The Board had a light agenda on this sunny Tuesday morning.
As always, there was some interest, or entertainment, in the Public Comment Period – Open Time. Anyone may address the Board during this time, speaking for up to three minutes on “matters within the jurisdiction of the Board.” The Board cannot take action or discuss any item raised at that time, but can refer the comments to a department or schedule the matter on a subsequent Board agenda. I was personally taken by the comments of Russ Wade, who came to urge the county to ask its citizens to eat more raw vegetables and offered to challenge all comers to pull-ups or other feats, despite his 71 years.
Two representatives from The Integrity Project spoke as well. They asked generally for the Board to establish outcome expectations and to work more closely with citizens. The group is roughly a year old and has taken on as a cause support for the Reverge Anselmo winery in Shingletown. The winery is involved in a series of lawsuits with the county: the winery alleges that the county has ignored its requests for permits to operate, and the county alleges that the winery has built and developed parts of its operation without the appropriate permits. Tuesday’s Integrity Project presentation focused simply on general statements, not on the winery battle.
Beyond these entertainments, the Board moved on to approve a number of non-controversial consent item. One of these, adding new programs to the contract of a provider to the Probation Department, prompted a discussion of the extent to which the programs will have deliverables or outcome expectations. This has been a consistent Board request of programs initiated for offenders, including those newly released from state prison. The Board also spent some time sorting out an accounting tangle in the Sheriff’s Office Wage Garnishment Trust Fund. The fund is managed by the Civil Unit that processes collections and disbursements from cases where a civil court order has been entered to enforcement of debt repayments. Accounting failures have resulted in a failure to identify checks that were sent out to the creditor but not cashed. The accounting problem seems significant, but the Sheriff’s Office has identified it and provided a process for correction in the future.
Some days housekeeping is Job One for the Board.
Catherine Camp is currently retired. She served as a Consultant to the California Senate Budget Committee in 2001-02, reviewing Social Services, Employment Development, Aging, Community Services, Alcohol and Drug Programs, Rehabilitation and Child Support budgets. From 1989-2000, Catherine was Executive Director for the California Mental Health Directors Association. During that period, Catherine staffed the county mental health system’s restructuring of public mental health through Realignment of community and long term care programs from the state to the county, transfer of the management of specialty mental health Medi-Cal services to those counties that agreed to provide them, development of risk mechanisms for consortia of small counties, and advocacy and policy analysis for the operation of public mental health programs throughout the state. Her prior experience includes Executive Director to the California-Nevada Community Action Association, Principal Consultant to the Assembly Human Services Policy Committee, and Director of Community Action and Head Start programs in Shasta County.
