Supervisor and school board candidates face voters at Willits forum

WILLITS, CA., 9/26/26 — Buffey Wright Bourassa and Eric Hart, the two candidates for the District 3 seat on the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors, answered questions on the county budget, data centers and private money for sheriff’s enforcement at a candidate forum Sunday, Sept. 20 at Little Lake Grange. John Haschak, who currently holds that seat, is not running.

The forum heard from the four candidates for three seats on the Willits Unified School District board, where two incumbents gave opposite readings of the district’s finances. The two candidates running unopposed for two Willits City Council seats also gave statements.

This account is based on the forum’s video recording, made by Andy Wright and other volunteer producers using Willits Community Television equipment. The recording was posted on Sept. 25 to the Willits Community Television YouTube channel. Willits Community Television staff didn’t attend. The League of Women Voters of Mendocino County, the Mendocino Women’s Political Coalition, the Ukiah branch of the American Association of University Women, Willits Economic LocaLization and Little Lake Grange sponsored the forum.

On the county budget, Hart said he would first look for spending that could be made more efficient and for revenue the county isn’t collecting, such as unpaid property taxes and grants it hasn’t sought. If the county was still in the red after that, he said, the choices between cuts and new revenue should go before the public.

Bourassa, a program manager for the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office, said she would lean on the state audit of the county’s finances. She said it found structural imbalances, declining reserves, late financial reporting and weak purchasing and contracting controls. She said she would stop using one-time money for ongoing costs, protect the emergency reserve and require a public dashboard tracking the county’s corrective actions, with deadlines and the departments responsible.

Bourassa said she supports the county’s temporary pause on data centers and isn’t automatically opposed to them, but wants “a clear benefit for Mendocino County,” which she said she hasn’t seen. Hart said he supports the ban “until we decide whether this is something that our county wants.” If data centers can’t operate without harming the county’s water, power and community, he said, the ban should be permanent.

The moderator asked what oversight the board should have when private organizations fund county law enforcement. Hart said grants the sheriff applies for on the county’s behalf should go through the board. Where the money comes from, whether donors ask for anything in return and what the money buys should all be published, he said. “We’re seeing money that is going out and no enforcement, no arrests, and that is concerning.”

Bourassa said the board has to hold departments to what their grants require, or the county will have to pay the money back. She cited a grant of about $4 million the county received to go after illegal grows.

An audience member asked about the supervisors’ approval of a building permit for a gas station along U.S. Highway 101 in Redwood Valley. The questioner said the Planning Commission and residents opposed the station: “Would you support the locals or the money?”

Bourassa said the question was whether the county followed its own land-use policies. She said she had heard from residents on both sides, noting a casino with a gas station down the road. “I wouldn’t strictly go against it because of the community,” she said.

Hart said the county must stay within the law and can’t pick which business owners open in the county. It can decide, he said, that an area has enough gas stations, or cap how many are allowed in one area.

Asked for the largest budget they had managed, Hart said the departments he oversaw at AT&T had budgets of $40 million to $50 million a year. Bourassa said her largest were the Sherwood Valley Rancheria’s budgets, including its smoke shop, casino and federal grants. She served three terms on the tribal council. She said she couldn’t share the tribe’s figures because they’re confidential.

School board

Four candidates are running for three seats on the Willits Unified board: incumbents Jeanne King and Paula Nunez, Mason Neil Rescina and Nicole Karkar.

King said the district’s reserve has fallen below 3% of its budget. Four years ago, she said, a board majority “voted in favor of a raise for staff that the school district said it could not afford.” King, first elected in 2018, said the reserve was 13% when she joined the board. She said she wasn’t part of the majority that approved the raise.

Nunez answered next. “I don’t believe that finances are our worst problem,” she said. The bigger problem, she said, is attracting and keeping qualified teachers. She said about 30% of the district’s teachers this year either aren’t fully credentialed or are teaching outside their credential.

Rescina, a Willits High School graduate who works as a substitute special education instructional assistant in the district, said the state requires the district to hold a 3% reserve. He said he believed it was at about 2.45%. Without a plan to rebuild it, he said, “the state will come in and do a takeover.” He said the district’s PG&E bill topped $60,000 in one month, and that turning off heating, air conditioning and hallway lights when they aren’t needed would help.

Karkar, running for office for the first time, named the budget and teacher turnover as the district’s biggest problems. “I think we’re losing more teachers than we’re keeping,” she said.

Asked whether they would put another school construction bond before voters, Rescina said the district’s 2020 bond costs property owners 4 cents per $100 of assessed value, or $180 a year on a $450,000 home. He said he wouldn’t vote for a new bond in his first term. Karkar said the district should fix its budget first and look for grant money before asking for a bond. King said the current bond money is going to repairs, not new construction. The high school dates to the 1930s, she said, and the newest campus, Blosser Lane, is more than 30 years old.

All four said they support Proposition 3, a statewide measure on the November ballot that would make permanent an existing income tax on high earners to fund schools and health care. An audience member’s written question said Willits Unified would lose more than $3.6 million a year if it fails.

City Council

Robin Leler and Sherrie Ebyam are the only candidates for two seats on the Willits City Council. Neither incumbent whose seat is up, Bruce Burton or Larry Stranske, filed to run. Leler and Ebyam gave statements and took no questions.

Leler, a retired teacher who said she taught in Willits schools for more than 30 years, said she’s on the executive committee of the Sierra Club. She said many people outside the city limits are “affected by the City Council’s projects and decisions,” but “can’t vote because they don’t live in the city.” She said she wants to speak for them.

Ebyam, a former math teacher who became a school district finance director, said staffing and benefits make up about 80% of the city’s general fund costs, and that she wants to know what has driven the city’s deficit spending. She summed up her approach in three words: “budget, budget, budget.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story attributed a remark about the Willits Unified School District’s PG&E bill to incumbent Paula Nunez. Challenger Mason Rescina made that remark. The story has been corrected.