LAKE COUNTY, Calif — On a 3-2 vote on Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors passed a collective recommendation to the U.S. Board of Geographical Names to change the name of Kelseyville to Konocti — despite more than 70% of voters opposing it in a November advisory ballot measure.
The decision followed three hours of public comment and board deliberation, amidst criticism of the county leadership and Measure U, which voters defeated Nov. 5.
In October 2023, “Citizens for Healing” proposed renaming Kelseyville, citing its association with Andrew Kelsey, who, with Charles Stone, brutalized, raped and murdered Pomo tribal members.
Their actions led to their deaths in 1849, sparking retaliatory violence, including the 1850 Bloody Island massacre.
In February, the U.S. Board of Geographic Names, or the BGN, sought input from county supervisors.
The Board of Supervisors held a special meeting in July and placed the countywide advisory, non-binding Measure U on the ballot. It asked voters if the Board of Supervisors should recommend the name change of Kelseyville to Konocti, as Citizens for Healing proposed.
It turned out that a majority of voters rejected the measure, with 70.58% voting “no” and 29.42% voting “yes,”
as shown in the final election results released last week.
Despite the ballot results, the Board of Supervisors came to a decision to make the name change recommendation at the end.
Nearly 40 public comments were made during the meeting, covering a range of arguments for and against the name change, with criticism of the county leadership and of putting the matter on the ballot in the first place.
Opponents of the name change requested that the Board of Supervisors adopt the voters’ choice against Measure U, arguing that they were elected representatives and should respect the ballot results.
Some also defied the notion of being called a racist just by opposing the name change.
Proponents of the name change invoked tribal members’ suffering and historical wrongdoings by Kelsey and Stone that were carried in the name of Kelseyville, asking for a moral action to be taken instead of following a majority vote. Some also thought that the voter guide on Measure U was misleading.
Lorna Sides, who submitted the name change proposal to BGN on behalf of Citizens for Healing, said that the ballot statements on “substantial” administrative costs in the argument against Measure U were false.
“The title to my home will not need to be changed when the name changes. My driver's license will still be valid,” she said. “This was a deliberate fraud upon the voters of Lake County, and that was allowed to go into the voter guide like that.”
Commenters on both sides raised doubts on the board’s July decision to put this matter on a countywide ballot, either saying it was a waste of time and money, or questioning its fundamental rationale: it’s not something to be decided by a vote.
The supervisors’ voteSupervisors Moke Simon, Eddie Crandell and Michael Green voted in favor of the option to recommend the name change of Kelseyville to Konocti. All three maintained the same stance as they expressed at the July meeting.
“Change the name, the healing can start,” said District 1 Supervisor Simon, who also is chair of Middletown Rancheria and one of two tribal members on the board.
Simon made it clear when he voted to have the advisory measure back in July that regardless of the ballot result, he would support the name change.
“I want the opportunity for the Indigenous people that have been here forever to see where we stand in this county. Every vote that we’ve taken, I think I know the outcome already. But I want it on the record. I want it on the record,” said Simon at the July meeting.
“It’s on the record now. No running away from it. I got what I wanted,” said Simon before voting for the name change on Tuesday.
Supervisor Crandell, another tribal member on the board, supported the name change and brought up the fact that the name change was “unanimously supported” by the National Congress of American Indians, which consists of 574 federally-recognized tribes in the nation.
But he also sensed something was not right in the process.
“I feel like this issue was thrusted among all of us by the submittal to change to Konocti and no other name,” said Crandell of Citizens for Healing submitting the proposal with only conversations with some elders at the tribe without input from tribal leadership.
While he felt that it was “a lack of due diligence” and frustrating, “at the same time, I know that there was an intent to do good and to try and do something moral,” said Crandell.
“The name of Kelseyville has got to go bye-bye,” said Supervisor Green, who thought that the name Kelseyville fell under what the BGN categorizes as “derogatory and offensive” and had no issue with the petition submitted to the BGN.
On the other side, Supervisor Jessica Pyska, whose district is ground zero for the matter, voted against the option of recommending the name change because of her intention to stay “neutral.” She suggested the board make no formal recommendations.
Pyska said she spent months communicating with the federal and state agencies, and blamed them for lack of clarity in the process and not showing up.
“I think that’s one of their failures is they never showed up to do that, to support us in that way,” said Pyska of the BGN and California Advisory Committee on Geographic Names.
“I feel like this process was dropped on us, dropped in my lap as the elected supervisor for this district,” she added.
Pyska reiterated her neutrality stance: “I told them (the BGN), you will not ever get a recommendation from me, because I have to support my community however the chips fall and whatever happens and that's what I'm committed on.”
Pyska’s neutrality did not seem to be received well in the meeting room.
During public comment, Pyska’s predecessor, former District 1 Supervisor Rob Brown, came up to say he’s against the name change but believed that supervisors should vote for what is right.
“You vote what you feel is right,” he said. “If the majority could determine what was right or wrong, we’ll still have slavery.”
At the end of his speech, he called out to Pyska.
“Jessica, with all due respect, neutrality is not leadership,” Brown said.
Later, when Pyska said, “you can question my leadership, all you want, but I have sat with everyone who wanted to sit with me throughout this last year,” a few tribal members including Flaman McCloud, Chairman of the Big Valley Rancheria, walked out of the meeting room before the final vote was cast.
Supervisor Bruno Sabatier, the board chair, also voted against recommending the proposed name change to Konocti, a turn from his earlier support for it in July. But his stand against having an advisory measure on the name change stayed firm. He and Supervisor Green were the two dissenting votes against having an advisory measure in July.
Sabatier said he could expect the ballot result to lean toward opposition to the name change based on “the number of letters that we received for and against."
“So it wasn't necessarily surprising to tell the people today that their vote doesn't matter. Then why do I come back here next Tuesday?” He added.
Sabatier said in the meeting that he as a voter voted “no” on Measure U.
“I didn’t vote no because I don't want to see the name change. I do want to see the name change,” he said. “I voted no because I don't think it needs to be Konocti, because I don't like how we got to that name, and I don't think it's the appropriate name.”
“I hate what this has done to us, because it's put us in a situation of an ultimatum. It’s either option A or B,” said Sabatier of the options to either go with the name change to Konocti or no name change.
The ‘options’ and the winning oneIt turned out that the number of options were not necessarily limited.
While voters were given two options — yes or no — to vote on, the Board of Supervisors gave themselves more.
The board’s agenda had initially outlined three response options to the BGN, each written in a long paragraph: 1) reject the proposed name change, 2) approve it or 3) make no formal recommendation.
The actual meeting began with even more options, without prior notification to the public.
Two more options similar to options one and three, with modified language, were added to the table, Chief Deputy County Administrative Officer Matthew Rothstein announced at the beginning of the meeting.
Shortly after the public comment was open, Brown, a
five-term supervisor who left office in January of 2021, walked up to question the process, citing the Brown Act that requires any agenda of a local legislative body’s public meeting to be posted at least 72 hours prior to meeting.
“How are you going to have adequate public input on something that none of us have actually seen?” Brown said. “You can’t vote on any of those if there are substantial changes. And that’s the law.”
Sabatier said there were printed copies of the draft letter to the BGN with all five options in front of the room for the public to grab and view before the board would make a decision.
“I think we're going to be having a lot of public comments and there's going to be time for people to review it during that time before we vote,” Sabatier said.
At that point, the audience started to move up to take the new material for the meeting.
Subsequently, Sabatier called for a short break, during which the public went to get a copy of the updated document while Sabatier himself took a stack of the prints and distributed them around the chamber.
“The options that have been provided are not revolutionary in the changes of what's the potential. The Board of Supervisors can always amend contracts or other things on the fly,” said Sabatier, who reconvened the meeting.
While the public who attended the meeting in person had a chance to review the five options, those who attended virtually or didn’t come to the meeting missed the opportunity.
By the time of this article’s publication early Wednesday, the
county’s website had not uploaded the new version of the document.
“That creates a lack of integrity in the process,” Brown told Lake County News after the meeting. “I was on the board for 20 years and my whole existence on this is we have to do this by the book.”
The option that the supervisors finally got to vote on turned out to be a modified version of Option 2, as Pyska suggested adding the ballot results in.
So, as verified by Rothstein, it reads as follow:
“Option 2 (Approve the proposed name change): In response to advisory Measure U, Lake County residents demonstrated their opposition to the proposed name change (70.58% opposed, 29.42% in favor), and members of our Board have concern changing a longstanding and valued town name is a non-trivial matter. However, our collective awareness of the violent acts committed by Kelsey and Stone demand change. Therefore, it is our collective recommendation your committee approve the proposed name change.”
However the board’s decision went, the supervisors did not think it would end the divide and the controversy.
“It will not end here,” Supervisor Crandell said. “We do not change this, the Board of Geographical Names does. And then from there, where does it go? Because it’s gonna keep going somewhere.”
“This is not the end,” said Pyska. “I feel like this is the beginning.”
“This is not going to be the last thing,” said Green, who added he had confirmed with the BGN that public input is still open at
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The timelineOn Oct. 18, 2023, a proposal was submitted to the United States Board of Geographic Names, often referred to as the BGN, to change the name of Kelseyville to Konocti.
On Jan. 23, 2024, the BGN published its
Quarterly Review List, which included the Kelseyville case.
On Feb. 26, the BGN reached out to the Board of Supervisors, requesting their opinion on the name change.
The Board of Supervisors did not act collectively until it held a special meeting on July 30, where the supervisors passed a motion on a 3-2 vote to put the Kelseyville name change on the ballot for countywide vote as an advisory measure, now known as
Measure U.
The supervisors’ meeting and decision came a week after the
county’s recommended deadline to file the measure and just 10 days before the official final deadline.
On Oct. 4, the county’s website published a document titled
“Frequently Asked Questions for the proposal to change the name of Kelseyville to Konocti” put together by the BGN, which was by far the most substantial response to the Board of Supervisors’ queries. But still, it lacked clarity.
By Nov. 5, voters had submitted their ballots and on Dec. 3, the certified election results showed a 70.58% “no” to 29.42% “yes” on Measure U.
On Dec 10, a week after the final vote was certified, the Board of Supervisors voted in favor of recommending the name change to the BGN.
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