MENDOCINO CO., 1/15/25 — At the Behavioral Health Regional Training Center in Redwood Valley on Tuesday, the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors held the first day of a two-day workshop to discuss countywide issues, including the code of conduct and ethics during board meetings, general county struggles, economic issues and public safety.
The meeting was open to the public but sparsely attended, with mainly journalists, county employees and a few community members present.
Supervisors from each of Mendocino County’s five districts attended the meeting, which began with public comments from audience members. After public comment, which only included two people, the supervisors quickly moved on to meeting policies and decorum, as well as ways to organize meetings more efficiently in the next year.
Meeting decorum
District 5 Supervisor Ted Williams, who represents coastal towns such as Mendocino and Point Arena, noted that many of his constituents complain that supervisor meetings are poorly run and don’t utilize time effectively.
“Dissent is American, it’s a nation founded on dissent,” Williams said. “I have people coming to me saying this is not how they want the county to be run. They don’t want supervisors who just show up ready to vote, they want supervisors showing up ready to listen to the public and colleagues before forming an opinion on where the county should go.”
Williams emphasized that he would like some bureaucratic hurdles reduced during meetings to make better use of the time spent on agenda items.
“People want practical solutions, they want to see potholes filled, and don’t want to see us talking about decorum,” he added.
Williams noted that supervisors need to consider submitting their questions to staff about agenda items in advance to ensure meetings run more smoothly.
Recently elected District 4 Supervisor Bernie Norvell agreed with some of Williams’ concerns, stating that he has observed the public’s general disapproval of how some of the county’s issues have been addressed by the board and the way meetings are conducted.
“I agree with you on some of those, and I think if you talk to the public there’s not a lot of agreement between what the county thinks it’s doing right versus what the public thinks it’s doing right,” Norvell stated.
Public safety
After a long and extensive morning meeting, the discussion shifted to a public safety panel in the afternoon. The panel was led by Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall, Chief Probation Officer Izen Locatelli, Public Defender Mick Hill and District Attorney David Eyster.
On the safety panel, Kendall began the discussion on the challenges of finding qualified employees to address various public safety issues impacting the county.
“Oftentimes, Sonoma County police are taking people from our area,” Kendall said, describing how other counties can pay more competitive salaries than Mendocino County.
In a similar vein, both the chief probation officer and district attorney echoed these concerns about their departments, saying that retaining competent staff has been extremely difficult in recent years.
“Departments from other counties poach qualified people from our county and bring them to theirs,” Locatelli said, but added that they are reaching out to more universities to look for qualified candidates. “We are reaching out to law schools across Northern California, and we are hoping to acquire a new intern for our office for this summer.”
Due to the passage of Proposition 36 in November’s election, Locatelli is also concerned about the possible increase in drug and theft cases charged in the county. “We are estimating that our caseload will increase,” Locatelli said.
Eyster said hiring young law school graduates in the District Attorney’s Office has become increasingly challenging due to the rising costs of graduate school and the more competitive salaries offered in Sonoma County and other Bay Area counties for public defenders and prosecutors.
“There are large loans for students going to law school, and both Sonoma County and the Bay Area pay more,” Eyster said. “Retention of employees is difficult. We are also getting applicants that are less experienced in criminal law, so we have to train them in that, which can take about six months. We often get ‘loaner’ employees, meaning that we only get them for a short period of time and then they head to other counties.”
Locatelli and Eyster also discussed budget issues and how they have had to let go of certain staff in the past to meet other program needs.
“Your budget absolutely determines your staffing levels,” Locatelli noted. “I have made choices and there are collateral consequences that you don’t know. I chose to fill up my line staff the best I could, with the consequence of eliminating management and supervisors. It has burned out other managers in the department.”
Locatelli added that probation officers in Mendocino County are not being paid adequately in comparison to other counties.
“You can research it all you like, and they are still underpaid, because we are in a weird position. We are not traditional law enforcement, and we are not traditional social workers, and both get paid more in this county,” he said. “I would say that pay alone does not drive people to stay in Mendocino County, it’s quality of life, quality of work and workload distribution. I want my staff to have more pay, but I can’t afford it with the budget I am given. I am still having recruitment issues.”
Homelessness and mental health
Near the end of the afternoon, Kendall, Behavioral Health Director Genine Miller and Senior Program Manager Megan Van Sant led a discussion on homelessness in the county and how behavioral health services are being handled.
All three presenters spoke about various programs in the county, including Heads Up Mendocino, a program that allows law enforcement agencies to alert the county’s Behavioral Health and Social Services departments about individuals struggling with mental health who need social services instead of incarceration.
They also referenced the Care Response Unit team in Fort Bragg that provides outreach to unhoused people on the coast and manages services for individuals who need medical care or housing.
Van Sant noted that despite the success of some of the programs, she knows that the supervisors want a system that tracks data of how successful county programs are in serving unhoused people. Williams described some of the data that the board would like to see.
“Programs that can’t show success, or don’t show anything at all, start cutting. I want every program to have some metrics so that we can portion future funding based on that success,” Williams emphasized.
Van Sant responded by outlining how, for example, the Heads Up program gathers data and metrics on how people are reacting from the programs, but it hasn’t been presented to the public.
“We have a huge database, and it is an Excel spreadsheet, we track that, and we track who the person is and who should be taking care of them. We try to make sure that the person is being sent to the right place,” Van Sant said. “What we do over time, and then we look back and see if that person had gone to a program, to jail, or was housed. That database has become a rich repository of individuals that are not really thriving, and we can backtrack and figure out why they aren’t thriving and figure out how they can best be handled.”
Williams added that while he appreciates that data, he believes behavioral health workers need to be better at explaining the data and presenting it to the public.
“I think this is partially about the county not telling its story,” Williams said. “The public sees people walking around who look like druggies, gathering sticks to start a fire. Unless we tell the public the big picture, and successes, the takeaway from the public is our programs aren’t working.”
Van Sant responded that despite the public’s perception of homelessness in the community, there has been significant progress over the last five years.
“I am aware of the work that has been done. Five years ago, there was a homeless encampment in the middle of Ukiah. There was animosity and everyone was throwing each other under the bus,” Van Sant said. “But we have made progress, and I didn’t think it was going to work, but it’s been shocking at how successful programs like Heads Up have been. The collaboration that we have with the mental health department is unbelievable, and we’ve failed at communicating that progress.”
Van Sant also said that several centers and programs have been added to the community in recent years for homeless populations, many of which the public may not be aware of.
“Well, what can we do to tell this story to the public,” Williams replied.
Kendall answered that both law enforcement and behavioral health workers need to continually speak with the media to present the initiatives they are working on to help both houseless people and those struggling with mental health issues.
“We are going to put our heads together and be able to tell this story in a good fashion,” Kendall said. “But there are portions of this story that people may not like, there is a responsibility that needs to be taken. When you’re collecting sticks and defecating in the public, that’s not OK.”
For Van Sant, she emphasized that despite the recent success of the Heads Up program, which launched in 2022, she didn’t want to inform the public about the service until she knew that it would truly help the community.
“This has been an unfunded program, it’s basically just people showing up to help,” she said. “We wanted to have the freedom to understand what worked and what didn’t work. Some of this stuff won’t work, and we are hoping to fail quickly and fix it quickly. We are trying to figure out what works for each individual and this will not be fixed overnight.”
Luckily, the collaborative effort through the Heads Up program has been successful, and Van Sant said she has seen progress in how caseloads are being managed.
“It’s shocking, our collaboration has worked very well,” she said. “It’s been seamless and it’s surprising how we’ve air traffic controlled this project.”
At the end of the homelessness discussion, which marked the conclusion of the first day of the workshop, Kendall made a closing remark on how the county should measure the successes of these programs.
“As we define success, I want to see a reduction in drug overdoses. We are losing a lot of lives,” he said. “That needs to be one of the measures in our progress.”
The second day of the workshop discussed topics such as transportation, planning and building services, environmental health and human resources. Visit the county’s website to view recordings of the meeting discussions. People can also view the agenda items and meeting notes using the same link.
Thank you for reporting. Supervisor Williams attempted to engage his colleagues in discussion about issues and bringing to light more of what is being done with tax dollars.. seemed to me the workshop was like a BOS meeting.. No real exchange of ideas ..,far from the coast
One more thing…this was not billed as a seminar..though it may have appeared to be. Workshop was how it was billed…
I was the Administrator of what was then known as Mendocino County Alcohol and Other Drug Programs. I’m advocating that the Substance Use Disorder Program and the County jail research the potential to provide the opioid replacement therapy called Sublocade. This medication is administered once a month, which makes it a long lasting, non-intoxicating, and very effective treatment for opiate addiction. There is a continuous abatement of the up and down swing, compared to Suboxone or Methadone, and so the treated individual is far less vulnerable to use. See New York Times article on its use in Maine, January 16.
It would aid public perception of the various agencies involved in mitigating these social problems if their county-funded budgets were publicized more overtly. Maybe more collaboration amongst these multiple organizations could lower their fiscal impact on Mendocino county’s budget.
I guess the elephant in the room stays ignored. Known heavy drug user/distributors are not being addressed.
Please do something to cut off the snake’s head