[Occupymendocino] Fw: Scott Schnieder has misappropriated over $70, 000 in City of Ft Bragg Funds!

[Ann Rennacker]

MCTV was taken down by the City and brought in-house, now it turns out that they have been diverting Comcast funds and paying big fees to VisitMendocino, Scott Schnieder and Linda Ruffing. CORRUPTION AT ITS WORST!!

________________________________
From: Annemarie <aweibel at mcn.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 28, 2018 11:07 PM
To: Ann Rennacker; David Gurney; Ed Oberweiser; Sue Boecker; Leslie Kashiwada
Subject: Scott Schnieder has misappropriated over $70,000 in City of Ft Bragg Funds!

Mendocino Coast Media
January 26 at 5:12am
Scott Schnieder has misappropriated over $70,000 in City of Ft Bragg Funds!

Throughout all negotiations between Mendocino TV and Linda Ruffing, she
and the past ad hoc committee insisted the City of Fort Bragg has no
intention of ever running the PEG station, while behind the scenes her
assistant, Scott Schneider misappropriates the Franchise Fees. We think
the subscribers of Comcast should know why their local television
station has been absorbed into the misguided city tourism promotional
behemoth being created by the City of Fort Bragg, Visit Fort Bragg.
Watch as Scott Schneider tries to create the same business model that
got him kicked off of VMC and read how Linda Ruffing manipulates City of
Fort Bragg funds to accomplish her personal goals.

The Fort Bragg City employee, Scott Schneider redirected over $70,000 in
City finances from what should have been from the City Clerk’s budget to
finance building his own media empire. By claiming that his department
spent the funds administrating the PEG station he was able to convince
the two feeble minded city councilmen on the ad hoc committee that, even
though he met only 3 times with the contractor, Mendocino TV, and sent 5
emails, his department spent over $70000 in administrative and actual
expenses!
In the initial negotiations with Mendocino TV it was asked of Mendocino
TV if we would also perform video production for Town Hall meetings.
After in-depth investigation it was determined that the budget for
Granicus, the City’s internet broadcast technology for recording minutes
was derived from the city clerks budget and should not be spent for a
completely different technology, broadcast television.

PEG is funded by franchise fees paid by subscribers to Comcast CATV, not
taxes. It is a private club essentially. Spending taxes on it would be a
misappropriation of public funds.

Granicus is a digital recording system for City Clerks to record public
meetings, funded by public dollars. An incidental by-product of it’s
digital stream is an audio/video signal that can be inserted onto the
CATV signal but not designed or funded for distribution over CATV.

As a result we could not perform the tasks requested because that would
have entailed spending taxpayers dollars subsidizing a private
television audience. The funds available from the franchise were
sufficient to run the channel but not anything else.
While waiting for the County of Mendocino to release subsequent
disbursments, Scott came to our offices and pleaded poverty. He asked us
to take a temporary 40% decrease in our payments, promising to make it
up when the funds get disbursed.
We found out later that Scott had taken the funds that he didn’t ‘have’
and slipped it into his IT department budget. This came to light when a
spreadsheet used by Scott for negotiating with the County of Mendocino
for subsequent fee payouts showed a budget for over $70,000 during a
period that Mendocino TV performed 100% of the PEG contract yet was paid
30% of the accounted for (by Scott Schneiders spreadsheet) funds.

Mendocino Coast Media is a name for the planned new public access
television station which has been turned into a government access channel.

Annemarie

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