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County Notes (January 13, 2021)

NEWLY SEATED SUPERVISOR MAUREEN MULHEREN boldly pulled Item 4k from the consent calendar on Tuesday, saying that she wanted to see some alternatives to extending Dr. Noemi Doohan’s contract for a year at $125 per hour, $100k per year. Her freshly seated colleague, Glenn McGourty, agreed the item should be pulled. 

SUPERVISOR TED WILLIAMS immediately disagreed, saying that “continuity” was important and he supported the extension of the unimpressive Dr. Doohan's contract. Supervisor Haschak agreed, saying he would support whatever Dr. Coren and CEO Angelo wanted in response to the pandemic, a statement rather breathtaking in its write-your-own check assumption.

CEO ANGELO thought that Dr. Doohan brought a “scientific” approach to the County’s covid response, and that if it was up to the CEO we'd have three Public Health Officers because the pandemic has not subsided and now the vaccine rollout is underway and there’s a surge and all. Angelo added that Dr. Doohan was actually a bargain since, according to the CEO, Dr. Doohan is providing at least twice the hours that she’s contracted for at no extra cost. 

SUPERVISOR MULHEREN repeated that she preferred local doctors to out-of-county consultants. But when the vote came Mulheren was the only no vote and we’ll now have whatever benefits a San Diego doctor can offer for at least another year.

(The County's “rollout” got off to a farcical start with the Adventist's indefensible failure to properly protect the batch of covid vaccine entrusted to it.)

THERE WAS an extensive discussion of the vaccine's Mendo debut centered on the failure of a freezer holding the vaccines having failed, the failure not noticed for some 9 hours or so, causing a scramble to get as many of the doses into as many arms as possible before the two hours of the vaccine's remaning effectiveness ran out on the approximately 850 vaccines that were at risk. 

ALL IN ALL, the hurry-up vaccinations got into some 830 arms, many of those arms not appended to priority people. Dr. Coren said the main limitation for Mendo at this point is not delivery into arms, but receipt of adequate quantities to cover each vaccination phase, the public being Phase Z or something. Plans are underway to add vaccination progress to the data dashboard, to bring staffing up for the three primary vaccination agencies (Public Health, Adventist Health and two federally contracted pharmacy chains for nursing homes) to coordinate somehow with the arrival of additional vaccine doses.

SHERIFF KENDALL provided an unusually long and detailed summary of the covid outbreak at the jail, saying his staff has had to deal with a whole new layer of unanticipated status and tracking and isolation, but unable to reduce the total number of inmates much because of the people held for a recent spate of serious crimes. Each inmate has to be covid-assessed and categorized and those who are released have to be evaluated and isolated outside as necessary. Complicating matters further are some inmates who refuse to be tested, meaning they have to be pre-emptively isolated as a precaution.


HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM MEASURE B!

Dear Measure B Stakeholders;

Happy New Year!

Measure B is off to a strong start in 2021 with three approved Services and two Facilities well underway.

Newly approved Services include Community Education, Mobile Crisis Response, and Crisis Aftercare.

The CRT or Crisis Residential Treatment Facility is scheduled for construction beginning in March, and the Behavioral Health Regional Training Center will likely complete remodeling in early spring.

Monthly updates will continue to be delivered publicly at Citizen Oversight Committee/Measure B meetings regarding these and any future Measure B projects. I have attached the 2021 meeting calendar for your reference.

Thank you for your dedication,

Alyson Bailey

Administrative Project Manager: Measure B

Special Programs - Behavioral Health and Human Services

Cell: (707) 510-6637

Text me if you need my immediate attention.


A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO (pre-holiday) we asked Measure B Project Manager Alyson Bailey:

Dear Ms. Bailey.

According to the minutes of July 2020 Measure B committee meeting, the Committee ordered that the Mobile Crisis Team that was funded by Measure B money would be evaluated in six months.

’Committee Action: Upon motion by Ms. S. Riley, seconded by Mr. T. Allman, IT IS ORDERED that the Mental Health Treatment Act Citizens Oversight Committee recommends to the Board of Supervisors that they support the development of a Mobile Crisis Team in partnership with local law enforcement to be reviewed in six months and allocate Three Hundred Forty Thousand Dollars ($340,000) per year for 4 years to fund three Mental Health Rehabilitation Specialist for the Mobile Crisis Team program.’

Six months later would be January 2021.

Can you confirm that such an item will be on the January Measure B committee meeting agenda, who will make the presentation, and whether the presentation will include:

1) a report of how much of the authorized $340k Measure B money has been spent on this item so far?

2) how many of the three funded crisis teams are in service?

Thank you.

On Monday, Ms. Bailey Replied:

Hello, Mr. Scaramella.

I have forwarded your request to Behavioral Health and the Sheriff's Office for review. I will continue to provide monthly updates regarding Measure B to the Board of Supervisors and Citizens Oversight Committee.

Thank you for your inquiry,

Alyson Bailey 

Administrative Project Manager: Measure B

Special Programs - Behavioral Health and Human Services


WE HOPE we were not the only viewers who noticed when last Tuesday’s Closed Session Agenda Item 9c, CEO Angelo’s cozy proposal to buy Richard Selzer’s Realty Offices next door to the Schraeders operation on Orchard Street, was postponed without action being taken according to a brief report out of closed session by County Counsel Christian Curtis. Readers may recall that CEO Angelo had hoped to reward her Ukiah realtor friend Richard Selzer with a “market rate” buyout of Selzer’s office complex at 551 South Orchard Ave. in Ukiah near the newly purchased Best Western motel, now being converted into a glorified 50-or so unit homeless shelter. Selzer didn’t like the idea of having an office building next to the people to be housed next door in the old Best Western Motel who are not potential clients (aka “homeless”). Angelo saw an opportunity to both mollify Seltzer while spending some of those millions of homeless/emergency dollars that Newsom and McGuire are forcing on Mendo (and lots of other places) to hurriedly convert Selzer’s building to more homeless housing and/or office space. (Nobody has announced their actual intentions for the building so far. One would hope that at least the plans and costs would be reviewed in public before the purchase, but it looks like the CEO is using the “property negotiations” Brown Act closed session ploy to keep the plans secret until after it’s all wrapped up.) We’d like to think that the new Board at least wanted to find out more about the cozy transaction before rubberstamping it. We’ll see if it re-apppears on a future agenda.

SPEAKING OF ORCHARD AVENUE BOONDOGGLES, what happened to the public meeting that was supposed to have been scheduled to consider “mitigations” and address community concerns surrounding the recent purchase of the former Best Western Motel cum homeless shelter operation, such as security, operational funding, staffing, police coverage and management of the facility and its residents? According to CEO Angelo’s CEO report of November 17, “Mendocino County HHSA will host another virtual community meeting in December to further discuss the project and gather additional community input.” As usual, that didn’t happen and nobody followed up. So far, the County has plans to install small kitchenettes in each room on an “emergency” basis, even though this was one of many known remodeling requirements back in October when the $12 million (and counting) “homekey” project was approved before any planning was done.


SPEAKING OF ORCHARD AVENUE BOONDOGGLES, what happened to the public meeting that was supposed to have been scheduled to consider “mitigations” and address community concerns surrounding the recent purchase of the former Best Western Motel cum homeless shelter operation, such as security, operational funding, staffing, police coverage and management of the facility and its residents? According to CEO Angelo’s CEO report of November 17, “Mendocino County HHSA will host another virtual community meeting in December to further discuss the project and gather additional community input.” As usual, that didn’t happen and nobody followed up. So far, the County has plans to install small kitchenettes in each room on an “emergency” basis, even though this was one of many known remodeling requirements back in October when the $12 million (and counting) “homekey” project was approved before any planning was done.

MENDO MANGLES MORE THAN METAPHORS

The next Supervisors meeting is not until January 25, three weeks after their first meeting of the year, a clear indication that the county apparatus doesn't feel the same urgency and general anxiety felt by their constituents. They seem to agree with their two Health Officers that because of the few vaccines haphazardly injected into the arms of whoever was nearby after the freezer failure, that they could “see the window at the end of the tunnel,” as Health Officer Andy Coren coined his own version of a cliched metaphor.

Dr. Coren's garbled attempt at optimism represents an abrupt about-face from his doomsday warning at the prior meeting that the expanding virus and post-holiday surges will lead to a “mass casualty” in the coming weeks as health care is overwhelmed by rising cases and patients coming up from counties to our south. Maybe that’s why the Supes don’t think there’s much for them to do these days — they might be dead before their next meeting.

But there's plenty to do, at least one would think. Several ad-hoc committees which were supposed to deal with unresolved issues were put off at the last Board meeting of 2020 and nobody seems interested in revisiting any of them, even though the three carry-over Supervisors acknowledged that they should be re-formed after the new Supervisors were sworn in.

CEO Angelo has proven that she’s a master at using emergencies as a way to avoid doing what the Board has asked her to do. Fortunately for the CEO, she controls the Board’s agenda, the list of Board directives, the kinds of questions the Board is allowed to ask, whether she will answer them, when they can be put off to, if ever, etc. Or, as she did with Supervisor McCowen, simply cease communicating with him.

MATTERS ON HOLD:

The Board was promised a business plan for Measure B.

The CEO promised a December public meeting to discuss the public’s concerns about the Best Western Motel conversion into a homeless shelter.

The Board was promised a response to the Fort Bragg City Council’s request last spring for meaningful mental health services reporting.

The Board was told that a list was being developed on how to spend the $21 million PG&E settlement money.

Supervisor Williams said that he would revisit the Measure V (declaring standing poisoned dead trees to be a nuisance) enforcement order they gave to code enforcment now that there are two new Supervisors on board.

CEO Angelo promised budget updates every two months (she had been asked for monthly, but…), instead we’re still getting incomplete quarterly reports which don’t provide an overall budget picture, nor an indication of how much of the covid response will really be reimburseable by state and federal authorities with all their strings attached.

There was an ad-hoc committee to determine if the cannabis tax revenues have been distributed according to the “advisory measure” (Measure AJ) which was passed by voters back in 2016 when the County said their (now failed) pot permit program should be preferred to the pot industry’s measure (which lost).

In December the Board disbanded the ad hoc committee that was supposed to address how items are put on their own agenda. That ad hoc committee was abandoned in favor of discussing it along with the annual January discussion of the Board’s “Rules of Procedure.” But the placement of agenda items never came up and CEO Angelo remains firmly in control of the Board’s agenda for at least another year.

There are numermous other unaddressed matters as well, but those are a few of the main ones.

On Tuesday, Supervisor Mulheren was promised that the County’s covid dashboard stats would include vaccination status and that a registration system for the public to sign up for vaccination would be up and running in a couple of weeks or so. They even approved the second health officer who’s putting in, the CEO says, 30 hours a week, supposedly to handle all the extra “work” of covid response plus vaccination rollout.

On top of that we have the Sheriff’s latest request for up to ten more deputies to deal with a marijuana-related crime wave in the North County. The Board casually fobbed that one off on Supervisors Haschak and Williams to work on an upgraded presentation — someday way off in the future maybe — of crime stats which might help justify the Sheriff’s straightforward request. But given their track record of ad hoccing ad nauseum, that one won’t go anywhere either — the state's not going to magically hand over more law enforcement money based on a few more dubious charts and graphs.

Obviously, there’s a serious crime problem in the north County and there’s no need for fancier charts and graphs before going to the state to ask for more money when Mendo has over $21 million of unallocated PG&E settlement money. Why not just tell the Sheriff that he can have any of that money he wants as soon as he hires and puts into place the first three deputies he says he needs? At last Tuesday’s discussion the Sheriff said he had trouble recruiting patrol deputies because, for example, the Ukiah Police Department pays more than he does and nobody wants to work in Covelo. The Supes could say to the Sheriff, Bring us the names of three new deputies and where he plans to house them and we’ll cover it. And then track the crime stats as they develop.

But none of this is going to happen because in Mendo nobody tracks what (little) the Board wants done, much less what the public wants done, and nobody is held accountable for anything, nobody imposes deadlines on anything, and the Supervisors are obviously content to let it stay that way.

PS. As far as we can tell, nobody’s going to follow up on the funded and approved mobile crisis van either. When we asked Measure B Project Manager Alyson Bailey last month whether there’d even be an agenda item to discuss it at their January Measure B oversight committee meeting — according to their own six month review schedule — instead of saying there would be an item as the Committee asked for, she wouldn’t even promise to have the item on the agenda, instead shuffling even the agenda question off to mental health and the Sheriff.

PPS. Dr. Coren said Friday afternoon during the on-line covid update that CVS and Walgreen’s pharmacy stores are not doing the nursing homes as previously assumed. Instead those two pharmacy chains have federal contracts and are responsible for vaccinating nursing home residents on their own and he has no idea when or how or who will deliver them or get them. County public health, however, is responsible for vaccinating staff in nursing homes and apparently some of that has been done, but no numbers are forthcoming. HHSA manager Becky Emery said the County has recived 975 Pfizer on the 17th of December (?) and 400 Moderna vaccines “shortly thereafter.” All of them have been injected, mostly to first responders. 100 more Moderna were used in clinics this week. 975 more Phizer came in this week and are being distributed. 1000 more Moderna first doses and 400 second doses. They don’t know what the state’s projections or deliveries will be but, Emery said, ‘it is ramping up and will continue to increase.” When asked about school reopenings in 2021, Dr. Coren said he “hoped” they could open in person this year. But it depends on the pace of testing and vaccinations. Supposedly schools are a priority — but there are lots of priorities and not much capacity so far. 


PPS. Dr. Coren said Friday afternoon during the on-line covid update that CVS and Walgreen’s pharmacy stores are not doing the nursing homes as previously assumed. Instead those two pharmacy chains have federal contracts and are responsible for vaccinating nursing home residents on their own and he has no idea when or how or who will deliver them or get them. County public health, however, is responsible for vaccinating staff in nursing homes and apparently some of that has been done, but no numbers are forthcoming. HHSA manager Becky Emery said the County has recived 975 Pfizer on the 17th of December (?) and 400 Moderna vaccines “shortly thereafter.” All of them have been injected, mostly to first responders. 100 more Moderna were used in clinics this week. 975 more Phizer came in this week and are being distributed. 1000 more Moderna first doses and 400 second doses. They don’t know what the state’s projections or deliveries will be but, Emery said, ‘it is ramping up and will continue to increase.” When asked about school reopenings in 2021, Dr. Coren said he “hoped” they could open in person this year. But it depends on the pace of testing and vaccinations. Supposedly schools are a priority — but there are lots of priorities and not much capacity so far. 

MENDOCINO COUNTY PUBLIC HEALTH OFFICER #1, Dr. Andrew Coren, says Mendocino County’s “goal” is to ramp up to 900 vaccinations a week at some point. Use of the word “goal” leaves lots of wiggle room as to when that will start and how fast it will ramp up. But that works out mathematically to about two years to vaccinate 90,000 Mendolanders. But of course lots of Mendolanders will refuse to be vaccinated and we don’t know if chidren will be vaccinated. Either way we’re talking at least a year before a majority of Mendolanders will be vaccinated — discounting whatever glitches and hiccups may pop up along the way. 

One Comment

  1. Noel Manners January 13, 2021

    Circa 1965, my elementary school In Sacramento vaccinated 600 kids for Rubella (German Measles) in a single day. Sounds as if the vaccine delivery is rapidly ramping up. Why can’t we set up vaccination stations throughout the county, say 3 in Ukiah, 2 each in Willits and Ft Bragg, 1 each in Laytonville, Covelo, Boonville, Redwood Valley, Leggett? There are staffed Hospitals or clinics in all of those places.

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