What Are This Website
and Newsletter About?
This website and newsletter are addressed to politically active citizens all across the political spectrum in Mendocino County in northern California.
We believe these are key financial duties of County officials:
- County officials should tell the truth.
- They should manage the County's finances competently and transparently.
- They should protect the County's financial strength.
- They should not force future generations to pay expenses that are our responsibility.
We believe County Officials have not and are not living up to these duties.
We also believe these duties aren't "left wing" or "right wing" ideas. We believe most people active in local politics agree with these values.
In the past 16 years the County of Mendocino built up about $300 million of unfunded retiree pensions and healthcare.
But these real past expenses were never reported to the people. The County also didn't disclose this debt until forced to by reform of government accounting standards.
The County's total debt is $350 million plus. Annual expenses are really about $10 million more than reported.
Over the next 30 years a half billion dollars will be extracted from our weak local economy. Not one minute of public services or a dime's worth of infrastructure will be produced. Future generations must pay hundreds of millions of expenses - plus interest - that was our responsiblility.
We believe that RIGHT NOW County Officials are greatly increasing our County's debt. We believe politically active citizens have a duty to stop it and change the direction of the County.
YourPublicMoney.Com takes no position on what employee benefits or programs should be.
We absolutely take the position that whatever benefits and programs the County provides it must fully disclose their expense to citizens and properly fund them.
The most important change needed is to build a consensus across the political spectrum of people active in local politics that County officials are expected to fulfill these obligations and will be held accountable if they don't.
YourPublicMoney.Com's mission is to help citizens understand the County's finances and debt and help create such a consensus.
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This Website
This is a quick tour of the website.
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If you see this Icon in the website click it to see more information for that topic.
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Sections in the Website (See menu at top)
Mendo County Debt: (click title to go to section) This section summarizes the County's debt: What it is, Where'd it come from, What are it's effects, What went wrong, and What needs to be done.
It's 9 pages - think of each page as being worth about $40 million - that's the total County debt divided by 9.
County Retirement Fund: The County doesn't hold or manage its pension fund. A separate organization does - the Mendocino County Employees Retirement Association (MCERA). In addition MCERA has paid most of the County's retiree health benefits over the past couple of decades.
MCERA created at least half of the County's total debt.
One page in the Mendo Debt section - Pension Debt (click to see) - provides a very short description of how that happened.
The County Retirement Fund section presents detail about certain aspects of MCERA. It is not a comprehensive examination of MCERA.
Data, Video, Articles: This section (titled "Supplemental Information" on the first page of the section) presents several types of information - Reports and Memos we've produced, statewide articles about these issues in other counties, videos, and our data sources.
You are in the "About Us & Website " section.
Sign up for our Newsletter by clicking here. Contact Us tells you how to do that. We'd like to hear from you.
Donations and Sponsors: Finally, if this work seems worthwhile to you, your donation helps to sustain our work.
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