Just like last year

It appears the June rains of 2010 will hold an encore.

Hazy prospects for Emerald City

The Santa Rosa Press Democrat on SoHum’s attempt to form a new town:

In the heart of southern Humboldt County’s prime marijuana growing region, an effort is under way to create a new city. It’s been dubbed “Emerald City,” a name as whimsical as the effort, critics say.

Emerald City is the fictional capital city of the Land of Oz, featured in books and in the movie “The Wizard of Oz.” And in pot country, emerald can be a reference both to the green of the marijuana plant and the color of money.

“It was sort of an irresistible temptation” to call it the Emerald City, said Jim Lamport, the man behind the effort and who owns a legal document service in Garberville. Southern Humboldt County is at the center of the so-called Emerald Triangle, a prime pot production region that also includes Mendocino and Trinity counties.

Full story.

Kinetic race brings national attention to Humboldt County

(CNN) — Forget about the Indy 500, America’s wildest race will be taking place almost 2,000 miles away in Humboldt County, California this weekend.

Scores of artists, pilots and engineers will bring their one-of-a-kind kinetic machines to race for the glory at the 43rd annual Kinetic Grand Championships.

Billed as “The Triathlon of the Art World,” the event pits human-powered art sculptures on wheels against one another in a three-day race across California’s northern coast.

Full story.

McKinleyville, Garberbille Sheriff substations on the chopping block

The Humboldt Deputy Sheriffs Organization has released a multi-media blitz over budget cuts that could close substations and increase response time to emergency calls. They are asking residents to sign a petition to urge the Board of Supervisors to preserve funding for the substations.

Press Release, charts and radio ad below.

(Click chart to enlarge or download the pdf.)

DEPUTY SHERIFFS RELEASES RADIO AD VOICING CONCERNS OVER BUDGET PROPOSAL TO CUT PUBLIC SAFETY LEVELS TO LOWEST ON RECORD

Staff budget proposal would force closure of McKinleyville and Garberville Sheriff Substations

EUREKA – Members of the Humboldt Deputy Sheriffs Organization (HDSO) released a radio advertisement voicing concerns about Humboldt County budget staff’s proposal that would force the closure the McKinleyville and Garberville Sheriff Department Substations and cut 20 law enforcement officers. The cuts would leave only 73 deputies, sergeants, and investigators to cover Humboldt County’s 4,000 rugged square miles from the downtown Eureka headquarters.

Federal challenge to Richardson Grove highway project

Challenge Seeks to Halt California Highway Project That Would Destroy Ancient Redwoods

[Press Release] SAN FRANCISCO— A coalition of conservation groups and local residents today asked a federal judge to stop California transportation officials from moving ahead with a controversial highway project that would jeopardize ancient stands of redwood trees in northern California’s Richardson Grove State Park.

The coalition seeks to halt plans by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to realign a section of Highway 101 that winds through old-growth redwoods in the park. The work would require crews to dig into the roots of towering redwoods that stand along the highway within park boundaries. Today’s filing asks a judge to stop the project until legal proceedings are complete.

The threat of possibly fatal damage to the prized ancient trees, as well as harm to sensitive wildlife posed by the controversial project, is driving today’s legal challenge, which is the second filed by the coalition. Caltrans has failed to evaluate impacts of the project in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

“The importance of this old-growth redwood stand, in view of the important heritage of the redwood forest, requires special consideration before projects that would impact the stand are allowed to go forward,” Joe McBride, a professor of forestry and landscape architecture at the University of California at Berkeley, said in today’s filing. “Substantial, irreparable damage would occur to the trees in the project area. This would, in turn, cause negative impacts to the overall health of the forest.”

McBride’s finding is based on his scientific review of the potential of impacts to each tree along the project route — a review plaintiffs show Caltrans failed to undertake.

“This project will cause major damage to one of our most prized state parks,” said Gary Hughes of the Environmental Protection Information Center, one of the plaintiff groups and spokesman for the coalition. “For Caltrans to railroad this multimillion-dollar project by grossly understating its impacts is a violation of the public’s trust and a wasteful use of taxpayer money.”

“With less than 3 percent of our ancient redwood trees remaining, we cannot allow Caltrans to injure and kill the precious giant trees of Richardson Grove State Park,” said Peter Galvin, conservation director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We will fight this project to the end, no matter how long it takes.”

Plaintiffs are Trisha Lee Lotus, Bess Bair, Bruce Edwards, Jeffrey Hedin, Loreen Eliason, Environmental Protection Information Center, Californians for Alternatives to Toxics and the Center for Biological Diversity. They are represented by a team that includes Philip Gregory and former congressman “Pete” McCloskey of Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, a law firm in San Francisco.

Supes appoint Dave Edmonds to Planning Commission

Humboldt County Supervisors voted 5-0 to appoint Eureka telecommunications engineer Dave Edmonds to the Humboldt County Planning Commission.

Edmonds is a former Planning Commissioner for the City of Eureka, and a past president of the Eureka Chamber of Commerce.

Cougars in Freshwater — and downtown Eureka!

[Email from Travis Pepke]

The main topic of conversation around our office this morning is “cougars in Humboldt,” and not the human variety. Here is what we know/have heard:

• My co-worker, Doug Shernock, tells us that over the weekend his daughter’s prize horse in Freshwater was chased into a gully and died. When the animal’s remains were recovered, they found evidence that a cougar had attacked said horse and left claw strikes all over the hindquarters. Apparently another horse from a pasture across the street was also killed and partially eaten a day or two previous to that, and Doug tells us that he recently spoke with an unspecified Dept. of Fish and Game worker who swore he saw a “pride” of cougars near Freshwater in Del Norte County.
• Unconfirmed rumors have been bandied about regarding further recent killings of goats and other small farm stock in the Freshwater area.
• A quick Google search uncovers a legitimate on-camera sighting of 8 cougars working together in Wenatchee, WA last Feb, so we know the grouping behavior at least has precedent.
• Another co-worker tells us that her son’s school in Freshwater has taken precautions by taping off certain wilderness areas and prohibiting kids from going there, for fear of cougar attack.
• Last night, yet another co-worker of mine and a number of other patrons at Ragg’s Rack Room in Eureka witnessed two mountain lions walking down the sidewalk near the post office on 5th & H St. Cougars in downtown Eureka!

I’m sure you’ve probably been receiving other mentions on this story, but just in case I thought I’d send what I’ve been hearing.

Regards,
Travis Pepke

ZIEMER: Take Planning staff to the woodshed

Humboldt County Supervisors will pick a new Planning Commissioner at its meeting this afternoon, and one of the top candidates has called for corporal punishment for county staff.

Retired Fire Chief Glenn Ziemer was named by 3 out of 5 Supes as a top choice to fill the vacancy left by Commissioner Bruce Emad, but Ziemer’s comments at the July 20, 2010 Planning Commission meeting call for pause.

Speaking about the challenge of providing fire service to rural residents, Ziemer called the staff’s work on the matter a “sham” and said they “deserve a trip to the woodshed.”

It’s not unusual for members and heroes of the Humboldt Coalition for Property Rights (HumCPR) to pound their chest while railing about county staff in the Community Development Services department. But it’s one thing to have it unleashed during public comment, and quite another to give it a nameplate and designated seating.

Ziemer is supported by developer-backed Supervisors Virginia Bass and Ryan Sundberg, with the third nod coming from swing vote Supervisor Jimmy Smith.

The only other candidate with three thumbs up is Insurance Broker Greg Conners, who is supported by smart growth advocates Mark Lovelace and Clif Clendenen — and again, the swing voting Smith.

It’s hard to imagine Smith — whose courtesy and patience seem boundless — would approve of calls to flog the staff. The General Plan Update is already a contentious affair without the addition of a Commissioner who thinks advocating for physical force against county employees is a productive way to finalize the long-overdue GPU.

Ziemer didn’t say whether he wanted to be the one to dole out the spankings.

Humboldt Election Transparency Project Gets Grant

Boxes of Humboldt County ballots from the June 2008 election await scanning. Photo by Tom Pinto.

[Press Release]

The United States Election Assistance Commission has awarded a grant to the Humboldt County Elections Department to further develop and document the processes and software used by the Humboldt County Election Transparency Project.  The $25,000 grant was one of only twelve awards nationwide under the EAC’s Testing and Auditing Grant Program.  Five of the awards went to state-level Secretaries of State and Boards of Elections, including California’s.

The Election Transparency Project was developed by Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich, community volunteers and election integrity advocates with the goal of allowing the voters to audit their elections by viewing digital images of the voted ballots. Open source software developed by project member Mitch Trachtenberg was instrumental in the discovery of a problem with the Premier/Diebold election tabulation system, which led to nearly 200 votes not being included in the Presidential Election report of November, 2008.  On further investigation by California Secretary of State Debra Bowen, additional serious problems were discovered with the Premier/Diebold system’s audit logs, resulting in that version’s decertification.

There and back again

[Guest post by Jackie Wellbaum]

Several years ago, during the Bush/Cheney administration, a few members of congress decided to live on the approximately $427 of food-stamp benefits provided to the poor. They reported regularly on how they managed to stretch this meager amount across the entire month in order to feed their families.

I attended the Arcata City Council meeting in 2010 when the aggressive panhandling ordinance was passed in a 3-2 vote with Shane Brinton and Susan Ornelas voting against (Ms. Ornelas seemed prepared to vote in favor but was swayed by the ground-swell of public comments against, hence the 3-2 vote rather than a 4-1 vote).

I wonder if any members of the Arcata City Council would be willing to shed their homes, hot showers and ‘normal’ lives to live for just a few months on the streets of a strange town with no money–just as many of the folks targeted by this ordinance do? I myself had been living a comfortable, well-insured and highly functional existence paying not one but three mortgages and preparing for retirement alongside other Gucci Loafer-wearing ‘American Dreamers’ when suddenly I experienced an extremely embarrassing and shameful psychotic break from reality. A period of complete and udder madness which quickly led to multiple “5150′s,” months in and out of fancy and not-so-fancy psychiatric hospitals, and finally homelessness after being prescribed a prescription drug with a known side effect of psychosis (similar to well-publicized accounts of our armed forces who are required to take prophylactic doses of anti-malarial drug mefloquine).

Within a short time, although I owned several homes, I was living on the streets and in the parks of San Francisco and eating out of trash cans. Finally I was placed in a locked-ward of Napa State Hospital for the criminally insane. No one expected to ever see or hear from me again. Not one family member came to visit or called to inquire how I was or answered my mail.

I can personally attest to the fact that however a person becomes homeless, once there you quickly come to understand how cruel and uncaring other humans and their laws can be. Helpless, vulnerable, broke and suffering from untreated mental illness hardly equip one to better their circumstances. Thoughts of suicide are constantly on your mind. And police officers can trigger a panic attack upon site.

As I walked the streets in a daze and looked through the windows of other people’s homes, my only wish was that one kind person living behind one plate-glass bay window trimmed with expensive, custom-made curtains in their well-heated homes would reach out to me and offer me a shower. I had been working since I was 14-years old and remained well-employed for most of my adult life. That low-point was not the life I worked so hard to attain. But it happened to me anyway, without warning, without time to properly prepare. Without the ability to find homes for my dogs. I never saw my puppies again.

I hope the City Council members of Arcata will consider ways they might better understand the plight of these fellow human beings who live on sidewalks across America perhaps by committing to walking a few blocks, for a few months, in their moccasins. The experience of street and park living and dumpster-diving with no money is so traumatizing and damaging that I can guarantee you will never look at ‘solutions’ to the problem of homelessness or at panhandlers the same way again.

There IS a solution to homelessness. It’s called homes, not sidewalks, folks.

This is my story.