Link to Anderson Valley Advertiser:  www.theava.com

The Mendocino Coast District Hospital (MCDH) held a special Board of Directors, Finance Committee, and Planning Committee meeting October 12th. The only subject at hand: an August phone survey of two hundred fifty-one likely voters in the hospital district by EMC Market & Opinion Research Services. EMC has offices in Oakland, Portland, Seattle, Columbus, Ohio, Washington, D.C., as well as Fernandina Beach, Florida. Jessica Polsky, with a M.A. in social psychology was EMC's point person on the MCDH survey.

Here are the bullet point takeaways from the EMC survey: 1) From the point of view of the public the emergency room (ER) and obstetrics department (OB) are the most important components of the coastal hospital. Approximately two-thirds of those polled strongly oppose closure of OB. 2) Most of those surveyed have a positive opinion about MCDH, although many still see room for improvement to the quality of healthcare served up there. 3) About 60% of the voters polled strongly or somewhat strongly support passage of a bond measure (as large as $50 million) to maintain the hospital and help build a new hospital, which is mandated by January 1, 2030. Only half of the voters surveyed favor passage of a $200 per parcel tax that would raise approx. $2.4 million annually for the hospital. Both the bond measure or the parcel tax would require a two-thirds voter approval for passage. 4) 64% of those polled strongly or somewhat strongly favor modifying the health care district's governance structure so that a new non-profit, public benefit board would oversee the hospital. This plan might generate somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 million annually according to the verbiage of the hospital's Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Bob Edwards and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Wade Sturgeon, though no substantive plans or progress has been made on this matter since the CEO and CFO first brought it up early this year.
The cost of the survey itself to MCDH was $18,700, according to Mr. Edwards. The questions/statements offered up in the survey were not authored by EMC, but by a committee made up of hospital CEO Edwards, new MCDH Board member Steve Lund, and Michael Riemenschneider. He and his partner Shin Green have been contracted by MCDH to explore government obligation (GO) bond possibilities for the coastal health care district. This committee appears to have been hand picked/self-anointed by CEO Edwards. At the time Lund was not yet a MCDH Board of Directors member. Apparently no other Board member, or any member of the Finance or Planning Committees, was deemed worthy of inclusion. Lund had been president of the Hospital Foundation (chief fundraising entity for MCDH) immediately prior to his appointment to serve out the remaining months before the November election after Dr. Kate Rohr's resignation from the MCDH Board. This fall's election will fill three MCDH Board of Director's seats.
An intriguing part of the EMC poll found that just 28% view the hospital's administration in a good or excellent light, 45% thought administration was doing a fair to poor job. 27% did not have an opinion on that issue. The public's opinion of MCDH's Board of Directors found that only 19% perceive the board as doing an excellent or good job, while 41% put their performance in the fair to poor categories. Of course, this was a judgment cast on the Board of Directors as a whole, no polling was taken regarding individual board members. Long time board member Sean Hogan is retiring in November. Tom Birdsell, who has served on the MCDH Board before, during, and now slightly after the hospital went through bankruptcy proceedings is a candidate for re-election. Interim member Steve Lund is also seeking election in November to a full term.
The EMC survey included the public's review of the financial management of the hospital: 20% in the good to excellent range and 52% in the poor to fair range.
Noting the less than favorable polling concerning the hospital's administration, board, and financial management, Planning Committee member Mike Dell'Ara stated, “If they [the public] don't feel good about the administration, the board, and the financial management, they don't feel good about the hospital.”

                                                                                   Link to Anderson Valley Advertiser:  www.theava.com

My uncle Forrest was the youngest of Lillian Robertson and John Macdonald's six children. Forrest's childhood nickname was Huck, the characteristics associated with that moniker separated his personality from that of his more serious-minded siblings. He was born in 1909, twenty-one years after his eldest brother. Forrest took a year off from high school to make money working for the Albion Lumber Company. He returned to Mendocino High School, graduating with the Class of 1928.

By 1930 he was employed in the woods north of Fort Bragg. What follows is a transcribed account of Forrest's experiences there over an eight month period, told entirely in his words:
“Out on Ten Mile, Camp 24, Churchill crick. That was mighty fine timber out there. That was the good old days.
“Oh hell, I was an old pup by that time, eighteen or nineteen. That was pretty old. You worked all day and slept all night and eat Chinaman grub. That was about all there was to that.
“The cookhouse had six Chinamen cooks, six Chinamens. They had about a hundred men to feed, hundred an' twenty-five.
“They each had a cabin, one at each end of the cabin. Sixteen feet long. You had one end to yourself and the other guy had his end to himself. You got one day off and that was Sunday.
“Oh, I come home pret' near every Sunday. The railroad was there. I don't remember the name of it. There was usually three trains went to town, every day. Two little engines, well one went on past Churchman up to camp 11. Then the other one picked up the logs out at Churchman crick, took 'em down the track to what they call the siding down there.
“Then the big engine... they made up a train, a string of cars, about fifty. Then the big engine took 'em into town. The big engine ran once a day, sometimes twice.
“Never heard of a chainsaw then. The choppers, there was two of 'em. You couldn't, they wouldn't let you, work alone. The cross cutters worked alone and the peelers, the barkers. Peelers and cross cutters got paid by what they did and so did the choppers. But the logging crew, they got so much an hour.
“I was doing nothing mostly. Scaling... I got paid by the month, one hundred fifteen dollars. Wadn't bad until January the ninth when they shut the whole damn thing down. Too much lumber, I guess. 1930.
“Oh, accidents? Hell, they killed a few of 'em. Well, the first one was out at the mouth of Churchman crick, where he got... tree fell on him and mashed 'im. Let's see, the second one was, uh, don't remember how that went.
“Then there was Squealin' Charly, a little Dago. The railroad track was on a slope like and he let the loaded cars down... log cars... and stopped them down a ways. Squealin' Charly was lettin' a loaded car down to couple onto these that were already down. And the goddamn coupling went... He backed up and it coupled right through him. That took care of him pretty fast.
“A month or two later an old boy was cross cutting up on the hill and he didn't show up for supper, so I and the other scaler, Johnson... Adolph Johnson... and another fella went along with us. Don't remember what his name was. We found this old Squarehead underneath a bunch of logs up on the hill. Couldn't get any of them helpful characters to get ahold of the old boy or touch him. I packed him and dragged him down to the railroad tracks and then we put him on the speeder and that hauled him along. I don't know what happened, didn't have much to do with him after that.
“Then there was old Jukka Hyman. Fort Bragg was full of Hymans. Stuck his ax right down through his foot. I met him on the railroad track. He was coming down there and the blood was squirting up out of his shoe, his boot. “Oh god damn it, I cut my foot.”
“Helped him into camp and old Fred Ball took over and I let him have him. I left. There was some more got killed, I forgot. Accidents at least once a month anyway. Pretty often.
“Worked there for about six months then went back and worked in the rigging for a couple months.
“Rigging... I was loadin' cars, second loader. Off of that I got forty-one cents an hour, no, thirty-one cents. A log'd be layin off here to the side and you put two cables around it, two straps, and they'd pick that up with the donkey and put it on the car. I stood on my end and the other guy stayed on his end. You better watch out to keep outta the way. Gotta duck once in awhile. Oh, it wasn't bad, I think it was thirty-one cents an hour. Worked ten hours and got paid for eleven.
“Then I got a dollar a day extry to go up the poles and grease the block every morning. I had to go down a half an hour early. Hundred and eighty, two hundred feet. Pulled you up with a cable. Didn't have to climb anything. Had a stick with the cable wrapped around, tied on there. You got on there and sat on the stick. Just hung onto the cable. I was young and crazy. A dollar a day I got for that.
“You carried a gallon bucket of grease and up on the block there was, oh, kind of like a grease cup you'd fill that. Had to go down a half hour early to do that. They had three different blocks. The high lead block was the upper one. That was the skyline, or main line. Then the back line was the next block. Then the next line below that was for the loadin' machine. You greased up the back side of the pole. That was easy money.
“Had a roommate at the other end of the cabin. He was a choker setter, but I learned more about cards there. I decided I didn't need to know any more and got outta that line. He could take a deck of cards and deal you any hand you wanted, whatever you asked for and you couldn't see how he done it. When he got ready, just before Christmas, he cleaned 'em all and left. Thirty, forty years old, don't know where he come from or where he went to.
“He used to take his fingers and sandpaper his goddamn fingers. Don't know what he was doin'. Guess he was gettin' the hide off, but he sandpapered them fingers down just the way he wanted 'em. He had about three or four names. Went by any name that come along. I forget what he called himself then. Should know, but I don't.
“You didn't have alcohol in the camp, wasn't allowed. One thing the boss kind of frowned upon. But I imagine he had his own jug. I was young then and hadn't got really goin' on the benefits of alcohol.
“You packed up your own lunches. All the stuff was laid out there and you took anything you want. You had a little old lunch bucket, a tin thing which they furnished. That was before thermos bottles. The bucket had a top on it. Most of 'em filled it up with coffee. I never put anything in it. A lid that fit on top of your lunch bucket. Wish I had kept a couple, or stole a couple, or done something, but I didn't.
“Had breakfast about six in the morning. Took fifteen minutes to walk from the cookhouse up to where I worked. Had to be there at six-thirty to go up the pole, like a monkey. Then supper was at six o'clock. Worked 'til five. Supper, they really fed good there. You had all the grub that you could eat. Didn't make any difference what you wanted.
“This Big Finn used to have a square table and set there. A Chinaman brought a platter, usually five or six steaks to a platter and that big Finn'd reach over and scrape all them steaks off onto his plate then stack 'em up. Ate everyone of 'em. Another thing that impressed me was he'd take the salt and by spoonfuls he'd make each steak white, just cover it with salt. Great big monstrous guy. He'd had his jaw broke and his face was twisted up a little bit.
“The Finns clung together, and The I-talians, and the white people, what few there was, it was just like they were segregated. Scotch or Irish.
“Had what they called a bull buck. He swept out cabins ever'day and he assigned who went in which cabin. Had a little mattress, four or five blankets and a pillow. No sheets. If you wanted some, bring your own. I didn't bother.
“Bull buck cut wood for the cook-a-house and, oh, he done other little chores around like that. One by twelve board cabins, with a little piece of batten over the cracks. There could be knot holes and what not, you had to patch them up yourselves. One by twelve boards for the floor, too, no tongue and groove.
“In the good old days we had steel cots. Put each leg of the cot in a gallon fruit can with about a couple, two-three inches of kerosene. Oh, bedbugs... soon as the lights went out you'd hear them pop down, but they couldn't come through that kerosene up into bed. They'd drop from the ceiling. That's your problem.
“Oh, they had a recreation room where you could play cards, but most nights you went straight to bed. Put in a day's work.
“No heat in that recreation room. Had a little box stove in the cabin. Got your own wood for your cabin, wherever you could find it, wood everywhere.
“Brought my clothes home every week. Some of 'em, they used the same pants for months I guess.
“Didn't get around without them corks on the bottom of your shoes. Them ol' trees were layin' on some pretty steep hills.”
Forrest's account was recorded in 1982 by Margaret Macdonald and Irene Mallory Macdonald, remaining unheard and unpublished outside of immediate family until now.

                                                                                  Link to Anderson Valley Advertiser:  www.theava.com

The Mendocino Coast District Hospital (MCDH) Board of Directors held a meeting Thursday night, September 29th. Maybe you didn't hear about. No worries, they only approved four million dollars worth of uninsured new debt revenue bonds. Don't know what that is. Well, join the crowd of taxpayers and voters from Rockport to Comptche to the southern borders of Mendocino County's coastline. There was apparently no notice in the coastal newspapers about this meeting. This writer didn't notice anyone from those papers at the meeting and the email list that yours truly is on for agenda packets includes about fifty-five people in total; most of those are affiliated with either the hospital itself, its clinic North Coast Family Health Center (NCFHC), or the Hospital Foundation.

So the audience at the September 29th MCDH Board meeting was predictably made up of fifteen to twenty folk affiliated with the hospital itself, its foundation, or NCFHC. I spotted only two people who could be clearly identified as simply concerned, taxpaying citizens without hospital affiliation beyond having been patients there at some point in time.
Other than this writer there were no ordinary citizens at the MCDH Finance Committee meeting of September 27th. Oh, yes, you could have had two days forewarning about the new debt revenue bonds had you made it to the Sept. 27th meeting. Wake up all you folk who complained about four-five days notice before the Fort Bragg City Council voted on the Hospitality Center move into the Old Coast Hotel. By the bye, that was the second noticed meeting on the Hospitality Center locale, there having been one nine months prior RE a proposed locale at 300 N. Harrison Street. In a strictly technical sense the City of Fort Bragg didn't have to hold a second meeting, the Hospitality Center could have simply said something like, “You didn't like 300 Harrison St., fine, we found the Old Coast Hotel. It would be our pleasure to see you at the Grand Opening.'
That little detail is conveniently overlooked by many of the harshest critics of Hospitality Center. Do not mistake my attention to detail for any kind of wholesale support for the Hospitality Center. Critics should have stuck to the simplest of facts. For years the Board and employees of Hospitality Center have demonstrated an inability to simply manage the delivery of food dispersed at their Fort Bragg flagship, Hospitality House. Feeding the poor and homeless is a fantastically worthy endeavor, but Hospitality lets too many of its clients leave the grounds with the food. Much too much of that food ends up dumped, trashed, deposited on the near and not so near neighbors of Hospitality House. It's been going on for years. It's still happening ¾ of the way through 2016. If the high school or middle school or any Fort Bragg school had a fraction of these kinds of food trashing the city, from teachers to school administrators to police to parents right up through and including the city government would be on the case in no time, putting a stop to it. If students dumping school food popped up again as a problem several years on, it would be met with a similar concerted effort. However, a do-gooder non-profit is allowed to let an unhealthy portion of its clientele trash businesses and residences for years and years with the mildest of admonishments at best.
I digress from the hospital situation, but MCDH is a metaphorical mess that has been allowed to limp along for years until it got a pretty full fledged admonishment, BANKRUPTCY. Now it's limping along again only a ear or so removed from bankruptcy. MCDH has millions and millions and millions (I can go on with the millions into the teens, maybe further) of needed repairs that it apparently doesn't have the money for. We are not talking boards and nails kind of stuff. Well, there's millions of that too, but there's four million dollars or more worth of operating room sterilization, nurse call system, automatic transfer switch system (for the times when the P G & E power goes off and state regulations mandate a switch to generator power within ten seconds), and more intricate types of repairs as well as equipment and mandated upgrades in the electronic health records system. That one alone will cost two million to two and a half million dollars. All the others listed cost a hundred thousand or hundreds of thousands of dollars each. The top five priorities in these repair projects will cost $4,115,000.
Is the dollar figure of a four million and change (as The Donald might refer to a piddling $115,000) starting to sink in, sound a little repetitive. The$4.115 million is so close to a $4.15 million figure the MCDH Board and its CEO and CEO project as potential proceeds from the issuance of the aforementioned debt revenue bonds.
Risk to us the taxpaying public? Very little according to the bond and investment expert from William Blair & Company, the firm hired to assist MCDH with the debt revenue bond process, but who knows. Don't ask me to explain the finer details, I was merely a witness to the ramming through of the multi-million dollar bond procedure.
To be completely fair to MCDH administrators the bond idea was first broached in the last week of August at a Finance Committee meeting with almost breathlessly zealous words about the imperative of voting on the matter as soon as possible to take advantage of lower interest rates. Some plausibility there, in that the Federal Reserve has been holding back all year on what seems an inevitable interest rate rise.However, I must repeat that it seems odd that the same MCDH administrators made little or no effort to publicize the multi-million dollar matter in the last month ( I use the word “little” in a completely benefit-of-the-doubt manner).
Public representation? The closest you were going to get on this matter lay in the MCDH Board of Directors. Board member Peter Glusker did raise multiple questions. New board member Steve Lund stated that this would be the last time he could vote for such a muliti-million dollar measure. However, ultimately MCDH's Board approved taking on the “new debt revenue bonds.,” with only Dr. Glusker dissenting in a 4-1 vote. Board members Tom Birdsell, Sean Hogan, Kitty Bruning, and Lund voted in the affirmative.
Was there public input prior to the Board vote? Not unless some reader can point to an as yet unknown letter or email. The nearest thing came from former (as of Tuesday, Sept, 27th) Finance Committee member Kaye Handley. At the Sept. 29th Board meeting Glusker asked that a letter from Handley by copied into the official minutes of the meeting. Presumably it will be, but who's going to see it. Here's what Handley wrote, “I am writing to [each Board member] to express my concern about the new $4 million bond issue proposed to fund equipment purchases... While it is clear the new equipment is critical, I am concerned about the “business-as-usual” approach to funding it with new debt. The proposed additional bonds will bring the hospital's long-term debt up to $18 million, barely a year out of bankruptcy. Annual debt service is currently about $2 million and will increase to $2.5 million assuming the proposed terms are achievable. That is roughly equal to all budgeted cash flow from operations for this fiscal year, leaving no cushion or funds for capital investment...
“The problem is, simply, that the hospital is already spending nearly all its free cash flow on debt service with little left for equipment and capital investment. That has apparently been the case for many years – predictable resukts. Capital investment needs presented by management for the next three fiscal years total $17 million, at least $3 million of which is deemed urgent. And this does not address the new facility required by 2030.
“Now we find ourselves with critical needs and no available strategy. This debt proposal is an opportunity for the Board to show leadership in taking the difficult steps necessary to bring the hospital's cash flow up to a level that will maintain equipment and ifrastructure. This is essential to restoring the hospital's competitive position and attracting/retaining quality physicians. Given the level of deferred expenditures in recent years an annual improvement of at least $3-4 million will likely be needed to maintain a viable independent facility.”
Handley goes on to enumerate cash flow improvement opportunities. One of which is passage of a parcel tax.; however, she concludes, “Such a tax alone is not sufficient and voters may be reluctant to 'throw good money after bad'.”
About the idea of closing or significantly modifying the Obstetrics Department Handley states, An ad hoc committee was supposed to research [the idea], yet this effort has not moved forward. While the public has expressed strong resistance they, too, need mre info to develop an informed view.”
Handley's take possibility of changing MCDH operations to a “Hospital Fee Structure” in order to qualify for potentially millions more, annually, in state reimbursement monies: “This is potentially the single biggest opportunity to improve cash flow, but t has sat in limbo since January, despite several volunteers willing to explore the issue.”
Handley goes on, “Other potential areas for significant savings should also be explored. These could include ways to improve employee retention in an effort to stop the dramatic rise in Registry costs, as well as working with employees to initiate some level of contributions to health and pension plans.”
Perhaps Handley is unaware of recent administration tactics in negotiating with the hospital's employee union. Up until now employees and their immediate family members received full medical benefits without any monetary contribution by the employees. Administration's negotiating tactic was not asking for something like a ten, fifteen, or twenty percent employee contribution, MCDH administration's first and apparently only negotiating stance was a straight 50/50 split in medical benefit payments. Reportedly the union, after moths of stalled bargaining, offered this: employees would pay 10% of family members medical benefit costs. Seemingly, something along these lines is in the final agreement ratified by union vote in mid-September. Substantive rumors about the labor agreement cite a 5% raise for employees countered by a 1% decline in employer contributions to retirement funding. Supposedly, MCDH initially wanted the retirement plan to be simply on a matching basis, but the union negotiators balked at this because new and lower paid employees would most likely find it difficult to contribute on their. From an administration point of view this would equal sizable savings because the employer contribution would only be triggered once the employee first made their own retirement contribution.
Handley concludes her letter to the Board with this, “There seems to be a perception by the public that difficult changes are nt really necessary. I often hear comments that the hospital will “muddle through” or that “someone will bail it out.” Approving this new debt with no further actions will only reinforce such perceptions. This is an opportunity to make it clear that failing to invest in capital needs or contributing to fund them through debt is not an option if MCDH is to become truly competitive and remain an independent entity.”
Two sources stated on Tuesday, September 27, that Handley had resigned her position on MCDH's Finance Committee. Precise reasons/causes were not immediately forthcoming. However, Handley was one of the Planning and Finance Committee members who were invited to attend a joint meeting with the Board of Directors in late spring, 2016 (the scheduled joint meeting was listed on the committee agendas). When the appointed meeting date arrived MCDH Board Chair, Tom Birdsell, failed to recognize/ignored Handley's efforts to be recognized for comment. A similar event occurred at a late summer committee meeting when the committee chair brought down the gavel to close the meeting rather than hear Handley's remarks on the new debt revenue bonds.
Handley, Lund, and Birdsell are vying, along with several other candidates, for three MCDH Board seats in the November election. Voters may want to check out Mendocino TV's (mendocinotv.com) recent MCDH Board candidates forum. Birdsell apparently refused to take part.

                                                                                  Link to Anderson Valley Advertiser:  www.theava.com

The City of Fort Bragg held an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) scoping session Monday, September 19th at Town Hall on the topic of yet another shopping center project near Hare Creek. The result was akin to a college football game between Alabama and Cal, about 48-3 against.

The EIR workshop was designed to gather public input concerning the slightly redesigned proposal put forth on behalf of the owners of the three (+) acre property immediately west of the intersection of Highways 1 and 20.
Two Fort Bragg City Council members, Lindy Peters and Mike Cimolino, were present throughout the two and a half hour meeting, though only Peters made public comment. He asked that the EIR place special emphasis on the following issues related to the project: 1. the potential aesthetic impact; 2. hydrology (water use); 3. the possibility for irreversible long term impacts; 4. and the related topic of overall cumulative impacts.
The proposed Hare Creek shopping center would be anchored by a Grocery Outlet store, approximately 15,000 square feet in size as well as two additional buildings sized at 10,000 and 4,500 square feet, for a total of 29,500 square feet of retail space. Associated developments would include an access road, a parking lot, loading zones, pedestrian improvements, rain water storage tanks, utility connections, drainage improvements, utilities, signage and landscaping. The project differs from a 2014 proposal, heard and denied in early 2015 by the Fort Bragg Planning Commission and City Council, in that the buildings are set twice as far back from the highway, grading of a grassy, man made hill would be minimized, and a road surrounding the project has been dropped.
The meeting was moderated both by Fort Bragg's Community Development Director Marie Jones and Florentina Craciun, an environmental planner employed by Michael Baker International, a firm (see their web site at mbakerintl.com) hired by the City of Fort Bragg to oversee the EIR process for this Hare Creek shopping center project. Craciun emphasized more than once that the fifty or more folks in attendance should refrain from either booing or clapping to avoid intimidation of others, and for the most part the audience complied, but she probably hadn't counted on Rex Gressett and Dave Gurney.
When Gressett stepped to the microphone for one of his three minutes of allotted comment (participants were allowed more or less unlimited turns at the microphone by the end of the evening's festivities), he promptly let out with a statement that the entire meeting was nothing more than illusory theater. Looking at the audience Mr. Gressett went on, “They (apparently city government) are not going to listen to any of you... If we want that property to be saved, we have to save it. Marie Jones ain't gonna do it. She works for the developers. She works for the people who want to desecrate our community.”
At this point Ms. Jones nearly shouted into her microphone, “Alright, Rex. That's enough. He cannot personally assassinate me... I'm done...”
Gressett asked, “What are you going to do, have me arrested?”
Though Ms. Jones appeared to beckon a young Fort Bragg Police Department officer from the back of the room the situation diffused, though not before Gressett asserted, “I say Marie Jones is behind this. I say, she is an absolute menace to the best interests of this community.”
Despite Mr. Gressett's claims about theater, it is too often he who puts on a show. On multiple occasions he has directly accused Jones and City Manager Linda Ruffing of being in cahoots with developers, yet he has to the best of this writer's knowledge never offered up any specific evidence to back up this claim beyond his raised voiced pontifications.
Rex Gressett is what one might call a colorful character, but his inherently contradictory stances on issues (on other, recent occasions he has stated his desire to allow local businesses to be free of all regulation) and passive aggressive public behavior (he wimpishly thanked the police officer for not arresting him then later came back to the public comment microphone with a promise, “To be nice this time.”) more often than not get in the way of civil discussion of the pros and cons of significant issues facing the city of Fort Bragg.
I enjoy Rex's personal brand of theater, but not to the point of accepting unfounded personal attacks as some sort of Gospel according to Saint Gressett. Though Ms. Jones's tone could have been gentler, how could any sane person blame her for finally saying, “Rex, that's enough.”
Mr. Gressett's antics and to a lesser degree the confrontational, not-able-to-take-yes-for-an-answer, style of David Gurney detracted from the tempered remarks of people like oceanographer Leslie Kashiwada. She spoke for a group called Citizens for Appropriate Coastal Land Use (CACLU), which includes educators, scientists, and small business owners. Interested readers can check out their Facebook site, where the group touts bullet points about the EIR process for the proposed Hare Creek shopping center, including: 1. The need to fully assess impacts on environmentally sensitive areas. 2. The project is not consistent with the City’s stated policies, plans, and goals in the Coastal General Plan.
3. It would bring about an increase in urban blight due to its impact on businesses in the central business district (CBD) and other shopping centers (already four vacancies each in the Boatyard Shopping Center and S. Franklin St strip mall, along with approx. fourteen vacancies in CBD). 4. It would bring more franchise businesses to Fort Bragg (already have twelve). The unincorporated areas of Mendocino County just renewed a moratorium on franchise businesses for one year – should Fort Bragg consider such a moratorium? 5. This area used to be a dairy farm. It was rezoned in 1995 to allow for this type of development, with the city hoping to increase its tax base. No consideration was given to the cumulative impact of development on Todd Point or on the gateway to the city. 6. The California Coastal Commission questions the legality of the proposed building site given the numerous requested Lot Line Adjustments over the years. Which LLAs have been approved (need a transparent trail of documentation) and is the current configuration approved?
Many other cogent questions/comments filled the nearly two hours of public input. Those interested in seeing and hearing them all should check out the invaluable Mendocino TV's website (mendocinotv.com) for an opportunity to view the meeting in its entirety. Despite the show put on at Town Hall, written comments by the public pull the greatest weight in this EIR process. Such comments can be directed to Marie Jones, the Community Development Director for the City of Fort Bragg. The comment period for the scoping session ends on September 30th. After the EIR is made public (most likely in January, 2017, a further forty-five day comment period will ensue. Most likely ending around March 1, 2017).