Who we are &
what we do
“I'm an administrative assistant for environmental health in our Fort Bragg office. Every day, I assist the public in getting their water checked. We are part of Public Health. I also issue well permits, and assist in building permit reviews. We are also a sharps container drop-off, so I assist the public with obtaining sharps containers and to dispose of them safely.
“I enjoy assisting in keeping our environment safe and our public and community safe.
“People are leaving after just being trained because the pay is better elsewhere. People want to work for us, but there's no housing. So they, unfortunately, accept jobs in other areas.
“We need to retain our people, and the only way to do that is to be able to afford to live in our county. We live in the most beautiful place on earth, and we need to be able to be paid the wage to live here.”
Sophie Vieira
Administrative Assistant
Environmental Health
“I'm a road maintenance supervisor with the County. I plan the road work for the day, deal with citizen complaints, run equipment, and do road maintenance as needed.
“Short staffing is affecting us tremendously. We don't have enough people to patch potholes, clean up brush, and clean up mudslides. It's just impossible to keep up.
“If we were fully staffed, the public would see more maintenance being done. They wouldn't have to call in to complain about potholes. They wouldn't have to call in about low-hanging brush. Things would be more proactively taken care of, and it wouldn't be just thrown together the way it is now. And our jobs would be done safely. I think the public would notice that as well.”
Ryan Bushnell
Road Maintenance Supervisor I
Department of Transportation
“My favorite part of the job is interacting with patrons, seeing what they want, and going the extra mile to buy the materials they want.
“Because we’re in a rural county, our towns are very isolated from each other. The library serves as a community hub. People of all ages come in and meet friends here, come in and get materials for the week. We offer a wide variety of programming for patrons of all ages, from story time for small children to book clubs for adults.
“One of the things we need to keep working on is to have equitable wages so we retain the people who come into our open positions and are trained at library expense to become the best they can be. We want to keep them, and keep giving them raises so that they will stay. The cost of living here, especially on the coast, is very high.
“With more staff, the library would be able to open more days of the week. Currently we’re open 5 days a week, Tuesday through Saturday, but we would then be able to be open on Sundays and Mondays, accommodating more people.
“People are coming to from very great distances throughout the week, and sometimes they arrive on a Sunday or Monday and the library is closed, and they’ve come from a long distance. It would be better to be able to accommodate them, but we definitely need more staff to spread out the work schedules for a full 7 days of open time.”
Dan Hess
Branch Librarian
Mendocino County Public Library, Fort Bragg Branch
“I am a social worker with Adult Protective Services. I assess clients who are in danger of losing their homes, having mental health crises, or sometimes their homes are not livable.
“I love everything about my job. I love working with the elderly and the disabled. I love working with people and trying to maybe just make someone's life a little bit better.
“We need the Board of Supervisors to recognize that the staff shortage has been a problem for years. We have such an astronomical turnover rate here in Mendocino County.
“The County doesn't pay its social workers enough, so people training here is kind of like a stepping stone. They train here, and then they go to other counties that appreciate their workers and will pay them.”
Jackie Otis
Social Worker
Adult Protective Services