
Town of Scotia, LLC vice prez Frank Bacik gives a slide show presentation to Supervisors about the historic town.
Humboldt County Supervisors approved zoning changes Tuesday that allow the small town of Scotia to graduate from its status as the last (or nearly last) company-owned town in the USA.
For the first time, Scotia residents will have the opportunity to own their homes and form an elected community services district.
The vote followed a presentation by Frank Bacik of the Town of Scotia, LLC, which formed as part of the Pacific Lumber bankruptcy reorganization. Bacik said the town is not seeking additional development because it was built to completion in the 1920’s.
Supervisor Mark Lovelace drew comparisons between Scotia and current fights over future development in Humboldt County.

There are some “big, scary words that all apply to the town of Scotia that we hear and have us quaking in our boots too often,” Lovelace said before going down the list. “Smart growth, mixed use, high density, urban, planned development, master planned, walkable community and the scariest one of all, social engineering.”
“[Scotia] is a perfect example of all of these things, and it’s wonderful,” he said.
Longtime observers of the fight over Pacific Lumber logging operations may be impressed by the sign of the times on display as Bacik made his pitch to now Supervisor Lovelace, who challenged the Company’s destructive logging practices in years leading up to the long-predicted bankruptcy.
Bacik, a former attorney for Pacific Lumber under it’s parent corporation Maxxam, was one of the few who made out swimmingly despite the bankruptcy, including landing his current job managing the town.
He said his new employer has tried to “diversify the industrial base of the town of Scotia so the community has access to additional jobs that aren’t subject to the boom and bust cycles of the timber industry alone” — as if those “cycles” are natural rather than driven by a corporate bottom line such as the one Bacik defended during his tenure with Maxxam-Pacific Lumber.