Mendocino County Veterans Triumph in Battle for Ukiah Office

Mendocino County veterans celebrated the return to their Veterans Service Office on Observatory Avenue in Ukiah during a lunchtime party on Tuesday. Just a few days before Christmas last year, they received word that they would no longer be able to use the roomy house on the west side of town to meet with experts about veterans benefits and services. Instead, they would have to seek services at the Public Health building a few blocks away, on Dora Street. Air Quality Management was slated to move into the Observatory house.

Veterans were outraged by the peremptory notice, and what they viewed as the inadequacy of the accommodations on Dora Street. They demanded a cost-benefit analysis of the move, which was never provided. County officials offered the use of extra office space, a courtyard where veterans could plant a community garden, and a conference room on Dora. But veterans from around the county set their sights on getting back into the house on Observatory.

Wilson Chavez is a Navy veteran who serves as Commander of the American Legion Post 76 in Ukiah. He stood in the shade of a sycamore tree in the backyard of the newly returned VSO and described his satisfaction with the way it all turned out.

“This is so joyful, because it’s exactly what the veterans need and want,” he said. “We need a home-like environment for all the veterans, because we need a calm environment,” where staff and visitors alike can come outside and relax without feeling like they are receiving medical treatment.

Laura Quatrochi and her husband Don Shanley, of Anderson Valley, organized the party to thank the veterans who insisted on moving back to the house, which has a  spacious fenced-in backyard and a wheelchair ramp. Quatrochi, who combed through consent calendars for inconsistencies in the justification for the move, was pleased but not at all surprised by the victory. “We felt that, with all the support, that somehow we were going to convince the Board that this was the place they should be,” she said, as she urged everyone to help themselves to refreshments before taking a seat at tables covered with white tablecloths and vases of fresh zinnias. “It didn’t matter what they said, we were going to move back. And so here we are!”

Robert Permenter shared her certainty. “The powers that be thought that they were going to abscond on our office,” he noted. “And all of us did the thing that we knew how to do, because we’ve all been in the military: work together. And we decided that we were going to keep our space.”

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Fernanda Gabriela Permenter described some of what it took. “We made call after call after call, and we wrote to (Congressman) Jared Huffman,” she reported. “We did everything. We called the Board of Supervisors and talked to them, and we did not rest until we came back.”

Shanley was one of the vets who became a fixture at Board of Supervisors meetings all throughout January until February 28. That’s when the board voted unanimously to reverse the decision, which was made by the leadership of Social Services. Bekkie Emery, the former head of the department, is no longer with the county. Shanley described getting the vets back into their preferred quarters as “a long haul,” and the original relocation as an “ill-conceived, egregious decision that was based on nothing, as we came to find out, as we witnessed more and more Board meetings.” Shanley doesn’t think the move was appropriate for Air Quality, either. “The irony was, when we came to visit,” he recalled, “They were jammed in,” with three desks in one room.

Carl and Alice Stemberg founded the Observatory office, back in the aughts, when he was the Veterans Services Officer and she was his head representative. The building is special to them for another reason: it’s where the now-married couple met and fell in love. For him, the eviction and the return were an emotional journey.  “At the very beginning, I thought we would definitely win,” he said. “They can’t do this. This is so wrong. But then, they did it. They moved. I lost a lot of hope. I thought, we probably won’t get Observatory back. But we’ve got to get out of those offices” on Dora Street. “People have called them cubicles. They were coffins. They were terrible.”

Ralph Paulin is an Army veteran who uses a wheelchair. He paid a visit to the office on Dora Street so he could make up his own mind about the new place. He described it as “a very cold, not very inviting environment,” where the office only qualified as “supposedly the office. Frankly, it appeared to be more like it had previously been a large storage room for the hospital that was previously there. There was barely room to get my wheelchair in the door,” and his wife had to stand behind him in the doorway until the white noise machine drove her outside. “It was like being in a cave,” Paulin continued. “There were no windows. There were three walls and the door out into the hallway.”

But Paulin views the final outcome as an overall success. “From my perspective, the real American democratic process worked out,” he reflected. “We brought our concerns to the Board of Supervisors, who were the elected officials in charge of the thing, and they listened to us.”

Chavez, the American Legion Commander, thinks that if the county had been more respectful of the veterans and given them enough time to find another space, they would have obliged. “We’re a quiet community,” he said with an amiable smile, before giving Paulin a lift home. “But if you do something to mess with the veteran community, you’ll hear from us. Absolutely.”

Carl Stemberg has just one more question. “You know, they were in such a hurry to move the veterans services out of these offices,” he allowed; “and all of a sudden, they can’t find the furniture. It was very nice furniture, and it was very appropriate for the offices. Where did it go?”

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