polls, pols and other miscellany
Thank all you blog readers out there for starting this interaction. I will do my best to answer your questions and keep up my end of the conversation as regularly as possible.
First, to the person who wanted to know if 109 degrees was unusual weather for Ukiah in June. I'd say yes. that kind of weather usually comes in July, but it is not unknown in June.
Next, to the person who said our two board of supervisor stories contradicted one another over the timing of the start of the meeting. While the meeting began with a closed session, the open session began at 10 a.m. I agree the wording was awkward and could have been confusing.
Next, is it a conflict of interest for the Daily Journal's John Graff to work part time for the Employer's Council of Mendocino County? Not in my book. John is an advertising rep, not a newsroom employee. He does not write or influence the news and we will continue to cover the ECMC as always.
About Marie Ulvila. My understanding is that she quit her job as City Clerk because she said she couldn't afford to continue to work part-time. I assume the city will look for another clerk ASAP. By the way, as I recall it, Ulvila is the reason the council asked the residents to approve changing the city clerk office from elected to appointed so that she could continue to work there after leaving the area and moving to Lake County. Now she's leaving and we have the city appointing someone new. We thought the clerk's job should have stayed elected. It will be interesting to see who the city chooses to replace Ulvila.
So we ran that poll about flagpoles and our techie gurus who host our Web site tell us there's no way to simply display the results. We have to build a whole box and blah-blah-blah, which we will do, but in the meantime, here were the results:
Yes (anyone should be allowed to put up any size flag pole in their front yard): 188 votes (52.66 percent)
No (they should not be allowed to do that): 169 votes (47.33 percent)
We now have the specific question about the Piffero flag that some wanted to see up there, so vote.
By the way, there's some debate about how long a poll should stay up. It's certainly not scientific by any means, yet someone told me last week that no poll should be up more than a couple of days. What do you all think?
So I was at Schat's Thursday morning as usual and of course the topic was the supervisors firing CEO John Ball. And Supervisor David Colfax walks in - I have to give him credit for showing up in public that morning - and as he and I were talking (I was telling him he wasn't going to like Sunday's editorial) a fellow named Michael K Johnson, who had earlier come in to hand me a letter to the editor opposed to the majority's decision to fire Ball, came up to Colfax and called him a cockroach and really got in his face in an aggressive way. Colfax semi-politely told him to get away from him. While I completely disagree with Colfax on this one and told him so, I have to say that even a supervisor you can't stand shouldn't have to take that kind of abuse. Geez.
I'm wishing now, too late, that I'd thought earlier this year to try to get a big public picnic together for Todd Grove Park this year for the Fourth. When the chamber announced it wasn't doing the fireworks, we asked readers to suggest new traditions (although it turns out the fireworks will continue thanks to the Speedway folks) and the idea of a big gathering of sort was raised. But then I didn't think again about it until too late. Maybe next year. I think it could be fun. I'll be here at the Daily Journal working away on Tuesday. Whatever you're doing, have fun and be safe!
NOTE: I posted this on Friday morning and corrected Mr. Johnson's name at about 12:30 p.m. Apologies to whoever may be out there with the name Michael Kennedy.