KZYX News

In May, we provided you with an overview of Local Coastal Plans and the over 3 million in Coastal Commission grants awarded to Point Arena, Fort Bragg and the County to study the impacts of Sea Level Rise in the coastal zone. Point Arena received their grant funding of 100,000 dollars in August of 2022 to study the Arena Cove. Last week at a Grass Roots Institute meeting, Louis White, an engineer hired by the city presented the findings of their vulnerability assessment.White explained the goals of the draft study detailed sea level rise expectations from Ocean Pacific Council and State of California and showed where flooding and other damage is expected to occur.Mendocino County received over 2 million in grants in April of 2023. They are still in the planning process but have issued requests for proposals for visual and archeological impacts, Highway 1 traffic impacts and groundwater impacts. The deadline for the proposals is late October. The City of Fort Bragg which received $900,000 in grants released a communication engagement plan with the Noyo Harbor District which can be accessed at www.NoyoOceanCollective.org. The Grass Roots Institute is also seeking volunteers to adopt a portion of the coast to monitor and document changes. For more information contact Peter McNamee through their website.

September 21, 2023 — Last year the fall season came with the unexpected combination of three respiratory illnesses, RSV, influenza and COVID 19. This year Mendocino county has seen an increase in reports of COVID infections and a new variant. KXYZ asked the Mendocino county public health officer Dr. Andy Coren, about the COVID virus and what they are expecting this year.

Sonoma Clean Power (SCP) is the default public power provider for most of Mendocino County. They deliver power and bill customers through PG&E. They also provide multiple rebate programs to residents who switch to energy efficient appliances or electric vehicles. They are currently seeking seven citizens to serve on a Community Advisory Committee for a four-year term starting in 2024. The application deadline is October 2nd and appointments will be made at the November 2nd SCP Board Meeting. Claudia Sisomphou, Communications and Engagement Manager at SCP explains the committee’s role and why it’s important for Mendocino residents to get involved. The committee meets once per month in Santa Rosa. If you are interest in representing Mendocino, you can find an application for the Community Advisory Committee at sonomacleanpower.org. You can request future agendas in advance or review past meeting minutes and agendas on their website.

Over one hundred residents packed the Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday to support outdoor dining and the retention of the tents that many restaurants and bars constructed to provide social distancing during the pandemic. The tents were allowed due to the state’s public health emergency status. Now that the state’s emergency has expired there has been an effort to pressure the restaurants to remove the tents. Supervisor Williams asked the board to extend the tents use for one year to consider both the lack of a reliable water source and the historic aspect of the village of Mendocino.Multiple restaurants stood up and spoke about the impacts of the pandemic on their business and the effort required to stay open and keep people employed. As well as their efforts to save water. Still, the support was not unanimous. Several residents also spoke about dry wells and the specter of wildfire as reasons for being conservative with the water table. The Board of Supervisors granted the one-year extension. But the real work is yet to be done. Water is a shared resource and that includes both human use and the natural environment. It will be up to local government and the community to ensure that they can have both outdoor dining tables and a healthy water table.

September 11, 2023 -- How much will Fort Bragg’s innovative Care Response Unit save the county’s general fund? Supervisors Ted Williams and Dan Gjerde brought Fort Bragg Police Chief Neil Cervenka to the Board of Supervisors Meeting on September 12 to provide an overview of the innovative homeless response program initiated by the city and managed through the police department. The program known as “CRU” or Care Response Unit utilizes a non-enforcement type of interaction to help the homeless get what they need and hopefully get them off the street. The CRU team has served 321 individuals and successfully reconnected 22 homeless individuals with family or friends, persuaded 18 into rehab programs and moved 7 into permanent housing. The program which was initiated by Mayor Norvell got its start with grant funding from the State of California’s Behavioral Health Justice Intervention Services Project. Funding for the program through grant and city funds will only last through mid-2024. Cervenka asked the BOS to fund the program for four years at a cost of 1.72 million using Measure B dollars. Measure B is tax money that was designed to fund the construction of psychiatric and behavioral health facilities, operation costs, and services to treat mental illness and addiction.So how does the program save the money in the county’s general fund? According to Chief Cervenka it costs a minimum of $107 dollars per day to incarcerate an individual in the county jail and goes up based on health and psychiatric needs. Since the CRU program’s implementation there has been a sea change in how the Fort Bragg Police Department deals with the homeless and spends its officer hours. There has been an overall 27 percent decrease in calls for service involving homeless from the 21/22 fiscal year to the current fiscal year. The most dramatic being 242 calls in December of 2021 versus 58 in December of 2022. There has been a 20% decrease in arrests of homeless and an increase in overall arrests.The program also includes contract staffing for Project Right Now, which helps youth with substance abuse disorders fight addiction. The Board of Supervisors directed staff to determine if current funding for homeless services, that is not as effective, can be redirected to CRU and agreed to send Cervenka’s request to the Measure B Committee for consideration. Williams also asked staff to determine how much money the CRU program has saved the county, presumably, due to reduced jail expenses.