Tuesday, July 23, four out of the five Mendocino County Board Supervisors voted to raise their own pay from $95,302 to $110,715, giving each Board member a total compensation of $160,715. In total, more than 45 SEIU 1021 members and allied community members gave public comment against this raise.

For years, Mendocino County has simultaneously claimed poverty and pleaded ignorance over its own finances. Indeed, in September 2023, Mendocino County’s financial situation became so unclear that State Controller Malia Cohen launched an investigation into the County after its repeated failure to provide yearly financial documents.

Last year, during contract negotiations with members of SEIU 1021 — including road crews, public health nurses, and children’s social workers — the Mendocino County of Supervisors regularly used language such as “bankruptcy” and “layoffs” to induce fear in the broader public and to divert attention from Mendocino’s public staffing crisis.

This crisis directly places Mendocino County’s children, families, and elderly at risk. In 2023, Mendocino’s county-wide vacancy-rate was 29%, including a nearly 40% vacancy rate in family and children’s services, a 44% vacancy rate in Department of Transportation road crews, a 47% vacancy rate for public health nurses, and a 70% vacancy rate for mental health clinicians.

Megan Wolf, a Mendocino County library assistant, said, ”I make less than $20 an hour, just like the majority of Mendocino County library staff. When I saw the Board was proposing giving themselves significant raises after our long negotiations, when we were told repeatedly that the county was in dire financial straits, I was really angry.”

Heather Chris, a program administrator in social services, said, “I understand you think this job is tough… and maybe compromising your values to appease your donors might be pretty difficult. But I have to take phone calls from senior citizens who are homeless on our streets, who don’t have resources, and I need to tell them you need to check with the shelter, that they don’t have any beds left, that you can be put on a waiting list. To say this is insensitive or audacious or just really disrespectful to your employees is an understatement.”

A’Kesh Eidi, SEIU 1021 Mendocino County chapter president, said, ”For literally years, this Board has publicly screamed that there is no money. SEIU 1021’s wage proposal was countered with a 0% COLA increase… Just last month there was talk of bankruptcy and continued lamenting that there is no clear picture of the County’s finances. We’re under the State’s microscope. We just finished one audit, and there is another, more invasive audit looming. And this Board now has a sudden optimism about the County’s finances? I would love this Board to share with the public the source of the magical sense of optimism.”

How has the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors justified its own gratuitous raise? While Mendocino County conducted a fair wage compensation study for its SEIU 1021-represented employees last year to determine how frontline worker wages compare to their counterparts in 8 surrounding counties, the County cherry-picked just three highly-paid counties to conduct a Board of Supervisor wage study — Humboldt ($124,300), Lake ($104,000), and Sonoma ($211,295).