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Mendocino Number 1 in Debt Per Person

December 6, 2009

Long before I started MendoDay I became aware that Mendocino County government was getting us into big financial trouble. It was hard to get the facts, and hard to interest most citizens in the issue. Now more facts are available, and yet the top county bureaucrats are still in denial, and the Board of Supervisors continues to show its basic incompetency in these matters.

Of all the counties in California, Mendocino has the highest county government debt per person residing in the county. We make the highest debt payment per person, and we incur the highest interest expense per person. Money spent on interest is money that can't be spent on government services, from fixing roads to helping the unfortunate.

This is not just from the fall in revenues due to the current recession. It was in the making ten years ago, but it was made worse by the recession.

Fortunately a web site is up that covers this story in detail. Every taxpayer and every voter needs to understand what happened, and what is coming down the road. Read it and talk to your neighbors about it.

Here is the site you should start with: http://www.yourpublicmoney.com/mendo-debt/10_debt.shtml

We need new (and better) Supervisors, new elected financial officers, new top civil service management, and more responsible government worker unions. We need citizens to keep up the pressure until this mess is cleaned up and the county is restored to fiscal order.

We also need to prepare our local economy to survive the trouble the vast federal war debt will be bringing to Americans in the next decade.

William P. Meyers