Link to Anderson Valley Advertiser:  www.theava.com

Last week I attended four public meetings in three days. It would have been three in one day if I hadn't taken time out to castrate a bull calf here at the ranch. Who knows how some of the attendees at the missed meeting would have reacted to that endeavor. That get together was the City of Fort Bragg's Public Safety Committee meeting and the agenda item that drew animal lovers proved to be a “Discussion of raccoon issues at the Harbor Lite Trail.” The opening lines of just one correspondence the City received expressed the fervor of animal protectionists. “I have just learned that, yesterday, the City of Fort Bragg sent City workers in to North Harbor to tear out and destroy the “kitty condos” that have been down there for over a decade. The justification was that the cats being fed there are drawing the raccoons ; this is not true and if the City had done their homework & talked to local experts they would know this! There is a long history of cats in the harbor that should be a big part of any solution... not just a hot-headed, unannounced action that is extremely cruel to the cats that were dumped there years ago (and have been ignored by the City and County animal control completely).

Writing on the Mendocinosportsplus Facebook website, Fort Bragg Vice Mayor (and chair of the Public Safety Committee) Lindy Peters stated, “I suggest folks who were stirred-up by the reports on this website concerning the Public Safety Committee meeting today [Wednesday, May 11th] where we addressed safety concerns surrounding the growing population of raccoons in the harbor, take the time to watch Mendocinotv.com video coverage of said meeting. The city never threatened to remove feral cats. The USDA and Department of Fish and Wildlife told the city to take action regarding the feeding of feral cats on City Property. A citizen who lives nearby and is plagued by raccoons on his property approached me personally and asked me to look into this. I talked to the city manager and said we may have a liability issue if the unintended consequence of feeding the cats is, in fact, feeding the wildlife. If so, there is a violation according to USDA and Fish and Wildlife. I asked to put it on the agenda so that the public would have a chance to weigh-in on what I figured to be a hot button issue. No citations were ever issued. No city official or police officer attempted code enforcement. The issue was never feral cats. The agenda item reads: Discuss Raccoon Issue of Harbor Lite Lodge Trail. Somehow the social network spinners turned this into the city aggressively going after feral cats. The people who showed-up at the meeting included representatives from the Coast Cat Project, the Eileen Hawthorne Foundation, the Humane Society and volunteers who help feed the cats. Once they understood the city merely took action to remove the feeding bowls and cat condos from city property due to pressure from state agencies and, in fact, wanted to work with community groups to solve the problem in a humane fashion, they wanted to buy-in and help the city work this out. We are forming a committee with various stakeholders to see if we can come up with a solution that will allow the cats to remain in the Harbor area without feeding them on City property. This problem was brought to the city's attention. The city did not, on its own initiative, arbitrarily go after feral cats.”
Glad I didn't walk into that stirred-up crowd with castration tools in my back pocket. For the curious, the banded method of castration was used. The bull calf in question was up and walking around immediately following the procedure. Though he wasn't eating out of my hand he has displayed no ill will toward humans in the days since the banding.
The first meeting I attended last week was Monday night's Fort Bragg City Council affair. Since January, 2015, when three Fort Bragg City Councilmen voted in favor of a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) that allowed Mendocino Coast Hospitality Center (MCHC) to centralize mental health services inside the Old Coast Hotel on Franklin Street said councilmen, along with Fort Bragg City Manager Linda Ruffing, have become the focal point of criticism in Fort Bragg. The criticism has taken standard patterns, such as letter writing, petitions, and the ballot initiative known as Measure U.
Measure U proponents have long felt frustrated that their voices have been ignored on the MCHC/Old Coast Hotel issue, especially after a petition with approximately 1,600 local signatories was, from their point of view, ignored by the City Council and City Manager. As time has passed some Measure U proponents have delighted in finding any and all faults, petty or not, in their civic leaders.
The public comment section of the May 9th Fort Bragg City Council meeting brought one of the backers of Measure U to the podium to note that since the City was observing National Bike Month she would like to let folks know she had just seen Mayor Dave Turner “blow through” two stop signs on his bike that very day. Later the same citizen said, “I was going through my computer and cleaning out some stuff when I came across something very interesting.” While looking at the councilmen the citizen went on, “I know how all of you are looking out for our homeless here in Fort Bragg, and when I came across this, I thought it was pretty interesting, so I'm just gonna read it to you. It was right after the Segway incident [when the City Council turned away a local from providing Segway tours on the Coastal Trail located in the old Georgia-Pacific mill site].
The citizen went on, seemingly quoting from a letter or email authored by someone else, “There are hundreds of Segway tour groups operating safely in California... nice to see new businesses in town...” Here the citizen interrupted to say, “And I agree with that one hundred percent.”
The citizen, a woman who will remain nameless for now went on quoting from someone else's letter or email, “I know that this particular group will operate safely – not allowed on coastal trails or sidewalks – only bike paths for now – maybe they can run over the homeless. You and I should give 'em a try.”
She turned again to the council members and challenged, “Who wants to own up to those words?” Then, one by one, queried each of them. There were four fairly adamant denials, so it was pretty clear which one of the councilmen she was after.
Anyone who wants to watch the video replay can go to the City of Fort Bragg's website and see who the citizen and councilman in question are. At the time it was apparent that this appeared to represent some sort of personal triumph for the citizen. Having sat there and watched it and thought about it a few times over the ensuing days, the pettiness of the whole thing seems emblematic. For those who can't figure out why it is petty I'd suggest doing some deeper thinking, and perhaps some deeper thinking before you go to the ballot box to vote on any initiative or measure.
As for the councilman who wrote what he considered a joking email to a friend, consider Elmer Fudd's advise, “be wary, wary, wary” when emailing a friend whose wife has a diametrically oppositional view on the MCHC/Old Coast Hotel issue, particularly when she apparently has access to your pal's computer and isn't above sending your “jokey” email on to someone unafraid of reading it in public.
Well, boys and girls, it appears that I've gone on at some length without getting to three of the meetings. So come back next week. Time limits will be adhered to, there will be pettiness, and much money on the table.
*Animals have died, but there are no public demonstrations of castration within the pages and photographs available at Malcolm Macdonald's website: malcolmmacdonaldoutlawford.com

                                                                                Link to Anderson Valley Advertiser:  www.theava.com

A close inspection of the May 3rd agenda for Mendocino County's Board of Supervisors shows this item in the Consent Calendar: “Denial of Claim from Mendocino Redwood Company, LLC for a Refund of Property Taxes.”

In only the way minutes of a public meeting can do, one might think, by reading literally, that Mendocino Redwood Company, LLC (MRC) was asking for a refund of its entire property tax. What MRC wants refunded is the tax charged to them under Albion-Littleriver Fire Protection District's Measure U. The Measure M tax was passed by an overwhelming majority of the voters in the Albion-Littleriver Fire Protection District (ALRFPD) in 2014. The 2015-2016 tax year is the first in which the monies from Measure M are being collected as a part of property tax bills. MRC's portion of the Measure M tax is $19,668.36. MRC's letter to the Board of Supervisors asks for a refund of $9, 334.18 for their first half of the yearly fire district tax.
As daily readers of the AVA online already know, despite odd protestations by MRC's legal representative, the Board of Supervisors denied MRC's claim, without prejudice,
According to county tax records MRC owns 8,269 acres within the Albion-Littleriver Fire Protection District. For comparison, yours truly is the trustee of a Non-Industrial Timber Management Plan (NTMP) property of 180 acres alongside the Albion River. I paid a little over $200 of my county property tax bill to ALRFPD.
So why is MRC objecting to the payment to the Albion-Littleriver Fire Protection District? Keep in mind this is a volunteer fire department. Therein lies one of the potential problems for MRC. It owns about 220,000 acres of timberland throughout Mendocino County, much of it within the boundaries of volunteer fire districts/departments. If MRC acquiesces to the ALRFPD tax, then an entity like the Comptche Volunteer Fire Department (CVFD) might be next to propose, and pass, a similar ballot measure. The CVFD covers acreage at least twice the size of the ALRFPD.
MRC's straightforward answer to why it opposes ALRFPD's Measure M comes in the supporting documents submitted to the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors. In those documents one of MRC's attorneys, Stephen Johnson (of the firm Mannon, King, & Johnson), cites California Health and Safety Code 13811 as the primary objection to Measure M. This code states, “Territory which has been classified as a state responsibility area may be included in a [fire] district, except for commercial forest lands which are timbered lands declared to be in a state responsibility area [SRA]. The executive officer of the local agency formation commission shall give mailed notice of the commission's hearing on any proposal to include a state responsibility area in a district, whether by annexation or formation, to the Director of Forestry and Fire Protection. The commission may approve the proposal. Upon inclusion of a state responsibility area in a district, whether by formation or annexation, the state shall retain its responsibility for fire suppression and prevention on timbered, brush, and grass-covered lands. The district shall be responsible for fire suppression and prevention for structures in the area and may
provide the same services in the state responsibility area as it provides in other areas of the district.”Johnson's letter to the Board of Supervisors italicizes the phrase, “except for commercial forest lands which are timbered lands declared to be in a state responsibility area.”
Mendocino Redwood Company may have a valid legal point there. However, readers may want to recall that under the state responsibility areas (SRA), supposedly governed and protected by Cal Fire, MRC pays a grand total of $120 for Cal Fire's protection of its 220,000 acres of commercial timberland in Mendocino County. The Macdonald Ranch pays the same amount for Cal Fire protection of 180 acres, which is predominantly timberland as well. The catch is that SRA fees (note that the state doesn't want to call much of anything a tax) are based on dwellings. Therefore the 180 acre Macdonald Ranch, with one house, pays the same amount in SRA fees as MRC's 220,000 acres of commercial timberland because there is only one habitable dwelling on MRC's property.
MRC is paying $120 annually for SRA protection of its massive acreage, but wants to be free of any taxation or fees charged by volunteer fire departments/districts because Health and Safety Code 13811 says those volunteer fire districts lie within SRAs, thus exempting commercial timberlands. Joseph Heller may be dead, but Catch-22 lives on.
Attorney Johnson's letter to the Board of Supervisors was dated December 8, 2015, a full month before the ALRFPD held its own tax assessment appeals hearings. At that meeting, John Andersen, the heir apparent to Mike Jani in the forestry division of MRC, briefly cited the 'commercial timberlands are within SRA, not local fire districts' claim. The ALRFPD board, with little discussion, voted to deny MRC's appeal by a unanimous vote. The county denial is just another step in the process. It allows MRC to state in court that it has exhausted all avenues within the local political system. It is also apparent that MRC will likely spend more on legal fees than the $19,668 yearly fire tax imposed by the Albion Littleriver Fire Protection District.
As stated before, MRC may be looking long term here. If other volunteer fire departments like Comptche (it is safe to say that members of the Comptche fire board are at least considering a similar measure) start taxing MRC by the acre, it could add up to a sizable amount in the long run; an amount MRC might want to nip in the bud via lawsuit.
Of course, there's another reason for MRC to deny money to our local volunteer fire departments. Mendocino Redwood Company and its companion corporation, Humboldt Redwood Co., are owned by members of the Fisher family. Along with owning the Gap Inc., purveyors of cheaply made clothing through brands like Old Navy and Banana Republic, members of the Fisher family also possess a controlling interest in the Oakland Athletics baseball club.
The Oakland Athletics routinely rank in the bottom five of major league baseball payrolls. This year they rank 27th out of 30 teams in total payroll. If you look at median salary the A's are dead last. That median line is important because the A's routinely trade away higher salaried players in mid-season for inexpensive minor league prospects. If an Oakland Athletic player is showing signs of true stardom for a season or two, boom, they're gone. In 2013 and 2014 A's third baseman Josh Donaldson finished in the top ten in voting for the American League's Most Valuable Player Award. Donaldson was headed for a big salary payday. See ya, traded to the Toronto Blue Jays, where Donaldson proceeded to win the MVP award last season. Oakland's general manager, Billy Beane, has gained renown for his so-called “Moneyball” method of running the team, but part of Beane's wheeler dealer role has been forced on him by the consistent cheapskate mentality of ownership. Star players have been traded or let go to free agency from the time of Jason Giambi, Tim Hudson, and Barry Zito on to Gio Gonzalez (presently among the National League leaders in earned run average [ERA]) and Donaldson.
In short, the Fisher family is loathe to spend big bucks long term. They'd rather shovel a healthy sum to their legal team now than pay their share in volunteer fire department taxes for years to come.

                                                                             Link to Anderson Valley Advertiser:  www.theava.com

Mendocino Coast District Hospital (MCDH) projects an $835,000 budget deficit for the coming fiscal year. That was the bottom line of an April 26th informational gathering held just before the MCDH Finance Committee meeting had to be canceled for lack of a quorum.
One could look on the bright side of the numbers, at the end of June, 2016, the hospital is likely to have lost only slightly more than $20,000 in the current fiscal year. Though Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Wade Sturgeon stated revenues should go up in the upcoming year so, too, will operating costs.
Sturgeon claimed that his estimates for potential revenue were stated on the conservative side. If one wants to look for financial hope in the upcoming year, gaze no further than the line in Sturgeon's “Budget Notes” that says, “Based on the evaluation of our charges over a 6 month period, it is estimated we under coded ER [Emergency Room] charges.”
How much one might ask? Sturgeon answers with, “$4.4 million over a 12 month period.”
Questioned later about the matter Sturgeon said the six month period started about six months before February, 2016. There have been rumors and even statistics that hinted at major billing errors in the past at MCDH, but this multi-million dollar error of omission occurred under the tenure of Sturgeon and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Bob Edwards, who started on the job in April, 2015. Sturgeon joined MCDH a couple of months later and it should be said that some of MCDH's short term upturn has been due to Sturgeon and his underlings finding significant amounts of savings and improved billing methods in some areas.
Losses of a million and a half dollars (or more) in the ER Department were cited by Edwards as the chief reason to look into an attempt at passing a parcel tax increase for the Mendocino Coast Health Care District. However, the parcel tax scheme is on hold until at least next spring and, as reported here earlier, Edwards is now promoting a switch to a hospital fee provider system that Edwards touts as a multi-million dollar annual gainer for MCDH. In order to make the switch to the hospital fee provider system MCDH would have to restructure itself under an appointed non-profit board that would make the day to day operating decisions for the hospital. There are rumblings of dissent in and outside the coast hospital by those who see this as a further power play by Edwards. Some of those questioning the hospital fee provider system may very well be on the MCDH Board of Directors. That publicly elected board might lose much of its decision making power if a non-profit board is set up to monitor the hospital as well. The presumed recipient of more power and control in all of this would most likely be the CEO, Bob Edwards.
Anyone searching for more signs of acrimony within MCDH's current power structure need gaze no further than the April 28th MCDH Board meeting agenda, under New Business, to an item entitled “Review and Approval of Medical Staff Bylaws.” Board member Sean Hogan moved to have the matter tabled and Dr. Peter Glusker (recently retired neurologist) seconded while questioning why these bylaws were not written in accordance with California Medical Association (CMA) guidelines instead of the California Hospital Association (CHA) guidelines that chief of medical staff John Kermen (anesthesiologist) and his committee seemingly followed. The difference being that the CMA represents physicians and the CHA can be looked on as representative of hospitals as a whole, thus that organization could be said to advocate more for the administration of hospitals rather than physicians themselves. All of this comes on the footsteps of MCDH's Medical Executive Committee balking at a full on round of mediation with the Board and administration, a mediation recommended for by the Board's legal counsel.
One bit of good news comes as a result of the recent closure of Colusa Regional Medical Center. With just forty-eight hours notice MCDH sent a team to Colusa that ended up recruiting two nurses and a pair of diagnostic imaging employees to the coast. More hires resulting from another hospital's misfortune may be pending. In addition, MCDH may be able to acquire some of Colusa egional Medical Center's equipment at lower than normal rates.
Anyone looking for vulture analogies need gaze no further than the Colusa closing. Their CEO at the time of the April 22nd closure: Wayne Allen, who presided in a similar post during MCDH's bankruptcy era.

                                                                                 Link to Anderson Valley Advertiser:  www.theava.com

In Fort Bragg, California, where the name of its earliest entrepreneur, Alexander Macpherson, is misspelled on street signs, things often get screwed up. The April 22nd League of Women Voters (LWV) forum on Measure U provides an ongoing case in point. Measure U would add the following sentence to Fort Bragg's Municipal Code, “A social service organization is not a permitted use under any circumstances unless such organization was established and existing at a location within within the CBD [Central Business District] zoning district prior to January 1, 2015.”

According to one of the moderators, proponents of Measure U had contacted the LWV just a day or two before the forum, stating they would not appear. However, come forum night the Measure U proponents had lined up Jim Britt (brother of attorney Ron Britt) to speak on their behalf. He was joined at the proponents table by Jeanne Stubenrauch, co-owner of Mendo Litho, which is located directly across Franklin Street from the new Mendocino Coast Hospitality Center (former site of the Old Coast Hotel). That Hospitality Center, which provides mental health services and is scheduled to eventually have five rooms (ten beds) of housing upstairs for those transitioning out of homelessness, is essentially the target of Measure U.
Jim Britt spent much time apologizing for his lack of preparation. Ms. Stubenrauch sat nearly silent until offering a brief statement during closing remarks at the hour and a half forum. That left the ball primarily in the ball of the three folks who spoke against Measure U, Scott Menzies (proprietor of Perfect Circle Tai Chi), Fort Bragg resident Nancy Severy, and Mara Thomas (President of the Board of Art Explorers, a non-profit).
Early on Ms. Thomas pointed to the case of Pathway Psychosocial Support Center v. Leonardtown, Maryland. Even a cursory look at that case from the late 1990s – early 2000s displays eerie similarities to what is going on in Fort Bragg. Ms. Thomas claimed that the ruling in the Pathway case cost Leonardtown well over a half million dollars in damages, let alone the legal costs of mounting a several years long defense. The Leonbardtown case involved the Pathways organization attempting to move into a vacant downtown building in which Pathways would provide counseling services to clients with mental health issues; much the same as the Hospitality Center at the Old Coast Hotel site. When Pathways was denied their move, lawsuits going up to the federal district court level ensued. The one major difference in the Pathways case: Leonardtown's city government caved in to public pressure after petitions from townspeople demanded Pathways be denied zoning permits. Fort Bragg's City Council has come out publicly against Measure U, at least in part because of the threat of lawsuits like Pathways.
On the surface, watching the April 22nd forum, it was clear that the opponents of Measure U won the debate hands down. It's equally clear that if the measure should happen to pass when all ballots are cast, lawsuits would inevitably follow, lawsuits based on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 14th Amendment rights of equal protection under the law, and other legal sticking points, but there are some things bigger going on in Fort Bragg and the defeat of Measure U will not make those issues go away.
Measure U is at its core a reactionary item. There is reactionary frustration in Fort Bragg because a size-able portion of its population is still reeling from the closure of the Georgia-Pacific mill more than a dozen years ago and the loss of almost all of its fishing industry in roughly the same time frame. Those hardworking, middle class jobs are gone. Some if not many of the good folks who had those jobs (or their friends or relatives who held those kinds of jobs) see the City of Fort Bragg as too reliant on outside state and/or federal grant money, they perceive the city manager and members of the city council as giving up on them, not helping to provide jobs for the working middle class and only spending money on prettying up the streets as well as grants for non-profits and social services.
Much of that thinking is shortsighted, but it is a real palpable frustration among a significant part of Fort Bragg's populace. Throw in what looks like a sweetheart deal for Dr. Carine in selling the long empty Old Coast Hotel for well over a million bucks as part of the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) deal that set up the Hospitality Center in the premises of said Old Coast Hotel and you've got trouble brewing. From that same point of view, light the match with what appeared to be only four days public notice before the City Council voted to approve the Old Coast Hotel deal and you've got Trouble with a capital T burning dang close to out of control.
There are all sorts of realities that disprove any number of conspiracy theories regarding the Old Coast Hotel deal and the proponents of the Hospitality Center/opponents of Measure U are perhaps equally frustrated with those who can't see matters their way. Anybody watching the April 22nd forum can tell you about the number of times the Measure U opponents' faces turned red, voices rose practically to a shout, or heard rebuttal arguments rambling into frustrating rants. Most of those rebuttals, if merely transcribed without sight or sound, were probably right on point, accurate. However, the demeanor in which they were offered displayed nothing more than frustration.
The frustration is not going to end with an up or down vote on Measure U. There is no absolute right or wrong side in Fort Bragg right now, just a lot of folks on all sides wearing blinders to avoid anything beyond their own particular point of view.