The following is a press release issued by the County of Mendocino:
Ukiah Valley Trail Group has announced a $32,000 gift from Pacific Redwood Medical Group to improve trails at Lake Mendocino. The funding will allow the Trail Group to realign and improve the trails between the Dam and Spillway. This gift follows a $25,000 gift in 2019 that provided the funding to build the recently completed trail above City View Trail at Low Gap Park.
Pacific Redwood Medical Group (PRMG) is a medical group comprised of doctors, physician-assistants, and nurse practitioners who provide Emergency Department and inpatient hospitalist services to local hospitals. PRMG established a corporate-advised fund with the Community Foundation of Mendocino County in 2016 with a goal of contributing to community health through health promotion efforts to ensure a just and prosperous community.
The PRMG corporation provided seed money to start the fund and pays the annual management fee. After that, the fund is based solely on employee donations. Although donating to the Pacific Redwood Medical Group Charitable Fund is entirely voluntary, most of the full-time employees have opted to contribute monthly.
“By working with the Community Foundation, we can allow funds to accumulate,” said PRMG’s Dr. Debbie Marks. “Then, when the right community-based prevention project comes along, we will be in a position to make a substantial grant. With the help of the Community Foundation, the impact of our collective giving is so much greater than our individual gifts.”
PRMG identified the Ukiah Valley Trail Group as a local non-profit whose mission aligns with their desire to improve community health by encouraging physically active lifestyles. “The research is clear that if you create pleasant convenient places to exercise, more people exercise more often,” said local trainer and Trail Group board member Mike Cannon. “We had a hundred and twenty people show up for the PRMG-funded new trail opening a Low Gap Park, and now with this new gift we expect to be able to do something similar in a year or two at Lake Mendocino.”
For decades, PRMG emergency physicians have cared for patients with incredibly complex and challenging medical problems, the types of problems that would be reserved for specialists in a larger metropolitan hospital. But here in Ukiah, where our specialists are limited, PRMG providers rise to the challenge and care for patients who have nowhere else to turn. According to Dr Debbie Marks, “You can’t just be good to practice medicine here. You have to be really good,”
“We’re really grateful for this gift as it allows us to focus on trail building rather than fundraising,” stated Cannon. “This will allow us to complete the reroute of old, poorly aligned trail on the southwest corner of the lake and make it a much more appealing and accessible route. Great trails, close to home is what gets people out and exercising” concluded Cannon.
What a waste of money there’s no lake left nobody wants to camp or hike at a lake that has no water
Is the Campground even open, they had no funding for employees to maintain the place