PREVIOUSLY:
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The final batch of this year’s reports from the Humboldt County Grand Jury have been released. They concern Measure Z (Humboldt County’s sales tax aimed at public safety), special education and a broad look into county government’s leadership and effectiveness.
It’s the latter item that is clearly the centerpiece of this year’s Grand Jury’s work, and seems the report about which it is most proud. It also seems to have been the most controversial inside the Courthouse, which seems strange to us. It doesn’t call out any local government leader by name or position; rather, it points to a general malaise in county government that seems to impact its delivery of services in ways the GJ enumerates.
This year’s Grand Jury Foreperson, Bernadette Cheyne, took time to underline the importance the current Grand Jury placed in this report. She rues that “events beyond our control” blocked the release of this report — a reference, it would seem, to the new release schedule imposed on the Grand Jury by the courts, which we referenced this morning.
Cheyne writes:
The Grand Jury intended this to be our first published report but, due to events beyond our control, it is now our final report. Because of this, you will find some references to timelines that already have passed.
The report focuses on our wider community, its leadership, the challenges we face, and the opportunities available to us. The report offers hope that with vision, courage and tenacity the quality of life can and will improve for our county’s current and future citizens.It would be difficult to summarize the breadth of this report or the investigative process this Grand Jury undertook in a brief press release. We hope you will review the report cover to cover and develop your own sense of the message it sends.
We also wish to acknowledge the members of the 2016-2017 Civil Grand Jury who forwarded to us the groundwork upon which we based this report. We hope our report does justice to their fine work.
The report — titled “Humboldt County’s Future, ‘Scene’ through the Looking Glass” — can be found below, along with the other reports released today.
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Humboldt County’s Future, “Scene” through the Looking Glass
“The Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury hopes the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors is willing to accept this challenge of improving the quality of life for all Humboldt County citizens,” writes the grand jury near the end of this report, just before it issues its recommendations.
This is after several pages in which the GJ casts some doubt over whether or not the board has been up to this challenge in the past. It lists five areas of concern:
- An uncommunicated vision for our future
- Planning with inconsistent follow-through
- The existence of a silo-riddled government
- Inadequate support of rural areas
- A lack of housing
Then looks at each in turn, often identifying a sort of apathy within the county’s policymaking chambers that manifests itself further down the chain, among people who deliver the services of government to the public.
The majority of county employees, the jury finds, are “hardworking, dedicated, and committed to public service” — but the Board of Supervisors “has not yet communicated and implemented a clear and viable vision for the county, nor have they developed a strategic plan supporting such a vision.”
The report is somewhat vague, and maybe that’s a necessary consequence of the fact the things it investigates are somewhat vague — leadership, vision, a sense of purpose. These things are hard to quantify, but central nevertheless. This is an interesting read.
Is Measure Z Measuring Up?
Measure Z — a half-cent sales tax approved by the voters in 2014 — was pitched as a way for the county to fund public safety and “essential services.” It’s set to sunset in 2020, unless voters reapprove it.
How has county government administered the $10 million per year that Measure Z has put into county coffers? How has it improved the delivery of services?
For the most part, the Grand Jury finds that Measure Z has “well implemented and successful.” But it has concerns:
- There appears to be no standard definition of what constitutes “public safety” or “essential services,” so that citizens may reasonably question certain disbursements of Measure Z funds — to the Boys and Girls Club, for example, or to the county itself for walkability studies of various towns, both relatively small expenditures of Measure Z money that citizens have questioned.
- A near-total absence of annual audited reports on the Measure Z program, which the county had promised voters and has mostly failed to deliver.
- The lack of a standardized system to judge the effectiveness of the programs that supervisors have decided to fund with Measure Z monies. How do we know if we’re spending money wisely?
In total, the jury finds that Measure Z is now a key component of the county’s budget, and county government had better make damned sure that it maintains the public’s trust: “The Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury finds if Measure Z is not approved in the next funding cycle the results to the county could be catastrophic, particularly with respect to public safety,” the jury writes.
Humboldt - We Have a Problem, But More Special Education Is Not the Answer
Seventeen percent of Humboldt County’s school-age children have been diagnosed with one or more disabilities — the highest rate in the state of California. The Grand Jury spent nine months looking into why this was, and why so many children are assigned to special education programs.
One thing they found was that foster children and Native American students are overrepresented in Humboldt County’s special ed programs, and that may be partly due to the methods used to evaluate whether kids need such programs or not. Most schools do not use what is known as “dynamic assessment” to determine whether or not a child has special needs; in those few schools that do use this method, the rate of Native American kids deemed to require those services is lower than elsewhere.
That, plus much more, included in the very data-heavy report below.
2016-2017 Compliance and Continuity Report
Each year the Grand Jury looks at how local governments have followed up on the recommendations issued by the previous year’s Grand Jury. That report is below.
Perhaps most of interest is the follow-up on last year’s Grand Jury reports on the Humboldt County Jail. Last year’s jury, like this year’s, found that inmates had inadequate access to mental health professionals and treatment options, that the county should raise the salaries of jail staff and that camera equipment inside the jail needs to be upgraded.
In each of these cases, the county responded either that the jury’s recommendation would be accepted or that further study would be required. However, the county gave no timeframes during which these things would be accomplished, and so the county is out of compliance with the law.
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