OPINION: In opposition to Measure U

Measure U is the wrong tool for the wrong task. It implicitly targets a group of people in need of assistance and the underlying logic of the text of the measure is flawed.

Measure U forbids social service organizations from operating in the central business district of Fort Bragg "under any circumstances" unless that organization was already there before January 2015. Proponents are engaging in a classic case of Not In My Back Yard, as known as NIMBY. They don't want to see the members of their community who are suffering or who are disadvantaged. They want to close their eyes to the homeless, the disabled, and the poor and pretend that Fort Bragg is still a vibrant small city with more jobs than people.

In addition to the NIMBY aspect of Measure U, it's a very expensive temper tantrum. Proponents of the measure fought against the city giving grant money the Mendocino Coast Hospitality Center for the purchase of the Old Coast Hotel building; they lost the argument. Granted, Fort Bragg's city government gave the community a short shrift in meetings, but that is not the Hospitality Center's fault. And yet, Measure U targets the Hospitality Center because of its mission to work with the homeless and plans to use the building for that purpose.

Proponents would rather the Old Coast Hotel building sit empty in perpetuity than have a business use it for helping people in need. It is intellectually inconsistent to target social service agencies because of their clientele, but not the drinking establishments that do actually contribute to social disorder. Social service agencies such as Hospitality Center serve the better angels of human nature while bars serve booze.

If the issue is how the City of Fort Bragg government, including City Manager Linda Ruffing and the city council, handled community concerns, the awarding of the grant to Hospitality Center, or the Old Coast Hotel ownership's willingness to accept less money for a private nonprofit instead of a private business, those are separate issues that must be the focus of a different initiative, referendum, or recall process. They don't need to result in a discriminatory law targeting those people in the community who might cause Measure U proponents to feel uncomfortable.

Measure U is an attempt to address the wrong issue with the wrong method. It completely misses what's wrong with the city; supporters are making Hospitality Center into a straw man.

The arguments in favor of Measure U are filled with even more fallacies. Proponents argue that the measure "...insures the preservation of our Historic Downtown business district-north  to Pine Street and South to Oak Street, from Main Street to McPherson." While this may be the central business district, it is not a cohesive historic district. Indeed, it is not actually a registered historic district in the strictest definition. Visitors to the coast would have to travel to Mendocino to find an actual historic district. The central business district is a hodge-podge of historic buildings and contemporary structures. Buildings from the 19th century are nestled against others from the 1920s and later.

Measure U proponents want voters to "Vote Yes if you want to preserve the historic use and structure of the Old Coast Hotel." The logic is untenable. The hotel was sitting empty. Community members who wanted to acquire the building and use it commercially were rebuffed by the property owner unwilling to negotiate on price; yet those same owners negotiated a deal with the City of Fort Bragg. The historic Oak Hotel across the street from the Old Coast Hotel is a seedy-looking collection of apartments once a notable lodging establishment comparable with the long-gone Piedmont Hotel. There is no hue and cry to restore the Oak Hotel to its historic use.

In addition, supporters of Measure U argue in the voter information pamphlet that "...the city's rich history should be celebrated and business's [sic] allowed to prosper." Fort Bragg's "rich history" is one of industry and jobs. It was a mill town with a thriving fishing harbor. The city has always been the commercial and economic center for the Fort Bragg-Mendocino Coast. If proponents truly wish for business to prosper, it needs to find ways to become collectively competitive with inland businesses. They need to fill the empty stores on Franklin Street and offer basic affordable necessities, instead of junk antiques and specialty boutiques.

Fort Bragg is not the town it once was. It is part of an area that is losing businesses and professionals. Cottage industries are not filling in the void left by the closing of the mill nor are they refilling the coffers of the schools that made this area so attractive to professionals with young families. If the business and property owners in the central business district want to better help the city, they need to address the issues that have contributed to the vacant storefronts on Franklin Street and the inability of the area to either build or attract large-scale employers.

It is not the purpose of public law or the initiative process to target specific groups or industries unless the case can be made clearly that the law will benefit the greater good. Laws that are exclusionary need to be so to serve the greater good, such as limitations on what businesses or individuals can be within a certain distance of schools. Measure U does not serve the greater good. It only serves the venal impulses of our human nature. It is in the same group of proposed social controls as excluding all Muslims from the United States or making law enforcement stops of people based on skin color.

I encourage voters in Fort Bragg to vote "no" on Measure U.

OPINION: In support of Measure V

I encourage Mendocino County residents to vote "yes" on Measure V next month.

When I was reporting for Mendocino's weekly community newspaper, The Beacon, part of my beat were rural fire departments south of Fort Bragg, California. One of those tiny departments was the Albion-Little River Volunteer Fire Department, an agency that covers an incredible geographic area that includes a lot of commercial timber land, most of it owned by the Mendocino Redwood Company.

In 2014, ALRVFD Chief Ted Williams became increasingly concerned about dead trees on MRC property left behind by the timber management practice known as "hack-and-squirt." Hack-and-squirt involves making a cut in an undesirable tree, such as tan oak, and then applying an herbicide to the cut. There are different herbicides used in the timber management industry, but one commonly used is imazapyr. The trees are then left to die and fall on their own.

2014 was also a year with record temperatures and low rainfall. In Mendocino, residents within the Mendocino City Community Services District were mandated to install water meters on their wells to help the district manage the limited groundwater. In the northern portion of Mendocino County later that year, over 12,500 acres burned near Laytonville when a wildfire was ignited by lightning.

In the early months of 2015, Williams had no reason to believe things would be different and there were hundreds of acres of dead timber bordering his fire district. He took his concerns to the Albion-Little River Fire Protection District board of directors, looking for a solution and then broadened his approach to include community members and fire professionals.

When I interviewed Mike Jani in March 2015 for a Beacon article, the issue of dead standing trees was quickly becoming a topic of concern for several coastal communities. Jani, the president and chief forester at MRC, attempted to minimize the dangers from standing dead timber.

“Our experience with the way fire reacts is it stays on the ground and doesn’t get into the canopy,” he said. “Albion-Little River Fire Protection District may have been ill-informed of the fire risk.”

Over a year later, MRC has spent $197,000 fighting against the county-wide measure, Measure V, that would make dead standing timber a public nuisance. In late March of this year, at a public forum moderated by the League of Women Voters, the timber company, with other opponents of the June measure, argued against Measure V on the basis of cost as well as creating a beneficial environmental situation; opponents continued to argue against the danger of dead timber as potential fuel in wildfires.

And while MRC has donated plenty of time and money to Mendocino County communities over the years, in this issue the company is wrong. The risks involved with hundreds of acres of dead timber seem self-evident. It is essentially miles of firewood waiting to be lit. Those potentially burning trees put first responders at risk due to falling snags, to say nothing of the question of whether those dead trees create unusually toxic smoke when they burn because of residual herbicide.

Measure V is needed to ensure that the negligence of property owners such as MRC does not endanger communities or firefighters. While I can understand the argument of trying to limit expenses, there is a point when common sense needs to rule over commercial expediency.

No landowner, whether it is an individual or a corporation, has the right to put their neighbor at risk because of one or more dead trees. MRC needs to accept it's responsibility to the greater community good, not just its bottom line.