Inside UDJ by Editor K.C. Meadows

The 100 or so workers at the Head Start run by North Coast Opportunities in Mendocino and Lake counties thought they were just a day away from their first union contract when Head Start program director Corinne Lindgren pulled the plug. Two other administrators more friendly to the union idea have left the agency leaving Lindgren in charge according to a union press release issued this week. The union negotiators say that Lindgren is the problem at the agency and the reason most of the workers want a union in the first place. Now the union has filed unfair labor complaints against Lindgren but are worried that her tactic is simply to draw out the process until the union has to start at the beginning again. I understand that money is not the primary issue here. It's more about working conditions and job security. A Head Start teacher here apparently has at most about 12 hours of early childhood education from someplace like Mendocino College and they are often mothers of former Head Start children. Union reps say they are dictated to by NCO folks who, according to one union rep I talked with, change the rules on them constantly and make it difficult for them to have consistency in the classroom. This union rep said in one example that an NCO person with control of federal dollars for classroom supplies sent a teacher a box full of Chinese dishware and chopsticks for use as a "cultural" lesson. Four-year-olds with chopsticks? En garde!

I asked blog readers t let me know what they'd like to see the city of Ukiah do with a new redevelopment bond. One reader wrote:
"I'm so glad you asked this question. I believe we need to spend some money on the neighborhoods just on the outskirts of downtown, where the infrastructures are deteriorating and in desperate need of improvement.
The Wagenseller neighborhood (Clara Ave and Ford St.) has become one of Ukiah's main vehicle thoroughfares for travel to downtown, the hospital, freeway, Pear Tree Center, etc. The neighborhood also continues to be a
draw for maximum "infill" development. While the vehicle traffic has increased substantially, the infrastructure has continued to fall apart. The neighborhood has long stretches with no sidewalks so that the many
pedestrians (who do not own or choose not to use cars) are forced to walk in the streets, alongside MTA buses, trucks and cars. There is insufficient drainage so that in the rainy weather, small lakes appear
where there should be sidewalks and the sitting water causes the paved streets to further deteriorate and forces pedestrians to walk even closer to the vehicle traffic. I've noticed this situation in other
neighborhoods with high volumes of vehicle and pedestrian traffic, like Leslie Street.
Perhaps if the streets were safer to walk, residents would be more willing to get out of their cars and walk to work or shopping. If more of us walked the neighborhoods, the air would be cleaner and the streets thus more inviting to walk. The city reports there is no money to repair the infrastructure of these crumbling heavily trafficked neighborhoods. If new bonds are to be issued, my vote would be to spend some money to improve the infrastructure and walkability of our neighborhoods that bear the burden of heavy vehicle traffic."

Add to that, the county supervisors have decided to build its new jail complex at the Brush Street triangle right across the future Orchard Street bridge from the Wagenseller neighborhoods which has those folks understandably worried.

One other thing, I heard at Schat's this week that some folks in the county admin building are upset that a few Ukiah High School students show up early in the morning to hang around the lobby for its warmth. They also apparently come to the county admin cafe after school for snacks. I was told the cafe has actually started closing early in order to discourage the students. First of all, it's a public building and the cafe is a public cafe. One woman at Schat's Thursday, after hearing this, said she thought having high school students in a county government building was a great opportunity for county employees to show them what goes on there, and at least befriend them as a way of letting them know that they are welcome citizens of this county. But no. They treat the building and the cafe as their personal fiefdom where no outsiders are welcome. Sad.