Link to Anderson Valley Advertiser:  www.theava.com

At the January 11th Fort Bragg City Council meeting Police Chief Fabian Lizarraga assured the Council, City staff, and the handful of citizens in attendance that the investigation into the death of Dennis Boardman would hopefully be resolved “in the not-too-distant future.” He added that two of his officers were “making some headway” with the case.

The Chief's circumspect remarks were countered a few minutes later when a local citizen spoke during the “Public Comments” section of the meeting, stating directly that a transient killed Boardman. The citizen went on to tie such lawless actions by transients to the seemingly never ending controversy surrounding the former Old Coast Hotel (corner of Franklin and Oak Streets) as the new location for centralized mental health services and transitional housing for the formerly homeless.
A swipe at the latter might well be appropriate because it appears that no such transitional housing has occurred yet. However, transients have been a problem intermittently on the Mendocino Coast, even before segments of the Manson family set up temporary shop in Anderson Valley and the Littleriver Airport Road decades ago. In short, commentary on the woeful state of adult mental health service is cogent. Trying to broad brush all of that onto the city manager and mayor of Fort Bragg for presenting and approving a centralized site for coastal mental health services is too big a stretch. The logic is similar to blaming law enforcement officers, who have become de facto mental health crisis workers, for not anticipating the killing of Mr. Boardman.
I wish that speakers from the general public at civic meetings would wholeheartedly grasp hold of the concept that two or three individual truths do not always equal a greater truth (of the speakers choosing). I also wish that citizens who speak out in the first fifteen minutes of civic meetings would stick around for the remainder of the show.
At the January 11th Fort Bragg City Council meeting the rest of the show included the California Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) for the city. The person who spoke about Dennis Boardman's death being the responsibility of a transient also claimed that a seeming influx of transients had resulted in a decline in Fort Bragg's businesses. While it is true that there are several vacant store fronts on Franklin Street, the CAFR indicates an increase of over $190,000 in the ironically titled Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) collection for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2015. The TOT numbers represent an 11% rise from the previous fiscal year. Sales taxes also increased, though by a more modest 2%.
With only two or three members of the public left in attendance city staffers and the city council perused the 203 page CAFR document. Those who haven't bothered to study the document at any length might like to latch onto the pie chart displaying Operating and Capital grants as 43% of the City of Fort Bragg's revenues.
While the City's net position improved by $31,000 over the previous fiscal year, those looking down the road might note that 91% of Fort Bragg's net assets consist essentially of infrastructure (think water pipes, machinery, buildings). The CAFR makes it clear that these assets cannot be liquidated to pay liabilities. Additionally, the City of Fort Bragg's property tax collections, which dropped in half between 2011 and 2013, have not rebounded in the last two years. Another way to look at it this: the price of a home in Fort Bragg increased by a little over seven percent in the last fiscal year, but the collection of property tax revenues decreased by about three and a half percent.
The City of Fort Bragg has a $1.3 million general reserve fund and a litigation reserve fund of $300,000. The Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada (GFOA) awarded certificates of achievement for excellence in financial reporting to Fort Bragg for four years in a row, beginning in 2011. The City will be submitting the current report for similar consideration. However nice that all may appear there is a dragon looming at the end of a long dark cave traveling into the future. The fire breathing, asset devouring beast is something commonly known as pension pay outs. The new Government Accounting Standard Board laws regarding pensions creates a net decrease for the City of Fort Bragg totaling $7,000,000.

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You write long enough in newspapers and you develop a series of sources. People you can go to for information and people who want to provide you with information. It is usually best to view the latter with a jaundiced eye, with skeptical antenna on alert.

However, sometimes the raw information they supply speaks for itself, more succinctly and to the point than any loquacious paragraph. The following contains two examples of what are now becoming all too typical law enforcement dispatch calls and responses on the Mendocino Coast. The commentary is that of the citizen source (who has no ties to the subject of mental health service in Mendocino County, other than personal curiosity/interest). The jargon is a mixture of direct law enforcement speak and/or the citizen's interpretation. The only deletions are mine, to protect the identity of potential mental health clients:
December 22, 2015
Citizen: Approx. 7:20 PM, I turned on the scanner due to the weather, and I heard the County dispatcher call law enforcement, with the message that Mental Health advises they won't be driving over the hill to speak with a subject unless they are making suicidal threats.
Law enforcement officer says, “But subject really wants to talk to a Mental Health person.”
Dispatch repeats, “They won't be driving over the hill to speak with your subject unless they're making suicidal threats.”
Officer (clearly flummoxed) says, “Well, he's not making suicidal threats, but he wants to speak with a Mental Health person.”
Dispatch gives the officer the Mental Health phone number to pass on to the guy, who clearly wanted to talk to a human in person (not so good).
The second example is from January 4, 2016.
Citizen: Heard tonight over the scanner set to law enforcement frequency.
12:40 AM Officer contacts dispatch and says, "Call out to Mental Health for a mental patient. We'll meet them at Coast Hospital ER.”
Second officer also tells dispatch he is going to assist the first officer.
12:41 AM "Unit 97 (arrives) at hospital.” First officer requests a case number (I couldn't remember the number, he said it too fast.).
12:49 AM, Dispatch tells first officer he contacted Mental Health, but no answer.
I believe xxxxxxx is the patient's name. He was contacted at Motel 6 several minutes earlier.
When the first officer calls dispatch to run the guy's ID, I can hear a loud agitated male in the background.
12:49 AM Dispatch tells first officer he recontacted Mental Health and they request the officer call yyyyy at 800-555-****, because yyyyy wants some background information on the subject.
1:30 AM Second officer asks dispatch if there is any pending traffic (No).
2:01 AM Dispatch calls first officer at hospital, telling him "Mental health left Ukiah at 0:100 hours, so should be there soon.”
3:20 AM First officer calls dispatch, asks for time of call and case number (I couldn't remember the numbers dammit).
3:29 AM First officer calls dispatch, "Both units 98 (leaving) the hospital ER. Patient is under care of mental health now.”
The officers are only required to stay at the hospital if the patient is troublesome, and the staff requests they stay. Apparently this guy needed two officers to babysit him for 2.5 hours.
So it was 2.5 hours before the guy got the (supposed to be timely) help the County is paying for. This isn't what Ortner agreed to do.
I feel it's cruel to make someone in need wait so long before assessment or treatment.
And, the City/County should be billing Ortner for the valuable time the officers have to wait at the hospital for Ortner's mental health professional to drive here from Ukiah, Ortner has to go!

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The Inyo was the land of the Paiute for thousands of years. They say Inyo means dwelling place of great spirits. The modern county that bears the Inyo name is home to Mt. Whitney, the highest point in the lower forty eight states and Death Valley, the lowest point.

In the early morning hours, just past 2:30 A.M., Antonia Montoya slept in the arms of her paramour. Something like distant thunder awoke them both. The sound roared closer, muffling Antonia's screams. The bed beneath swayed this way and that until it tossed them out. Antonia clasped hands and rambled through prayer upon prayer. Her lover scrambled passed and bounded through the door of the adobe house moments before it crumbled into a brick burial chamber over Antonia.
The place: Lone Pine, California, in the eastern shadow of Mt. Whitney. The date: March 26, 1872. The quake that killed Antonia Montoya also killed 25-30 other Lone Pine residents, then a community of some 250 to 300 souls. Approximately 80% of the small town's residences were destroyed by the quake estimated to have measured somewhere between 7.4 and 8.0 on the Richter scale (though there were no official recording devices at the time).
More than 230 miles to the northwest, at the other end of what is now known as the John Muir Trail, John Muir himself was working as the winter caretaker of Black's Hotel, below Sentinel Rock in Yosemite Valley. This is how Muir described what happened after being shaken from his slumbers, “Though I had never before enjoyed a storm of this sort, the strange, wild thrilling motion and rumbling could not be mistaken, and I ran out of my cabin both glad and frightened, shouting, 'A noble earthquake!' feeling sure I was going to learn something. The shocks were so violent and varied, and succeeded one another so closely, one had to balance in walking as if on the deck of a ship among the waves, and it seemed impossible the high cliffs should escape being shattered. In particular, I feared that the sheer-fronted Sentinel Rock, which rises to a height of three thousand feet, would be shaken down, and I took shelter back of a big Pine, hoping I might be protected from outbounding boulders, should any come so far. I was now convinced that an earthquake had been the maker of the taluses and positive proof soon came. It was a calm moonlight night, and no sound was heard for the first minute or two save a low muffled underground rumbling and a slight rustling of the agitated trees, as if, in wrestling with the mountains, Nature were holding her breath. Then, suddenly, out of the strange silence and strange motion there came a tremendous roar. The Eagle Rock, a short distance up the valley, had given way, and I saw it falling in thousands of the great boulders I had been studying so long, pouring to the valley floor in a free curve luminous from friction, making a terribly sublime and beautiful spectacle--an arc of fire fifteen hundred feet span, as true in form and as steady as a rainbow, in the midst of the stupendous roaring rock-storm. The sound was inconceivably deep and broad and earnest, as if the whole earth, like a living creature, had at last found a voice and were calling to her sister planets. It seemed to me that if all the thunder I ever heard were condensed into one roar it would not equal this rock roar at the birth of a mountain talus. Think, then, of the roar that arose to heaven when all the thousands of ancient canon taluses throughout the length and breadth of the range were simultaneously given birth.
“The main storm was soon over, and, eager to see the newborn talus, I ran up the valley in the moonlight … A cloud of dust particles, the smallest of the boulders, floated out across the whole breadth of the valley and formed a ceiling that lasted until after sunrise; and the air was loaded with the odor of crushed Douglas Spruces, from a grove that had been mowed down and mashed like weeds. Sauntering about to see what other changes had been made, I found the Indians in the middle of the valley, terribly frightened, of course, fearing the angry spirits of the rocks were trying to kill them. The few whites wintering in the valley were assembled in front of the old Hutchings Hotel comparing notes and meditating flight to steadier ground, seemingly as sorely frightened as the Indians. It is always interesting to see people in dead earnest, from whatever cause, and earthquakes make everybody earnest.”
After the sun came up that day the underground rumbling continued followed by a series of aftershocks large enough to swish the branches of nearby pines like a mighty wind. A rather devout store keeper handed Muir the keys to his business and departed by horse or human hoof for the lowlands of the San Joaquin Valley, not to be seen in Yosemite for another month or more.
In Yosemite Valley aftershocks were felt for two months. Muir kept a bucket of water on his table to better study the movements. His observations included , “The blunt thunder-tones in the depths of the mountains were usually followed by sudden jarring, horizontal thrusts from the northward, often succeeded by twisting, upjolting movements. Judging by its effects, this Yosemite, or Inyo earthquake, as it is sometimes called, was gentle as compared with the one that gave rise to the grand talus system of the range and did so much for the canon scenery. Nature, usually so deliberate in her operations, then created, as we have seen, a new set of features, simply by giving the mountains a shake - changing not only the high peaks and cliffs, but the streams. As soon as these rock avalanches fell every stream began to sing new songs; for in many places thousands of boulders were hurled into their channels, roughening and half damming them, compelling the waters to surge and roar in rapids where before they were gliding smoothly. Some of the streams were completely dammed, drift-wood, leaves, etc., filling the interstices between the boulders, thus giving rise to lakes and level reaches; and these, again, after being gradually filled in, to smooth meadows, through which the streams now silently meander; while at the same time some of the taluses took the places of old meadows and groves.”
Muir was spot on. The Inyo quake created eighty acre Diaz Lake a couple of miles south of Lone Pine, the result of a block of land being thrust downward by the seismic event. The German word graben, meaning ditch or trench, is often applied to such depressed valleys or suddenly formed lakes.
The 1872 quake centered at Lone Pine was felt from Oregon to Mexico. Not only were lakes, like Diaz, created, but the Sierra Nevada jumped fifteen to twenty feet upward and about thirty-five to forty feet horizontally in a matter of seconds.
The dramatic uplift of the Sierra in 1872 was a mere drop in the swaying waters of John Muir's bucket compared to its earlier history. The oldest rocks in the Sierra are estimated to have formed 500 million years ago, under the ocean.
When the super-continent Pangaea broke apart about 185 million years ago, the North American plate smashed into two sub-oceanic island arc plates. The incredible amount of pressure and heat created by this collision helped raise the Sierra. About five million years ago a tremendously large block of dense rock broke away from the underside of the western Sierra. It sank into the earth's mantle, causing granite to buoy upward on the eastern side of the range. Similar to the sinking of Diaz Lake, five million years back the uplifting of the long eastern escarpment of the Sierra formed large graben like Owens Valley and much of the Great Basin itself.
While the granitic Sierra rose it pushed metamorphic fragments on its back downward, creating the western foothills. Most of the metamorphic rock of the ancient Sierra left stranded on the top of the range has eroded to dust, but today dark chunks of red or black metamorphic rock remain here and there atop the Sierra Nevada, roof pendant reminders of the volatile nature of the state we live in.
If one wants to imagine what those uplifts from eons of years ago felt and looked like, go back to John Muir's description of a stupendous roaring rock storm with fifteen hundred feet of fire arcing into a rainbow, then multiply exponentially by thousands if not millions.

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Film maker Ron Howard has stated several times that the sneak preview of his 1995 movie Apollo 13 produced one comment card that totally trashed the film, alleging a typical Hollywood ending because no astronaut crew could have survived the ordeal portrayed on screen. The irony, of course, was that Howard had remained faithful to the real life predicament facing the Apollo 13 crewmen. One has to wonder then why Howard missed the historical and storytelling mark so horribly with In the Heart of the Sea.

In the Heart of the Sea purports to tell the back story to Herman Melville's creation of Moby-Dick from the events surrounding the sinking of the whale ship Essex in 1820. Howard's film starts in 1850 with a thirty-ish Melville interviewing a significantly older man named Tom Nickerson (portrayed by the sixty year old Irish actor Brendan Gleeson) about his experiences aboard the Essex. In actuality Nickerson was only forty-five in 1850 and lived another thirty-three years. Being a generous movie watcher, I'd normally grant Howard and his screenwriters (at least three worked on bringing Nathaniel Philbrick's non-fiction bestseller to the screen – when the number grows beyond two there's usually plot, character, or thematic problems afoot) this conceit in order to frame the story. However, Howard uses Nickerson's version of the tale to depict the Essex's first mate Owen Chase as the heroic figure of the tale. That he was, but with complications. The film version of In the Heart of the Sea paints Chase as an altruistic husband who promises to return to his wife before setting sail. In reality Chase was married to four or five women. One of whom bore a child sixteen months after Chase went to sea.
The movie tells us that Chase was passed over for the captaincy of the Essex for a greenhorn named George Pollard because Pollard was the son of an influential Nantucket family. To some degree that was true, but the film does not even hint at the fact that Pollard and Chase served together on their most recent whaling venture, with Pollard as first mate and Chase as chief boatsman and harponeer.
For some saccharin reason, Howard felt it necessary to have Chase heroically swim under burning seas after the Essex was torn apart by an eighty foot long whale (the whale, which was not albino white, came back and rammed the ship a second time). The Essex did not catch fire from its precious whale oil, but lingered, without flames, for nearly two days while the survivors salvaged supplies from it before sinking.
Howard's film thoroughly misses chance after chance to depict a more conflicted, yet heroic Owen Chase. In reality, as the whale swam alongside the Essex after the initial ramming, Chase grabbed his harpoon in order to thrust it into the giant sea mammal, but held back because the whale was too near the ship's rudder. Chase believed that a writhing whale could easily destroy the vessel's primary steering mechanism.
The movie presents Pollard as a privileged seaman incapable of guiding his ship. Pollard did make mistakes and tensions were high between Chase and Pollard, primarily due to a lack of success in finding enough whales. However, after the sinking of the Essex, with the surviving crewmen in three 28 foot long whale boats rigged with sails to crate small schooners (and, at first, lashed together), Pollard wanted to sail/row for the Marquesas, but Chase and the vast majority of the surviving crew believed that cannibals inhabited those islands, so Pollard acceded to majority rule and the three whale boats made their way eastward toward South America, three times as far away. Think how much richer the irony when the men aboard both Chase and Pollard's boats, by then separated, resorted to cannibalism in order to prolong their lives.
Some of the criticisms of Howard's movie are almost too easy. There are brief nods toward 21st Century liberal sensibilities concerning the role of humankind in the ruination of nature. But Howard ompletely misses the figurative boat in this regard. He utilizes not a single strip of film on the Essex's stop in the Galapagos Islands.
In October, 1820 the Essex was hove down (heeled over on her side) to repair a leak in the protected bay of Hood Island. When the repairs were finished the Essex sailed the relatively short distance to Charles Island where whalers had for years maintained a crude "post office," with a cask serving as a makeshift mail box underneath a giant tortoise shell. Letters were left for other ships or for transport back to Nantucket.
As a prank one of the Essex's crewmen lit a tinderbox in the dry brush of Charles Island. Though it was October, this was still the dry season in the Galapagos. By the time the Essex set sail the next morning nearly all of Charles Island was ablaze, killing tens of thousands of tortoises, birds, lizards, and snakes, some of which may have been species unique to Charles Island.
Captain Pollard was so incensed by the arson the perpetrator dared not reveal himself. Though anyone can read about this episode in quite some detail within the pages of Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea, the film of the same name completely ignores this ironic calamity.
Perhaps the greatest gaffe of the moviemakers lies in the overall conceit/deceit of having Melville learn about the Essex, its sinking, and the subsequent harrowing tale of three months adrift on the open ocean through a meeting with Thomas Nickerson. Herman Melville had partaken of a whaling voyage himself aboard the Acushnet approximately a decade before writing Moby-Dick. On board the Acushnet he heard tales from older sailors about the destruction of the Essex by a gigantic bull whale. During a chance meeting with another whaling ship in the South Pacific Melville made the acquaintance of another young sailor, William Henry Chase, the son of the Essex's first mate. Melville made such an impression, the younger Chase gave him Owen Chase's complete written account of the disaster, Narrative of the Wrecking of the Whaleship Essex. Why Ron Howard didn't use this dramatic and true encounter to frame the cinematic telling of the story is a mystery yet to be revealed.

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At 9:06 a.m. Mendocino County Board of Supervisors Chair Carre Brown gaveled the Tuesday, December 15th meeting to order then opened the speaker's podium to comments from the public on non-agenda items. Dr. Marvin Trotter, once the county's public health officer and now a physician at Ukiah Valley Medical Center stepped forward to introduce a counterpart at Howard Memorial Hospital, Dr. Ace Barash.

Barash read a two page document reproduced as closely as possible here:
“I speak on behalf of Mendocino County physicians and health professionals in addressing
the current system of providing mental health care. The overall feeling is one of frustration and disappointment having to do with availability of services and lack of integration by the current provider, Ortner Management Group. The areas of insufficiency concern outpatient services, hospital relations, and the types of services currently emphasized.
“When asked regarding the overall quality of mental health care, a frequent response is
that it is 'a little bit better' than it used to be before the engagement of the current provider
about two and a half years ago. I think that this is true when it comes to promptness of mental health facility treatment for those determined to be a danger to self or others. In fact, this was one of the initial objectives in engaging Ortner Management Group at the outset and this they do reasonably well due to their owning and maintaining facilities in other counties in which patients may be treated. The problems stem from their overall concentration on this class of patients and the fact that, with our progressively increasing lack of infrastructure, we have negligible means of stabilizing patients before they arrive at such an intensity.
“The availability of local mental health services for the patients of our county has deteriorated markedly, outpatient and day treatment, respite care, and necessary local programs. This is definitely not better than previously. Studies have shown that patients treated earlier may be prevented from arriving at the level of dangerous intensity, ie. 51/50 by 97%, that is only three percent of those dealt with early progress to 'danger to self and others.' This has been widely recognized in recommended provision of best practices.
“Further, our mental health services are being provided by an outside contractor, who
cannot be expected to have the same degree of concern about our local patients and personnel as those who have lived for many years locally. There has been friction and disagreement between the managing group and our own facilities that seem to highlight their status as 'outsider.' This has escalated to a level of a lack of trust and confidence in providing mental health services. This is a very serious aspect in deterioration of our local mental health services, the lack of collegiality and collaboration between OMG and our own providers.
“Availability of talent and heart abounds in local residents who might potentially be
providing Mendocino County mental health care; we have a lot of available resources. These
are, unfortunately, beginning to atrophy, due to the palpable lack of inspiration which currently predominates the mood of services.
“The problems that we have had in years past, in fact are currently surmountable with
adequate planning and wider participation. Certainly, it would be necessary to build adequate
oversight into such a system, through a contract that provides for checks and balances. Possibly this would be accomplished by allowing the mental health board more power and actual participation in administering the provision of services. Alternatively, a committee could be formed composed of county doctors and a fiscal officer that would report to the board every quarter. They should be aware of all of the details regarding budget activities and given the power to approve or disapprove from an informed standpoint. Any provider of services must be bound by a contract that holds them accountable and an agency that oversees their activity.
“We health care providers of Mendocino County feel that it is still within our reach to
develop a mental health care system of which we can be proud that would also be within reach of our budget. However if we continue on the current trajectory, we don’t believe this can ever be achieved.”
The “we health care providers” Dr. Barash alluded to showed up on an attached list provided to the Board of Supervisors. More than fifty doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, physicians assistants, and psychiatrists from around Mendocino County apparently signed on to the statement read by Dr. Barash. They are: Dawn Magdelin-Betts, MD; Jeremiah Dawson, MD; Judy Lemke, FNP; Anne Robinson, ACNP; Irene Forrest, NP-BC; Valerie Takes, ACNP-BC;William Bowen, MD; D. Mills Matheson, MD; Angus Matheson, MD; Elizabeth Whipkey-Olsen, DO; Candice Dolbier, DO; Carla Longchamp, MD; Tedd Dawson, MD; Brenda Begley, DO; Betty Lacy, MD; Rebecca Timme, DO; David Ploss, MD; John Glyer, MD; Kim Faucher, MD; Rick Bockmann; Mark Luoto, MD; Gary Fausome, MD; Anne Retallic, FNP; Robert Pollard, MD; Ace Barash, MD;Alejandro Casillas, MD; Monte Lieberfarb, MD; Michael Medvin, MD; Bruce Andich, MD; Samuel Martissius, MD; Lynn Meadows, PA; Mary Newkirk, MD; Leslee Devies, DO; Gary DeCrona, MD; Lynn Coen, MD; Mim Doohan, MD; Harry Matossian, MD; Cotti Morrison, FNP; Suzanne Hiramatsu, MD; Roger Cheitlin, MD; Jorge Allende, MD; Walter Bortz, MD; Charles Evans, MD; Marvin Trotter, MD; Terrence Tisman; Kari Paoli; Keilah Miller; Andrea McCullough, MD; Tambra Baker; Peggy O'Reilly, MD; Steven Dagenais; Brendon Smith; Eli Weaver; Megan Collison; Robin Serrahn, MD; Tamaki Kimbro, MD; Aaron Stauffer, Tammie Bain; and Helen Remey, RN.
The number of health care professionals signing on to an open and public questioning of the privatized provider of adult mental health care services in Mendocino County speaks for itself. Dr. Barash was briefly followed to the podium by Sonya Nesch, a local board member for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). Ms. Nesch presented the supervisors with a one page chart detailing the increase in emergency room (ER) 5150s (involuntary psychiatric holds) over the past five years which she attributes to a decline in mental health services. Since Ortner Management Group has taken over mental health services for those 25 years of age and older, 5150s have increased from 145 throughout the county in 2013 to more than 400 in 2015.
Next up to the podium was Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman, who stated that he was speaking on behalf of three chiefs (presumably the police chiefs of Ukiah, Willits, and Fort Bragg) and himself. Allman didn't mention Ortner by name, but he did say that one of the privatized contractors of mental health services has fewer complaints against it (presumably Redwood Children's Services). He stated what has become obvious to anyone paying attention in recent years, law enforcement has become preoccupied with responses to mental health care calls. In other words, mental health is the number one public health safety concern in this county.
The Sheriff's most verbally forceful point came when he insisted that Mendocino County needed its own mental health facility, seemingly a jab at Ortner placing Mendocino County mental health clients in its facilities in Yuba City. When Allman was done 4th District Supervisor Tom Wodehouse asked for the issue to be placed on the agenda for the Board of Supervisors' next meeting January 5, 2016. Supervisor McCowen pointed out that the Supervisors were already scheduled to hear the report of Kemper Consulting Group regarding the county's mental health system on that date, so, in effect, the issue was already on the Jan. 5th agenda.
One of the reasons speakers like Dr. Barash appeared on December 15th was to “get out in front” of the Kemper report, which, in the quarters of those who signed on with Dr. Barash's remarks, is suspected to be something of a “whitewash” of Ortner Management Group's ability to capably run county wide adult mental health services.