Link to Anderson Valley Advertiser:  www.theava.com

Meg Courtney appears to be rather poor at keeping a secret. In early August Ms. Courtney somehow got hold of information from a closed session meeting of Fort Bragg's City Council. As a former council member one would think she would have recognized the privileged nature of closed session matters. Rather than keeping the information private she sent out emails far and wide. Eventually, it even landed in my laptop, though I doubt if I've ever been on Courtney's friend list. The email read: “I've been made aware that there is a coup brewing to get rid of Linda Ruffing our City Manager. It would be a real tragedy for our city if we were to loose [sic] her. As a former council member, [I] can attest to her professionalism, her honesty, her clarity, her creativity and my respect for her.
“This Monday (August 13) there is a city council meeting where we can let the council know of our support for her. Public comment, where we can make our thoughts known, is one of the first things on the agenda...
“Below is a list of Linda's accomplishments to help you with talking points. Please call me if you want details.Hope to see you on Monday night! And please forward this to 'your people'!” - Meg
Not sure just who Meg's people are, but in the waning days of August many of the same addressees received this from Courtney: “You may have already received this, but in case not, here is a really good idea from Hilary White and hopefully we can sustain it every Monday, though the next Monday is Labor Day and not sure if the Mayor will be in. (caveat: Sadly I can't be there as I have a long-standing appt. in Ukiah that morning. - Meg”
The text or email (not sure which it was originally) continues, with these headlines, authored by someone other than Meg Courtney:
“Request for Action:
Monday with the Mayor
10:45 am on Monday, August 28”
Followed by the body of the message:
“Friends,
In response to the forced retirement of our female city manager, Linda Ruffing; and the 'chosen' departure of our female city attorney, Samantha Zutler, due to the observable conditions of rampant sexism and outright harassment, we are both outraged at the treatment of women in positions of authority, and concerned about the future with a 5 member, all white, male, City Council.
“While Linda and Samantha will no longer be part of the future of our city government, and our actions will not bring them back, we feel compelled to be proactive in an attempt to push back against institutional misogyny and also publically [sic] educate our City Council. They have already begun the hiring process for both of those positions. In the current climate, it is extremely doubtful that they would hire a woman, or that a woman would choose to accept either position.
“As a beginning action, we are proposing that a group of women gather at City Hall for Mondays with the Mayor, to have a SILENT protest. Meaning we go there and DO NOT TALK (to him or each other) for one hour, or as long as the time lasts, or until you have to leave. Lindy Peters likes to be liked and likes to talk.
“A large group of women sitting in silent protest in city hall would be a very loud commentary on how we feel about the treatment of women in our city. We are frequently silenced, but to choose silence as a statement could be powerful. What do you think?
The time to gather at city hall is 10:45 am on Monday, August 28. We are reaching out to invite women we know to participate. We are hoping to have this be an unexpected action, so if you ask another personal friend to join us, please ask that they not spread the word publicly.
“We will need a lot of people, men and women, to get involved in what is happening locally. We need to find a way to engage in thoughtful and civil discourse about the future of our town. We need to demand real leadership from our elected officials.
“We will be presenting the Mayor with the following request:”
The request was apparently authored by one or more of the signatories listed at the conclusion of the email/text. The request itself was addressed directly to Mayor Lindy Peters:
“We oppose both the actions and inactions of this City Council that have created an environment of hostility at public meetings. The Council's actions, or lack thereof, have encouraged and contributed to the seething distrust and rumormongering within our community. We call on you, Lindy Peters, as mayor and head of the City Council to improve the tone of your public meetings so that they are less hostile, more inclusive of our entire community, and more conducive to the goals of our democracy. The untimely exits of our City Attorney and City Manager, both highly intelligent women who were actively mistreated by this Council and the public, is cause for great concern. You have allowed for some of the most misogynistic language and misleading accusations to go unchecked and allowed these two highly skilled, female, employees of our City to be scapegoats for horribly misguided anger from the community and the Council. You have done very little to provide the leadership necessary to redirect this misguided anger which has only allowed it to fester. We are tired of speaking in calm and rational voices and not being heard, but we refuse to stoop to the level of ranting and raving and shouting and arguing. We hope you will hear our silence.
We hope you will join us!
Thank you.
Carole White, Simon Smith, and Hilary White”
The trio then added this postscript, apparently aimed at their readership, not Mayor Peters: “If you have not read this week's paper, you might want to. There is a statement from Linda herself, an interview with Linda by newspaper staff, and a community forum piece written by us. We need to keep up the pressure. If you can't participate in this action, please consider writing a letter to the editor. We can't change what's done but we can say we're not ok with it.”
If the writers of the email/text had been paying closer attention to Fort Bragg City Council meetings they would have noticed that many months prior, the August 28th city council meeting had been cancelled. For the past few years the council has taken one of the August meetings off the calendar as something of a holiday for council members and city staff. With that in mind Mayor Peters was not present at City Hall that morning for “Mondays with the Mayor.” As the Courtney message points out, the following Monday was Labor Day. In addition, through previously scheduled events (including a “sister city” visit to Japan), Mayor Peters is already scheduled to be absent from Fort Bragg for consecutive Mondays into late September.
In reference to Lindy Peters, when he took over the role of mayor in December, 2016, he said this, “I want this to be an inclusive, participatory government.. when people come to the podium and sometimes get emotional talking about an issue, I pledge that I will listen... and we will try and give respect, mutual respect from the podium and respect from the dais... This country is divided... and to a certain extent this community is divided too... I make it my mission to bring this community together, to try and find common ground... As mayor it's up to me to run the meetings [in a manner] that will be civil, where we will treat each other with respect, we will be polite and try not to use perjoratives... We will do the best we can as council members, and I know I speak for all of us, to listen to everybody, to listen to all sides of the issues and try to make a decision that is best for our community.”
Readers can judge for themselves the validity of each speaker/writer's words. Fort Bragg remains a city somewhat divided. There are people who I view as being spot on about the issues facing the hospital, but in some cases, in my opinion, those same folk are dead wrong about the matters pertaining to Hospitality House or the Hospitality Center. But even within the major issues of the past few years alliances are not simply defined. There are professional women in Fort Bragg who were highly critical of actions taken by former police chief Scott Mayberry, seemingly putting them in the pro Linda Ruffing camp. Yet, the same female professionals were just as critical of Hospitality House, thus, apparently, placing them on board with the anti-Ruffing folks. Oversimplifying the problems within Fort Bragg or the actions of its city council to a women vs. men argument appears misguided at best.
Let's close with the official Fort Bragg City press release, quoting Mayor Peters concerning Linda Ruffing's departure: “Fort Bragg has been very fortunate to have City Manager Linda Ruffing at the helm for the past 12 years. She is a talented and effective leader who has dedicated many years of her career to our community. I wish her all the best when she retires early next year.”

                                                                                Link to Anderson Valley Advertiser:  www.theava.com

During the evening of August 14th a twenty year old woman named Morgan Franklin, from Big Bear, CA, appeared at the emergency room (ER) of Mendocino Coast Hospital (MCDH), apparently having been driven there by law enforcement. A little over an hour later officers of the Fort Bragg Police Department (FBPD) were dispatched to the hospital due to a report that said same female patient was vandalizing the ER and assaulting members of the staff.
According to a FBPD press release, officers contacted Ms. Franklin outside the ER shortly after 9:10 p.m. Franklin is alleged to have threatened officers if they did not stay away from her. The officers talked with Franklin in an effort to discover why her demeanor had changed over the last hour or so. In addition, the officers tried to determine if Franklin was experiencing some sort of crisis.
When the officers finally attempted to physically detain her, Franklin became combative, resisted, struck and kicked them. The press release indicates that Franklin was eventually subdued and placed inside a FBPD vehicle so that further investigation could ensue.
Upon entering the emergency room the FBPD officers discovered the area of the nursing station looked like it had been ransacked. Computers and other expensive pieces of euipment were strewn about the floor, most, if not all, had been damaged or destroyed. The ER staff told the officers that as they [ER personnel] had begun to administer treatment to Franklin, she assaulted the emergency room doctor, then exited the treatment room and threw items and equipment at staff.
Franklin continued her rampage through the ER then exited. Outside, she climbed onto the roof of a parked vehicle and smashed the vehicle’s windshield with a large rock.
The FBPD press release concludes: “Franklin was placed under arrest and charged with felony vandalism and felony assault on medical personnel. She was later transported to the Mendocino County Jail without further incident.”


Franklin's charges also included misdemeanor resisting, obstructing, or delaying a peace officer along with being placed under a “competency status.” Her booking log states that she is five feet, eight inches tall and weighs one hundred twenty-five pounds. One person at the scene stated that Franklin was not a “5150” case, but was suffering from the effects of LSD use. The LSD having been acquired at the “Reggae on the River” event.
No one was seriously injured, though Franklin did hit and kick the police officers several times. A first hand witness said, “The destruction she caused inside the ER was incredible, and the resulting anguish she caused the hospital staff was shocking. A lot of anger and destruction from a skinny little twenty year old girl.”
Why is this incident of note? An interested person in the medical field put it this way, “The [MCDH] staff is besides themselves with no support and no clue if anything was investigated.”
This remark references the necessity for a hospital, in such a situation, to report to both OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) and the California Department of Public Health (CDPH). California Health and Safety Code 1279.1 requires a health facility to report an adverse event to CDPH no later than five days after the adverse event occurs. As of this writing it remains unclear if any report was made to the above named agencies by MCDH's lead administrators. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Bob Edwards is reported to have called the damage and destruction “an isolated incident.”

                                                                                  Link to Anderson Valley Advertiser:  www.theava.com

At the conclusion of a five hour Fort Planning Commission meeting on August 23rd, the City's planning commissioners voted 3-2 in favor of a resolution that placed eighteen special conditions on a use permit for Hospitality House, the McPherson (sic) Street entity that provides beds and meals to an ever growing homeless population. Commissioners Curtis Bruchler and Nancy Swithenbank dissented, apparently for one of two reasons, that the resolution did not go far enough in limiting Hospitality House (HH) and/or that the final wording of the resolution was dropped in their laptops as the Wednesday night meeting commenced.
Following are the special conditions the City of Fort Bragg plans to place on Hospitality House: 1. The total number of overnight guests at the emergency shelter shall not exceed twenty-four each night. An increase in the number of overnight guests is not permitted unless a Minor Use Permit or Use Permit Amendment is applied for and obtained. If this provision is violated, the operator shall pay a code violation fee, as determined by the City’s Fee Schedule for each occurrence of the violation.
2. The emergency shelter operator shall permit periodic inspections by City staff, which may be conducted without prior notification, to ensure that the limitation on the number of overnight guests is not exceeded.
3. Hospitality House shall serve all food on premises. Food shall not be prepared or served
“to go” for clients to carry off-site.
4. Hospitality House shall provide at least two 50-gallon trash receptacles on site for clients
to dispose of personal trash. Trash cans shall be emptied on a regular basis to ensure
sufficient trash capacity.
5. Hospitality House shall provide a restroom facility for non-guest clients starting one hour
before the breakfast meal program each day.
6. Hospitality House shall provide a location on Hospitality House premises for clients to gather and wait for the meal program to open. The gathering area shall be available to clients starting one hour before food service each day. The gathering area shall be monitored by Hospitality House staff.
7. Hospitality House shall monitor client behavior on and adjacent to the Hospitality House
premises and shall report illegal behavior to the Police Department and cooperate with the Police Department to address client behavior that disturbs the peace. “Adjacent to” means the sidewalk directly in front of the Hospitality House property and the alley directly behind the Hospitality House property.
8. Hospitality House shall establish rules of conduct for clients, aimed at curtailing behaviors that are unlawful and/or disturb the peace. Clients who violate the rules of conduct shall be denied service by Hospitality House in accordance with policies approved by the Mendocino Coast Hospitality Center Board of Directors. The Hospitality House shall establish a “ban list” which identifies individuals who are temporarily and/or permanently banned from the Hospitality House property. The “ban list” shall be shared with the Police Department and the Police Department may recommend the addition of individuals who have been cited and/or arrested for illegal acts occurring in locations other than the Hospitality House premises. The Hospitality House shall abide by the “ban list.” Closed loop surveillance cameras shall be installed in the interior and exterior public spaces of the Hospitality House. With regard to sharing video footage with the Police Department, Hospitality House will comply with their obligations to their clients under state and federal privacy laws, including but not limited to HIPAA.
9. The Hospitality House rules of conduct shall prohibit drug use and drinking on Hospitality
House property. Clients that violate these rules of conduct shall not be served meals and/or provided with a room for the evening.
10. The Hospitality House shall post signs on the front and back property entrances that
prohibit drug use, drinking, intoxication and loitering. The signs shall also provide a phone number to reach a member of the Hospitality House staff during Hospitality House operating hours from 4:00 pm to 9:00 am.
11.The Extreme Weather Shelter shall not be operated from the Hospitality House.
12. The Hospitality House shall be managed by a competent person with at least twenty hours training.
13.The Hospitality House manager shall be responsible for oversight of all activities on the
premises and shall work to minimize the negative impacts of the facility and its clients on
the surrounding neighborhood.
14. The Hospitality House shall have a trained person on-site at all times when clients are
present.
15. The Hospitality House Management shall cooperate with the Police Department and
Police Officers when they respond to com plaints and calls for service at the Hospitality
House, or when undertaking investigations at the Hospitality House.
16. The Hospitality House shall not expand the hours of meal service. Meal service shall be
limited to 20,000 meals per year (the 2017 use rate).
17. Other homeless services currently offered at the facility shall not be intensified or
expanded, except for showers and laundry services.
18. The Hospitality House shall not offer new services that attract additional clients to the
facility at other times of day or otherwise intensify the utilization of the facility, including but
not lim ited to: counseling, educational services, mental health services, m ail service,
computer access, food pantry, etc.
The last minute changes only amounted to a few words in conditions 1,2, 8, and 12, but the attorneys for the City and HH's out of area lawyer devoted much time to over-explaining these few words to the planning commissioners. In some respects Hospitality House and its Board of Directors got away easy. Most of the conditions listed are little more than common sense and should have been adhered to already. In a letter from HH's attorney to the Fort Bragg Planning Commission and the Community Development Director, Marie Jones, HH refused to accept any blame for the myriad number of nuisances caused by HH clients anywhere off the premises of Hospitality House. Quoting from the letter, “[The Planning Commission] has not established any connection between Hospitality House's services and conduct in the vicinity that might be considered a nuisance.”
Those nuisances were enumerated in Planning Commission documents as including fighting, aggressive panhandling, loitering, shouting, arguing, cursing, littering, drunkenness, drug use, obstruction of sidewalks, defacating on private property, and urinating in public. The list goes on and has been witnessed by numerous business owners, residents, City Council members, police officers and this writer. The fact that HH leadership continues to deny these simple truths has to make anyone who lives, works, shops, or visits the alleys and streets near HH skeptical about its future compliance with the special conditions placed upon it. In the document thrust on the Planning Commission and its staff on the day of the meeting HH's attorney wrote, “The Findings, which attribute problematic behavior to Hospitality House guests, are supported only by correspondence from neighbors, police logs and 'police officer testimony' to which MCHC has not had adequate opportunity to respond.”
That has to be near the top of any list of legalese double speak and hogwash! First, the statement uses the word “only” to describe the testimony of police officers and the folks who live and work around Hospitality House. Makes me wonder exactly what greater source HH and its attorney need? Second, the statement says that Hospitality has not had adequate “opportunity” to respond to this. If opportunity equals time, then HH has had at least since last autumn to respond to the first emails from a neighboring business. Part of the reason the emails of complaint had to lead to police officer involvement was because HH refused to respond to the original emails in 2016. A reminder to readers, there were dozens of emails complaining about HH guests' behavior from a single neighboring business as of February, 2017. Readers who can't understand why Linda Ruffing is headed out the door of Fort Bragg's City Hall need to put on their remembering hats and recall that it was Ruffing who deliberately withheld these emails from City Council members for nearly three weeks after the business owner who sent them to Ruffing specifically requested that the emails about HH be given to the City Council.
If you want a reason to believe HH can successfully comply with the Planning Commission's Special Conditions, that belief will pretty much rely on the fact that HH has recently employed a new house manager who will be on scene at least five days a week. This person, Lara Anderson, does appear to be a confident and competent employee. How much she can turn around the atmosphere in and around Hospitality House will prove to be the big question. The facility, along with its sister entity, Hospitality Center, at the Old Coast Hotel location, would be better situated outside of the central business district. That doesn't seem to be a change in the offing of the foreseeable future, so the City of Fort Bragg, through its Planning Commission, perhaps has done the best it can for the time being: saddle Hospitality House with a relatively simple collection of conditions to abide by. Let's see whether the City of Fort Bragg has given HH enough rope to corral their problems or just enough to proverbially hang the organization.