Hi Charles,<br /><br />I'm happy that you have jumped on the home rule
bandwagon. If Holly had won the 3rd District, we would have had 3
sure votes. Now we have to cultivate another vote on the BOS to get
a charter on the ballot. <br /><br />There are only 2 ways to get a
charter. Either the BOS put it on the ballot, or a petition of the
people puts a charter commission on the ballot. If elected, the 15
charter commissioners write a charter, and then place it on a subsequent
ballot. (Don't know how the commissioners are chosen)<br /><br />For
over 2 years, we have been trying to convince the BOS to put our charter
on the ballot. Dan Hamburg is our sponsor, and he won't bring up
the issue until he knows he has 3 sure votes. Dan Gjerde, your
Supe, is our other supporter. We have a lot of members in the Fort
Bragg area. We also expect that the BOS might edit the charter, but
we felt we could deal with that. Even if they deleted the public
bank section of the charter, we could add it on later by a petition of
the people. <br /><br />Charters can be amended or rescinded by
either the BOS or a petition of the people. <br /><br />Our
colleague in Willits has been meeting with Tom Woodhouse to try to gently
persuade him of the advantages of a public bank and county charter.
Like all politicians, he says, "Very intriguing! I'll have to
learn more about it." She has had 3 contacts with him already,
at least one in person in his office. <br /><br />We have a
PowerPoint presentation just about ready to present to the BOS and anyone
else who will listen. <br /><br />John McCowen, my Supe, has
thoroughly read 2 earlier drafts and made substantial comments, which we
corrected, but he says, he isn't opposed to a county charter, and he
isn't opposed to a public bank, just not THIS charter [draft #12b].
He said, "There are so many inconsistencies, that I can't even list
them all." If we cleared up the inconsistencies, then he could
be our 3rd vote. McCowen is classically reluctant to make a
commitment in either direction. I like a "careful" public
servant. <br /><br />Carre Brown never bothered reading the charter,
the book we gave her by Ellen Brown, nor does she have time to think
about it. She's too busy. So we gave our previous PowerPoint
to the Farm Bureau to convince the farmers. I got 2 farmers in our
coalition from Carre's district to give the presentation. We
thought if we could convince the Farm Bureau, then Carre would
follow. We have done very little F/U with the Farm Bureau to see if
anyone was convinced to support us. We were first distracted by my
running for office, and then by the Measure S campaign. But now we
are in hot pursuit of political and financial independence. <br
/><br />John Pinches was opposed and had some very clever arguments
against it. His main question was, "What can the county do
with a charter that it can't do without one?" Charter or not,
we can still make laws by petition and ordinance. He didn't care
about proactively rescuing the county's money from the next bank
orchestrated economic meltdown. He assured us that no matter what
the Dodd-Frank bill says, they will repeal it and bail out the
banks. Those statements from Pinches led me to believe that the
most conservative member of the BOS was opposed to home rule and in favor
of bank bailouts with public funds. That was quite a
surprise! <br /><br />Attached please find a copy of our latest
draft charter. Since we failed to get it on the 2014 ballot, we
have decided to postpone it until the 2016 ballot, and instead see if we
can get the public bank going without the charter. Also, see if we
can find a lawyer to correct all those inconsistencies that McCowen
sees. Once we find a good speaker, we intend to have a fundraiser
similar to the Jeff Clement event, or the Swami Beyondananda events that
financed Measure S and Measure F respectively. We will need money
to pay a lawyer. <br /><br />We will also need a lawyer who knows
banking and finance who will be willing to help us set up our public bank
before the charter. We are already seeking retired bankers from
around the country to join our Bank Board. Do you know any? Can you
ask your professors at school? <br /><br />In Peace, Robin<br
/>Treasurer and co-founder of the Mendocino County Public Banking
Coalition<br /><br /><br />Read my blogs:
http://bodhis-ruminations.blogspot.com/<br /><br />The next step in the
growth of Liberty and Democracy is for our sovereign People to take
control of our government's funds with a Public Bank; make the People's
money work for the People! We will non-violently take back our government
from within the system set up by our Founding Fathers by amending the
Constitution to eliminate corporate personhood rights.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Move-to-Amend-Ukiah/331350666895175,
https://www.facebook.com/MendoPublicBankCoalition<br
/>http://publicbankinginstitute.org/county-banks.htm<br />Yes on S -
http://www.crnmc.org/<br />www.facebook.crnmc.org