Link to Anderson Valley Advertiser:  www.theava.com

If you want to see something sickening skip right past the latest video games or the most brutal Game of Thrones episode, shut off the DVR, and settle in for the current Pacific Gas and Elelectric Company (PG&E) television sixty second “mea culpa” about the San Bruno gas explosion. A saccharin female voice recounts the fatal disaster over images of broken pieces of pipeline, but unless that voice belongs to PG&E's CEO or head of its board of directors, which is extremely unlikely, the ad is as phoney as the tone in which it is told. The advertisement is part of a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson in January. PG&E must spend $3,000,000 running these pathetic ads over a three month period as part of Judge Henderson's decree. Previously, state government regulators had fined the gas and electric giant $1.6 billion as a result of the 2010 explosion that killed eight people. One of them, Jacqueline Grieg, was an employee of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). If you want irony, Grieg's position at the CPUC was in a relatively tiny unit devoted to advocating for consumer rights in relation to natural gas regulations.
In total PG&E will run approximately 12,500 sixty second TV ads to fulfill that aspect of Judge Henderson's ruling. PG&E's public relations response to the judgment included statements that said the company was committed to becoming the “safest and most reliable energy provider in America.”
Which leads us to what you can find out by reading the insert within your gas and/or electric bill. The Pacific Gas and Electric Company included a tidbit in their March billing notices about Proposition 65. That 1986 ballot initiative was intended to protect the state's drinking water sources from being contaminated with chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm, and requires businesses to inform Californians about exposures to such chemicals. The last phrase explains why thirty-one years later PG&E has to place a paper insert in its bills to tell you that the company still uses chemicals in its operations “that are known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm.”
If you have already discarded your monthly PG&E statement this is what it says, in part, “PG&E uses lead-based paint on some of our towers or other facilities and wooden utility poles are treated with wood preservatives.” Along with the inherent dangers of natural gas pipeline in need of repair and replacement, those lead-based paints are also sources of birth defects and cancer causers.
The less than ethical tactics of businesses have spilled over into the semi-literary world. Last year I let a decades long subscription to The New Yorker run its course. However, the magazine, owned by the Conde Nast company, has continued to send pleas to re-subscribe. The last two have come with the words “Demand For Payment” plastered in bold capital letters across the one page request/threat. Keep in mind that I, the subscriber, haven't received any product (the magazine) since the old subscription ran out about six months ago. The most recent “Demand For Payment,” which I started to wad and throw in the trash bin at the post office, but held onto, states, “Your bill is seriously past due. Even though we have given you every opportunity to forward payment, we still haven't heard from you. The quickest way to fix this situation is to pay online...”
This threatening method must work to scare up enough re-subsciptions to counter balance the ill-will such tactics engender, but it's not working at the Macdonald household. If The New Yorker's mean spirited methods seem too far afield, consider the operation of two of our local banking institutions. Recently Mendo Lake Credit Union sent me a “past due” notice for a deal that was seemingly finalized a month earlier. Before anyone thinks of switching to the Savings Bank of Mendocino County, remember that institution has recently imposed a $5 monthly service charge on customers who want to receive paper statements for their accounts. At current interest rates a customer would need to maintain a checking balance of more than $100,000 just to offset the $5.00 service charge.

                                                                                   Link to Anderson Valley Advertiser:  www.theava.com

Those dissatisfied with their local hospital or physician might want to consider the case of Dr. Thomas Goodsir, who in 1878 served the community of Cuffey's Cove, just north of Greenwood (Elk). William Heeser described a then ongoing doctor/patient situation in his coastal newspaper this way: “There is a rumor afloat of the attempted poisoning of a man by the name of Nelson at Cuffey's Cove, by his physician, Dr. Goodsir, but we hope, for humanity's sake, that the Doctor will be able to fully explain matters, and establish his innocence. We are informed that about six weeks ago a man named Nelson had his leg badly broken while at work in the woods near that place, and that Goodsir was called to set the broken limb, and after a futile attempt to set the bones, called Dr. McCornack [of Mendocino], who performed the operation. Goodsir then is said to have circulated the report that Nelson must die, and could not hold out much longer, and that he would die of lockjaw. Soon thereafter McCornack was again called, as Nelson and his friends had become alarmed by Goodsir's expressions. McCornack saw no symptoms of lockjaw, and pronounced the man as well as circumstances would permit, and that he was getting along nicely. Goodsir, however, would not agree with him, saying that physicians differ and patients die, and that Nelson would be a dead man by morning. Soon thereafter he came into the room with a plum and offered it to the patient, which the latter took and ate one half, but rejected the other half as being bitter. He soon complained to his nurse that he had a bitter taste in his mouth and did not feel well. Shortly thereafter, Goodsir came again and stopping in the hall, took another plum, split it in halves, and put some powder into it, as the nurse reports, and on his offering it to the patient, the nurse motioned to him to refuse it. This he [Nelson] did, and the Doctor took it and threw it out of the window. Next he came into the room with a slice of melon and offered it to his patient, but the latter told him he had been eating fruit and did not wish for more. Where upon Goodsir said the melon was not fit to eat, and threw it out of the window also. He then told the nurse that the patient needed some tea, and that he would go after a package. Coming back, the tea was given to the nurse, who opened it, and found a white powder over the top of the tea. This he shook off onto the table, not thinking anything about the powder, and began steeping the tea. The nurse was about to give the patient a drink when he remembered the strange actions of Goodsir and did not let him [the patient] drink it. The nurse then took the powder, and found it to be strychnine. It was taken to Dr. McCornack and others who all pronounced it strychnine. It appears that Nelson had some money and a gold watch and chain which he had left with John J. Harris, and after the giving of the tea to the nurse, both Harris and Goodsir put in an appearance, and Harris claimed that he had given the valuables to his wife who had hidden them and could not find them. Both Goodsir and Harris were arrested Thursday on a criminal charge and will be examined before O.W. Scott, one of the Justices of this Township.”
In the West of the 1870s names were made up then cast away as a person moved on to greener pastures, but Goodsir appears to be the good sir's real appelation. Readers may or may not be flabbergasted to find that the local legal sytem of 1878 worked much more swiftly. Mr. Heeser, of the Mendocino Beacon, described the outcome of the Nelson/Goodsir case in the following week's edition of the paper, “The Cuffey's Cove poisoning case was tried before Justice Scott last Friday and dismissed. Dr. Goodsir acknowledged having given strychnine, but for medical purposes.”
While modern science shows that strychnine, from the strycnine tree native to the Malabar region of southern India, has no positive medicinal effects, in the late 1800s it was thought that tiny doses of it were useful stimulants, promoting enhanced athletic prowess due to its convulsant effects. Though mistaken by modern standards, in 1878 Dr. Goodsir may have considered small amounts of strychnine to be no more adverse than a strong cup of coffee.
Dr. Goodsir must have been a fairly young man in 1878, his name appears periodically throughout the final decades of the 1800s. He seems to have practiced primarily in Willits. Tragedy struck his family in 1907. As reported in the Healdsburg Times, a week after the Fourth of July, “Wilbur Goodsir, a fifteen-year-old boy, was drowned Sunday in Mark West Creek near Burke’s [Sanitarium]. The boy had partaken of a hearty meal, mounted his wheel and rode out from Santa Rosa to the creek, where he immediately went into the water. He had given only a couple of strokes when his companion, Anthony Kline, saw his body disappear. He at once hurried to the lad’s assistance and dragged the body to the shore only to find that life was extinct. Help was summoned fiom Burke’s. Doctors worked with the body for two hours but without avail. The boy’s parents are Dr. and Mrs. T. H. Goodsir of Willits.”
Presumably a “wheel” meant a bicycle. Less than a year after the drowning of young Wilbur, the Press Democrat records the divorce action brought by Mrs. Linda Goodsir against Dr. Goodsir. The divorce decree was granted in May, 1908. Perhaps they were a couple who had remained married in name only for the sake of their child.
The locale of Wilbur Goodsir's drowning leads to the explosive trial of Dr. Willard Burke, of said same sanitarium, just a few years later. That will have to remain a story for another time.

                                                                                   Link to Anderson Valley Advertiser:  www.theava.com

The leadership at Mendocino Coast District Hospital (MCDH) has circled the wagons. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Bob Edwards has moved out of the traditional CEO office because the room was not sound proof enough for his liking. At about the same time he fired the administrative assistant to the Chief Human Resources Officer, who in turn has been placed on a months long administrative leave. The reason for the firing appears to be that Edwards suspects the Human Resources (HR) assistant of leaking inside information of some sort. Just in case CEO Edwards thinks that HR assistant has contacted this writer, he has another think coming. I have never spoken to or otherwise communicated with said HR assistant; wouldn't know the MCDH Human Resources assistant if I met her on the street.
The administrative leave of the Chief Human Resources Officer is connected to a recent personnel review of the hospital's Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Wade Sturgeon. That review is ongoing with the Board of Directors promising to conduct more interviews with fellow staff members.
Then there is the obstetrics (OB) department, which has been close to a million dollar a year money loser for quite some time. At the end of 2016 the MCDH Board commissioned an ad hoc committee to look into the matter. The committee, chaired by new board member, Dr. Kevin Miller, submitted its report at the March 30, 2017 Board of Directors meeting. When he finished a summary of the committee's report, which did not take a position for or against closing the OB department, Dr. Miller publicly announced he was in favor of closing obstetrics. At that point an emotionally charged voice from among the standing room only crowd uttered, “Your child was born here!” The voice apparently belonged to a current OB nurse. Since the March 30th Board meeting Dr. Miller has made it clear that he wants a vote on closing the OB Dept. placed on the April MCDH Board agenda.
Miller's OB report was part of the monthly Planning Committee report. Though an ultimate vote on closing or keeping open OB was not part of accepting the Planning Committee report, nevertheless when Board chair Steve Lund called for a vote concerning that report only DR. Peter Glusker voted, “No.” Glusker stated his vote was based on his understanding that the OB ad hoc committee had also been tasked with finding potential solutions to the monetary losses incurred.
Three members of that ad hoc committee (Carole White, Tanya Smart, and Lucresha Renteria) penned dissents to the report submitted to the full MCDH Board. Perhaps it is ironic that the three dissents were authored by three female members of the committee. Ms. Renteria, executive director of Mendocino Coast Clinics, made this case regarding the possible closure of the coastal OB, “[T]here are women who cannot afford or who will be unable to arrange for a delivery over the hill. Since the Ad Hoc Committee's report was unable to highlight that we do in fact have a vulnerable population that will be affected by this discussion I felt the need to advise you that 56% of our prenatal patients are on Medi-Cal. These women and/or families are living below 138% of the Federal Poverty Level; which we know is much lower than a living wage for the Mendocino Coast.”
Renteria also criticized the direction in which Dr. Miller took the OB committee, “I believe that the Ad Hoc committee function was hampered by an overly aggressive agenda to quickly submit a very narrowly scoped report. Discussions regarding possible solutions, approaches, and non-data-driven discussions about how this department's closure would affect our community were swept away by Chair Miller under the remonstration that the topic(s) were 'out of scope of this committee'.”
Having been a first hand witness of these meetings, this writer concurs with Ms. Renteria. There were meetings when it was obvious to any observer that Dr. Miller had a pre-set internal clock in his mind. He displayed extremely limited patience with anyone's discussion beyond his own ideas. At the first OB ad hoc gathering Miller allowed retired Dr. Keevan Abramson to go on at great lengths in what appeared to be a sour grapes whine about how he and his OB/GYN partner had lost business near the end of their careers to Ms. Renteria's Mendocino Coast Clinics. Renteria displayed uncommon restraint, at that meeting, by remaining silent throughout Abramson's rant.
Several times at these meetings, Dr. Miller cut off Ms. White and Ms. Smart when their comments or questions went on too long for his own purposes. Full disclosure: Dr. Miller performed two cataract surgeries for me last year. He did a good job. There are aspects of his personality that are very likable, but it might serve him well to personally observe a Fort Bragg City Council meeting so that he might understand how a meeting can be run effectively and to understand that public meetings are a bit like baseball games, there is no pre-set time limit.
What Dr. Miller, and perhaps a majority of the MCDH Board, doesn't seem to understand is the OB question is a no-win situation as currently presented. Sure, closing OB might cut off nearly a million dollar money drain, but the publc relations backlash of closing OB will be far more costly in the long run. First, a closure of OB makes passage of any kind of district wide parcel tax nothing less than a pipedream. Who in their right mind would vote in favor of taxing themselves more for a hospital that can't deliver an OB department to its public? Second, in all likelihood, an OB closure will bring about something akin to an unspoken boycott of most MCDH services. Combine that with a hospital only two years out of a prolonged bankruptcy and the picture being painted fades to black pretty quickly.
The concept of time appears to be a problem for MCDH's current Board of Directors. They scheduled an 8:30 a.m., Saturday, April 1st (no kidding) special board meeting. Only problem: the public notice for it didn't get out until 9:31 a.m. Friday, March 31st. The Brown Act, the law regarding public meetings, requires twenty-four hour notice to media outlets. Just getting sorta-kinda-close at slighly less than twenty-three hours doesn't cut it. In addition, the meeting was held at the Harbor Lite Lodge in a room without any identification on it as said meeting venue. One might get the idea the public wasn't really wanted at this meeting.
Further irony abounded at this April Fool's Day meeting. Dr. Glusker did not attend. At the meeting other Board members made snide references about Glusker, essentially because he doesn't follow their lead blindly. I will say that MCDH Board legal counsel John Ruprecht made a valid point about board members inundating him with legal opinion requests in the last days before board meetings. This, too, appeared to be addressed at Glusker. However, the snide comments made by fellow board members was obviously unprofessional and counterintuitive to the main agenda item at the meeting, an educational presentation, much of which centered around how board members can get along and be mutually supportive. These are the same four MCDH Board members who censured Dr. Glusker for violating the Brown Act in “leaking” an email concerning closed session, confidential matters. It is doubtful that any of them will make a motion to censure themselves for violating the notice requirements of the Brown Act. They were apprised of the violation as the meeting started by one of the two members of the public who figured out which unmarked room at the Harbor Lite Lodge they were hiding/meeting in.
At that faultily noticed meeting the Board, by a 4-0 vote, authorized management to submit a Help II loan application in the amount of $3,500,000 through California Health Facilities Final Authority (CHFFA). According to CFO Wade Sturgeon $2 million of the loan will be paid back at 2% interest over twenty years. The other 1.5 million dollars will have a 3% interest payment attached to it over a five year term. That million and a half is slated toward part of the purchase price for new electronic health records (EHR) equipment (full, actual cost of the EHR upgrade equals approximately $2.4 million). Two million dollars of the CHFFA loan will be spent on facility remodeling and other construction projects.
This brings us to Project Manager Steve Kobert's report at the March 30th board meeting. The five main issues regarding capital maintenance are the nurse call system, telemetry, the automated transfer switch (ATS), HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) equipment, and the central sterile system. The nurse call system is essentially completed at an estimated budget cost of $525,000. The wireless telemetry systems that allow patients to wear small battery powered devices that signal monitors has an estimated budget of $295,000. The expected time to completion is thirty-six weeks after a formal notice to proceed from the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Deveopment (OSHPD). The ATS system's estimated budget cost: $573,487 (which is an estime based on prior MCDH Board approval); expected completion: forty-two weeks after notice to proceed from OSHPD. Readers should keep in mind that OSHPD approval is far from a “rubber stamp” occurrence. The estimated budget, from 2015 numbers, for the HVAC equipment is $373,021. On March 7th, OSHPD granted MCDH a six month extension to start this project. The new deadline to start (yes, that sounds inherently contradictory): August 31, 2017. The central sterile system also has an out of date estimate at $663,000. Once an up to date budget is approved it would take a year to complete the project.
Lest we forget, readers who pay taxes and vote within the Mendocino Healthcare District may want to remember the annual payments still owed by our local hospital as part of its exit from bakruptcy: In 2017: $1,638,595; in 2018: $1,547,177; 2019: $1,635,794; 2020: $1,420,742; 2021: $1,118,864;
2022: $1,113,921; 2023: $861,216; and in 2024: $857,654.
That adds up to $10,193,961. Keep in mind that the hospital district is required to have a new hospital facility in place before the start of the year 2030. At that well kept secret of a meeting on April Fool's Day, MCDH Board counsel John Ruprecht said, in regard to a topic centered around strategic planning, “There's no way this district can afford to build a new hospital at this time. It's not going to happen.”
That might be conclusion enough, but let's add former MCDH Board member Patricia Jauregui-Darland's observations concerning CFO Sturgeon's March Finance Report to the mix. “This Report should be labeled 'Eight Months (YTD) [Year To Date] February 28, 2017.' This far into the fiscal year it is important to make year-over-year actual comparisons and not to compare to budget-only real numbers.”
Ms. Jauregui-Darland questioned Sturgeon's line item “Total Services Revenues,” noting, “Total patient service revenues has increased $6,182,563 or $6.2M for FY [fiscal year] [20]17. That is a very large increase. How much was related to charge increases vs. volume increases?”
Going on she cites, “The net patient service revenues have decreased $364,282 for FY17. This means all of the $6.2 M of additional bill gross patient service revenue for FY17 was written off and even an additional $364, 282. Where did the 6.2M go? Was it all written off and if so why? I can see the $1,386,217 or $1.4M negative swing in the Bad Debts (from Page 6 of the Finance Report if readers have obtained copies of the voluminous March 30th MCDH Board meeting agenda packet).”
Jauregui-Darland asks two more questions: “What was the justification for the additional $4.8M write-off? Has there been a significant change in the payor mix?”
Jauregui-Darland had more queries about operating expenses. Her notes about the entirety of the Finance Report include these terse comments: “It appears that not $1 has dropped to Net Rev [enue]... I haven't seen anything like this in years! This is shocking and alarming.”
Her final thought, after questions concerning the hospital's potential large cash outflows in the current final quarter of the fiscal year, “Where is the money going to come from?”
By May we should be able to delve further into why Sturgeon's numbers are unconvincing and whether or not the Help II loan application actually gets approved.

                                                                                   Link to Anderson Valley Advertiser:  www.theava.com

Last week some non-law abiding person or persons drove a pickup truck into the northwest forty of the Macdonald Ranch and made off with a sizable amount of unsplit madrone and oak firewood. Perhaps the perpetrators are unaware of our family history. While the first Macdonald to venture to California in the 1800s made his way from Nova Scotia across the North American continent without use of a firearm, he eventually married into the Robertson family. The Robertsons were already well known for their prowess at hunting bear and mountain lion (my Robertson/Macdonald grandmother called the one she shot dead in McKay Gulch a catamount) as well as fatally dispatching double-dealing card sharps and armed highwaymen.
The Robertsons deftness in the matter of gunplay included fatally besting one of the members of the notorious Frost family (the victors in an 1867 shootout on the streets of Little Lake in which one Frost perished while the remaining Frost gunmen killed five members of the Coates family). The Robertsons' abilities with firearms was such an infectious trait throughout the family that one of their horses answered to a court of inquest for shooting dead a holdup artist near Observatory Hill, east of Mendocino. The horse was found not guilty for discharging the revolver in its saddle holster. Its rider, John Robertson, was dismounted and away from the equine at the time Ben Frost (who was attempting an armed robbery of John Robertson) was shot dead by a single round through the breast. Even a Robertson horse would have been embarrassed to needlessly waste extra ammunition when one shot did the trick
Since the marriage of the Macdonalds into the Robertson clan, each succeeding generation, though taught to shoot in something approaching Robertson skill levels, has had to wrestle with the internal struggle of dealing with wrongdoers in a manner approximating Macdonald pacifism or to let their inner Robertson mindset rule the day.
Here we turn not to gunplay in the woods of the wild west, but to law enforcement on the streets of Laredo, no, the streets of Fort Bragg. According to a lifelong resident of that municipality who spoke during the “Public Comments on Non-Agenda Items” section of the March 22, 2017, Fort Bragg City Council Public Safety Committee meeting, the town's police department gave out about a hundred less vehicle code violations last year than there are days on the calendar. The citizen appeared particularly upset that the four sergeants on the Fort Bragg Police Department (FBPD) handed out less than twenty vehicle code tickets in total last year.
FBPD sergeants may well be on duty assignments that preclude much traffic patrol, but simple observation of traffic in Fort Bragg would lead most law abiding driver's to concur that far too many speeders, not to mention texters and hands on, prolonged, cell phone users go unnoticed by law enforcement. The speaker noted that statistics he had obtained showed that next to no vehicle code violation tickets had been written for Maple and Dana Streets, two of the more heavily traveled streets outside of Highway One itself. Dana Street is frequented by high school drivers five days a week during the school year. The speaker wondered aloud how it was possible for the entirety of high school drivers to go a year without violating traffic laws. The obvious point being that it is enforcement that is lacking in this neighborhood as well as others.
FBPD Chief Fabian Lizarraga seemed to be writing down a multitude of notes while the resident spoke, so hopefully the ten officers and four sergeants of FBPD will have time to take a tougher stance on vehicle code violaters. Time and manpower are the crucial elements for any small town police force. Right now FBPD spends what appears to be an inordinate amount of time attempting to manage problems related to mental health and homelessness. In many ways our law enforcement officers, be it county or city, have become the de facto social workers of the twenty-first century.
This takes us to the item that was on the Public Safety Committee agenda on March 22nd. The topic: Update from Staff Regarding Progress on Homeless Issues. Staff consisted of City Manager Linda Ruffing. The headline takeaway from Ruffing's comments was that Mendocino Coast Hospitality Center is going to have to file for an amendment to their 2003 use permit regarding the twice daily food program at Hospitality House on McPherson [sic] Street. The 2003 use permit contained the following statement regarding the number of rooms used for housing and the food program under a “Findings” heading: “The City is not authorizing an increase in the intensity of use at the site...”
In the thirteen years since the 2003 permit was granted the number of bed nights at Hospitality House has risen from about 6,000 per year to slightly over 7,000 annually. The meals served has nearly doubled from approximately 12,000 per year in 2003 to over 23,000 in 2016.
Ruffing cautioned the two city councilmen on the Public Safety Committee, Mayor Lindy Peters and first year councilmember Bernie Norvell, to not delve too deeply into this issue lest they prejudice themselves, forcing a recusal if the use permit amendment is passed on to the full city council by the Fort Bragg Planning Commission.
While addressing the myriad problems associated to the lack of planning and management of clients, especially at or near Hospitality House, Ms. Ruffing went through an array of facial contortions and finally a shoulder sag when she announced that the poor, downtrodden folk who run the Hospitality conglomerate (meaning its Board of Directors and specifically Board President Lynelle Johnson) might have to go through a use permit amendment process before serving up their next 10-12,000 meals without any noticeable supervision. If Ruffing's body language weren't enough to tell you whose bread she butters, at one point Ms. Johnson rushed behind the dais that houses the councilmembers and city staff in order to hand off papers to City Manager Ruffing. If John or Jane Doe, plain citizen, had rushed behind the council and city staff's sanctum sanctorum chances are they would have at least received an admonishment from Ruffing. At worst the police chief might have detained, if not arrested, said citizen. In short, the move simply accentuated what many observers already know: Ms. Johnson has special privileges with this City Manager.
Keep in mind, Ruffing held onto a series of emails sent by another lifelong Fort Bragg resident, who owns and runs a business in the vicinity of Hospitality House, for approximately twenty days before delivering them to the five councilmembers. Let's make that more detailed. On January 19th the aforementioned business owner, in an email to Ruffing, requested that more than two dozen emails, authored by the business owner, be forwarded to all five Fort Bragg City Councilmembers. The emails detailed a number of problems regarding Hospitality House clients, including drug use, drunkeness, and the failure of Hospitality staff as well as the Hospitality Board President, Ms. Johnson, to communicate with said business owner despite the fact that the business owners' attempts to contact Hospitality personnel often times contained plausible solutions to the ongoing problems. At the conclusion of the January 19th email, the business owner's precise words to Ruffing: “Please make sure this email, and the others I am sending to you, are sent to Fort Bragg City Council.”
Between January 19th and February 8th, City Manager Ruffing held onto the emails, failing to deliver them to the City Council. During this time, it has been reported, Ms. Ruffing communicated more than once with Ms. Johnson and/or the staff of Hospitality Center and/or House.
Ms. Ruffing's only possible excuse for withholding the emails from the City Councilmembers might have been an avoidance of a Brown Act violation. However, since the business owner was requesting that the emails go to all of the councilmembers there would seem to be no undue advantage for any one councilman. Furthermore, the business owner sent an even more explicit request in a January 31, 2017, email to City Manager Ruffing: “I am just checking in to see if you have had time to send the emails to City Council. If not, please let me know and I can send the emails to them. I want to make sure they have plenty of time to look things over before the meeting on the [February] 13th and I want to make sure they are getting the current emails of complaints, I have sent in--as well. I can just start adding them to the emails, I am not sure how all of this works but I know they will be crucial in helping with solving this problem and want them [City councilmembers] to have enough time to problem solve before the 13th.”
At the conclusion of this email the business owner re-states, “I believe City Council will have valuable input and I need to know everyone is working on this together, with everyone having all the information.”
Still, Ruffing withheld the emails from the city council until the agenda for the February 13th council meeting went public late in the day on February 8th. Most of the business owner's emails, dating from October, 2016 into February, 2017, were included in the agenda packets for the February 13th City Council and Feb. 15th Public Safety Committee meetings; however, the crucial January 31st explicit request regarding the emails was conveniently omitted.
At this point there is no indication whether or not the Fort Bragg City Council intends to call City Manager to task on the matter of withholding the emails.
As for lawbreaking here at the ranch, I'm heading up the hill to put in some new fencing around the northwest forty. Perhaps I should saddle and holster a horse to come along with me.