Excerpt from "OFF THE RECORD"

Polly's Out of Crackers

by Mark Scaramella & Bruce Anderson

RENNIE INNIS, long-time manager of the Mendocino Community Network (MCN) based at Mendocino High School, abruptly quit his cush job last week and reportedly departed for Hawaii. MCN is not only a local internet service provider, it's Mendocino County's first public school-private business partnership, MCN having been organized and fully subsidized by Mendocino High School in the early 90s. Other, less blessed local internet providers complained about their publicly subsidized competitor but to no avail. Innis and his assistant, Mitch Sprague, were handsomely compensated as they fattened off free labor, free equipment, free space, free this and that. "The kids," you see, were learning by doing. Maybe they were, but Innis and Sprague were getting rich, too, and getting rich via what is essentially a non-competitive, fully underwritten private business with themselves as primary beneficiaries. No one knows specifically why Innis quit, but unspecified problems between Innis and school district Superintendent Jim Shock have been known to have been simmering for the last couple of years. Shock inherited the cozy Innis arrangement along with a host of other built-in probs bequeathed him by outgoing district superintendent Ken Matheson. It's not much of a stretch to see that the school's budget problems exacerbated tensions between Shock and Innis. After all, can Mendo Unified continue paying Innis and Sprague as the district cuts back much more essential staff? Shock may have wanted to cut the subsidy the district was giving to Innis's business by way of staff time or utilities, he may have been unwilling to fund some new techno-expansion scheme of Innis's, or he may have expected Innis to turn more money over to the school district. Of course, some other non-financial problem(s) could have developed, specifically Innis's, ah, obscure bookkeeping which seemed to hide the true numbers of his MCN operation. For the time being Mitch Sprague is running the school's computer business.

THIS MAY BE a little belated, but it's still one more example of why Mendocino County has so much trouble dealing effectively with its budget deficit.

LAST FEBRUARY, the Supes held a little noticed budget workshop (one in a series) which was summarized in their minutes and buried in the even larger piles of minutes generated by the County's demonstrably incompetent leadership.

[FOLLOWING introductions], "Mr. Andersen acknowledged [praised] Department Heads for their input into the budget development process at the December 30, 2003, Executive Management Team retreat [to be addressed separately], and the subsequent January Department Head meeting, reflecting upon the value of the input in developing the materials for today's workshop. Mr. Andersen [irrelevantly] stated that the workshop will include presentations by Administrative Office staff and the Auditor-Controller that will review past objectives and balancing strategies, current fiscal variables, and will describe the estimated magnitude of the County's budgetary challenge. Also noted were issues that may impact the budgetary process. Mr. Andersen and Mr. Huey acknowledged the material loss in discretionary funding, stating that resources are more limited than ever before; the County's current fiscal challenge is the most difficult that has been experienced in the past 17 years."

A SPECIAL WORKSHOP to do this? And on and on and on it went until the Supervisors and their hard-hitting administrators took an early lunch.

"MR. MARTIN [Assistant County Administrator] provided [more irrelevant] introductory remarks, noting that the purpose of the workshop is to seek direction from the Board as it relates to the development of the Proposed Budget for Fiscal Year 2004/2005. Also referenced were staff's meeting facilitation outline and materials referencing issues affecting 2004/2005 Budget Development, projected impacts and implications to programs, revenues, priorities, and functional areas of county government, including anticipated next steps in the budget development process. Related materials containing background information associated with the condition of the State budget and County budget included: 'Budget Balancing Options' and 'Budget Scenarios'; a Comparable County Survey (budget solution actions); and projected impacts on the County such as 'best case, worst case, and anticipated case' scenarios."

WE'VE ARRIVED AT 'WORST CASE SCENARIO.' The rich no longer pay anywhere near their fair share of taxes so state and local governments are bankrupt. And local government is bankrupt because the federal government is bankrupting US on an even grander scale via oil imperialism. Meanwhile, sub-mediocrities like our supervisors and their department heads occupy every public office from school superintendencies to the White House. Looking around Mendocino County we see cowards and idiots at almost all the levers of power. Multiply them by a million and we have the government of the rest of the country. And to know we're citizens of the land that once elected Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, well, name a country that's fallen farther this fast.

I DEFY ANYONE to argue that the participants in the preceding and the following are capable of intelligently leading Mendocino County anywhere but deeper into the mire.

"STAFF PROCEEDED to review with the Board various charts and handouts depicting previously established Board priorities and areas of interest including variables and issues affecting 2004/2005 Budget Development and proposed budget balancing options for Fiscal Year 2004/2005. Board members reflected upon the seriousness of the issues, noting that to take a position on the potential budget balancing options at this time will require further in-depth review to truly understand the impacts and implications of these methodologies."

AT THIS POINT, which was midway in the proceedings, and we've already beaten this particular horse into dog food, one doesn't know whether to laugh and go get permanently drunk or retreat to the hills to stockpile weapons for guerrilla war. "Reflected." I love that one. If these people possessed so much as the rudiments of a reflective capacity, they'd resign their positions on these grounds: "I'm a low down, grasping, vain, stupid son of a bitch, but I'll be goddamed if I'm so low that I'll sit around at public expense and participate in this kind of bullshit." —ms

WHAT'S WRONG with the Green Party? I know most of the active members of the Mendocino Greens. Nice people, most of them. Well meaning, even. But for them to say they're supporting this Cobb character over Nader because they want to build the party at the grassroots level is almost clinical-quality delusional. The local Greens started out with about 20 active members and they still have about 20 active members. Ten years from now they'll still have 20 members. Why? Let me count the ways; there are only two of them: Piety and tedium squared, with the most relentless chronophages allowed to go on and on and on about absolutely nothing. All but the most insensate pwogs flee the mere mention of the Mendocino Greens.

THE LOCAL GREENS very first local priority was to go all out for an advisory initiative aimed at decriminalizing marijuana, and that one said it all. "Get us our dope and we'll have this country straightened out tomorrow. Like, dude, when is tomorrow, anyway?" (Not only are the Greens forever in the hippie bog, they're wimpy to the max.) The Mendo Greens haven't done anything since their all out effort to get loaded and will soon be gone because they've allowed themselves, out of their typically pompous self-delusion, to be persuaded that Fifth Columnist Cobb and Cobb's idiot child of a running mate is somehow a superior presidential ticket to Ralph Nader and Pete Camejo, the very two persons who, all by themselves, made the Greens into a force the Democrats have had to go to the trouble of sabotaging. So, here we are again, with an election choice between "liberal" reactionaries and conservative ones, with the millions of Americans who comprise the country's left (and its only real hope), so far out of the discussion that Kerry and Edwards don't even have to pretend they represent anything but more of the same.

AND NOT TO MENTION the little treacheries of the Mendo Greens in failing to support Green Party supervisor candidate Dave Severn over incumbent Democrat Dr. Colfax, PhD, DUI. And now the party's candidate for Congress is recreational election chick Pam Bogart Elizondo of Stonerville, er Laytonville. The Green Party will remain synonymous with time capsule hippie-ism because it doesn't have the guts for real fights. Ralph and Pete are fighters, and the only possible presidential candidates we have.

ANOTHER LEGAL TRIUMPH for the Mendocino County Counsel. First Peter Klein, Frank Zotter and Co. and the Supervisors give US Cellular the big OK to erect a cell phone tower in Mendocino, then Klein and Supervisors tell US Cellular no deal. US Cellular is suing, but unlike the Point Arena Parrot People that Klein and the Supervisors attempted to bankrupt by keeping them in court until Polly was completely out of crackers, US Cellular has the resources to further bankrupt Mendocino County by suing Mendo to death.

WE WON'T SEE IT, but wouldn't it be nice if incompetents like Peter Klein and Frank Zotter and the Supervisors could be held personally liable for the errant legal decisions they routinely make? This board of supervisors, "advised" by Klein and Zotter, use the courts and public money to take personal revenge against people they don't like. Worse, Klein and Zotter, and their spine-free enablers sitting as Supervisors, are even worse at revenge as they are at law, having finally been out-maneuvered by the Parrot People, out-lawyered by Marc Tosca, and slam-dunked in 45 minutes in the case brought by the AVA against the County.

THE COUNTY'S pursuit of Tosca is particularly sinister. They're obviously hoping Tosca will die before the County is finally compelled to comply with a federal court decision in Tosca's favor.

IF YOU CAME in late, Marc Tosca is the gay Ukiah man raided by Mendocino County's finest on the laughably dubious say-so of a local snitch cum lowlife named James Mallo. Mallo, a fit young man in his early 30's, claimed Tosca, a dying man in his middle 60's, sexually assaulted him. On this preposterous pretext — the word of perhaps the biggest scumbag on the Northcoast, Mr. Mallo — the Mendocino County Sheriff's Department mounted a task force raid on Tosca at his ranch west of Ukiah, holding the AIDS-crippled old man at gun point while members of the task force spent their tax-paid day ransacking Tosca's home, apparently looking for illegal blow jobs. Tosca filed a federal lawsuit alleging that he was jacked up by the police because he's gay, which is exactly what happened. With Tosca, we're talking big league fighter; the guy's already returned once from the dead to continue his battle against Mendocino County's ghoulish legal apparatus, and darned if Tosca didn't win his federal suit, among whose settlement terms was a promise by Mendocino County to pave the road leading to his house. But upon receiving the federal judgment against Mendocino County, Klein and Zotter, like a pair of portly buzzards, began circling the dying man, forcing Tosca into endless negotiations in Mendocino County's notoriously slo-mo (and supine) superior court. And on it goes, but I'm betting on Tosca to outlast these shameless bastards, and here's hoping he does.

OF COURSE you've heard by now that this year's Rainbow Family gathering began with one peace warrior nearly beating another to death with a shovel for driving too fast through the fam's campground.