I spent part of Saturday visiting the Brooktrails Township and covered the Brooktrails Fire Department Open House for TWN.

In partnership with CAL FIRE, the department put together an open house/preparedness event this weekend for residents. With hot summer temperatures and fire season right around the corner, the Fire Department wants residents to be ready for any contingency or emergency.

There were tables full of pamphlets, information about preventing and dealing with emergency situations, as well as T-shirts and raffle items and baseballs with "Smokey The Bear" logos emblazoned on them.

I actually felt badly for the volunteer firefighters that were assembled there. There was only one thing missing: the Brooktrails Township residents.

Where were the residents?
Except for one lone straggler toward the end of the allocated time for the event, most of the Brooktrails residents were no shows. Now you can argue that there were a lot of events going on this weekend and that the forecast called for rain, but it still seemed like a shame to me that the FD would go to the trouble of advertising the event and it ended up being sparsely attended.

The same story was true for a tour of the Brooktrails Community Garden in which resident Anthony Ward was scheduled to read excerpts from his book on gardening and spirituality. 
The pending threat of rain and cold weather in June seemed to deter residents from stopping by.

But for the other events, is it a lack of marketing to blame? I can't be sure.
This isn't the first event in North Mendocino County I have covered which suffered from a lack of participation from the very people it is intending to serve.

A couple of months back I attended a workshop of the Mendocino County Behavioral Health and Recovery Services Committee aimed at educating community members, particularly cultural groups such as native Americans and Hispanics, about the services available to them in terms of counseling, mental health and other areas.

Once again that workshop was missing members of the community, despite the fact I was told that there is a staff member employed by the county whose job description includes driving around the county promoting such events. Sadly, the counselors and presenters may as well have been talking to themselves because there was zero community input.

I have not attended other workshops, though I am told others have been better attended. Later this month on June 29 in Redwood Valley, another event, this time a cross cultural training, the byproduct of a collaboration between the Consolidated Tribal Health Project and the County's Behavioral Health and Recovery Services will feature a couple of speakers and discuss topics such as sharing of local practices.

I hope this workshop will see better community attendance and participation. The event is scheduled from 9 to 4 p.m. and lunch will be provided. Those interested in attending should contact Dustin Thompson at thompsondu@mendocinocounty.org