Rednecks and hippies unite?
Below is a guest report submitted to the Humboldt Herald following Wednesday night’s presentation in Southern Humboldt by HumCPR.
Last night the Humboldt CPR realtor road show came through Redway, to great acclaim from a standing-room only, very diverse crowd of all ages and stations. HumCPR’s primary concern is TPZ and the General Plan’s Plan A, which in fact does criminalize our rural lifestyles (no shitters, no alternative to perc testing of blue goo, no grandfathering, no small parcels or de facto land partners etc.). Our primary concern was Code Enforcement’s ham-handed hooliganism on our neighborhoods, where a pretext of some civil violation in one house down a private road–bad wiring? junk cars? smelly pooper?–brings, I kid you not, seven SUV-loads of sheriffs ‘exploring’ the surrounding area, literally miles away from the pretext, driving past No Trespassing signs and through closed gates, up to and into people’s homes with no warrant or reason beyond the ‘open field’ doctrine that they can do anything we don’t stop them from doing. In my neighborhood they beat a neighbor’s dog, and told another neighbor on TPZ land that he had to tear down his son’s house and replace his septic system, out of the blue. How could he get rid of a 30-year-old house!? the sheriff was asked. The reply: burn it down. Thanks.
This will not make Mark or progressive politics look good. It will lead to massive redneck/hippie fusions at the Supes, starting next month. It will change the course of mighty rivers and voters–heads up!! This is the worst possible time to throw the weight of the Nanny State around. And it’s an excellent time to find out just what state mandates county planners operate under, and to consider if the Supes should aggressively seek exemptions from standardized absurdities like mandatory leach fields for single homes on 40 acres. More basically, progressives should get out in front of what will, alas, become Arkley’s mob if we don’t serve it, too. Also note that the ultimate boss of these code-abusers is Paul Gallegos, who has signed on to some Tooby-Ranch related Supervisorial policy change that will change again, come hell and high water. A critical alliance is inevitable–got a strategy?
Consider and discuss. Thanks!
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From my perspective, some kind of sewer system seems like a good idea. Hippies-and-rednecks-who-own-forties seems like a fairly small number in this democracy of ours. Good luck.
First, it’s not just about sewage–though poo in a hole is as good as poo in a hold. Second, this has happened before–the owner-builder code category was created the last time the county went on a red-tag jag in the early 80s. The Supes got visited by hundreds of threatened rednecks and hippies, and the result was the effective code holiday that’s existed in rural Humboldt ever since. Maybe that’s a bad idea. Maybe we should talk about it. But broaching the subject with random rampages strikes me as spectacularly bad thinking, and unneighborly. There are many more of us affected than you think.
Ah – abandoning the cause already?
Gee thanks Virginia for the ghost writing.
huh?
Of course, if the houses are red-tagged or burned to the ground and any potential buyer would not be allowed to live on the land, the property values would go WAY down (although the taxes would not for many years). Many if not all property holders, bankrupted by fines and/or court battles would not be able to pay their property taxes (why bother) and the county would take possession of the land. Who might be interested in such land? – Gosh! Do you think it might be timber companies?
This is a land-grab by the county coupled with a chance to sweep the hippies and red-neck trash out of the hills.
If this goes forward, it is the End of the World as we know it.
Odd, indeed, to find ourselves on the same side as the Arkleys.
I suspect – there will be blood.
Please, no blood for poo.
I read that post three times and I still have no clue to what the hell it’s talking about.
The way I read it, they’re saying “basically, progressives should get out in front of what will, alas, become Arkley’s mob if we don’t serve it, too.”
or else.
This is ironically mindful of historic events which lead to our country’s inception – involving a party in Boston at which tea was served, and the common man vented his frustration at the willful acts of a non-responsive government. Sadly, if we do not remember our history, we are truly destined to repeat it. Tragically, if these actions continue, there is bound to be blood.
It makes some sense to me. The weird thing is the way code enforcers treat country people like Mexican mafiosi. They claim they need big-barrelled back-up to go where solo county assessors and soil samplers and insurance inspectors don’t fear to tread. But sheriffs need ’em–until they get there, and just wander, without back-up, doing whatever they’re moved to do, supposedly harrassing big growers but settling for teeny toidy duty. Obviously something is very bunk here, but what exactly? And for who? 4:50 is thinking, and we all should.
What’s clear is that they’re pulling civil warrants for trivial code crap, and using them as entrees to do criminal investigations over a much larger area for big dope grows, on property that they couldn’t otherwise enter without probable cause. Maybe they believe their own press releases and think no one will stand up for the bad guys they’re really after. But that’s not who they’re badgering. Some cops are so aggro they may not even realize this.
Gee wiz guys. You dope growers don’t think your buildings have to be up to code? Or built with a permit?
I think it’s great that the code enforcment guy gets out of the greater Eureka area and works in SoHum. Taking a bunch of deputies with him in the back woods of SoHum also makes sense. Maybe take along a couple DA’s investigators with some assault rifles too?
The real arrogance comes from the POS dope growers that don’t think the laws apply to them.
this has happened before–the owner-builder code category was created the last time the county went on a red-tag jag in the early 80s.
That is very true. Who was here to remember those multi standing room only meetings with the county building department heads. It was an interesting site to behold.
Franchessi Hall at Redwood Acres was overflowing with rednecks and hippies arm-in-arm.
You see, in the rural areas, you’re pretty much talking about the same type of people wearing different colored clothing.
In town, it’s much different.
The Supervisor’s districts are very much different from one another. The 3rd district and the 5th district, though neighbors are not the same breed of cat. Same as the 4th compared to the 2nd. One size doesn’t always fit all.
Oh, I forgot to add, Rob Arkley and Tad may have more in common than they realize.
Thanks alot Jill Geist.
to gmf (6:02):
perhaps you are ignorant of the heavy-handed tactics that the “code enforcement” (warrantless seach) crew has been using around the county in recent months.
just consider the military-style raid they carried out at the “yee-haw ranch” in trinidad last year, where no pot or other drugs were found (just some cabins and old schoolbuses) but more than a dozen heavily-armed members of the “county drug task force” came in with the code enforcers, pointing guns at unarmed women and children and infants during their search.
this blatant abuse of the code enforcement laws as a pretext for marijuana-grow fishing expeditons, is definitely driving a wedge in the “progressive” community here in humboldt county. building codes may be a good idea, especially in urban and suburban settings, but no code enforcement visit is worth pointing guns at unarmed people and their children, an act of supreme cowardice for which the deputies, code enforcement officers, and their bosses gary philp and paul gallegos, should be held to account.
also, by letting the code enforcement staff act as the stalking horse for the drug task force, these short-sighted leaders have guaranteed that the code enforcers (and perhaps other county personnel) will be seen as just another arm of law enforcement. this guarantees that they will receive less cooperation from residents who object to their privacy rights being trampled, and could even lead to these code enforcement staff becoming targets of violence inthe future.
Not everyone who lives in the hills is a big dope grower. Repeat: NOT everyone who lives in the hills is a big dope grower.
There are a lot of small farms, small homesteads, regular familes, real people, town workers and telecommuters living on 40s out here, and if the cost of living cheap and lightly on the land in paradise is living a small shabby little house without septic, a lot of us are more than happy to pay it. Hard for city folk to understand, but you really don’t miss flushing when you live out here. Because you don’t need to.
Here’s a code issue for urban environmentalists to ponder: Water is the most precious resouce and future wars are going to be fought over it. So you pipe 20-30 gallons of clean potable water into your house and you shit in it. Every day. Ok, I know, in concentrated urban areas, you need sewers and septic, nobody wants cholera outbreaks. But they are massively water intensive.
A small family living on 40 or more acres can efficiently compost their poo, no septic needed. A composting toilet, whether home built (lots of great plans online and in alternative building books) or bought as a kit from Real Goods is sanitary and it is water wise. So are outhouses. One of the great impacts of rural development is water diversion. Composting toilets and outhouses do not use gallons of water to flush. Septic systems do.
My outhouse doesn’t smell, isn’t unsanitary, and doesn’t take water from the fish. So why should the county force me to build a septic? Even if they permitted a composting toilet, they demand the full greywater infrastructure be built–thousands of unnecessary dollars. Why? My shower drains into a flower bed and the kitchen sink into a small grass marsh, where ravens pick out food scraps from the outflow and the frogs –an indicator species–wallow there healthy and happy.
I’m getting old, I would like to get a shitter indoors one day, but you can be damn sure it won’t be the flushing kind.
Another issue: code is expensive. A small owner built home is affordable housing. Demanding urban standards where they aren’t needed is class war. (Repeat: Not everyone who lives in the hills is a big dope grower.)
Read “The Owner-Builder and The Code” by Ken Kern, Ted Kogon and Rob Thallon. Kern and Kogon were among the United Stand activists that demanded and got Class K standards for rural owner builders. The numbers are dated, but the argument isn’t.
I kind of think the code enforcement guy IS an arm or extention of law enforcment and I think it’s great.
Do you really expect me (or anyone) to believe that the drug task force guys point guns at infants?? That sounds like something Noel would say.
It kind of sounds as if you (6:35pm) are making not so subtle threats to the code enforcement guy? That kind of talk is not very bright.
If they got K class codes, what’s the problem with meeting those? Serious question, not baiting.
i wonder how much of the recent $175,000 DEA grant that the county recently accepted will be used to send a dozens of heavily armed cops to investigate code violations and point their guns at unarmed women, children and infants, as they did in last summer’s raid at the yee-hah ranch in trinidad? (see “codes, damned codes” in the 2/28 edition of the north coast journal).
they didn’t find any marijuana at yee haw, nor any other drugs, nor guns, but they did manage to seriously traumatize some small children in the course of “clearing the land” for the convenience of the code enforcement officer, who found some old schoolbuses and cabins.
yep, i’m sure glad that the police state is there looking out for our safety, threatening to shoot us, and our kids, to keep us safe from the hazards of an imperfectly built structure.
we shouldn’t give another dime to the drug task force until they can be made to behave with some respect for the safetly innocent civilians, especially children.
after all, shouldn’t the people have at least some influence, through their elected representatives, over the way our sheriff’s dept. treats residents? after all, it’s our money, whether it’s local sales tax, property taxes, or the federal income taxes that pay for those grants. now the power of the purse can be quite influential, but not if the board of supervisors blindly goes along with an ever-increasing law enforcement budget, and foolishly accepts every DEA grant, and forwards the money to the HCSD, no strings attached. this is another case of democracy, use it or lose it.
certain cowardly deputies will keep on waving guns at unarmed people, including children (as happened at yee-hah ranch in trinidad) as long as their boss, the sheriff, doesn’t stop them. and the sheriff has no reason to change anything, as long as the board of supervisors continues to rubber stamp the c.a.m.p. funding and other d.e.a. grants.
if the board of supervisors actually turned down a grant or two, i’ll bet the sheriff would suddenly be quite interested in finding out exactly what concerns the community has with his department’s practices, and dealing with those issues. money talks, and sheriffs departments have to listen to the arguments that money brings to the table, just like everyone else does. but they have been hooked on the sweet dope of c.a.m.p. and other d.e.a. money for so long, that it will take one hell of an intervention to get them to recognize that they have a problem and need to change.
if that doesn’t work, it’s time to dump the head bozo, sheriff philp, and elect a sheriff who will tell his deputies to keep their weapons holstered unless truly needed.
small children do not need to have guns waved in their faces for the convenience of building code enforcement staff or the safety of individuals wearing badges who are clearly too cowardly to be actual cops.
gmf, why should criminal law enforcement be necessary on a civil issue such as code?
I agree, thorn’s last comment could be read negatively but I don’t think it’s meant that way, just that people get scared and when they are afraid they might act stupid.
Frankly, I don’t see any danger to code officers; tax appraisers come to the hills all the time unharassed. Of course, they are civil employees, not law enforcement. Which code inspectors and enforcers should be as well. There is absolutely no reason to criminalize code violations if they are not harming tenants or the environment in any way.
Tenants? Is that what you meant or did you mean residents? Owner built and occupied homes is a different matter than owner built rental homes, don’t you agree?
it continues to amake me that folks who are supposedly so interested in making the county more “progressive” don’t seem at all interested in taking on the most powerful good-old-boy office-holder in the county, sheriff (and assistant code enforcement goon) gary philp.
maybe when one of your neighbors complains about that unpermitted shed on your property, and then a dozen or so of philp’s heavily armed goons show up and point guns at your kids, then you’ll finally realize how silly it is to blather on about “creating affordable housing” on the one hand, while the jack-booted cowards threaten your neighbors and their kids at gunpoint in order to take away the affordable housing they already have.
and all this over-the-top coercive police power is used just to grease the skids for an out-of-control code enforcement unit to find a few more penny-ante code violations and force people out of safe, affordable living situations they already have and into the clutches of the welfare state / police state.
wake up “progressives.” until we can stop the government from doing so much harm through the excesses of the police state, its silly to expect people to support giving the state more regulatory powers in other areas, like environmental protection or healthcare.
the first rule of government should be he same as the first rule of medecine: “first, do no harm.” when we’ve achieved that goal, then we can talk about what good might be achieved by expanding government programs.
in the meantime, you are all just proposing band-aids as treatments for cancerous tumor.
Anon 6:52, good question. First, lots of the rural owner built homes in question predate Class K (like mine). Permitting after the fact is prohibitively expensive, and under current County conditions, impossible.
Second, a lot of folks, in the interest of affordability or sanity (have you ever tried to deal with planning?) or even for political reasons skipped the permit process. Maybe it didn’t seem to matter at the time. But it’s done, and after 25 or 30 years, now the county wants to criminalize them? Not a sensible approach.
7:02, yes, you’re right, I meant owners. Interesting slip of the old keyboard; I’ve rented a lot of dumps in my time and was grateful cheap housing existed. Hated the slumlord but loved the slum, I guess.
So, what happens when this property with its owner built, codeless house is sold?
to gmf (@6:47)
i don’t expect members of the “law-and-order” crowd to believe that the drug tasks force members pointed guns at unarmed women, children and infants until they witness it themselves. some, of course, will still manage to justify such cowardly acts in the name of ensuring the safety the cops (that baby could have been hiding a grenade, right?)
but i believe they pointed guns at unarmed women and children because i heard it first-hand from an eyewitness, who had her baby on her hip and her small child by her side while one of our brave boys in blue pointed a gun directly at her. she was unarmed, and cooperating with the request to leave the property during the seach, she just wasn’t moving fast enough for the shouting, threatening cops.
even the code enforcement officer, interviewed on kmud, admitted that the cops’ “guns were drawn” during this interaction with an unarmed woman, marie, and her two kids. he claimed that all the guns remained “pointed at the gound” during the incident,” but didn’t explain how he was able to see all 12 of the armed cops at the same time to confirm that this was the case.
so i believe my friend, who is not given to exaggeration, and has no reason to lie, and i disbelieve the cops, who have every reason to lie in this case to protect their cowardly asses.
as far as your claim that the last statement in my first comment could be construed as a threat, i think that your interpretation is quite revealing as to your own paranoid mindset. neither i, nor anyone i know, would ever consider attacking any cop or code enforcement officer, except in direct self defense. my point was simply that others are not so enlightened, and therefore the foolish decision to make the code enforcement department a front for the drug task force blurs the lines of what county employees are, or are not, part of the military-occupation tactics of the failed drug-war. blurring that line puts a lot of other county employees under suspicion from the public, including, no doubt, some members of the public who have no scruples about the use of violence (much like the drug task force itself, ironically).
Me an’ Suzy Blah Blah thouht we’re agoin to live tha dreem on are 40. but sum city sliker com outta noware and start preechin tha law an tha such LOL. are traler..cough couh tee hee.. and are outhose was filty an all..hack weez,. but a shuk an a jive an were gonna figgur it allout.Lol
Stoney Love
unpermited
two more public officials who should be held to account for the violent/cowardly actions of the code enforcement unit and their trigger-happy drug task force pals are:
the county counsel – according to code enforcement official who spoke at last night’s meeting, the code enforcement unit is part of the county counsel’s office.
district attorney paul gallegos – according to the same official, the code enforcement staff derive their (completely unnecessary) law enforcement status from gallegos’ office.
paul gallegos, you supposed “progressive,” you alleged “civil libertarian,” just what have you done to make sure the kind of cowardly acts of police intimidation and armed confrontation that happened at yee-haw don’t happen again? pretty much nothing, eh? perhaps you need to spend a little less time posturing for the press and a little more time overseeing those county code enforcement goons who are operating under your authority.
perhaps it’s time to look for replacements for philp and gallegos, as well as replacements for any county supervisors who remain silent, or actively support such police-state tactics. (note to “gmf,” i’m referring to our electoral process here…just though i should make that clear so you don’t get scared again!)
cops pointing guns at infants and mothers, supposedly to keep them “safe” from code violations, is a perfect example of “the cure is worse than the disease.”
7:14. Nothing really. Unless you want a mortgage. Lenders want code so mortgages can be bundled up into securities and resold. They don’t want wierd properties in those securities. Without code structures, you can’t get a bank loan, as land is not considered collateral. You end up paying more on a private note, ARM or ag land loan, or the owner carries the finance. There is nothing that prevents a non-code property from selling as long as everything is presented honestly. I bought sweet land with a decrepit house that has slowly cleaned up nice. Affordable price, though financing was tough. And I can never, under current County process, normalize the code, so insurance is costly and now I now risk armed officers red-tagging my outhouse.
Big beautiful moonrise over the hills tonight. Totally worth it.
A few thoughts…
Housing without code costs almost as much as housing with code. Not following codes doesn’t make the materials (a large part of the cost) any cheaper. Investing money into a home that is hard to sell doesn’t make much sense. Buying a home that hasn’t been built to code makes even less sense.
aparently this is what happens when our local so-called “progressives” believe that they have gained the upper hand – they immediately begin to overreach, trying to push the hand of government bureaucracy out into every nook and cranny of the county.
i wonder if gallegos would have won his last election if it had been preceded by months of the police-state tactics we have seen recently from the code enforcement goons, all carried out under the auspices of the district attorney’s office. my guess is that gallegos probably would have lost and we’d have ‘worthless’ worth dikeman instead. what some of gallegos’ rural (former) supporters are starting to wonder is: would dikeman really have been any worse?
better address this situation, pronto, my “progressive” peers, or you can kiss your new-found power goodbye, as the working coalition between our rural civil-liberties-minded “back to the landers” and the traditional urban/suburban government-program-oriented “liberals” begins to crumble. your reach exceeds your grasp, power-lovers…better pull back that grasping hand now, and not wait until you can only pull back the bloody stump.
(note to the faint-of-heart, including “gmf”: relax folks – “grasping hand” and “bloody stump” are political metaphors)
Putting labels on other people and then grouping them all together under one banner serves no purpose, Thorn, other than to support your own theories. Calling Gallegos a “progressive” because he is hated by the far right makes about as much sense as calling McCain a progressive because the far right hates him too. We are not defined by our enemies but by our principles.
Amen, 9:12. Amen.
I am not too cozy with strict code enforcing- I mean, who cares? But when my lawyer neighbor hauled an entire house onto his property without permits and dug his own septic system right next to my house (without permits), where it didn’t perk on his land, I felt really violated. His poo is seeping into my ground and groundwater. Maybe some rules do have a purpose. I want him gone, and I want his cabin and septic system gone.
“…you pipe 20-30 gallons of clean potable water into your house and you shit in it.”
Hill William offers a refreshing perspective. Threads like this may become contentious, but I value these opinions and read them with interest.
Composting toilets make sense. I have used one (probably illegal) and there was no smell and it worked quite well.
to: anon (9:12)
i call gallegos a “progressive” (a quote-unquote progressive) because he claims to be a progressive and his supporters claim he is one, but the kind of “progress” we’re seeing as he arms the district attorney’s office with assault rifles and allows the code enforcement goons and their gun-toting chaperones from the drug task force to run roughshod over our privacy rights – this is not the kind of progress any sane person would want.
labels such as “back-to-the-landers” or “urban/suburban goverment-program-oriented liberals” are certainly generalizations and oversimplifications (as are any terms of analysis), but these labels do, in my opinion, aptly describe some clusters of people and public opinion that have been important parts of the current, relatively new working majority in humboldt county politics. now, the code enforcement / warrantless search situation is driving a wedge between these constituencies, much to the delight of the local good-ol-boys network, who are still sore from a string of recent electoral defeats.
Where / when did Gallegos claim to be a progressive? Progressives’ support doesn’t make him one. They supported some of his actions, certainly not all of them.
to our “progressive” elected officials in humboldt county:
pretending this division in our community is not happening will not stop it from happening.
pretending that anyone concerned about this situation is either a pot grower or a “redneck” or an arkley stooge will not stop it from happening.
what can, potentially, begin to heal the rift is:
(a) admitting that there is a problem with the code enforcement unit and it’s unhealthy attachment to the drug task force,
(b) enacting an immediate moratorium on these armed, confrontational code enforcement visits/warrantless searches,
(c) soliciting solutions from the community in the form of public hearings arouvd the county, and
(d) adopting the best solutions put forward by the community to address the ongoing problems.
who decides what are “the best solutions” ? well, you current elected officials can get a crack at that, but if you waffle, or punt, or dig in your heels, we’re gonna bounce you out of office and see if your replacement can do better. that’s democracy, baby, so you’re just gonna have to suck it up.
now is the time to speak plainly, listen carefully, and act expeditiously. otherwise you will soon be out of power, and the solutions adopted by your successors may be even less to your liking.
if you don’t think gallegos considers himself a progressive, call him up and ask him. certainly that’s how his last three election campaigns have described him.
now more and more people are starting to wonder just what sort of “progress” these folks have in mind. using code enforcement as a pretext for warrantless searches? pointing guns at unarmed women and kids to “protect” them by dirving them out of their home because it doesn’t meet some suburban barbie’s dreamhouse ideal?
my advice, above, to “progressive” elected officials, also applies to candidates for public office, including mr. mark lovelace, 3rd district supervisorial candidate.
many of us admire mr. lovelace for his hard work on behalf of our environment. he seems to be a thoughtful and reasonable man. as such, i hope he recognizes that a useful tool like building codes, can, when misused by the likes of our current code enforcement unit and the drug task force, be transformed from a tool into a weapon – a weapon selectively wielded against certain disfavored members of society (“hippies,” “rednecks,” the rural poor, presumed pot growers, etc). this sort of police state crap is “progressive” only in the way a cancerous tumor progresses to metastatic cancer.
As if people in McKinleyville all get permits! Oh but that doesn’t fit the desire to polarize that seems to be a human instinct. OK, so it’s the urban McKinleyvillans vs. the hill folk–as if we have such a different view of a good life.
The General Plan is not about building codes–it’s about where people think appropriate development should be located.
Calling yourself by a label that doesn’t really fit is an old tactic. Progressive fascism would be more accurate.
why should people in mckinleyville or fortuna bother to get permits, and why should eureka slumlords bother to bring their buildings up to code? answer: they don’t have to to bother. they have nothing to worry about, since they can rely on the fact that the resources of the code enforcement unit are diverted toward a different set of priorities out in the hills, a twisted set of priorities arising from the failed, but still deadly, war on marijuana.
progressive fascism, indeed.
Remember that code enforcement reports to Gallegos, if he really wants to support alternative lifestyles he can stop the code enforcement guys anytime he wants. Rememnber too that Lovelace supported restrictions on building over and over again. At least on the building issue he is not our friend.
heh, at least Heraldo didn’t claim that the guest speaker was anonymous, because anybody on the Butte knows that rhetoric.
And thanks to Hill Williams for speaking the truth about living in the Hills. We are not the same people. We are simply people doing for ourselves as best as we see fit. If the government thinks they know better, they can bite me – and with guns on their hips, I suspect they may want to do more than bite.
ANY candidate that says they don’t support code enforcement shouldn’t be elected. There is a huge difference between using fascist police tactics and insuring that homes comply with building codes. If you want to go live in a cave, be my guest. If you want to build a house get a permit and pay your taxes on the improvements. People who think they should just be able to build anywhere without permits (and without paying taxes on those unpermitted structures) should go live in the third world where you can live in any shelter you like. These CPR goons are trying to fool you, but don’t forget Rodoni (their favorite) and Tooby Ranch.
Thorn – If you look at your comments at 10:18 you will see that you are proposing EXACTLY what the HumCPR people are suggesting. Are you a Arkley/developer stooge or is it possible that HumCPR is precisly what they say they are: concerned citizens trying to make a difference. Sure some of them are realtors and big ranch owners, thats how come they learned about what the county was up to first. That doesn’t make them wrong. Besides, only a few of them are “in the business”, almost all are just like the rest of us with regular jobs raising their families and just getting by. Try setting aside your bias and actually listening for a second. Everything they said was going to happen is happening and their ideas are the same as yours. Teaming up may not be such a bad idea.
thorn, the cities use CITY employees for enforcement.
So now CPR is opposed to building codes and permits? Oh please tell us more about CPR’s agenda 6:28. You CPR goons are desperate for more adherents and lying just like your kind always does. Look at the history behind these pro-developer groups. Where is their funding coming from? What is their history of being honest and forthcoming in the past? Look at HELP, Eureka Coalition for Jobs, Sunshiine Group, etc. All the same people, the same hiding behind dupes and the same lies.
Bottom line right now: HumCPR is doing more than Healthy Hum to defend rural interests. Name-calling may be more fun to you than analysis, but the point’s well taken that we need a strategy here. Sticking your tongue out isn’t a strategy.
Seems to me the progressives could start thinking before the mobs arrive about how to soften Plan A. And insist that Code Enforcement rhetoric about TPZ come into compliance with state law (code cops are falsely threatening structures that certainly are being taxed). And explain to Paul that, whatever he may call himself, he needs a political base that his employees don’t goon up on. He must recall that cops, like bloggers, often exaggerate, and tend to demonize customers. That’s why we elect reform DAs, remember?
7:39 – No one has ever said HumCPR was opposed to codes and permits just in favor of the right to live on your land and having a permit process that normal, reasonable people can understand and deal with. That is NOT pro-developer, it IS pro-lifestyle. The goons live in the Planning Department and the Supervisors chambers, just ask the folks living in So. Hum. Open your eyes and look past the anti-growth mantra. You might just learn something.
12:23, whether a house is code or not, you pay taxes on it. Square footage is the basis, then they add more depending on how finished it is. Not being permitted or code gives no discount or dispensation, they still assess you. I pay taxes on my unpermitted structures, (have a barn too) which are small, cute, tidy, warm, and far from cave-like. The taxman doesn’t care whether I flush, just that I am flush enough to pay.
A small house is affordable housing. Forcing urban standards on rural houses is war on affordable housing.
There seems to be an unspoken assumption on the part of city folk that unpermitted = squalid. Sure, there are dumps in the country, just as there are moldy, filthy, leaky tweaker houses in towns. That all depends on owners, who cannot be generalized. There is a wide range of rural housing, from converted school buses to straw bale construction to small one room wood frame cabins like mine. If you’re a tidy person, you have a tidy house.
8:32, code DOES make a huge addition to the cost of a house. My rocky heavy clay land won’t perk, I HAVE to compost, yet in order to permit my composting system, which uses no water, I would still be required to install a full greywater system–thousands and thousands of dollars–to obtain a permit. Utterly ludicrous requirement based on uban needs and urban standards.
Uncoded houses are not at all hard to sell. Maybe if there were enough housing to meet the demand they would be harder to sell, or if this were an area where everyone wanted McMansions no one would want an uncoded place, but there’s not enough housing to meet the demand anywhere in rural Humboldt, and there’s no where near enough affordable housing anywhere in America.
You are claiming that anyone who is opposed to unrestricted development is anti-development. A dishonest ploy and very transparent. Thorn’s comments at 6:18 were about code enforcement. Your claim that his agenda fits yours is more dishonesty unless CPR is opposed to permit and code enforcement. While that wouldn’t surprise me, the developers aren’t so clueless as to believe they could sell any homes they built ANYWHERE that aren’t built to strictly enforced code. You are being used by duplicitous people for their own purposes, not yours.
And since we are all in the mood for transparency of advocacy groups, isn’t it time to come clean about CPR (and HELP, Eureka Coalition for Jobs, Sunshine) funding? Who is paying for their office? Names and amounts donated please.
Thorn seems to be really upset. I kind of get the impression that the code enforcement guy and the drug task force has paid him a visit recently? Could that be the reason he has a burr in his bonnet? Or maybe he is worried that they will? Paranoia?
Does Mr. Thorn have any facts, or real hard evidence, of any of the atrocities he speaks of? I don’t think so. Calling the code enforcment a facist and the drug task force trigger happy whatever is just trash talking. All this whining makes me think that “thorn” lives in a very rural area because he is a marijuana grower. And as many soHum marijuana growers thinks that the rules or laws don’t apply to them.
There is more to code enforcement that toilets. These codes are in place for legit reasons. Are these unpermitted houses, shitters, and barns wired correctly as in safely? What happens if you go to sell the property to a non “farmer” and they can’t get a loan because the place is not up to code?
What is required in Cutten should be required in “Thorn” or Alderpoint. It’s kind of funny how this is only an issue where marijuana growing is the norm. And yes I know all of the folks living in rural sohum are not marijuana growers. But MANY are and Thorn knows it.
Admit it Thorn, the real issue here is marijuana.
If you don’t have a permit to build, how does your structure get on the tax rolls? Buying an unpermited house is indeed virtually impossible to do unless it is an under the table transaction for cash. Not something a prudent person would even consider.
Who does that imprudent buyer sue when his house burns down and kills his kids due to faulty wiring? There is a good example of what happens when people mistakenly buy homes that have problems in this blog. See the Pollace bankruptcy story.
My house is not code. That doesn’t mean I am careless and ignore safety. I have safe gas and safe wiring and a safe chimney. I want to live here a long time. I cut back the brush, cleared the forest understory 200 feet back and installed a pump and standpipes and fire hose. Living in rural areas means you are hyper aware of fire prevention, not ignorant of it.
It doesn’t require cash under the table to buy an unpermitted place. Owner financing, ag land loans, and ARM loans are all available legally and tax-deductable. It’s more expensive and annoying to finance, that’s all.
As for buying a place, it would be pretty hard to represent a place like mine as anything other than what it is. I should hope any buyer inspects anything thoroughly. Many people, like myself, were happy to buy a simple uncoded place–ever hear of a fixer-upper and sweat equity? I had to accept the limitations in order to afford anything. It was an easy decision.
As to how a new home get on the tax rolls, I don’t know, mine was already here, but they fly regularly and code enforcement says they use google earth, so I suppose Big Brother Assessor manages to find you eventually.
Amazing lot of nonsense here. The assessor taxes every structure without fussing over its code compliance, because that’s a trivial technicality. Most rural homes aren’t permitted because it’s a pain in the ass, just like it is in town, and for more than 20 years we haven’t had to out here. A great many rural homes are build to code by the same builders who work in town, or by people like me who read code books. But, as has been said more than once, urban standards don’t always make sense in rural areas. Cartoons and caricatures don’t make sense either.
Now, about pot. Pot is the excuse, not the reason, for incredibly abusive police action. Pot enables the story that ‘bad people’ and not ‘regular people’ are getting guns stuck in their bellies and their dogs beaten and their buildings and homesteads threatened. This isn’t made up, this isn’t second hand. The reason this matters is that it is NORMAL BEHAVIOR. What happens to us today is what will happen to you tomorrow, in your neighborhood with nice toilets. Honest to goodness, cops can’t tell the difference between people and perps, and aren’t trying to. You’ll see that when they get to your belly.
Your claims that unpermitted structures get taxed is misleading. They don’t exist in the bureaucratic world unless there is a paper trail that starts with a permit. Tax collectors do check out property for improvements which, of course, triggers investigation of permitting and code violations. If you don’t want the code enforcers swooping down on your unpermitted shack, then get a permit and build them to code. Violating the law and then complaining about aggressive enforcement is trying to avoid your responsibilities to get the permits and follow the law in the first place. I don’t believe drawn guns are necessary for civil law breaking and should always be the last resort.
Houses that aren’t up to code are a different issue. Codes change over time, as they should, and older homes are not up to current code in most cases until you get a permit to make alterations or additions. Certain alterations require a permit and lack of permit is a code violation in itself.
A contractor who builds an unpermitted home could lose his license if caught doing so.
i am amused to see some of the responses to my numerous comments of last night. a few points are worth responding to:
* i have never had any problems with code enforcement, personally, nor do i anticipate any.
* the evidence i cited in criticizing the behavor of the cops and code enforcers at yee-haw in trinidad is the eyewitness account given directly to me by the woman who had the gun pointed at her and her children. (see above)
* the four points i suggested above to try to heal the widening rift in the “progressive” community here in humboldt involved, first and foremost, admitting that there is a problem with the code enforcement unit’s use as a pretext for unwarranted searches. that’s not what i’ve heard from humcpr, which seems to be most concerned with the general plan and tpz building issues. but if humcpr express concerns about the code enforcement / drug task force crackdown, and the police-state tactics used, then i say good for them, and shame on the “progressives” who remain silent in the face of these over-the-top police tactics.
* yes, i DO think that at the bottom of this issue is the failed, but still lethal, war on marijuana. that should be clear from my earlier posts. the problem is a county government, particularly law enforcement, which is so drunk with c.a.m.p. and d.e.a. money that it is warping other government functions, like code enforcement, to meet the goals of the war on pot.
* mckinleyville is not a city, and code enforcement is supposed to be provided by the county, if they weren’t so busy acting as a front for the drug task force out in the hills. a good deal of what we call eureka (including most new building) is actually outside the eureka city limits, and therefore is also the responsibility of county staff.
* to the commentator who said “there is a huge difference between using fascist police state tactics and ensuring that homes comply with building codes” – that is my point exactly. if they were really just trying to get homes “brought up to code” that would be one thing, and we can have a reasonable discussion of what those rules should be, when some leeway should be provided, and how best to enforce the rules in a safe, equitable way. But the reality of the current round of military-style “raids” like the one at yee-haw, is much closer to “fascist police state tactics” than regular civil code enforcement, which is generally done with legal papers, not guns.
You are wrong on many levels at once, 9:20. Rural homes are taxed on the basis of square footage, often estimated from regular overflights and confirmed on the ground where additional facts may be established as well. The thousands of unpermitted rural homes did not ‘violate the law.’ County practices had been fixed and firm for more than 20 years.
Go sell your lies at your CPR meetings 9:53.
“first and foremost, admitting that there is a problem with the code enforcement unit’s use as a pretext for unwarranted searches.”
Why are you assuming that any “progressive” disagrees with this?
My experience getting a mortgage on my (unpermitted) rural home was this: the existing mortgage I took on was categorized as a farm loan, at 2 percent higher interest than home loans. After my wife and I had worked on it for 6 or 8 months, we had an appraiser come up, and with that home appraisal got a lower-interest refi. The refi was a normal home loan that, interestingly, ignored the large ‘yard’ surrounding our home. That’s it. We have a nice place. Code never came up. It isn’t important out here. There aren’t inspectors on city payroll to enforce it anyway. It just plain isn’t an issue–until way weird stuff happens out of the blue.
Way up there someone asked about Class K. That’s actually the Mendocino County equivalent of our owner-builder code category, I believe. I’m not sure, because my own understanding for all the years I was rebuilding was that, if you’re more than half a mile from county blacktop, there was no building code. Okay okay I’m a moron, but that’s how I understood the owner-builder code. It never came up in all my visits to the Courthouse. Code enforcement really was a non-issue at every level. So I don’t actually know anything about owner-builder, or know anyone who does, because none of us ever thought of going through it.
Building to code? Sure. Hassling over code? Why?
Codes don’t matter. Check out the General Plan changes that Planning is pushing. You won’t have to worry about codes because they won’t allow ANY building. It’s worth noting that Lovelace/Miller/HWC have strongly supported this no rural building concept. Go to the County site and see it for yourself. Don’t believe Lovelace or HumCPR believe your own eyes.
Explain Lovelace’s support of Forster-Gill then, 11:46.
There is nothing rural about Forster-Gill. It is all about urban planning and houses stacked like cordwood, a lifestyle choice already available…..in Los Angeles, which not suprisingly is where our Planning Department was trained.
Forster-Gill IS rural. You may not like the plan, but that doesn’t change the location.
People who live in remote rural areas put a drain on county services and the environment. You can’t debate that on facts so you are relying on scare tactics (they won’t allow any building) and outright lies.
Folks – Don’t believe anyone. Go to the Counties site and see for yourselves just easy they are going to make it to build a home on your own land. Make your own judgement about how their no-growth policies are going to affect you.
Yes you can build IF:
You are in a “fire related” district (not volunteer and not CDF)
You are less than 1/4 mile from a main road.
You get a finding that your residence is “necessary for the production of timber”
You do not extract water during dry periods from a water impaired watershed.
And many more…..
Planning staff will have many ways to say no in the new proposed plan.
You don’t think saying “no” is appropriate in some cases Ben?
There may be cases where development is not appropriate, but there are currently many safeguards in the CURRENT plan that seem sufficient. Remember when the whole TPZ thing started there were only an average of 2 to 5 requests for building permits on all the thousands and thousands of parcels in the County in a year.
The problem we have is that Planning Staff made a decision years ago to “look the other way” at illegal building in some areas. Kirk Girrard told me that! Now with the Tooby Ranch issue, they were in a bind because they are focusing on one “project” while looking the other way in other areas. I believe they decided that this policy would get them into a whole world of hurt and began to take enforcement action in areas like Redwood Creek and Garberville.
It is not about TPZ the “new” County requirements have onerous aspects that apply to all types of County land. There are pages and pages of environmental protections in the current General Plan. How many of you know of a house built under the current regulations that is a problem? There is no problem why are we paying millions to re-invent something that is already working pretty well.
The law is supposed to treat everyone equally Ben. Enforcing it for some but not for others isn’t fair, is it? If people in Honeydew can build without a permit, why can’t I build without a permit in McKinleyville or Freshwater? “Looking the other way” in the past wasn’t a good idea. Looking the other way in the future isn’t any better.
The idea of planning is just that, looking to the future and not the past. There were only 2-5 building permit requests because most people in the boonies are building without permits. How many unpermitted structures were built? The assessor might have a handle on that, I suspect a large number, Tooby Ranch being the tip of an iceberg.
Enforcing regulations is the only fair way to manage planning otherwise its “who you know” and “who you blow”.
And the environmental impacts and government services costs of folks living spread out while making a legal living reduces the quality of life for everyone else. And if they’re living way out and conducting clandestine activities, those impacts and costs are even greater.
I pretty much agree with ecovox. All in all, when it comes to where they aspire to live, hippies and rednecks do have a lot in common, but not as much in common with speculator/developers. But the rednecks have sided with the developers because their livelihoods have been dependent on them. The hippies are content to live more “primitively” so they need less income from the developers(and get more from ganja).
Which services cost more and how does living in the sticks reduce the quality of life for people in town?
Tim H, here’s some of the larger impacts that stick living brings. These are overall impacts some “sticks” people have less impact and some “close in “people have more, but in summation rural costs are larger for society:
Public safety, road/bridge maintenance, public assistance, education, environmental impacts(dewatering streams/rivers), environmental cleanup(dumping/burning of trash), health services, postal service, communicatons(rural telephone subsidy), public utilitities(when provided).
The disproportionate amounts spent on folks living in the sticks is subsidized by folks living more compactly. And that’s in addition to the disproportionate amounts of gasoline they use personally and for propane/diesel deliveries, which increases overall demand and costs.
3/21 at 12:q6 – YOU GOTTA BE KIDDIN US? The forester gill project is about as rural as downtown eureka. Trust us we live next to it.
Go bullshit someone who doesn’t or can’t know better.
I’d like to see some real accounting on that. I am talking about people living 20 – 30 minutes from town and commuting to work. The people living farther out than that probably don’t really get the same level of service as those in town.
I don’t see the public safety, assistance, education, and health services argument making sense in the 30 minutes or less instance. I agree to a point on the fuel issue, but it seems that since 40% or more of the fuel costs are taxes, which I believe some of are supposed to go for road maintenance, one could say those people are paying more than their fair share via fuel taxes.
Same goes for property taxes. If a person lives in a subdivision and buys a house for $300K, they pay the $3k for property taxes. I was told by the county at one point that 85% for the property taxes go to the schools. The same family in the same house on a 20 acre parcel would go for $600K, doubling the contribution to the school system.
not a native, much of that’s true. Some of what you list is the legacy of 150 years of land use that has only recently and imperfectly been renounced (without consultation). And unquestionably stacking people as closely as possible reduces their footprints, but it vastly increases necessary inputs for sewage, social service, garbage, bread and circuses that aren’t offered to us bumpkins. Why do cities and service districts have additional taxing powers? Because their concentrated populations need them.
Why do Garberville and Orick scream and howl at the Supes about neglect? Because they don’t get the services their taxes would pay for if they were urban.
Why does county code purport to force me to flush like a Eurekan? Because they don’t know any better. As a city boy who moved to the country, I know that individual habits determine amounts of waste, in town as in country. No argument that country living costs gas, but cities of strip malls do too. Some people ride bikes and car pool, in town and country. Impacts are horrible all around. As an off-gridder, I live comfortably on less than a tenth the electricity of the average city person, which I create on-site, as do all my neighbors. I could go on. But the point is that blanket policies that don’t even know what good and bad practices are, are not Smartgrowth in my eco-book. They are bureaucratgrowth that won’t save the planet, but just make it more expensive while it dies. I don’t support that, and I bet you don’t either.
(btw, we don’t all live on diesel or propane, either)
I don’t have the accounting easily available but neither do you to claim otherwise. Government costs are aggregated and tax rates are uniform, unlike car/life/health/homeowners insurance that are based (somewhat)on group risks and historical costs. So it’s unlikely that expenditures and taxes are “exactly” in balance for all individuals. Especially with prop 13. But show me anyone who acknowledges they get more back from Government than they pay in taxes?
As many commenters have written, they live in “the sticks” to reduce their individual housing costs, they can’t afford and don’t have $600K homes. A family living in town moves to a cheaper place outside of town(on a bigger lot). Homes in Arcata are much more expensive than homes in Kneeland. Rural assessments overall are lower and Williamson Act, agricultural, ranching subsidies also reduce tax costs, even for the non-commercial residents who find ways to “plug into” those programs.
As to road/gas taxes, we all know they aren’t covering the maintenance costs, that’s why local bridges are failing and roads crumbling. And that’s with special State and Federal assistance to rural areas. The urbans have rebelled against susbsidizing the rurals to the degree they used to. The high costs are mainly attributable to the rural roads serving few people (and earning fewer tax dollars per mile).
Are the taxes not covering the costs, or is the money being spent elsewhere? It seems like we should have a huge windfall from the sales tax on fuel since the price has escalated so much in recent years. Same w/property taxes. Where’d the dough go?
WHen was the urban rebellion? I missed it.
I’m talking at the state level, btw.
Ok anonymous. Not a complete reply.
In part, you made my point. Folks in cities ARE taxed more for what they get. The costs for those services in rural areas would be much higher and fewer people could afford to pay them, so the systems aren’t built. So the rurual people don’t pay the costs but produce the impacts nonetheless, because “everybody’s got to live”. Long rural private access roads and culverts often aren’t maintained well, economic subsidies given to rural people to reduce those impacts. Rural living is alot about “cheaper” living. But my point is that its cheaper for the individual but not for the general society. Rural people use shitters, burn wood and put in stream diversions not because they really want to be inconvenienced, they mostly do it because they can’t/don’t want to pay the higher costs to have their needs met conveniently. In fact, some rural people get together and form water/power/trash/firewood collectives to reduce their personal costs and get more convenience. But their impacts are still greater than urban dwellers who obtain much greater economies and efficiencies of scale for the same things.
This bears repeating:
# Anonymous Says:
March 21, 2008 at 12:23 am
ANY candidate that says they don’t support code enforcement shouldn’t be elected. There is a huge difference between using fascist police tactics and insuring that homes comply with building codes. If you want to go live in a cave, be my guest. If you want to build a house get a permit and pay your taxes on the improvements. People who think they should just be able to build anywhere without permits (and without paying taxes on those unpermitted structures) should go live in the third world where you can live in any shelter you like. These CPR goons are trying to fool you, but don’t forget Rodoni (their favorite) and Tooby Ranch.
If the roads are serving fewer people, wouldn’t they require less maintenance? I grew up on a gravel road with about 15 houses over +/- 2 miles it is still there. The road association spends a few hundred a year on gravel and they go out and fill potholes and grade it once in a while. Pretty minimal costs there.
Anon: The “urban rebellion” I meant was a change in the formulas and policies for State transportation money that now heavily favors urban “traffic congestion relief” over putting in new roads in further out places.
In a word, maybe. Overall it’s far from obvious. Your assumption that, for example, private roads cost public money is false on its face–they’re private roads that six-year-olds can drive because the public is NOT responsible for them. What you don’t seem to get is that the ramped-up appetites of city-dwellers aren’t the norm of the country–though God knows city gluttons aplenty now move to the country and continue to water like they’re still killing Colorado and not their own river. Sure, your blanket generalizations are as good as anyone else’s. They’re no better.
Wow, I love these alternating conversations. That urban rebellion was against suburbanization, not country living. That’s a night and day difference.
TimH No, road maintenance is largely a matter of time and weather, usage is a much smaller component within a given construction method. Rural construction is ususally done to a lower standard because it is so costly, and that also increases maintenance costs. How many landslides and road washouts occur in urban areas relative to the number on rural roads? I’d say rural roads are more dangerous too, sharper turns and narrower. That resulats in more crashes per person-mile, with attendant medical/emergency and property damage costs
The CPR goons want you to let them build McMansions in the hills which will bring in many rich people who will then work to get you all out of the hills.
If you think there is code enforcement now, wait till 10 years after they have sold lots of new houses.
Crashes per person/mile in rural areas are infinitesimal compared to urban roads. We get puny services because of puny use. You may not know how many of those crashees are from cities–you talk as if we’re not clogged with you. I demand my sales tax back from the mall!
anon. Well I don’t mean to accuse any individual but generalizations are needed when large numbers of people are involved. Sure, there’s lots of variation among urban and rural lifestyles, as you noted. But in aggregate, rural areas have higher government costs per person and thats just a fact. It is evidenced by numerous rural assistance programs the government has created to keep some degree of parity among the populace. Admittedly, some of those are because rural people(in aggregate) are poorer(and choose to remain rural and poor) and less able to provide for their needs.
You’re talking about illegal roads? The construction standards are pretty much the same in the rural areas, minus the AC. It has been my experience people actually want to build good roads and good drainage systems so they don’t have the constant maintenance issues.
I think this is a case of unit price vs. lump sum. I can get a 50 lb bag of rice at costco for hardly anything per pound, but do I want 50 lbs of rice? The impact per person may be greater in Fieldbrook than Phoenix if you only look at that slice of the pie, but on the other hand, where Humboldt will probably never get the efficiencies of a large metropolitan area, a few hillbillys aren’t going to hurt too much – especially if you keep them spread out far enough.
Nope anon, rural roads are much more dangerous. Of course, There are a lot more crashes in urban areas but that also results in emergency rooms and ambulances being more efficiently used, to put a positive spin. Check the statistics statewide, Humboldt particularly has a high crash rate. Many of those are on Hwy 299, 36. Remember the tragic Ruth Lake crash??
TimH Rural roads are thinner, have shorter radiuses, and are narrower. Check out the CalTrans standards that specify different road types dependng upon intensity of usage. When the engineering is done, usage and length are the biggest factors.
All this disagreement and nobody’s calling anyone a NAZI or making personal attacks? I have to go. Have a nice weekend.
Yep, its been nice and civil, good to chat, enjoy.
Me too. I gotta go get a life myself, but remember where those tragic deaths come from. Rural areas are for city people to enjoy, as city malls are for rural people to shop. The whole idea of taking targeted grants as proof of anything more than logs getting rolled in Sacto and DC kind of troubles me. Who gets subsidized lunches? 100,000 more cops? 200 billion dollar bailouts? Freeways to infinity? Free sewage and garbage . . .
The fact that even rural people get programs (and ethanol is one heck of a lot nicer a scam for rural America than anything you’ve mentioned) only proves that they have representatives too. The true cost of citizens is their consumption and expectations–and it’s a jungle out there, all over. Good talking with you.
I just heard from a good source that HumCPR has booked a hall in Ferndale in a couple of weeks. It will be interesting to see what the residents of the First District think about Planning and Code Enforcement abuse. The HumCPR show comming to a meeting near you.
There are land developers who envision Humboldt county as the next napa/ sonoma co. And we homesteaders are in the way of the planned gentrification of Humboldt Co. They cleared New Orleans quite easily, peoples homes and property gone for a pittance,perfectly sound homes destroyed with out the owners permission to make way for upscale housing and gentrified neighborhoods. Plan A’s doughnut communities ain’t gonna be affordable housing.
There are many places in the 1st world where composting shitters are encouraged in drought prone areas.
Today I called the planning dept. to inquire about a hypothetical composting toilet permit. they told me to call health and human services. Here is what health and human services said:
A general fee of $800 gets the process going. The first two percolation tests are $232 each, subsequent perc tests are $21. You must have an inspector come and test your shitter the 1st four years, 4 times per year at $145 per visit, and you will have to pay a bowel movement tax of $132 per year as long as your having bowel movements. The grand total for the 1st year comes to a $5.41 per day bowel movement fee. But what a deal, that $5.41 gives you unlimted access to your privy just like an all you can eat buffet. People we need a revolution in this country. Salmon County Emerging
By the way , 3/4 of the raided properties in sohum have had no pot found and no indoor grow scenes. We’d all like the indoor diesel grows to go away, but the code enforcement hasn’t had a great track recordso far.
By the way , 3/4 of the raided properties in sohum have had no pot found and no indoor grow scenes. We’d all like the indoor diesel grows to go away, but the code enforcement hasn’t had a great track recordso far.
Another thought on human waste. Shitting in a bowl of clean water is a perverted modern ritual. What idiot dreamed up the idea ” Hey, think i’ll take a dump in a bowl of clean water ” And to think this idiocy became the cultural norm. I think most of you will agree, getting splashed has gotta be one of the most unpleasant of daily occurences. A water wasting splash toilet and leach field is the best the county can come up with.
When was the last cholera epidemic in the US? Not something I want to experience. Some people may be responsible about where their waste ends up. Some people, as we know, aren’t responsible about much of anything. If they can’t keep their household trash and diesel spills out of creeks and rivers, why would you trust them to keep their shit out of them?
Salmon Girl, I have an honest question for you. Are you an expert in wastewater management?
Are you as angry as most of us with regards to the environmental degradation that PALCO has brought upon our sensitive watersheds?
Are these not the same watersheds that you are living in?
Can you guarantee that the shit that you are composting isn’t making it into the streams that the Salmon that you obviously care about are spawing in?
Thats what the fees you are seem to be against are supposed to help prevent – a qualified person from the county ensuring that the perc tests are properly done and that you dont need something more elaborate, like a mound system.
It’s easy to point the figure at an obvious violator like PALCO, a bit harder to take a look in the mirror.
The fact that a few individuals are not responsible with their waste or building methods or most anything does not mean that the overwhelming majority should be precluded from making our own lifestyle choices. Should we all have our cars taken away because a few drive drunk? If I want to tolerate a pothole ridden road and choose to grow much of my own food to improve its quality and to avoid driving to town it is my decision. If I am willing to pay a little extra for fire insurance or add a tank because I am out of a conventional fire district so be it. The marginal societal cost is absurdly low particularly as I pay a lot of taxes for services that are provided to those who choose to live closer to the more urban areas that I receive no benefit from. Lovelace or anyone else has no right to make lifestyle choices for us. If he wants to live in the city I respect his right to do so but I expect the same consideration. He has done a good job working to protect streams and other habitat, he is knowledgeable in those areas, he should stick to what he has experience in and we can all benefit but he should stay out of other realms. Otherwise he will lose credibility even where he could really, and has, made a difference.
No, we should all not have our licenses taken away because a few drive drunk, but a better comparison would be that nobody should be able to drive a motor vehicle without first obtaining a valid drivers license.
You may live a rural lifestyle but that doesn’t mean you aren’t impacting the environment and people who live downstream from you. Unfortunately, the only way to insure that people don’t cause problems for others is to regulate activities on private property. So far the best method we have is through codes and permits for activities that have the potential for negatively impacting others. Your water usage definitely impacts the watershed and in times of drought could be quite detrimental to life downstream from you. I am sure if you have neighbors upstream you wouldn’t appreciate them using all the water or polluting it before it gets to your property. Do unto others, etc.
That’s right. That’s why it’s critical for people *on the land* to make responsible decisions about lessening water use, not logrollers in Sacramento with degrees in urban planning who impose cloud-cuckoo norms on people they’ve never taken a class in.
Take perc tests: the stupid things are only relevant to systems that prodigiously waste water. It’s kind of like the absurd regulatory trap that the Arcata Marsh sewage system fell into, where natural systems cleaned the water so well of pollutants that they are forced by regulation to put unnecessary chlorine into clean outflow, in order to meet minumim requirements of re-pollution mandated for inferior systems. It makes no sense. We don’t want to play. If you’re actually concerned about water usage, encouragement, not troopers demanding flushers, are what’s in order.
The amount of water you use is one issue. How you dispose of your waste is another. Expecting people living downstream from you to just trust that you are responsible is asking too much. Waiting until there is a cholera outbreak to investigate its source isn’t something most of us are willing to do.
I agree that we all have a basic responsibility to keep our impact on the environment to reasonable levels. Yes, alternative systems that reduce water consumption are especially critical and getting more so. But the extremists that want to eliminate our right to live our lifestyle and force us off our 40s or 160s and into their lifestyle choice are just as wrong and closed minded in the opposite extreme as the timber companies were. Some of the HumCPR guys may have reached their conclusion for other reasons but the end result and goal is the same as ours. Strange bedfellows, I agree, but bedfellows nonetheless.
Cholera is an urban disease, propagated by congestion. 40-acre patches of paradise aren’t the solution to the world’s problems but the simple fact is that fecal disease spreads in high density, not Humboldt’s rural density. It’s amazing what our ‘expert planners’ don’t know or care to learn. Wait till you see what they don’t know about you!
I’m not against planning but I do oppose dictat.
Cholera is not necessarily an urban disease. It is spread through fecal matter in water or fish. Shitting in a river (whether directly or through run-off) is an excellent way to spread it.
From CDC:
A person may get cholera by drinking water or eating food contaminated with the cholera bacterium. In an epidemic, the source of the contamination is usually the feces of an infected person. The disease can spread rapidly in areas with inadequate treatment of sewage and drinking water.
The cholera bacterium may also live in the environment in brackish rivers and coastal waters. Shellfish eaten raw have been a source of cholera, and a few persons in the United States have contracted cholera after eating raw or undercooked shellfish from the Gulf of Mexico. The disease is not likely to spread directly from one person to another; therefore, casual contact with an infected person is not a risk for becoming ill.
No one, not HWC, not HumCPR, not growers, not developers, no one, has suggested shitting in rivers directly or indirectly. Almost everyone realizes the need for proper construction methods and corresponding limited and rational enforcement. What is abuse is for the enforcement to be heavy handed, the regulation abusive, and fees unreasonable. It is absurd to be required to pay for someone to come out four times a year to look at your poo. Build it right, inspect it, maintain it and there is no problem. But do not take away our right to live on our land.
It is going to be interesting if your collaboration with the developers is successful. Their McMansion subdivisions will require services that you don’t want to pay for, but you will be outvoted by people who want the “rural” lifestyle without the inconveniences you are willing to live with. The increased taxes will force many of you off your land. Ignoring what has happened in other formerly “rural” areas when developers moved in will come at a high cost for you and everyone else as well.
Read the original post. It’s not looking to create some ‘you’ for you to judge. It’s suggesting a rethink of some assumptions and positions that are making you, and me, weaker, not stronger.
Where and when is the Ferndale meeting. Perhaps it is actually time to hear what they are saying and look for commonalities. Maybe they have some legitimate points. Maybe not, only one way to find out.
CPR has brought out a lot of information I appreciate. I don’t agree with their ultimate conclusions.
CPR uses a lot of emotional appeal in the public meetings, especially issues of wanting to provide for your kids. Nice, but I don’t buy that argument.
Many friends and neighbors who’ve homesteaded here for 30 years+ are struggling with issues of children wanting to live on the land. Many have come to the painful conclusion that they cannot subdivide because the environmental impacts are too great.
The kids are disappointed but they understand. They are adults, raised by people who cared about the land to be people who care about the land.
I’d like to see this conversation taken to a landscape level by homesteaders who see the limits. It’s awkward, I am not one of those people who wants to slam the door now that I’ve got mine. But those of us living our homestead dreams who put the land first have to scruitinze the limits of what development –especially how much more–is sustainable.
We have to look at what we have have wrought. We have our small homes and live conscious of the fact that we have an impact and attempt daily to minimize it. Yet we’ve opened the door for a lot of folks to come in and build to urban standards of comfort and desire, not simple necessity. We’re aging, sooner or later of lot of us will be physically incapable of living this strenuous life. Nice if you can pass it on to your kids, and if they retain the live-lightly philosophy.
But who do we sell to if we have no family or tribe to take over our homesteads? Suburban minded people who demand bigger and better, who want to commute daily on dirt roads? Or to the kid who wants to turn my barn into a 50-light diesel scene?
We started something and it’s up to us to rationalize things in a manner that solidifies (dare I say codifies?) our values so our land and our rural homes remain sustainable.
I don’t think we can avoid the issue. We can have it dictated to us by the county in it’s lame-brained, urban-informed, one-size-fits-all approach, or we can proactively approach the progressive environmental community with ideas for small home permacultural codes that normalize our sustainable approach.
Our natural allies are the progressives, not CPR. I have been mulling over the strange bedfellows idea for several days now, and I just don’t want to sleep with them. I’d rather convince folks I find more attractive to get kinky with me.
Perhaps you would be right if they were suggesting the right to subdivide. At least what they are proposing is to allow 40s to 160s which is just what attracted many of us and is hardly urbanization. Some of my neighbors have houses larger than mine, some smaller. I don’t think it is my right to tell them what to build to the extent it doesn’t affect me to any real degree (they keep their poo on their land). Most people who live on their land are more in tune to its needs and see the effect of the timber companies past actions. Certainly there are more people moving here from the city but mostly they seem to be seeking much the same quality of life issues as me.
There is certainly a business element to some of them but just as many seem to have the same concerns as the rest of us. Time will tell.
9:23, I agree, nobody has suggested that they will be shitting directly or indirectly into the rivers. However, I do believe there are those, such as SalmonGirl who more than likely do not have the proper qualifications to determine whether or not she is in fact shitting into the river.
What are your qualifications? Are you a licensed building contractor?
All I am suggesting is that the permitting process is a valid way to ensure that the shit isnt hitting the fan(or river).
It is also my contention that many who think they are doing a fine job with their building, be it a home or sewage/septic system without going through the permitting process to make sure they are building to code are in fact building substandard systems/homes/wiring/plumbing/etc that may (or may not ) fail, and that will unfairly burden their nieghbors, be they the next home a mile away, or the salmon swimming upstream.
peace
Well said Hill William, thank you.
You too, 10:14.
10:14, I too agree. There is a clear need for “reasonable” and well thought out codes and inspection. I suggest that some portion of the existing codes are onerous and contribute nothing to the common or individual good and are simply the result of overzealous bureaucratic intervention and empire building. We need a real review of the permitting process and elimination of the nonsense and yes, even perhaps more rules where appropriate. More intervention into our basic right to live on our land is still intolerable and needs to be fought. Thanks for the civil conversation, may peace prevail upon us all.
is any of this really worth pointing guns at unarmed women, their children and infants, as was done during the code-enforcement “raid” at the yee-haw ranch in trinidad last year?
i think that it’s fair to say that when a cop sneezes, and a bullet rips through a child and/or mom, suddenly cholera will not be much of an issue to that family. but perhaps the threat of a “chlolera outbreak” will be used to justify the “regrettable but necessary” killing?
stop the hippie profiling and the military-style raids, and then we can have a meaningful discussion about appropriate waste disposal.
in the meantime, this discussion is like having a friendly chat with your fascist neighbors over whether the sanitation in the ghettos is adequate or not. remember how jews, gypsies, and gays were portrayed by the nazis as dirty “vermin” who spread disease…sound familiar? (note to the reasoning-challenged: comparing some aspects of these raids to the nazi liquidation of the jewish ghettos and noting certain similarities is not the same as equating the two sets of events. so this is not a claim that our cops or code-enforcement goons are actual nazis, or that our county government is a full-blown fascist state – no, the concern many of us have is that our society, at many levels, seems to be headed in that fascistic direction. this little pogram in the hills is just one more example of this trend, and one that hits particuarly close to home.)
these raids aren’t aimed at “cleaning up” our rural homestead scene, they are aimed at driving us off the land. the proof is in the pudding – our government isn’t offering to help people come “up-to-code,” they won’t allow affordable solutions, such as composting toilets, and they will continue to pile on the fines, even as you try to meet their demands.
just wait until they start hitting you with multi-thousand dollar fines, per day, that will soon exceed the value of your property. that’s where things stand at yee-haw in trinidad. the residents continue to improve the land with gardens and orchards, and they have removed junk cars, etc., but this is largely an act of faith.
unless there is enough of a public outcry, the county will simply use the accumulated fines to steal the land, and then sell it to the highest bidder. my guess is that the high bidder will be the same individual who originally made the “complaint” to the county seveal years ago.
instead of a number of families has living safely in a “village” environment of small houses, cabins and converted schoolbuses, what will be built instead are one, or maybe two multi-million-dollar homes. they will be built “to code” and sold to a few rich folks from out of town, the gardens and orchards will be bulldozed for golf-course type lawns and nonproductive ornamental plants.
thus “progress” will march on and mainstream pseudoenvironmentalism, as personified by many of our local “progressives,” will triumph over common sense once again. unless….
…yes, unless…
I have previously agreed with you, Thorn, that there is no need for guns when doing code inspections. The highest bidder will undoubtedly be developers when your land is taken. Remember, they don’t want to update the general plan, they like it the way it is.
I get your point, but the HumCpr people are not calling for enforcement, as a matter of fact they were strongly protesting it. At the meeting Ulansey was screaming for an amnesty program to keep enforcement off our backs not to kick us out. I think like most of us they are a mixed bag.
I am concerned about the amount of disinformation on this thread regarding rural living standards and rights of use. Let me just say this:
#1. No matter where any human being lives, we will not live life the same way. People will choose to trash their property or not. People will choose to maintain their property or not. People will choose to burn their trash or not. People will choose to pay for added amenities or not. People will choose to buy a product or not. People will choose to purchase more land, less land, or no land(rent) or not. People will still break laws that they are unaware of, in disagreement with, feel is illegal, etc. or not. This is human nature and there is nothing that will change it except total extinction.
#2. Rural land is better than urban land for excercise and health because of many factors including, but not limited to, self-sufficiency, working on chores, longer nature walks and explorations, sports with family and friends (throwing a baseball, football, kicking/juggling a soccerball, frisbee, badminton, teatherball, volleyball, etc.) in wide open fields / land, less public diseases and air born bacterias, less blight created by masses of people and products, less impacts by neighbors who live 10 feet next to your exterior walls; unless it is apartments / condos / townhouses, which can have an occupancy wall literally touching your wall for the “beat on the drums” affect. Less noise pollution or zero noise pollution. Less urbanized city smells from mass cars and garbage, less impacts by child-kid-adults, less impacts from dysfunctional families; less exposures to rape, murder, drugs, physical violence, gangs and wannabees, and so much more.
In fact, if it were not for rural lands, people like GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER would have never been able to do the things he was able to do – Human Society benefitted from this. However, the urban land argument does make sense for BIG CORPORATION and GOVERNMENT AGENCIES, but NOT THE SMALLER, INDIVIDUAL CITIZEN. Go figure.
#3. The idea that rural land is being used as a tool by many sides in order to restrict freedoms, rights, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in life is not a surprise to me because it is all about money, power and control. The government needs more tax dollars for this out-of-control consumer based economy. Realisticly, there are too many people living in this country ( and planet for that matter) which eats up very quickly any taxes generated, including government tax misallocations and fraud. Further, more population requires more jobs! Therefore, the government mules and their respective agencies are trained and forced to take whatever steps are necessary to force the tax revenue stream upon the citizenry through illegal methodologies and abuse of power in order to subsidize a growing population that much more quickly reduces the food supply, housing supply, etc… This is the source of monopoly monies that go unchecked.
#4. When it boils down to it, the UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION has everything legally we would ever need. Sure, we may have necessary future amendments comparable to past amendments; just like we have zoning and planning which is authorized by state constitutions and real-estate laws. This is necessary too; however, what is not necessary is when government agencies purposefully and intentionally with malice decide not to enforce laws so as to create problems. Then, with problems- in- hand, elected officials get to obfuscate and decieve the voters and citizenry; and another agency (like planning departments) have an excuse to further “take away” your rights on your land / property because they agree with the problems.
This is trumped up politics. This is fraud by intentional, malicious acts / non-acts. This is “FEAR TACTICS” in motion. It is a GAME for too many politicians because of the personal benefits received by their actions; or, they are just plain selfish, stupid and/or unaware. Take Kirk Girard for example: look at the decisions he is supporting; then, take a look at his lavish lifestyle and dwelling. What he lives in now for his home (the process too), he has restricted to other people of this community.
#5. LACK OF ENFORCEMENT: This is the impetus government agencies and elected / appointed officials use to get away with constitutional restrictions, personal restrictions of freedoms and liberties, the restrictions of your pursuit of happiness, etc. In fact, there is still a place on Buttermilk Lane near the Arcata City limits (just inside county lines), where the developer (from Modesto, CA) of a “manipulative” and “feel good”project in Arcata (later in time by a few years) broke environmental laws, building and zoning requirements and others’ property rights during and after construction of a Single Family Residence at the Buttermilk Lane location; and the former Planning Director of the County who attempted to cover up the fraud through a non-defined and illegal Special Permit Process; and who then switched over to Arcata after the scandal broke out after a couple years had passed and people forgot; and, in his new Arcata position as Planning Director helped this developer from Modesto) for the negative exposure (getting caught in the Buttermilk Lane conspiracy); and financial troubles because the County and Developer of this Buttermilk Lane Parcel wanted to work together in the development of an additional 20+ living units, while destroying indigenous plants and second growth redwoods, historical landscape, a stream, etc…
Further, the developer on this Buttermilk Lane property converted and rented many out-buildings to college students and younger families while he (the developer) moved into one of the shop buildings to live so he could rent the recently built S.F.R. to college students to pay for the mortgage, insurance and property taxes. Then, the developer rented a shop building to a ceramics studio business that was storing and disposing toxic chemicals illegally with a creek adjacent to the building used for the business. Then, the developer allowed drug trafficking across other property owners’ land. Then, continued to rent a mobile home illegally on the property as per the County of Humboldt’s own documentation.
Then, the Planning Director had to rely on the Supervisors (Bonnie Neely, etc.) to cover-up and bail him out. Then, the Humboldt County Environmental Health Department and Richard Hendry / Jeff Connors (Code Enforcement) decided to intervene for appearances only and not fully and legally remedying the situation.
Now, the current owners of this Buttermilk property think they have more rights and own more than they actually do, unless they just recently purchased vested interests away from adjacent owners of some property and easement rights, as indicated on those specific property’s titles / Grant Deeds. There are some weird road easements that are owned by multiple properties. When a developer purchases one of the properties, the developer will not discuss many issues in hopes that the other owners do not realise what they have rights to. Then, after prescriptive rights have been stolen unbeknownst to the other property owners, the scam between the developer and the county planning and building departments can begin for collaboration on additional housing units to suffice California State Housing mandates and numbers, as well as extra tax revenues.
KEEP IN MIND THAT THIS IS A FEW BAD DEVELOPERS COMPARED TO THE OVERALL TOTAL OF GOOD DEVELOPERS. USUALLY, THERE IS A METHOD TO THE MADNESS – namely their level of honesty, respect and exposure. The developer from Modesto was an individual, not a big company. However, both big and small can succumb to the madness. Therefore, understanding who you are dealing with is very critical. In addition, understanding your legal property rights of land and/or home ownership is a life and death responsibility.
Again folks, it is all about tax revenues; no matter what the public or private methodologies are. It is either a direct tax method, an indirect tax method, or you will not be allowed to do what your rights allow you to do, period. This is the real discussion here for this thread and not the unaware, misinformed and/or manipulative statements being made by the wrongdoers. It is private self-sufficiency versus public power, control and domination.
As stated by a few of the above threads and reiterated by myself:
Fact is, the current General Plan is adequate; ENFORCEMENT IS NOT ADEQUATE. HUGE DIFFERENCE AND REALITY. NO NEED TO INVENT MORE ZONING STANDARDS AND LAWS WHEN LACK OF ENFORCEMENT IS SO PERVASIVE WHEN ASSOCIATED WITH CURRENT LAWS AND STANDARDS. Let the private property / land sector operate within reasons already established by laws years ago.
P.S. If I choose to reasonably and legally live somewhere within this country, I will do it. Many laws and restrictions are not legal. If you won’t allow me to entertain my Civil Rights, then you are going to be in the wrong and you will have to either imprison me on choreographed charges and choreographed non-existing evidence or, you will have to eliminate me! Those are the options.
Jeffrey Lytle
McKinleyville – 5th District
Jeffrey, Sometimes I agree with, sometimes not. I always respect your right to speak but sometimes it would be nice if you could be more concise. With all due respect, fewer words often makes a better case.
I made the comment at 10:14, Thorn, and really you havent addressed any of the points that I raised (with all due respect of course).
I too read the NCJ article on the Trinidad “raid” and was and remain aghast at the treatment that these people went through.
However, It does not detract from the fact that if their sewage is not being treated properly or if the wiring is faulty then the community at large suffers.
Someone made the point in an earlier thread about a fire casued by faulty wiring. What if one of these structures went up in a blaze? You can best bet that the relatives of the people lost in the fire would be suing the dickens out of the yee-haw owner.
Code enforcement is not hippie profiling. There is code enforcement on a daily basis in the cities – it’s far easier for the offenders to get caught doing unpermitted work, primarily because they are in an area where there are plenty of people around.
Ferndale is Jimmy Smith’s district. Is he going to attend and speak at the meeting? I do not have a feeling one way or another regarding his thoughts on these issues.
Anonymous @ 10:45 am,
Thank You for your respect. Sometimes, minimal words won’t explain concisely the points that MUST be discussed. I will continue to take your advice. Now, if only the presidential candidate’s speeches could be fewer in words, while making the same or better case. Sometimes, it can’t be done in my opinion.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey Lytle
McKinleyville – 5th District
Jeffrey, In regards to the candidates speeches, we once again agree.
There are also permitted jobs where permitee and/or permitter make mistakes or circumvent the laws and codes during work and inspections. We are all human.
Jeffrey Lytle
McKinleyville – 5th District
and yeah, i’m pissed off. you would be, too, if you saw the fear in the eyes of a child who had never even seen a gun in real life – much less have one pointed straight at him at age 6 by shouting, bullying cops. children can be amazingly resilient, but what has been to this child done cannot be easily undone. it will take a great deal of time and healing, and thankfully he has amazing parents to see him through. what the rest of us need to do now is try to make sure this sort of senseless police violence stops now.
don’t wait until it happens to you or your friends, or i guarantee you will be at least as pissed off as i am. if it does happen, hopefully you will react as i am, with strong words rather than by force of arms. unfortunately, i suspect that some will make a different choice when their families are treated this way by the code raiders. let’s stop this now before it gets much, much worse.
we must act together stop the police/code enforcement violence now. then there will be plenty of time to debate the merits of flushing vs. composting, etc.
Some info on the waste:
Click to access task0163.pdf
But Thorn, this is the thread where we are debating that. It seems that you are pretty much the only one raging about the yee-haw thing – and guess what, nobody disagrees with you- it was a terrible thing.
But still, what do you think would happen if that whole place went up in a fire and those precious kids were severely hurt or worse?
That place needed and needs to be brought up to code.
peace
Here is an interesting link. It’s Mendocino’s code for Class K
http://www.co.mendocino.ca.us/planning/MCC/1823Index.htm
I wish Humboldt had something as clear and direct describing the parameters of owner built housing. I’ve called and inquired, begged and whined, but the best they can give me is this:
Click to access Zoning.pdf
also available as html:
http://co.humboldt.ca.us/planning/zoning/Zoning/index1.htm
These docs are part of the online planning library:
http://co.humboldt.ca.us/planning/planning_library.asp
I still see an assumption that the gun-wielders’ bosses know better than we do how we should live. I still read here that because I didn’t drive to Eureka and fill out forms and pay fees, my wiring is likely to be faulty.
Look, though the General Plan update chooses not to acknowledge the existence of our volunteer fire departments, which are foolishly professionalizing anyway, one of the many services we have evolved for ourselves in the absence of county nannying till now is consultation and advice on safety issues, wiring right at the top of the list. As a result of this longstanding, very effective work, our local VFD’s service is now over 90 percent road-related–and the majority of people they help out of accidents are from urban areas, not locals. Also, because this is volunteer, it doesn’t even appear as a ‘cost’ of us mooching hillbillies.
Your solutions aren’t to problems. They’re Band-aids on caricatures. Please, let’s hear some more acknowledgement that we who live in the hills know more about our lives than people who don’t. We’re happy to talk about them, and share our learning experiences.
Humoldt used to be an incubator of innovative solutions to real problems. Do you really want to become a suburb of Sonoma? I am shocked by some of these attitudes–I guess I’m going redneck after all. But I too would much rather sleep with progressives.
Does Code Enforcement spend enough diligent time drafting letters informing any property owner their intentions to interact and create a cause and effect relationship within the parameters and issues that they charge against the property owner?
Legally and Constitutionally, Property Owners have a right to know who their accusers are and the accusations made. The mechanism = The accuser is presented with an option to check the box of non-disclosure. In other words, do not let the property owner understand who the accuser is; if there is even one to begin with. A game of charades that allows the code enforcement unit to circumvent procedure through inaccuracies.
Like rape = If a woman goes to the police and accuses a man of rape, the accused often times is not given their “full” civil rights and due process. In fact, you most likely would receive a knock on the door and a request to come down to the department willingly, or by force. In cases where evidence is very compounding, this issue of initial “rights and due process” is prevalently immaterial.
Jeffrey Lytle
McKinleyville – 5th District
I asked before, does anyone know when and where the Ferndale meeting is taking place? Is Jimmy Smith going to be speaking? I want to at least hear them out. It may well not be a perfect alliance, or even one worth pursuing, but there as here, civil discussion is always worthwhile.
to anon (10:46)
i’m glad that you read that ncj article and have sympathy for the families at yee-haw who were affected by the violent “code raid.”
but with all due respect, if all you know about the situation at yee-haw is from one newspaper article, you might want to defer on the facts to those who have looked at the situation on the land directly, and spoken directly to a number of eyewitnesses to the violent “code raid.” i am one such person.
the fact is that no dangerous “sewage” is being discharged at yee-haw. i understand your confusion, in that the north coast journal article made the strange claim that “graywater” might contains fecal matter. not so, unless you’re shitting in your sink. by definition, graywater is not fecal waste, it’s the runoff from your kitchen sink. there is a working septic system on the property, and there is no evidence that this system is failing or threatening the neighbors in any way.
code enforcement does take place in plenty of different locations around the county, and who gets targeted for what reasons is hard to sort out. but when they choose to bring more than a dozen heavily armed members of the county task force on what is supposed to be a simple code inspection, that’s good old fashioned “hippie profiling,” humboldt style.
when they can wave guns, threaten and shout at these unarmed people, including mothers with their infants and children, all for something like building codes, that profiling and needless violence begins to approach a state of creeping fascism, don’t you think? or should we let it creep a little futher before we apply the “f” word (fascism)? i don’t really care what you want to call it, as long as you agree that these violent raids are wrong and need to stop immediately, before the situation devolves further.
11:18, I couldn’t agree more. We understand our lives and why do so many people assume we dont know what we’re doing?
You don’t come out here and survive not knowing what you’re doing. And you don’t come out here expecting somebody else to save your ass when you don’t do things like gas, wiring, sanitation, and fire prevention dilgently.
We accept the fact that we are responsible: that assumption underlies homesteading.
If you can’t or are physically unable to take responsibility for your health and safety, you go live in town where you can (you hope) depend on government infrastructures to take care of you. I dread a time when I’m too old to live here because I don’ t want to live in town, but I acknowledge that’s a possibility. I have to be responsible, and if I’m not capable of preventing or fighting fire, for instance, I won’t belong here anymore.
I fear the suburbanizing of these hills. That’s high impact, and that brings in folks who don’t know what they are doing while they demand that big brother or the nanny state keep them safe.
Nothing’s safe. But then again, very little is as dangerous as a lot of fearful folk make things out to be. These back roads for instance, are not inherently dangerous. More challenging to drive, perhaps, so turn off your cell phone and drive. I like to compare them to whitewater classifications–some rapids are class 2, but with class 5 consequences. Actually a pretty easy run but screwing up has greater consequences. So you take responsibility and do your best not to screw up.
Then I have to do an about face and say, sheesh, there are folks here who don’t know what they are doing, who want this to be suburbia and suck up water for non-native landscapes, or idiot indoor growers who drag in noisy polluting generators and start fires that threaten to spread to the watershed.
I am not opposed to code, I’m opposed to unrealistic codes mandated by people who think they know more than the people who live the reality. So it’s up to this creative community to come up with ideas, convince the county of their merits, and then work to ensure a means of *civil*–not criminal–enforcement.
to anon (11:06)
in case you forgot or didn’t notice, the issue of violent “code raids,” often as a pretext to do a warrantless search for marijuana grows, was front and center at the meeting in sohum that was described in the original blog post that spawned this thread in the first place. sorry if i’m not following the herd as the discussion has moved in other directions. i continue to “rant” about yee-haw because some folks like yourself have demonstrated that you don’t really understand the situation there, or what took place during the last year’s violent “code raid.”
i am not at all against arguing the merits of composting vs. flushing, i am simply making the point that another aspect of this situation, namely the violent code raids that are taking place around the county, may be the most pressing matter at hand. stopping the violence is every bit as important as discussing the terms of the peace to follow. and it is hard for some of us to discuss those terms while the one-sided violence continues.
as far as the make-believe fire scenario you concoct, what makes you think these people are so ignorant or incompetent that they cannot take the proper precautions to prevent fires and protect their families without the help of big brother? because they are hippies? several decades of experience at yee-haw and elsewhere says otherwise.
hey 11:48, 11:18 here–can I sleep with you?
Wait until restrooms are required for the rest of the animals in mother nature. In fact, marine life (mammals, reptiles, birds, etc.) excretes uric acid (purines) in their own environment routinely, while living and using the environment along with other species. Hmmm, come to think of it, we all urinate on property every now and then. Is this so bad? Nope, it is De Facto.
Jeffrey Lytle
McKinleyville – 5th District
apart from the violent part of the code crackdown, the fact is that piling huge fines on people who can’t afford to pay them is not a way to help people “come up to code,” it’s a way for the county to create a debt and put alien on the propety, use that as an excuse to sieze the land, and then auction that land off to developers. in trinidad, where land is becoming more and more valuable for upscale development, this amounts to pushing poor people off of their land to make way for a few more mcmansions.
as long as these mcmansions are “up to code” i guess planners and code enforcers will see this as a good outcome for our environment? meanwhile, perhaps the displaced poor folks can be herded into one of the government-funded cookie-cutter “affordable housing” developments that are eating up prime farmlands in arcata? then some other developers can make money off of the poor, complete with special tax breaks and zoning variances justified on the basis of providing “affordable housing” for those same families who the county so recently pushed out of the affordable housing they already had.
whether this land grab is being done intentiontionally or is simply allowed to happen due to the ignorance or indifference of county bureaucrats and politicians, i guess i don’t know for sure. either way, our public officials must be held accountable for the violent code crackdown, and the idiotic policies that spawned it.
that’s supposed to say “put a lien on the property”, and not “put alien on the property.” i’m not quite that paranoid :)
wow, that emoticon is extra-goofy. let’s see about this one: :(
one more note on the yee-haw story, which i do think is good example of this whole “code raid” situation:
i noticed that in the ncj article on the code raid at yee-haw, code enforcement officer john desadier (describing an earlier interaction with residents who did not consent to his entry without a warrant and in the absence of the owner) gave the reporter the following justification for the large contingent of heavily-armed drug task force members being brought on the raid:
“one guy was tatted up, could’ve been a parolee”
so now simply having tatoos is used as part of the justification for the military-style assualt, because the individual with the tattoos “could’ve been a parolee” ? (and if, by chance he was on parole for a marijuana raid carried out under the guise of code enforcement, we can see how the police-state cancer begins to become systemic)
as i recall, the code enforcement officer who spoke to kmud news about the incident justified the armed assault by saying that on that earlier visit, those residents had, as he put it “put up a fight.”
so now insisting that searches be carried out with a warrant and preferably in the presence of the owner, is considered “putting up a fight,” which is then used as a justification for an armed assault?
when he came back, on the day of the assault, the code enforcement officer had a warrant and had made an appointment with the owner. thus the problem of entry had been solved, no violent police intervention was necesary in what should have remained a civil process.
but the code enforcer, with his stereotypes of the residents firmly in mind, didn’t take them at their word that what they wanted was to see a search warrant and have the property owner present. so he led an armed assualt, traumatizing children for absolutely no reason.
sometimes state violence becomes such a habitual, almost reflexive act, that those perpetrating it can no longer even see the wrong in it, and those members of the public not directly affected find it hard to believe that such unjustified violence is happening to their neighbors, because if it is happening to your neighbors, it means that it could hapen to you, too. so many people comfort themselves with the thought that these people are different, that these people brought the violence on themsleves and may even have deserved it. so it’s understandable that we don’t want to believe that unjustified police-state violence is happening.
but it IS happening and it must stop now.
Thorne,
the lien situation is a circumventionable methodology used by government agencies to increase the property tax values. This helps the tax revenue stream for the local jurisdictions. I am sure you realise that wealthy people do not sweat over taxes much of the time because they have the resources to pay. Your points on the poor in these types of issues are correct. Class Economics, Class Civil Rights and Class Due Process is sad when EQUALITY, WITH REGARDS TO RIGHTS, IS NOT PRACTICES, YET STILL VERY NECESSARY. This reality is probably one of the misguided reasons why many wealthy citizens would not consider advocating for the poor in this situation you commented on. Albeit, eventually everyone will feel the adverse effects caused by the few.
Jeffrey Lytle
McKinleyville – 5th District
The Military assault premise could be based upon the fact that in America, you have the right to bear arms as an individual and that Law Enforcement understands that it could be their actions that constitute a breach in an individual’s private property rights and homeland (ironic) security. An event such as this could open the door for a legal shoot-out commenced by the property owner if so choosed by the property owner because of the tyrranical situation created by the invaders when done illegally. Of course, if the property owner is murdered, then the media and government agencies at work will spin it off as the home owners fault. Very sad state of affairs, socially and economically.
Jeffrey Lytle
McKinleyville – 5th District
Anonymous @ 11:06 am (#1),
Thank You for the link.
There are quite familiar similarities in the processes discussed in the link that can also be associated with conditions observed with the Water Quality on the Klamath River (Blue Baby Syndrome versus Blue-Algae syndrome, etc.).
Jeffrey Lytle
McKinleyville – 5th District
My wife and I have been living happily and safely in an unpermitted house five miles off the pavement for the last 23 years. We were told when we came that the issue of owner-built homes in remote areas had been resolved through the efforts of United Stand in the early eighties with the (special) K zoning. We have been paying taxes on this property, including our house for all these years. I have personally squired the tax assessor about the property. It does not seem fair for the county to come along and change the rules of the game to such an extent that we will lose our home.
We are not in a fire district. We have a composting toilet etc. etc. The fact of Plan A is – even if we wanted to come up to code we would not be allowed to. Which is, of course, what these pen-pushers want.
Our property will become essentially worthless if no purchaser can build. We are in our sixties – too damn old to start over. Are we supposed to leave our small but comfortable home and move down to the homeless camps on the Eel? Don’t they have enough poo problems already? Does Johnny Casali really want to be picking up MY diapers?
• We need to have “Grandfather” clauses written into the plan.
• The process of bringing homes up to code has to be reasonable in terms of expense, expectation and appropriateness.
• The fines are simply draconian. $5,000 per day per violation. This is not a fine meant to encourage compliance. Who could sustain that? It is purely meant to bankrupt and force out anyone they choose to pick on.
As United Stand did twenty-five years ago –
WE MUST ORGANIZE – form a Citizens Observation Group (COG) to follow, photograph, video and document incursions into your neighborhood by the Code/Sheriffs. Get together a neighborhood phone tree. Spread the word that our very lives are threatened by these bureaucrats.
WE MUST PACK THE SUPERVISORS CHAMBERS EVERY TUESDAY -1:30 PM.
WE MUST PACK THE PLANNING COMMISSION MEETINGS EVERY FIRST AND THIRD THURSDAY – 6 PM (In the Supervisors Chambers)
BE SURE TO MAKE THE CLMP MEETING IN GARBERVILLE – VETS HALL FRIDAY APRIL 4 at 2:00 PM
CALL YOUR SUPERVISORS • CALL THE PLANNING DEPARTMENT • CALL GALLEGOS • CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES
Now is the time to act or we will lose our rights and our rural lifestyle forever!
No problem. Just bring it up to code.
‘Course, you might have to get a building permit.
thanks, “anon anon” (5:50pm). i agree 100% with you that $5,000 per day, per violation fines are clearly not intended to be affordable to anyone except the very wealthy. these are confiscatory fines, intended to create a basis for the county to seize the land and sell it off at auction.
thanks also for making a clear call for action, including specific places for people to focus their efforts. i suspect that in over the next few months, many people will be raising the alarm and rallying the community against this new land grab. it appears that there is a critical mass of concern and outrage bubbling up from the grassroots.
see ya at the supes!
5:50…
The county told you 23 years ago that you could build a house without a permit, which you did, and now they are telling you they will charge you $5,000 a day until you bring it up to code? Is that what you are claiming?
Great Post @ 5:50 pm
In fact, if you have been assessed and paid your property taxes; and the home and fixtures you have been living in all these years (5+) is maintained without denial of useage; and if no county personnel has written and recorded a document in the assessors office granting permission for your use until revoked, you have a prescriptive right (grandfathered clause) which allows you the right to continue the use in perpetuity. Any adverse actions would be a violation of your civil rights. Our community really needs to start using the underused Federal Statute Laws in defending our rights.
Many higher-up agency subordinates, and the Supervisors too, use a strategy of guile and cunning manipulation to press fear upon the citizenry. This is the truth of the matter.
Example – I remember when Jill Geist mentioned about two years ago +/- that the Planning Department needed to come up with a zoning ordinance to combat property owners on larger plots of land who have built without a permit; and who wanted to further develop their property while bringing up the existing structure to code. It was laughable because there are already zoning laws that deal with these issues for ALL properties, not just larger ones. This was just a decision to make it look like the Supervisors were doing something relative and effective.
Further, when the leaders and appointed officials that oversee Planning and Zoning standards to a piss poor job of community service, as well as create more expensive and unnecessary rules of an ever expanding process, they only create more animosity and discontent. In addition, people will not want to entertain the process of obtaining a permit because department officials have not really allowed alternative styles for building and living standards.
The Planning and Building Departments treat most everything alike without much variation. A triangular parcel is treated like a square parcel. A flowing boundary line parcel is treated like a square parcel. A pie-shaped parcel with appendages is treated like a square parcel, etc… These departments and others just do not understand that there are differences in ALL parcels, concepts, building designs, development designs, lifestyles, etc…
Lastly, do you really think that most developers, home builders / contractors will put down their foot when their civil rights or procedural and substantive due process rights have been violated? Hell no; they are looking for a quick profit turnover because the completed development will be sold to someone else for profit. Many could care less. They will appease the Planning Commissioners on anything just to get the project through the permitting phases so that they can begin construction. This is financially motivated by government agencies looking to get a cut of the pie or lessen their responsibilities which have been unnoticed for years. Again, it is all about taxes and the tax revenue stream.
Jeffrey Lytle
McKinleyville – 5th District
There are a bunch of local blogs that show how awesome rural living is – Kym, Ernie, and others. To stereotype them is crazy. To try to limit the freedom of that life, that authentic life, to try to force it to conform to city life is crazy. To deny people the right to choose that life, to live lightly on the land is wrong.
That isn’t to say some codes aren’t necessary, but you might find that many of those rural builders build better than code, and that human touch, like some of the stuff Kym shows on her blog, is the BEST of Humboldt County, it’s why so many came here, and why so many choose to stay. Not everyone wants to live in crackerbox tract homes, but having the choice, being able to move up as your life situation improves – that’s what people mean when they talk about property rights.
To spin that as the evil developers with eyes on covering the land is wrong. This is a great discussion. One of the very best I’ve seen. Good points, good questions, and lots of common ground.
No thanks to you.
I’m with you, Rose. Lots in here is very fresh and interesting.
I just had to respond to Not A Native’s comment about rural roads not being as safe, and remembering “the tragic Ruth Lake accident”: the driver was WASTED. Almost all the passengers were WASTED. That accident had nothing to do with the safety of the road. It had to do with the fact that everyone in the car was drunk, high, and not belted. The only person who WAS belted was the only one who didn’t die or suffer major injuries.
If you live on a rural road, you should drive appropriately. Simple as that. The fact that rural roads aren’t as safe doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t live off of them. That’s an odd sort of faulty logic.
I could make a lot more comments, but I think they’ve all been made already.
Anon Anon at 5:50 got it right. This is not all about busting grows or about developers it’s about our rights and the way of life many of us have created for years and want to be able to pass on to our children. We need strong civil action to stop enforcement AND the Planning Department, BOTH are threats to our way of life. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Salmon Girl has tuned me in, and Hill William suggests the way forward. We need an Organic Bowel Movement.
“We need to have Grandfather clauses written into the plan.”
Anon-anon’s suggestion sounds like it could be a useful way for the County to resolve many of these situations. Would it be too big a burden on the County? Not a rhetorical question.
“This is financially motivated by government agencies looking to get a cut of the pie or lessen their responsibilities which have been unnoticed for years.”
I wouldn’t be surprised to find that it is actually politically motivated with the intent to divide progressives in an election cycle. It so, it’s a smart move strategically. It certainly helps to foment an anti-government intrusions pro-property rights kind of perspective. But, perhaps I give conservatives to much credit for strategic thinking. The fact that it unifies rural landowners of all stripes whether conservative, liberal, libertarian, progressive or whatever is certainly an big opportunity for someone willing to get out front with a rational course of action. Or, perhaps there are those that benefit from the stalemate and distraction of community conflict and inability to enact a cohesive policy.
Perhaps HumCPR could prove their intentions by working toward a amnesty/grandfathering kind of program. They could also add Peter Childs or Dan Tarranto to their group, they led they charge against enforcement abuse the last time and have great green credentials.
An organic bowel movement? I don’t know whether to laugh or bang my head against the doorframe until it hurts.
Then again….”The Toilet Papers” is now back in print, with a new intro by Wendall Berry
If only my grandfather were still alive. He would fall over laughing. He was rather puzzled, much as he loved me, about my choice to go all the way to California to live in a cabin without a toilet–one of the things he left behind in eastern Kentucky when he jumped a freight to get the hell out of coal country in the Depression. I managed to assure him that I was, in my peculiar way, still upwardly mobile.
It’s worth getting a conversation going with planning about grandfathering in older structures, maybe an amnesty for getting newer code-built structures that weren’t permitted regognized, and creating a permaculture based code for compositing outhouses and natural filtration graywater systems to modify the alternative owner builder codes.
Peter Childs is a good guide, if he wants to fight the battle again. How about a few young folks with permaculture degrees too? Any homesteaders interested? Hands on experience always good to bring to the table.
Great ideas Hillwilliam.
Years ago, all properties were built without permit in County areas. If you own a house that was built before 1965 in a County area, you can’t find the permit because there was none.
So does everyone that has property that is not on “rural” land have to upgrade their property if it was built without a permit in the County area? Even if the lot is not large?
I know you don’t have to do code upgrades to remodel certain things on that house. Been there and done that. If you have a fire in that house you better have “code upgrade” insurance because it will be required depending on what has burned. This is a very complicated issue and I am not sure it can be “grandfathered” in because of the insurance companies.
When the “McKinleyville Plan” was prepared and heard by the Planning Commission, it had been proposed that if you lived within 50 feet of a creek you would not be able to build your house if you had a fire or another type of disaster. It was suggested to them that this should be grandfathered in as there are houses that are closer than 50 feet to a creek that also on sewer and they would not be able to rebuild their house if over 50% of it burned down or was destroyed. This would not impact the creek, but would have made that lot unbuildable for anyone including the owner that may have lived there forever. Rights?? The County would prefer we not have any rights either in rural or nonrural properties. Now what?? Off the grid properties are numerous and I don’t know how many have been built without permits and if so, when they were built. If they have been appraised and are being taxed as houses, then they should not have to bring them up to current standards. My house was finished in 1988 with permits, but if I had a fire, I would have to bring it up to current codes which is a “little bit” of money and that is why I have the insurance I have – to pay for the upgrades the County will require.
There have been accepted “rules” over the years by the County – why do they want to change them now?? Election year??
The point would be to take what HumCPR has started to the next level and broaden their base.
Christina, How do you know that the entire cause of the Ruth Lake crash was intoxication? Could the road construction be a contributing factor?
Safety is a statistical measure. Even while legally drunk drivers are able to execute tasks, but with less ability. That’s what a roadside sobriety test is all about, degree of impairment.
The Ruth Lake driver was able to negotiate the road quite a ways up until the crash occurred. The crash wan’t inevitable(unless you beleive it was fate or God’s will). I believe that if the road was safer, that crash may not have happened at all. Not all drunk drivers crash their cars, and thats a fact.
You gotta be kidding. Drunk drivers get into wrecks period, only someone with another agenda would say otherwise. Maybe someone who doesn’t want anyone driving on rural roads or living in rural areas.
Getting away with violating the law for years doesn’t mean you were being lawful.
anonymous @ 2:40 pm,
You asked why they want to change “accepted rules” now? Again, it is all about the tax revenue stream while attempting to raise negative ires amongst the citizenry ( a camoflauge affect). It is good for government to create “citizenry in-house bickering and dispute resolutions” than understanding who the “real culprits” are and who really deserves the attention.
Think about the County Tax Assessor and how the County Appraiser’s assessments subsidize the “local funding” (General Fund Account). This is the why. Oh, and when your home burn downs and you are not allowed to rebuild, the Tax Assessor is supposed to lower your property taxes. Whether or not they do it is politically motivated. If they get caught in a fraudulant scam and the SUPERVISORS help to cover it up, then you will have to battle the conspiratorial JUDGE and JUDICIAL SYSTEM. The JUDGES will do whatever it takes to FIND JUDGEMENT FOR THE AGENCY. This is another hurdle to be aware of.
As far as 50 feet setback from creek – this is the building framers exemption; otherwise it would be 100 feet. Many builders and homeowners have proven that a home can be built environmentally safe within a closer proximity to the creek. I have a dream to build a home over a creek with the stream flowing underneath the home, turning a water wheel for electric generation. It can be done eco-groovy. However, misleading and manipulative information has poisoned the minds of so many.
A project like this currently would not be allowed for any person unless the government was the one doing it because the agencies have, in affect, made decisions which imply that the people (the citizenry) are not smart enough to do it and must be dependent on government to tell us what we should do; rather than allowing us to act within our civil rights to do what we are allowed to do by CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, of course, within innovative, reasonable parameters.
FYI – Government’s intent (as many agencies as possible) is to create any type of restriction (legal or not legal) so as to increase the burdens within some proces which allows the agency to implement more “chargeable items on the Schedule of Fees”. This is due in part to an overpopulated planet which needs money to create jobs, housing units, consumption to raise tax revenues, etc…
Lastly, I am fortunate to have a copy of the “original Building Code” dated from the year 1927. With that information, I can honestly and comfortably say that many Victorian Structures are still standing strong. Go Figure.
Jeffrey Lytle
McKinleyville – 5th District
But their plumbing and wiring have been upgraded, Jeff.
The alternative lifestyle, off the grid people have just been promoted from dirty scummy drug addicted hippies to redneck comrades. Congratulations!
4:21, If your a progressive then I’ll take the rednecks anytime.
I hope everyone, who considers environmental protection a most important local value, reads and supports the sentiments of the posting Hill Williams 3/22 9:55 am.
Further, I hope planning solutions and strategies can be devised by the next group of County Supes that address HW’s concerns. Off the top of my head, conservation easements, land trust agrements, Williamson Act contracts are some current methods, but we all see the implications of Maxaam’s bankruptcy and pressure of more people to live in remote areas(with urban/suburban lifestyles).
Conservation easements, land trusts, and Williamson agreements all effectivly go away with the proposed zoning changes. If you can’t live on your land and it is effectivly zoned for timber/open space you have nothing to contribute to one of those agreements. Think about it.
Proposed being the key word. The GP update isn’t done yet. They are still holding meetings and taking public input. Tell them about your concerns.
Rest assured they will hear our concerns about code enforcement, zoning, building standards. They heard from us before and that is going to look like nothing. We are older and wiser now. We will burn them out of office if need be. If the Planning people or Supervisors want to try to throw me or my neighbors out, let them try, We just might have a suprise or two for them.
And people are surprised when the building inspectors show up with the sheriff’s dept fully armed when they know full well that there are loonies like the one at 6:08 out there with a “surprise or two”…
Doesnt excuse them pointed a weapon at a child, but I can understand why they might take there safey seriously…
As much as I hate this, I have to agree with you Yo. I hope the metal detectors are working at the Planning and BOS meetings. There are some dangerous whackos out there.
Yep, and it doesnt matter to me what side of the politcal fence they come from…
Don’t worry about agreeing with me once in awhile 6:25, even a broken clock is right twice a day…I’m bound to make sense once in a blue moon, right? ;)
Simple solution, they should call first. Even my kids know it’s only polite to call, if just to make sure I’m home and that it’s a good time to drop by for a visit. The problem is not the code guy, he’s just doing his job. The problem rests with Planning, the Sherriff, and the politicians, they are making the rules and telling Connor what to do. Connor is welcome, if he lets me know he’s coming and not bringing a bulldozer with him.
A point of clarification, the “burning” was meant symbolically. The “surprise” is the uprising of the people. Neither I nor I hope anyone else is advocating violence against people, just the peaceful overthrow of the system and the replacement of the politicians who don’t get behind the issue with ones who understand our rights.
one aspect of this “code-raid” situation that has not had much commentary is how they decide who to target.
for example, i doubt the “three bedroom house” at roger rodoni’s maxxam-subsidized “rainbow ranch” in the mattole watershed is up to code. i recall how a few years ago, while trying to explain how his lease with maxxam/pl for the three bedroom house, a number of outbuildings and an entire ranch property for only $350/month was not a “sweetheart deal,” one of his justifications was that the house did not include running water, etc. but i’d be willing to bet roger has some sort of running water rigged up there, perhaps not up to code?
and i’ll bet he’s got an unpermitted shitter somewhere around there, too (unless he just saves up all his crap for the supes meetings!?) but for some reason, i doubt that roger will ever get a visit from the “code raiders.” so roger will continue to go along with the violent crackdown, as long as it doesn’t touch his circle of cronies. but he, and the cpr folks, will gladly take advantage of the backlash for their own purposes.
i agree with those who say that that chumps like rodoni or arkley or the cpr clowns don’t have our best interests at heart. but neither do the pseudo-environmentalists in the planning department, or the “progressive” politicians like john woolley or bonnie neeley who have also kept mum as the violent code raids have intensified.
we’re on our own, folks. we must form alliances both left and right, but not be too attached to any of them. we don’t need to join the cpr crowd, we should form a seperate group, a “rural rights alliance.” then we can ally with them when they are standing up for the little guy, but not when they are just serving the big developers.
some will try to say it’s one or the other: either you’re with the pseudo-enviro planners, the clueless “progressive” pols and the violent code enforcers, or else you’re on the side of cpr and the arkleys, favoring endless, unfettered development, leading to vast ecological degradation.
that is a false choice that only benefits the “leaders” on both sides of that artificial divide. there is a third path to find, (probably fourth and fifth paths, too). rejecting the false choice is the first step toward finding those better paths
In theory, yes, I agree that’s a simple solution…
But what happens when the property owners don’t pick up the phone, be it through laziness, paranoia, or they have caller id, and can see it’s the county?
It’s a problem when you have lunatics saying the things like what was said by 6:08…
“We will burn them out of office if need be”
“We might just have a surprise or two for them”
That’s scary shit…Ted Kacinsky scary…
Again, my apology for a statement that was inflammatory and easily misinterpreted.
I agree too, lets not let the wackos, on whatever side, set the agenda or limit the discussion of options.
Everyone who is sincerely committed to wildlife protection, ranching, logging sustainably, and productive fisheries, needs to see Maxaam’s crisis as an opportunity to join together. I think its still possible to avoid the past mistakes and set a new balance between economic growth and freedom of lifestyle choices.
Responsbile people, wherever they live, need support and encouragement to stay responsible. And irresponsible people need to know their immediate land use options are limiited by the minimum requirements.
yeah, there are some dangerous whackos out there all right. some of them are wearing badges. some are not. when the two groups mix, watch out.
let’s try to stop this madness before it gets to that point.
A voice of reason, NotANative. Thank you.
No problem, I understand…you are frustrated. But these people going in and doing there jobs have to go under the assumptions that sometimes these statements are not symobolic…
I am a bit frustrated in a sense. I’ve built two houses since becoming a homeowner (well I didnt build them, but they were built for me by a contractor)…
I spent a ton of time at the county offices, getting the proper permits and turning in plans ( my contractor didnt do this for me, as it was was cheaper for me to go in and do it on my dime, as owner/builder)…
Both homes have been just outside of city limits, the latest in cutten…I have complied with all of the requirements, paid all of the fees…
I dont understand why people believe they should not be required to adhere to the building codes and standards that are out there…I certainly dont advocate for the storming of unpermitted properties with armed police, and I am all for those who want to enjoy there lifesytle choices, whatever they may be….
But…I still dont think that excludes them from having to build to code…
Thorn, I saw somebody raise the question a couple of times yesterday with regards to the yeehaw ranch…and I havnent seen you answer it….
What happens if, something happened there, due to bad wiring, poor ventilation, or whatever, and some unspeakable tragedy occured, that would have been likely prevented had the buildings been brought up to code?
Who do you think the families of those lost would go after in court? The property owner? Most likely, but I bet that some attorney would be suing the crap out of the county as well, for allowing substandard buildings that they were aware of to exist without requiring them to be brought up to code…
Anyway, great conversation these past couple of days…
interesting how “yo” is so frightened by vague metaphors on a blog, but doesn’t seem too concerned about cops unnecessarily pointing guns at unarmed people, including children. curious choice of concerns.
Just answer the question, “thorn”…it’s a reasonable one.
More good points, Yo. Why should some people be allowed to build without permits and code compliance but others be required to do both?
To be fair Thorn, no one has justified the actions of the police at yee-haw.
yo,
the wildly hypothetical scenarios about yee-haw that you and other have come up with about fires, cholera, etc. are just that – wildly hypothetical.
another hypothetical question is this: what happens when the gun-waving code raider sneezes and the bullet rips through the child or the mom? suddenly cholera or non-union electrical work ain’t too much of a concern for that family. this could easily have happened at yee-haw, where many guns were drawn, none for any good reason, and these guns were waved around at a number of unarmed residents (there weren’t any armed residents!), including children. what if a gun-waving cop stumbled, or a resident reached for their wallet, which would later be said to “look like a gun” ? so for any hypothetical scenario you could come up with about what “might” happen if the code raid didn’t take place, i’m sure i could come up with another hypothetical scenario that may happen if these violent code raids are allowed to continue.
now here’s a not-at-all hypothetical question for you: what happens when a six-year-old child is exposed to the business end of a cops gun, and witnesses his mother bullied and shouted at, and together with his infant sister they are all herded off their land by a heavily-armed contingent of code raiders / drug warriors? how many years does it take to erase such an experience? will the effect ever be fully ameliorated? this is not at all hypothetical because i personally know of at least one such child who has already been emotionally scarred that way. not to even mention losing his cozy and perfectly safe, albeit unpermitted home.
no one is even alleging that there have been any fires, sewage spills, etc, at yee-haw (all the “harm” alleged by the county is purely hypothetical and/or bureaucratic, as opposed to anything that is actually harming anyone).
i would much rather rely on my own ability, and that of my neighbors, to keep our families safe from the everyday hazards of life, than rely on the armed nanny state to keep me and mine “safe” at the point of a gun.
no one was harmed at yee-haw until the code raiders’ military-style assault took place. the only ones harmed at that point were the residents. this was an example of violent nanny-state overreach, pure and simple. looking for pot plants that didn’t exist, and solving problems that don’t exist, all at the point of a gun. actually a couple of dozen guns.
whackos, indeed.
Hypothetical problems are what codes are meant to prevent, Thorn. Waiting until the potential problems kill someone isn’t a good option.
Virtually everyone here has agreed that the police actions at yeehaw were wrong and that type of situation should never happen again. Your righteous anger is valid, no doubt. But you seem to want to blame everyone who believes in following the permitting process and building to code. Why do you believe that people living a rural lifestyle should be granted amnesty from the laws that everyone else has to follow?
anon (@7:12)
i agree that no one has “justified” the police violence at yee-haw. it is patently unjustifiable. but a number of folks on this thread, like yo, are quick to condemn what they perceive as threats of violence on this blog (in each case it has turned out that they have been reading too much into the comments, which were not threats at all) and yet they remain silent about the police violence in these code raids.
either a very selective sense of outrage, or a very curious decision to decry some hypothetically (actually non-existent) violent threats on a blog, while remaining silent about actual, real-world violence by the cops and code raiders.
in this case, as in many others, silence is complicity.
Land use controls are, in fact, a capitalist plot to optimize the property values of the majority of owners, not some communist conspiracy to deprive individuals of some imaginary “property rights”.
Adam Smith perceptively observed that, “As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed.” That doesn’t mean we are depriving them of rights when we tell them no.
Thank you
Hey Yo,
As I tried to explain up there somewhere, we “adhered to the standards” like most people do when we did our rural building. Code isn’t rocket science. It doesn’t require so much as a drive to Eureka.
We never thought we were getting away with anything, let alone violating anything. We were busy building our homes for life. Why would we build them to burn down? What in the world makes you think our homes are worse than your home, which having built it you know violates code too? (Have you turned your plug outlets upside-down yet? It’s been code for 2 years. No? Stick ’em up!) What do we have to disagree about?
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For everyone who is not manipulating this thread,
All homes which were built prior to 2008 are not up to code based on the new codes which were put into affect for FY 2008 as per CBC, UBC and IBC standards. All homes which were built prior to 2007 were not up to code as per new FY 2007 codes and standards. Same thing in backwards motion for Fy 2005, FY 2004, FY 2003 etc… Every new home will eventually “NOT BE UP TO CODE” regardless of obtaining a permit or not. This is the TRUTH! This is due, again, to new codes and standards.
Sometimes, this effect is reverse. Take sheetrock as an example for the home in a designated R-1 classification when understanding the safety aspects of the garage seperation wall with the occupied portions of the home. The code used to be 5/8″ sheetrock; now, it is 1/2″. Sometimes, the State Building Official and associated local agency Building Officials realise they over did it on the codes and standards. Most of the time, however, it is the introduction of new codes as a device to keep the money rolling in, as compared to just safety reasons.
Anonymous @ 4:12pm,
#1. What was your application on your point?
#2. Second, lets say I have an existing house that was built in 1978. Iwant to gut the whole inside of the home because I do not like the ugly plastered walls mixed with rough wood paneling. Now, by the mandate of code, I am supposed to upgrade the wiring and plumbing. Read carefully because here is the twister!
In 1978,Tax Assessor valued the new wiring and plumbing as brand new. Then each successive year, up to 2% was added to the value of that wiring and plumbing. Fast Forward to today. I take out all that wiring and plumbing to upgrade to new wiring and plumbing as per the new codes. The County Tax Assessor then values the new wiring as such (per market value which includes labor to install in the fraudulant opinion of the appraiser). Guess what, now your home has not only the false value of the years of old wiring, but now a fraudulent and opinionated “new value” on the new wiring and plumbing that you just spent your hard earned money toward.
Oh, and the final nail in the coffin is this – the County Tax Assessor / Appraiser did not remove the value of the old wiring on your Property Tax bill. You are paying for things you do not have anymore. Further, the secrecy of the Assessors Department to manufacture, purge or deny you a copy of the calculations used to come up with a value on your Property Taxes is very much so prevalent. This is the guile and cunning strategy that I mentioned in a previous post. THIS IS FRAUD AND YOUR COUNTY SUPERVISORS ARE COVERING IT UP ALONG WITH THE COUNTY TAX APPEALS ASSESSMENT HEARING BOARD.
As I will keep reiterating the truth; it is all about the local tax revenue streams in this housing issue, no matter where the house is located; and, no matter if the home had permits or not originally.
By the Way, the extra money that you spend on fraudulent property tax values could be going to health insurance, property insurance, your mortgage if you have one, or many other things in your life. Remember these facts when you vote for SUPERVISOR because I guarantee that our current Supes either do not understand land planning, zoning, enforcement and taxes; or, they are conspiring to defraud you. There is no negligience; it is intentional misconduct at best.
Jeffrey Lytle
McKinleyville – 5th District
“Thorn”…please tell me where I have “remained silent” with the behavior of law enforcement at yee haw…
I’ve said it was deplorable…furthermore, I’ll answer your question, even if you won’t answer mine…If one of those kids were killed by a gun totin sheriff who had one too many red bulls before the raid, I’d say that the County would be held liable, as they should be…I have no problem with that at all. But – you seem to be using the yeehaww thing as a stand alone end all, be all for your argument…
I’ve seen where Cholera was discussed, and it was and it wasnt with regards to the Yeehaw place, although I do believe that they do have an improper septic system…
So, I’ve answered your question…
Again, answer me this…who would be held liable if that whole place burned down and people were killed due to improper electrical wiring, or people suffocated because the heating wasnt ventilated properly?
The property owner…yes
The County….for allowing this to continue with their knowledge buildings and systems not built to code? I would have to think that the lawyers would go after a county as hard as they can with the vast (in comparison to one property owner) resources, including, I would wager, a much better insurance policy for things like this…
Hi 752…
I dont think everyone doesnt build their homes to code…
But I do think that there are many who do not…
btw, 752, take a look at the ncj article on the yeehaw raid in trinidad that our friend Thorn is so passionate about…
There are many cases of this on a smaller scale, with nary an effort to have anything brought to code…
to anon (@7:37)
you can always come up with hypothetical problems for the nanny state to solve pre-emptively, and you can keep coming up with these until the cows come home (and that does seem to be the point our pseudo-enviro planners and code enforcers, and our county government in general is approaching) but that doesn’t mean that people really need the nanny-state to prevent these problems in the first place.
most problems we can prevent and/or solve ourselves. the ever-growing parasite that we call “the state” is predicated on the idea that we are growing less and less able, every day, to address these problems ourselves, and therefore we are more and more in need the armed nanny-state to protect us from ourselves, sometimes at gunpoint. and this becomes somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy as more and more people cede control over larger and larger parts of their lives to a state that will never voluntarily curtail its own power, or the growth of that power.
i agree with the statement that “waiting until the potential problems kill someone isn’t a good option.” now try applying the same logic to the police violence aspect of these code raids, and you may understand my sense of urgency on this matter.
you say that “virtually everyone agrees that the police actions at yee-haw were wrong and that type of situation should never happen again.” great. so what policies have been changed to ensure that it never happens again? answer: none. it could happen again tomorrow. it probably will, if these code raids continue under the current military-style-assault approach, including the unhealthy and corrupting influence of the drug task force being brought along for a generalized unwarranted search, rather than being handled as a civil matter.
so i don’t blame all those who support building codes for the past actions of the code-raiders and their bureaucrat bosses. but i do question the priorities of those who spend their time and effort trying to justify, with rather weak, hypothetical arguments, the need for code raids in general, even while these raids are continuing in the same violent and confrontational fashion as at yee-haw.
i don’t think that rural living or building should be completely no-hold-barred, but certainly it makes sense to have different rules for different situations, rather than the one-size-fits-all approach we see coming from the central scrutinizers in eureka. honestly, if we thought that the county was acting in good faith, i think compromise solutions could be reached in any number of areas, including grandfathering longtime residences, creating a reasonable permitting process for composting toilets, etc., etc.
if the county wants to actively help its residents improve the rural infrastructure and facilities, they could provide help in any number of ways: advice and consultation, expedited permitting of simple improvement projects, revolving-loan financing, etc.
but from the way this is being handled at the moment, it appears that the county ‘crats are more interested in making unwarranted searches in order to justify their ever-increasing dea/camp funding, and in driving certain low-income people off the land.
hope they prove me wrong, but i’m not betting the farm on it!
Yo @ 7:59 pm,
#1. What facts make you believe that there was an improper septic system? Do you have privied information from the County Environmental Health Deapartment? Or, do you mean improper or without a permit? It is very possible that a proper septic system can be in use having not obtained a necessary permit. I am not trying to justify one way or the other because I do not have the specifics. I am just wondering if you have the specifics.
I went through a permit process with Dave Spinosa years ago; and again later while abandoning a septic tank / leach field system with an onsite water well. He was very helpful. However, on a neighboring property, Mr. Spinosa did not want to properly red tag a Modesto Contractor for illegal septic system usage after the fact. Even Jeff Connors and Richard Hendry did not want to fully follow through. I was around during code enforcement’s visits and they did not need sheriff’s deputies then, so why now? I guarantee there were more people living on the disputed Modesto Contractors SFR than the NCJ made clear up at Yee Haw Ranch.
#2. Liability is decided by insurance investigators. If electrical wiring was faulty, it could be the installer, manufacturer, inspector, property owner, etc. regardless of whether or not a permit was necessary or not. If there is no insurance, then a lawsuit to decide the issue would be a most likely avenue for victims and/or their successors in interest.
#3. On Yee Haw; why would sheriff’s deputies have guns unhooked and drawn in the first place (in combat form) if residents on property had no weapons visibly displayed for immediate use if necessary?
#4. By the power of the 2nd Amendment of the United States Constitution, any citizen can have firearms displayed at any point in time on their property, period. No law can deprive of this right. If one wants to shoot a .22 caliber, a .45 caliber, or even a pellet gun, etc. as gopher control, he or she can. If an owner wants to safely target practice on their land, they legally can. Now, of course in a city, the general welfare and safety of others is a higher concern than in the country.
In addition, if one just wants to sit or stand at their property boundary with any legal weapon showing as a sign of protective force, that property owner can legally do so. Brandishing a fire-arm or other legal weapon to “protect your property rights” is not illegal, unless there is no threat of your rights being infringed. Now, if you overdue it by injuring or killing someone, you MAY be liable depending on the situation and circumstances. This issue of firearms is always a question of reasoning. Stupidity hurts the law abiding citizens’ rights and integrity. Violence is terrible, but protection of rights is necessary. Let us all just be safe.
Jeffrey Lytle
McKinleyville – 5th District
Thorn @ 8:19 pm,
If County agency staff were to offer for “free” any advice or consultation, then they are shown on “the financial ledgers/books” as not being necessary. This is another reason why the local tax revenue stream is the issue.
Jeffrey Lytle
McKinleyville – 5th District
The thing is, Thorn. These “hypothetical problems” have occurred in the past and the codes were designed to prevent them.
You still haven’t explained why people living a rural lifestyle shouldn’t have to have permits and build to code like urban dwellers. Keep in mind, the rural builders already got an amnesty of sorts with the relaxation of building codes for them in the 70’s, I believe. Now that isn’t good enough either.
Anonymous @ 8:43 pm,
Proximity of dwellings is one reason.
Jeffrey Lytle
McKinleyville – 5th District
What does the proximity of dwellings have to do with anything? Urban dwellers would, OF COURSE, hook up to water and sewer, them being convenient and practical.
What does proximity have to do with how a house is built?
yo,
when you tried to use a (hypothetical, acutally misunderstood) “threat” on this blog as a justification for sending all the armed cops along with the code enforcers, you did more than “remain silent.” you provided an excuse for continuing the armed assaults.
it used to be that we celebrated our law enforcement folks because they were risking their lives to keep the public safe. now we ask the public to risk their lives so that our increasingly bullying and apparently increasingly cowardly cops can always “feel safe” as they stomp around our lands without a warrant. the ’76 ers would be appalled at this state of affairs, in which the people serve the police and the government, not the other way around.
funny how the tax assesors, soil testers, various “-ologists,” insurance inspectors and so on are able to go out to these same properties without an armed escort. but for some reason, our “law enforcement” code enforcers feel the need for a dozen heavily-armed storm troopers, who just happen to comprise the county’s drug task force, and who just happen to use the occasion to conduct an otherwise warrantless search of the property, and often adjoining properties. if you think this only happened in trinidad, you obviously weren’t at the sohum meeting described in the article at the top of this thread. i have continued to address the yee-haw incident because it is the one i know the most about, and unlike some commentators, i prefer to comment on matters that i have some real knowledge about.
your question about who the folks at yee-haw would sue if there was a fire shows a profound misunderstanding of the people you are making assumptions about.
consider this: the parents of the child i know who was traumatized by that needless police violence are well aware that they could sue the county for what was done to their child. there may be psychological counseling costs for years to come, for instance, not to mention the punitive damages that could be applied in such a case.
but they don’t want to sue anyone, they don’t even necessarily want to have anyone fired. they recognize that it is the system, more than the individuals that serve it, that must be changed. they don’t want to “hit back,” they just want to make sure that this doesn’t ever happen again. yes, i know that’s hard to believe, but these are the type of kind, gentle, forgiving souls that these parents are (which makes the cops’ bullying behavior seem all the more obscene). at this point, these parents just want to be left alone and allowed to protect and raise their child, free from the clutches of the armed nanny state that has already put him at risk of his life once, along with his infant sister (who, thankfully, is too young to understand what happened, though she, too, had her life disrupted and her first home lost for no good reason).
by the way, if anyone, in any dwelling, does non-code wiring which causes a fire, and then tries to sue the county for failing to prevent them from causing the fire, they would be laughed out of court at the very least – more likely they would receive a stern warning from a judge on filing frivolous lawsuits. that would be like speeding at 120 mph, getting into an accident, and then suing the state of california because chp didn’t stop you from speeding in time to prevent your crash. ain’t gonna fly in court, even in our admittedly over-litigious age.
the folks at yee-haw, and i daresay most of our back-to-the-landers, are quite capable of preventing fire and other common household hazards without the armed “help” of the code raiders. and they are not at all interested in holding the county responsible for the negative consequences (if any) of their own personal lifestyle choices. if most americans had the sense of self-efficacy and personal responsibility these folks have, we’d all be in a lot better shape (except maybe the growing number of slef-important bureaucrats who rely on our alleged helplessness to justify their existence).
I just can’t help but wonder what you think about slum lords who rent out substandard dwellings to the poor who can’t afford to live elsewhere. Many of their renters are probably grateful for the shelter, but does that make what they are doing right?
Anonymous @ 8:51 pm,
Safety distances between habitable buildings is the “proximity” reason. This is why the limited scope process for an “owner-builder” situation allows a reduced permitting / inspection process as compared to an Apartment Building in a more urbanized area, a sub-division, etc… In a rural situation, an owner-builder does not need electrical or natural gas / propane if they use renewable resources.
A big problem I mentioned earlier is that the “General Public” is mostly unaware of their legal options because the Building, Planning, and other departments are pushing for maximized tax revenue streaming through consumption by creating cash flow through others’ pockets (ie. industry manufacturers, sector businesses, labor, etc.).
Jeffrey Lytle
McKinleyville – 5th District
9:08, as you can tell, you are the only person who really cares about that evil slumlord and his poor tenants. Yes, they deserve to be interrogated and removed at gunpoint while trained inspectors determine if the doorjambs are really 32 inches across, or just 31 and a half; but we don’t care about them enough. We don’t care about them like we care about country people, so we don’t invade their homes and beat their dogs and tell them what to tear up, haul off or burn down. Why aren’t they entitled to the same treatment, is that your question? I’d like that answer as well.
HumCPR may not be perfect but they fill the room and thats what makes a difference to the politicians. I’m going to the meeting and let Jimmy Smith know what his people are doing is unacceptable and he better get it together if he wants to be reelected.
Why couldn’t an owner / builder in an urban area use renewable resources rather than electric or natural gas? Houses are set far enough apart that in most cases a fire in one doesn’t spread to the neighbors. Fires from homesteads can be devastating to the surrounding properties and homes as well. So that doesn’t wash either.
Some of you seem to be claiming that your lifestyle choices exempt you from following county and state laws. You want exemptions from building permits, code compliance, unlimited numbers of houses (with their corresponding increase in resource use, especially water), and even rentals. Yet you claim you are responsible stewards who don’t need supervision, “just trust us.”
Wrong 9:29. I don’t believe that even the slum lord should be held at gun point. These are civil, not criminal investigations. Again, no one has said that what happened at Yee Haw was acceptable.
Now…
Slum lords provide substandard shelter to the poor who can’t afford to live elsewhere. Does the gratitude of the poor for shelter make it right?
to anon (@8:43)
i much prefer to risk the “hypothetical” harms that i can easily prevent myself without any help from the armed nanny state, over the very real, tangible harms being perpetrated by the armed storm troopers of said nanny state.
as far as your question about why there should be different standards (not “no standards”) in rural areas i already answered your question in the 6th paragraph of my comments at 8:19. perhaps you hadn’t seen that yet when you posted your 8:43 comments? in any event, the idea is not that it should be no-hold-barred building in rural areas, but it does make sense to have very different standards in very different situations, does it not. one-size-fits-all doesn’t even work that well for hats, even though skulls are all roughly similar in shape. landscapes and types of communities, densities, etc., all vary quite a bit between the suburban streets of the arcata bottoms, and the rolling hills of sohum. thus the rules should probably fit the situation in a reasonable way, rather than trying to use force of arms and confiscatory fines to try to force the situation to fit unreasonable rules.
there are plenty of solutions and compromises that could be reached, but not with the atmosphere of armed occupation that these violent code raids have created. and i’m sure that’s just fine with some political folks, they don’t want compromise, they don’t want solutions, they want continued sharp conflict, which they hope to translate into support for their overall agendas, be they the pro-corporate, pro-big-developer agendas of the cpr/arkley crowd, or the pro-bureaucracy, pseudo-environmentalist agenda of the urban/suburban “progressive” politicians and their supporters.
but for those who are interested in developing solutions rather than excusing more of the status quo – again, my proposed plan of action for ending this madness is: (1) admit that there is a problem with the violent code raids and the corrupting partnership with the drug task force, (2) stop the violent code raids immedately, (3) hold a series of public hearings around the county to hear from the people who are being affected and to solicit proposed compromises, win-win solutions, etc. (4) adopt the best proposals and then start working with, not against, the people to improve our rural facilities. this will be done through our elected representatives; if they punt, or waffle, or dig in their heels and stay in denial, they can be relplaced and we can try #4 again, until we get a result we can all live with.
i realize these are not specific solutions. they are not supposed to be – i don’t claim to have all the answers. but i know the practical solutions are out there – many people have mentioned some of them on this very thread.
what’s missing is not the ingenuity of our residents or the solutions they can adopt – what’s missing is good faith on the part of the county, which, again, seems more interested in using the code raids as a pretext to do unwarranted searches to help meet their pot-bust-quotas in hopes of getting even more d.e.a. funding, and also interested in driving the poor off of our rural lands to clear the way for a few more gaudy mcmansions.
but the people taking those attitudes are either elected officials or the paid staff overseen by the elected officials. all such people can be removed as a result of the democratic process, as long as we can see the true dimensions of the problem clearly and are willing to speak frankly about our concerns and be peacefully assertive of our rights.
No. We had a system. It worked. We all worked together. One day a troop of–well, call them what you want–appeared like bats out of hell and started threatening and misleading people, very aggressively, over huge areas. over ‘code violations’ pulled from someplace dark. Remember? We didn’t bring up code, everything was fine, and overall safe, as any volunteer fireman can affirm.
WHo the hell wants to talk about this nonsense? The point you haven’t arrived at yet is that, if our county wants to write code for the country for the first time, as it’s doing, it will damn well consult with the people it’s coding. Your codes issue from an almost century-old, legimate process. Ours issue from someone shouting “Fire!” and “Cholera!” and “Wolf!” at innocent students. Well, live and learn.
Anonymous @ 9:32 pm,
1st sentence = convenience; lack of an acceptable set-back area for an on-site water storage tank; distances from other dwellings, again; sub-division standards that the urban developer agreed to which eliminated some property rights; the pushy mandates which are forced upon the developer in urban developments; the extra costs for mixing and matching the types of resources that some of the potential home buyers may or may not want (not everyone wants to split wood, deal with rats and spiders, etc. in their wood pile stored for wood stove purposes); etc.
2nd sentence = Urban or Rural?
3rd sentence = Fires anywhere can be devastating; especially next to other homes that have natural gas lines, vehicles with fuels; other close homes with combustible materials, the voluminous numbers of people nearby, etc.
5th sentence = There are certain exemptions as explained by the “limited scope” process for an owner-builder.
6th sentence = I do not know how many people want what you suggest. Whatever the historical, legal and reasonable exemptions have been are still justifiable today; just like whatever the historical, reasonable and legal requirements were post 1927 are still justifiable today. As many people should understand, a growing and changing social environment does necessitate the updating of safety standards. Hopefully, people would agree this can be accomplished while still allowing reasonable variations in leeway. A little bit safer is better than not being any safer.
Last sentence = there was no such building codes in place prior to 1927. Does this mean our historical forefathers were irresponsible stewards who needed supervision? Look at the Old Victorians still standing. Look at the systematic changes for tax revenue growth. There is much more to the reasons for codes and standards besides safety issues. This is the truth of the matter.
Jeffrey Lytle
McKinleyville – 5th District
Many of them are not still standing Jeff. I remember many when I was a child that were in deplorable condition. Those still inhabited have been upgraded many times, beginning many years ago when they were plumbed (you can see the pipes on the OUTSIDE of the houses) and their archaic wiring replaced. There are buildings thousands of years old still standing but most don’t last so long.
the example of an urban slumlord may be an appropriate analogy for some of the rural situations, but not yee-haw, which, unlike our urban slums has been (according to the residents themselves) a very safe and pleasant place to live – at least until the gun-toting county “safety” patrol showed up. tenants of actual slumlords generally have a very different opinion of their living conditions and their landlords.
but in neither case should the tenants be subjected to police violence or thrown out of homes that are only “out-of-compliance” in a bureaucratic sense and not actually dangerous in any concrete way.
some urban landlords are intentionally predatory, but many are just not very good businessmen or property managers, and/or they are just getting started in the business and begin in the least expensive part of the market. for those who prefer a government/bureaucratic/regulatory approach (which seems to be the preference of the majority of folks in urban and suburban settings, and that’s fine as long as they don’t want to force it on those of us in rural settings) one practical solution that might help to sort out the predators from the well-meaning, would be a system whereby if identified code issues are not fixed by an initial “warning” deadline, a certain portion of the monthly rents would be set aside in a seperate bank account to be spent on fixing the code problems and once that is accomplished could be spent on other maintenance and improvements.
if the landlord doesn’t go ahead and make the improvements, the money would sit in the account until a final deadline, after which it would go back to the tenants, who may end up having to seek new housing in an extreme case. i suspect that this sort of arrangement would provide plenty of incentive to landlords to keep their places “up to code” as much as reasonably possible (which i do think is more important in the cities than in rural areas for all kinds of reasons that many others have outlined above).
when an otherwise well-meaning landlord does let things go a bit, this mechanism would ensure that a portion of the rental funds would be set aside to help get caught up. the landlord will have a big incentive to use the funds to make the repairs, and keep generating income, rather than an incentive to just keep stalling and wringing a few more months of rent out of the tenants before abandoning the building as sometimes happens now with the current “hit-them-with-huge-daily-punitive-fines-that-will-soon-overwhelm-the-value-of-the-property” system (and if the landlord does stall-and-abandon, under the win-win system, at least the tenants walk away with the last few months rent, rather than the irresponsible landlord).
in this sort of win-win system, nothing is being “taken” from the landlord (unless he/she abandons the property), the state is using it’s coercive power simply to redirect some of the rental income to building maintenance, but that is still a capital improvement to the landlord’s property and he/she still benefits from that. no one loses if the landlord makes the repairs, and the tenants don’t have to get booted out. (and just think: the code enforcers, through non-violent, civil means, could actually be performing a real public service with their inspections, rather than just providing cover for warrantless searches by the drug task force and racking up huge fines to help the county seize and auction properties that are desired by developers!) now in particularly recalcitrant slumlord cases, straight-up fines, or seizing or condemning the building, etc. could still happen in the end, but that should be a last resort, not the automatic first response, like the code enforcers are doing at these rural raids.
anyway, this is just one idea, perhaps there are better solutions that also don’t involve police violence, criminalizing tenants, or the other problems with the current approach. it’s still a more bureaucratic approach than i would really like to see, but that’s what most urban/suburban folks seem to want, and at least it’s more of a win-win approach to the problem of “distressed properties,” as opposed to the mindlessly punitive approach the county now takes.
whether you think this particular solution to the “slumlord” problem is the right one, it is an example of the sorts of practical, common-sense solutions that can be found – when people are really looking for solutions, and not just looking to stoke divisions for political advantage, or generate extra income for the county with dea grants, huge code fines and seized-land auctions.
Anonymous @ 10:29,
Many Victorians are still standing too.
Lack of personal dwelling maintenance is different than structural lapses, fires, flooding, other natural disasters, etc. The old Victorians stand up very well in this “earthquake” country we live in. Deplorable conditions happens with all makes and models of homes and structures, right?
Trends is another reason that suggests a diminishing of Victorians as compared to lack of codes and stewardship. Victorians that are upgraded are rebecoming a fad for people who want nice architectural design compared to the fad of “crackerbox houses” or “cookie cutter” developments. In the big cities, Victorians fetch higher values when upgraded when compared to upgraded “cracker box” homes. Also, the costs to build a new Victorian style home is much more than ” cracker box” homes within “cookie cutter” developments. Hence, affordable/ living housing realities.
Jeffrey Lytle
McKinleyville – 5th District
I have a piece of property that was in my family. I probably could be called a slumlord for this one, but I have a couple of other ones that are very nicely maintained. This one property is very old, and the tenants stayed for around 25 years. Since I got it, the tenants moved and the interior was in awful condition. I really can’t afforf to fix it up much, but I did have it painted and everything works. I took out the toilet the previous people had clogged up and taped shut (understatement- I just don’t want to describe what they did). if they had called me I could have dealt with it, but as it was I got a new one and had the pipes cleared. My new people begged me to have a dog. Their dog ruined the carpet so they took it out and put it in the shed. Don’t people who rent understand that they have no right to remove things like carpet? Anyway, when you can’t afford to make things nicer, the tenants who will live there seem to be the type to not care about your property. It’s a vicious circle.
Define Slum Lords please.
I am sure what one’s definition is can be different when compared to another’s definition.
Thank You
Jeffrey Lytle
McKinleyville – 5th District
to anon (@9:38)
you said “these are civil, not criminal investgations.” true enough…so why is it that the rural code crackdowns are being conducted by code enforcement officers operating under the criminal law enforcement auspices of the district attorney, and who are most certainly criminal law enforcement agents, not civilian members of the county health department or something? and since these are “civil, not criminal” investigations, why is the code enforcement unit acting as a trojan horse for warrantless general searches of targeted properties (and adjoining properties), searches conducted as military-style raids by dozens of heavily armed members of the drug task force?
why indeed, if these are truly just “civil investigations” by county staff looking out for our health and well-being? answer: they’re not being handled as “civil investigations” at all, except to the extent that it is easier to gain access to a property this way, than to obtain an actual criminal search warrant. thus even the folks who are piad with our tax money to look out for the health and well-being of the community have been turned into more pawns (though maybe they see themselves as at least rooks?) for the failed, but still all-too-often-lethal, war on pot.
you also said “no one has said what happened at yee-haw was acceptable.” well i guess that’s narrowly correct if you are referring only to comments on this blog. the fibbing code enforcement officer who was interiewed on kmud about the yee-haw raid certainly claimed that everything was done properly, and we have seen nothing from his bosses at the county counsel’s office, or, more to the point, at the d.a.’s or sheriff’s offices to indicate that there has been any change in policy whatsoever.
and meanwhile a whole series of similar violent raids (last week it was “wood ranch” in sohum) have continued to take place in the intervening months, without so much as a peep from gallegos, the supes, or the sheriff. so apparently, among those who have the power to immediately stop the worst excesses of these code raids, there doesn’t seem to be any willingness, much less any urgency, to really change the violent approach. perhaps the burgeoning hippy/redneck rural alliance, if you want to call it that, will focus their attention. too bad doing the right thing by the other human beings in the county isn’t incentive enough on it’s own. but some politicians can only recognize an outrage when a crowd of a few thousand angry citizens is on hand to point it out to them in no uncertain terms.
we urgently need, among other things, a month-long series of public hearings throughout the county – not just a few minutes of easily-ignored public comments at a routine supes meeting during the day in eureka – but specific public hearings, in the evenings at a number of locations throughout the county – public hearings with all the members of the board of supes, the sheriff, the d.a., the county counsel, and the code enforcement staff present, among others, so that county residents can voice their concerns and ideas directly, in an open, meaningful forum where the decision-makers are present, focused on this issue, and (hopefully) listening.
of course, first we need an immediate freeze on the violent, armed, confrontational, drug-task-force oriented code-raids / warrantless searches. you can’t expect people to participate very constructively when you’re trampling their privacy rights and threatening their family members at the point of a gun.
stop the violence. hear the people. find the solutions.
The real risk of cholera is from the fecal matter left behind when our government minders wipe their asses on the constitution after crapping all over our civil rights.
11:18
Landlording seems to be a pretty rough game. The situation you describe is one reason why I would never be a landlord.
I used to be a renter before I was able to afford to buy a small, modest house. My competition in the starter, modest house part of the market (the lowest priced homes) seemed to all be local investors who wanted to be landlords.
A solution to your problem could be to sell it to a first time home buyer, and thereby benefit the community by putting ownership in the hands of someone who would fix it up properly. Just a thought.
Anyone know what cholera is and how fast and far it can kill?
From CDC:
Cholera is an acute, diarrheal illness caused by infection of the intestine with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The infection is often mild or without symptoms, but sometimes it can be severe. Approximately one in 20 infected persons has severe disease characterized by profuse watery diarrhea, vomiting, and leg cramps. In these persons, rapid loss of body fluids leads to dehydration and shock. Without treatment, death can occur within hours.
A person may get cholera by drinking water or eating food contaminated with the cholera bacterium. In an epidemic, the source of the contamination is usually the feces of an infected person. The disease can spread rapidly in areas with inadequate treatment of sewage and drinking water.
The cholera bacterium may also live in the environment in brackish rivers and coastal waters. Shellfish eaten raw have been a source of cholera, and a few persons in the United States have contracted cholera after eating raw or undercooked shellfish from the Gulf of Mexico. The disease is not likely to spread directly from one person to another; therefore, casual contact with an infected person is not a risk for becoming ill.
Check out the cholera link way above. It puts things in good perspective, and specifically says septic systems in lower-density areas aren’t more purposeful than holes in the ground (and in high-density areas may not work). It doesn’t define high-density but it’s about developing-world conditions.
Gray water from showers can also contain fecal material. The Yee Haw Ranch was dumping gray water onto the ground, not into a septic system or even a hole in the ground. Contaminated gray water can seep into wells or garden areas and contaminate the food being grown there.
I’m a city boy but I like redwoods and clean rivers. I like the idea of people living on the land too. If I were younger I would try it maybe.
This looks to me like an issue of rich vs. poor, with the poor being both hippies and rednecks. It is the poor, whether hippies or rednecks who are being harassed by armed gangs.
This is akin to urban gentrification, which we see over and over again in cities. The poor are forced out of their (affordable) homes and city blocks are “redeveloped.”
This is rural gentrification and must be resisted. If we in the city (who are relatively wealthy) feel that our poorer brothers and sisters living in the hills (whether redneck or hippie) are polluting the environment, then we should offer them some help (because we are wealthy and they are not), not send armed gangs to attack them.
It is just the same as helping the poor in the city. Poor people should not be attacked but offered a helping hand.
Have a peaceful day,
Bill
I agree Bill. I suggested that WAY up there somewhere or maybe on the Pollace thread, a sort of fix up Habitat for Humanity. There are lots of possible solutions which don’t require throwing out all building codes and stopping the general plan update.
with all the unpermitted composting shitters and outdoor showers in the county, i’m sure you fearmongers can point to at least *one* actual recent case of cholera in humboldt county, due to these rustic living arrangements? what’s that, you can’t point to any cases at all?
yup, just more hypothetical scenarios to justify the idea that we desperately need the tender loving care of the armed nanny state to protect us all from ourselves.
once again, i’d much rather take my chances with the hypothetical risks posed by an outdoor shower, than continue with the very real consequences of the military-style assaults, warrantless searches and confiscatory fines aimed at driving poor people out of their homes.
when the nanny state proposes to “protect” the community by throwing people out of their homes in an armed assault, all to save us from the horrors of an outdoor shower, we have arrived at a point of bureaucratic absurdity that would be humorous if it weren’t so damaging.
i wonder if you can get cholera from hogwash? if so, be sure to avoid the offices of the central scrutinizers in eureka.
dad gum it thorn, yer my kinda dirty hippie.
People get sick all the time, its not reported in the news. I got a stomach ache last year after hiking near Willow Creek on BLM land. Maybe it was Cholera. Asking folks to die to satisfy the doubts of a few is not good Government. And just because you haven’t seen something or heard about it happening in your lifetime, doesn’t make it impossible or even improbable. Intelligent people LEARN from history and the wisdom of those who have come before us. Ignorant people ignore education and accept only what they have personally experienced.
Thorn, you have some ideological obsession that you keep beating like a drum over “nanny state”, whatever the hell that is. You’re the one with hypothetical fears and paranoia about other people controlling you. It sounds like you have a personal problem with authority. Some folks need to live far away from others because they aren’t able to get along well in social groups. That sounds like you. Your ideas certainly aren’t representative of most of the rural lifestylers out there, and I’ll take that to the ballot box.
The sane proponents of rural living, like Hill William 3/22 9:55AM, aren’t interested in Thorn’s antisocial paranoia, they want to just see the landscape not be radically modified due to human habitation. And that means limiting impacts of all kinds by conforming to standards of behavior that reflect scientific and social understanding, not ideologically based.
Do those unpermitted BLM chipmunks need septic toilets? Boy is there a future in planning!
Well spoken Coda! (March 24, 2008 at 12:18 am
What all those who are saying, “I have to get a permit, why not you? Just pay up and fix up,” are missing is that the new plan makes it IMPOSSIBLE to do so.
We built twenty or thirty years ago under the rural owner-built K zoning. Now they are changing the rules on us to the extent that we will lose our homes. I have never thought of myself as such, but we may yet become “dirty hippies” if my wife and I have to leave our small but comfortable (completely solar-powered) home and move down to the homeless camps on the Eel river. I am not exaggerating – where the hell are we supposed to go, bankrupt with our land unsellable and taken by the county for taxes??? I’m in my sixties – I really can’t start over at McDonalds. When they come with the dozers – I think it might be a good day to die.
Most of us rural off-the-grid home owners are not in an official Fire District (volunteer FD’s do not count). This is a new requirement. What can I do about that?
The draconian fines imposed – $24,000 for a house, $5,000 per violation and $5,000 a day per violation are meant to bankrupt people and get rid of them, not to encourage compliance.
I reiterate – this is a land-grab by the county. There was a time when they enjoyed having the taxes from the rural home owners, but now, that land has appreciated to the point that they would like to have it – after they have bankrupted us and made our land unsellable.
All who value our free rural lifestyle must come together. If this plan stands as written and their plot succeeds – it is the end of the world as we know it – and I don’t feel fine.
ORGANIZE AND OVERWHELM THEM!
• SUPERVISORS MEETING Tomorrow 3/25 – 1:30 PM and every Tuesday thereafter.
• PLANNING DEPT. MEETING (A MUST!!!) Thursday 4/3 6 PM (In the supervisors Chamber.)
• CLMP (Civil Liberties Monitoring Project) meeting in Garberville at the Vet’s Hall – Friday 4/4. Rodoni, Planning Dept., Sheriff Philp and more. WE WANT TO PACK THIS.
• ACT – CALL YOUR SUPERVISORS • CALL THE PLANNING DEPARTMENT • CALL GALLEGOS • CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES
Call:
• Code Enforcement 476-2429
• John Desadier (desk) 476-2363
Supervisors:
1. Jimmy Smith 476-3291
2. Roger Rodoni 476-2392
3. John Woolley 476-2393
4. Bonny Neely 476-2394
5. Jill Geist 476-2395
• County Counsel 445-7236
• District Attorney 800-962-8261
Form a Citizens Observation Group (COG) to follow, photograph, video and document incursions into your neighborhood by the Code/Sheriffs. Get together a neighborhood phone tree. Spread the word that our very lives are threatened by these bureaucrats.
Now is the time to act or we will lose our rights and our rural lifestyle forever!
When you are done with the Board of Supervisors maybe you can do something about The President.
Not A Native, Cody Baker was driving on a suspended license. He had at least one prior DUI. As for being able to negotiate the road as far as he did, he was familiar with it. It’s probably the only reason he made it that far.
Blaming an accident on a road, rather than on intoxication, on the basis that “not all drunk drivers crash their cars” is lunacy. OK, so they’re LUCKY. Does that mean they should keep pushing their luck – and the luck of the unfortunate souls who have to share the road with them?
Yes, there might be an issue with rural roads needing more maintenance for less people to travel on them. But for a lot of people who live down here, your very generalized comment about tax dollars “subsidizing” the rural way of life probably smacks of ignorance. As many people have noted in many other threads on many local blogs, 60% of the bed tax in Humboldt County comes from Southern Humboldt, but SoHum sure doesn’t get services in proportion to that number. Who’s subsidizing whom, and for what? It’s a lot more complex than “there are less of you, using up more services.”
And for the record, I’m not a native either.
not a native:
your resort to lame personal attacks and (wildly inaccurate) stereotyping and pop psychology reveals more about your character than mine or anyone else’s. but it gave me a good laugh, as it usually does when people try to explain away these kinds of concerns by retreating into their own biases and lashing out at those who disagree. how sad.
i think many people, of various stripes, know exactly what i’m talking about when i refer to the “armed nanny state.” if this label doesn’t ring true for you, well o.k., but folks like yourselves may be quite surprised at the ballot box.
so you got a tummy ache while hiking on blm land near willow creek, and you really think it might have been cholera? what were you doing, licking rocks? how do you think you could have contracted cholera on a hike? if you drank untreated water from a creek (like an idiot) you probably got a touch of e-coli from our bovine pals, or giardia or cryptosporidium, which are naturally occuring in our environment.
talk about grasping at straws! your resort to this wildly hypothetical scenario just reinforces my point that we are better off with these very improbable, hypothetical risks, which we can easily prevent ourselves, than with the very real, very harmful effects that these violent code raids have already had in our communities. that’s not a matter of ideology, it’s a matter of simple observation.
this exchange is eerily reminiscent of the “bush doctrine” of “pre-emptive self-defense” in relation to the iraq war. the argument is that the deaths of 4,000 u.s. troops and up to a million iraqis as a result of this war is all worthwhile because of the wildly hypothetical possibility that somehow iraq might have eventually become a threat to the u.s., might someday have developed a new nuclear weapons program, might have someday provided those nucs to terrorists, might have, might have, might have… the wildly hypothetical fear factor (the great humboldt cholera epidemic) is used to justify the very real state violence.
you say “asking people to die to satisfy the doubts of a few is not god government.” ok, now try applying that same logic to the violence of these code raids, which could easily turn lethal on both sides, all to assuage the doubts of a few nervous folks like yourself, who are ready to attribute your blm-hike tummy-ache to cholera, sans evidence.
you know, if you don’t wipe and wash properly after shitting, you can get sick from e coli and other bacteria in your own poo, and you could spread it to others. maybe you need to have armed agents of the state monitor your wiping and washing at gunpoint. ‘cuz i once got sick after shaking the hand of a bureaucrat in eureka, and i’m not sure i can “risk” the hypothetical possibility of you spreading disease with their poor hygiene. now to be fair, of course, we’ll all need the same armed hygiene squad when we crap… but then who will watch the wipes of the wipe-watchers?
i notice that none of you folks who are defending the status quo of these code raids has responded to my question, posed above, about who they decide to target, and how.
why yee-haw in trinidad, and wood ranch in sohum, and so many other “hippy,” “redneck,” and “back-to-the-lander” properties, but not supervisor roger rodoni’s maxxam-subsidized, off-the-grid and flushless “rainbow ranch”?
don’t you think roger’s got an unpermitted shitter up there somewhere? or does he just save up his turds for when he gets back to town? somehow i doubt it. what about the horrors of graywater and the great imaginary chlolera epidemic of 2008: presumably roger washes his hands after he poops (might not want to shake his hand until we get the answer on that), so where does that deadly, noxious graywater go? onto the ground? does he wipe it on his shirt? better get the armed hygiene squad on this case, pronto!
maybe someone should ask him about all this, in public, at the supes meeting. it will be interesting to hear his reply, which i suspect will be both folksy and avoident.
Hi Thorn,
As far as I can tell, you’ve never answered the question as to who would be held liable in the case of a tragedy up at yee haw, other than to say that those are not the types of people to sue.
That may be true, but there are others, parents and grandparents who most certainly would try and sue the pants off of the county.
who else would be liable than the owner?
Hi 622,
If the County allowed the yeehaw property to continue on with unsafe sanitary, wiring and other faulty issues that could result in deadly consequences, I believe that they would be named in a lawsuit.
For the record, I am not saying that all of these problems actually exist at yeehaw. I am saying that if they do exist at yee haw or elsewhere, that a smart lawyer would go where the most resources are, and compared to a property owner like the yeehaw owner, that the county would look like a pretty ripe target.
apparently you didn’t read the second-to-last paragraph of my comments at 9:00 pm (3/23) very carefully. basically, what i said was:
anyone who tried to sue the county for a fire that they caused by their own faulty wiring would at the very least be laughed out of court. more likely they would be given a stern lecture by a judge about filing frivolous lawsuits (then laughed out of court). that would be like speeding at 120mph on 101, getting into an accident, and then suing the state because chp didn’t prevent your crash. that’s not going to fly, not even in our admittedly litigious society.
this kind of absurd (hypothetical) lawsuit assumes that somehow the county is constantly responsible for our safety, at home, and despite our own personal actions that put us at risk. in this worldview, we are all like irresponsible children who need constant monitoring and supervision, and if the state fails to provide this, the state has therefore been negligent. this is where the concept of “nanny state” comes in, and i guess to folks who accept the cockamamie premise of this worldview, the county would be responsible for our actions anytime we break it’s rules and they fail to stop us from doing so.
this hypothetical lawsuit about a hypothetical fire is just more evidence of how scanty a basis there really is for these violent code raids.
as i said earlier:
stop the violence. hear the people. find the solutions.
what’s so wrong with that?
imagine how much better the situation would be if even half of the huge amount of effort and resources going into these military-style code raids was instead spent on working WITH the rural communities in our county to improve knowledge and infrastructure, instead of starting right off with the assault-and-punish approach?
how about a realistic process for allowing composting toilets, with the county helping to disseminate the best plans and designs, and non-law-enforcement county staff doing periodic voluntary inspections. now that would be an actual public service. after all, no one wants a smelly crapper, or one that is a health hazard, but as long as composting toilets are criminalized, the potential positive role of county staff in providing information, consulting, voluntary inspections, etc., is going to be thwarted by the adversarial aspect of code-inspectors-as-law-enforcement.
after all, conventional septic systems also fail from time to time, and many people don’t have their septic tanks pumped until they are overflowing to the point that “the grass is greener” over the septic tank, and eventually that unmistakable smell begins to waft about. so flush systems aren’t foolproof or maintenance-free either, and there are plenty of effective composting toilet designs that are far simpler, cheaper, and every bit as safe and sanitary as the standard septic tank and leaching field system.
but as someone else described in detail above, the current system for getting a composting toilet permitted in this county is so ridiculously convoluted and expensive, that the first-year cost of having a “legal” composting toilet, at an average of one poop per day, was somewhere in the range of $5 per poop. about 10 cents of that per-poop rate is the cost of building the actual composting toilet, the other $4.90 per poop going to the central poop-scrutinizers in eureka. (makes the tax on gasoline look like nothing by comparison, doesn’t it?)
how about having health officials actually study the array of options, and then, on their advice the county sign off on a number of the best simple, proven designs, including both do-it-yourself plans, and, most likely also some of the widely used off-the-shelf models (like they have at “real goods” in hopland), instead of having to look at each individual composting shitter as if it was a radical new concept that needed to be scrutinized carefully, and at great individual cost to the resident. if there are designs that are particularly bad, or common mistakes new composters make, a constructive county approach would be to help disseminate that information.
likewise with graywater systems. if people are running their graywater onto the ground, everyone can agree that this is not ideal (though probably not actually dangerous from a public health standpoint) once again, there are a number of simple, inexpensive designs for graywater systems that are more than adequate to handle a kitchen sink, a shower, etc. but the county bureaucrats apparently aren’t in any hurry to study, legalize and encourage these systems, they’re a bit busy acting as a trojan horse for the drug task force to carry out unwarranted searches on properties they couldn’t otherwise obtain a search warrant for. by trampling rural privacy rights with the armed code raids, the code enforcers generate lots of anger and resentment among rural residents, then point to that anger and resentment to justify the need for all the firepower. this is the circular logic by which the servants of the armed nanny state puff up their sense of self-importance and justify violent actions toward unarmed residents.
if we can stop the violence, the people’s ideas can be heard, and plenty of solutions can be found for the technical and social issues. but as long as the county’s approach is military-style code raids and confiscatory fines the conflict will only escalate.
Thorn, I don’t know you, but have read words on this thread with interest and occasionally commented. While I slightly question your anti-establishment bent as I don’t think Arkley controls the County or even wants to and I believe the HumCPR is pretty independent and altruistic although time will tell for sure. I think this is you best comment yet. No focus on the past, just positive suggestions. We might all do well to think about the possibilities that could be by working positively toward a common future. That is the attitude that created the Utopian perspective that brought us all here, even the new pseudo-environmentalists though they have much to learn about open-mindedness. Keep it up.
Only problem with your reasoning, Thorn is that it wouldnt be faulty wiring that “they” installed…
It would be the parents and grandparents of the people lost in the tragedy…
Parents and grandparents, btw, that may not share the spirit of peace and love, live and let live etc that the yee haw residents have…
Parents and grandparents that would expect the county to enforce the laws that are on the books that would likely prevent these things from happening…
Parents and grandparents that want a big fat target to vent their grief on…
So you see, it’s not the people who did the faulty wiring who would be bringing forth a lawsuits for this…
I don’t entirely disagree with everything that you say, Thorn, I just think that the County will find itself at risk if it doesn’t enforce the laws it has on the books with regards to building and property codes…
btw, I have enjoyed the dialogue…its much more fun when we (myself included) arent hurling out insults and invective…
thanks, 8:36,
just for the record, i never stated that the arkleys controlled the county, i just made the point that the arkleys and other developers stand to gain by harnessing the backlash against these violent code raids to suit their own agenda of making it easier to build more and larger developments and thereby increase their profits.
there isn’t necessarily anything especially unusual or nefarious about that, it’s just not a very good idea for the county. so we need to follow our own path of resistance to the county’s assaults on rural living, as well as make common cause with others, such as commercial developers, when we find ourselves in agreement, and act on our own when we don’t.
i appreciate your point about focusing on the future being most important. at the same time it is also important to be clear about what has been happening, on the ground, in the recent past and the present. otherwise we don’t have much chance of doing a lot better in the future.
again, thanks for your thoughtful reply, 8:36.
yo:
again, the hypothetical lawsuit against the county over the hypothetical fire caused by wiring that is hypothetically not as sound as that which has been blessed by the code dept. – that lawsuit can be filed, like a lot of other frivolous lawsuits can be filed, but it wouldn’t have a prayer in court, whether filed by the residents, their parents, kids, or their dog’s rich uncle. any such lawsuit would be summarily dismissed by the judge, due to its reliance on the ridiculous and truly novel legal theory that the county is responsible for our injuries when we break the county’s rules and the county doesn’t manage to stop the rule-breaking in time to prevent our self-inflicted injuries.
now in cases where the wiring is installed by the owner (and especially if it is passed off as being up to code standards and is not), it does seem to me that, if your hypthetical scenario was to come to pass, a tenant or their surviving family member might very welll be able to sue the property owner.
apparently the property owner is willing to take this risk, either due to mutual trust (misplaced or not) with the residents and their families, or because of his own confidence in his own ability to safely do his own electrical work (as most rural folks do, and without any higher rate of fires than in the heavily-regulated cities). at any rate, from the point of view of legal liability, that’s his business, not the county’s concern.
sayiyo:
again, the hypothetical lawsuit against the county over the hypothetical fire caused by wiring that is hypothetically not as sound as that which has been blessed by the code dept. – that lawsuit can be filed, like a lot of other frivolous lawsuits can be filed, but it wouldn’t have a prayer in court, whether filed by the residents, their parents, kids, or their dog’s rich uncle. any such lawsuit would be summarily dismissed by the judge, due to its reliance on the ridiculous and truly novel legal theory that the county is responsible for our injuries when we break the county’s rules and the county doesn’t manage to stop the rule-breaking in time to prevent our self-inflicted injuries.
now in cases where the wiring is installed by the owner (and especially if it is passed off as being up to code standards and is not), it does seem to me that, if your hypthetical scenario was to come to pass, a tenant or their surviving family member might very welll be able to sue the property owner.
apparently the property owner is willing to take this risk, either due to mutual trust (misplaced or not) with the residents and their families, or because of his own confidence in his own ability to safely do his own electrical work (as most rural folks do, and without any higher rate of fires than in the heavily-regulated cities). at any rate, from the point of view of legal liability, that’s his business, not the county’s concern.
what the…? sorry about the repetition, not sure what happened there…
Are you speaking as a legal expert or as someone who thinks that is how it should be, Thorn?
9:41: neither. that’s another either/or false choice.
i’m not a lawyer, but i’m also not entirely unfamiliar with the law. it’s my opinion, as an informed citizen, not as a judge or a lawyer, that this sort of argument that the county is responsible for injuries we sustain as we break county rules, simply because they didn’t stop us in time – as if the state was required by law to stop every speeder, and liable for any speeding crashes due to their “negligent” failure to apprehend the speeder in time – these arguments would be laughed out of court.
so, how about you – are you a “legal expert,” 9:41? or are you just someone looking for an excuse to justify these sorts of code raids based on hypothetical scenarios of faulty wiring and litigious relatives, and lawsuits based on absurd and convoluted reasoning about county liability?
Jeezus Thorn. You need to walk away from the computer for a bit.
Thorn, It is worthwhile pointing out that HumCPR doesn’t seem to be advocating either more or bigger developments, just the maintenance of the status quo. Current code is one house per 160 with the possibility of one per 40. Not exactly big time development, at least as far as TPZ is concerned. This is why I support them. As best as I can tell simply keeping codes where they are is what they are advocating, county wide that has been translating to 200+/- houses per year, doesn’t seem like a problem. What we should be focusing on instead is encouraging alternative construction techniques and lower cost housing alternatives. There are a lot of positive options we could be looking at rather than simply taking rights away and police enforcement actions.
What about the people who are building more than one house (unpermitted) per 40 and those who are now complaining that they can’t build their children homes on their parcels? Where does it end?
to all those concocting the wildly hypothetical litigation scenarios, cholera scares and the like: why not simply acknowledge that the county’s current violent/coercive/confiscatory approach to code enforcement has been wrongheaded and counterproductive?
what’s wrong with simply acknowledging this, stopping the violence today, holding hearings and finding real, practical solutions, and then working together to implement these solutions and move forward?
10:06, What about asian sweatshops and African Ebola? The point is there are always people who break the rules. They need a response appropriate to the violation, they also need to be positively encouraged to be part of the process, not inundated with unreasonable arbitrary code and fees that are arbitrarily ordained by the Planning Department Gods. The general rules and codes are designed for those who want to work within the societal framework. It is absurd to penalize those following the rules because of those who don’t.
Almost everyone has agreed with you on this issue Thorn. No one has justified the use of guns to enforce code infractions. Many have said there need to be negotiations with the county on ways to settle this issue. Your inability to admit that there could be problems with people building substandard shelters (some even as rentals) is another issue altogether.
10:06, Your response like those of “not a native” are typical of the closed-minded, pseudo-environmentalist of the last ten years. Got mine, now lets stop anyone else from getting theirs. Get with it, we may be older, but the movement we started of tolerance and understanding works.
10:04: i pretty much agree with all that you say, but just for the record i never stated that “cpr” specifically was advocating for more and larger developments, but i did say that i thought that the arkleys and developers in general have that agenda. perhaps i’m wrong about that, we’ll see how the debate develops.
in my view, both the violent code raids, and the draconian changes proposed for the general plan are both examples of the county desperately trying to impose unnecessary bureaucratic solutions on “problems” that don’t really exist except in the minds of some policy-makers and county staff.
but then there is also the use of the code enforcement raids as a trojan horse for the drug task force to gain entry to properties that they don’t have probable cause to get a criminal search warrant for – that’s a whole other angle, a serious and troubling perversion of the purpose and priorities of the code enforcement team to help the drug task force circumvent our constitutional rights. certainly code enforcement needs to be untangled from the drug war agenda if county staff is to have any hope of working cooperatively with our rural residents on matters of public health. can we all agree on that?
and, 10:04: i agree completely with your statement that “there are a lot of positive actions we could be looking at rather than simply taking rights away and police enforcement action.” amen, brother.
Your response was nonresponsive 10:22, nonsensical in fact.
10:22: can you show me where i said that there were never any problems with people building substandard shelter? no, you can’t, ‘cuz i said no such thing.
we just haven’t yet hit upon any actual examples where the actual harms caused or risks created by the substandard shelter come anywhere close to justifying the confrontational and confiscatory approach that the county has been taking toward certain rural residents.
perhaps such examples exist, but not at yee-haw, and probably not in most of these code raids. perhaps i’m wrong on the latter point, so feel free to offer some actual facts to the contrary (the hypotheticals are getting a bit old, though, so let’s stick to real-world, factual examples if you don’t mind).
if the idea is to help to improve substandard housing conditions for lower-income rural residents, there is certainly a lot that could be done, as i have stated above. but you can’t use coercive power to “order” people to be less poor and more able to afford better household amenities.
when you simply push people out of one set of somewhat “substandard” housing, where do you think they go? to a gated community overlooking a golf course? no, they usually simply move on to another “substandard” situation somewhere else. in fact, since folks are usually already in the best situation they have been able to afford, when this is taken away, most will end up in even worse situations, or perhaps completely homeless. this helps no one. meanwhile, pushing these folks out of the housing situations they already have, and demolishing that housing, simply puts more pressure on the low-end rental market, driving up prices at the low end of the market for those who can least afford it.
what’s really interesting is that this state of affairs is the end result of a process called “planning.” so either the planning isn’t working out so well in implementation, or else it is working out all too well, depending on how you look at it…
The bottom line on the hypothetical problem is, there is no problem. That’s why it’s hypothetical. There’s no cholera, there’s very little electrical fire, and there’s absolutely no litigation over the county’s code practices. Why don’t we talk about what’s real?
10:22 said “no one has justified the use of guns to enforce code infractions.”
actually a few people have tried to provide justifications, upthread. and certainly the code enforcer who led the armed raid at yee-haw, john desadier, tried to justify it in the ncj article, as did the code enforcer interviewed on kmud news shortly after the incident.
more to the point, the violent, armed approach remains county policy at the moment, with armed code enforcement agents with criminal law enforcement status under the auspices of our “progressive” “reform” d.a., paul gallegos, often accompanied by a large contingent of heavily armed members of the drug task force.
so, if you are in agreement that guns should not be used to enforce code infractions, do you also agree that the use of the code enforcement team as a trojan horse to give the drug task force entry to properties without a criminal warrant must also stop immediately?
and have you done anything about these serious matters? called your supervisor? the d.a.? anything?
it is one thing to say “we all agree” that guns shouldn’t be used. it is quite another thing to do something about it. i invite you to join us in actions as well as in words. “anonanon” provided some very useful information on upcoming meetings, phone numbers for our elected officials, etc. i hope those who profess to be against the violent aspects of these code raids will join us in actively calling on our policy-makers to immediately change the policies that enable and justify the violent approach.
end the violence. hear the people. find the solutions.
What happens when the code people come and shut down a house? The property is not worth what the county has appraised the house for. The county might have to refund the taxes paid on the house over the years? For sure the land owner will not have to pay the appraised taxes in the future. Maybe a tax protest? Put your tax money under the mattress and hold on to the money until this is figured out. How long does the county want to play this stupid game with no money? Do they want to be looking at refunding tax money from years past? After all, if you can’t live in the house the house is not worth what they said it was.
How about we start with a property tax “slowdown” where people wait to pay their taxes until the very last day when they are due, rather than getting the year’s property taxes out of the way weeks or months before they are due, as most of do now. Those folks who are willing to risk it a bit farther could wait until a few months after the tax deadline and force the county to do all the initial paperwork to demand payment. This may not seem like much, but we’re talking about many millions of dollars in county revenue that county officials will be sweating about.
Making the county wait for our tax money might get the attention of county officials in a way that mere facts don’t seem to be able to. Then, if the county still doesn’t sit up and take notice, it’s time to talk about a complete property-tax strike.
To succeed, a full-blown property tax strike would need to be massive. If just a few people do it, the county will just take their land. But if even 5% or 10% of property owners hold back their tax payments for even a few months, the county will have to listen – they can’t go after thousands of property owners at the same time. There aren’t enough judges, courtrooms and sheriffs, to do all that, not to mention the massive political backlash if they really try to take our land en masse.
We can wait while they pick us off, one at a time, or we can join together now, and force them to listen to reason. And if any of the elected ones, the Sheriff, the D.A., the Supervisors, can’t or don’t listen listen to reason, we’ve gotta crush them in the next elections. Our votes and our tax money are the two commodities the current regime running the county needs to have to maintain control. We must withhold these prizes from them until they demonstrate that they are working for us, not the other way around.
An idea, but my home lender pays my property taxes and home insurance out of our escrow account.
We can also bury them in compliance. There are hundreds, probably thousands, of unpermitted homes that in theory should fear the guns of the new order and sheepishly comply. If we comply en mass just the paperwork–let alone the endless earnest questions we have to ask about codes that don’t reflect real conditions–would paralyze them. Not that I want to paralyze them! Perhaps they could cooperate without paralysis.
But think about it: they obviously can’t even hope that we do what they say they want us to, there aren’t enough paper-pushers in the county to process multiplied permits. It’s bad enough already.
We invited the assessor up to assess our home recently. It is not, nor has it ever been a permitted structure, but the assessor was happy to take measurements and make sure that we are paying enough taxes. I hope that appeases the county for a while because code enforcement is currently a mile down my road harassing the neighbors.
I can live with paying off the government for what it thinks is it’s far share. But I refuse to let them tell me how to live.
I hear ya 11:33, it’s the height of hypocrisy to tax it as a house for years and years, and then turn around and tell you it’s illegal to live in your house.
But don’t think for a minute that your tax-paying will stop them from continuing that next mile up the road to your place and ordering you to vacate, pronto, at the point of a gun. Your friends down the road have probably been paying their taxes all these years, too.
Don’t wait ’til they pick us off one-by-one, folks. We need to start organizing and acting, now, at all levels, relentlessly, until they wise up and back the flock off.
The assessor assessed you house as a place to live. It the county comes back and says you can’t live in the house obviously the house/property is not worth what they said it was worth. Now if you pay those taxes for five years or ten years and they tell you, you can’t live there I would think there could be a claim to get back you taxes for past years. Theoretically your property was not worth what they said it was worth for all those years.
As far as taking your property for not paying taxes, the first thing is that they won’t take your land for five years. Or at least that is what it use to be. They don’t want your land anyway. They want the tax dollars. So I believe you can be behind in your land taxes for five years. Of course there is a fine (10% ?) so it is not cheap. In reality it is not expensive to be behind either. Relatively cheap that is. It compounds as well. I would think that the threat of tax paying “slowdown” or whatever you want to call it would open their eyes. Make them think.
If they kick you out of your house because they say it is not up to code or whatever and you have been paying taxes on that house as if it were habitable I would think you have a case to get your tax money back to the point of the values of the bare land. I don’t know but they, the county, should think about this.
Read the property tax rules publications from the Stae of California Board of Equalization. Then, you will understand the fraud that Tom Oliphant, Jacqueline Turner and others have been committing over the past 15 – 20+ years, as well as the conspiring Board of Supervisors. Stephen Strawn too (the County Tax Collector). Do not forget Miss Hill (elected County Assessor) as well. They are all government mules building their own personal governmental credentials for retirement benefits. They endorse falseifying government documents and entertain the practice of false accusations and defamation of character on your personal property tax documents (this is intentional malice and misconduct). Further, they have other department staff call you up and act as someone neutral trying to get monetary information from you so that they can increase illegally again your property taxes, especially if you are me because I have documented their fraud and twisted mind-sets. If they actually were honest and law abiding agents acting within Proposition 13 standards, there would have been no need to disclose what I have just mentioned.
Further, there is no policy for the State Level Officials in California to force a County to give you your tax hearing; unless it is a “public improvement” project. With this said, the County will deny many folks their “Due Process” of a legal Property Tax Appeal’s Hearing. Then, after two years has passed and they have played their “Screw the People” game, you will have to go before the Judge. The Judge conspires with the Agency and is at equal fault as well. So, now you have a bit of information to research.
Lastly, don’t you think that it should be that the State of California mandates that, “when a “Property Owner” disputes their bill through filing an application for Assessment Appeal, that Property Owner’s bill should be suspended until the hearing has been afforded to that particular Property Owner in dispute and a judgement and appeal has been finalized?” Now you know why I keep informing the General Public about this FRAUD. IT IS ALL ABOUT THE LOCAL TAX REVENUE STREAM, LEGAL OR NOT. GOTCHA! PLEASE STAND UP FOR YOUR RIGHTS.
Jeffrey Lytle
McKinleyville – 5th District
Auntie MayMe @ 10:50 am,
I feel sorry for you. You got caught in the system where the financial sector is conspiring with the government agencies to make sure you are getting screwed on your property taxes based on super-inflated values (which corresponds to super-inflated loans, interest, property tax bills, etc.). If you were to dispute your value, you now run the of risk losing your home because if you deduct the tax value from your payment to the financial institution, they will begin foreclosure proceedings for lack of “full payment” after a short time. Then, they will auction it off to someone else for the minimum balance of the debt / note + the highest bid that comes in. The Tax Assessor does not lose because they were receiving way to much tax revenue based on fraudulant values. You are locked into a situation where you have no control over your future, and therefore, your destiny. Good Luck.
Jeffrey Lytle
McKinleyville – 5th District
Well…
While you’ve all been musing here in the blogosphere, there was a Supervisors meeting yesterday.
Four people showed up from SoHum – two from HumCPR.
Boy, the Supes are shakin’ at our outrage and resolve.
Shame on you!
• There is another Supes meeting next Tuesday – 1:30 PM
• The next, and perhaps last, public comment meeting of the Planning Dept is Thursday April 3rd.
• There is a very important meeting sponsored by CLMP on Friday, April 4 at 2:00 PM at the Vets Hall in Garberville. We must pack this one! Rodoni, Gallegos and reps from the Planning Dept will be present. Desadier refuses to attend.
SPEAK NOW OR FOREVER HOLD YOUR ASS!
Desadier should be fired if he is not willing to listen to public input, and even (perish the thought) criticism.
supervisors’ meetings that start at 1:30pm on a weekday are ideal for avoiding the participation of the public. of course county staff and business representatives will be present, as they are being paid to be there.
to actually hear from the general public we need specific public hearings, in the evening, in a number of locations around the county, to address these violent code enforcement raids and the overall attack on rural living here in the humboldt nation.
in the meantime, i agree that in order to be heard, we should try to take advantage of whatever forum is available, and the more the merrier.
i will try to make it to the planning meeting (6:00pm is a little better than 1:30pm, though still cutting it close for most working people), and will encourage others to do so as well. however, the planning department claims to have no role in the code raids, and so i suspect that those concerns won’t be directly addressed at that particular meeting. but i recognize that the decisions being made by planning today, and the proposed update of the general plan, could lead to more of these counterproductive code enforcement crackdowns in the coming years.
we should definitely pack that CLMP meeting (i hope someone gets a chance to ask rodoni where he poops when he’s up at rainbow ranch!) but also demand an actual public hearing, where a county employee like desadier will HAVE to be present. he’s got a lot to answer for in terms of leading the armed raids, and, at times, operating the code enforcement department as a trojan horse for the drug task force. as a county employee, paid by our tax money, he shouldn’t be allowed to hide from the questions and criticisms of county residents.
Eric has a thread on this too, Thorn. He has been asked to facilitate the meeting. He would probably have all the information about who is going to be at the CLMP meeting.
I don’t believe the County Planners have anything to do with the Code Enforcement. Code Enforcement has been put under the control of County Counsel (or it was a few months ago when I last checked). This puts it into the Supes domain and not the Planning Commission.
When were permits first required in Humboldt County?? I have looked at numerous projects that were built in small developments in various areas and found no permit files even in the archives prior to 1965. So – if a developer built a development in McKinleyville prior to that date – were permits required is my question. Therefore, if you purchased land with a cabin that was already in existance – when was it built? Would a permit have been required?
Possibly no permit for a “bus” or a “travel trailer” would be required if it could be moved from the property. Then what would Code Enforcement be enforcing? If DHSS has placed persons on a property “without a permit” then what? Ask the Board of Supervisors the question. And if no answer, then ask it again. Sometimes their hearing is impaired on some issues and possibly this is one of those issues where they just can’t hear you. Their hearing sometimes improves if there is a “rally” on the courthouse front lawn with numerous people there as it is their “votes” that could be lost plus a lot more votes that can’t show up. Must somehow give a boost to their “hearing aides” when lots of people show up. Earth to BOS – we are calling you.
from the preamble to the u.s. declaration of independence where the ’76ers lay out their grievances against king george:
“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.”
sound familiar to anyone? this is a good time to re-read the declaration of independence, and the constitution -particularly the bill of rights. this is also a good time to re-read orwell’s “1984” if you haven’t read it for a while.
source: http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm
Whoever you “hippies” are out there, living rurally with pets, I’d like to remind of an old saying. If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.
How about this anagram “Rednecks and Hippies, UNTIE !
how about trying to contribute something substantial to the discussion, rather than meaningless one-liners?
see how easy it is to toss out “zingers?” but how does this sort of thing clarify anthing, or move the debate forward in any way? answer: it doesn’t.
is this where anonymous bloggers Get Down?
Get up, get up, get-get down
9-1-1’s a joke in your town…
April 4th, 2:00 pm
Civil Liberties Monitoring Project
Vet’s Hall, Garberville.
Be heard, not herd.
CLMP
April 4, 2:00 PM
Vets Hall, Garberville
• Gallegos • Philp • Connor
UNTIED WE STAND
Untied AND United!!!
Report please.
****
CLMP
April 4, 2:00 PM
Vets Hall, Garberville
• Gallegos • Philp • Connor
UNTIED WE STAND
it was a useful first step.
the next important step will be at the supervisor’s meeting on tuesday at 9:00 am. desadier and the county counsel will probably have to attend this one, rather than leaving conner and gallegos holding the bag as they did tonight.
the woman who had the gun pointed at her at the code raid at yee-haw spoke truth to power in a way that left little doubt that she was indeed telling the truth and that the power had better listen up and listen up good. many other people also gave detailed eyewitness accounts of the many abuses being perpetrated by the code raiders.
for the most part gallegos, philp, and conner made lots of excuses – everything that went wrong was someone else’s fault, or due to the confusing structure of the c.e.u., or was just a fluke. but this sure added up to a whole lot of “flukes” and “misunderstandings” just in the last few months alone.
as expected, philp and conner both denied that there was any intent to use the code enforcement unit as a pretext for warrantless pot searches, although there was no way for them to deny the fact that, intent or not, that’s how it works out in practice.
they simply explaned it away as, essentially, “well, when we’re there anyway, the ‘open field’ doctrine applies and then we can look where we want.” which is exactly our point – the code enforcement unit used as a legal trojan horse to get around the constitutional requirements for probable cause to get a criminal search warrant. to say that you don’t “intend” that outcome rings pretty hollow when you continue doing it over and over.
thank heaven for local democracy, where your elected officials stilll have to sit and look you in the eye when you talk to them, even if they do waffle and tapdance rather than give a straight answer to most questions.
gallegos repeatedly stated that the code cops carried guns under the auspices of his office, but that he had no authority to supervise or discipline them. many people pointed out the fallacy of being responsible for arming people he has no control over. gallegos responded that he has been “uncomfortable” with this arragement for “some time” (he’s been in office for 5 years now, and that arrangement has continued throughout). he says he has been “in discussions” with the county counsel about it “for some time” and that it is “taking longer than he would have liked.”
the general sentiment of the crowd seemed to back an immediate moratorium on the power of the code cops to carry guns, at least until there are clear lines of responsibility and someone can be held responsible for their actions, unlike the pathetic display of bureaucratic buck-passing we witnessed tonight. also popular with the crowd were the ideas of an immediate amnesty, grandfathering existing structures, and creating a new, more realistic and appropriate rural building code.
rodoni played the populist role, and mostly just sat back and watched the fireworks, occasionally interjecting that it was the other supervisors’ faults and reminding us that it takes three votes to move anything on the board of supes, such as an amnesty, a new rural code, or grandfathering. left unsaid was what, if anything, he was doing to win over those other votes. but then, in what might have been the most astonishing comments of the night, he seemed to suggest that the 2nd and 5th districts were being “targeted” for these code raids to exact retribution against their supervisors. it was a somewhat veiled and suggestive remark, but that’s what he seemed to be driving at – at least that’s how it seemed to be interpreted by the folks i asked about it afterward.
the mood of the crowd was certainly somewhat angry and frustrated, and there was some shouting at times, but no threats were made or anything like that, and the panelists emerged unscathed, if somewhat chastised. and thankfully there were quite a few moments of levity to help break the tension and keep things fairly civil, if not exactly friendly.
too bad desadier and the county counsel blew it off. maybe they had somewhere else they really, urgently needed to be, but i doubt it. at least from the point of view of the public, their absence comes off as pure cowardice.
at least conner, philp and gallegos were willing to listen, to take the heat, and, at least to some (small) extent, provide some answers. hopefully on tuesday, desadier and the county counsel will be on hand to take their share of the heat, and to try to explain themselves to the public who pays their wages. otherwise they should be replaced, poste-haste.
Titlow Hill is taking the inspections, raids and the allogations of illegal subdivision. Now Conner says “criminal/civil” suits. WHAT?? We pay taxes for years, have AP numbers, make land payments/interest, and I’m getting dragged to court by a county who takes my $$$$?! You can imagine what we have to say about that. PLEASE, everyone pass the word and get the word to these Sups. If us now……you later.
2 of my several violations:
Costco 14×10 tent (metal legs, white top). ANY Structure larger then a 10×12 is a violation. Up to $1000. a cleared area 20×30 called an illegal landing…………..Do you or do you know anyone with things like this on their property? Pass the word! I dont want to tell you the other violations, they were NOTHING like these. Just dont want to ID myself because of civil/criminal talk by Conners. Anyways like I say: Get out there, gather your neighbors, visit Humboldt County Sups online and write them, go to the Board meetings. We’ need to defend our way of life!!
I live in Butte County and found this post. I completely believe in building safe structures. I have a parcel that is right on the county line. Thinking of building an illegal unpermitted cabin to live in so I can borrow money from the bank to build my real permitted home! The bank’s won’t loan right now to build houses easily – so people are forced to do drastic things to realize their dream. They GOVT needs to get the hell out of the WAY!The cost to build a 24×16 cabin start to finish with a temporary foundation and loft is about $10,000. The fees (impact here is $4600) and building permit cost is $4500 and school fees are $3.00 per square foot brings the total permit cost alone to over the price I paid to build the structure. This is called extorsion. You can build a nice timber frame structure at a cost of $10 per square foot yourself on a temporary foundation that will stand the test of time.
I would completely be pissed off however if I lived in a subdivision and had neighbors putting up yurts in their backyards and renting them out to others – more noise, etc 40 feet from my bedroom. Not good. In the country on a 40 acre parcel you have 1200 or more feet from property lines of others. They need to allow people to build homesteads without consequences. What happened to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness? I guess we just have to pay for it Royally and take it up the A*S. My ‘little house on the prarie’ is going to cost me about 4% of what it will cost when I build a 2500 square foot house in 5 years.
I’m A lic. contractor in shasta county & I’ve talked to my represinitave Jim Nelson about introduting a owner builders set of seperate codes. The modular home companies did it why cant owner builders.If any one has the knowlege on how to do this E-mail me at lukeprsn40@gmail.com
God Bless