On Local Government
Police blotter: Morons on the loose
The Anderson Valley Advertiser is one of those local newspapers that you can enjoy no matter where you are from. It is published in Boonville, California and its politics are what one might call “curmudgeonly libertarian.”
One of the joys of a trip to Mendocino, among the greatest towns on the West Coast, or any Coast, in fact, is a stop in Boonville to get the latest issue. On the masthead is the quote from Joseph Pulitzer that “newspapers should have no friends.” It is published on broadsheet and is, shall we say, eclectically art directed.
It is a hoot.
I came across a Google Alert from the AVA. Having not gone to the north coast in a while, I couldn’t resist. No matter how much I might have worried about whether the power of the paper’s iconoclasm would be lost as electrons, I needn’t have.
Just a look at the “Sheriff’s log,” brought a sigh of relief. During the first half of October was included this citation: “10/17 2:09am Moron music boomed throughout downtown Boonville until the morons playing it were suppressed by deputies Walker and Squires.” I felt like I was there again.
Looking over their site, www.theava.com, I noticed two things. The first is that whoever makes up the paper is not the one who designed the Web site. It is very well done. The second is that if you click on the pull down menu item for “Commerce,” the first choice is “Marijuana.” That’s before wine, timber, fishing, tourism and farming.
Of 16 listings in the same Sheriff’s log that cited the morons, 3 dealt with marijuana. One announced that “Marijuana was discovered not far from the Yorkville Post Office.” Another indicated that “Marijuana was under cultivation within 1000 feet of a bus stop in downtown Boonville.”
Being the local government junkie that I am, I discovered a blog posting that the Mendocino County Planning Commission is discussing ways of how to zone for marijuana to be grown for medicinal purposes. (By the way, many pages on the site have an ad for a law firm specializing in defending marijuana growers, patients and care givers.)
Every county in California is hurting for money. For the rural counties like Mendocino, the situation is dire. They are large, sparsely populated areas, often with large tracts of Federally owned, but generally ignored forest land.
Response times for public safety, generally Sheriffs and volunteer fire departments are hampered by distance and lack of resources. Yet, the obsession with stamping out marijuana remains the state’s policy.
Along with wine, it is probably the most successful agricultural commodity produced there. But, it is not taxed to provide resources to the cash-strapped county.
Maybe the morons aren’t just playing moronic music too loud. ER