Mary Anderson, Redwood Times

Ft. Bragg resident Kendall Smith is seeking a second term representing the 4th District on the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors.

Smith came to the job of supervisor with a good deal of administrative and government experience. She worked for the Mendocino County Public Health Department for many years as an administrator and health educator. Additionally, she was a field representative for Mike Thompson during his days in the State Senate and became his district representative when he went to Congress.

Smith says she really enjoyed working with Thompson and gained a good amount of knowledge about the workings of government in the process. With that experience, she says, she was encouraged to run for the 4th district seat and won by a significant margin.

Smith says that while all areas of government are facing serious challenges these days, rural areas are more challenged. As supervisor her constituency extends to Leggett, Piercy and Whale Gulch. She says that as a representative of such a large geographic area she logs a lot of time driving. On Wednesday night of last week, she attended a school board meeting in Leggett. She says it was a real “eye opener” to sit in

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on the discussion of a proposed bond measure, Measure D, which will generate money for facility improvements at the school. She said that some students are occupying trailers infected with mold and the bond measure is the only way the school district can get enough money to take care of such problems.

”It’s clear the governor is going after education,” she says, and she supports the efforts of the Leggett School board to raise the needed money locally.

Later this month, she will be visiting the Whale Gulch School at the northwest tip of her district. Helping her remote rural constituents navigate their way through the governmental bureaucracy is one of the aspects of her job that she enjoys the most. She was able to help Whale Gulch and the Mendocino Road Department come together on a paving project in front of the school to reduce the amount of dust. The project was cooperative to the extent that the school paid for some of the materials used. She says that even though the road is not heavily traveled, she felt that the school was deserving of its share of the road department budget.

Smith says that Mendocino County has the same amount of roadways to maintain as Marin County, but must do it with half the money.

In the remote areas, she says, residents will have to come together and build a good support relationship with their government, as the Whale Gulch folks did.

”Whale Gulch is a special community,” she says, adding that she’s appreciative of the resiliency of the people there.

Smith also serves on the Bureau of Land Management Resource Advisory Committee and has been very supportive of the work of the Mattole Restoration Council. She says that she thinks the county should lead on water resource planning.

Like every other county government, Mendocino is facing serious budget shortfalls, but Smith says that she intends to make sure that there is equity between the urban and rural areas of her county. As a 30-year resident of the Mendocino Coast, she has seen the tendency to provide services for large urban areas at the expense of rural areas.

She says that as she goes about her district, she finds that people are more and more concerned about meeting their everyday needs in the face of rising prices.

Government is facing some of the same problems, she says. There will be no new revenues in the budget and cuts will have to be made. She says the Sheriff’s Office is very challenged in its efforts to provide for public safety by budget constraints.

If re-elected, Smith says she would like to set up a structure that will bring together the rural supervisors in both Mendocino and Humboldt Counties.

”We need county to county partnerships,” she says, “and better communication. There are issues that the two counties have in common, like the future of the Eel River and land use planning. We also need a regional approach to economic planning and development.”

She would also like the two counties to work together to develop an educational use for the portion of the old Redwood Highway that will be abandoned once the bypass project is completed on U.S. 101. She says a planning grant will help developed the old road for use as a watershed and historical education area.