Mendocino County’s financial situation is not real good. You may already know this. Everyone does, even the supervisors.
Economic convulsions have rocked every industry and business. On one hand the problems are real and dangerous; on the other hand we have supervisors fighting hard and working overtime to meet the challenges.
NOTE: The part about problems and dangers are true, but the idea our current band of elected officials has ideas, plans, strategies and experience in financial doings to turn things around is fantasy. Lying, more to the point.
The traditional prongs supporting Mendocino County’s economy have included grapes, sheep, fishing, timber, agriculture and marijuana. None on that short list of economic kingpins is presently thriving. If you didn’t know the wine industry is in free-fall just ask your friends, so long as they aren’t named Parducci, Fetzer, Nelson or Annie Greensprings. They’d rather not be reminded.
Not too long ago, walnuts, pears and cherries were important crops, but in recent years were (mostly) supplanted by grapes and wine production.
Timber was strong for decades, the backbone of employment in every area that had forests, which was about 90% of the county. Mills and workers were everywhere from Philo to Covelo, from Fort Bragg to Ukiah, and from Laytonville to Hopland.
Look around in 2026 and you see the trees are plentiful as ever. But in the 1990s the industry was confronted by eco-lunatics, ultimately driven off by tree sitters, equipment saboteurs and endless protests. The mills closed down, the jobs evaporated, and LP and GP left for other places in other states with other trees. (Not redwoods, however.)
Marijuana kept the boat afloat until morons (such as I) kept yammering about legalizing weed. Legal pot is a grand idea that makes sense to people who have no sense when it comes to supply, demand, markets, and what happens when a flourishing economic engine is turned over to the government.
What we had was a booming marijuana economy that trickled big money into local restaurants, clothing stores, car / truck dealerships and real estate offices.
What we got in return for legalizing pot was money diverted into taxes feeding government, but as inept as government usually is, no one knew anything about pot or money, or their buttocks from their elbows.
The county was able to quickly destroy the underground pot economy, and spent lots and lots of tax dollars doing it. It set up costly, confusing, unworkable marijuana rules and regulations. New employees, some comically inept, were hired and were provided offices, cars and salaries. Everyone sat back and waited for tax dollars to accumulate. And still, we wait.
Next, agriculture. The county, eyes wide shut and giddy at the prospect of closing down Lake Pillsbury and the old dam, will be yanking the final prong out from under the economy.
Today local employment is mostly highly paid county workers followed by school and hospital employees; all essentially work for the government.
This not a healthy economy,, but from the narrow perspective of a county supervisor with a pretty pension, it’s working just fine
OILY OTTERS OR DEAD BIRDS?
Do local Eco Warrior chapters still exist? Social Justice Warriors appear in remission, but there’s nothing like “offshore oil” to bring environmentalists out of their yurts and trees.
Our Eco tribes have always seemed an odd lot. Forever shrieking about timber this and oil that, they have not once complained about National Forest devastations in or around marijuana grows.
Spraying Roundup on a dandelion is a crime against nature, but sacrificing deer, bears, rabbits and fish to produce weed is justifiable Mammalcide.
Right now on the Mendo and Humboldt coasts there is noise about oil pipelines, drilling, whatever. Our environuts are in full tinfoil hat battle garb, and that’s OK with me. I get mushy just like everyone else when it comes to oil slicks with ducks and seals coated in goop.
But what also bothers me to tears, and what Eco Warriors seem happy to forgive, are all the birds killed by wind generators. It’s a great big huge problem.
Estimates of the number of birds killed annually in America range from 140,000 to well over a million. Where’s the outrage, the marches and the courthouse demonstrations?
If Big Oil is the enemy what is Big Breaking Wind? Exxon is bad, but windmills have a teeny carbon footprint?
Put wind farms in illegal grows and there’d be talk of making them parklands.
Tom Hine says go online to check dead bird figures yourself, and realize some estimates are even higher, and are disproportionately lethal to larger birds, like eagles, geese, ducks and hawks. TWK says don’t check because it’s very depressing.
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