The following is a column submitted by Mendocino County 3rd District Supervisor John Haschak. The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of the Mendocino Voice.
With beautiful springtime weather in Mendocino County, we can be grateful for the wonderful natural beauty and people in this place we call home.
One of my main issues has been creating safer communities. In the past six years, I have worked closely with Firewise Communities, fire departments, the Sheriff, Cal Fire and county staff to make this a reality. We have opened emergency access routes, secured local funding to maintain some of these routes along with funding for fire departments and the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council, and enhanced communication between the different entities. There are other projects ongoing.
One project that promised to enhance community safety significantly was the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant. Last year, the county received $3.6 million from the BRIC grant through FEMA and matching funds from a Prepare CA match grant. This funding was for the first phase of a multi-phase, $50-million project to create defensible space, reduce hazardous fuels, and retrofit homes with ignition-resistant materials to address wildfire hazards in the Brooktrails/Sherwood Corridor. This initiative was crucial for improving the county’s wildfire preparedness and resilience, especially given that this area is considered one of the highest priorities in the state.
Unfortunately, staff informed me that FEMA released a memo announcing the termination of the BRIC program. As part of this decision, it states that all BRIC applications from Fiscal Years 2020-2023, which would include ours, are being canceled. The memo referred to the program as “yet another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA initiative.” This federal action seems to be taken without consideration for the well-being of our community, and it certainly undermines our efforts to enhance safety.
We had the April 8 Board of Supervisors meeting in Willits at the County Museum. As the museum transitions into a nonprofit entity, the work of the Friends of the Mendocino County Museum becomes increasingly important. Please join, volunteer, and/or offer support if you can.
Issues discussed at the board meeting included the budget and the cannabis cultivation size limits. Due to deadlines, I will have more information about these issues in the next update.
I will be holding Town Hall meetings in Willits on April 14, 3-4:30 p.m. at the Firehouse Training Room and in Laytonville at Harwood Hall on April 15 from 6-7:30 p.m.. It is critical that we are communicating because there are so many concerns out there. I hope to see you at one of these events.
The Talk with the Supervisor will be on April 17, 10 a.m. at Brickhouse Coffee in Willits. Note that this is a change from the second Thursday of the month. As always, you can communicate with me at haschakj@mendocinocounty.gov or 707-972-4214.
FEMA is being investigated for all of the illegal activities that have occurred by them. I think we all knew that this was coming. I think all you have to do is look at North Carolina and what happened to them with FEMA. I think it’s kind of selfish to think that this should have not happen after what they did. We know that there was problems here in Mendocino County during the fires and how they did not act in a lot of areas that they should have been acting in. I’m sorry but as far as I’m concerned if there is corruption going on then it needs to be stopped at the knees and now it is stopped and will be investigated as it should have been a long time ago. Thank you though for keeping the one-sided information to us. As I’ve said before getting pretty sick and tired of only hearing one side of the story.