewal’s suit against the county. Grewal, who was the third Ag Commissioner to be installed in the first few months of 2018, filed suit against the county in January of last year, claiming wrongful termination, hostile work environment, and violations of labor code and due process. A summary judgement in that matter is scheduled for September 17. The date for a jury trial has been set for February of next year. Curtis told the board in July that he would “generally recommend against using a firm that is actively suing us.” Curtis also characterized the amount of money that was spent in the fight between the City and the District as along the lines of “what you might expect to see...with multinational corporations fighting each other over some pretty important issues, where they’re almost engaged in a sort of economic warfare.” In a 52-page filing with the court at the end of July, James fired back, saying Curtis’ estimate of the attorney fees was “grossly inaccurate and demonstrates the County Counsel’s biased approach and his total lack of knowledge about the case.” James wrote that six law firms including his own were involved in the fight between the City and the District, and that the total amount paid out to all of them was a little over five and a half million dollars. At last week’s Board of Supervisors meeting, Curtis sought to minimize the possibility of department heads’ being held personally liable for budget overages. He said the original discussion at budget hearings in June lacked context. Also, the problem doesn’t appear to require a solution, since there are already legal provisions in contract law and agency law for addressing unauthorized spending by department heads. In his filing last week, Curtis clarified the board’s position on the conflict of interest between the board and the sheriff. He said the board agreed to provide outside legal counsel on the issue of the sheriff seeking independent IT and email service. However, Curtis wrote, “The Board does not concur the County Counsel is ethically prohibited for (sic) advising the sheriff on which expenditures require board authorization.” He wrote that “the Sheriff appears to be upset about the process used to arrive at that budget, and concerns about what may or may not be included in future budgets...the complaint...is not that he didn’t receive the monies, but rather that he had to request them...these issues don’t present any legal question that require either County Counsel or an outside firm.” A hearing before presiding Judge Ann Moorman is scheduled for September 13. At last week’s meeting, supervisors voted unanimously to a vague resolution to use the budget process to mitigate unnecessary concern that impedes civil servants’ ability to perform their duties. They agreed to keep an eye on the budget and have a free flow of information. Asked if department heads generally adhere to their budgets, CEO Carmel Angelo offered little detail: “I can say, in the fourteen years that I have been here, it has been fairly consistent that our department heads do everything they can to stay on budget,” she attested. “There have been bad years, and there have been good years.”
From Mendocino County Public Broadcasting, this is the KZYX News for Friday, Sept. 3. I’m Sonia Waraich.
Eric Hillesland and his wife Elaine own two inns in the town of Mendocino – the Raku House Inn and Alegria Oceanfront Inn and Cottages. They’re across the street from each other and have an amazing view of the ocean.
In the two decades that they’ve owned the place, Hillesland said they’ve usually had to buy water for the inn, but it’s never been at the magnitude it is right now.
Hillesland has had to pay more to haul that water, too. He was paying $300 per truckload at the start of the year when water was available from Fort Bragg and was paying $600 per truckload last month when it was coming from Irish Beach.
Demand has been high. Summer is Mendocino’s busy season and people have been flocking to the coast more this year than in years past.
Hillesland and other coastal business owners say they’re not worried. They feel confident that the local government is going to handle the situation. Especially since Tuesday when the county supervisors unanimously decided to cover most of the cost of long-hauling the water to the coast for businesses. So far that’s only for the first four or five weeks of countys new water hauling program.
Josh Metz has been hired by the county to coordinate its drought response. He describes the program.
Earlier this summer, the City of Ukiah agreed to send some of its water supply to the coast, but how to deliver the water in an efficient and cost-effective is still a question. The county was initially considering using the Skunk Train to get the water to Fort Bragg, but that plan fell apart. For the past few weeks, the county has set its sights on trucking the water to the coast, but it’s still searching for a way to pay for it.
Despite that,at the virtual meeting on Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors said it would subsidize 100% of the long-hauling cost for residents and 80% of the cost for businesses. Residents and businesses would still have to pay the water and local delivery costs.
Last month, the supervisors decided to start the program with just under $1 million from the county’s $22 million PG&E disaster settlement fund. Supervisors expressed the desire to replenish the PG&E funds quickly through other funding sources like tax revenue generated by tourists or state grant money. That’s because the settlement money has become a bit of a sore spot.The board almost approved a list of projects to fund with the PG&E money last month until it got negative feedback about how it was planning on using the money.
The county already submitted a couple of grant applications to the state to cover the cost of the program.
The county’s drought coordinator Josh Metz says that none of the funding is guaranteed and it’s not certain whether the state would cover the entire cost of the subsidy. Depending on how things go with the grant process, the state may pick up either a percentage or all of the tab.
The county’s deputy CEO Janelle Rausays finding an affordable water hauler in the area has also been an issue. So far only one qualified business has expressed interest and it’s from out of the area. That means the company’s drivers would likely need a per diem. Rausays it’s also unclear how many gallons per day the company would be able to transport. The county needs to transport about 75,000 gallons per day at 27 cents per gallon.
Back in Mendocino, Hillesland says he has enough water for the time being and he can find ways to navigate around the drought, like cutting back on reservations or passing on higher water costs to customers. Residents can’t do that.
For the KZYX News. I’m Sonia Waraich, a Report For America corps member. For all our local stories, with photos and more, visit KZYX.org. You can also subscribe to the KZYX News podcast where you get your podcasts.
September 2, 2021 — The referendum to repeal the newly enacted cannabis ordinance, Chapter 22.18, has collected enough signatures to either be repealed by the Board of Supervisors, or placed on a ballot for voters to decide if it should be repealed or not. Assessor Clerk Recorder Katrina Bartolomie reported to the board this week that she had verified 4,198 of the 6,239 signatures that were turned in. A total of 3,397 signatures were required for the referendum to move forward. The referendum was opposed by a pro-ordinance group called Citizens for Sustainable Agriculture, which sought to counter points made by people gathering signatures for the referendum. According to campaign documents, the pro-ordinance group received a total of $24,500 in May and June, plus $5,716 in non-monetary contributions. Heritage Holding of California, which does business locally under the name Henry’s Original, contributed a subscription to SquareSpace for a website worth $216 and made a monetary contribution of $5,000. The Cannabis Business Association of Mendocino County contributed $5,500 worth of staff time for a policy consultant, according to Joshua Keats. Keats is a co-founder of Henry’s Original. He and Henry’s CEO Jamie Warm are two of the five members of the Cannabis Business Association’s Board of Directors. Keats also served as the CSA campaign treasurer. In an interview from the road, Keats said, “It’s no secret that cannabis is the backbone of Mendocino County’s economy,” and that Prop 64 is forcing a reorganization of how cannabis businesses operate in California. He suggested that anti-capitalist, anti-cannabis elements are taking out their aggression against Prop 64 on the local ordinance. He said the referendum won’t do anything to change the national or international cannabis markets, and referred to the collapsing local market, with growers still trying to sell last year’s product at two or three hundred dollars a pound. “You can’t do that on the backside of Spyrock, importing soil,” he pointed out, saying that 22.18 is supposed to bring cultivation and the jobs provided by an industry that’s not highly mechanized, onto appropriate agricultural zones. He said he plans to continue promoting Mendocino County cannabis, and that he’s hoping for a policy that allows local farmers to succeed. The largest single donor to the CItizens for Sustainable Agriculture was Syracuse Coyote Goldenghost, of Maverick Farm Solutions in Willits, who contributed $10,000. Goldenghost is being investigated for large illegal grows in Covelo and Willits that were subject to enforcement actions by multiple local, state and federal agencies this summer. On August 9, agents from local law enforcement and US Border Protection served a search warrant on a property at the 500 block of Cropley Lane. They interviewed non-English-speaking Hmong workers, confiscated over $200,000, and destroyed over 9,000 pounds of cannabis. Sheriff Matt Kendall provided kzyx with the parcel number, and the county assessor’s office confirmed that it is owned by a company called Fiore della Vita. Goldenghost is listed as one of the officers of that company, according to Open Corporates.com and Bizapedia. Kendall confirmed that the Hmong workers told an interpreter that they were not on the site against their will. He said they were living in tents and that his office is in touch with CalOSHA about non-standard labor conditions. Goldenghost is also the owner of two properties on Biggar Lane in Covelo, where Kendall reported that agents served warrants and discovered more than a hundred unpermitted hoop houses on July 29. “We located almost four tons of processed marijuana and eradicated from that site, 14,495 cultivated marijuana plants, and then we seized 7,590 pounds of processed marijuana bud,” Kendall told kzyx, a few days after the action. Goldenghost is not a suspect in a trespass grow on neighboring tribal property. He did respond courteously to an email sent earlier this week, requesting comment, but said he is very busy and often does not have cell phone or internet service. Kendall said the investigation is nowhere near ready for the District Attorney’s office, and it is not known at this point who was in charge of the grows, or if the properties were being leased to another party. Suspects are innocent until proven guilty. Keith Shuster of Healing Herb Farms in Willits contributed $5,000 to the CItizens for Sustainable Agriculture. Healing Herb Farms is a member of the Cannabis Business Association of Mendocino County, as is a company called OutCo, which has a local cultivation and nursery site with a license under the name East Hill Wellness, according to OutCo CEO Lincoln Fish, who contributed $2,500. OutCo also has a couple of dispensaries in San Diego and a multi-use facility in El Cajon. Fish wrote in a brief email exchange that he was expecting to close on a deal for OutCo to be acquired by Canadian company Nutritional High this week. He wrote that, “OutCo will likely consider shutting down its Mendocino operation if the referendum succeeds...the only reason we invested in Mendocino was we believed the county was planning to keep up with the rest of California in expanding their cannabis capabilities. This repeal would be shooting the county in the foot. It will mean dramatically less revenue and many fewer jobs.” He called the referendum “a case of protectionism,” and predicted that it would “cost the county tens of millions as larger, responsible operations will move on to more progressive counties.” Thomas Wegesser of Mendo Gold and Heath Dolan, the owner of Dark Horse Vineyards, each contributed a thousand dollars to the CItizens for Sustainable Agriculture. Wegesser is a Calpella farmer and retailer who was issued permits for six hoop houses and seven greenhouses last year, according to county documents. Dark Horse Vineyards is a biodynamic vineyard on Old River Road. Dolan also served on the campaign steering committee. Joe Rogoway, of Rogoway Law Group in Sonoma County, did what he called “upstream work” on the Mendocino County ordinance, but said he was not involved in the anti-referendum effort. Without 22.18, he, too, believes the entire legal local cannabis industry will fail. He tried to allay concerns about enforcement, saying state agencies are hiring more personnel to crack down on violations.Land use penalties for illegal cultivation, which are getting more common, can be three times the permitting costs, and illegal operators are subject to prosecution for tax evasion. He hopes the Board of Supervisors will put the referendum on the ballot rather than repealing the ordinance, and that voters will reject the referendum. The item is coming before the board on September 14th.
September 1, 2021 — In mid-August, Katharine Cole drove out to her pasture in Hopland through a thick haze from the Dixie Fire. Earlier this summer, she lost 20-25 trees to PG&E’s vegetation management program, which the California Public Utilities Commission approved as a strategy to prevent catastrophic wildfire. “Basically, I’m looking at a war zone here,” she said, pulling over to survey the felled trees; “that was beautiful oak and madrone and manzanita.” Cole was especially mourning the loss of an ancient blue oak, marked with blue dots and lying on the ground in sections a few feet from its stump. She says about a year and a half ago, she did get notice that crews would come out to some work, but that she never received a contract or any detailed information about the extent of the work that was to be done. Crews marked some trees and said they would remove dead brush and debris left over from the River Fire, which scorched part of the property in 2017. “But we were not notified that they were going to take down this oak without some kind of consideration,” she added. Limbs and sections of the tree were left in the pasture, leaving her to wonder how she will mow. She doesn’t have the equipment she would need to buck up the large-diameter rounds for firewood, or the wherewithal to hire someone who does. In addition, crews scattered wood chips around the site, which damages its viability as pasture. “I re-seed in here,” she said, scuffing a toe in the inches-deep carpet of wood chips. “I don’t know if I can rake in here, or what.” PG&E spokeswoman Deanna Contreras said in an email, “Unless it’s a transmission line that runs through their property...PG&E contractors should’ve communicated with them clearly about the work, what to do with the chips, and what was going to be removed and when. We understand that chips spread out hinders the reseeding for livestock process.” Contreras offered to send a supervisor out to the property, but between stress about covid and wells running dry, Cole demurred. Also, she added, “it’s not like I trust them to come down here and clean all this out.” And PG&E does have an easement along the transmission line. Cole is especially frustrated, in light of the fact that in July, PG&E announced plans to launch a multi-year effort to underground about 10,000 miles of power lines in districts at high risk of fire. “If they put underground lines and they come down here after they’ve cut all these trees,” she said, laughing in disbelief. “Well, thanks! And now just dig it out.” Cole shares an easement along the transmission lines with her neighbor Kellen Kaiser, whose cattle run on both properties. Kaiser is doing her best to keep the company off her land. The company, she says, has been absent most of her life, but early last year, crews started doing “significant amounts of work on the property, and treating it very disrespectfully, leaving gates open that let my cows out, leaving gates closed between pastures that my cows were supposed to have access to, leaving messes in terms of cutting wood and not cleaning up that wood. So me and my mother started resisting their presence on the property.” Resistance is difficult for both women, who have jobs off the ranch and are not always home to monitor goings-on at the property. “I’m a sex educator,” Kaiser says, “and so I teach about consent all the time. And it seems to me that the concept of consent is lost upon these people. Even though I have explained repeatedly that we are a group of women who would love to know the random strange men that are wandering around the property. That concept, even, is lost upon them.” The transmission lines run along Parsons Creek, which, in the middle of August, still had a pool of cool water shaded by a tree with a blue dot on it. Most of the trees on Kaiser’s property by the creek are marked with one blue dot, which Contreras said means they’ve been selected for trimming. The blue oak on Cole’s pasture had two blue dots, which sometimes indicates that it’s been selected for removal, and another tree still standing along the creek had three blue dots. Kzyx sent a picture of that tree to Contreras, asking what the markings meant, but did not receive an answer. Kaiser reported that she ran into a crew on her property one morning while she was doing chores. She had expected them three hours earlier, but joined them for a tour of their plans. “And as we went along, they were just going to cut down so many trees that are a part of this riparian corridor that exists on this protected creek,” she recalled. “And over the years, I have had so many people tell me what I can and cannot do with that creek as a property owner...but if I have to treat the creek with that much respect, which I think is the right thing to do, why doesn’t PG&E have the responsibility to treat the creek with the same amount of caution?” She says she was assured that environmental reviews were conducted, but that she has not had any success being connected to the people who have done the work. Her consent to any work, she says, is contingent upon her speaking with those who have done the environmental reviews. That hasn’t happened yet. In the meantime, the combination of fires and the lack of control or communication about the work being done on their land has taken an emotional toll. Kaiser compared the work of the crews to her experience with wildfire, which “sweeps over your land, you have no control over it...and this is sort of a similar process, where this much larger force sweeps through your property, and again, you have no control over it.” “And so now I have a double PTSD,” Cole added. “PG&E PTSD.”
This morning, PG&E announced that it is extending the deadline for eligible landowners to request removal of large-diameter wood. “The deadline for landowners to submit permission forms to authorize PG&E to remove trees that were cut down for safety after the 2020 Wildfires has been extended to September 14, 2021. Landowners who are interested in the Wood Management Program and have safely accessible wood from trees that PG&E felled, should call 1-877-295-4949 or email wildfiresafety@pge.com.” The statement adds that. “After completing tree work, crews chipped wood that was less than four inches in diameter and spread the chips onsite, where possible. Because wood is considered the property of the landowner, any wood larger than four inches in diameter was left onsite. There is no legal or regulatory requirement to remove large-diameter wood, since it is the property of the landowner.”
August 31, 2021-- Good news! The performing arts are back. Over the weekend. Mendocino college students, alumni and guest artists returned to the outdoor stage at the Ukiah campus to showcase dance, drama and music before a live audience.
The celebratory performance, called “Live in the Oaks,” was inspired and produced by Mendocino college dance director, Eryn Schon-Brunner. “It's been quiet, or “dark,” at the college for the last 18 months,” she said. “We haven't done any live performances. And while we won't be inside the big theater, we decided that it was okay to bring people outdoors and celebrate the work that artists do, and let people know that we're still doing it. We're still working. Dancers are still dancing. Theater majors are still coming out and performing and acting. Singers are still singing. And that we can share it safely, from a distance, in person.”
Reid Edelman, professor and drama director at the college, remembers back to march of 2020, when COVID hit our community. “Everything just stopped dead in its tracks. So as you know, we were four days away from opening Midsummer Night's Dream the day of our tech rehearsal where we pulled the plug on that realized it wasn't going to happen.” All college drama, dance and music performances were canceled. And faculty and students had to pivot to online instruction. “All of us in all that not just theater and arts but all of the faculty in high school and elementary school and college faculty, we all had to pivot with no notice or no preparation. I didn't even know what zoom was when this happened. I mean people that go you can teach on zoom and I was like, well, what's zoom?”
The Performing Arts faculty not only adapted to provide continued online education, but also created new opportunities for students to hone various artistic skills. Stephen Decker, technical director at the college, developed a one year career in technical theater program, which trained students to work behind the scenes on stagecraft, sound, and lighting. Edelman created an online Repertory Company for artists. “In the fall of 2020, we started what we called the Online Repertory Theater, and those are still up on the website,” Edelman explained. “So we created performance pieces that were on video, and then we've shared them on the website. So we did keep doing work through the shutdown. And the Online Repertory Theater went on for two semesters, 2020 and 2021. Now we're back at the college with in person classes but still the majority of the classes are online.”
Mendocino College performing arts students also showed resilience during COVID. Two recent graduates, Rickie Emilie Farah and Schuyler Marcier continued with their online education during the lockdown. Both graduated with associate degrees in performing arts and went on to UC programs.
Rickie earned her BA from UC San Diego and is excited to be back on stage: “This is my first in person show after a year and a half I want to say. And well, I just graduated from UC San Diego this summer. And I transferred there in the fall of 2019. But then, I've done the last year and a half online doing this in productions.”
Schuyler, who will soon finish his acting program at UC Santa Barbara, feels COVID’s impact on his art: “It's a huge impact. I guess I can't really tell yet and performance-wise what it's done. But I do feel like I need to start from scratch. I feel like I need to take a beginning acting class and get back into it. I did a few things over zoom, but it wasn't the same. It's just yeah, it's like you take a year and a half off anything and it really is gonna set you back.”
Rickie noticed too, that zoom affected her acting. “I just kind of don't know what to do with my hands. Because, you know, in front of the computer, it's your face that people are seeing. And, you know, even when I was working with Reid last week on my monologues, I wasn't really moving, and I was just kind of staying still. And it's nice because I feel like before it was harder for me to stay grounded and you know, you just kind of like lean on one leg, but it's so it's nice but then to have achieved that grounded state. But then I also now want to go back and play with movement.”
Art mirrors life, and these humble confessions from young talented artists remind us that we are all, actors and audience alike, a little rusty and unpracticed right now. “Live in the Oaks” was the first step in slowly, safely finding our way back to being together. Set under a grove of oaks with the music teacher Janice Tim ready at the piano, and a masked, socially distanced audience filled with friends and family, the performers of Live in the Oaks took to the stage for over an hour, delighting with dance, drama and song and transporting everyone out of plague and pestilence to a place of collective joy.
Eryn Schon-Brunner reminds us why live performance matters: “We are people who connect with each other and live performance gives connection,” she says. “It allows for empathy to come through and allows for emotions to be seen, felt in a very visceral way that you can't find on a screen.”
From Mendocino County Public Broadcasting, this is the KZYX News for Friday, Aug. 27. I’m Sonia Waraich.
The drought situation on the coast is getting worse. Elk, Irish Beach, Mendocino Unified School District and Westport said they will no longer sell water to haulers supplying homes and businesses in Mendocino, which rely on that water.
On Tuesday, the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors held a special meeting to talk about how to get water flowing from inland to the coast as soon as possible. The supervisors ended up voting to fund a water hauling program with just under $1 million of the PG&E disaster settlement funds.
That program will cover the cost of hauling water from Ukiah to the coast and it’s estimated to only cost residents 3 cents per gallon for the water and 24 cents per gallon for local hauling. In total, the program is expected to cost $3.84 million for four months.
County staff is seeking grant funding and other assistance from the state, which is expected to cover the cost of hauling the water long distance from Ukiah to the coast.
But that program only applies to water being bought for home use. So far, it seems like businesses are out of luck. They’d have to pay almost $1,000 more per truckload to cover the cost to haul the water from Ukiah.
1st District Supervisor Glenn McGourty abstained from the vote and said he didn’t feel comfortable using the PG&E money to fund the program.
“I’m very supportive of helping everybody on the coast. I just kind of feel like we could do this with a little bit more time. Maybe we don’t have a little bit more time, but that’s what my reluctance is. It just feels like we’re moving awful quick and unless everybody signs their agreement for PG&E money in blood, we want to make damn sure it gets paid back.”
At a meeting earlier this month, the supervisors held off on approving a list of projects to be funded by the disaster settlement. That’s because Potter and Redwood valley residents were upset that not enough money was going toward their community, which experienced the fire that led to the settlement funds.
At the start of the meeting, 5th District Supervisor Ted Williams suggested using the county’s transient occupancy tax revenue to jump start the program. The transient occupancy tax, also called the TOT, is collected anytime visitors stay overnight at hotels and other lodging in the county. The TOT is expected to bring in over $5 million this year, and 75% of that is generated on the coast.
And the coast is suffering the worst consequences of the drought right now. Ryan Rhoades, superintendent of Mendocino’s water district, said 25 wells went dry in the district last month, the highest number on record for any given month. And that’s out of 420 wells total.
“As you all know it’s a dire situation, but we’re teetering on catastrophic. Right now there is virtually no bulk water for sale on the coast. Residents and businesses are scared.”
County CEO Carmel Angelo said using the PG&E funds would be more expedient than using the TOT funds.
“Since 2017, I can tell you, that we diverted many, many resources, county resources, from other areas so that we could support Redwood Valley, Potter Valley and the fire region. And we would do that again and again and again, and most likely we will. This is a time when the town of Mendocino is in such a crisis – and the whole coast – and we do know that 75% of TOT comes from the coast. And so I respectfully request that this board really look at the item at hand in front of you. And I know you don’t want to use PG&E but the quickest way to get water to the town of Mendocino is with the item in front of you. That we would use PG&E money and that we would absolutely replace it – whether it’s grant dollars or TOT dollars.”
That seemed to convince most of the supervisors to change their positions. Supervisor Williams said the board needed to do whatever it could to get water to the coast right away.
“I mean seriously water needs to be flowing tomorrow or the next day, not a month out. We’re in bad shape today, but if you look at where the drought will be a month from now, we’re going to be in dire straits.”
But he said he was still concerned about how businesses would fare with no access to any kind of assistance from the government.
“It’s my understanding that we’re going to address the life safety, residential water concern and pass along the actual cost for commercial users. And it sounds like the actual cost may be $945 per truckload, which business has told us likely will not work. They will likely close their doors. Does the board see the need to have any sort of follow up or next steps on that item, how to save our local economy from what this sticker price will cost, or are we done?”
Supervisor McGourty suggested businesses take a look at some market-based solutions, like adding a water surcharge to their customers’ bills.
2nd District Supervisor Maureen Mulheren said businesses were coming out of a pandemic and doing the best they could to conserve in the face of the drought.
“I would like to see an opportunity, just as we had with COVID relief funds, to not only – COVID relief funds went to support tenants that were behind on their rent and they went to support landlords that also could not receive funds from their tenants. So for me, having some kind of opportunity for businesses to be reimbursed or grants based on occupancy, whatever that might look like, I think that is important.”
Mulheren added that it was just a matter of time before other parts of the county needed similar assistance.
For the KZYX News. I’m Sonia Waraich, a Report For America corps member. For all our local stories, with photos and more, visit KZYX.org. You can also subscribe to the KZYX News podcast where you get your podcasts.
August 27, 2021 By Alicia Bales
Today, as the surge in Covid 19 infections has filled our hospitals to capacity, and reports of deaths from the virus are becoming a daily occurrence, dozens of local doctors and medical providers have signed a letter addressed to the community of Mendocino County asking for help. The letter describes the dire conditions healthcare providers are seeing at work every day: emergency departments overflowing, full ICUs, and a surge of sick young patients with covid-19. The doctors are urging Mendocino County residents to stem the tide of new infections by getting vaccinated.
Dr. Erica Valdovinos and Dr. Drew Colfax are two of the doctors who signed on to the letter.
Here is the Text of the Letter:
Dear Mendocino County Community,
We are a group of doctors and medical providers living and working in Mendocino County. We need your help. Like all of you, we are heartbroken at the number of lives and livelihoods the COVID-19 pandemic has taken. COVID-19 has proven difficult to control, and this pandemic feels unrelenting to all of us, as healthcare providers and as members of the community.
We work in the emergency departments at Ukiah Valley, Howard Memorial and Mendocino Coast Hospitals, in the inpatient units, the intensive care units, and the clinics in the community. Every day, we take care of more and more patients who are sick with COVID-19. The great majority of hospitalized patients are unvaccinated. Our emergency departments are overflowing. Our hospitals are full. Our ICUs are full. We struggle to find hospital beds even for the patients who are coming to the emergency department with strokes, heart attacks, or appendicitis. When patients need services that our hospitals cannot provide, we struggle to transfer them, and have become used to hearing the phrase “there are no hospital beds in all of Northern California.” We repeat this sentence to our patients, to their worried family members. Never before have we seen such a surge of sick, young patients with COVID-19, and never before has our medical system faced such a challenge. We can all do our part in this dire situation by getting vaccinated.
We will keep coming to work every day and taking care of everyone who walks through our doors -- taking care of those in need is what we do and we can’t imagine working anywhere else. But we need your help to prevent hospitalizations and deaths.
Rumors and misinformation are circulating about the vaccine. Please talk with us, or your primary care provider, about the COVID-19 vaccine. The data and the science are clear: the vaccine is safe and highly effective in preventing severe COVID-19 illness and COVID-related deaths. We are vaccinated. Getting vaccinated will not only protect you, but will also keep your loved ones and your community safe and out of the hospital.
If you would like to get vaccinated for FREE, please visit: https://www.mendocinocounty.org/community/novel-coronavirus/covid-19-vaccinations/vaccination-clinics
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August 26, 2021 — With climate change, the current drought conditions could be here to stay. That means the ability to experiment with unfamiliar crops could be key for local farmers. Rachel Britten is the owner of the Mendocino Grain Project, which provides a variety of services to small grain farmers in the northern California region. They’ll harvest crops, clean them, and distribute them, so each farmer doesn’t have to invest in machines for something they may only want to plant every few years on a couple of acres. We’ll hear from Britten and John LaBoyteaux, a grain farmer who grows varieties both ancient and modern to contribute to the diversity that’s essential to food security.
August 25, 2021 — The drought, following covid, market forces, and wildfire, is just one of many challenges facing local farmers. We’ll hear from two members of multi-generational families raising cattle and hay in Potter Valley about the choices they’re making and the future they face.
From Mendocino County Public Broadcasting, this is the KZYX News for Tuesday, Aug. 24. I’m Sonia Waraich.
Caspar Cove is a beach just south of Fort Bragg. Early Sunday morning, about a dozen people were kayaking, hanging out with their families, playing fetch with their dogs and doing everything else you can imagine people doing at the beach on a weekend.
Nobody seemed to be paying any attention to the new fixtures at the center of the cove. A couple hundred yards off shore, you can spot what looks like an orange balloon and a yellow-and-black object, about the size of a basketball, floating in the middle of the cove.
That object is a solar-powered buoy known as the Spotter and it’s connected to a floating balloon and smart mooring system that can collect data on ocean temperature, wind speeds and more. There are about 50 other buoys just like it floating off the coast of places as close as Washington and as far as Fiji.
This nonprofit called Aqualink has been donating the buoys to conservation groups around the world. The nonprofit is building a network of buoys that are monitoring and collecting data in sensitive environments like coral reefs, kelp forests, eel grass beds and local estuaries.
That has implications that are both large and small. Researchers can use the data for studies on, for example, sensitive species. Beachgoers can also use the data to get a better idea of what local ocean conditions will be like. Data that relies on regional monitors is often unreliable.
Aqualink still has about a hundred more buoys that are supposed to go out. It bought the buoys from a company called Sofar Ocean Technology.
Zack Johnson works there.
Johnson says it’s not clear yet what kind of research the buoys can help support, but the data can come in handy for a wide variety of uses.
Caspar Cove is an important part of the network Aqualink is building because it’s an important site for kelp. Kelp do a lot. They’re powerhouses for storing carbon, they provide habitat for other species and they serve a lot of economic functions, too.
But a few years ago, kelp forests like the ones on the North Coast were decimated. So was a lot of other marine life.
For kelp, the trouble started in 2013. First, a virus wiped out the sunflower star, a sea star that preys on purple sea urchin. Purple sea urchin eat kelp.
Then a marine heatwave that started in 2014 made the ocean so hot and inhospitable that kelp weren’t able to survive. That heatwave ended in 2019.
With no kelp in sight, the purple sea urchin transformed into grazers and moved into shallower waters, grazing on all the kelp they found there.
Tristin McHugh has been working on kelp restoration since moving to the area in 2018. In January McHugh started working on kelp restoration with The Nature Conservancy, which received the donated buoy and put it out in Caspar Cove last month.
Beyond research and conservation, McHugh says the buoy has other benefits.
Johnson, the engineer at Sofar Ocean, encourages people to check out that data and put it to good use by going to aqualink.org.
The data’s also on display in the Noyo Center for Marine Science at 338 N Main St. in Fort Bragg.
For the KZYX News. I’m Sonia Waraich, a Report for America corps member. For all our local stories, with photos and more, visit KZYX.org. You can also subscribe to the KZYX News podcast where you get your podcasts.
August 23, 2021 -- Jon Spitz, member of the Mendocino Non-Lethal Wildlife Management Alliance talks about their recent victory in convincing the County to end their contract with the USDA Wildlife Services. He discusses the history of their grass roots fight and explains how exclusion wild life management techniques work. Currently Mendocino County does not have an exclusion contractor. In the interim, Spitz recommends calling the Sonoma County Exclusion Program Hotline for advice in dealing with animals on your property. The number is 707 992 0276 and their web site is awces.com.
August 20, 2021 — Hundreds of thousands of acres are on fire in the state of California. There’s been one or more fires every day in Mendocino County this week, and the Cache Fire has destroyed dozens of homes in Lake County. The topic of how to make a home resistant to fire, or hardening it, is timely. On Wednesday morning, Scott Cratty stood in a light rain of ash from the Dixie or the Monument or maybe the Caldor fire, overlooking what’s left of Lake Mendocino. Cratty is the Executive Director of the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council, and he was there, at a private home with a film crew and fire experts and a representative from Assemblyman Jim Wood’s office, to showcase a home hardening project. The Fire Safe Council is working with a crew from the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians and grant funding to clean up roofs and vegetation around the homes of people who are low income and senior citizens or disabled. Cratty estimates there are about 2,500 such homes in the wildland urban interface in Mendocino County. Cratty stepped behind a brand new trailer to talk about what else is new with the Fire Safe Council as Yana Valochovic, a foremost authority on fire behavior, led a pair of CalFire inspectors around the home to explain how resistant it was.
From Mendocino County Public Broadcasting, this is the KZYX News for Monday, Aug. 16. I’m Sonia Waraich.
Last month was the hottest July ever recorded on Earth and in Mendocino County, according to NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,. The federal agency is also predicting there’s going to be lower than average rainfall in Mendocino for at least the next six months so the drought’s not going anywhere.
One of the groups working on addressing the drought locally is the Mendocino Countywide Drought Task Force. The task force is made up of Supervisor John Haschek, Supervisor Glenn McGourty and Josh Metz, who was contracted by the county to coordinate the drought response. They met on Thursday by Zoom and gave updates on how the drought is being felt and addressed around the county.
Josh Metz started with some good news – the county is making progress in addressing one of the major issues its facing because of the drought, how to move water from one part of the county to another.
Ukiah and Fort Bragg started the push for a regional approach to the drought through mutual aid agreements. Those agreements are expected to make it easier for cities to share water by without facing regulatory hurdles.
Metz said the initial goal will be to transport ten 6,000-gallon truck loads of water from Ukiah to Fort Bragg for a total of 60 to 70,000 gallons per day.
There’s also been talk of using the Skunk Train to transport water from inland to the coast. The idea hit some roadblocks around cost, but it looks like funding has become available for the project through the state’s Department of Water Resources.
Not everyone in attendance was happy with that idea. During public comments, one resident of the Willits Valley called in and told the task force to lobby elected officials to implement solutions that won’t tax people living inland.
Supervisor Glenn McGourty didn’t foresee the depletion of groundwater being a problem in the immediate future since that water supply is monitored by the Ukiah Valley Basin Sustainable Groundwater Management Agency.
Move water around the county in an efficient and cost-effective way has been central to the drought response. That’s because even though the entire county is facing an extreme drought, not every part of the county is experiencing the drought the same way.
Ukiah is faring pretty well through the drought because of early investments the city made in building up its water resources. The city has reduced how much water it pulls from the Russian River by 75 to 80% and still has water available to spare to help other areas around the county.
But cities like Fort Bragg are concerned. The city still has a steady supply of water but last Monday the Fort Bragg City Council kicked up its water emergency to Stage 3, calling for water users in the city to conserve 10% more than they had been since mid-July.
City officials are worried about the lack of rainfall predicted in the region in the coming months because of how it will impact the Noyo River. Fort Bragg relies on the Noyo River as one of three main water sources. The Noyo usually experiences its lowest streamflow at this part of the year and doesn’t get replenished until there’s significant rainfall. In the meantime, high tides can cause the water in the Noyo to become too brackish to be pumped for drinking water by the city.
Fort Bragg Public Works director John Smith said the city’s is expecting its desalination system to arrive next month. That will allow the city to make the brackish water drinkable after high tide events.
For the KZYX News. I’m Sonia Waraich, a report for America corps member. For all our local stories, with photos and more, visit KZYX.org. You can also subscribe to the KZYX News podcast where you get your podcasts.
August 19, 2021 — The consent calendar and CEO report from this week’s Board of Supervisors meeting were full of big news. Earlier this month, the Board drew up an allocation plan on how to spend the one-time $22 million PG&E settlement fund for the 2017 wildfires, which started in Potter Valley and devastated neighboring Redwood Valley. Much of the money went to items the supervisors thought would ease the burden of the next disaster, but many Redwood Valley community members felt that they had been overlooked. After an outcry, the Board agreed to allocate a quarter million dollars from the fund to the grange in Redwood Valley. They also resolved to ask the FIre District Association for advice on how best to spend another one million dollars from the same fund, leaving about $2.7 million for the next emergency. Supervisor Glenn McGourty pulled the PG&E allocation item from the consent calendar to make an eleventh hour pitch for funding the grange, whose members have long yearned for a commercial kitchen and major repairs. About two dozen letters pleaded for consideration, reminding the board that the grange became a focal point of the community during the fires. A member of the Municipal Advisory Council called in to say that just over 16% of the money had been doled out to Redwood Valley, and to ask that the board redo the entire process. McGourty demurred on the general, but acquiesced in the particular. The board agreed unanimously with his suggestion to fund the grange but not revisit the allocation process, and also agreed to allocate half a million dollars to solarizing the libraries, rather than providing them with generators as was originally requested, so they could serve as gathering places during evacuations or power outages. They also provided $1.5 million to carbon reduction plans, with a view toward using funds from ARPA, or the American Relief Plan Act, to fund other requests on the list of priorities for the PG&E money. The Redwood Valley Calpella Fire District did receive funding for two vehicles, but the water district did not receive the money it requested for fire hydrants. County analysts told the board that that project could be paid for by ARPA, which, according to the CEO report, became law on March 11. The money can be used by local governments to shore up the economic and public health impacts of the pandemic. Mendocino County has been approved for close to $17 million of that money, half of which was awarded earlier this month. $4.6 million of that is eligible for water and infrastructure projects. Another consent calendar item about land use and building code authority drew angry letters from neighbors of the Ukiah Gun Club, in the eastern hills. These included a letter and a call from a legal firm, which are often steps toward establishing standing for a lawsuit. The Gun Club is on city-owned property in the unincorporated part of the county, which places it in a confusing jurisdictional situation. While a shooting range is an allowable use on rangeland, neighbors believe the gun club poses fire and other environmental risks. The board agreed to enter a joint powers agreement with the city to share land use authority over the property, which the Gun Club is leasing until the end of 2044. County Counsel Christian Curtis attempted to shed some light on the circumstance, saying that “when the city owns property in the county’s jurisdiction, the city is immune from the land use and the building laws on that property, so the county is unable to apply its laws to that location.” With conflicting opinions from the Attorney General on the topic, Curtis concluded, “that’s left a significant amount of confusion for some time as to exactly what laws the county can apply to the Gun Club while it’s operating on the city property.” The Board voted to enter a Joint Powers Agreement with the city of Ukiah to share land use authority over the property, which the Gun Club is leasing until the end of 2044. And the drought task force is churning through the bureaucracy that will be required to carry out the plan to truck water from Ukiah to the coast. McGourty told Supervisor Ted Williams that he thinks 65,000 gallons a day could be forthcoming. The board also appointed five of the six applicants to the redistricting committee to follow up on the census by redrawing the borders of the supervisorial districts, if warranted by changes in population. Initial numbers indicate that the county population has grown by about 4,000, with slight increases in Ukiah, Willits, and Point Arena.
August 18, 2021 — Mendocino county is experiencing a fourth surge of covid cases, with a peak over the weekend and a record 95 cases on Thursday. County Public Health reported the death of a 49-year-old man in Ukiah yesterday afternoon, bringing the death toll to 56. Five of those deaths have been reported this month. Deputy Public Health Officer Dr. Noemi Doohan said that full genome testing is not widely available, but she’s confident it’s the delta variant that’s sweeping through the county.
August 17, 2021 — Paul Putter’s homestead used to be nestled in a grove of hardwoods and conifers. It was shady and cool, and he used to jog on a trail beneath the canopy. But now, with PG&E’s enhanced vegetation management program, crews of contractors are taking down any tree the company thinks could fall on a power line and start another massive fire. On August 7, kzyx was on site to see crews feeding dozens of smaller trees into a chipper and pouring large ones into a big red dumpster. “Maybe a hundred trees,” Putter estimated. “All along their power line, but some of them quite far away from their power line, maybe a hundred feet...I’m in kind of shock here. The extent of what they have cut on my property alone is really quite incredible. ” Putter signed a contract on June 24th, though landowners all over the county have told kzyx they’ve had trees felled by PG&E crews with no contract. Putter’s document is basically a checklist, with the number 32 written by hand on a line following the typewritten words:” Tree Quantity.” PG&E spokeswoman Deanna Contreras apologized for not being able to reach someone at the company who could explain the contract in time for this story. “I think I might have signed something without really understanding what the full implication of it was,” Putter noted. “It just didn’t register, what was going to happen.” There’s no independent third-party environmental review for this work, and landowners complain about a lack of precise information about what it will entail. It is legal. PG&E submitted its vegetation management plan to the California Public Utilities Commission late in 2018, and it’s now a part of the Public Resource Code. The utility is required to give notice to landowners and provide damages if it removes a valuable tree, but the process is not defined in the code. In April of this year, the CPUC placed the company into an enhanced oversight and enforcement process, because its wildfire safety division found that last year, PG&E failed to clear the most dangerous vegetation from the highest risk lines, focusing instead on lower-risk lines. If the company can prove that it’s prioritizing high-risk lines for its stepped-up vegetation program in 2021, it has a chance of being removed from the enhanced oversight process, which is a condition of its plan for exiting bankruptcy. Nancy Macy of Santa Cruz is the chair of the Sierra Club wildfire mitigation task force and one of the co-authors of a white paper on the harmful effects of PG&E’s tree removal practices. The paper says outside professionals may be reluctant to pronounce a tree healthy once it’s been marked for removal by PG&E, out of fear of liability if the tree does fall. Still, there have been pockets of resistance. “They hit a big wall in Santa Cruz,” Macy recalled. “We insisted on public meetings, we insisted on people having the right to say no, that they could take the responsibility for the trees being there.” But the battles can take years. And laying the groundwork was a meticulous process, too. “We’ve done a lot of work to do research and provide the background information so that the supervisors could be educated as to what the problems are,” Macy said. “And so all the supervisors respond to that.” Today on the consent calendar for their regular meeting, the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors accepted informational reports on two emergency coastal development permits to remove a total of 182 trees along PG&E power lines between Fort Bragg and Gualala. Meanwhile, Putter’s property, his neighbor’s land, and the steep slopes along Orr Springs Road where the power lines march across the ridgetops are steadily being cleared. “This area has too many trees, there’s no question about it,” Putter reflected, over the sounds of heavy equipment. “But that’s not what PG&E is doing here. They’re not thinning trees. That’s just not what’s going on.”
August 13, 2021 — With fire season and drought well underway, PG&E is hard at work on the 1800 miles of enhanced vegetation management it plans to finish by the end of the year. The company is responding to wildfire threat by limbing and cutting down trees and any other vegetation its arborists deem present a possible danger to its infrastructure. Cathy Monroe of Redwood Valley is a long-time member of the California Native Plant Society and an original member of the Mendocino County Climate Action Advisory Committee. She’s also a fire survivor who understands the need to take preventive measures. Electricity, she acknowledges, is key to getting away from fossil fuels. This week, Monroe and Eileen Mitro, a fellow member of the CNPS and co-founder of Climate Action Mendocino, looked out over an area near the intersection of Road A and Highway 20 in Redwood Valley, which was cleared in May. Some willow remained along a small seasonal tributary to the Russian River, but now, with the heat and the drought and the absence of shade, that willow is dying. With it, protection from sediment and the force of heavy rain also disappears. In June, PG&E spokeswoman Deanna Contreras said that “A substantial amount of vegetation was left near the waterways to help protect water resources in the area,” and that “the protection measures we applied precluded the need for a water quality permit.” Mitro and Monroe worry about erosion damage from upcoming winter floods and the loss of the carbon-sequestering blue oaks that once provided habitat and held the slopes together.
Aug 12, 2021 — The plight of the town of Mendocino has captured national attention. Wells are going dry just as the local tourist trade i s struggling to emerge from the pandemic. Fort Bragg can no longer sell water to other towns. A plan that called for the skunk train to bring water to the coast from Willits fell through. Now it looks like the most feasible option is for truckers to bring water over the hill from Ukiah, which Supervisor Glenn McGourty, who is on the drought ad hoc committee, hopes will happen sometime this month. We’ll hear from Ryan Rhoades, the Superintendent of the Mendocino City Community Services District, about a few local connections that are coming through, including two school district sources. And water operator Donna Feiner will share some details about what it takes for small water systems to share water with one another.
August 11, 2021 — The Jackson Demonstration State Forest is the largest of eight so-called working forests managed by CalFire for a number of purposes, including timber production. This involves experiments to figure out how to replace hardwoods with conifers, especially the high-value redwoods that were logged so extensively for much of the 19th and 20th centuries. But the current Timber Harvest Plans in the state forest are hotly contested by a coalition of tribal groups and environmental activists. Alder, a member of the Mama Tree Network, was sitting in the now-iconic Mama Tree when logging started in the Caspar 500 on June 10th. Last week, he invited kzyx to take a tour of another site near Chamberlain Creek, where large numbers of trees had been treated with Imazapyr and left standing. Alder said he first noticed the trees about a month ago, and that he thinks they had been dead longer than the 90 days allowed by Measure V. Measure V is a voter-approved initiative that has been on the books since 2016. It doesn’t prohibit the use of herbicides, but it does ban the practice of leaving dead standing trees for more than 90 days. Mendocino Redwood Company and CalFire say the law does not apply to them, and the State Attorney General declined to issue an opinion, citing a conflict of interest. It’s never been enforced. CalFire confirmed that Chamberlain Creek is part of an experiment designed by Dr. Pascal Berrill of the University of Maine, formerly Humboldt State University. Berrill says the technique, called frilling, or hack and squirt, is one of several methods he’s using to determine the best way to restore forest resiliency and productivity, perhaps even reducing the risk of wildfire. But John O’Brien, a climate scientist and postdoctoral research fellow at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, thinks the research is more economic than ecological. He argues that the hardwoods are an integral part of the forest, supporting the vital mycorrhizal network that shuttles water and nutrients among tree roots. He adds that creating a monoculture of redwood trees would result in a less resilient forest. An item about Measure V is scheduled to come before the Board of Supervisors on August 17. Supervisor Ted Williams, who spearheaded the successful Measure V campaign before he ran for office, hopes to discuss the possibility of getting trusted independent third-party approval of management plans. Currently, those plans are approved by the state and written by CalFire, which he worries is creating public distrust.
From Mendocino county Public Broadcasting this the KZYX News for Monday, Aug. 9. I’m Sonia Waraich, a Report for America corps member.
The Jackson Advisory Group meeting last Tuesday started like just about any other local government meeting.
That’s George Hollister. He’s a small forest land owner and chair of the group known as the JAG. The advisory group was formed just over a decade ago in 2008 to offer recommendations to CAL FIRE and the Board of Forestry about how best to manage Jackson Demonstration State Forest in the public interest.
The advisory group can be composed of up to 14 members with applicable knowledge, ranging from registered professional foresters and land owners to biologists and conservationists. It currently includes industrial forestland managers and recreation advocates.
Those are activists who ended up shutting down the meeting.
After leading a march to the Fort Bragg Town Hall, they were initially quiet, allowing a couple staffers like Jason Serna, the timber sale program manager at Jackson State, to get through their presentations.
But it wasn’t long before Chair Hollister lost control of the meeting.
While logging has been a contentious issue in the county for decades, interest in preventing commercial logging in Jackson State has grown over the past year, triggered by a timber harvest plan in the forest called the Caspar 500, which is close to residential communities and a popular recreation destination.
Activists have been engaging in direct action to stop the logging and in June it worked. Cal fire temporarily paused logging in the area to gather local input through a series of town halls.
The meeting Tuesday was the culmination of those meetings and the community came with its concerns.
The meeting was intended for Cal fire and Jackson State staff to address those concerns, but that’s not how things ended up playing out.
During one portion of the meeting, a handful of protesters began chanting. As a result, CAL FIRE staff weren’t able to get through their presentations.
The JAG members decided to continue discussion on the agenda items to their meeting in the field at Jackson State at the end of this month.
That’s John Anderson, a member of the advisory group and head of the Mendocino Redwood Company.
As a member of the JAG, Anderson said he didn’t find the tactics used by the protesters to be very productive.
For the KZYX News, I’m Sonia Waraich. For all our local stories, with photos and more, visit KZYX.org. You can also subscribe to the kzyx news podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
August 6, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors agreed to hire outside counsel for Sheriff Matt Kendall, though who exactly will advocate for the sheriff has yet to be decided. And the sheriff and the CEO’s office had two distinctly different memories of a key meeting about the sheriff’s budget.
August 5, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors allocated PG&E settlement funds this week, agreeing to fund the fire safe council for five years, widen East Side Potter Valley Road, and set aside three million for drought relief or other emergency needs. And the water shortage is growing ever more dire for the town of Mendocino, with no state or federal help in sight. With no water forthcoming from the City of Fort Bragg, or from the Willits aquifer by way of the skunk train, the town is looking at buying water trucked in from Ukiah.
August 4, 2021 — With the Latino population in Mendocino County growing, local Latino leaders are strategizing how to bring business owners in to fund scholarships and initiatives. And with the delta variant surging, Ukiah mayor Juan Orozco says he thinks he’s cracked the code when it comes to the best way to get public health messages out to the Spanish-speaking community: short, informative videos on social media. Orozco is a member of UVA, Ukiah Vecinos en Accion, a local group that’s been working for ways to advance the interests of the Latino community. The group is now setting its sights on getting business owners to step into playing a social role beyond offering employment. For the younger generations coming up, he envisions leaders in government, healthcare, education, and business. “You know, I haven’t met a Latino CEO in our county yet,” he reflected. “And we really need to start figuring out how to get that going.”
August 3, 2021 — Indoor masking and limited testing and vaccination mandates are headed for Mendocino County. Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren asked the Board of Supervisors for their support as he prepares a health order mandating universal indoor masking in public places, both for vaccinated and unvaccinated people. Coren said the order will come out this week, and go into effect on August tenth. And he’s extending the state public health order mandating vaccinations or frequent testing for firefighters and EMS and law enforcement personnel. Coren is also offering guidance, which is less stringent than an order, advising employers to implement a vaccination or testing policy for their employees. Covid-19 cases have been surging, with the delta variant now firmly ensconced in the county. Public health reported the deaths of two elderly men in Willits last month, bringing the local death toll up to 52. Fourteen people are in the hospital with covid, including six in the ICU. One fully vaccinated local person has passed away from the virus during the course of the pandemic. The upcoming orders received wholehearted support in written and oral public comments, including one representative of some of the county’s top business concerns. Julia Kendrick Conway introduced herself as a founding member of the Mendocino County Wedding and Events Task Group, then said the economy “needs a mask mandate now,” to avoid another shutdown. Conway also read a letter from the Mendocino County Lodging Association, expressing similar sentiments. The Chambers of Commerce around the county have masks and hand sanitizer available for businesses. Coren reported that the supply of all three vaccines is plentiful. Supervisors directed the county government’s Human Resources department to devise a policy requiring proof of vaccination or regular testing, in what they hope will be an example to other employers.
August 3, 2021 — California salmon fisheries are in trouble across the state’s watersheds, as panelists testified last week at a hearing moderated by Senator Mike McGuire. Chuck Bonham, the head of the California Dept of Fish and Wildlife, testified that his agency had trucked 17 million fish from the Central Valley into the Bay Area, and 3500 to the Russian River watershed, a measure that will be difficult to sustain for a number of years. Joe Scriven is a fisheries biologist with the Mendocino County Resource Conservation District, which is working with the county’s drought task force. He works in the upper Russian River watershed, which officially starts in Alexander Valley and works its way back to Orr Creek, Ackerman, Forsythe, the west fork and Potter Valley in the east branch. The fish may have had a couple of life cycles to rebound from the drought of 2014-2015, but they didn’t get off to a great start this year.
August 2, 2021 — From Mendocino County Public Broadcasting, this is the kzyx news for Monday, August second. I’m Sarah Reith. Tomorrow, the Board of Supervisors is considering a proposal to invest at least two million dollars of American Rescue Act funds to bringing down the county’s carbon footprint. Supervisor Dan Gjerde and Geof Syphers, the CEO of Sonoma Clean Power, joined two members of the Grass Roots Institute, a local environmental advocacy group, to discuss the objectives of the resolution on a public affairs show with Alicia Bales this morning.
August 2, 2021 — Last week, multiple law enforcement agencies came together for two operations against large illegal cannabis grows in Covelo. Sheriff Matt Kendall shared some details on Friday afternoon.
July 30, 2021 — Drought, climate change, and mismanagement are a recipe for extinction, according to panelists at a recent hearing on the crisis of the state’s salmon fisheries, moderated by Senator Mike McGuire. The Healdsburg Democrat chairs a Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture, which heard testimony from agency heads, tribal chairs, and environmental groups from across the state this week. Panelists testified about how environmental factors and management decisions that over-allocate water delivery to agricultural interests, have led to a severe decline in native salmonids that grows grimmer every year.
July 29, 2021--As Mendocino County Public Health announces another local death from coronavirus, Dr. Drew Colfax gives an update about working in the ER during the most recent surge.
July 28, 2021 — We’ve learned that the kelp forests off the north coast are in trouble; that they’re being devoured by purple urchin, who in turn are not being devoured by anything. Both main urchin predators, the pynopodia sea star and the otter, are missing from the food chain. The sea stars are succumbing to a wasting disease, but why not just bring back a sea otter? Sarah Grimes, the stranding coordinator at the Noyo Center for Marine Science in Fort Bragg, explains this and much more about the animals that rely on kelp for habitat.
July 28, 2021 — The collapse of the kelp forest off the north coast is part of a long-running sequence of destabilizing disasters. The kelp is being devoured by purple urchin, a native species whose predators have disappeared from the food chain. The otters, which ate the larger urchin, were hunted to near regional extinction for their fur, and the pycnopodia sunflower sea star, which formerly feasted on smaller urchin, have withered away from a wasting disease. Now the urchin, unchecked, have eaten themselves into overpopulation and near starvation, a condition they can survive in for years. The result is expanses of urchin barrens, with nothing but purple urchin where entire underwater ecosystems once thrived in kelp forests. Earlier this month, Congressman Jared Huffman introduced the Kelp Act, which would provide millions of dollars in grants to fund conservation, restoration, and management projects to restore kelp. Sheila Semans, Executive Director of the Noyo Center for Marine Science in Fort Bragg, has a list of priorities for how to put some of that money to use, from figuring out how to remove more urchin from the water and turn it into a sustainable commodity, to restoring the sea star — and learning more about the dynamic between the urchin and kelp. There are some glimmers of hope, with a few beds of kelp hanging in there even during the worst years of the urchin barrens.
July 27, 2021 — The sheriff is preparing for a fight with the Board of Supervisors over what he terms overreach and extortion, while board members want more data to support his contentions. Last week, Sheriff Matt Kendall asked the supervisors to hire Duncan James to represent his office as independent counsel on two points. Kendall and County Counsel Christian Curtis both believe there’s a conflict of interest, with Curtis representing positions the sheriff finds objectionable. One is that Kendall says that there are laws giving him exclusive authority over his IT department, and he believes the board has overreached its authority in that regard. A Grand Jury report released this month stated that Information Services is not one of the typical responsibilities of the sheriff-coroner’s office, and that Mendocino County could benefit from a consolidated IT model that requires background investigations into staff supporting the sheriff’s IT. But the main point of contention is the budget, and accountability. The county has a policy that department heads will be personally responsible for coming in over budget, which the sheriff’s office regularly does. Kendall believes the department is structurally underfunded, which puts him in a position where he has to weigh public safety against his own financial well being. “I am not goin to make decisions about how to serve the public based on financial things that could be done to me,” he said. As one example of structural underfunding, Kendal mentioned overtime, which often comes out to $1.4-$1.8 million, and for which he said he receives “a heck of a lot less.” Supervisor Ted Williams brought up Kendall’s recent opposition to an independent financial audit that he thinks would have provided more solid data to support the sheriff’s position. “Where is the data that shows that we’re falling short, and in what areas are we falling short?” he asked. “And what is the proposal so that you’re not structurally underfunded? We haven’t seen it.” By statute, the board has to approve the contract with the firm that will oppose it. Kendall was staunch in his selection of Duncan James’ firm, which charges between $300 and $425 an hour, depending on which associate is doing the work. Curtis found other firms that charge much less, and which he thinks have relevant experience. If the two parties can’t agree on a lawyer, a judge will decide. Curtis advised the board against hiring James for two reasons. One is that James’ firm is actively suing the county in another case, which Curtis said could be disadvantageous to the county. “I generally would recommend against using a firm that is actively suing us,” he remarked. Another issue that Curtis said sent up red flags for him is that, according to a 2019 Grand Jury report, the Sanitation District paid three times as much as much as the City of Ukiah in litigation that was steered by Duncan James, the District’s counsel. “The amount was well in excess of what I would expect to be spending, frankly, for even some pretty complex litigation,” Curtis told the board. “It’s more in the lines of what you might expect to see in a bill with sort of multi-national corporations fighting each other over some pretty important issues where they’re almost engaged in a sort of economic warfare.” Curtis estimates that litigation between the board and the sheriff could take two years and cost a quarter of a million dollars. Supervisor Dan Gjerde suggested putting the contentious policies on hold while waiting for an opinion from the State Attorney General, which Curtis thought would take about a year and come at no additional cost. Kendall demurred, saying he was not sure he should answer the question without an attorney. Curtis will provide the board with the names of two law firms he thinks are suitable to represent the sheriff on or before the next meeting on August third. None of the supervisors was prepared to hire Duncan James.
July 26, 2021 — Last week saw significant developments in local cannabis policy. The Board of Supervisors raised the income threshold for the cannabis equity program, which has not attracted as many applicants as originally expected. And the challenge to the new cannabis cultivation ordinance, Chapter 22.18, has narrowed to one referendum. Assessor Clerk Recorder Katrina Bartolomie confirmed Friday that proponents of the Small is Beautiful campaign, which sought to repeal the 10% expansion provision, had not turned in their petitions by the deadline, which was 5pm Thursday. Volunteer signature gatherers for The People’s Referendum to Save our Water, Wildlife and Way of Life, which seeks to repeal the entire ordinance, reported that they had collected more than 6,000 signatures, which they turned over to Bartolomie’s office on Wednesday. Bartolomie has thirty days to confirm that 3,397 of those signatures are valid, after which the Board of Supervisors will have to either repeal the ordinance or place the referendum on the ballot for a special election. The Board agreed Tuesday, with Supervisor Ted Williams dissenting, to three changes to the cannabis equity grant program: to raise the qualifying income threshold for applicants from low to moderate levels, to simplify the application process, and to increase the amount of funding to $50,000 for the direct grant program. Cannabis program manager Kristin Nevedal explained that the low income threshold requirement had been one of the biggest hurdles for applicants.
Click here to watch the full briefing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFK7gQI-6f0
Spanish version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUm5EvU1RIM
By Stacey Sheldon
July 23, 2021--Flynn Creek Circus is a rural circus based in Mendocino County founded by Blaze Birge and David Jones. Bringing world renowned circus performers from all over the globe, they pitch their big top tent in parks and fields around the western US.
This week, Flynn Creek Circus performs their newest show in Ukiah, Fairytale: a multi-media high energy piece featuring music, stunning acrobatics, clowning, and a very confused unicorn.
The cast of Fairytale are some of the most skilled performers in circus arts, who have studied in circus schools in Canada and Europe, and Humboldt County’s renowned Del Arte Academy. These artists have performed on a variety of stages, from opera houses to refugee camps, thrilling audiences with traditional circus acts like trapeze and mime, to the sideshow acts like sword swallowing, hoops, and magic.
Even though the circus performs outside, the company is going to great lengths to make sure its performers and audiences are Covid-safe. People are seated in bubbles, socially distanced, and tickets are sold per group. Drew explains:
Flynn Creek Circus performs Fairytale live in Ukiah tonight at 7pm, Saturday for all ages at 1 and 5pm with an Adults only Show at 8 for ages 21 and up, and Sunday afternoon at 1. After that their tour takes them north to Arcata. Tickets are available at the door, or at their website: www.flynncreekcircus.org
July 22, 2021 — The Skunk Train has been a fixture of Mendocino County since the late 1890’s, when it was built to service the logging industry. Over the decades, it transitioned to a transportation and tourist attraction. In 2013 a major cave-in of the tunnel shut down the transportation service and the system focused on delivering adventures to tourists and families. Today the system is exploring a more utilitarian service to the local community: drought relief. “Chief Skunk” Robert Pinoli talks about how the train can help the coast during this unprecedented drought, and provide an update on transportation services between Willits and Fort Bragg.
July 21, 2021 — The two cannabis cultivation ordinances came into conflict at this week’s Board of Supervisors meeting, with the result that permits for 214 hoop houses on 36 sites are now under review. And the board received a report from scientists at the Berkeley Cannabis Research Center, asserting that cannabis requires about as much water as vegetable crops, far less than almonds or wine.
July 20. 2021 — Redwood Valley is still sorting through the aftermath of the Broiler fire, from the lack of notifications to the power and water it took to fight the fire to rethinking fuel management strategies. Flow Cannabis Company president Jerom Fawson issued a statement saying the July 7 fire quote “originated on our property, after the blades of a mower, operated by our employee, struck rock, causing a spark.” The company has not responded to requests for further comment. The lack of notifications during the incident was a serious problem. Chris Boyd, who chaired last week’s meeting of the Redwood Valley Municipal Advisory Council, reported that even though she’s signed up with multiple alert systems, she didn’t hear from any of them about the fire that burned more than 80 acres and destroyed three homes. Redwood Valley was hit hard this month. Tom Schoenemann, a board member at the Redwood Valley County Water District, reported that the district lost a lot of water on July 7, one unknown quantity to fighting the fire and another to a line that was damaged during work on the infrastructure project. He’s expecting quite a power bill for pumping water from the lake back into the storage facility, too. Schoenemann doesn’t know yet how much water and power were used during the fire, or if the water district will seek compensation from Flow Cannabis Company. But Adam Gaska, a volunteer firefighter with the Redwood Valley Calpella Fire Department, was outspoken in his call for another swift response. In a letter sent to the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council, the Board of Supervisors, and posted on social media, he called for Amanda Reiman, the company’s Vice President of Community Development, to step down from her seat on the Fire safe Council board. He wrote that “After the incident a few days ago, it is obvious that the purpose and mission of the Fire Safe Council isn't carried through into the culture of the company she works for;" and that FlowKana "seemingly didn't have an employee fire safety plan or training...I can't wrap my head around how they could have been directed to be mowing during the conditions present." In a brief interview, Joe Zicherman, the President of the Fire Safe Council Board, described Reiman as a solid contributor to the organization and said the board had no interest in having her relinquish her position. Ruthie King is a contract grazer who put her sheep to work on 46 acres of Flow Cannabis Company land in 2019. She liked what she heard about the company’s commitment to regenerative agriculture, and expanded her flock, expecting the sheep to keep nibbling away at the years’ worth of accumulated fuels. But early last year, she learned that the company planned to use mechanical means instead. She knows what she wants from her former client and other landowners in the neighborhood. “If they’re going to continue being in this community and continue being landowners, I want to see a renewed commitment, like they originally had, to really support, in a deep, real way, this community...big takeaway that I have is that I’m hoping that other landowners who have fuels on their land...are thinking now about their responsibility to manage that.”
July 19, 2021 — The cannabis cultivation ordinance has been at the center of controversy since the Board of Supervisors passed it less than a month ago. But the cannabis facilities ordinance was amended in May, with little fanfare. There were just a few objections, some from small growers requesting more consideration for microbusinesses, and others from neighbors, most notably a church in Hopland, protesting the removal of the requirement for a 600 foot setback between cannabis facilities and churches. Tomorrow in closed session, the Board of Supervisors is scheduled to discuss a lawsuit over the matter. The lawsuit says that the county cited a common sense exemption from CEQA when the original facilities ordinance took effect late in 2017. It argues that the common sense exemption does not apply to the amended ordinance, because the changes will foreseeably draw more visitors and workers into undeveloped parts of the county, which would result in more infrastructure and more development. David Drell, of the Willits Environmental Center, which filed the lawsuit on July 2, says the organization is resorting to litigation because the changes to the ordinance are too drastic to get by without proper environmental review and mitigations.
July 16, 2021 — The deadline to file petitions for the referenda opposing Chapter 22.18, the county’s new cannabis cultivation ordinance, is fast approaching. Employees of a pro-ordinance group shadow signature gatherers and counter their arguments as they urge voters to sign, to get the item on the ballot, to repeal the ordinance in part or in full. Documents showing financial support for the pro-ordinance group are still not available, but the steering committee includes Joshua Keats, of Henry’s Original, Amanda Reiman, of Flowkana, vineyard owner Heath Dolan, John Schaeffer, formerly of Real Goods, and Willits schoolteacher Shawna Jeavons. Passions are running high on all sides, with some volunteer signature gatherers for the referendum claiming that the paid workers of the pro-ordinance group are resorting to intimidation. Leo Buc, the pro-ordinance campaign advisor, said field staff have come in for screaming and harassment, too. In an attempt to sort out who’s doing what, the Redwood Valley Municipal Advisory Council held a forum on the referenda and the ordinance on Wednesday night, with First District Supervisor Glenn McGourty arguing on the county’s behalf. McGourty lit up a discussion among policy watchers on Monday, when he wrote a letter saying he is 100% committed to a lengthy list of amendments and actions, including a full programmatic environmental impact review on all cannabis cultivation in the county. The board passed the ordinance at the end of last month, barely making a state deadline to get it on the books before a requirement for an EIR kicked in. He insists that the new ordinance will include rigorous environmental protections. But Ellen Drell, speaking on behalf of the People’s Referendum to Save our Water, Wildlife, and Way of Life, which seeks to repeal Chapter 22.18 in its entirety, says the new ordinance is all about expansion, especially into the county’s treasured rangeland zones. Charles Sargenti, representing Small is Beautiful (the referendum seeking to repeal the provision that allows for 10% of qualifying parcels to be used for cannabis cultivation), thinks the new ordinance is mostly sound. He thinks one acre for cultivation is sufficient, and that 22.18 offers plenty of protection for rangeland. Under the new ordinance, only rangeland that has previously been converted to agricultural purposes can be used for growing cannabis. Michael Katz, the Executive Director of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, weighed in against both referenda. Chapter 10a17, the cannabis cultivation ordinance that preceded 22.18, relies on a ministerial permitting process that doesn’t cut it with the state. It’s the discretionary permitting process, which involves the Planning Commission and notice to neighbors, that’s key to bringing the county’s ordinance into alignment with state law. Katz worries that if the referenda make it onto the ballot and one of them passes muster with voters, growers who are partway to a state license could be stranded in a legal limbo. MCA supports 22.18, but also calls for an environmental impact review. The future is as uncertain as it always is, but amendments and an EIR could be in the future for 22.18, even if it survives the referenda. Compromise, according to McGourty, is always possible.
July 15, 2021--Reporter Frank Hartzell talks with Fort Bragg residents about the possibility that their city's name would be changed, and the ongoing survey by the Fort Bragg City Council to gather input.
July 14, 2021 — The Delta variant has arrived in the county, as evidenced by full genome tests from late April. A letter-writing campaign based on shoddy science is seeking to spread misinformation about the efficacy of masks and social distancing in spreading covid-19, ahead of students returning to in-person classes.
And the water supply for coastal residents is dwindling, with scanty water available to Fort Bragg from the Noyo River, one of the city’s three surface water sources. That has serious ramifications for coastal communities that purchases trucked-in water from Fort Bragg.
July 13, 2021 — Last month, summer steelhead were listed as endangered under the state Endangered Species Act, which highlighted some of the differences between the summer and winter stocks. Pat Higgins, a fish biologist and managing director of the Eel River Recovery Project, traces the life story of summer steelhead, from the run of the river to the health of the forest and finally, to its place in the pattern of worldwide climate change.
July 12, 2021 — Barge water is out, and water storage is in. With shortages rapidly approaching a critical point in most parts of the county, water storage ideas are getting a lot of traction. At one point, bringing water into Noyo Harbor on a barge was an idea that had some currency. But at Thursday night’s virtual drought task force meeting, Alex Huang, of the State Water Resources Control Board, explained that this idea would not be feasible. Josh Metz, the program manager for the Mendocino County Water Agency, sketched out a plan to bring water from Willits to Fort Bragg on the train, though it’s not clear at this point if the water or the infrastructure is available. Water trucks have not gotten much love during the crafting of the cannabis cultivation ordinance. But water trucks hauling potable water are tightly regulated by the state. There are five licensed potable water haulers in the county. Supervisor John Haschak said the Board of Supervisors and County Counsel are working on ways to control water trucks locally. But for the moment, storing the increasingly scarce resource is top of mind. Tomorrow the board will consider an urgency ordinance that would allow people across the county to install temporary water storage tanks on their parcels without discretionary or environmental review as long as the county is in a declared local emergency. On the South Coast, Randy Burke, the Director of works at the Sea Ranch Water Company, said he’s working with the State Division of Drinking Water and Department of Water Resources to get a grant for a project he hopes will eventually make it possible to store 220,000 gallons, and thus “take the pressure off the north Gualala watershed,” as he reported to the task force. At a recent meeting in Anderson Valley, several attendees brought up the possibility of a moratorium on vineyards. McGourty, who grows wine grapes, said they bring in tax revenue: for every ton of chardonnay, he offered by way of example, growers get about $1200, which he said generates almost $900 of taxes. Meanwhile, in the Russian River watershed, Janet Pauli continues to advocate for enough local funding to raise Coyote Valley Dam and keep more water closer to home. The lake is managed by the Sonoma County Water Agency, because Sonoma County put in a great deal more money at the dam’s inception than Mendocino County did. “Locally, we have to take this responsibility or our water responsibility on ourselves,” she said. “And we probably need to do it while the drought is still fresh in everybody’s mind, because...if we have another three or four really wet years, everyone will forget.”
July 8, 2021 — A new law that transfers coastal property from the State of California to Native Americans will be a historic first. Mendocino tribes could take possession within a year, creating an 172 acre natural preserve south of Westport. An interview with Melanie Rafanan, the Chair of the Sherwood Valley Band of Pomo Indians explains the process, obstacles and traditional uses of the land.
July 7, 2021 — The current governor declared the latest California drought from the cracked, dry basin of Lake Mendocino, which is generally believed to provide some portion of water to 600,000 people from Coyote Valley Dam to Marin County. As per the original arrangement, Mendocino County is entitled to 11.3% of the water. The dam was dedicated on June 6, 1959. The ceremony included a beauty contest, speeches, and a strawberry festival, according to a history written by local scholar Victoria Patterson (nee Kaplan).. If the man-made body of water were a human, it would be barely old enough to collect social security. Before building the dam, the Army Corps of Engineers bought a piece of property near the East Fork of the Russian River. That’s where seven Shodokai Pomo families had settled when they returned to the valley after their families had been forcibly removed in the mid-19th century. Among them was Priscilla Hunter, former Chair of the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians and mother of Michael Hunter, the tribe’s current Chairman. “When we say ancestors, people think hundreds of years ago,” Hunter noted. “I think about that often when I’m out there.” He thinks the people who were displaced by the dam should have first dibs on the water. Like everyone else, they’re now dependent on it. Hunter has sixty households under his purview, as well as a casino and gas station that do a brisk business. A hundred-room hotel and recycled water project are under construction. Water is tight in Redwood Valley, with each person only receiving 55 gallons per day for all domestic water services. This does not include the 200 or so agricultural connections in the valley that were shut off in mid-April. “And yet you see vineyards keep expanding,” Hunter observed. “It seems to be that this county put vineyards before they put Native Americans...we should have first rights to that water, which we don’t.” Hunter says his fellow elected representatives at the county level haven’t invited him to take part in decisions about water and land use. Partly he stays away because he doesn’t agree with a vision that includes continuing to deplete environmental resources. And he doesn’t want his presence to provide a diversity endorsement to decisions he doesn’t agree with. If the tribes are involved in deliberations, but in such small numbers that their votes can’t possibly affect the outcome, he doesn’t really see the point. “It’s hard to sit at tables where people look similar to me, even though I’ve never met them before, and I have to assume that if it wasn’t you, it was your father or your mother who participated in removing my people,” he explained. That’s not to say that he doesn’t have an opinion. “It’s a lot of irony for me, a lot of mixed emotion, where Coyote Valley stands right now. I personally would like to see a cap, a moratorium if you will, on acres of vineyards. It’s hard to ask a resident to cut back and limit your showers, or put a bucket under your shower while the water gets warm, to water your plants, when they keep expanding agriculture, whether it be vineyards or marijuana.” Hunter says the tribe’s sense of responsibility has led it to decide to build a recycled water system for the 100-room hotel that he expects to open sometime next year. He plans to connect the homes and most of the tribe’s businesses to it, as well. “It didn’t feel right doing the hotel without doing that purple piping (recycled water),” he said. “We started this process about three years ago before the drought was here, just because we’ve been here. We live here. It’s nothing new. The drought’s not new. It’s just getting worse. So we feel as if we’re having some responsibility amongst our reservation...we feel like a sovereign nation. We feel isolated. In good ways and bad ways.” In the end, he feels like his tribe paid a high price for a bum deal. “You made my people leave for 11 percent?” he exclaimed. “What?”
July 5, 2021 — The latest entry in the political canvassing effort around the recently enacted cannabis cultivation ordinance is Citizens for Sustainable Agriculture. That’s a pro-ordinance organization that’s hired a strategist and canvassers to persuade voters not to sign either of the referendum petitions currently in circulation. The People’s Referendum to Save our Water, Wildlife, and Way of Life, seeks to repeal the entire ordinance, while the Small is Beautiful effort proposes to strike footnote six, which allows for 10% of a parcel over ten acres to be used for cannabis cultivation. The pro-ordinance canvassers offer counter-claims to those being made by referendum signature gatherers, as well as a template letter for people who have already signed a petition, regret doing so, and want the registrar of voters to remove their names from petitions that land in her office. This is legal according to the Statewide Initiative Guide, as long as the request for removal is filed prior to the date the petition is filed. Leo Buc is a local political strategist who is working to defeat the referendums against the ordinance...
July 5, 2021 — Possible responses to the drought range from relaxing permitting standards for water storage to calling on the National Guard or the state Office of Emergency Services. Josh Metz, the program manager for the newly revitalized county water agency, accompanied the drought ad hoc committee on a tour of drought-stricken communities last week, and discussed various approaches.
July 2, 2021 — There’s a new addition to the art scene in Ukiah. The Deep Valley Arts Collective, which held online shows during the lockdown, is opening a gallery called Medium for the First Friday art walk today. The introductory show, in the freshened up former Radio Shack in the Pear Tree shopping center, is called Prologue, in anticipation of much to come. For Chris Pugh, one of the three founding members, it’s been a long-time dream that crystallized during the isolation and unemployment of the pandemic. The work upholds the promise of multiple mediums, starting with a paper doll sculpture that looks fully prepared to start doing somersaults. There’s an electrically powered kinetic piece designed by a retired engineer, and a large painting of a woman in a tight dress, reclining behind some foliage that looks a little dangerous....
July 1, 2021 — The 2020 census has come to a close, and now it’s time to think about redistricting. The final census numbers will probably be available by the end of September, and the county has until December 15th to readjust the borders of the supervisorial districts to reflect population changes. Each district is supposed to have roughly the same number of people, to ensure equal representation. The Board of Supervisors will decide later this month which method to use for the redistricting effort, but it’s likely to be a mixture of experienced county staff and members of the public. Paula Cohen is a member of the League of Women Voters, which is working to make sure the required public meetings are actually accessible to people with varying work schedules and linguistic backgrounds. She acknowledges that everything is pretty undecided right now, since the census numbers aren’t in yet, the board has not yet acted, and there is still some caution about having in-person meetings. The League of Women Voters’ position on redistricting includes protection from diluting the voting strength of a racial or linguistic minority and not allowing the goal of protecting incumbents or preferential treatment of one political party. You can find out more at their website, www.lwvmendo.org. The organization is focusing on redistricting at the local and national levels, and is open to everyone.
June 30, 2021 — Summer steelhead have been listed as endangered under the state endangered species act, which some conservationists believe will ease the way to seeking protections for them. Summer steelhead have a different life cycle from their winter-run cousins, and a differentiating genetic marker on one chromosome. Samantha Kannry is a fisheries ecologist who has been studying them in the van Duzen, a major tributary of the Eel River, since 2010. She recently published her masters thesis, “On the Ecology and Distribution of Steelhead in the Eel River,” in the Journal of Heredity, with the Oxford University Press. She knows the nuances of fish populations, but she’s also moved by the joy of swimming with both varieties of steelhead.
June 29, 2021 — Live in-person theater was one of many enjoyments that was impossible during the pandemic. Local venues did what they could with virtual fare, but this Friday night, the Willits Community Theatre is reopening its physical, non-virtual doors to an in-the-flesh audience who will file in and take their seats as the lights go down. “The Viewing Room” is a comedy that involves a dysfunctional family, a funeral, and improbable second chances. Mathew Caine directed the play, which was written by Mark Smith and has played elsewhere in California, as well as Australia. We’ll hear from Caine and Jeff Shipp, who plays the angst-ridden son of a patriarch who rises from the dead to make amends with his family.
June 25, 2021 — This week, the Board of Supervisors discussed how to include members of the public in an upcoming effort to redraw the district boundaries after receiving data from the 2020 census. The Board also heard an appeal from an applicant who claimed to be “astounded and appalled” by an allegedly racist comment delivered during a meeting of the Archaeological Commission.
June 24, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors discussed cannabis and water at this week’s meeting.
June 23, 2021--Myles Anderson is the owner of Anderson Logging, the logging company working on the controversial Timber Harvest Plan in Jackson State Forest known as Caspar 500. Anderson’s crews began cutting in the area on June 10, but they have been slowed or stopped every day by protestors. On Saturday, June 19, the logging company owner decided to take a page from the forest activists, calling for his own protest in Jackson State Forest. He and several dozen of his employees and supporters gathered at the entrance to Jackson State in Caspar, California, and held their own blockade.
June 21, 2021 — As the region heads into a dry spell expected to rival the drought of 1977, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has approved a much-reduced flow of water to Lake Mendocino and Potter Valley. The lake and the Potter Valley Irrigation District have relied heavily on water from the East Branch of the Russian River from the Eel River via the Potter Valley Water Project, which includes Scott Dam and Lake Pillsbury behind it. The project is still owned and operated by PG&E, which recently requested authorization to reduce the flows to the East Branch from 25 cubic feet per second to five. The company has asked for the variance to end with Lake Pillsbury’s storage exceeds 36,000 acre-feet in October or is superseded by another variance. Last week, Lake Pillsbury was at just a little over 42% of target storage for this time of year , according to Sonoma Water. Janet Pauli, of the Potter Valley Irrigation District, says this has hit the small agricultural community hard. She spoke with kzyx on Friday afternoon, as temperatures climbed to 108 degrees.
June 18, 2021 — Last month, PG&E cleared the vegetation on either side of its transmission lines for about two miles along Road A in Redwood Valley, from its substation to Highway 20. The clear cut area is up to 80 feet wide in some places, and traverses steep slopes and narrow canyons. The work is in a public utility easement outside the coastal zone, and is exempt from county review, according to Planning and Building Services. PG&E spokeswoman Deanna Contreras said in an email that certified arborists communicated with every landowner along the line about the work, which she said did not affect old erosion caused by concentrated water from driveways and ditches. She did not respond to a question about how that assessment was made. Also, arborists are not trained to the level of registered professional foresters. The company plans to mitigate the erosion with straw, waddles, and water bars. Most of the property owners did not agree to the use of herbicides, so the remaining stumps are expected to stabilize the soil. Contreras added that, “Fuel breaks created along transmission lines before and during active wildfires have been instrumental in preventing the advancement of wildfires throughout the state.” But Nancy Macy and Jeanne Wetzel Chinn disagree. They’re members of the Sierra Club’s utility wildfire prevention task force and two of the authors of a white paper on the harmful effects of PG&E’s tree removal practices. They say there are readily available technological fixes that would keep the trees in the ground, sequestering carbon and providing habitat for wildlife.
June 17, 2021 — Lake Mendocino’s supply of water from the Eel River is likely to dry up sometime this summer, due to flows being reduced to a fifth of what they were when conditions were dry rather than critical. The lake receives regular infusions of water from the east branch of the Russian River through the Eel River via the Potter Valley Project. The Project is still owned and operated by PG&E, though a regional consortium is working to take it over when the license expires next year. The two-basin solution, a post-PG&E proposal brokered by Congressman Jared Huffman, includes the removal of Scott Dam. In April, PG&E requested a flow variance from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, to preserve storage capacity in Lake Pillsbury, the reservoir behind Scott Dam. According to FERC documents, the company proposed “to reduce minimum flow releases to the East Branch Russian River from...25 cubic feet per second to...five.” The company also asked the Commission to cut its release to the Potter Valley Irrigation District in half, from fifty cubic feet per second to 25. The temporary variance request has been approved, until June 21, though it could be extended to become an actual variance. The deadline for public comment has passed. Alicia Hamann is the executive director of Friends of the Eel River, which has long advocated for the removal of the entire Potter Valley Project. Although the current variance request hinges on Lake Pillsbury and the construction of Scott Dam, events may have been set in motion back in March, when the Friends challenged conditions at Cape Horn Dam.
June 16, 2021 — Logging continues in the Jackson Demonstration State Forest, in close proximity to activists trying to prevent it. The site, Capar 500 is one of six timber harvest plans being carried out by CalFire. Reached by phone yesterday, Kevin Conway, Cal Fire State Forests Program Director, said he couldn’t comment. Tree sitters with the Mama Tree network took up residence in two old-growth redwoods, dubbed the Mama and Papa trees, in April. Since logging began last Thursday, there have also been protests in the forest. Wagner insists that activists are not trespassing, since the forest is public. And she thinks the management plan is highly flawed. Wagner has been conducting non-violent trainings for protestors, who have been gathering at the kiosk every morning, starting at 4am.
June 15, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors agreed to move ahead with a multi-department plan to enforce cannabis codes, involving aerial surveillance and more staff. The plan is based on the Humboldt County model, which relies heavily on satellite imagery and fines and liens to achieve compliance. Another big change is that enforcement will be proactive as well as complaint based. The estimate for the program’s cost for this fiscal year is a little over one and a half million dollars. Code enforcement supervisor John Burkes estimates that the program will take three to five years to implement. The start date is uncertain, since many of the positions called for in the plan do not yet exist on the county’s registers. That means that negotiations with labor unions still have to take place, so the suggested salaries are rough estimates at this point. But supervisors agreed to start by hiring two low-level code enforcement officers, and take steps to request assistance from the state.
June 14, 2021 — With a looming drought and the high likelihood of emergency curtailment regulations on the Russian River, local agencies are encouraging water conservation. On Saturday, anyone pulling up to the stop signs at the Redwood Valley Grange or Club Calpella could expect to receive a bucket full of drought swag. We’ll hear about the dire situation for the fisheries, how the Calpella Water District is preparing for the drought, and go through the swag for water-saving tips.
June 11, 2021 — With the drought declaration that started in the dry bed of Lake Mendocino, the county has revived its water agency with $50,000 and the hope of further grant funding to come up with water security plans and ways to pay for them. The agency is headed up by Josh Metz, a senior advisor with a firm called Regional Government Services. Helistmmmed the main areas for the agency, starting with identifying the gravest needs, assessing the economic and health impacts of the drought, and working closely with the Resource Conservation District and local government to identify key projects. The State Water Resources Control Board is meeting Tuesday to consider proposed emergency regulations. If adopted, these would establish when to curtail diversions from the Russian River, according to a system of water availability and water rights. Phil WIlliams, a water attorney who works with the City of Ukiah, says the city has pre and post 1914 water rights. The emergency regulations have not yet been approved, but they are causing a level of controversy that is entirely expected.
June 10, 2021 — Logging started early this morning in the Jackson Demonstration State Forest, in spite of the efforts of local tribal and environmental groups that believe the trees are more valuable standing. But CalFire is moving ahead with its timber harvest plan in Caspar 500, one of six plans the agency intends to move forward with. Tree sitter Alder was high up in the now-iconic Mama Tree when logging trucks arrived.
June 10, 2021 — As the Board of Supervisors prepares to adopt an unpopular cannabis cultivation ordinance, two separate groups are planning referenda to repeal or amend the final product. One group is gathering signatures to repeal the whole thing. Another group wants to strike the ten percent provision, and follow up with negotiations for further amendments, or, failing that, a citizens’ initiative. The current version of the ordinance that will come back before the board by the end of the month would allow cultivation on ten percent of ag and rangeland parcels over ten acres.
Initially, Charles Sargenti of Covelo was planning to stay out of it. But then he said it was causing distress at a meeting of the Round Valley Municipal Advisory Council, where he serves as secretary. He teamed up with Jim Shields of Laytonville, editor of The Observer and a longtime supes watcher, to launch a referendum effort.
June 9, 2021 — A proposed development in the Western Hills of Ukiah has neighbors fuming as the city takes steps to acquire and annex about 700 acres off of Redwood Avenue, in the headwaters of Doolan Creek. The property currently belongs to David Hull, who gave the city 188 acres adjacent to the proposed project parcels late last year. The city wants to break 54 acres into seven lots for single family residential parcels, where owners would be allowed to build one main house and one additional dwelling unit each. According to city documents, no purchasers have been identified and the timing of the sale and development of the properties is unknown. The remaining 640 acres would be rezoned public facilities, which is the same designation used for city parks. The property is still on county land, and the project would need to go through Ukiah’s planning commission and City Council before the city could even start the annexation process, which could take a year. But last month, when the item was scheduled to come before the planning commission, thirty-eight letters came in, only three of them supporting the project. A few others, from agency representatives, offered analyses of what would be needed to carry out the proposal, but most expressed opposition on the grounds of increased traffic, fire risk, and impacts to wildlife. Ted Aff is a retired Oakland firefighter who remembers fighting the Oakland Hills firestorm of 1991, before wind-driven blazes that jumped over freeways had become a way of life in California. Aff and other members of the Firesafe Council are worried because the homes would be on the wrong side of a firebreak meant to protect the city from fires coming in from the west. But Maya Simerson, a project administrator in the city manager’s office, says that’s been vetted with CalFire, the Ukiah Valley Fire Authority, and the city fire marshall. She also said that homeowners would have to maintain the properties according to fire code and the rules of a homeowners association. Retired CalFire battalion chief Michael Maynard, who was responsible for local fuel reduction efforts in the last ten years, wrote a letter saying he thinks acquiring the Hull Properties would reduce the risk of catastrophic fire in the Ukiah Valley. Aff said he and the retired chief have “a different assessment” of the situation, adding that he does “not underestimate the lethality of fire.” Another supportive letter was from a real estate agent who reminded the commission that the hospital is always trying to recruit doctors who go to “other areas with a larger inventory of homes.” An opposing letter writer declared that single-family homes are “so last century.” And Aff thinks a lot of work is going into building a few homes for rich people. “The views are spectacular,” he said. “Oddly enough, they characterize these properties as moderate income properties. So either their scale of what moderate income is, is far different than mine, or they're downplaying the value in order to fit in with the city’s general plan, which requires a certain number of moderate income houses.” Simerson says she thinks the developer would build on the land even if it stayed in the county, and the city didn’t get involved; and that the city is the best agency to take the lead in the project.
June 8, 2021 — As the region heads into a massive drought and the start of fire season, there are some signs of optimism about humanity’s ability to reverse some of the damage it’s done. Gerald “Bam” Britton, a senior at Round Valley High School in Covelo, recently made a film with a title that sounds like a line from a poem about nature. From River to Ridge and From Fish to Fire is a series of interviews with scientists and Tribal elders about the relationship between fire and water, different trees on the landscape, and the now-scant runs of salmon and steelhead in the Eel. Britton won an internship from the Public Broadcasting Service through KEET TV in Eureka earlier this year, and worked with the Eel River Recovery Project to meet up with interviewees in the field. Last week, he was featured on the PBS Student Media Showcase for his work about cultural response to climate change. Britton is headed off to Northwest Indian College in Washington to major in Native Environmental Science. He got a head start on that, in his interview with Vernon “Woods” Wilson, a former Cahto Tribal chair and champion of controlled burns. Wilson explained how fir trees in the lower Tenmile Creek, which are no longer controlled by prescribed burns, suck up huge amounts of water and then choke out the oaks, which are a keystone species.
June 7, 2021 — On Wednesday, the Board of Supervisors voted 4-1, with John Haschak dissenting, to waive the first reading of a cannabis cultivation ordinance which, if it becomes law, will allow grows of up to ten percent on ag and rangeland parcels over ten acres. Ellen Drell is working with a citizens group called Save Our Water, Wildlife, and Way of Life to repeal the ordinance. Most of the supervisors want to pass the ordinance before June 30, because after that, the county will be required to conduct an environmental impact review, which they fear would be costly and time-consuming. But Kate Marienchild, who wrote Secrets of the Oak Woodlands: Plants and Animals Among California’s Oaks, thinks an EIR is the right thing to do.
June 4, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 to adopt chapter 22.18, the phase III cannabis cultivation ordinance that will allow cultivation on up to 10% of ag or rangeland parcels that are ten acres or larger. They also directed staff to come back with another ordinance this summer that will allow growers in those zones to phase in to larger operations. The board was struggling to pass the ordinance before June 30. After that, the state requires local jurisdictions to conduct what supervisors fear would be a costly and time consuming environmental impact review. But the last time the ordinance came before the Planning Commission, that body recommended a ten percent expansion with a 2-acre cap. If the board changed the commission’s recommendations too much, the ordinance would have needed another round of review by both bodies, which would probably take longer than a month. Most of the board believes an EIR would take years, during which time no one in the county would get a state license and progress toward legal cultivation would come to a halt. The possibility of expansion has spurred preparations for a referendum to repeal the ordinance…
June 3, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors took a look at tax relief options for small cannabis farmers, with an eye toward passing the tax burden on to farms larger than 10,000 square feet yesterday. And law enforcement critic David Ayster called in to critique the Board and the Sheriff for the quality of their discourse during last month’s discussion about the proposed audit. Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren called in to tell the board that Mendocino County’s yellow tier status is being adjudicated, due to some unfavorable metrics.
June 3, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors is holding a special meeting today to decide on a new cannabis cultivation ordinance, which some are calling Phase III and others are referring to as 2218, after the new chapter that will enter the county code if the supervisors pass the proposed ordinance. The current ordinance, 10A17, was crafted before the state developed its own regulations. The two systems are not compatible, and the current environmental mitigations were developed specifically for the now misfit ordinance. Endless negotiations between the county and state agencies have taken place. Meanwhile, many applicants for the early 10A17 program have languished. Quite a few of them don’t even have the permit that would bring them one step closer to the state annual license they’ll need to be legal by the end of the year. At an informational meeting last night, Mendocino County cannabis program manager Kristin Nevedal provided the numbers of how many applicants there are, and what it took to issue three more permits.
May 28, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors declined to conduct a proposed audit of the sheriff’s department this week, opting instead to hold a workshop where the sheriff and the auditor will answer questions.
May 25, 2021 — Public Health Officer Andy Coren told the Board of Supervisors today that the county is in a covid-19 surge. Though there are no outbreaks in the county at this time, Coren expects the county to be demoted to the orange tier by June 2.
May 25, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously yesterday to use Measure B funds for a psychiatric health facility, or puff, and to conduct a study on the feasibility of locating it on Whitmore Lane, in the unincorporated fifth district portion of south Ukiah. The county purchased the 26,601 square foot building with two point two million dollars of CARES Act federal funding last August. Repairing the roof appeared on an original document with suggestions for how to use the funds from the PG&E settlement, though now the possibility of a partial demolition is under consideration. CEO Carmel Angelo told the board that the Ranch Proposal, for the county to buy a rural parcel of land and build a multi-purpose mental health care facility, is no longer being pursued. Operators for the county’s psychiatric health facilities are emerging. The Board of Supervisors has approved a contract with Redwood Community Services to run the critical residential treatment facility that’s being built on Orchard Avenue in Ukiah. It’s expected to be up and running in November. Dr. Jenine Miller, the head of the county’s Behavioral Health and Recovery Services Department, wrote in a letter to the board that Telecare Corporation, an Alameda-based mental healthcare organization, had received a conditional award letter to operate the puff. Telecare, according to the letter, is the largest provider of county contracted PHF services in California, with 122 beds. In a letter to the board, Miller cited operating costs of between $5.7 and $7 million a year, with Medi-Cal, Medicare, realignment, Measure B, and private insurance as funding sources. She wrote that Lake County had expressed an interest in using the facility, which would reduce operating costs. She added that projected costs vary widely due to Medi-Cal payment regulations. Early in its tenure, the Measure B Citizens Oversight Commission hired Lee Kemper to conduct a study and write a report about mental health needs in Mendocino County. Ros Liberty, who serves on the Commission, wondered about the long term return on the investment in a PHF. He said that, according to the Kemper report, the county could expect to see a reduction of about 50% in the need for a PHF, provided there were more services available to people in the early stages of a mental health crisis. “I don’t think this conversation is complete without at least looking at the possibility that maybe, instead of a PHF, we spend more money on advanced services before people get into that kind of crisis, per Kemper report recommendation,” he suggested. And Jan McGourty, a former member of the Commission, called in to urge the board to figure out exactly what kind of PHF, and what kind of services, they want. If the facility ends up at Whitmore Lane, the building will have to garner a higher rating than it currently has with OSHPD, the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, the agency that approves hospital expansions and building plans and analyzes California’s healthcare infrastructure, according the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism. As the meeting adjourned with unanimous direction to conduct a feasibility study on locating the puff at Whitmore Lane, Angelo added that she would include regular updates in her CEO report.
May 24, 2021 — Supervisor John Haschak met virtually with a friendly crowd at a town hall organized by Willits Mayor Madge Strong and the Willits Economic Localization group. Residents talked about water, fire, money, cannabis, and public safety. Haschak, who is on a drought ad hoc committee, said the county is considering asking residents for a 20% voluntary reduction in water usage. He didn’t have exact numbers for emergency drought funding from the state, but he said projects that are well planned and ready to go would be more likely to get the money when it comes. One woman from Laytonville said her well has already gone dry, which she attributes to large pot grows in her neighborhood. Haschak also touched on the status of the public safety advisory committee, in response to a question about a presentation that South Coast Organizing for Radical Equity is scheduled to make to the board on Tuesday, encouraging an audit of the sheriff’s office. But it was the proposed cannabis ordinance that drew the most comment. Haschak has been the lone dissenting vote on the proposal, which has been through the planning commission twice and is expected to come back to the board on June second. Organizers around the county are preparing to get a referendum on the ballot to repeal the ordinance, in anticipation of its approval. The first training in gathering signatures was yesterday, and more are scheduled throughout the week. Charles Sargenti had been organizing an effort for another referendum that would have only called for a partial repeal. Late last month, on the day the board sent the proposed ordinance back to the planning commission, supporters of a referendum held a rally outside the empty board chambers. Haschak took a question from kzyx about when the meetings will be open to in-person participation again. Reportedly, the board chambers are currently being renovated, though county staff can be seen at the front of the room during meetings. Cannabis activist Paul Hansbury is familiar with difficulties posed by permits. “It’s interesting that after a year and a half of lockdown and quarantine, that they’re getting around to renovations in the chambers,” he remarked, to laughter. “Unless they had to get a building permit.”
In this extended interview with Mendocino County cannabis program manager Kristin Nevedal, we’ll hear about how the county will make use of a multi-million dollar windfall — if the Legislature approves Governor Gavin Newsom’s proposal to allocate $100 million to bringing provisional license holders through the system to annual state licensure. Mendocino county’s allotment would be $18,084,837, based on the anticipated cost of bringing 1149 locally authorized growers into full compliance with CEQA.
May 21, 2021 — The county is anticipating big changes around cannabis between now and the end of June. Chapter 22.18, the proposed new county cultivation ordinance, has gone through two rounds of review by the Planning Commission and is due before the Board of Supervisors again soon. Hovering over that process is the possibility of a referendum, if enough voters essentially recall the ordinance. More recently, the governor proposed to spend $100 million statewide to help growers with provisional licenses get through the system and obtain annual state licenses. The legislature will decide on the proposed budget at the end of June. If they accept the governor’s proposal, Mendocino County could receive more than $18 million to get its licensing program in order. KZYX spoke with Mendocino County cannabis program manager Kristin Nevedal Thursday, shortly after she received a briefing about the funding.
May 19, 2021 — The pandemic has been an economic catastrophe as well as a health disaster. In Mendocino County, where 98% of the businesses are small, the blows have kept landing. Now a group representing a variety of local interests has assembled economic data and a plan they think will help the county climb out of a slump following multiple disasters and long-term stagnation. A little over a year ago, the county received a grant from the Economic Development Department to come up with resiliency strategies after the fires. West Business Development Center contracted with the county, and assembled a group that is now called MOVE2030, to do the research and report back with ideas. Executive Director Maryann Petrillo says the time is now. Paul Garza, who assembled much of the data for the team’s analysis, said that even before the most recent crises, the county was in a weak financial position. The average annual income in Mendocino County is $20,000 below the national average. But that doesn’t mean the cost of living is commensurate with low wages. A real living wage for a local family of four would be $27 an hour, plus benefits. The group has a few requests for the Board of Supervisors. They want ordinances that will simplify licensing and permitting requirements. And they want an employee of the county to help bring together local economic and educational players to form a business hub where entities like non-profits and chambers of commerce could coordinate their approach. And Garza envisions a grant writing clearinghouse, because there have been instances where two organizations with a similar mission each assumed the other was applying for a particular grant, so neither of them did so. We’ll hear about the connection between local private industry, non-profits, and what MOVE2030 wants from the Board of Supervisors.
May 18, 2021--Annie Esposito reports on a Sunrise Ceremony this weekend, organized by Clayton Duncan of Robinson Rancheria, to remember the Massacre of 400 Indigenous Pomo people on May 15, 2850 by the US Calvary. Story produced by Alicia Bales for KZYX.
May 17, 2021 — Supervisors Glenn McGourty and Maureen Mulheren held a community meeting with residents of Potter Valley on Saturday morning, to talk about what they’d like from the $22 million PG&E settlement for damage caused by the 2017 firestorm.
May 13, 2021 — Last night’s meeting of the Redwood Valley Municipal Advisory Council hinged on the familiar topics of cannabis enforcement, water, and how to spend the $22 million PG&E settlement.
May 12, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors heard initial plans for organizing an enhanced cannabis enforcement program yesterday. And fire departments that fought the fire in 2017, as well as the Redwood Valley County Water Agency, made the case for why they think they should get a share of the $22 million PG&E settlement.
Little River, 5/11/21 - Reps. Jared Huffman, Mike Thompson, and other notable North Coast water managers and politicians gathered at a virtual summit yesterday morning to discuss the severe drought facing the North Coast and the state. No new policies were announced, but Senator Mike McGuire announced that the state senate is moving on a $3.4 billion drought relief package and Huffman listened to water leaders who made a resounding and sometimes plaintive call for state and federal money to weather this year's water crisis and prepare for the future.
May 10, 2021 — There was dancing in the streets in Ukiah, as the first First Friday since the pandemic got underway. Postcards from Mecca lined the walls of the Grace Hudson Museum, offering glimpses of adventure and associations with lengthy travails in the desert. Masked art lovers flocked cautiously to the Corner Gallery.
May 7, 2021 — The Planning Commission hammered out further refinements to the proposed cannabis cultivation ordinance at a meeting that ended at a civilized hour yesterday. The Board of Supervisors is anxious to pass a phase III ordinance before June 30, after which the state will require environmental review that county counsel estimates could take three to five years. But the board made significant enough changes to the planning commission’s original suggestions that the document needed another round trip through the deliberating bodies. The least popular proposed amendment is one that would allow growers in agland and rangeland to grow cannabis on up to 10% of their parcel size, provided there’s enough water and that the land has been previously used for agriculture. Already, citizens’ groups are preparing to gather signatures for two referenda that would repeal all or part of whatever ordinance the board eventually passes. One letter-writer promised the Commission that she intends to work every day on the referendum if commissioners support the ordinance as presented by the Board of Supervisors.
May 5, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors held its third quarter budget workshop yesterday and heard a covid briefing from public health officer Dr. Andy Coren. Though the forecast for non-departmental revenues, mostly from taxes, is over $80 million, the board is bracing for several possible blows, including inflation, the loss of cannabis taxes, and the as-yet unknown fiscal impacts of drought. And, although the county’s positive test numbers are down, so are the numbers of people getting tested. There’s still a vaccination gap between whites and Hispanics, with 57% of the Caucasian population vaccinated and only 40% of Hispanic people. The numbers do not reflect shots administered by Indian Health Services, VA, or pharmacies. And Coren said more variants have turned up in the county, including the case of the UK variant reported on Friday.
May 4, 2021 — In the last few hours of a meeting that lasted for three days, the Board of Supervisors hammered out amendments to a cannabis facilities ordinance that clarified farmers markets, cannabis tours, and invited a few legal threats. The cannabis cultivation amendments typically draw ore than four hundred letters to the Board of Supevisors or the Planning Commission, and hours of public comment. The facilities amendments brought in fifteen letters and about a dozen comments, but they were no less contentious.
The town of Mendocino is already at a stage three water shortage and eyeing a stage four, which would trigger mandatory 40% reductions in water allotments for all users, according to district superintendent Ryan Rhoades. The Mendocino Community Services District Board is holding a meeting May 3, at which they are expected to raise the drought level.
This year, the town of Mendocino received less than half of their average rainfall — only around 18 inches. Usually, closer to 40 inches of rainfall. To make matters worse, this is the second dry year in a row for Mendocino, and all of California. Last year, the town of Mendocino recorded just over 20 inches of rainfall.
April 30, 2021 — The county moved into the yellow tier this week, which means movie theaters can open with 50% maximum capacity, more if everyone can prove they’ve been vaccinated or have a recent negative test. That’s just in time for the independently owned Noyo Theatre in Willits, which is reopening May 4, the 81st anniversary of its premiere. Owners Lois and Jeff Hoover are history buffs and movie lovers. To them, the two are inextricable. We’ll hear about how the theater has come through history and current events, and how the Hoovers plan to keep it going into the future.
April 28 — The Board of Supervisors sent recommendations for a reworked cannabis cultivation ordinance back to the Planning Commission for another round of review. Yesterday’s nine and a half hour long meeting was held after an early-morning rally protesting the expansion of cannabis grows into rangeland during a drought. In spite of assurances that no new permits will be granted without water, deliberations were dogged by talk of a referendum that would undo the ordinance. Social media comments as the meeting was underway revolved largely around the lack of water and calls to recall the supervisors. At the same time, the current phase I ordinance is only open to growers who have already proven to their local government that they were committing the felony of cultivating a schedule 1 narcotic prior to 2016. The lack of enforcement is one of the things that led Andrew Hilkey, of the Water Equity Group in Willits, to carry a sign outside the empty board chambers. Ellen Drell, of the Willits Environmental Center, is already thinking about what it would take to carry out a referendum. But the board is also up against pressure to comply with state law. County counsel Christian Curtis cautioned that drafting an entirely new ordinance would require a years-long process of environmental review. And the current ordinance is not immune to legal challenges. The board is counting on a separate effort to beef up enforcement following the Humboldt County model, using real time aerial surveillance, large fines and property liens to discourage illegal grows. Most cultivation in the county is illegal. And, according to County Counsel Christian Curtis, without amending the ordinance, that could soon include cultivation that’s currently legal.
April 26, 2021 — Black Lives Matter activists rallied in front of the Ukiah courthouse Saturday to demand police accountability after the beating of Gerardo Magdaleno and to request an audit of the sheriff’s department. Troyle Tognoli is a local Black Lives Matter organizer. She is also a member of Ukiah’s recently formed Equity and Diversity committee, which is meeting this Wednesday. The Ukiah Police Department has not released the names of the officers involved in the Magdaleno beating , though according to police logs, Saul Perez, the responding officer, continues to respond to calls. Tognoli talked about the petition, which declares that “the undersigned are horrified at the video of Ukiah Police Department officers beating a naked man in a state of mental health crisis.” The petition addresses the police statement, which uses a euphemism to describe two officers simultaneously punching Magdaleno in the head, by adding, “We do not accept the “distraction strikes” claim, and this situation was dangerously escalated by the officers themselves.” We’ll hear from young rally-goers and longtime activists about what’s important to them, and what they’d like to see next.
April 23, 2021 — A small homeless encampment on the south end of Ukiah was closed down earlier this week. Shortly after 8am on Tuesday, city workers began removing items that had been left behind by six to ten residents, some of whom have been living there since “Tent City” off Hastings Avenue was cleared out in June. Notices were stapled to nearby trees and utility poles by Friday, announcing that the property along the railroad tracks from Airport Road to Norgard Lane would be cleared on April 20th. The city has an easement alongside the tracks, which is part of long-terms plans for the Great Redwood Trail.
It’s no secret that our county, along with the entire state, is in a drought. Lake Mendocino is at a historic low, Fort Bragg’s main source of water is flowing at half its normal level, and Ukiah water manager reckons that parts of the Russian River may run dry towards the end of the drought year. But what will that mean for Mendocino County residents?
April 21, 2021 — A day after the board of supervisors declared a state of emergency due to drought, Governor Gavin Newsom stood at the bottom of Lake Mendocino and signed a proclamation declaring a drought emergency in Mendocino and Sonoma counties. There was very little moisture in the basin of the lake this afternoon, a few hundred feet from the south boat ramp where dignitaries suffered in dark clothes and black shoes and a few dispirited geese nibbled on the parched grass. At one point, the breeze picked up a cloud of dust that swirled in front of the governor. Newsom said his administration has been preparing for the drought for months. None of the strategies involve water mandates, though Wade Crowfoot, Secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency, said water rights could be curtailed.
April 21, 2021 — At an inconclusive eleven and a half hour meeting this week, the Board of Supervisors agreed 4-1 to allow cannabis expansion on parcels meeting a narrowly defined set of requirements. And, with the drought expected to be in full swing by the time the season begins, growers under the new ordinance will not be getting plants in the ground this year. The ordinance was not fully hammered out on Monday night. Supervisors heard more than six hours of public comment and ended the meeting after dinner by going over a ten-point memo submitted by Supervisor Glenn McGourty. Most of the recommendations by the Planning Commission were left for another meeting next week, when the board will also hold a hearing on cannabis facilities. On Monday, supervisors tackled the issue that’s come to define the phase III debate in the final hour of the meeting. Prior to the meeting, local environmentalists and Supervisor John Haschak sponsored a poster that flew around the internet, urging residents to “say no to big grow” and stating that the proposed land use ordinance “puts profits over people, wildlife, public safety and the environment.” Last week, scientists from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said that site-specific review does not begin to address the cumulative impacts of cannabis grows. But photos accompanying the scientific presentation showed egregious violations of any ordinance. Supervisors resolved to address growing frustration with the lack of enforcement by directing staff to write a new enforcement procedure in line with that of Humboldt County, which relies on real-time aerial surveillance, hefty fines, and property liens. Still, a lack of confidence in the county’s ability to carry out a detailed policy characterized much of this week’s debate. Callers invoked the failure of Measure AF, the so-called heritage initiative of 2016, and some floated the possibility of another initiative to overturn the supervisors’ decision if it was unpopular. And employees of at least one legal cannabis company called in during working hours to urge the board to allow the 10% expansion, praising their employer for treating them fairly and paying them well.
April 19, 2021 — Today, about seventy people who have been homeless or at high risk for it are moving into Live Oak Apartments, a former Best Western Inn in Ukiah. The building is part of the state’s Project Homekey initiative. Last year, counties got money specifically to buy lodging establishments and convert them into permanent housing for vulnerable populations. Mendocino County received $9.6 million, and has spent most of the time since purchasing the building installing kitchenettes and remodeling common areas. The priorities have been seniors, veterans, families with kids, and people who are especially susceptible to a bad outcome if they get covid-19. One 70-year-old wheelchair-bound tenant has been living in a car for a year. Another elderly tenant’s story is largely unknown due to severe short-term memory loss. Megan van Sant, a senior program manager with the county’s Health and Human Services Agency, has been able to unravel that this tenant does have a work history and therefore access to social security benefits, but has no ID, no bank cards, and no memory of where their money is. Van Sant gave a tour of the building last week, before anyone had moved any of their things into the rooms. Beds were stripped, and a few light fixtures were laid out on countertops, prior to being installed. Some of the rooms had multiple sinks, to satisfy funding requirements about kitchenettes and facilities. There will be 25 children in the building, including one with special needs, whose single parent had to stop working when school closed. But sometimes it’s just bad credit that makes it hard to get ahead. Four of the living units are double rooms, to accommodate families with several children. Another single parent is blind and will have to seek regular treatments at the dialysis center, which is a block away in a neighborhood shopping complex. As of last week, 37 households had been accepted into the program. Some of those households consist of one person, while others are multigenerational families. Ten of the rooms will be empty until they’re equipped with kitchenettes. The funding to keep the building staffed and maintained is coming from a variety of social services programs. Housing vouchers will pay for rooms with kitchenettes, and veterans typically get benefits through HUD-Vash, a federal housing program. Some tenants are getting help from CalWorks, some have social security or retirement benefits, and some of them have jobs. Whatever their source of income, they have committed to paying 30% of it toward housing here. And there are rapid rehousing grants that are available for the first few months after tenants move in. Sex offenders, people with a recent felony history, and arsonists cannot be housed here, even one person whom van Sant referred to as “a mild arsonist.” Also, it’s against the law to discriminate against people based on where they are from, so it would be illegal to offer services only to people who satisfy some criteria of being local. However, van Sant said that after selecting applicants without knowing where they were from, only one was from out of the county. Still, there’s only so much that can be done with one project, even with a multimillion dollar windfall from the state. “And again, we prioritized veterans, seniors, families with children. We never even had the opportunity to look at anybody who didn’t fit one of those categories. Because the demand was so high,” van Sant recalled. “And frankly, there are individuals who have a level of care that exceeds what we can provide in this building. So there are homeless individuals who have very complicated needs, and we were very clear that’s not a level of care that we can provide here.”
April 16, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors decided this week to follow Humboldt County’s approach to code enforcement against cannabis scofflaws, which includes real time aerial surveillance, hefty fines, and property liens. And scientists with the California Dept of Fish and Wildlife told the board that the proposed cannabis cultivation ordinance to replace Phase III does not adequately address the cumulative impacts that cannabis grows have on water bodies and habitat loss. On the same day the board heard from water managers around the county about the severity of the current drought, Angela Liebenberg, a CDFW environmental scientist specializing in cannabis enforcement, offered an analysis of the proposed ordinance.
April 16, 2021 — Redwood Valley residents met with county supervisors this week to start on a wish list for community needs that could be funded with some of the $22 million settlement from PG&E. Suggestions ranged from new fire trucks to improvements on the grange, which served as a community hub during the 2017 firestorm. And, with roughly 200 agricultural water connections getting shut off in a few days, fire hydrants and water security were top of mind. The board has received the first formal presentations from entities making the case for some of the money, but has not laid out any parameters or priorities as to how the funds will be distributed.
LITTLE RIVER, 4/15/21 - Inland reservoirs have hit historic lows, the coast is preparing to rely on trucking water in from out of town, and dry, hot weather is on the horizon. On Monday, First District County Supervisor Glen McGourty held a "water workshop," where water leaders from around the region came together to discuss the drought and how it should be handled.
April 14, 2021 — Supervisor Glenn McGourty organized a water informational session at this week’s board of Supervisors meeting, calling on the board to come up with an emergency response to the drought. With Lake Mendocino lower than it’s ever been, Redwood Valley Water District is shutting off irrigation services to its 200 agricultural customers on April 19. Jared Walker, the district general manager, is expecting to reduce water to fifty gallons per person per day for critical public health and safety water use only. Don Seymour, a principal engineer with Sonoma County Water Agency, said the current drought is set to surpass 1976-77 as the "drought of record." Sean White, the director of water and sewer for the City of Ukiah, says the city plans to rely heavily on groundwater and produce about a thousand acre feet from a recycled water system that was completed in 2019. Water is tight on the coast, too. Fort Bragg received just 17 inches of rain this year, a little over a third of its average annual precipitation. John Smith, the city’s director of public works, says the local water source is not as easily measured as Lake Mendocino. The Mendocino County Resource Conservation District is kicking off a campaign to save water, but McGourty brought up a lot of unanswered questions, including the need for a Board strategy to meet the crisis, when conservation should start, what the parameters should be, and how to regulate trucked water.
Supervisors did not vote on any of the proposals, though most of them got a nod from at least one member of the board. The next round of presentations is scheduled for May fourth. The Redwood Valley Municipal Advisory Council will discuss the settlement fund at its meeting this Wednesday at 5pm.
April 8, 2021 — Mendocino County’s two-year industrial hemp pilot program got started this week, with one participant, in District 3. The hemp will be grown for CBD, and is part of a study about how much water the crop requires. Elizabeth Garcia, with the County Agricultural Department, shares details in this interview.
April 7, 2021 — Joe Louis Wildman, a longtime union organizer and Democratic activist, died Sunday, not long after retiring. He was the Secretary Treasurer of the North Bay Labor Council, an SEIU representative, and a business agent with operating Engineers Local #3. He was also Treasurer for the Inland Mendocino Democratic Club, and the owner of the Sprinter van that served as the club’s mobile headquarters during the pandemic. Raul Gardeia is an organizer with SEIU Local 2015. He lost a valuable mentor, one who was steeped in the dynamics of rural politics and encouraged him to go to grad school to get a degree from the University of Massachusetts in union activism. “He was an incredible resource, someone full of so much knowledge and history of county politics, and the history of the Mendocino County labor movement. It’s not easy to find a lot of the information unless you find someone who lived it,” Gardenia says. “Joe was someone who had a lot of ideals without ideology.” Val Muchowski, a longtime Democratic activist, worked alongside Wildman for twenty years. “Joe started off as a Green, so we were kind of on different teams for a while,” she recalled. “But then he became a Democrat, and a very active Democrat. He worked for years as a labor representative, and he had a keen wit and a cutting humor, which made him very fun to work with.” She described him as “very effective,” and told a story about how Wildman decided to drum up some money for the Democratic Party by inviting Fiona Ma, the California State Treasurer, to an event at Black Oak Coffee in Ukiah. “I said, sure, let’s do it, if we can,” Muchowski said. “We raised $3,000 for Democrats at that time. That was pretty good, with less than 100 people in the room,” she concluded. Gardenia added that Wildman, who had been counting down the days to his retirement, spent more time than ever at the union hall as a volunteer. “In the last several weeks, I saw him more than I ever had before...I think he was doing more work as a volunteer, I saw him more after he decided he was no longer going to work.” Before he died, Wildman had a chance to work on a historic campaign to elect two Democratic senators in Georgia. On December 10, he talked to Annie Esposito and Steve Scalmanini for Corporations and Democracy, about driving the mobile headquarters to Atlanta. “You know, everyone acts like driving a long time is hard, but it’s no harder than sitting on your couch,” he told his hosts. “I put a lot of strain on my right ankle. That’s about it. Everything else is sitting in the chair, watching the states go by.” Gardeia says no one can fill Wildman’s shoes. “We’re going to have a recall election sometime later this year, and we’re not going to have that voice, grumbling about it but still doing the work, preventing bad stuff from happening in our state.” There will be a political rally supporting AB 1400, guaranteed healthcare for all on April 17, starting at noon in the Low Gap parking lot in Ukiah and wending its way to Alex Thomas Plaza. It’s what Wildman would have been working on now, and references to him are sure to abound. The Raging Grannies will sing “I dreamed I saw Joe Wildman,” and local democratic leaders will speak. A few weeks before he died, Wildman wrote a poem that now seems prophetic:
I am walking backward in time and slimming down, now wearing clothes that haven't fit in years. They are no more out of style now than they ever were. I am walking backward in time getting stronger with each step and closer to where we last diverged. I hope you'll join me now and walk me closer to when we met. To when I first walked you home. I am walking backward in time, but you cannot walk me back into the womb. You can, I hope, walk with me, back until I am no more. It is, I hope, your turn to walk with me the rest of the way. To walk me, slowly, all the way home.
April 7, 2021 — The family of Gerardo Magdaleno, the mentally ill man who was beaten by Ukiah police last week, is preparing to sue the city. Their lawyer, Isaak Schwaiger, is a civil rights attorney who specializes in police brutality cases. The case has not been filed yet, but Schwaiger says “It is primarily an excessive force lawsuit...but it also has a component that’s derived from the Americans with Disabilities Act.” Another claim will be inadequate training at the UPD for dealing with people having a mental health crisis. There will be a money damages claim, but Schwaiger also plans to ask for reform at the department. Ukiah Police Chief Justin Wyatt posted a brief statement on Facebook, but has not responded to requests for interviews or a press conference. The department issued a press release signed by a subordinate the day after the incident. It’s not Schwaiger’s first time in Ukiah. He also represents Christopher Rasku, who was beaten by former UPD sergeant Kevin Murray in 2018. Murray was fired last year after being charged by the District Attorney with sex crimes, burglary, and possession of methamphetamine. Schwaiger says Murray broke eight of Rasku’s ribs after forcibly entering his home. Murray was promoted to sergeant after the incident. “Not maybe the best candidate for sergeant that the department could have picked,” Schwaiger remarked. Rasku was charged with resisting arrest, but those charges were dropped after bystander video and body cam footage contradicted Murray’s account. Magdaleno is also facing felony charges of resisting or threatening an officer. “It’s practically guaranteed,” Schwaiger says. “Because of a court case from many years ago, Heck vs. Humphries, if a person is found guilty of resisting arrest, that can bar them from seeking justice in the civil courts for the use of excessive force. Police officers know this, and therefore when they use force on someone they arrest them for arresting. It’s their insurance policy so they don’t get sued.” Magdaleno’s case is a civil case, because only district attorneys, not private citizens, can bring criminal cases. The Rasku case is against Murray directly. The claim against the city was dismissed early in the litigation, but Schwaiger expects the matter to either go to trial or settle soon. Schwaiger plans to sue the officers involved in this case under fictitious names until their identities come out in discovery. “It’ll say John Doe #1 fired a Taser into a naked and defenseless man,” Schwaiger explained. “It’ll say John Doe #2 kicked the man in the head. And it’ll say John Doe #3 punched him about the head twelve times. And it will identify them like that, and once the case opens up, we will learn their true identities and amend the complaint to conform to that evidence.” Schwaiger, a wartime veteran of the Marine Corps, says “I see things that cops do on Main Street every single day that would have had marines court-martialed if they did it in Iraq. People talk about the militarization of the police. I almost wish they were more militarized, in the real sense of the word. Meaning that there was discipline, and accountability.”
April 5, 2021 — A little over a dozen people marched on Civic Center in Ukiah Saturday, calling for an end to police brutality and more mental health services in the wake of Gerardo Magdaleno’s beating at the hands of Ukiah police officers. On April first, Magdaleno, a schizophrenic bipolar man, took some non-prescription drugs after running out of his psychiatric medications. He was wandering nude on south state street when an encounter with Ukiah Police Officers escalated into officers tear-gassing, Tasing, kicking, and punching Magdaleno multiple times in the head. Videos began circulating online almost immediately. Magdelano was taken to jail after a medical clearance, but returned to the hospital the next morning. By Saturday night, he was at home with his family after his sister posted bail. He was charged with public intoxication, possession of drug paraphernalia, and felony resisting or threatening an officer. Early Saturday afternoon, protesters broke out signs similar to the ones they carried during last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death beneath the knee of now-former Minnneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. At the head of the procession in Ukiah was Josie Ann Zolata Batiste, expertly steering her daughter Odessa’s red wagon through the construction on State Street. “There’s no reason for violence, there’s no reason for two, three, four, five cops on one person,” she said. “I’m pretty much disgusted. And sad. It’s scary to have a daughter, it’s scary to be Latin...I love Ukiah, and I’ll never stop sticking up for Ukiah, but I feel like we’re spiraling out of control as well as the rest of the country.” Shy, who witnessed part of the incident, came from Philo to participate in the march. “I put it together once I saw the videos,” they said. “I thought perhaps he was sick because I saw the firefighter and thought that he was getting care and was concerned because of the amount of police cars, and seeing the report knew it was not care, it was violence.” A woman named Ashley wore a cap that said “You Are on Native Land” and carried a sign that said “Divest and Invest in Solutions.” She said she had a Native American uncle who was killed by San Diego police while having a mental health breakdown. “I think Ukiah police could adopt, like my sign says, a crisis response team made up of mental health professionals to respond to these types of mental health crises that we saw on the videos.” Jordan Uggla, too, wants more mental health resources. In early September of last year, the Board of Supervisors approved a recommendation by the Measure B Citizens Oversight Committee to use Measure B money to fund mobile outreach teams that would pair psychiatric workers with sheriff’s deputies. Thursday’s incident took place on the border of the city and county jurisdictions. “I would be happy to pay more taxes to fund support for marginalized people, for disabled people, for mental health services,” he said; “and I’m not very happy that my taxes money is going to pay police officers that beat people that are in crisis when it’s not necessary.” When reminded that we are paying more taxes, with Measure B, Uggla said, “Great.” One of the videos shows Magdeleno being punched in the head for about twenty seconds straight, sometimes simultaneously by two officers who are pinning him to the ground. Ukiah police chief Justin Wyatt had no comment on Friday, but a press release signed by a subordinate described the blows as distraction strikes, which “allowed the officers a brief opportunity to place Magdaleno into handcuffs, and the technique was ceased.” A man named Cooper believes it’s time to rethink the budget. “The response always ends up with police departments getting a larger budget, and that’s never going to solve the problem,” he said, echoing other calls for more money to go toward mental health services. Asked what he thought about the press release that characterized the blows as “distraction strikes,” he said, “yeah, that was pretty offensive. You could look at it and understand exactly what they’re doing...it sounds like something made up to justify looking for an excuse to punch the man in the face.”
April 2, 2021 —In the wake of a summer of protests against police brutality, two short videos from behind a shop window show four Ukiah police officers repeatedly punching a man whose sisters have identified as Gerardo Magdaleno. One shows the nude man getting up off the ground and walking slowly toward an officer. The officer shouts at him repeatedly to get back on the ground. The video is blurry, but according to Ukiah police logs at that address, Officer Saul Perez responded a few minutes before 3pm. Another video shows two officers holding the man down on his back by the arms and punching his head repeatedly while a third officer stands by, rolling up his sleeves. A fourth runs toward the scene and grabs his legs. They force him onto his belly and three officers hold him down while one continues to deliver short, sharp blows to his head. A third video, filmed from across the street, shows the nude man standing underneath the sign for Alderwood Apartments, about a car’s length from an officer. A minute and twelve seconds in, another officer approaches, walking fast. Both policemen raise their arms, pointing something at the man. Ten seconds later, the man falls over backward and the beating begins. Magdaleno, a schizophrenic military veteran, had been staying with his sister, Luna Magdaleno. She said her brother left around noon yesterday. He had been out of his medications for two days and taken LSD. She found out what happened to him that afternoon, when someone sent her the videos. “He wasn’t being aggressive or disrespectful,” she said. “I understand that being nude in public is indecent exposure, but you can clearly tell that he’s in his own world at that moment. For the cops to come and do that thing to him the way that they did, instead of de-escalating the situation, they made it worse. They’re saying, in the report that they’re printing, that one of the cops was hurt, but he was injured obviously because they beat the fuck out of my brother.” Another sister, Nemesis Garcia, said Luna sent her the videos right away, while she was at work. “I was just a chaos, like, I couldn’t even finish what I was doing,” she said. “He wasn’t even attacking them. They did an oath to protect people, and what they’re doing is not protecting people. They’re violating that oath.” Ukiah Police Chief Justin Wyatt said he was unable to comment at this time. A press release that came out this afternoon said Magdaleno failed to respond to simple orders and that he took a fighting stance when officers issued instructions. The original call for service was made to the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office, but Ukiah Police regularly monitor radio traffic from MCSO in order to assist, especially if the call is on the border between the two jurisdictions. According to the press release, Magdaleno was running in and out of traffic while naked, and that he appeared to be intoxicated. Black Lives Matter activist Troyle Tognoli would like to hear what the chief has to say, especially in the wake of former officer Kevin Murray facing multiple criminal charges, including sexual assault. “That would send a huge echo as to why these things are occurring, what steps are being taken, if any, to address it, and just how deep are we into this type of behavior. You know, UPD, there was a time when they were really pulling their shit together. But this is not good.” Ukiah Mayor Juan Orozco said he believes a lack of training is to blame. “This man didn’t have a weapon,” he said, “he didn’t seem to be threatening, so why go about the way they did it? And it’s clearly a lack of training.” “That is bullshit,” said Tognoli. “What you saw is the training. I’m not sure it’s sanctioned by the department, and I would doubt very seriously it is. Considering we have the Eight Can’t Wait campaign, that the Ukiah Police Department has endorsed, they have spoken publicly about really wanting to change some of their policies and practices.” Magdaleno and Garcia said earlier this afternoon that they’re trying to find their brother. Magdaleno bailed him out this morning, after he spent the night in jail and returned to the hospital. Lt. John Bednar of the Mendocino County jail said the Ukiah police sent Magdaleno to a local hospital for a medical clearance before bringing him in for booking. He spent the night in jail and went back to the hospital sometime before seven o’ clock this morning. His sisters say that nurses at the Ukiah hospital told them they had no record of him. Unofficially, they learned that he had facial fractures and a concussion. He’s been charged with two misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct and possession of drug paraphernalia. He’s also charged with resisting or threatening an officer, which is a felony. Magdeleno is skeptical. “My brother was butt naked,” she said. “Where in the fuck is he gonna put the drugs? Up his ass?” The press release said that, following the alteration with Magdaleno, officers located a glass pipe in a pair of sweatpants that Magdaleno had been wearing prior to the first calls for service. Garcia spoke for both sisters: “We just want him to be okay. And we want justice.”
April 2, 2021 — Yesterday, every Californian over the age of fifty became eligible for a vaccine. Later this month, every Californian over the age of 16 will be eligible. There haven’t been any clinics for first doses for weeks, but a combination of paid staff and volunteers are busy at second dose clinics around the county. With limited or unknown supplies, getting volunteers where they can be useful is a logistical challenge. Molly Rosenhal is a program coordinator with the NCO volunteer network, which contracts with the county to send the right people to public health clinics. She says that people with medical expertise, including retired healthcare workers, can register with a state network called Disaster Healthcare Volunteers and ask to be assigned to the Mendocino County unit, where their names will appear on Rosenthal’s spreadsheet in due course. There are also some fee waivers for people who have recently retired. We’ll hear details, and a few words from two particularly dedicated volunteers.
April 1, 2021 — Spring is here, and new growth is everywhere. But unlike the fields of yellow mustard that signal the beginning of the short season, some of that growth is old and slow. Like an 18-inch diameter, breast-height scrub oak, which could have been on the landscape since your great-great-great grandmother was born. Jennifer Riddell and Andrea Davis, fellow co-presidents of the Sanhedrin Chapter of the California Native Plant Society, recently encouraged the Board of Supervisors to adopt an ordinance to protect oak woodlands, which was originally supposed to be part of the Phase III cannabis ordinance. Their letter to the board cites a study estimating that Mendocino County oak forests store more than 28 and half million tons of carbon. They asked for strong protections for rangelands, because those areas contain the bulk of our oak woodlands and upland watersheds. But now, with Phase III coming before the board next month with recommendations from the Planning Commission, the oak woodlands ordinance has been sent to committee and is waiting on an inventory of the trees. That inventory isn’t likely to include a lot of young trees, which are out-competed by fast-growing non-native grasses and devoured by other non-native species like turkeys and pigs. Riddell believes that, with all the complicated pressures oak woodlands already face, they need as much protection as they can get. We’ll hear why oak trees matter, some of the pressures they face, and some ideas for protecting them.
March 31, 2021 — With Old Howard Hospital decisively off the table for use as a psychiatric health facility, the Board of Supervisors last week directed county staff to look into two other possibilities. One is using the property at Whitmore Lane in Ukiah, formerly an alternative quarantine site, now in need of a $2.8 million roof. The other is finding a parcel somewhere in the unincorporated part of the county, purchasing it, and building a psychiatric facility where there would be fewer neighbors to object. That idea was sketched out in a proposal by Dr. Mimi Doohan, the deputy health officer, earlier this month. Doohan spoke with kzyx last week.
POINT ARENA, 3/26/21 - When the weather is favorable, Teresa (Tree) and Scott Mercer drive out to the end of the windy Point Arena bluff, right near the lighthouse, where they position themselves above the rocky shore line in two camping chairs pointing south, out to sea. Snacks at the ready and binoculars in hand, they settle in for a four to seven hour stint of whale watching.
The Mercers, who are both retired, are whale watching experts. They actually met on a whale watching boat. These days they spend over a thousand hours a year peering out into the wild, turquoise-blue Pacific ocean, braving the wind and the rain and watching whales travel north and south off of the rocky Mendocino Coast, recording whale numbers, movement, and anything out of the ordinary.
Along with other whale watchers who do similar work up and down the Pacific’s eastern shores, the Mercers create a census of the global gray whale population and of other marine species. In general, the gray whale population is stable, but the species has been experiencing an unusual mortality event over the past three years, meaning that more grays have been stranded, washing up on shores, than normal.
Unusual mortality events like this can point to deeper problems in the ocean. All of the information the Mercers collect helps other scientists piece together a story about the health of the ocean and the entire planet, which is always important, but especially so the era of climate change.
March 23, 2021 — A detailed proposal for building a psychiatric health facility in a rural part of the county was filed under public expression on the agenda for yesterday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, though the item came up Monday during Measure B discussions. On Monday, the board asked staff to come back with two proposals for a psychiatric health facility, one called the Ranch concept for a rural puff, and the other for Whitmore Lane. Earlier this month, Deputy Public Health Officer Dr. Mimi Doohan sent the Board a 12-page outline of the “Ranch concept,” proposing to use $30 million of Measure B funds to purchase an as-yet-unidentified property, construct the puff, and operate it for two years. The current Measure B fund balance is just under $23 million. Yesterday, the board authorized over $320,000 of Measure B money to remodel the training center, purchase a gun locker, and reimburse the sheriff’s office for a law enforcement training. Ongoing sources of funding for the puff, according to the Ranch proposal, are possible from philanthropy and the State of California through a $750 million dollar allocation in the new budget. The document states that “It is recommended that the County own the property and any buildings for a PHF;” partly to ensure that local people have priority. The proposal leans heavily on a concept called “the lean startup,” and provides a link to an article in the Harvard Business Review, which describes this as an approach that “favors experimentation over elaborate planning,” and declares that “A business plan is essentially a research exercise written in isolation at a desk before an entrepreneur has even begun to build a product. The assumption is that it’s possible to figure out most of the unknowns of a business in advance, before you raise money and actually execute the idea.” The lack of a strategic plan has plagued the Measure B committee for years. After quoting from the article, which is geared toward technology startups and small businesses, the proposal goes into a wealth of detail, including staffing ratios and the qualifications of the dietician. Social Services, rehabilitation, and pharmaceutical services, including a pharmacist who would make regular reports, could be provided in kind by the hospital, funded by cost savings. Security could be provi ded in kind by the sheriff’s department, also funded by cost savings. Adventist Health did not respond to requests for more information about its involvement in drafting the document, but Sheriff Matt Kendall said he was never consulted about the proposal. He added that deputies are too valuable to provide security to a facility.
March 22, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors agreed to work on dedicating staff and funding to an economic development program run by West Business Development Center. Supervisors also agreed to spend Measure B money to remodel the behavioral health training center in Redwood Valley, purchase a gun locker for the site, and reimburse the sheriff’s office for crisis intervention training for law enforcement. And, now that the county is in the fourth year of collecting the half-cent sales tax, the board requested proposals on what it would take to get a psychiatric health facility going in different locations. The one cannabis item, which came up briefly at the end of the day, generated the most correspondence, including eighteen lots of 25 letters each that were forwarded from the Planning Commission. The board established a moratorium on Phase III cannabis cultivation permitting, in preparation for a new controversial chapter in the county code, which has not been finalized yet. Move2030 is an economic development program based, according to Paul Garza, the chair of West Business Development Center, on data and research. The work was funded by a grant from the U.S Economic Development Administration. Garza said that, in spite of an economy concentrated in too few industries that don’t provide a living wage, which he declared was $27 an hour for a family of four, there were bright spots in using biomass for sustainable product development, manufacturing in cannabis, food, beer wine and distilleries, and metal. Some of the biggest challenges, according to surveys, are access to technology and startup funds. Michelle Hutchins, the Superintendent of the Mendocino County Office of Education, was enthusiastic about using the program to fine-tune workforce training. Supervisor Dan Gjerde was all in, citing a study by economists with Sonoma Clean Power that projected a grim recovery for Mendocino County. He said he approved of West’s request for a staff person and funding to continue its work. Supervisors Ted Williams and Maureen Mulheren agreed to bring a proposal back to the full board within a month.
The board also agreed unanimously to authorize close to $300,000 of Measure B money to remodel the Behavioral Health Training Center, including fire sprinklers. Another $8400 of Measure B money went to purchasing a gun locker, though Jan McGourty called in to say she thought it was inappropriate. Another $12,400 of Measure B funds went to reimbursing the sheriff’s department for a training that is usually paid for by NAMI, the National Alliance of Mental Illness. This particular training was not held at a county building, though, so NAMI refused to pay for it, according to Jan McGourty. The board chose to reimburse the training this one time, but to have a plan moving forward. Supervisors also called for more plans about possible locations for a puff, one on a ranch somewhere in the unincorporated county, and another at the property on Whitmore Lane, which CEO Carmel Angelo called “a free fixer-upper,” because it was purchased with $2.2 million of CARES Act funding. It will need a new roof, though, which will cost close to $3 million. Williams urged Dr. Jenine Miller, the head of behavioral health to research the options. “Maybe this is like ordering a sandwich,” he analogized. “We have some check-mark boxes, and we need to know which ingredients we can throw in there for a total of about seven bucks. I think we need our director to bring forward those check-boxes. And if a puff is one, great, if not, give us a few more we can choose from...pick a location, tell us what the options are, and let’s vote on it.” Supervisor John Haschak gave a general idea of what he would be voting for. “I think that there’s pretty much consensus that the sandwich needs to be a puff,” he opined.
March 22, 2021 — At a meeting that lasted nearly twelve hours, the Planning Commission agreed to recommend some of the expansion that was the main point of contention in 302 letters and four hours of public comment. The Commission held two hearings on Friday, one on a cannabis facilities ordinance proposed by the Board of Supervisors, and another on a proposed major change to cultivation policy. Phase III is likely going to be replaced with a new chapter in the county code, which its proponents argue will give existing small cultivators a pathway to getting a state license at the beginning of next year. The facilities proposal did not garner a huge amount of public opposition, though a member of the St Francis church in Hopland and the president of the guild wrote letters to oppose a provision that would allow cannabis facilities within 600 feet of a church. But the cultivation ordinance was another matter altogether. There was one item that drew united opposition from environmentalists, the Farm Bureau, one wing of the cannabis business community, several local MACs, and retired Sheriff Tom Allman. This was a proposal to allow property owners to apply to grow cannabis on 10% of a legal parcel zoned agland, upland residential, or Rangeland. Under the new proposal, each grow would be subject to site-specific environmental review before receiving a discretionary permit. Some fear this would result in onerous environmental requirements, while others worry that protections wouldn’t be nearly enough. Still others, like Devon Jones, the executive director of the Farm Bureau, don’t have faith in the process as it stands now. Sheriff Matt Kendall called in to make a case for resources to be allocated for enforcement. With unforeseen overtime, the sheriff’s office is currently projected to be more than a million and a half dollars over budget. The Commission agreed to recommend that the board allocate resources to the Sheriff’s office and Planning and Building to implement the new ordinance, but couldn’t agree on exactly how much expansion in which zones they should allow. They eventually settled on recommending an increase between one acre and 5%.
March 19, 2021 — The Planning Commission came up short at its regular meeting yesterday, with only three of the seven commissioners available for an application to extend a cell phone tower that generated about twenty letters of opposition. Without a quorum, though, the item was automatically permissible, due to federal law about the length of time allowed to review the application. A proposal for a campsite in Hopland was roundly rejected. The Commission is meeting again today to discuss the widely unpopular Phase III cannabis ordinance, which, if it passes, would result in each grow being subject to site-specific review as part of a discretionary permit process.
And the days of ‘line-jumping’ to get a vaccine could be coming to a close. Earlier this week, 246 inmates at the Mendocino County Jail were offered the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which requires only one shot. Fewer than half of them accepted it, for a total of 111, according to Lt. John Bednar, a spokesman for the jail. There’s no formal arrangement with public health at this time to vaccinate more inmates as they come in.
Yesterday, a perfect storm of absences converged on the Planning Commission as it took up the question of whether or not to allow Crown Castle, the owner of an AT&T cell tower in Laytonville, to increase the height of the tower by 20 feet. Last month, the Board of Supervisors approved an ordinance to reduce the number of commissioners from seven to five, eliminating the agricultural seat held by Greg Nelson and the timber seat held by Randy Jacobzoon. But that ordinance doesn’t go into effect until next week, which means that four commissioners must be present to constitute a quorum. Jacobzoon was absent, the second district seat is still vacant, and two of the commissioners recused themselves due to a conflict of interest and prior work on the project. Letters opposing the height expansion cited a range of concerns, from the tower not fulfilling the needs of people who don’t use AT&T to those who felt it would pose a hazard to the children attending the nearby Spy Rock School.
The item had been carried over from last month, but Deputy County Counsel Matthew Kiedrowski explained that time had run out. “And any extensions of that are available only with the written consent of the applicant,” he concluded. The applicant, through an attorney, respectfully declined the invitation to continue the matter.
Later in the afternoon, the five commissioners present chose unanimously to reject an application by a company called Getaway House to turn a remote parcel off of Old Toll Road in Hopland into a campground designed to attract people from the Bay Area looking to relax in a natural setting. The proposed project included 45 RV campers on gravel pads, plus a lodge and a residence for an on-site manager. A hundred seventy oak trees were slated for removal, which would have necessitated replanting trees elsewhere and a ten-year monitoring period to ensure their survival.The applicant, Stephen Maulden, said he was preparing to buy the parcel from Brutocao Vineyards and was willing to dedicate part of it to a conservation easement. The area is a known wildlife corridor, connecting populations that roam as far as the Mayacamas Mountains. The 90-acre site is zoned Rangeland, where some forms of recreational use are allowable with a major use permit. But the water source is on a neighboring parcel, and the Farm Bureau worried that the proposed use would make it difficult for the property to be returned to agricultural purposes. Commissioner Alison Pernell countered that a fence would hamper the movement of wildlife. Only one of the thirty letters that came in supported the project, and that was from people in Washington state attesting to the company’s ability to be good neighbors. But Wendel Nicolaus, a neighboring vineyard owner, hired a lawyer, a biologist and a fire protection engineer to speak about the inadequacies of the application, including fire danger, the lack of a traffic study, and a tiny one-lane bridge that would make it difficult to escape the area in the event of a fire. Jones summed up some of her reasons for not approving the project: “I understand why you were attracted to this site, it’s high up, it has beautiful views, it’s in an amazing natural setting,” she conceded. “But unfortunately those are also the characteristics that lead it to be difficult to approve.”
March 18, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors decoupled a proposed oak woodlands ordinance from the proposed Phase III cannabis ordinance last week and sent it to committee, pending an inventory of the oak woodlands in the county. Michael Jones, the UC Cooperative Extension Forest Advisor for Mendocino, Lake and Sonoma Counties, said the most recent data puts the local acres of oak woodlands and mixed hardwood canopy at 650,000, which is one of the highest percentages of such coverage in the state. But, with historically poor land management practices, fire suppression, climate change, and a host of other complications, local oaks also face a wide variety of pressures. Initially, the oak woodlands ordinance was supposed to be adopted prior to or at the same time as the Phase III cannabis ordinance. But Assistant Director of Planning and Building Julia Krog said that Phase III, which is coming before the Planning Commission tomorrow, proposes that every cannabis grow will be subject to a site-specific discretionary review process. This would presumably include rigorous environmental reviews for every proposed project. Jones referred to a study led by his predecessor, Greg Giusti, saying that there are many elements to a successful oak woodland protection program, including a voluntary program and general plan amendments. He cited “A Planner’s Guide to Oak Woodlands,” which advises forest and resource managers to assess what they have, determine what they want, how to get it, and how to get the desired results. The Sanhedrin Chapter of the California Native Plant Society sent a letter to the board saying that “Data are needed to make good policy, but any attempt to improve the available data should not preclude immediate oak protections in Mendocino County.” But Farm Bureau Executive Director Devon Jones echoed the call for an assessment of the oak baseline. She was also concerned with replanting requirements and regulatory redundancy. “The State Board and other governing documents do exist in precedent to oak tree removal connected to cannabis,” she pointed out. “So I’m just interested to see what sort of cohesion is going to take place in moving through the discretionary review process.” She and Michael Jones are likely to work with Supervisors Glenn McGourty and John Haschak, the supervisorial ad hoc committee charged with assessing the woodlands.
Phase III is not popular, judging from the 100 or so public comments that had come into the Planning Commission as of yesterday afternoon. Haschak, who serves on the cannabis ad hoc committee with Supervisor Ted Williams, has come out against a proposal that would allow property owners to apply for a permit to grow cannabis on ten percent of their land. And he, like many environmentalists, is concerned about the possibility that Rangeland could be deemed agriculturally appropriate for growing cannabis. And a lot of people have an eye on ever-lowering aquifers. But Kristin Nevedal, the county’s new cannabis program manager, does not expect more water use with the possible upcoming changes. She spoke earlier this week at a town hall hosted by the Cannabis Business Association of Mendocino County, moderated by Kate Maxwell of The Mendocino Voice. She said the state regulates water rigorously, from discharge requirements to rules around wells and storing surface water during the dry season. “And then the local jurisdiction also has the ability to further restrict water hauling,” she added. “So I think if we move into a more heavily regulated program where folks aren’t cultivating before they’ve gone through the local approval and the state approval and obtained all of their permits, we shouldn’t see expansion of surface water draws and more water consumption.” Wiliams, who has championed the discretionary permit approach, argues that the process would allow for more overall environmental and neighborhood protections; and that the changes are the only way to align the county’s rules with the state rules, thus creating a pathway to state licensure by January. But Patrick Sellers, board chair of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, doesn’t believe Phase III will help the Phase I growers who are stuck in a years’-long limbo. And he thinks the environmental regulations under the proposed changes are overly onerous. “I think what this does is really just provide a narrow pathway for a limited number of well capitalized businesses who can handle the rigorous discretionary review process that’s being proposed, which is more than is necessary and is more than is done in other jurisdictions and essentially leaves the existing tax-paying operator in the dust, potentially cutting them out for good.” He also worried that, with CEQA considering cumulative environmental impacts, one large farm could create as much of an impact as several small farms, thus reducing the likelihood that the small farms would be approved. The Planning Commission will take up the cultivation ordinance and a facilities ordinance at 9am on Friday, March 19. You can view the full town hall on understanding Phase III at The Mendocino Voice Facebook page.
March 17,2021 — A former motel in Ukiah is getting closer to housing more than 60 people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. Last week, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to approve a contract with Rural Community Housing and Development Corporation to manage Live Oak Apartments, which the county purchased in September with state funds under Project Homekey, a program to house the most vulnerable. Megan van Sant, a senior program manager working on housing and homelessness with Health and Human Services, reported that fifteen families have been selected to live in the apartments so far, consisting of twenty children and twenty adults, three of them pregnant. Another 22 applicants who have been accepted are senior citizens, some of them veterans. RCHDC, a non-profit developer and housing management company, will be paid $675,000 a year to provide a resident manager, maintenance, clerical, and bookkeeping staff to keep track of rent, taxes, and upkeep of the property. There’s an additional $1.3 million operational grant, and tenants will pay 30% of the income they get from various social services programs and housing vouchers to pay rent. People could be moving in by the middle of next month. Right now, construction workers are remodeling the lobby and putting kitchenettes in the living units. Van Sant says that while some tenants may be short term, there’s no timeframe on how long they’ll be able to stay at the apartments. Homelessness is often generational. Van Sant relayed what she learned from colleagues who have been working in local homeless services for many years: “They recognized the names on our list from children they knew who had been homeless years ago, who are now adults parenting their own children, in some cases pregnant, and my thought was, this is an opportunity to break a cycle of homelessness.”
March 16, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors is facing the question of how to spend the $22.6 million of settlement money from PG&E for damage caused by the fires of 2017. Last week’s list of proposed projects, copied and pasted from the list of capital improvement projects in the mid-year budget review, did not include any projects that were specific to Redwood Valley or Potter Valley, where the wind-driven fires raged for days.
Don Dale, who’s been the Redwood Valley/Calpella fire chief for about seven years, was expecting a grant for a siren, but the fire district ended up raising $64,000 to buy a solar powered siren that can be set up in different areas and activated from a distance. He’s expecting to receive the siren in about 60 days, and is considering setting it up in four different zones. If he got money from the settlement, he’d like to buy more equipment for that siren. He’d also like ongoing funding to keep the roadsides clear, and pay for fire breaks. And, with an aging fleet, he has his eye on buying some used engines from CalFire. Grants are theoretically available, but highly competitive, and often require a professional to apply for them, which is another expense small volunteer fire departments aren’t always prepared for.
Bill Pauli has been the chief of the volunteer fire department in Potter Valley, where the fire started, since 1997. He wa s the first incident commander on the night of October 8, 2017. He thinks the county should have a portion of the settlement, but he’d also like the affected communities to have their fair share. That includes the fire department, but also the irrigation and the schools, which provided some meals and counseling and other services to fire survivors. He says the fire department has never been reimbursed for hosting the agencies that came to help, providing meals, lights, bathrooms, and drinking water, much of it during a time when the power was out in the valley. “That’s what we do,” he acknowledged; “but that was certainly above and beyond what we normally would be doing. And certainly we would think that now that the county has received these funds, that there would be some funding set aside for Potter Valley fire, related to the impact on the fire department for the fires and the services that we provided.”
Water is always an essential service, especially during a fire. Jared Walker, the operations manager at the Redwood Valley County Water District, said a major rate study is coming up soon, and he expects significant increases in the water bill to pay for the upkeep of aging infrastructure. Insurance and FEMA paid for the lost booster station on Tomki Road, but the water treatment plant on Road D needs some upgrades. And the drive shafts on the motors for the pumps that pump water to the plant from Lake Mendocino, which is four and a half miles away, also need some repairs. The drive controls on one of the motors have already been repaired, which Walker says cost just under $100,000. Walker would also like to see some fire hydrants in Redwood Valley. The community relies mostly on surplus water from Lake Mendocino, and Walker says the district has spent about a million dollars already trying to find alternate sources. Studies to look for more water will cost more money, but Redwood Valley is $7.6 million in debt to the Bureau of Reclamation, and is not eligible for grants. And the problem with drilling more wells, says Walker, is that the State Department of Drinking Water requires proof that well water is groundwater.
Chief Dale thinks that, with this windfall, a lot more fiscal responsibility is in order at the county level. He was nonplussed by the seven county departments projected to exceed their budgets by at least $150,000 each. And he offered a blunt analysis of a preliminary suggestion to spend $2.8 million of settlement funds to repair the roof on the property at Whitmore Lane, which was known to be damaged at the time of the purchase. He was nonplussed by the seven county departments projected to exceed their budgets by at least $150,000: “They need to clean up their act, is what I think, as far as the county goes.”
March 15, 2021 — Cannabis is in the spotlight this week. With the Planning Commission scheduled to hear about major changes to the Phase IIII cannabis ordinance this Friday, informational events about various aspects of cannabis have been highly visible. The Cannabis Business Association of Mendocino County is hosting an event this afternoon at 4pm on the MendoVoice facebook page, about a proposal to align the county’s regulations more closely with the state’s by introducing a discretionary land use model requiring use permits. Environmental arguments against the proposed ordinance concern the already existing water shortage and the desire to preserve open lands for wildlife. Most public policy regarding cannabis is not based on science, according to Phoebe Parker Shames, a PhD candidate at the Brashares Lab at UC Berkeley who has devised an experiment to test the impact of noise and light from cannabis grows on wildlife. Last week, the Hopland Research and Extension Center hosted her virtual presentation to a crowd that included local county and tribal government leaders, ecologists, and small cannabis farmers. Parker Shames expects to conduct her wildlife monitoring research over the next two years, involving three sites each at the Hopland Research and Extension Center and Angelo Reserve. She’s gathered some observational data, like a stunning game cam shot of a mountain lion in front of a cannabis grow, but says that’s not enough. What’s needed, she believes, are experiments. Parker Shames, whose work is funded by the Bureau of Cannabis Control, plans to set up the light and noise conditions of a cannabis farm at her six sites and monitor the reactions of a wide range of animals at various distances from the sites, including some collared deer at Hopland. Game cameras are set up to capture the activity of larger mammals. There will be acoustic monitors for birds and bats, and traps for insects. There’s also an ingenious device involving a bucket and a short fence to capture the reactions of small land-based animals. She’s not expecting a full set of data until a couple of years after she completes the experiment. Until then, she has some advice for policy makers seeking to craft ordinances: “Start with the farmers. Look to existing research, and make informed guesses.”
Teresa Sholars has lived on the Mendocino Coast for 50 years, studying the diverse ecosystems that make up our small corner of the planet. Yesterday, Sholars took me out to the headlands, the flat bluffs that overlook the pacific, to look at the wildflowers which are just starting to appear, marking the beginning of spring.
March 11, 2021 — A property on Whitmore Lane, just outside Ukiah city limits, is out of commission even as its potential uses multiply. Last March, CEO Carmel Angelo commandeered a former skilled nursing facility to use as an alternate care site for people who did not have another safe place to isolate or quarantine during the pandemic. According to a CEO report from April of last year, “the monthly lease rate of $31,550 is approximately $415 per bed, per month.” That comes out to 76 beds, but no one has been in the building since February 11. The county bought the building in August with $2.2 million of CARES Act funding. Now repairs are estimated at $2.8 million, after two rainstorms that damaged the roof and the HVAC system on the roof of the 27,000 square foot building. Doug Anderson, the assistant facilities manager with the county, briefed the board of supervisors during the mid year budget review this week. He said the building had known leaks when the county bought it, and that the capacity is 100 beds. It has 33 rooms, a commercial kitchen, nursing stations, and a laundry facility. And fixing the currently flat roof, which is not up to code, will be complicated, after what Supervisor Glenn McGourty described as a spectacular failure. With Old Howard Hospital off the table as a psychiatric health facility, some are eyeing Whitmore Lane’s potential as a puff. But Dr. Mimi Doohan, who still serves as a deputy public health officer, is also interested in using it as an addiction clinic, funded with a combination of philanthropy, grants and government money. By fall of last year, she was interviewing stakeholders and raising money in Mendocino County for a Safe Haven clinic, which would include drug rehabilitation, street medicine, medical respite with hospice detox and a pharmacy, according to documents at the Healthforce Center at UCSF. Safe Haven is an initiative of the Arlene and Michael Rosen Foundation, which specializes in medical philanthropy and has also funded the Ukiah Valley Street Medicine Program and the Mendonoma Health Alliance. Doohan spearheaded the Street Medicine Program and the family medicine residency program at Adventist Health Ukiah Valley hospital. Angelo did not commit to any one use of the building, but offered to bring forward an agenda item about it later this month, during a discussion about Measure B.
Jim Culp talks to longtime members of the county-wide, unmoderated community forum, the MCN list.
March 10, 2021 — Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren reported to the Board of Supervisors yesterday that, if current covid case metrics hold for another week, the county can look forward to transitioning out of the purple tier and into the much less restrictive red tier next week. The county received its first shipment of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine yesterday, and is considering using it for people who are transient and homebound. Vaccine coordinator Darcie Antle noted that the county is working with Redwood Community Services and other agencies to hold a Johnson & Johnson clinic for the transient population this week or early next week. Following yesterday’s mid-year budget review, the Board made its first foray into talking about what to do with the one time monies from a PG&E settlement for the 2017 Redwood Complex fires, a little more than twenty two and a half million dollars. None of the money was committed yesterday, and that was not the intent of the item. But ripples of alarm spread on local social media sites, and about two dozen letters came into the board. One set of letter writers supported Sheriff Matt Kendall’s request to fund efficiencies like creating a courtroom next to the jail and using satellite imaging to enforce cannabis ordinances. These, he and his supporters argued, would free up deputies’ time. Kendall pointed out that the Redwood Complex fire was originally discovered by a patrol sergeant in Potter Valley, who initiated the response. Another set of letters expressed dismay at some of the suggestions for using the money, which were lifted directly out of the list of mid-year capital improvement project recommendations in the mid-year budget report. While both lists of options included microwave facilities improvements and hardening the building where 911 equipment is located, a couple of items drew particular ire. Community members were aghast at the suggestion to use $55,000 to remove the amphitheater in Ukiah’s Low Gap Park, and to use over $200,000 to remove dead and dying trees and repair the spillway in Gualala’s Bower Park. Redwood Valley community members wrote that they believe some of the funds should be used to shore up the local fire department and water system. They also complained that the fire departments and the Municipal Advisory Council or MAC in the areas that were ravaged in 2017 had not been asked to weigh in on how they thought the money should be spent. Supervisors Maureen Mulheren and Glenn McGourty expressed their willingness to hold town halls and attend MAC meetings to gather community input.
At the Board of Forestry and Fire Protection’s eight-hour-long meeting Wednesday, Cal Fire directors discussed the upcoming 2021 fire season, timber harvest plan sales, fire safe regulations, and carbon sequestration.
Mach 8, 2021 — About half the Caucasian population in Mendocino County has been vaccinated, compared to 16% of the Hispanic population. Still, with case rates dropping, Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren says the county could enter the red tier by the middle of this month. The county Planning Commission unanimously approved a subdivision of parcels on Feliz Creek in Hopland for more winemaking, with the possibility of publicly available walking trails on a 40-acre parcel in the floodplain. And the county has likely missed its opportunity to purchase Old Howard Hospital, with another potential buyer taking steps to secure the property. The topic of possibly using Measure B money to buy Old Howard Hospital for a psychiatric health facility surfaced at the January meeting of the Measure B citizens oversight commission, which decided to leave the matter to ad hoc committees of the Board of Supervisors and the Willits City Council. In 2018, when the site was first being considered for a puff, the City Council passed an ordinance noting that the county had failed to provide the city any information about the project; that the Council believed the building does not conform to seismic and safety standards; and that the proposed use of the site does not comply with the city’s zoning requirements. The upshot of the ordinance was essentially a public records act request to the county, enfolded in a declaration of the city’s desire to be involved in the decision-making process about the use of the property. Just a week and a half ago, county representatives were gearing up to do just that. The Willits Rotarians received a presentation about the implications of having a puff in their community, and a town hall with the city and county ad hoc committees was planned for yesterday afternoon. But as of late last week, the Frank R. Howard Foundation had signed a letter of intent with an undisclosed buyer. The purchase agreement had not been signed, but once it is, a minimum of sixty days’ escrow will begin. Arnie Mello, the Executive Director of the Howard Foundation, said the potential buyer had expressed an interest in renovating the property and converting it to a healthcare facility of some sort, but there is still lots of due diligence to be done. And on Thursday Gary Breen, the CEO of Campovida winery in Hopland, made a case to the Planning Commission to subdivide 54 acres into four small parcels and a 40-ACRE remainder. Last year, he built a $12 million 60,000 square foot building to store a million gallons of wine from local vineyards. He argued that he’s made significant financial contributions to the local economy and public safety. The planning Commission agreed unanimously to grant Breen’s request.
LITTLE RIVER - The largest coast redwood forest left in private family hands is now protected from subdivision and development permanently. This morning, Save the Redwoods League announced three conservation easements that will protect an extensive redwood forest, including a 300 acre section of true old growth, on the Mailliard Ranch, a 14,838 acre property in the Anderson Valley.
Photography by John Birchard, Save the Redwoods League
On February 16, the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians requested a government-to-government consultation with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, better known as Cal Fire, to discuss the Tribes concern over the cumulative impact of around nine timber harvest projects lined up to take place in Jackson Demonstration State Forest over the next half decade. Jackson Demonstration, a 50,000 acre parcel of land, is the ancestral territory of the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo, along with other tribes.
March 4, 2021 — Former Ukiah Police Sergeant Kevin Murray is scheduled to appear in Mendocino County Superior Court today, to be arraigned on information. On January 26, District Attorney David Eyster filed a complaint against Murray, charging him with four felonies for crimes alleged to have occurred on November 25 of last year. The complaint says he entered an occupied motel room on South Orchard Avenue in Ukiah and violated the civil rights of a woman by intimidating her “under color of law.” Murray is also facing two charges of burglary for entering the room twice, and one of sexual battery for forcing the woman to touch his genitals. The DA’s complaint also includes a misdemeanor charge of possession of methamphetamine on December 1. Murray posted $200,000 bail on the conditions that he wear an ankle monitor, surrender all firearms, and be subject to search and seizure of firearms and drug testing. Murray, who lives in Lakeport, surrendered four handguns and a rifle with a scope to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office on February 3. Later that month, Eyster filed another complaint against Murray, saying that in June or July of 2014, Murray raped someone identified only as Jane Doe, while armed with a gun. Murray faces a second count of forcible oral copulation against Jane Doe a few months later, in April. Murray was arrested again last week on those charges, and is being held on $500,000 bail. Eyster requested that his previous bail be recalled and increased because he had hidden an assault rifle at his father-in-law’s house. According to the complaint, Murray had carried the rifle as a duty weapon while he was a police officer, and it is illegal for non-peace officers to possess this particular kind of weapon. The DA believes that Murray committed contempt of court and fraud on the court by submitting a false firearm statement. Ukiah Police Chief Justin Wyatt released a statement in a Facebook video on January 29, saying the internal investigation of Murray had concluded and that he was no longer employed with the Ukiah Police Department. He said the UPD is cooperating with the DA’s office in its investigation, which is ongoing. Murray and the City of Ukiah are being sued on separate claims in the United States District Court of California in San Francisco by a man named Christopher Rasku, who says that on October 13 of 2018, Murray broke into his home and brutalized him. Rasku was later charged with the felony of resisting arrest. According to a complaint signed in May of last year, Rasku was in his home behind a partly closed doorway when Murray responded to a call by a neighbor about an argument between two other neighbors. Rasku claims Murray charged his door, knocking him unconscious, and proceeded to beat him so severely that one of his lungs collapsed. The statement says Murray had not turned on his body camera, but that a neighbor filmed Murray’s forcible entrance, which allegedly contradicted Murray’s account.
The Willits Police Department has also had some personnel changes in the last few months. Alexis Blaylock, the city’s first Black female police chief, arrived on August 26 of last year and departed abruptly on October 8. In December, a Southern California law firm sent the Willits City Council a letter, saying it was representing Blaylock. It said Blaylock would sign a release of claims agains the city, or agree not to sue, for a payment of $500,000 from “the City and applicable individuals...and a commitment on behalf of the City to provide workplace discrimination and retaliation training to certain City employees and officials for the purpose of making the City and Police Department more tolerant, effective and honest institutions.” The letter then goes on to detail the hostility that Blaylock allegedly encountered from a subordinate and the City Manager at the time, Stephanie Garrabrant-Sierra. The claims range from difficulties securing keys to the evidence room to being undermined when she fact-checked a workers’ compensation claim based on an undocumented use of force. The letter claims that “The City undermined Chief Blaylock’s authority and credited baseless allegations against her while ignoring her own credible claims of misconduct. Yet non-black male employees committed serious misconduct that was ignored.” The letter claims that the City Manager told Blaylock she could not write anyone up for any reason or take disciplinary actions without her permission, and that Blaylock was told to meet with her and a white male subordinate three times a week to assess her performance. The letter claims that Blaylock has lost income and suffered mental and emotional distress, humiliation and reputational harm and that she is prepared to sue the City if her demands for compensation and training are not met.
Brian Bender was hired as the new Willits City Manager on January fourth of this year. Fabian Lizzarago, who retired as the Fort Bragg police chief last year, has been serving as the interim police chief in Willits since early November. In a lengthy Facebook post this week, he referred to “possible litigation pending regarding interactions between my predecessor and members of the Department and City staff.” He added that no lawsuit has been filed against the City or the Department, and that policies continue to be reviewed. He said his department is young in terms of experience, and that “any mistakes made are of the mind and not of the heart.” In November, voters in Willits passed Measure K, a three-quarter cent sales tax, to prevent the elimination of police services and other vital city functions.
March 2, 2021 — Spanish-language outreach about covid has fallen almost entirely to community groups and volunteers. In the Ukiah valley, UVA, or Ukiah Vecinos en Accion, has collaborated with Adventist Health to get Spanish speakers to vaccination events. Jackie Orozco, a member of UVA who runs the Spanish-language publication Periodico Al Punto, says the collaboration got off to a strong start, with UVA recruiting over 300 people in the Spanish-speaking community in the first two weeks. Juan Orozco, the mayor of Ukiah and the co-chair of UVA, says the couple has the ability to reach a lot of people in a matter of hours.
March 1, 2021 — The wild pony herds of Robinson Creek are part of the lore of Ukiah. They’re the descendants of Shetland mares and a Welsh stallion that escaped captivity in the middle of the last century. Over the decades, a few other breeds may have gotten involved, including some pintos and appaloosas. Now the vigorous little creatures are dots in the distance, a magical visitation, or a nuisance, damaging property and just waiting to cause a car crash on the 253. Even so, they are beloved, by those who treasure their wild bonds to one another and those who want to bring them in from the cold.
From Mendocino County Public Broadcasting, this is the KZYX news for Friday, February 26th. I’m Lana Cohen.
“Well first if I can just tell you about the sunflower sea star and just how cool of a species it is in and of itself.”
That’s Walter Heady, he’s a coastal marine ecologist for the California Chapter of the Nature Conservancy, an international national non profit.
“Sunflower sea stars are one of the largest sea stars in the world. They can grow to be over three feet in diameter. They have about 20 arms, with thousands of little tube feet under them which help them to sense the world as well as to move along the seafloor as one of the fastest sea stars in the world. They can move about six feet a minute. Which is not terribly fast compared to a cheetah, but it’s actually a very fast moving sea star to the point where you can see them move across the floor. So they are a charismatic invertebrate in the marine world.”
These giant sea stars are in trouble. A study published by the Nature Conservancy, Oregon State University, and other partners found that 5.75 billion sunflower sea stars, which is 90% of the species previous population, have perished since 2013.
What happened to the sunflower sea stars is not a pretty story. Basically, climate change led to warmer ocean temperatures, which gave way to an unprecedented virus called sea star wasting syndrome. Heady, one of the authors of the study, said it was early last decade that he first started noticing the struggling sea stars.
“We started noticing disease outbreaks where these individual sea stars would grow lesions and get sick and literally waste away. Some other folks have described that they turn into goop. They literally dissolve in the either intertidal or sea floor area. And we started noticing that that was happening widespread in a high number of stars and a number of different species and it really started to impact the sunflower sea stars in their range from Mexico up into Alaska.”
Sea star wasting is a heartbreaking, graphic, and kind of a gory disease. Honestly, it seems more like something that would happen in a sci-fi movie or on an alien planet rather than here on planet earth. The first time local biologist Tristin McHugh saw a wasting sea star was in 2013 near Monterey.
“I remember seeing a sea star with a physical lesion, like a cut, on its arm. There are many different forms that you can see a sea star wasting in like the cut, the loss of an arm, it detaching and the most severe is it physically melting and in between that you also would see twisting arms and them physically rejecting their body, like contorting their arms into pulling them off.”
The loss of the sunflower sea star has decimated ecosystems all across the species range and a local marine biologist, Tristin McHugh, said that holds true here in Mendocino.
“The loss of sunflower stars in Mendocino and the North Coast has been very impactful on the balance of the kelp forest ecosystem and ultimately to our community.” McHugh is the Nature Conservancy’s North Coast kelp project director.
“You know everyone in the community is keenly aware of what’s going on with kelp forests and everything we’ve been talking about when it comes to kelp loss, the boom in purple urchin, the loss of the abalone fishery, the federal disaster to the red urchin fishery and the cultural and aesthetic loss of these forests, but it’s all tied to the disappearance of the star.”
The disappearance of the sea star in tandem with warmer water temperatures triggered a chain of events which ultimately resulted in the collapse of multiple local fisheries. Fisheries that have historically played important cultural and economic roles in Mendocino. This includes the red urchin and abalone fisheries, which, before they collapsed, could bring in up to 3 million and 44 million dollars in annual revenue to the county’s economy, respectively.
So Here’s what happened: the sea star was the last remaining predator of purple urchin. And purple urchin, they eat kelp, which are big brown algae that grow in groups and create dense underwater forests, providing food and shelter to nearshore marine life. When the sea star numbers plummeted, the purple urchin population exploded. And the urchin ate so much kelp that the forest disappeared. So then, all the species that relied on the forest for shelter and food, such as red urchin, abalone and a variety of fish species were left empty handed.
Noticing the rapid decline of sunflower sea stars, scientists from the Nature Conservancy, Oregon State University and other partners decided to find out just how many sea stars were left. When they realized that over 90% of the population was gone they came to the conclusion that the sunflower star was critically endangered.
They submitted their findings to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature,IUCN, for short, which is a nonprofit dedicated to conservation and sustainable development across the planet. The IUCN agreed with their assessment and listed the species as critically endangered on their Red List, an international list of species threatened with extinction.
Heady hopes that this categorization will bring attention to the plight of the sunflower starfish.
“There’s a number of different rankings on the IUCN Red List site and critically endangered is one step away from extinct. So it’s dire is what it means. It means that we’re really at risk for extinction of the species without concerted action.”
The IUCN listing doesn't give the species or their habitat any legal protections the way that a federal or state listing would, but Heady and McHugh said they hope it will bring attention to the decline of the species and encourage support for research through public interest and funding.
McHugh said now that the sunflower sea star is listed, scientists are working to figure out how to help out the struggling species which continues to be pummeled by sea star wasting disease and the impacts of climate change.
“That’s currently being explored right now with researchers from University of Washington and the Nature Conservancy, is exploring captive breeding programs. Can you actually have these animals reproduce in a lab setting and if so, after you go through all the mechanisms of outplanting the species is it something that is actually needed and is it appropriate.”
For KZYX news, I’m Lana Cohen.
For all our local news, with photos and more, visit KZYX.org. You can also subscribe to the KZYX news podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
February 25, 2021 — A day after CEO Carmel Angelo critiqued the Measure B Citizens Oversight Commission as having no common mission, the committee voted to hire a consultant to work out a long term strategic plan based on the Kemper Report.Commissioning that report was the first thing the committee did after electing Tom Allman as its first chair three years ago. The commission also formed an ad hoc committee to work with county supervisors to change its function. As Commissioner Shannon Riley put it, the goal would be for the eleven-member body to spend its time overseeing work that was being done according to the strategic plan and reconciling independent financial audits, rather than debating landscaping and lighting contracts. The item was on the agenda days before Angelo made her remarks to the Board of Supervisors, but according to Riley, who brought the item forward, it was long overdue.
February 24, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors approved a $200,000 increase to a contract with an armed guard service to monitor people in quarantine at hotels or Whitmore Lane, the county-owned quarantine facility just outside Ukiah city limits. The outbreak at Mountain View, a long-term care home in Ukiah, is up to 23 cases, with two people now deceased. Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren said the outbreak grew rapidly during the full week it took for a positive staff member’s test result to get back from a lab in Texas. The eligible age for people to get the vaccine in the county has been lowered to 65, and starting in mid-March, people 16 and older with certain health conditions or disabilities will also be eligible. And, in what CEO Carmel Angelo called the county’s last shot at trying to purchase Old Howard Hospital, the county submitted a three-month Memorandum of Understanding to the Howard Hospital Foundation, asking it to hold off on selling the property to another buyer for that length of time. When the question of whether to use the property as a psychiatric health facility came before the Measure B Citizens Oversight Commission last month, the commission decided to turn the matter over to ad hoc committees from the Board of Supervisors and the Willits City Council. There will be a virtual town hall on the subject at 4pm on Sunday, March 7. Angelo also asked the board to create a five-year strategic plan by the end of the year, in preparation for her planned retirement in the fall of 2022. Her priorities are enhancing planning and building services, strategically investing the $22 million settlement from PG&E, and an organizational review, including whether the county should go back to a CAO model, or continue with the CEO model.
February 23, 2021 — As the pandemic drags on, the public demand for outdoor recreation has surged. At a town hall last week, Senator Mike McGuire invited panelists to talk about how they believe the Great Redwood Trail from Marin County to the Humboldt Bay will enhance outdoor recreation in the coming years. Some segments are already built, and some are underway. Some, like the one in Ukiah, will be built next to the abandoned railroad, while others will be built on top, if applications for a technique called railbanking, to preserve and recycle the railbed, are approved. The nuts and bolts of building the trail and funding it will come out in a master plan, which itself will need to be funded. McGuire’s newly introduced Senate Bill 69 would require that SMART, Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit district, create and manage the trail from the Mendocino-Sonoma county line to its southern end. If the bill is written into law, the bankrupt North Coast Railroad Authority, or NCRA, will become the Great Redwood Trail Agency, responsible for the northern portion of the trail. NCRA just put in a federal application on Thursday morning for railbanking from Willits to Samoa in Humboldt county.
February 22, 2021 — Adventist Health in Mendocino County has administered 10,875 doses of the covid-19 vaccine, four thousand of them second doses. Vaccine shipments did not come in last week due to storms across the country. The hospital, which receives its own allocation of the vaccine, has been focusing on administering it to people over the age of 70. According to data from the California Dept of Public Health, 22,091 people in Mendocino County have been vaccinated. Healthy Mendocino puts the total population at 86,801. Dr. Bessant Parker, the Chief Medical Officer for Adventist Health in Mendocino County, said that in a sample of 660 doses given by the hospital, 18% were administered to Latino people. On Friday, Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren said 13.6% of the vaccines in the county have been administered to Latino people. Healthy Mendocino reports that the Hispanic/Latino population is 27.18% of the overall population in the county. Dr. Parker is expecting a supply of vaccines this week, but like all the other entities giving vaccinations, the hospital is having a hard time making appointments without information about exactly how many doses will arrive or when. He expects distribution to be streamlined once Blue Shield takes over the distribution of the vaccine. Six thousand people are in the Adventist Health database waiting to be contacted for an appointment to be vaccinated. You can sign up here. Learn more in our interview with Dr. Parker.
February 19, 2021 — Redwood Coast Medical Services in Gualala has administered about 3000 doses of the covid-19 vaccine on the Mendonoma coast, about ⅔ of them to residents of Mendocino county and ⅓ to Sonoma county residents in its coverage area. At a quarterly town hall meeting last night, RCMS CEO Ara Chakrabarti said the clinic had 500 doses of the Moderna vaccine from Sonoma county public health and the rest from Mendocino County Public health. About a thousand of the doses have gone to people seventy five and older, and the rest have gone to people who qualify because they are in eligible professions. About 1200 people have received their second doses. The numbers are rounded to the nearest hundred. Chakrabarti reported on the various places where vaccines are being administered on the south coast through RCMS, the financial situation, big changes coming up in the vaccine rollout and why he thinks RCMS should come up with a long term strategic plan.
February 17, 2021 — There are so many different ways to get a vaccine, but the supply is still scarce. Adventist hospital, which gets its own allocation of doses from the state, is holding age-based mass vaccine events. CVS pharmacy in Ukiah is taking appointments for people 65 and older. The county public health department is administering vaccines to people who are at risk because of their occupations. And the federally qualified health centers, which get all their supplies from the county, are vaccinating people in both categories. There’s a catch as catch can quality to getting a vaccine now, with people patrolling the right sites, showing up at the right time, and answering the phone when it’s an unknown number that turns out to be a health center offering a shot. Lucresha Renteria, who runs the Mendocino Coast Clinics in Fort Bragg, says her health center has administered 1,879 vaccines, including 620 second doses. She’s relying heavily on vaccinatemendo.com, local employers, and her own patient rolls going back to 2009. She said it can take two days to get enough appointments to give out 300 shots. Wiith just a few days’ lead time, old phone numbers, and the modern reluctance to pick up the phone if you don’t know who it is, the clinic often calls employers at the end of the day and asks them to send people over on the spur of the moment. And the county has administered more Moderna doses that it’s received, because some of the vials have more than ten doses in them. So if you’re on a standby list, you’d better really be standing by. Big changes are coming at every level. Today, the county is rolling out MyTurn, a state signup system. And possibly as early as March, the state will start to prioritize vaccine for people with disabilities. Soon Blue Shield will take over the distribution of the coveted supply. And the Biden administration is working on a new plan for the federal government to send vaccines directly to the federally qualified health centers. For now, Renteria says she’s carefully maintaining those standby lists. You can hear more in this interview with Renteria.
February 16, 2021 — The Ukiah Unified School District is opening up to a hybrid model of some in-person instruction for pre-kindergarten through sixth grade today. Pre-Kindergartners through second graders, fifth graders at Eagle Peak Middle School, and sixth graders at Pomolita Middle School, as well as some special day classes throughout the district. will be back in the classroom two mornings a week.There are no fifth graders at Pomolita, and the sixth grade at Eagle Peak will start the hybrid model next week. Older students can go back to in-person instruction once the county returns to the red tier. We’ll hear from a union rep and a family who are looking forward to getting back to class.
From Mendocino County Public Broadcasting, this is the KZYX news for Monday, February 15th. I’m Lana Cohen.
“So we are standing in a section of Jackson State Forest that basically is vegetated by Mendocino Cyprus and another name for that is the Pygmy Cyprus and what people have kind of called this area is the Pygmy Forest, what we botanists call it is the …”
Only 2,000 acres of Pygmy ecosystem remains on the planet, and all of it lies along the Mendocino and northern Sonoma Coasts. The Pygmy Forest is made up of grey scraggly trees that look no older than 10 to 15 years are no thicker than the handle of a broomstick, and no taller than the average adult. But the trees in the Pygmy Forest are not young, some are more than one hundred years old. So why are they so small?
Decades ago, rare plants botanist Teresa Sholars moved to the Mendocino Coast and set out to answer that question.
“It’s kind of an anachronism for someone to live and work and retire in the same spot. I’m 68 I moved here when I was 22. Raised three kids here, but I’ve always felt that certainly as a botanist or ecologist the best thing in the world for me is to, if you stay in one place you get to really know it. And each decade I would kind of pick a new group of organisms and try to figure them out. I never took mushroom or lichen classes. I just studied them and started teaching these different groups, natural history, insects, mammals, amphibians. So that has really created a challenge and wonder of all of the different ecosystems here, being able to be here for so many years, because it takes a long time to learn this stuff and appreciate it and understand all the diversity that’s in one locality.”
Sholars is a leading expert on a range of Mendocino Coast ecosystems. Not only has she researched them, she’s spent almost fifty years walking through the sunny Pygmy Forest, foraging for mushrooms under the dark, cool cover of Redwoods, admiring wildflowers on the bluffs that overlook the Pacific.
“And that’s what’s so fantastic about California. If you go back east you have often the same rock, the same topography, the same rainfall, the same climate for miles. Here you go from 50 degrees at the ocean in July to 100 degrees just 10 miles inland or 8 miles inland. You have hotspots of different soils and different rocks so we have an enormous amount of diversity here of vegetation and plants and animals and fungi that have evolved in those diverse habitats. So the magic really started because of the diversity of rock types, topography and climate that we have here in California.”
Although Sholars has explored many of the County's microclimates, the Pygmy forest is the ecosystem she knows best and the one she is most attached to. It’s the one that first called her to this corner of the world.
When Sholars was in her early 20s, she decided to study Mendocino’s Pygmy forest for her masters degree.
“Well I think in reality a lot of us decide what to study because we want to go to a place that’s really nice and there I am living in Davis and you know this was a very unusual vegetation and everybody who studied it only studied the soils and not the plants so my late husband and I both chose the Pygmy forest as a place we could drive to from Davis in three or four hours, come here camping and study why the plants were so short because nobody knew. Anything that’s unstudied and unknown is fun for people to try to figure things out.”
To discover why the Pygmy’s trees were so short, Teresa decided to dig deep. Literally, she dug thousands of holes in the soil in order to find out what was going on in there and how it might be impacting the trees. The thing was, she couldn’t get very far. Again and again, about a foot and a half down, she hit something solid. She found that the soil under the pygmy forest is hardpan, which means that you can’t get through it. Hardpan is created when the ground is flat, so rather than soil moving and flowing over years with storms and wind, it stays put and consolidates, becoming concrete-like.
Ultimately, Sholars found that the soil’s tough, rock-like nature is not the main reason the Pygmy trees are stunted, but it is related to why the trees
in the pygmy are minutature
“If you ever hike around the Mendocino Coast or in Northern California, most areas are basically steep and upland, you go up and down. Well in this small area that’s really just a few miles long between Northern Sonoma county at Salt Point there’s a few areas where when the land was uplifted it was uplifted flat .”
Uplift is when the surface of the earth is slowly pushed upwards. The flat uplift in this area is also why the Mendocino Coast has cliff-like bluffs that lead to the ocean rather than mountains that slope into the Pacific.
“So you can walk in these Pygmy Forests for really miles and it’s flat land.”
The floor of the Pygmy Forest, which was uplifted by tectonic forces an estimated 500,000 years ago, has never been tipped one way or another or deeply fractured. Consequently, the surface of the ground has sat, flat and exposed to the elements for half a million years, which is 200,000 - 300,000 years before modern humans appeared on the planet. Over time, this exposure leached the soil of nearly all its nutrients, making it almost inhospitable for life. But only almost.A small community of plants that now populates the pygmy, bolander pine and the mendocino cyprus among them, seems to make it work.
“Well you can see, this pine here, it only occurs in the Pygmy forest no other place and it only grows from Fort Bragg to the Navarro River.”
So although the 500,000 year old soil may not be the most hospitable place to put down roots, it creates a unique and cherished ecosystem.
“Well the older the terrace the older the soil, when you get here and you have soil being half a million to a million years old that’s very unique. It is incredibly rare to have these and any time is rare it will make rare plants, make habitats for rare animals, rare animals then provide food for other species, so it is a whole web of life that is dependent upon the uniqueness of what is here.”
For KZYX news, I’m Lana Cohen.
For all our local news, with photos and more, visit KZYX.org. You can also subscribe to the KZYX News Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
February 9, 2021 — The Promotores de Salud, a Spanish-speaking community health workers program that’s funded by the county with supplemental money from the Community Foundation to buy groceries for families in isolation or quarantine, is heading into its third month.
The promotores focus on getting information out to people who need it, often in person, by handing out fliers or calling people at home. Promotore Sergio Perez said people who need information about how to stay safe or get tested or vaccinated also come to the office of Nuestra Alianza, the Willits-based nonprofit that’s taken on the program .
He hasn’t encountered a lot of vaccine hesitancy, but it’s hard for Latino essential workers to get vaccinated, partly because the population skews young, and partly due to breakdowns in communication about which documents people need to get their shots.
In the past, there has been no groundwater regulation in Ukiah. Municipalities, agricultural users, and individuals could use their wells to pump as much water out of underground aquifers as they wanted. But That is about to change.
Groundwater regulation in the Ukiah Valley is on its way. Yesterday, the Ukiah Valley Groundwater Sustainability Agency, which is in charge of figuring out how to manage the groundwater, had their first meeting of 2021 where they discussed how things are moving along.
February 11, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors approved a social media services contract with Liz Barney this week, with Supervisors Dan Gjerde and Ted Williams dissenting. The board also unanimously approved an ordinance providing for the abatement of hazardous vegetation and combustible material to reduce fire hazards. Another unanimous vote updated Measure H, the 2004 voter-approved initiative to ban GMOs in Mendocino County.
February 10, 2021 — A covid-19 outbreak at a Ukiah nursing home has infected eighteen people, according to Bekkie Emery, of the county’s Department Operations Center. The outbreak was identified at Mountain View Assisted Living and Memory Care on Saturday. Twelve residents and six staff have tested positive, and another staff member is considered a close contact and is in quarantine.
Alyson Bailey, the program manager for the Measure B Citizens Oversight Committee, is no longer working in that position. Dr Jenine Miller, who heads the county’s Behavioral Health department, said in a statement that her department will be taking over Measure B clerical tasks, monitoring fiscal activities related to Measure B, and continuing the development of the training center and the crisis residential treatment facility. Supervisor John Haschak, who is on the Measure B ad hoc committee, said he does not believe it was a rash decision, and that, “With the variety of tasks that were being done by people in either behavioral health or facilities, it seems that streamlining and cost efficiencies were appropriate.”
The three year anniversary of Khadijah Britton’s disappearance was Sunday. Witnesses say Britton was abducted at gunpoint by Negie Fallis on February 7, 2018. On Friday, Scott Shelby, the special agent in charge of the San Francisco division of the FBI, said the bureau is still working with the county to find Khadijah Britton. The FBI is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for her disappearance. “Somebody knows,” he declared. Anyone with that information is urged to call the sheriff’s office or WeTip, the anonymous crime reporting hotline, at (800) 782-7463. You can also email the fbi at tips.fbi.gov.
At yesterday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, Dr. Coren reported that the county only has enough vaccines for second doses this week. He said the county had to give out extra doses on January 13, 14, and 15 to meet the governor’s call to vaccinate a million people in a week. Those people are now due for their second shots. The county health department and the rural health centers are vaccinating people who are now eligible due to their occupational risk of exposure, while the hospital and its clinics are focusing on those 75 and older. Things could change, if the state decides to prioritize people with co-morbidities and disabilities. Meanwhile, testing and vaccines are hard to come by for people who live outside of Ukiah or Fort Bragg. Supervisor John Haschak asked if the traveling OptumServ testing team would be coming to Willits anytime soon. Deputy CEO Darcie Antle, who is now overseeing the vaccine program, said it had to do with the now-familiar urban rural divide at the state level. But Anna Stockel, who called in during public comment, said she thought the county and the state have something in common. “The Board of Supervisors complained endlessly about the state not disclosing data,” she said; “but, quite frankly, Mendocino County isn’t doing much better.” Supervisor Ted Williams asked if more data could be made available to the public, saying the item at the top of his wish list for more information is vaccine numbers. Emery said that is a goal, but her focus has been on satisfying state reporting requirements, which involve nine different systems. The board supported giving direction to staff to publish how many vaccines are distributed daily, by which provider. Four of the local skilled nursing facilities have received vaccines from a contract with CVS and Walgreens pharmacies, which are not required to report to the county. Williams offered to collect the data himself, rather than wait a week or two. And Supervisor Maureen Mulheren revisited the issue of what kind of paperwork is necessary for essential workers who are eligible for the vaccine but don’t have pay stubs. “I think it’s important that the county public health gets out to all the vaccine clinic locations that we will accept a letter as proof of employment, instead of a pay stub for some essential workers,” she said. “That has been a question that has been coming up, and I think clear direction to the vaccine clinics would be helpful.”
2/9/21 — The Dungeness crab season is off to a pitiful start this year. Some crabbers pulled their gear out and threw the towel in just one day into the season.
However, scientists, seasoned crabbers, and even those new to the business all say that is to be expected — the crab fishery has a very cyclical nature. Some years bring in plentiful crabs and subsequently, money. Others, not so much. This year is definitely a ‘not so much’ year.
The decade leading up to this year brought a pretty steady and bountiful harvest of Dungeness crabs, so fisherpeople knew they were in for a bust year. But no one expected it to be as bad as it is and the slim pickings for Dungeness this season have left a lot of people hurting.
Down at Noyo Harbor Last Thursday, the weather was perfect. It was so warm and people were walking around in dresses and shorts, and there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky. But the mood of the crabbers was grim.
February 8, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors is scheduled to revisit an agreement with a social media contractor whose activity on the right-wing website Parler caused a stir in December. Late last year, the sheriff’s request to approve a three year contract with Liz Barney for social media, web design and training, appeared on the board’s agenda. It came out on facebook that Barney had a Parler account, where she had shared or echoed material stating that masks are a symbol of Antifa, that Donald Trump won the election, and an article about Rashida Tlaib, with a comment attached to it that said, “Where is Mossad when you need them?” Barney did not write the article or the comment, but this was shortly after the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, whom the New York Times reported was a primary target of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, widely believed to be responsible for the assassinations of other scientists. A dozen letters came in to the board expressing dismay about a county social media professional being active on a site where white supremacist groups like the Proud Boys flourished. The item was pulled, but it’s coming before the board again tomorrow, as a one-year agreement for two-thirds of the total possible compensation in the original contract. Sierra Wooten, of the Mendocino Coast BIPOC, Black Indigenous People of Color group, was one of the people who wrote a letter in December. We caught up on Saturday, for an update on her concerns since the insurrection at the Capitol and Parler being deplatformed.
February 4, 2021 — School districts in Mendocino County have the option to start the reopening process, though a lot of uncertainty remains. We’ll hear from a teachers union representatives and school superintendents, for a look at the planning regionally and locally.
February 3, 2021 — Mari Rodin will be sworn into the Ukiah City Council at tonight’s meeting, where she’ll start serving out the remaining two years of Maureen Mulheren’s term. Mulheren was elected to the second district supervisor seat, which Rodin also wanted, and started that position early last month. At an hour and a half special meeting last week, the city council heard from Rodin and seven other applicants, including Joel Soinila, who ran against her for supervisor, Cameron Ramos and Steve Scalmanini, who ran for city council last year, an urban planner, and a neighborhood activist. The vote to appoint Rodin was unanimous.
2/2/2021 — As we all know, it’s not unusual for the rainy season to start out relatively, well, un-rainy, and then for the state to get hit with a big storm — though not quite like this one. “This storm definitely has more water in it because of climate change,” explained Michael Wehner, a senior scientist who studies extreme weather events and their relationship to climate change at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. According to research from Wehner, climate change is driving processes that make winter storms drop more precipitation than has historically been the case in NorCal.
February 1, 2021 — An inmate of the Mendocino County jail died yesterday morning at the Ukiah Valley Medical Center. And a new health order will allow schools to begin the process of re-opening to in-person instruction for students in kindergarten through sixth grade.
Jan 29, 2021 — A renewed interest in using the old Howard Hospital in Willits as a psychiatric health facility revived community outcry and intimations of NIMBYism. The half-cent mental health sales tax enacted by Measure B has been in effect for about three of its five years. So far, a little over twenty one and a half million dollars have been collected. Some of the money has been used to purchase a training center in Redwood Valley and hire a contractor to remodel it. The architect Nacht and Lewis, which is also designing a new jail for the county, is almost finished with architectural plans for a Crisis Residential Treatment facility in Ukiah. The sheriff and the Ukiah Police Department are recruiting mental health workers to accompany law enforcement on calls involving psychiatric crises. But specialists to run the facilities that were the original goal of the measure have not been identified. Negotiations with a potential operator for the Ukiah facility are underway, and there’s a request for proposals from contractors to run a puff.
When Old Howard Hospital was first considered as a site for the puff, the city was not enthusiastic about the idea. The Willits City Council passed an ordinance with recitals noting that the county had failed to provide the city any information about the project; that the Council believed the building does not conform to seismic and safety standards; and that the proposed use of the site does not comply with the city’s zoning requirements. The upshot of the ordinance was essentially a public records act request to the county, enfolded in a declaration of the city’s desire to be involved and informed in the decision-making process about the use of the property. But at this week’s meeting of the Measure B Citizens Oversight Committee, a sub-committee tasked with taking up the recommendations of a $30,000 report on how it should proceed brought up the issue again. The Kemper report, which was commissioned early in the committee’s tenure, calls for a variety of wellness and support services, but does not comment specifically on the hospital site. Dr. Jenine Miller, who runs the county’s behavioral health department and represents it on the Measure B committee, explained why she was bringing the topic forward again, urging the committee to consider the site as one of the most viable in the county, and pointing out that every community wants a puff, but “not in my backyard.” But Commissioner Shannon Riley blasted the item on multiple grounds, calling it “government at its worst.” She cited a lack of documentation, and the sub-committee’s failure to work on items it had been explicitly charged with, including bringing forth an update on a the status of the request for proposals from would-be contractors for the puff, an update on the strategic plan, or word about the doings of a financial consultant who was hired to help with the strategic plan. Commissioner Mark Mertle reminded the committee that the original estimate for remodeling the hospital was $17 million, but that this estimate is now out of date. Commissioner Ace Barrash said that psychiatric hospitals do not require the same level of seismic readiness that acute hospitals do. Dr. Mills Matheson of Willits worried that patients of the hospital would be released without housing and might swell the city’s homeless population. Both he and Sherrie Ebyam, a community member, returned to Riley’s point of not having any information about who would run the facility.
“Why consider a particular site if you don’t know what the costs are, and if you don’t know what the available budget is for that site?” Ebyam asked. In the end, the committee did not even vote on the item. Chair Donna Moschetti paraphrased Commissioner Tom Allman’s suggestion to turn the matter over to the Board of Supervisors and the Willits City Council. “It’s been brought forth to the Measure B Committee,” she noted; “and if the supervisors want to run with it, run with it,” she concluded.
January 28, 2021 — People all over the county are still feeling the effects of Tuesday’s storm, which took out trees and crushed structures and cars. As of this afternoon, customers in almost every community are still without power, with Willits the hardest hit at 3,434 customers in the dark. Redwood Valley is next, with 1,728, then Laytonville and Covelo, with 1,321 and 1,256 respectively. Most of the county roads are now open, but there are still piles of brush on the road, including branches dangling from trees and power and telecommunication lines. A Greenfield resident reported that roads had been partially cleared, but that some houses and vehicles had been damaged. A lot of decks and outbuildings around the county have been splintered, in addition to hundreds of trees, especially madrones and oak trees that still have enough leaves to hold onto piles of snow. Kent Standley with the Department of Transportation reported that Bell Springs Road and Spy Rock roads are still closed. Sherwood Road and the main roads in Brooktrails are open, and crews are working to clear the smaller roads in the Brooktrails subdivision. The northern end of Tomki road is still closed, with PG&E working on downed power lines. At the bottom of the hill near the convergence of West and East Roads, there is still a slushy drift of snow and a power line draped across the right side of the road. I watched a big red pickup truck drive underneath it earlier this afternoon and continue on its way up the hill. Nancy Jameson, in downtown Redwood Valley, lost a historic barn full of hay when trees weighted with snow came down on the structure. As we walked through her property after I drove around the valley , she pointed out piles of branches and full-grown live oak trees that had simply been uprooted, their root balls six or eight feet across. By this afternoon, the horses seemed more or less adjusted to their pasture full of fallen trees. An Arab Tennessee Walker named Paintbrush was nibbling moss from the branches, while two other mares stood shoulder to haunch, napping on their feet. They’re not young horses, which Jameson says is lucky, or they would have done something stupid. Jameson and her family were able to save most of the hay, except for the bales that are still mashed directly under the tree that flattened the old barn. Two days after the storm, her huge flock of peacocks, which expanded after the 2017 fire, took shelter in another outbuilding or pecked around in the yard with a few of the chickens that ventured outside in the rain. A little blond cat and a rooster napped in another barn, and a shaggy pony, smaller than the two Pyrenees dogs, watched us calmly from the far side of his pen. “No lost animals or injured people,” Jameson reported. “We just have a lot of work. And a lot of firewood. But we all have stoves, so it works out.”
January 28, 2021 — Neighbors of an apartment building that will soon be dedicated to housing homeless people or those at risk of homelessness chimed in with ideas and concerns at a virtual town hall last night. The former Best Western Inn on Orchard Street in Ukiah is now part of Project Homekey, a state-funded program to renovate former motel rooms into small studio apartments. Megan van Sant, a senior program manager with the county’s HHSA department, told the more than forty attendees that the project would start taking referrals as early as next week, and that she hopes the complex, now called Live Oak Apartments, will open at the end of March. Not all the details have been worked out yet, but she said she’s planning to have a social worker and a social worker assistant on site during the day, and a security guard in the evening hours. She expects most of the residents to be referred to the apartments by other agencies, which will provide case management. The tenants will pay rent through programs like SSI or retirement, housing vouchers, or CalWorks...
January 27, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors agreed unanimously to move ahead with soil testing for a $35 million state-funded water and sewer project in Boonville yesterday, over objections from the Fair Board. And Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren reported that 11,000 people in Mendocino County have been vaccinated, including 70% of school staff. Four nursing homes have been vaccinated by pharmacies under the contract with the federal government, and the state is considering moving away from the equity-based method of vaccinations toward a system prioritizing the elderly. In Mendocino County, 308 of the 3293 known cases have occurred in people over 65, though most of the 36 deaths are among senior citizens. Fully a third of the known cases are in people between the ages of 19 and 34, and a little over fourteen hundred of the cases have been in people between the ages of 35 and 64. Board members also expressed dissatisfaction with the quality and the amount of information provided by Measure B project manager Alyson Bailey, unanimously approving a motion that read like a checklist of the update they expected...
January 26, 2021 — The Board of Supervisors took a significant step in rejiggering the cannabis codes yesterday, voting 4-1 to send a proposal more closely aligned with the state’s land use laws along to the Planning Commission. The board also voted unanimously to direct the Department of Transportation to continue working on a pilot program to create a benefit zone in Brooktrails, allowing the neighborhood to figure out how to collect a tax to maintain properties for fire safety. And last week, the superintendent of the Fort Bragg Unified School District gave a report to the board of trustees, telling them it is not feasible for schools in Mendocino County to reopen at this time, due to the high rate of positive covid tests. Mendocino has descended from the purple tier to the newly created deep purple tier, for counties with more than 14 positive test results per day per 100,000 residents. The county Board of Supervisors, which is meeting again today, held a special meeting yesterday afternoon to hash out the proposed cannabis code amendments, a document which will come before the Planning Commission, then return to the supervisors, then undergo a first and second reading before it replaces much of the original ordinance. Chief Planner Julia Krog ran through the general idea of the draft proposal, before the public weighed in for approximately two hours. The agenda item also generated more than a hundred written comments by individuals and organizations from across the spectrum of love and loathing for the plant. “The goal of this discretionary permit model is to really bring us into conformance with state regulations,” Krog explained. The reason it’s important to be more closely aligned with the state is that most local farmers can’t meet the state’s environmental requirements, which means that by the end of the year, they will not have state licenses and will therefore be unable to grow legally. The discretionary permit means that each site will be subject to environmental review, thus sparing the county the trouble and expense of generating an environmental impact report for the entire project of a cannabis ordinance, which is what happened the first time around. One of the highlights of the new proposal is that growers who applied during Phase I but were never able to make it through, will be allowed to reapply under Phase III, unless they are in sunset or opt-out zones. There are about 1,100 of these applicants, though some of them seem to have dropped off the map, not responding to attempts by county staff to make contact. The board also gave direction that cannabis farms should not be allowed to use generators or truck in water except in cases of emergency. This was in keeping with the Mendocino County Climate Action Advisory Committee’s concerns. That body also urged the board to give the nod only to cannabis cultivation in areas that are already developed, including agland, as long as it doesn’t degrade other forms of agricultural production.The board also included direction about preserving native soil and keeping the size of hoop houses under 10,000 square feet. The lingering question of whether or not grows should be allowed on rangeland came up, but this was shunted to the Planning Commission to sort out in the conditions for the use permits. Krog pointed out that the review process for each permit, which does allow some flexibility, is also supremely detailed, involving an analysis based on consultations with state maps of prime farmland and soils. An appendix attached to the agenda states that parcels in ag or rangeland zoning districts larger than ten acres may cultivate up to ten percent of the parcel area. This was the sticking point for Supervisor John Haschak, who voted against the proposal. The motion, which passed with his lone dissent, includes a request to the Planning Commission to return its report and recommendations to the Board of Supervisors within forty days.
Another thing that is unlikely to see any movement until March is school reopenings, according to Fort Bragg Unified School District superintendent Rebecca Walker. Counties can’t even consider reopening schools until community-wide positive covid test results drop to 25 a day per 100,000 residents. And then, Walker calculates that the required weekly covid testing would cost the school district $110,000 a week, far more than the grants the state is offering to incentivize reopening. Schools can only reopen to in-person instruction for students in grades 7-12 if positive covid tests drop to seven per day. As of yesterday, the seven-day average was 23.57, for a population of a little under 90,000. Walker is not sure her district would be able to satisfy the covid testing requirements, even if testing capacity were available. The vaccinations are a bright spot. Three hundred teachers and staff from schools and preschools all along the coast got their first vaccines on the fifteenth of this month, and are scheduled to get their second shots on February 12, well before reopening would be possible. Walker described the vaccine clinic in the high school gymnasium like it was the gala event of the year: “It was like, ten months of, I don’t get to see anybody, and now I get to see the whole town,” she enthused. “It was amazing. It was just so much fun...it truly filled my well. I want to thank everybody who participated and helped.”
The Noyo River, Pudding Creek, the Navarro. These are just some of the rivers that flow through Mendocino County. Starting from their headwaters in the chaparral hills, they wind down valleys of redwoods and pour out into the Pacific ocean. The rivers running through our county are some of the last left that still host wild California Central Coast Coho. Central Coast Coho, also referred to as CCC coho, are a genetically distinct subset of Coho Salmon that once flourished from Aptos Creek near Santa Cruz all the way up to the Eel. Old stories tell of rivers filled so thick with salmon that one could cross the river on their backs. But now, the species is on the brink of extinction. They are both federally and state endangered.
“In the 1940s there were probably estimates of 400,000 coho that used to return to california. The most recent population data from 2018 had about 4,000 coho. CCC coho specifically. So we’re looking at returns that range between 1-6 percent of what historical population estimates were.”
That’s Anna Halligan, North Coast Coho Project Manager of Trout Unlimited, which is a national conservation nonprofit with a Fort Bragg branch. They nonprofit works to protect cold water fish species and the places they need. You’ll hear from Halligan throughout this story.
Coho have been present in this region since far before humans arrived and took it over, and Each year, conservationists, fisheries scientists, and fishermen alike hold their breath, waiting to see if the species will make it through another season.
Late this fall, Trout unlimited completed three projects intended to support the Central Coast Coho fishery. They replaced old infrastructure along the Skunk Train’s path that was obstructing fish passage.
So last week, I went with Halligan down to the location of one of the three project sites to check out the work they had done. The project opened up one mile of previously inaccessible coho habitat that Trout Unlimited claims is critical to the species reproductive success, and so ultimately, their survival.
“Most people call this the noyo flats. We’re in kind of the upper headwaters of the noyo river. I’m actually standing on what will be a railroad track. I'm on the bed and looking down at what will be on that track.”
The project I went to is located far down in a valley off of the north side of California State Route 20, where, running underneath the Skunk Train’s railroad tracks, the upper headwaters of the Noyo River flow slowly through a landscape of redwoods, alders, and willows. Crouching down on the bank of the newly restored stream bed, I put my hand in the water. It was clear and cold as it moved over a bed of gravel. I didn’t see any fish that day, but Halligan said that endangered central coast coho travel this tributary, downstream to the noyo and out to the ocean to grow big and strong or upstream back to their birthplace to spawn. The project was centered around replacing an old culvert that was blocking fish from reaching a mile of spawning habitat on a small tributary which is unceremoniously named Gulch C.
“What was here was a pretty small culvert for the size of the channel that we have. We had an undersized culvert that was underneath the railroad bed. Usually when culverts are undersized what will happen is they act like a fire hydrant nozzle. It constricts the amount of water that comes through during storm events and then shoots it out like a fire hose and that causes all this erosion on the downstream end of the culvert. As it erodes the bottom of the culvert becomes what we called perched where it's sitting above the bed of the channel and above the surface of the water so that creates a big jump. Generally when we’re doing this we don’t want to engineer anything that has more than 6 inches of a jump height for juveniles and a foot for adults.”
So basically, the old culvert was creating a cliff that salmon couldn’t get past in order to reach their spawning grounds. The project to reopen the habitat cost around one million dollars and included installing a new corrugated steel 30 foot wide culvert, building and installing a bridge and restoring a section of damaged stream bed.
“I mean this project will open up a mile of habitat, and I guess you could say that’s not a lot. But that’s a mile that they don't have right now. And I do think that one of the best things we can do to help them as a species is provide them with the most and highest quality habitat.”
Central Coast Coho, which are a metallic looking silver and blue-green fish are a keystone species. That means that other species that share its ecosystem depend on them for their survival and that without them, the ecosystem would dramatically change, likely to the detriment of other flora and fauna that live in it. So basically, they are very important.
The downfall of coho salmon has had harmful impacts beyond the species and its ecosystem. The loss of the fish left Native communities which once relied on the salmon for nutrition, wealth, and culture, empty handed. It destroyed a central pillar of their communities and livelihoods. It also damaged what was once a large and thriving fishing industry along the coast.
But Trout Unlimited believes that through restoration projects like the ones they just completed on Gulch C, they can bring these fish back to their previous numbers, or at least further away from the tenuous situation they are in now.
“We have wild returns every year. And there are some places in the range of CCC coho where that doesn’t happen anymore There are places like the Russian where they are keeping the population going through a captive broodstock program. And here we still have wild returns and it’s in the order of thousands of fish so that’s a big deal. We want to take advantage of the opportunity of working in these watersheds where we here still do fish coming back. One of the best things we can do is give them access to more habitat. The haitat isn’t pristine but it's not completely broken and we know that because we have a population here still. More access to more habitat the better for these fish. Particularly in a changing climate because they need to have the ability to move if conditions are not suitable for them to survive. The Noyo River, the Big River, the Ten Mile River, Pudding Creek, The Navarro, The Albion. Those rivers are so important for recovery. If we can do as much restoration as we possibly can in those watersheds, we have a decent chance of keeping those fish from being extirpated from the California landscape.”
1/22/21 -- In the final days of a presidency with a propensity for environmental deregulation, the Trump administration tucked some final rollbacks under its belt. The administration opened conservation lands in California and Utah to development, loosened standards on home heating equipment and, most notably to the North Coast, reduced protected habitat for the infamous northern spotted owl by one-third. The owl, which is threatened under the state and federal endangered species acts, is native to northern California, Washington, and Oregon. The species has been the subject of heated debate for years, as it’s protection resulted in millions of acres of forests being closed to timber harvesting
January 22, 2021 — The progress of the vaccine rollout has been one of confusion, changing directives, vaccine hesitancy, conspiracy theories, and a mad rush for available shots, followed by resentment on the part of those who thought they might have had a chance, if they’d been looking at the right Facebook page at the right moment, or if they were on the right mailing list or if they worked for a large well-orgainzed employer like a school district. This was compounded last week, just as Mendocino County was moving into phase 1B, which includes workers in emergency services, education, and food and ag. It also includes older adults. On Wednesday, 1200 people, including hundreds of senior citizens, lined up in the rain at the fairgrounds in Ukiah to get their first shot. The same day, Governor Gavin Newsom dropped the high-priority age from 75 to 65, and said the elderly would be moved to the head of the line. The first allocations that counties received, to vaccinate healthcare workers, were based on an estimate of how many healthcare workers there were. According to last year’s demographic data from Healthy Mendocino, there are 19,656 people in the county over the age of 65. Another 38,608 people are under 18. That leaves just over 49,000 adults who will need to be vaccinated, plus people 16 and older with health conditions who will get their shot in phase 1C. I asked Assemblymember Jim Wood if he could clarify a few things from his perspective at the state level.
Jim Culp talks to a frustrated elder, as well as Supervisor Ted Williams, Mendocino Coast Clinic Executive Director Lucresha Renteria, and Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren, about why the vaccine isn't readily available.
Private landowner David Hull handed off 188 acres of land in the western hills above Ukiah to the city to use for conservation, recreation, and fire management.
January 19, 2021 — The Ukiah Unified School District, the largest in the county, met last week for an update on distance learning and the governor’s not-yet finalized proposal to partially reopen schools by mid-February. The California Safe Schools for All plan is an incentive program that would give schools grants to bring kids back into the classroom. And a letter signed by sixteen local doctors to Mendocino County leaders and representatives laid out in stark terms how detrimental distance learning has been for children, citing widening disparities in academic success and “more and more kids suffering from isolation, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, obesity and diabetes,” as well as an addiction to screens, social media and gaming. The letters’ signers include Dr. Drew Colfax of the regular KZYX Coronavirus Update, and Dr. Mark Luato, the county’s EMS medical director. It closes with the unambiguous exhortation that “Getting children back to in-person school now is essential!”
Enrollment in the district is down slightly, and could go down further if Sanel Valley Academy, a charter school in Hopland, opens next year. The majority of students in the district have seen a decline in their academic assessments, with only about a third of them meeting proficiency levels in most areas. Most of the district’s 800 employees received their first round of the covid vaccine during events at the Ukiah Valley Conference Center on January 12 and 15. Assemblymember Jim Wood, who is also a forensic dentist, participated in giving some of the shots. In other vaccination news, the county reports that public health has vaccinated 5,970 people over the age of 18. That’s not counting those who have been immunized through hospitals, pharmacies, or the Indian health centers, which get their supplies through other channels in the state and federal government. According to a county press release, the approximately 1,200 people who came to the vaccination event at the Redwood Empire fairgrounds on January 13, many of them senior citizens who waited in a light rain for hours, have been vaccinated or scheduled for their first shot. Those who received their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine on December 30 or 31 can receive their second shot on Thursday, January 21, between 9am and 4pm, at the Redwood Empire Fairgrounds in Ukiah. You’ll need your ID and the vaccine card you got with your first shot. Vaccines don’t play into the safety plan that schools must have if the governor’s proposal to reopen passes, but they could make it safer.
January 14, 2021 — Vaccination efforts on the coast are ramping up, with two clinics for firefighters and EMS workers plus a clinic tomorrow at the Fort Bragg high school for all the educators who want it. The hospital is putting together a list of patients who are eligible for a vaccine and will be the first to hear about it as soon as it arrives. The Mendocino Coast Clinics will be using 300 doses of Moderna it received from the county for tomorrow’s school clinic, and have received an approval email to get more directly from the state.
January 15, 2021 — Local community clinics have started vaccinations this week, and are reaching out to the elderly and people whose jobs put them at greater risk of exposure.
Lucresha Renteria, the director of the Mendocino Coast Clinics, worked to get vaccines for today’s vaccination at Fort Bragg high school. Next week, she plans to put together lists of veterinarians, dental workers, and food and ag workers. And she’s weighing the possibility of doing a mass vaccination off-site, especially since there are about 800 elderly patients who have been to the clinic since January of 2018. For now, she’s reaching out to employers and going over the patient rolls.
Leah Collins, a doctor at Anderson Valley Health Center, is asking anyone in the valley who want a vaccine to fill out a survey at the Anderson Valley Health Center’s facebook page or website, so the clinic can contact people when they become eligible. You can also call the clinic at 895-3477.
January 14, 2021 — The governor is seeking early action from the legislature that would provide grants to incentivize local school districts to start reopening for in-person instruction as early as February 15, starting with kids in pre-K through second grade. Students from third to sixth grade would start a month later. Schools would need an agreement with the unions and a strategy for complying with safety criteria from the state, which is set to come out this week. Parents could still keep their children at home if they don’t feel safe about sending them to class. Schools in purple-tier counties like Mendocino would be able to reopen, as long as the average daily rate of infections does not exceed 28 per 100,000 residents. But local educators worry about the source of the funding, and whether it will even be enough to cover the costs of the required testing.
January 13, 2021 — Hundreds of people lined up at the Redwood Empire Fairgrounds in Ukiah this morning, in hopes of getting one of the 400 covid vaccines that were available. The line started at the gates and wound around the parking lot past the RV park. The crowd consisted of workers in the food and ag sectors, caregivers, first responders, and dozens of elderly people who had been waiting in a light rain, some of them with wheelchairs or walkers, for hours, We’ll hear from some of the hopefuls, and Dr. William Miller, the Chief of Staff at Adventist Health Mendocino Coast.
1/11/2021 - Last water year was the third driest on record in the upper Russian River watershed. In downtown San Francisco, the 2020 calendar year was the second driest since record keeping began in 1850, and forecasts are showing a dry January on the horizon.
Needless to say, we may be barreling towards drought in 2021, which could lead to curtailments in water use like we saw in 2014. That year, entire municipalities lost their access to water. In anticipation of this, prominent leaders and water managers of the Mendocino County Farm Bureau, Russian River Flood Control, and the City of Ukiah have banded together to advocate for local interests in the case of a water shortage.
January 11, 2021 — Last Monday, Public Health, Adventist Health Ukiah Valley, and the City of Ukiah administered 830 doses of the Moderna vaccine that were at risk of losing viability after a freezer failure at the hospital. They did it in about two hours, and had to turn people away. Not everybody who wanted one got it, but sometimes it helps to make a little bit of noise, as Anthony Adams, a lawyer in the public defenders office found after he called in to the board of supervisors meeting the following day to complain about being overlooked. We followed up with Adams on Friday. He wanted to be clear that he’s only representing his own personal perspective in the following interview. He’s been vaccinated since Monday, but he’s still concerned about how courthouse working conditions make it hard to keep socially distant. For example, it’s impossible to have a confidential conversation with clients during an open court proceeding without leaning in close to whisper advice. Under ordinary circumstances, Adams also confers with incarcerated clients, which is much more difficult now with covid and the outbreak at the jail. He thinks the jail is doing everything it can to reasonably accommodate the need for legal representation, with a video conferencing system and a couple of rooms in the lobby, where he can meet with clients in person through plexiglass. Still, the public health emergency is making it really hard to make sure untried people can enjoy their constitutional rights and the presumption of innocence.
January 7, 2020 — The sheriff’s presentation before the board of supervisors this week elicited critiques of his data, a request for a resident deputy in Covelo, and demands for him to issue a formal apology for including an image of a hog-tied Black man on a PowerPoint slide. Sheriff Matt Kendall was asking the board to give him the go-ahead to request funding from the state to hire, train and equip ten more deputies to combat organized crime and cartel grows, which he says have proliferated in the Third District, especially Covelo. The total three-year estimate for the deputies, their training and their gear, including vehicles, came out to a little over $4 million. To justify the request, the sheriff included seventeen SWAT activations, two of them out-of-county assists, an increase in coroner’s cases, and a list of major crimes per year, going back to 2014. Homicides in 2020 were up to 13 from 8 the previous year, though they climbed to 18 the year before that. Assaults, including sexual assault and assault with a deadly weapon, public intoxication, and child abuse are down, but Kendall fears reporting is down, too. And some of the violent crimes have involved multiple perpetrators, which presents time-consuming complications. But written and oral comments called out the incomplete data. Chloe Reed wrote that the cumulative statistics on another slide are “essentially meaningless in the context of this proposal,” because they provided no comparison data. Other commenters asked for resources to be allocated to out-of-work families or social workers to address the underlying causes of crime. The slide that troubled everyone had two pictures and a caption but no explanation. The image under the words Imminent Threat portrayed a shadowy figure with an assault rifle, carrying a large bundle on its back, presumably a game camera still from a robbery at a cannabis garden. The next image, beneath the words Appropriate Response, is of a Black man lying in the dirt, covered with dust, his hands tied behind his back and his legs bent behind him. Kendall says that the picture is an instance of vigilante violence from a garden robbery in Laytonville last year, and that it’s the kind of thing that could be prevented if there was enough law enforcement in the area. But Ron Edwards, a licensed nursery owner in Willits who has been a long time advocate in the regulation process, wanted more information. He’s also a Black man, and he was livid about the image. No apology for the image was forthcoming, but the board appeared to agree that the item needed more data, voting unanimously to have Supervisors Ted Williams and John Haschak work with the sheriff to document crime related to illegal pot and come back to the board with a more comprehensive presentation before sending it along to the state.
Jan 6, 2021 — Yesterday was the first board of supervisors meeting of the new year, and the first one ever for First District Supervisor Glenn McGourty and Second District Supervisor Maureen Mulheren, who were sworn in on Monday. Judson Howe, the new CEO for the local Adventist hospitals, was also on hand for a bit of an after-action review of a malfunctioning hospital freezer that set off a mad dash to vaccinate hundreds of people in two hours. There were 830 Moderna vaccines in that hospital’s freezer, which exceeded eight degrees centigrade at 2am on Monday morning after the compressor and the malfunction alarm failed. The vaccine is not viable after more than twelve hours at room temperature. Because the malfunction was not discovered until 11:35 on Monday morning, hospital and public health staff reasoned that they had until 2pm to make sure none of the vaccines were wasted. Howe doesn’t know how much warmer than eight degrees the freezer got, but does not believe it was more than room temperature. Yesterday morning, we reported that the freezer contained 340 vaccines that were part of the county’s 400-dose allotment of the Moderna drug, and that the rest was part of the hospital’s allotment. Another sixty, we said, had been set aside for a planned vaccine clinic at the fairgrounds in Ukiah. But in a brief interview after yesterday’s meeting, Howe said all 400 of the county’s doses were in the hospital’s freezer. The hospital gave 200 of those doses to public health, which then passed them along to the city of Ukiah and the jail, which set up emergency clinics to distribute the vaccines. The hospital gave the county an additional sixty doses from an additional cache of its own vaccines, which were being stored in a different freezer at the hospital in Willits. 101 northbound from Ukiah to Willits was closed due a jackknifed big rig, but the southbound road from Willits to Ukiah was open. We’ll hear details from hospital and county staff about the mass vaccination and the rollout of the vaccine program.
January 5, 2021 — Two new county supervisors were sworn in yesterday morning, shortly before the compressor went out in a freezer containing 830 doses of the Moderna vaccine at the Ukiah Valley Adventist Hospital. Adventist Health and the county’s public health department get separate allocations of vaccines from the state. So far, the county has received one batch of 975 doses from Pfizer and one batch of 400 from Moderna. Most of the county’s allocation of 400 doses was in the malfunctioning freezer, minus sixty that were used at a clinic at the fairgrounds in the afternoon. CEO Carmel Angelo said that the scheduled clinic did proceed as planned. As for the unexpectedly defrosted medicine, Public Health Officer Dr. Andrew Coren said “every one of those vaccines found a person’s arm,” after the city of Ukiah, three nursing homes and a church were among the entities that put together emergency clinics to administer all the vaccines before they were presumed to expire at 2pm. A hospital spokeswoman confirmed that after the freezer’s compressor failed, an alarm that would have alerted staff also failed. She said a manual log indicated the exact time of the power failure, which is how administrators knew, at around 11:30 in the morning, that they only had a few hours to find the arms they needed. Tami Bartolomei, the emergency management coordinator for the city of Ukiah, reported that her team took about fifteen minutes to put together a clinic at the conference center. City EMTs gave the vaccine to over a hundred people, including seven floor staff from Building Bridges, the homeless shelter. Sheriff Matt Kendall said NaphCare nurses from the jail inoculated 94 sheriff’ s department and other county personnel, including himself, in the Donovan Room, near the Emergency Operations Center. An eyewitness to the scene at the hospital, where vaccines were also being given out, described people running from all directions and lines snaking into the hospital and a nearby doctor’s office. The tier structure was not strictly observed during the rush to dispose of the vaccine. Changed plans were the order of the day. Before everyone in Ukiah who was qualified to give a vaccine suddenly found themselves doing just that, another long-anticipated event took place in the hallway at the county administrative building. A full rainbow arched across the sky over Low Gap, but intermittent rain scotched the plans for an outdoor ceremony. Inside, air filters blared and masked family members stood at a distance as First District Supervisor Glenn McGourty and Second District Supervisor Maureen Mulheren were sworn in to their new offices. The agenda for the new supervisors’ first meeting is packed, with first of the year administrative matters as well as attempts to address homelessness, cannabis, and law enforcement. Supervisors will discuss the installation of kitchenettes at the former Best Wester Inn in Ukiah, to turn hotel rooms into living units for homeless people. The cannabis ad hoc committee will bring forward a proposal it hopes will nudge more phase 1 growers toward a state license. And the sheriff will present a plan to try to get the state to pay for more deputies to fight organized crime and illegal grows. There’s also an item on the consent calendar recommending a retroactive agreement with former Public Health Officer Dr. Noemi Doohan for $100,000 effective for the entire year of 2021.
January 4, 2021 — The covid outbreak at the jail continues and has spread to the women’s facility. A total of 90 people have tested positive at the jail since the outbreak began on December 19th, including 77 inmates and 13 staff. As of Sunday night, there are 59 active cases among inmates and seven active among deputies and other staff. Eighteen inmates have recovered or been released, and six staff have completed their isolation. The population at the jail fluctuates, but it’s around 250 people. When kzyx spoke with Sheriff Matt Kendall last night, he said a second inmate had just been hospitalized because of low oxygen levels. One of the hospitalized inmates is in the ICU, but is not on a ventilator. Kendall himself was in quarantine due to a close contact, but has tested negative twice. We’ll hear details from the sheriff.
January 1, 2021 — The coronavirus vaccine has arrived during a surge in covid-19 cases and an outbreak at the jail that has tripled over the course of the week. There are currently 47 inmates in the jail who have tested positive. Nine employees have tested positive since the outbreak started on December 19, and four of them have made it through their isolation period. Another twelve inmates who tested positive have been released, for a total of 68 people so far who are known to have the virus. Sheriff Matt Kendall said cases have ranged from asymptomatic to mild flu-like symptoms. The outbreak is still confined to the men’s jail. Some test results are still pending. As the jail works to monitor its staff and inmates, the vaccination effort is rolling out at Carl Purdy Hall at the fairgrounds in Ukiah. Nash Gonzalez and Adrienne Thompson, of Planning and Building Services, are in charge of making sure everything goes according to plan. Thompson says there’s a reason for that.
People on the streets of Mendocino Village talk about how to say goodbye to 2020 and hello to 2021.
December 30, 2020 — The Ukiah City Council will be short one member as soon as Second District Supervisor-elect Maureen Mulheren leaves the council to take her seat on the Board of Supervisors next week. Earlier this month, the Council voted to fill her seat by appointment rather than special election. The council has replaced departing members by appointment at least since 1947, according to a document put together by City Clerk Kristine Lawler. In 2013, when Mari Rodin left, the council did call for a special election, but Steve Scalmanini was the only candidate, so the election was canceled and he was appointed instead. A special election would cost the city $30,000, since there are no other jurisdictions to share the check. The application for the current open position is due at noon on January 21st. It’s pretty extensive, asking would-be council members about the top three to five most important issues facing the city, how they would resolve a situation where their personal philosophy is at odds with what’s best for the city, and requesting that they weigh in on public safety, infrastructure, economic development, and quality of life, among other issues. The council meets on the first and third Wednesday of every month, and the meeting on the sixth has been cancelled, so it will be down one member for only one session. There is a special meeting on Thursday the 28th, where the council will review the applications, but no decision is required until 60 days after the official date of resignation, which is Monday, January 4. Of the seven candidates who ran in November, Doug Crane and Josefina Duenas won the two seats in contention. Jenny Kimbler, who came in third place, created a social media furor when she used her candidate Facebook page to call for extra-judicial shootings of protesters. A screenshot of the post, which was filled with obscenities, misspellings, and unconventional punctuation choices, appeared on MendoFever a month before the election. In a letter to the editor that ran in the MendoVoice last week, Kimbler thanked her supporters, who knew what was truly in her heart. “If we all agreed with one another all the time, no new solutions would emerge,” she wrote. She went on to say that the past few months have made her realize that she does not need to be on the City Council to make a difference for her community. Earlier this week, we reached out to Scalmanini and Brian Erickson, who were also on the ballot, but both of them were undecided as to whether or not they would apply for the open seat. Ed Donovan said he was not planning to apply. Ahead of the December 16 meeting where the council chose to appoint a fifth member, he and another community member wrote to the council recommending that they choose the remaining candidate, Cameron Ramos. In arguments to dissuade the council from choosing the third-place runner-up, Donovan quoted a few of the more pungent excerpts from Kimbler’s now infamous post, and another letter-writer said she trusts that anyone advocating violence will not be considered for the position. Ramos had not submitted an application when we checked last night, but earlier this week, he said he was planning to.
December 29, 2020 — Food banks are a lifeline for people living on the financial edge: seniors, families, and those with little job security. We’ll hear from volunteers at three food banks from three very different communities in Mendocino County: Gualala, Anderson Valley, and Ukiah.
Listen to the many contributions of area churches as they present a virtual Christmas concert on youtube.
December 24, 2020 — The synthetic opioid fentanyl is a huge problem in the US right now, according to Sheriff Matt Kendall, who sees some of the social effects first-hand. “It is the biggest problem,” he says, because fentanyl is so much cheaper than methamphetamine or heroin to make. “I believe there’s more fentanyl on the streets right now than heroin,” he added. “This is going to be the new epidemic.” It’s a scary substance. In 2018, the CDC, in partnership with the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, put out a video from police body cams that purported to show police officers in Virginia being accidentally exposed to fentanyl. Closer to home, the sheriff reported earlier this month that a deputy at the jail had accidentally been exposed to the drug while cleaning a cell where an inmate had suffered a severe overdose from fentanyl that had somehow been smuggled in. The deputy started feeling woozy, received a dose of Narcan, and was taken to the hospital for observation. He was wearing PPE, including a mask, gloves, and long sleeves. He was also wearing eyeglasses, but not protective goggles. Kendall says it’s impossible to be exposed to fentanyl through the skin, but he thinks the deputy may have been affected by powder that got into a cut on his skin, into his eyes, or by inhaling it. But Dr. Rachel Winograd, a clinical psychologist who works as an associate research professor at the University of Missouri St. Louis, the Missouri Institute of Mental Health, says that sounds impossible. Her work revolves around the role of opioids in what she and others in the field call “the worsening poisoning crisis.” She’s especially concerned with effective, equitable treatments for addiction. In August of this year, she led a team that researched and published an article on misinformation about the risks of accidental fentanyl contact. ”I suppose if you walked into a cloud of fentanyl dust in the air, then technically when you breathe it in, it would get into your system,” she conceded. But typically, getting affected by the drug requires something much more intentional. Users inject it, snort it, insert it rectally, or apply a fentanyl patch, which last is the most common legal use. Kendall says the substance that was found in the inmate’s cell, including on the bed sheets, had preliminary tests done on it before it was shipped off to the California Department of Justice for a full analysis, which has not come back yet. Any toxicology tests that may have been performed on the deputy would be privileged medical information. “You’ll notice that in all the anecdotal reports and accounts of first responders falling ill to overdose from incidental fentanyl exposure, there are zero reports of toxicology that match the anecdote,” Winograd says. “It’s not what’s happening. Something else might be happening, maybe more related to some panic, or nerves, fear, anxiety...but it’s not an overdose.” In a 2017 position paper on incidental fentanyl exposure to first responders, the American College of Medical Toxicology and the American Academy of Clinical Toxicology agree that “the risk of clinically significant exposure to emergency responders is extremely low.” The paper goes on to say that, while terrorists in Russia killed 125 people with a weaponized aerosolized carfentanil mixture, an unprotected individual exposed to “the highest airborne concentration encountered by workers” would require 200 minutes of such exposure to reach a dangerous dose. Absorption of liquid fentanyl does increase with broken skin. The paper cites a veterinarian who was quickly affected after being splashed in the eyes and mouth with a dart containing a mixture of carfentanil and xylazine, but says that facial contact with liquid or powder opioids is unlikely.
Winograd’s team has started incorporating accurate information about the hazards of incidental exposure, or lack thereof, into a law enforcement training program. She says lives could be on the line. “By the end of our training, we had pretty overwhelming results that we were able to bust this myth in the minds of those who attended our trainings,” she reported. “And the idea there, why that matters, is that if first responders are really scared that they are going to overdose themselves, or put themselves in harm’s way when they go to save someone’s life from an overdose, then that’s going to deter them from doing it...or it will at least slow them down if they feel like they need to put on a bunch of protective equipment...if you take an extra two minutes to don a bunch of PPE, that could cost someone their life.”
MENDOCINO, 12/23/2020 - Cal Fire has six timber harvest plans lined up for Jackson Demonstration State Forest. The first plan is slated to begin this spring. Jackson is California's largest state forest and is home to a significant amount of the states redwood trees. Local conservation group, the Mendocino Trail Stewards, doesn't want the logging to happen. They think that, considering climate change, the forest should be left alone, only used for carbon sequestration and non motorized recreation. Cal Fire says that's not going to happen.
On Sunday, I met up with some members of the trail stewards, to find out a little more about their concerns and desires for the state forest they love. This audio piece dives into what I discovered.
As a health care professional, Miranda Ramos has a heightened awareness of limiting exposure to the virus. Nevertheless, she contracted the disease, and chose to share her experience online, and with the KZYX audience.
December 21, 2020 — The legal cannabis industry in Mendocino County is more uncertain than ever, with a local ordinance that does not set up local growers for success in getting their annual licenses from the state. Those will be required by the first of the year in 2022. The local program started out in the ag department, which is on its fifth ag commissioner since the regulatory process started, then moved over to planning and building, where Megan Dukett is now the second cannabis program manager to try to sort things out. She’s the third, if you count Kelly Overton, who fled into the desert after a few months on the job amid purported clashes with Harinder Grewal, the ag commissioner whose legal troubles with the county have surfaced in closed sessions of the board of supervisors. More than a thousand growers are in the queue to get their permits from the county, which does not require site-specific environmental reviews but does call for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to conduct sensitive species reviews on potential grow sites. However, there’s no funding to pay the agency to do that work, and CDFW has not indicated that it’s willing to do the job for free. Meanwhile, growers have gotten tired of resubmitting minutiae-laden paperwork and paying to bring their properties up to a standard that’s acceptable for growing weed. A huge problem for Dukett is that many of the applications are incomplete. She reported that the response rate to letters from her office requesting more information has been less than stellar. At a cannabis town hall last week, led by Supervisors John Haschak and Ted Williams, Haschak said that, in light of the fast-approaching deadline for annual licences, the focus of conversations with state leadership has been about the California requirement for site-specific CEQA reviews.
December 18, 2020 — The covid-19 vaccine is here, but leading medical experts urge continuing safety measures, like mask-wearing and staying home for the holidays. The list of who can be vaccinated in phase 1b, the next round of shots, is still being developed, but Lori Nezhura, co-chair of the vaccine task force at the California Office of Emergency Services, says food and ag workers, emergency workers, and people in the field of education are likely to be on it. We’re in phase 1a now, with healthcare workers getting the first doses. There are about three million people in that phase. Still, help has arrived during the state’s worst surge, which healthcare workers fear will lead to a rising death toll. But it also means more people than ever will have recovered from the virus by the time it’s their turn to get the shot. Dr. Matt Willis, the public health officer for Marin County, says the vaccine is safe for covid survivors like himself. He and Nezhura were panelists, along with UCLA infectious disease expert Dr. Timothy Brewer, at a coronavirus town hall moderated by Senator Mike McGuire last night. Dr. Brewer said there’s been a 740% increase in cases since Halloween, which was a tipping point for the virus. There’s been a 400% increase in hospitalizations, and a 350% increase in deaths since a day that is generally seen as the kickoff to the holiday season.
December 18, 2020 — Uyen Thai, a pharmacist resident at Adventist Health Ukiah Valley, says she felt honored to be chosen for the historic role she played yesterday afternoon, when the first recipients of the first doses of the covid 19 Pfizer vaccine to hit the county rolled up their sleeves for her and her colleague Jenny Nyugen so they could be immunized in front of their friends, colleagues, and most of the English-speaking press corps of inland Mendocino County. Dr. Mark Luato, who serves as the EMS director, was the very first person in the county to be vaccinated. As promised earlier this week on the coronavirus update, he took it very well.
Globally, wildfires are getting more frequent and more extreme, and in Mendocino County it’s no different. Actually, wildfire is part of the natural ecosystem process in Mendocino, so it’s an inevitable part of life in this region of the north coast. And climate change, a failure to manage forests properly, and building in wildland-urban-interfaces has only made the situation worse.
Earlier this month, In response to this issue, the Mendocino Fire Safe Council rolled out a video series to help residents prepare for this inescapable part of life in the County. The videos guide residents through the steps of protecting their property from fire.
December 16, 2020 — Supervisors Carre Brown and John McCowen were honored at their last Board of Supervisors meeting yesterday, with Senator Mike McGuire and Assemblyman Jim Wood sharing a retrospective of their accomplishments. Public Health Officer Dr. Andrew Coren disclosed new school guidance loosening restrictions on cohorts, which Ukiah Unified School District Superintendent Deb Kubin said will allow schools to open to in-person instruction for one period per day. That guidance can be acted upon four weeks after the county re-enters the red tier, as per regulations put out by the state. Right now, Mendocino County is firmly in the purple tier, surpassing 2,000 known cases earlier this week. All the residents of Building Bridges, the homeless shelter in Ukiah, are in hotel rooms as Redwood Community Services cleans the premises after an outbreak that led to a quarantine. Covid vaccines are likely to arrive in Mendocino County this week, but Coren advised the Board to look into establishing a mass casualty plan, because he expects the next few months to be the worst yet. Nash Gonzalez, who is heading up the vaccine distribution, reported that the county expects to receive 975 doses of the Pfizer vaccine this week, though next week’s distribution has come into question.
December 15, 2020 — The cannabis ordinance has been a puzzle for years: how to move culltivators through the county permit process and on to a state license, which will be required as of January first, 2022? The state requires site-specific CEQA review for every grow, which the county does not. State agencies and the county are short on staff, and there are over a thousand cultivators waiting in the queue to get their county permits. The Board of Supervisors formed an ad hoc committee, consisting of Supervisors Ted Williams and John Haschak, to figure out how to fit the state and county pieces together. They’re hosting a virtual town hall tomorrow afternoon at 4:00, to try and catch everyone up on the latest information.
December 14, 2020 — December 12 is an important day for local Catholics, who celebrated the birthday of the Vigin of Guadalupe this Saturday in their cars, with no singing, no live music, and lots of social distance. It was unlike any of the previous celebrations, which were sometimes lavish, with parades to the Redwood Empire Fairgrounds and mariachi bands and lights and food and a Mass before dawn. Carlos Jacinto, a local playwright who helps organize church events and theatrical productions, talks about this year’s celebration: what was special about it, and what he’s looking forward to next year.
December 11, 2020 — A narrow section of land long claimed by the historic cemetery in Redwood Valley is under dispute, with a neighboring property owner saying the land is his and he wants it back. Now the district wants to find the descendants of people it believes are buried in unmarked graves in the fifteen by hundred foot strip.
The year 2040 may seem like the distant future. But the Ukiah is already making decisions about what the city will look like in 20 years.
Currently, the city of Ukiah is working on it’s 2040 general plan. A general plan is a document that outlines the goals for the cities or towns creating them. The State of California requires local jurisdictions to update or re-write their general plans periodically.
The 2040 general plan has the potential to define Ukiah’s future. It will lay out how land and resources are used for the next two decades and how projects the city takes on will be prioritized. It will create a long term plan that guides decisions about zoning, housing development, infrastructure, and more.
Additionally, the general plan is an important way to plan, long term, for a green future. The plan is required to consider environmental equity and sustainability. It’s supposed to be written considering California’s goals of reaching carbon neutrality by 2045
The city started working on its 2040 general plan over a year ago, in May 2019. On Monday and Tuesday Nights, the general plan committee held two identical meetings, where they consulted ukiah residents about land use. Between the two meetings, around 60 people attended. This was their third round of community meetings since may of 2019.
The meeting was led by Rick Rust, a consultant from the Sacramento based planning and development group Mintier Harnish, which was hired by the city for around 350,000 to write the city’s general plan.
The meeting was informative and filled with passionate Ukiah Residents or people who are otherwise invested in the city's future. Just some of the topics discussed last night were creating evacuation routes, building parks, investing in more low-income housing, incentivizing developers to make their way to Ukiah, and creating a green and sustainable city.
Although the meeting was packed full of information, I wanted to find out more about when the plan will actually be written and implemented and how the city of Ukiah General Plan committee will make sure that community member input is considered when writing and implementing the plan. To hear from Craig Schlatter, director of community development, listen to the full story.
December 9, 2020 — The Board of Supervisors spent the whole morning yesterday on the novel coronavirus update, with reports from Dr. Coren and Dr. Doohan, high-level hospital staff, and the CEO of Redwood Community Services, who reported on the outbreak at Building Bridges, the homeless shelter and day program in Ukiah. Yesterday, 37 new cases were reported countywide, and the day before, another covid patient died on the South Coast, bringing the death count up to 24. Jason Wells, the president of Adventist Health in Mendocino County, assured the board that, with cross-trained staff and ventilators, the hospital could bring its current sixteen ICU beds up to 45. The state is only counting sixteen beds in its calculations of the county’s contribution to regional ICU capacity. Currently, 10% of the hospital’s workforce is out on medical leave, but Wells is confident that the 23-hospital system could rely on highly trained National Guard personnel if the surge demanded it. The best case scenario is that vaccines will arrive in the county in a week or two. Adventist Health Medical Officer Dr. Bessant Parker told the board that healthcare personnel caring for covid patients in the emergency department would be first in line for the new vaccine, followed by ICU staff, then those on the regular medical and surgical wards. Coren said the county has purchased one deep freezer that will be suitable for storing the Pfizer vaccine, but that there may be a delay in the delivery. In the meantime, he said the hospital is willing to share its refrigeration capacity with the county. Victoria Kelly, the CEO of Redwood Community Services, reported that staff and clients of Building Bridges are in quarantine or isolation. Eight clients who tested positive are isolating hotel rooms. Everyone else who was on the premises when the outbreak started has been determined to be a close contact, and has been quarantining on site since Thursday. Public health conducted PCR tests yesterday, and testing is being carried out twice a week until everyone tests negative. RCS and the Adventist Health Street Medicine team are still offering services, and Plowshares has been providing some of the meals. None of the staff has tested positive at this time. In an off-agenda item, Supervisor John McCowen and Supervisor Ted Williams brought forward a resolution to prioritize available county resources to assure effective enforcement of local health orders. Williams cited Facebook complaints about large gatherings, and McCowen relayed reports of people working out inside gyms. John Martire, the head of the Special Investigations Unit, said his office had gotten 23 calls for service in the month of November. He added that he regularly hears about violations days after the fact, and insisted that his office does prioritize complaints about large gatherings. The board also adopted a hazard mitigation plan for other disasters, which must be updated and approved every five years in order to receive FEMA hazard mitigation grants. The county, the four cities, and the Mendocino Office of Education participated in the plan, which identified the top hazards facing the area, and pointed the way to a variety of grant programs to preemptively reduce damage, largely by investing in infrastructure. Wildfire ranked highest on the risk matrix, squarely in the middle of the highly likely probability with catastrophic impact, followed closely by earthquake. The plan lays out mitigation actions, priorities, which agency is responsible, and whether the actions can be covered by the existing budget or if other sources of revenue should be sought out. The board also agreed unanimously to adopt an urgency ordinance to clean up fire debris and remove hazard trees from private properties that were damaged during the August Complex and Oak fires. Thirteen owners of damaged properties have signed right of entry agreements with a state-funded debris removal program, three have made private arrangements, and 14 have taken no action. The ordinance allows the county to declare those properties a nuisance and a health hazard and to abate the nuisance. The ordinance will appear on the consent calendar to be formally adopted next week, after county counsel fine tunes some language about the definition of hazard trees on private property.
12/8/2020 - If you’re a PG&E customer, you should start preparing yourself for an increase in your electricity bill. On March 1st, a rate hike of 8 percent will take effect.
The boost was approved by the California Public Utilities Commission on Thursday, December 3rd. And According to reporting done by the Associated Press, it will result in an average increase of $13.44 per month, or 161 dollars and 28 cents per year for residential customers across Northern California.
Rate increases over the next few years, including this one, will add up to 1.15 billion additional dollars in revenue for PG&E.
The utility company says they plan to use their funds to update their outdated equipment, equipment which has been blamed for igniting catastrophic wildfires over the past few years. But this will come at a cost to consumers, as it will further tighten the budgets of Californians struggling to make ends meet during the pandemic.
The approval didn’t come lightly. Rather, it came after a two year battle between PG&E and a variety of consumer advocacy groups that rejected the idea that customers should have to pay for updates that, as one source said, PG&E neglected for years.
In the full story, you'll hear from Mindy Spatt, representative of consumer advocacy group The Utilities Reform Network, who believes that in light of the pandemic and subsequent economic hardship, the rate hike should be frozen. You'll also hear from Paul Doherty, communications representative at PG&E, who says that the rate hike is necessary in order for PG&E to continue to safely and reliably provide electricity.
12/8/2020 - Lead Park Ranger at Lake Mendocino, Poppy Lozzoff, admitted that the water level at the lake looks terrifyingly low. “As a visitor, it is a dramatic site to see so much exposed ground,” she wrote in an email.
Lake Mendocino currently sits at 712 ft above sea level. That’s very low. But despite years of dry conditions and the fact that California water year 2019 to 2020 was the third driest in the Upper Russian River watershed in recorded history, it’s not the lowest the lake has ever been. Which is thanks to FIRO, or Forecast Informed Reservoir Operations (pronounced FEE-roh) — a satellite weather forecasting tool to manage water availability and increase water reliability. Without FIRO, there may have been a water shortage this year.
Lake Mendocino is the location of the first ever FIRO trial. For over six years, government agencies and academic institutions have been testing FIRO out at Lake Mendocino. They’re trying to find out, in light of years of droughts and floods, if the new management tool will be feasible to use across the west to more efficiently manage water.
Lake Mendocino is a man-made reservoir that was created when the Coyote Valley dam was constructed in 1958. Because the lake is artificial, water managers can control how much water is released or stored and when.
Before the arrival of FIRO, the lake was being managed based on a manual from the 1950s that had last been updated in the 1980s. FIRO’s forecasting tools allow water manager to better dial in how much water to keep in the lake at any given time.
Without FIRO, the lake would have sunk to its lowest elevation of all time and have 18% less water than it does now, according to Lozzoff and other officials familiar with the project. Army Corps Engineer Nick Malasavage, who has been with the project since its inception, said that if not for the use of FIRO, there likely would have been a water shortage and therefore limits placed on businesses and people that rely on Lake Mendocino water.
However, even with FIRO and the technology it brings to the table, the Russian River water system, which includes the lake, is still being stretched thin by climate change and subsequent drought. This year, the Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the lake, had to reduce flows going into the Russian in order to keep sufficient water storage in the reservoir.
During water year 2019 to 2020, which came to a close on September 30, the region around the lake received 34.8% of normal precipitation, compared to historical averages from the last 127 years. That number comes from measurements at the Ukiah rain gage. As climate change continues to bring more extreme weather conditions — fewer, more intense storms during the rainy season and hotter, longer dry spells during the summer months, data and forecast based water management will become increasingly important. However, it’s not a silver bullet to providing reliable water in the west. FIRO is complicated, and each reservoir is impacted by a variety of factors including climate and users. Applying FIRO principles to other bodies of water around the west and the country will not be an easy feat.
December 7, 2020 — On Wednesday night, Ukiah City Councilman Juan Orozco became the city’s first Latino mayor. He took over from newly re-elected Councilman Douglas Crane, and will serve in the role for one year. Orozco has been on the council since 2018. Josefina Duenas, who was newly elected on November third, was seated on the Council for a four-year term. Orozco was born in Mexico and came to Mendocino County with his sister as a young man. He worked in the vineyards and orchards of Anderson Valley and started learning English and taking classes at Mendocino College. He went on to Sonoma State, where he minored in Chicano and Latino studies. Then he got an emergency teaching credential at Dominican University, which allowed him to work as a substitute teacher. We’ll hear from the new mayor and Roseanne Ibarra, who is the co-founder of the Mendocino Latinx Alliance and part of the recently created Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force, which succeeded in getting the county to publish covid information in Spanish and provide simultaneous translation of the press conferences with the county health officer. She’s also the director of community well-being for the county’s three Adventist hospitals. All these roles make her acutely aware of various disparities, especially now, that 65% of the known covid infections are among the county’s Latino population. It’s been a tough year. But there’s also been a groundswell of organization in the Latino community, with the formation of the task force and a new promotores de salud program, which trains Spanish-speaking community health workers to educate people about how to stay healthy and safe. Both initiatives are likely to remain relevant, even after the pandemic subsides. With Orozco working to hire more bilingual staff and working to get city communications out in Spanish, both community leaders are hopeful that more of the population will feel adequately represented.
December 3, 2020 — More than 90% of the electorate turned out to vote in the race for board members in the Mendocino City Community Services District, which oversees sewer, water, and streetlights in the town of Mendocino. Given the famous saying about whiskey and water, it’s not hard to see why.
December 2, 2020 — For years, the Mendocino Coast Hospitality Center has worked with local faith groups to run a winter homeless shelter, which houses 15-24 people in addition to the year-round shelter and the transitional housing programs. This year, with pandemic safety measures in place, the year-round shelter has reduced its beds from 24 to 17, and the center is scrambling to find staff to operate the winter shelter at a new site. The Board of Supervisors recently passed an urgency ordinance to allow properties in the coastal zone to operate as shelters without a use permit, and there are three potential properties where the shelter could open in the new year, as long as there are enough people to run it. Hospitality Center interim Director Paul Davis talked about efforts to bring people in out of the cold. Applications to work at the winer shelter are available at the Mendocino Coast Hospitality Center’s webpage.
December 1, 2020 — Last week, retired sheriff Tom Allman announced on Facebook that he would start serving as a peace officer in Humboldt County, where he was born and raised. The Humboldt County sheriff, William Honsal, wrote in his own statement that Allman would end a nearly decade-long vacancy in the Lost Coast Resident Deputy position, which includes the Shelter Cove, Whitethorn and Mattole Valley communities. Honsal added that Allman will spend about four days a week on the Lost Coast, with deputies from the Garberville substation providing coverage on the days that he is not assigned. The resident deputy position is funded through the county’s Measure Z public safety sales tax. Allman was sworn in today at 11am at the fire station in Shelter Cove. Because of the pandemic, the public was not invited to participate in person. The event was livestreamed on the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Facebook page. Lauren Schmitt, of KMUD news, interviewed Justin Robbins, the general manager of Shelter Cove’s resort improvement district number one about his thoughts on the new resident deputy.
For church choirs, vocal ensembles and professional musicians, one of the hardest sacrifices of the pandemic is not being able to sing together. Jim Culp explores how one local church choir has implemented unfamiliar technologies to create an even better choir, virtually.
November 30, 2020 — Earlier this month, the Board of Supervisors approved a six-month contact for a Promotores de Salud, or Spanish-speaking community health worker program with Nuestra Alianza, a non-profit organization in Willits. The contract, for up to $158,700, includes one lead community health worker and five part time promotores, who will provide Spanish-language education about covid-19 to the community that’s been hardest hit by the virus. A team of professional public health trainers will lead the workers through various scenarios and the complexities of communicating about often fraught subjects. The promotores are focusing especially on educating people about safe gatherings and staying safe at work, so they don’t bring the virus home to their families. You can call Nuestra Alianza about this program at (707) 456-9418.
November 26, 2020 — Assessor Clerk-Recorder Katrina Bartolomie has something to be thankful for this week, with all the votes tallied as of late Tuesday afternoon. Glenn McGourty and Maureen Mulheren won their supervisorial races decisively, with McGourty claiming 57.7% of the vote in the first district and Mulheren winning in the second with 60.64%. But Steve Scalmanini, who was the second-highest vote getter in the Ukiah City Council race on election night, dropped to fourth place, losing his bid for another term. In Willits, Measure K, a ten-year 75 cent sales tax initiative to fund city services, passed comfortably, with 65.11% of the vote. And Measure I, which will allow the Willits Unified School District to issue up to $17 million in bonds, also passed with 60.04% KZYX caught up with Bartolomie Wednesday afternoon.
When Ed Keller opened a letter from his home insurance company announcing that his policy had been cancelled and that purchasing a new one would cost four times what he had paid in the past, he was sure there had been a mistake. Bewildered, he picked up the phone and called his provider, Mark Davis Insurance, to clear things up, only to hear from a company representative that it was not an error at all. Keller’s insurance premium had been hiked up by around 400%, from around $1,000 to just over $4,000 per year. His story is by no means unique. Across California, almost one million homeowners have received notices of non renewal since 2015. Short of serious intervention, insurance experts, consumer advocates, and state agencies only expect this to continue.
November 24, 2020 — Mendocino County is solidly in the purple tier, which means that most schools are closed, with narrow exceptions for extracurricular activities and students facing certain hardships. But some small schools got their waivers in over the summer and received the nod from the state to provide in-person instruction. We’ll hear from Sandy Peters, the administrator at Deep Valley Christian School in Redwood Valley, about what it takes to deliver all in-person instruction; and Chloe Reed, the Executive Director and one of the teachers at Montessori Del Mar Community School in Fort Bragg, about adventures in outdoor education during hybrid learning.
A long contested plan to remove four hydro-electric dams on the Klamath River is moving forward, creating a path for restoring the river's decimated salmon fisheries and cleaning up a waterway that has long been central to local Native American tribes. The process of physically removing the four dams, which are owned by energy company PacifiCorp, is set to begin in three years. The agreement was announced at a Zoom meeting on Wednesday afternoon.
November 23, 2020 — Between August 19 and August 23, as the August Complex fire was working towards becoming the state’s largest wildfire, almost fifty earthquakes were measured eleven miles east southeast of Willits. The first one was a magnitude 4.2, and most of the aftershocks were tiny, with just four of them above a magnitude 3. Cynthia Pridmore is a senior engineering geologist at the California Geological Survey. She says Willits, like most of California, is really close to an active fault. Specifically the Maacamas, which is part of the Hayward Fault subsystem of the San Andreas. We’ll hear from Pridmore and Amanda Moyer, the Earthquake Early Warning program manager at CalOES, which has worked with the US Geological Survey and private industry to roll out three ways to give people a few seconds between the first and second waves of a quake to drop, cover and hold on.
November 19, 2020 — Current local election results have not been completely tallied yet, but a new batch of ballots has been freshly counted, bringing the percentage of counted votes up to just over 68%. Maureen Mulheren and Glenn McGourty’s leads in the supervisorial races have grown over their opponents, Mari Rodin and Jon Kennedy, but in the Ukiah City Council race, Steve Scalmanini and Josefina Duenas have switched places. Duenas is now the second-highest vote getter, with 17.90%, while Scalmanini is third, with 16.99% Douglas Crane is still in the lead with 18.94%, but with two seats in the race, the top two contenders will win a seat on the council. 65.59% of In a previous election, the Measure B mental health sales tax measure passed three years ago this month. At yesterday’s Measure B Citizens’ Oversight Committee meeting, Commissioner Lloyd Weer reported that, at almost halfway to the five-year mark, the tax initiative’s revenues are close to projections.
November 18, 2020 — Surveillance testing programs in Mendocino County have come and gone, as the global pandemic has lasted much longer than anyone expected. The contract with UCSF to process tests from the clinics expired on the fifteenth of this month, and yesterday, Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren reported that the state had approved the county’s application for a mobile Optum Serv site, in addition to the site at the fairgrounds in Ukiah. Wineries have been testing employees through a private company called Healthy Spaces, and now there’s an effort to get more businesses to use the service to test employees on the job. The Chambers of Commerce in Mendocino County have been working with local business and trade groups, city and county officials, Coren, and the West Business Development Center to put together a program they hope will catch on at local workplaces.
November 17, 2020 — With most of California back in the purple tier, public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren has updated the county’s health order to limit outdoor gatherings to 12 people instead of 20 from three different households. He told the board of supervisors today that he does not expect the county to get out of the purple tier for the next six to eight weeks. On the consent calendar, the board approved $158,700 for a six-month Promotores de Salud program with Nuestra Alianza to train at least six Spanish-speaking health ambassadors who will work in the community to prevent the spread of covid-19. The board also approved an urgency ordinance to establish temporary group care facilities in the coastal zone for winter homeless shelter.
November 16, 2020 — Last week, when the county was still in the red tier, school boards met to discuss plans to reopen schools for in-person instruction. We caught up with Michelle Hutchins, the Superintendent of the Mendocino County Office of Education, about an hour after the governor’s address on Monday afternoon.
November 16, 2020 — Coronavirus infections are rising again in Mendocino County, but for the moment, schools are still eligible to reopen for in-person instruction. The Ukiah Unified School District board met Thursday night to discuss the plan. The board voted last July to authorize Superintendent Deb Kubin to decide which option to implement. If the county is still in the red tier on December 1, the plan is to bring transitional kindergarten and first grade back to school on December seventh for two half days a week on a staggered schedule, and distance learning for the rest of the week. Older students through the eighth grade would phase into the hybrid model later in December, and high schoolers would come back in January, also on the hybrid plan. Parents can opt out of the hybrid model and stick with all distance learning if they still don’t feel safe. The teachers union advocated for waiting until after the winter break to bring any students back. Thirty-five people signed up for public comment during the meeting, and most of them made it through, in spite of the YouTube lag. The stakes in the matter could not be higher, and opinions broke into roughly three groups: those who are watching infections and deaths climb and want to hold off on in-person instruction; those whose children are breaking down mentally from isolation and desperately want to go back to school; and those who believe the hybrid model is not a good enough alternative to take the risk and do the work to roll out.
Yesterday, the Ukiah Valley Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency had their second public meeting, where they discussed how their mammoth project of sustainably managing the groundwater in the Ukiah Valley Basin is coming along.
The Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) is in charge of creating a plan to regulate all groundwater (well water) in the Ukiah Valley Basin for decades to come. Basically, the GSA will decide how much water gets pumped and how much water stays in the ground in order to avoid chronic groundwater lowering.
Although the Groundwater Sustainability Agency is making progress on their management plans, there is still a lot that is up in the air. Precisely how the agency chooses to manage groundwater will dictate how residents who rely on it are impacted.
November 12, 2020 — The county has been in the red tier, for substantial rather than widespread presence of covid-19 for just over two weeks. The percentage of positive test cases, over a seven-day average with a seven-day lag, is low enough to qualify the county for the orange tier, but the numbers, at an average of 6.57 per day, just barely come in below the average of seven per day that qualifies us for the red. An additional death was also reported earlier this week, bringing the total deaths in the county to 22. MendoFever reported that the most recent person to lose his life to the illness was an 80-year-old Asian man in the Ukiah Valley. That hasn’t kept city playgrounds in Ukiah from reopening, with strict protocols including face masks, social distancing, daily cleaning of playground equipment, no eating or drinking on the playground, and a limitation of half-hour visits with other people are there. And yesterday was Veterans Day, though the usual gatherings and displays of appreciation for service members were virtual affairs. The Mendocino County Museum hosted a Facebook tribute, where local people recorded messages in front of the memorial in honor of the 22 veterans who lost their lives or went missing in action in Vietnam. Supervisor John Haschak recorded his message, noting the many veterans in his own family. Homelessness is a persistent problem for many veterans, who make up one demographic targeted for the most recent plan to house homeless people in Ukiah. On Monday, November 16, at 6:30 pm, Senator Mike McGuire will host a virtual town hall on the project, which has unfolded more quickly than is typical. You can register for Monday’s webinar in advance at: https://mendocinocounty.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_56BGCnjfTmO9qwGeX41FnQ or watch it on the county’s YouTube channel. You can email questions prior to the meeting to: cobsupport@mendocinocounty.org
November 10, 2020 — Not quite half the ballots from the recent election have been counted, assuming all of Mendocino County’s 53,651 voters participated. Both courthouses in Ukiah and Fort Bragg will be closed all week, due to two unrelated covid exposures last week. And if you see smoke in Anderson Valley tomorrow, chances are it’s the Anderson Valley Fire Department conducting a training burn at Gowan’s Orchard in Philo, starting at 8am. The site is ten acres of fallow field bordered by Hendy Woods State Park and the Navarro River. Mendocino County has now been in the red tier for fourteen consecutive days, after which schools will have the option of reopening to in-person instruction. And as the year winds down, the Board of Supervisors is asking for detailed financial information and priorities from the Measure B Citizens Oversight Committee.
10/9/2020 -- For years, the Willits Unified School District has struggled to keep their aging facilities in good repair. There are eight school buildings in the district. The newest one is from the late ‘80s, and the oldest from almost a century ago. At Willits High School, the parking lot is badly in need of an upgrade, and at Blosser Elementary, the roof is leaking. Despite the urgency of these issues, superintendent Mark Westerburg couldn’t do much about it, because there was no money to deal with the rapidly deteriorating buildings. Last week, that changed.
The Willits School District voters passed measure I, allowing the district's board to issue $17 million dollars in bonds over the next 10 to 12 years. The access to funds should allow them to keep their buildings in decent shape and tackle problems as soon as they come up.
People in Mendocino Village are notoriously left of center politically. On November 4th, they shared their feelings of disappointment and frustration, optimism and hope.
November 4, 2020 — The entire country kept a long-awaited appointment with its democratic destiny yesterday. In Mendocino County, not quite half the ballots from 53,651 registered voters were counted by midnight. A huge amount of confusion resulted from the all mail-in procedure, with the majority of election-day voters casting provisional ballots because they lost track of the ballots they received in the mail last month.
November 2, 2020 — Since the county entered the red tier on Tuesday, a few restrictions have been loosened. On Friday, Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren addressed what will be allowed in the new tier, how to celebrate the holidays safely, and talked about plans to improve testing capacity, especially now that UCSF has canceled its lab contract with the county.
October 29, 2020 — The Measure B committee reviewed the first draft of its strategic plan, went over some financial information, and discussed the training center in Redwood Valley at Wednesday’s meeting . Some commissioners were surprised that Measure B is now paying for services that have not appeared on previous budgets, but Commissioner Carmel Angelo said this is the beginning of the commission paying its own way. The decision about who will run the psychiatric health facility, or puff, and the crisis residential care unit, or CRT, will be made this winter. And next week, the Board of Supervisors will discuss a virtual training module, which would run trainees through various scenarios with people in mental health crises.
The city of Ukiah’s newest employees have floppy ears, hooves, and will eat almost anything you put in front of them, which makes them the perfect fit for their job: eating the invasive species and flammable material on the Ukiah section of the Great Redwood Trail.
Most years, the City of Ukiah hires contracts inmate crews from Chamberlain Creek Camp, a prison in Mendocino, to remove excess brush from the abandoned Ukiah train tracks and a few other city properties. But due to both COVID and the massive amount of fires burning around the state, those crews were sent elsewhere.
This is an important job, as excess brush is proven to have a direct relationship to more severe fires.
So the City hired Tony Gonzalez, owner and founder of Gonzalez Brush Busters, and his 200 goats to do the work. So far, the project has been a success. The goats seem to be doing their work -- clearing the ground of everything edible, and are bringing smiles to the faces of many Ukiah residents.
October 29, 2020 — The Measure B committee reviewed the first draft of its strategic plan, went over some financial information, and discussed the training center in Redwood Valley at Wednesday’s meeting . Some commissioners were surprised that Measure B is now paying for services that have not appeared on previous budgets, but Commissioner Carmel Angelo said this is the beginning of the commission paying its own way. The decision about who will run the psychiatric health facility, or puff, and the crisis residential care unit, or CRT, will be made this winter. And next week, the Board of Supervisors will discuss a virtual training module, which would run trainees through various scenarios with people in mental health crises.
October 28, 2020 — As the summer of the pandemic fades into fall, the loneliness is getting acute, especially for kids and elderly people. Online platforms and handwritten cards have to take the place of in-person gatherings, especially since the two age groups tend to respond so differently to the virus. Meyo Marrufo, the environmental director for Guidiville Rancheria, has been heavily involved in the online curriculum at the California Indian Museum and Cultural Center in Santa Rosa, which put a lot of work into getting elders on zoom so they could take classes. Bonnie Lockhart is a member of the Sherwood Valley Band of Pomo, where she runs the tribal youth diversion program. She’s using multiple platforms to connect with young people and come up with healthy activities. Recently, the two women got a grant from the North Coast Opportunities Mask Awareness Program to design a card and distribute it, along with packages of masks, to people in Native American communities. We’ll hear them talk about connecting with lonely friends and family, staying safe, and continuing to do the work that’s important to them.
October 27, 2020 — For most of the pandemic, the county has been able to send hundreds of surveillance tests every week to a lab at UCSF, free of charge. The community health clinics in Fort Bragg, the south coast, Anderson Valley and Long Valley have offered these tests for months to people who can’t get to the OptumServ site in Ukiah. The contract with UCSF was supposed to last until the end of the calendar year. But just last week, UCSF terminated that contract, based on unspecified legal advice, according to Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren. Now the clinics and the county are scrambling to come up with another way to test asymptomatic people outside of Ukiah.
October 26, 2020 — As the US, along with much of the Western world sees surges in covid-19 numbers, local organizations like the chambers of commerce and non-profits are working to distribute masks and information about the virus. Lucy Kramer is a community wellness coordinator and the program manager for the mask awareness program at North Coast Opportunities, which has made more than a dozen mini-grants to organizations and individuals with ideas about how to spread the word. NCO itself received a grant of a little over $150,000 from the county of Mendocino over the summer, to target young people and Hispanic and Native American communities. Some of the grants it disbursed from that money were matched by another organization, Emergency Preparedness in Communities, which doubled some of the awards, so fourteen of the grantees could get a limit of $6,000. One grantee is the covid response network, which has put out a bilingual survey to find out what people already know about the virus. Questions include basic queries about safety practices and what kind of messaging people find most compelling about the virus. Some of the answers double as suggestions for safe ways to handle holiday celebrations, while others seek information about people’s feelings regarding free testing if they’re asymptomatic or getting the vaccine if it becomes available. Kramer also coordinates the Gardens Project, and says the gardens have become distribution points for masks, along with with bilingual information about the virus. As of the middle of last week, she had 40,000 masks remaining from a shipment of 115,000. “They’re going like hotcakes,” she reported.
In this episode, you will hear from Patrick Higgins, managing director of the Eel River Recovery Project, and Andrew Ryple, a UC Davis scientist who specializes in cold water fish ecology. Ryple says that considering climate change, the poor river conditions Higgins witnessed are not surprising.
October 22, 2020 — The Board of Supervisors unanimously denied an appeal to block a cell phone tower on Pine Mountain about five miles from the Willits city center on Tuesday. And the second reading of an ordinance regulating a pilot program for growing industrial hemp passed along the same lines as the first reading, though it still meets with opposition from cannabis farmers.
October 21, 2020 — The Board of Supervisors unanimously agreed to purchase a Best Western Motel on South Orchard Avenue in Ukiah yesterday, after Senator Mike McGuire assured the board that the state has expanded program funding to support Project Homekey, a statewide program to purchase motels for homeless housing. And Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren said he’s cautiously optimistic about the county’s prospects of slipping into a less restrictive tier, which would allow schools to open and gyms and houses of worship to commence indoor operations. The recent fires have been declared eligible for FEMA assistance, and the county will host Local Assistance Centers in Covelo and Willits next week. FEMA reps will be at the Willits Library from 8am to 5pm October 26-29. From 2-6 pm on Monday the 26th, county reps from planning and building, HHSA, disaster recovery, the cannabis program and environmental health will also be at the Willits Library. On Wednesday the 28th, the county staff will be at the Round Valley Elementary School from 2-6 to help fire survivors figure out what they need.
October 19, 2020 — The second district supervisorial race took an unexpected turn earlier this month, when Mari Rodin canceled a candidate’s forum for health reasons. In an interview earlier today, Rodin disclosed that she was having an exploratory surgery in San Francisco that day, and that she found out the next day, October 6, that she has cancer. Rodin says her campaign for supervisor is still active, and according to Katrina Bartolomie, the county registrar of voters, as of this morning, 1,914 of the 9,491 voters in the second district had already mailed in their ballots.
October 19, 2020 — On Saturday afternoon, seventeen days before the election, about fifty people gathered in Alex Thomas Plaza in Ukiah to rally in memory of Breonna Taylor, to encourage people to vote, and to put out the word that the public safety board is still looking for representatives.
Oct 15, 2020 — Last week’s approval of an industrial hemp pilot program has some cannabis farmers worried about the possibility of pollen drift, pesticides, and pests that specialize in Cannabaceae. And this week, the board agreed unanimously to make administrative revisions to the manual for the cannabis local equity program grant, which must be disbursed by August of 2021.
October 14, 2020 — The Board of Supervisors began hammering out directions for a new cannabis cultivation ordinance for Phase III, which they hope to roll out by April of 2021. This is not an amendment of the existing ordinance. It will be a standalone ordinance, which will get its own chapter in the county code and which, board members hope, will make it easier for the next batch of applicants to align with state regulations.
Rich Molinari, Director of Mendocino County's Animal Shelter, and veterinarian Charlotte Burns talk about how their jobs have changed during the coronavirus pandemic and fire evacuations.
Jim Culp interview Pastor Matt Davis of the Mendocino Presbyterian Church about his Holy Goats, who eat their way through landowners' pesky weeds and invasive species.