Local blog update, and a reaction to the GPU hate fest

The media landscape in Humboldt County is quaking with economic and cultural activity (or lack thereof) and it’s all a junkie can do to keep up with this never-before-seen trajectory.  Some highlights:

1. Newspapers are folding and dropping days of publication.
2. Hank Sims is getting other people to update his Lost Coast Outpost blog for free —  and he’s still getting paid!
3. Charles Douglas and his maverick Humboldt Sentinel are posting in-depth interviews unseen elsewhere in this “did you poop and pee on the bank” media landscape.

Take for example this interview with Community Development Services Director Kirk Girard who was the recent subject of an obnoxious cover of the North Coast Journal.  The headline there asked, “Why Do People Hate Kirk Girard?”  Emphasis original, all bold and big font next to a picture of Girard.  Not as bad as the meat hooks, but sheesh.  Who else do we Hate with bold type on the cover of the Journal? Maybe the NCJ should make it a series.

Anyway, Girard spent an hour with Douglas, talking about his work history and the current topic of so much Humboldt County angst: the General Plan Update.  At about the 50 Min. mark, Girard has this to say about the motivations of his detractors.

If I can be discredited, it would  spill over into discrediting the entire plan, and potentially slow its momentum or stop it altogether.  And I say that because it’s a really common tactic as communities are going through General Plan Update processes to see if the argument can be made that the director should be fired, and by association pause or change the General Plan, change it’s direction.

But Girard says the Plan belongs to the Planning Commission, not him, as they have gone through it line by line over the last few years during public meetings.  Such tedium always follows scads of input from the Girard/GPU haters who continue to say they’ve been prevented from participating in the process.