In Ukiah, a Town Hall Tests the American Experiment

7.25 p.m. 2025-04-05 An initial draft of the this story mistakenly identified the town hall as occurring on Thursday instead of Friday.

On a brisk Friday evening in Northern California, more than 400 constituents packed into Mendocino College’s auditorium at the Center for Visual and Performing Arts, many arriving early. What unfolded over the next ninety minutes was part policy briefing, part civic reckoning—and a full-throated reminder that the American town hall remains one of the last sacred venues where democracy breathes face-to-face.

U.S. Representative Jared Huffman and State Assemblymember Chris Rogers came to listen, to explain, and, perhaps most importantly, to hold space for the layered concerns of a region both steeped in local specificity and deeply aware of its place in national currents. Water rights, immigration raids, education funding, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza—each issue provoked not just questions, but emotion, history, identity.

The tone was set early when Huffman, delayed eighteen minutes, asked the crowd for civility. They obliged, mostly. But the evening was anything but quiet.

Few topics stirred as much tension as the decommissioning of the Potter Valley Project and the removal of the Scott and Cape Horn dams. The 2019 announcement by PG&E to end the hydroelectric diversion from the Eel River to the Russian River set off a scramble among stakeholders. Huffman, who’s helped broker a compromise to preserve seasonal water flow through a diversion tunnel, faced tough questioning.

Todd Lands, mayor of Cloverdale, dismissed the agreement as “political wordsmithing.” His concern? That the plan delivers water only when it’s not needed—during winter floods—without storing it for dry summers. “So during the summer times we won’t have any,” he said flatly. “That’s the problem with this.”

Lands cited a study that he claimed would allow for the preservation of the dams.

Huffman, both measured and firm, responded by untangling mischaracterizations. The study Lands cited, he explained, was misunderstood. It evaluated only one dam, not both. “It’s been conflated,” Huffman said. And the agency that funded the study supports the compromise. “No one is going to let the water supply just vanish and go away. And it keeps being suggested that that is the case. It’s not.”

From infrastructure to immigration, the questions pivoted sharply. Avalo Fuentes, of Ukiah Vecinos en Acción, raised the specter of federal immigration enforcement, asking what safeguards existed to protect undocumented residents without criminal records from ICE sweeps.

Rogers, invoking both policy and humanity, was unequivocal. “In order for law enforcement to be effective,” he said, “they have to have a good relationship with immigrant communities… Everything that undermines that actually makes our community less safe.” While ICE activity in Mendocino, has not changed since the Trump administration took office, Rogers acknowledged the spillover effects of fear are reverberating.

California, he reminded the audience, cannot direct federal immigration enforcement. But that hasn’t stopped local leaders from resisting its reach.

Concerns over education were voiced with urgency by Janice Hawthorne Timm, president of Mendocino College’s part-time faculty union. She worried about student access to financial aid and looming state budget cuts.

Rogers didn’t flinch. He outlined efforts to fight an 8% proposed cut to California State Universities and emphasized new strategies—like expanding housing for community college students and improving labor conditions for part-time educators. Huffman added his own federal lens, pledging to protect Pell grants and Title I programs, and to continue fighting for full funding of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)—a battle decades in the making.

The discussion turned global—and procedural—when Tekla Broz of the Mendocino County Democrats asked about a bill seeking to reclaim Congress’s power over tariffs. Huffman explained that Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act had enabled sweeping tariffs, even on U.S. allies like Canada.

“The president has taken great liberties with emergency authorities,” Huffman said. “Apparently Canada is now our enemy and we have a national emergency that requires all these crazy tariffs with Canada.”

Though the Senate has responded with bipartisan legislation, Huffman noted that the House recently undermined its own power. “One of the most disturbing things about the government funding bill that passed two weeks ago is that it tied the hands of the House,” he said.

Jeremy Malin, a local nurse practitioner, asked what could be done to support Medicaid and Medicare amid proposed federal cuts. Huffman’s reply was a sobering forecast.

“These cuts would gut Medicaid,” he said, outlining a cascade of consequences: skyrocketing premiums under Covered California, decimated Indian Health Services, layoffs, and weakened nursing home care. “Anyone with disabilities, physical or developmental—100% of them depend on Medicaid.”

But he also offered hope. Thanks to public advocacy, he said, Medicaid’s approval rating had soared to 81%. “We’ve elevated it into the national conversation.”

As the evening drew late, an unidentified woman thanked Huffman for his service—but challenged his stance on continued U.S. aid to Israel. Huffman didn’t dodge.

“I deplore what’s happening in Gaza,” he said. “What’s happening right now is not self-defense.”

He condemned the Netanyahu government, expressed compassion for both Palestinians and Israelis, and emphasized the complexity of policymaking. “This issue does not reduce to some simple binary. It just doesn’t.”

He acknowledged legal and diplomatic tools the Biden administration failed to use. And he pushed back on the notion that aid to Israel was unconditional. “Let’s be careful about the facts as we try to wade our way through a very combustible subject,” he said.

In their final remarks, both Huffman and Rogers urged continued public engagement. “Showing up at town halls and being engaged like this is part of it,” Huffman said. “It matters. This is something.”

Rogers invoked a more philosophical appeal: “Hope is a form of resistance,” he said. “The creep towards fascism relies on people feeling like they have no hope, that they have no outlet, no ability.”

By the time the town hall wrapped what remained wasn’t just a list of grievances or policy debates. It was the shared understanding that this work is messy, often unsatisfying, but vital. It was democracy, raw and imperfect, trying to hold.