UKIAH, CA., 7/8/26 — Nobody has publicly proposed building a data center in Mendocino County. On Tuesday the Board of Supervisors decided to investigate a pause on that possibility just in case.
Supervisors voted unanimously to have staff draft an urgency ordinance that would pause the processing and approval of new data centers. The pause would give the county time to study what the server farms would do to water, power, noise and neighbors. The same motion created a two-member “data center ad hoc” made up of the item’s sponsors, Supervisors John Haschak and Ted Williams. The committee will work with staff on research from other counties and cities, plus do the analysis Chair Bernie Norvell asked for: “fiscal impacts, both positive and negative.”
The moratorium itself is not law yet. When the ordinance comes back, adopting it will take a four-fifths vote under the state code section that governs urgency zoning measures. The initial term would be 45 days, extendable after public hearings to a hard ceiling of two years. The county has pulled that lever before — on cannabis permitting, hemp, GMOs and short-term rentals.
Haschak told the board the county’s zoning rules leave it little room to say no. “We don’t really have the capacity right now to have discretion in the permitting of some of these data centers if they were to come into Mendocino County,” he said. The moratorium, he added, “provides us a tool to really explore what the issues are and come up with an ordinance that would be appropriate for what the people in Mendocino County want.”
Williams was careful to say he isn’t against computing — some data centers power work he supports, like early cancer detection. “Water is a shared resource,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to see our limited water go to cool GPUs in the data center. There’s a better way to do that, or a better place to put it.”
Public comment ran hot in both directions. Helen Sizemore of Ukiah urged the board to act, saying data center backers “want to go to the fairgrounds, where the people running the fairgrounds need money.” Supervisor Maureen Mulheren and planning staff offered a correction: the county has no land-use authority over the state-owned fairgrounds. A county moratorium wouldn’t touch it.
Matthew Delbar called the item “a virtue signal that could cost this broke county more than it could ever help” and told supervisors to welcome new industry instead. Janet Rosen of south Ukiah described big data centers as “resource extraction” by “a billionaire class.”
Planning and Building Services Director Julia Krog told the board her staff started researching data centers before any supervisor called about the item — and that the work will continue without her. Krog announced earlier in the meeting that she is leaving for a job with Marin County after 12 1/2 years here. Her last day is July 17. Chief Building Official Richard Angley will run the department in the interim.
Mendocino is early to this one. Data center fights have produced moratoriums or bans this year in Monterey Park, Oakley, Coachella and a string of other California cities. Imperial County became the first California county to adopt one in June. On the dais, the naming of the new committee drew a laugh line — “the grift prevention ad hoc” — before the board settled on the data center ad hoc.
Redwood Valley water annexation clears its county hurdle
The board also voted unanimously — with no public comment at all — to approve a zero tax-sharing agreement with the Russian River Flood Control and Water Conservation Improvement District. The agreement was the last piece the water district needed from the county before its annexation of the Redwood Valley service area goes to the Local Agency Formation Commission.
The district wants to fold in the 9,610 acres of the Redwood Valley County Water District service area that sit outside its boundary, per its LAFCo application. “Zero tax sharing” means exactly that: if the annexation goes through, existing property tax shares don’t move. No money changes hands.
The annexation is narrower than it sounds. Redwood Valley’s water district keeps its board, its operations and its debt. Nobody is dissolving or consolidating anything. What changes is the map: Redwood Valley could then use the flood control water it already contracts for anywhere in its service area, instead of just the 200-odd southern acres that fall inside the current boundary. The flood control district holds the only water right in Mendocino County that allows use of water stored in Lake Mendocino — nearly 8,000 acre-feet a year. Redwood Valley would join Millview, Willow and Calpella county water districts, two mutual water companies and Hopland’s utility district on the list of customers inside the line.
The district’s presentation was blunt about what the annexation won’t do: it adds no new water, and it does not fix the problems behind the moratoriums on new Redwood Valley hookups.
Flood control’s General Manager Elizabeth Salomone told supervisors the district’s own board passed its version of the resolution Monday night. LAFCo’s public hearing on the annexation is tentatively set for Sept. 14.
Social Services fare better than expected
DeNeese Parker, the county’s Social Services director, gave the board her read on the final state budget: better than the version the governor proposed in May.
The budget sends $196.9 million to counties for Medi-Cal eligibility work — the staff who process applications and decide who qualifies for the health coverage. Parker said she does not yet know Mendocino County’s share.
The May version would have shifted more of the cost of two programs onto counties: In-Home Supportive Services, which pays caregivers so elderly and disabled residents can stay in their homes, and Adult Protective Services, which investigates abuse and neglect of vulnerable adults. The final budget dropped both ideas.
Counties also dodged a new cost on CalFresh, the food assistance program. Federal money pays the benefits, but running the program — the workers who take applications and manage cases — costs Mendocino County about $1.4 million a year, with Washington paying half. A new federal law cuts Washington’s share to a quarter on Oct. 1, which would have added $684,000 to the county’s bill. The state budget picks up that increase through fiscal year 2028-29.
The bad news is In-Home Supportive Services. The county pays its share of the program from realignment money — a slice of state sales tax that counties have received since 1991 to run health and social services programs, including public health and behavioral health. A state formula pushes the county’s IHSS payment up every year. The sales tax only grows when the economy does. If that revenue stays flat, Parker said, the IHSS payment could swallow nearly the whole realignment stream by about fiscal year 2031-32, crowding out every other program that shares the pot.
The road report that set up the tax vote
Before breaking for closed session, the board sat through the pavement report that tees up the biggest decision still on Tuesday’s agenda: whether to put a 1% sales tax for roads in the unincorporated county on the November ballot.
The Mendocino Council of Governments presentation, delivered with Transportation Director Howard Dashiell fielding most of the board’s questions, put hard numbers on the county’s roads: an average pavement condition index of 47 on the 100-point scale, and a $575 million repair need per the statewide assessment. At the current budget — about $5.5 million a year, riding largely on SB 1 gas tax money — working through that backlog would take more than a century. Doubling it with sales tax money cuts that to 50-some years and would push the county’s average pavement condition score to 64. Seven years into the county’s 20-year plan, 107 miles are done.
Dashiell’s crews average about 25 miles of road per worker, and on the worst roads — “pothole on top of pothole on top of pothole” after a storm — they patch too fast to patch well. That was Ted Williams’ opening complaint: county pothole repairs ride like “a go-kart off-road derby course,” and if voters are being asked for more money, the county needs a story about better work, not just more of it. Williams put up his own chart — county road spending per resident, adjusted for inflation, falling since 1955 while public safety costs climb. “You could have volunteer supervisors, not have a CEO. You could trim everything and it wouldn’t make a difference,” he said.
Maureen Mulheren pressed the equity question that will shadow the campaign: five of the first seven years of the 20-year plan went to the 5th District’s roads. Dashiell’s answer — the 5th District has 40% of the county’s road miles, and coastal roads double as detours when flooding closes the state highways — came with a concession that a tax-funded plan would work differently, treating all the roads in an area at once instead of cherry-picking.
Mendocino is the outlier among its neighbors: Sonoma, Marin and Humboldt counties all have dedicated road sales taxes, as do the cities of Fort Bragg, Willits and Ukiah. The unincorporated county has none. The board accepted the presentation unanimously, with Norvell repeatedly fencing off the tax-measure debate for the ordinance itself.
That debate will have to wait. The board went into closed session without reaching the tax ordinance or the resolution that would put the measure on the November ballot, and took no final action. Both return at a future meeting, and the ballot clock is running: the resolution targets the Nov. 3 consolidated general election.
The closed session itself carried as much weight as anything on the open agenda: appointments of a county counsel and a chief executive officer, an anticipated-litigation conference and negotiations covering SEIU Local 1021 and eight other bargaining units.
No takers for Ukiah annexation analysis
Assistant CEO Sarah Pierce said the executive office is still hunting for a consultant to run the cost-benefit analysis of Ukiah’s proposed annexation of county land. Of the vendors she has reached, only one has answered — and it flagged a possible conflict of interest in one consultant serving both the city and the county, suggesting each hire its own. Williams pushed back on the conflict framing; Pierce said she has calls out to about seven more firms and will bring the item back July 21.
The board announced no action out of closed session Tuesday. Antle’s own introduction earlier in the day — “Darcie Antle, CEO for a few more days” — did the talking.
The morning opened with county workers at the podium. Patrick Hickey, a field representative for Service Employees International Union Local 1021, asked the board to “support your staff so they can support our community.” Robert Maddock of Teamsters Local 856 said the county’s deputy district attorneys and public defenders can come out of law school with as much as $300,000 in student loan debt. And Nick Worf, a communications technician seven months shy of 20 years with the county, told supervisors about a tourism display in the administration center’s back hallway that reads “always beautiful, always diverse, always affordable.”
“Every time I walk by it and I see that last line, I laugh,” he said.
Matthew Delbar is an idiot. We already struggle with water issues here, Lake Pilsbury is almost certainly going away and this FOOL thinks that a data center here would benefit the county because “more jobs!”. It’s insane how stupid people are.