Although the majority of council members appeared to support leaving the funds alone for at least the next month, they stopped short of voting and left the decision in the hands of the city’s MCOG representative, Mayor Tami Jorgensen.

The total needed for the full fourlane bypass is $360 million. The county allocation is just a part of the nearly $178 million already earmarked for the bypass from a variety of state, county and federal programs.

Supervisor John Pinches urged the Council to send a letter of protest to the California Transportation Commission now, but to avoid making a fi nal decision on funding until after CTC members come to Willits in April to meet with the council.

Pinches also urged the council and CalTrans to look at innovative ways to use the funds in-hand to meet the area’s bypass needs. Pinches suggested using the eastside of the railroad rightof- way for a two-lane bypass as one possible solution to the problem.

Concerned citizens spoke with opinions ranging from “let us build something now” to “we need no bypass”. Ways to relieve some of the local traffic bottlenecks were also discussed, such as extending Locust Street and Walnut Street and connecting Baechtel Road to Railroad Avenue.

At its Monday, March 5, meeting the Mendocino Council of Governments pulled back from deprogramming at least $17.3 million from the Willits Bypass.

To deprogram funding which has already been allocated by MCOG for the bypass would mean that MCOG would move it from the Willits Bypass column to another column, from which it could later be reallocated to other street or road projects in the county or in the cities.

In the view of Phil Dow, MCOG's long-suffering executive director, such an action would also "send a message" to the California Transportation Commission, which last Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to not allocate $177 million for the bypass, which has been on CalTran's books as a project since 1956.

Dow was clearly still reeling from the CTC vote and appeared to be out for a kind of vengeance. On the other hand, it appeared that he believed that such an action on the part of MCOG might knock some sense into the CTC, or into CalTrans, and might cause something to happen which would help the bypass get back on track.

"I don't think it's quite over yet," Dow told the council. "There may be one or two avenues of recourse that we have."

Dow told MCOG that he needed its help and that deciding to deprogram or not was a decision that was "out of his realm"

"I'm a technical person," Dow said. "I kind of thought this was the proper message to send. Maybe you in your wisdom maybe you know what we should do. I truly don't know."

Other speakers from the public had varying views on the matter. Former Third District Supervisor Hal Wagenet urged MCOG to deprogram the money. He said that the CTC did on February 28 "tasted like crap" and he urged MCOG to cut its losses unless it wanted to have to taste that flavor again.

But Willits City Manager Ross Walker urged MCOG to hold off, at least until the Willits City Council could have an opportunity to discuss the matter.

Third District Supervisor John Pinches questioned whether deprogramming the money would send the kind of signal that MCOG wanted to send. He suggested deprogramming might in effect tell CalTrans that MCOG no longer thought a Willits bypass was important.

"Maybe we need to step back and think a little but that don't mean we got to punt," he said.

Pinches, who was attending his first meeting as an MCOG board member (during his current term as a county supervisor) advised deprogramming funding for the Hopland bypass but was later informed that no money had actually yet been programmed for it by MCOG.

In the end, MCOG decided to hold off on deprogramming the money for the near term. It was thought wisest to allow some time for local jurisdictions to discuss the matter and evaluate what the implications might be.

As a substitute move, MCOG voted unanimously to approve and then send a letter of protest to the CTC. The letter recounted the long history of the bypass project and affirmed that everything had been done correctly, and that the program qualified for funding.

The letter also recommended that the CTC "immediately establish a stand-by list of Corridor Mobility Improvement Account (CMAI) projects that will be available for funding as recently approved projects fail to be delivered under the terms of the CMAI program.

The letter also urged that the stand-by list consist of CMAI projects that the CTC staff recommended but which were not approved by the CTC "and urges that priorities shall be established within this list based on point values previously assigned those projects by the CTC staff."

In other words, the commission was swayed by political pressure, but as the projects they funded fail to materialize by the required timeline, which Dow thinks is likely, the money they allocated would become available to the projects they bumped, number one of which would be the Willits bypass.

Dow estimated the situation where the CTC-funded political projects would not be ready by the drop dead date required by Proposition 1B, would likely take about two years to become apparent.

In a separate phone conversation with The Willits News, Dow said, "The only thing I can see to salvage this project is to put it on a stand-by list." But he added that getting the CTC to endorse the formation of a stand-by getting the CTC to endorse the formation of a stand-by list would take political muscle which Dow said he didn't have by himself. As we spoke, he was getting ready to talk to our state representatives, and to representatives from other rural districts in northern California.