FORT BRAGG, CA., 10/2/26 — Fort Bragg City Council candidates split sharply Thursday night over the city’s Flock license-plate cameras, but most agreed that any master development agreement for the former Georgia-Pacific mill site should not go to voters before the council acts on it.
Eight candidates are running for three seats in the Nov. 3 election. Seven showed up Thursday evening to take written questions from the audience at the League of Women Voters forum at Town Hall: incumbents Tess Albin-Smith, who is seeking a third term, Marcia Rafanan and Jason Godeke; and challengers former Fort Bragg Police Chief Scott Mayberry, Mary Rose Kaczorowski, former middle school drama teacher Mary Ann Schmidt; and Richard Ulveling. Levi Cooke did not attend.
Flock cameras
The first audience question, submitted in several versions, asked where candidates stood on the city’s automated license-plate readers. Mayberry, who said he has spent 37 years in law enforcement, broke from the field: “I’m going to disagree with everybody on Flock cameras.”
He recalled working for the Petaluma Police Department during the 1993 kidnapping of Polly Klaas, a case in which he said a vehicle report helped investigators. “So I support Flock cameras used the right way,” he said. “If the chief or the police department wants to violate that, then take them away.”
Kaczorowski said the company’s portal lists numerous California agencies in the city’s data-sharing network, and she said Mountain View and El Cerrito have banned the cameras. “Enough is enough with our private information. It’s sacred,” she said.
Schmidt cited the Fourth Amendment and said she is “completely opposed to any extra surveillance in our lives.” Ulveling said the cameras can help solve crimes but questioned where the data goes. “I’m totally against the Flock,” he said.
Rafanan said she trusts the police chief and noted the data is kept for 30 days. Still, she said, “as the city council member, I don’t support it because most of our community does not.”
Albin-Smith said the cameras arrived through a grant under a former chief, without a council vote or city money. She wants the current chief to brief the council before any decision, though she said, “I’m more on the end of taking it out than leaving them in.”
Godeke said he was “a little bit conflicted.” He said he had found little peer-reviewed evidence of the cameras’ benefits beyond the company’s own claims, aside from a limited Berkeley police study on case closures.
The mill site
The mill site, about one-fifth of the city’s land, drew more audience questions than any other topic. Asked whether they would send a binding master development agreement to the ballot before voting to adopt it, Albin-Smith, Rafanan, Godeke, Mayberry and Kaczorowski said no, pointing instead to the city’s public workshops.
“I think the voters aren’t always aware of what’s going on, but I think the people that come to these workshops are the ones that know,” Albin-Smith said. Rafanan said a city ballot would reach only about 7,000 voters inside city limits, leaving out the wider coast.
Godeke said he supports rezoning the site, which he described as “essentially like a big kind of black hole.” He said an agreement is the community’s leverage to win public access and open space in exchange for the value rezoning gives the owner.
Mayberry called planning for the site “a 20-year process” and said he wants it to move faster. Ulveling said, “I want to say yes, but also I want to say no,” and argued the land should be left alone for wildlife. Schmidt said ballot measures can be shaped by corporate money. She proposed a memorial and “truth-telling center” on the site, modeled on the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, which honors victims of lynching.
On cleanup of the site’s toxic pond, Godeke said the state Department of Toxic Substances Control holds the property owner, Skunk Train operator Mendocino Railway, and Georgia-Pacific financially responsible. Albin-Smith suggested the railroad set aside what remediation would cost, with the city seeking grants to go further.
“It’s gonna cost millions. I know the city can’t afford it,” Rafanan said. Mayberry said the cleanup “needed to be a priority twenty years ago,” and Kaczorowski added, “I don’t do horse trading behind doors.”
Immigration and diversity
No candidate raised a hand when asked whether they had ever worked for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Asked about diversity programs and the deportation of legal immigrants, none defended the deportations.
“It’s abhorrent that legal immigrants are being deported,” said Godeke, who teaches art at Fort Bragg Middle School. Rafanan went further: “Undocumented or not, I don’t think anybody should be deported.”
Mayberry said agents who detain U.S. citizens should be fired or arrested because “they’re violating the law.” Kaczorowski, who said she is a first-generation American, said her uncle helped liberate Dachau. Ulveling called for a path to legal status instead of deportation, and Albin-Smith proposed monthly celebrations of the city’s cultures.
Housing
Every candidate supported “community cottages,” accessory dwelling units made by converting garages to code. Godeke said city code already allows them and that most building permits pulled in Fort Bragg over the past decade have been for accessory dwelling units. The city offers free engineered plans for those units, he said.
Albin-Smith said small units help one or two people but not families. “What we need is more apartments,” she said, and she repeated a half-joking council suggestion to replace the Rite Aid building with apartments and a small park. Schmidt said the high school’s lack of a wood shop is a missed chance to teach students to build homes. “Housing is a right,” she said.
Campaign money and closing statements
Asked to name their largest contributors, most candidates said they were paying their own way or taking no money at all. Godeke said he has accepted no contributions and has spent about $150 on door hangers. He does not use social media. “I just find it better to go and talk to people,” he said.
Albin-Smith called her campaign “the me show,” and Rafanan said she paid for her own signs and mailers. Mayberry said he is funding himself and that his wife and a friend run his social media. Kaczorowski said her donors are retired local residents and noted she cannot write for the Mendocino Voice while she is a candidate. Schmidt said she has no contributors but has been endorsed by a North Bay labor group. Ulveling named God as his largest contributor.
In closing, Mayberry credited residents with helping his department break up gang activity during his time as chief. “It was you, the community, that helped me,” he said. Albin-Smith framed her priorities as quality of life, including affordable housing, skilled jobs and a strong local hospital.
Kaczorowski pointed to her policy work, including a 14-page transportation plan she said she brought to the Mendocino Council of Governments and Mendocino Transit Authority, and calls she said she made to Caltrans and the California Coastal Commission when a fence went up along the coast. “I’m at a lot of tables,” she said. “I love this community, I love to work with people.”
Schmidt said, “Hierarchy and progress are the biggest problems that we face” and urged Fort Bragg to become a town that “has committed itself to be in reciprocity with the earth, to grow our own food.” She described a Garden City initiative with small agricultural neighborhoods, or “agrihoods,” where young people build houses and grow food for the community.
Ulveling, who said he was homeless about a decade ago until the Hospitality House program turned his life around, said, “My past doesn’t dictate my future.” Rafanan said she represents working people and pointed to a Grocery Outlet store she said is coming to town.
Godeke credited City Manager Isaac Whippy with the city’s progress on economic development. On housing, he said, “it does come down to some potentially controversial decisions.”
It was a palm print on Polly Klaas’ bed that led law enforcement to the killer. But cOp’s gotta cop, right? JFK, don’t vote for the obvious liar.
There might not have been a killer at all, just a kidnapper had there been license plate reader cameras to track the vehicle. I believe that was Scott Mayberry’s point. License plate reader technology has gotten kids back home when they’ve been kidnapped.
One hopes one debate issue isn’t about whether or not to have public cameras, but whether tools of that kind better enable public services to respond immediately to risks, crime, and disasters are used. They are being used all over the country and in CA-and they are locally controlled fortunately. Rejecting these tools only makes local public service more challenging placing more responsibility on personnel to be in all places at all times. The debate shouldn’t be about whether or not to have public cameras, but whether communities want tools that enable public services to respond immediately to risks, crime, and disasters. Rejecting these tools only makes public service more challenging. To work effectively, technology must be paired with well-designed policies, strict privacy protections, and regular accountability checks. Nationwide, well-managed communities succeed because local citizens and groups monitor publicly funded tools to ensure they serve the public good. Ultimately, it is the people and processes behind the camera—not the technology itself—that make public agencies more effective. Dismissing these tools as “conspiracy” or “police state” tactics is counterproductive. Right now, area citizens have a direct opportunity to shape and control how cameras can be used but if their use is avoided, let’s hope expectations are adjusted. Public service use of technology must be paired with well-designed management policies, functional use procedures that serve as rules of the road, They require privacy protections, and transparent accountability checks that are openly evaluated and reported over time-so adjustments are made. Its the people and processes behind the camera—not the technology itself—that make these tools benefit the public. The public has the power to decide.