The City of Fort Bragg convened at Town Hall for a full day budget workshop bright and early last Wednesday morning. They had coffee but only a modest bowl of grapes to go with it. Since it was a budget meeting they made it lean and mean: no donuts. Long tables had been arranged into […]
Fort Bragg City Manager Linda Ruffing’s prepackaged ready to believe biweekly spin sheet just arrived in my email box. Linda writes her “City Notes” to let folks know what is going on in Fort Bragg City Government. It comes out every two weeks. Of course the Advocate prints it without comment. Linda provides this epitome […]
It started out as a grouch, a gesture of mild derision directed at an apparently uninterested city council looking the other way as big ugly box store barreled down on a sleepy city. Monday night I again chucked my resolution not to speak during public comments, not because of some surprise indignation. No. This time I […]
We have had quite a few impressive fires over the years in metropolitan Fort Bragg. It’s all of these little wooden buildings cheek and jowl. Famously, in 1987, in one grand night of arson-for-profit and revenge, the library, the adjacent Ten Mile Justice Court and the Piedmont Hotel went up in flames. Later the Oak […]
The much touted openness and transparency in Fort Bragg’s city government that has come out of the last few years of political wrath, general indignation and community opposition, is opened maybe a crack. The City Council and all the committee meetings are online, which we wanted, but somehow it is not a great help to […]
I went the Harbor Commission meeting last week like a prisoner to his execution. Well, maybe it was not that bad, but it was grim. To briefly recap. On February 13 the noble San Juan, my ship and my home on the Noyo River, a 200-ton 80-footer known to everybody in our small town, was […]
I drove up Highway One Monday afternoon to the old Fort Bragg Grange building in Inglenook to meet the local resistance. The Grangers, officially The National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, were in emergency conference to talk strategy in the building they had taken back basically by force. They did not let […]
I attended the open air walk and discussion out on the Georgia Pacific Mill site to hear Fort Bragg’s Development Director Marie Jones discourse on the project of “daylighting” the creeks. It was a brisk California foggy day, with a light wind and light rain falling. The land out there is tumbled from its industrial […]
The City Manager, in just over one month, has launched a focused assault on the long formulated and widely discussed community vision for the development of the Fort Bragg mill site. At the last city council meeting, the city received the stunning revelation that a contract had already been signed, and that money was in […]
The Georgia Pacific mill site is once again in play. 320 acres of the most beautiful coastal acreage in California or actually in the world has once again merited the attention of City Hall. In a new plan put forward by the city manager after secret consultations with the Coastal Commission and the State Department […]
I spent the morning talking to Fort Bragg’s development director, Marie Jones. She expressed a quiet dismay and gentle sympathy over the fate of my ship, which is after all a local landmark as well as my former home. We talked about her concerns with the accuracy of my articles; she made some good points. I tried to […]