Dan Schmidt approaches his candidacy for Crescent City Harbor Commissioner the same way he viewed his job as editor of the Del Norte Triplicate — he wants to help.
That philosophy was emblazoned on the absurdly large wrench he brought into the KFUG studio last week where he sat down with Community Service host Paul Critz and Redwood Voice Community News. The Crescent City Harbor District needs repairs, Schmidt says, but it has potential.
“There are a whole lot of things that were allowed to fall apart in previous years that need to be corrected,” he said. “The whole Fashion Blacksmith fiasco — where the Harbor ended up owing millions and millions of dollars because they neglected their job to maintain and repair the harbor facilities. That should never have happened, and worse, they allowed a very hard-to-get permit to do that work to expire. Somebody wasn’t paying attention, and they allowed that to happen, and then they got embroiled in the lawsuit.”
Experienced officers have already begun inquiring about working for the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office, Garrett Scott told Redwood Voice Community News the day after the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved his staffing plan.
The Del Norte County sheriff said his proposal to freeze positions that have been vacant for more than a decade in an effort to increase salaries for new and existing employees won’t be the answer to all of his office’s problems, but it will help.
“I [plan] to send five locals to the academy in January,” Scott said Wednesday. “I anticipate several of those being current staff members of the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office. For example, jail deputies that want to work [as] patrol deputies or bailiffs.”
Marilyn Gray Wintersteen admitted she didn’t think much about what growers were spraying on the lily fields in her neighborhood until last year when it hit her in the face.
Wintersteen was planting flowers in her backyard on Ocean View Drive when she got a face full of spray from the adjacent lily field.
“My skin burned, my eyes burned, my tongue swelled up, I had blisters on it [and] I ended up in the ER,” she said. “I got from the back of my house where they were spraying around to the front of my house and bent over to catch my breath. I could not breathe.”
Wintersteen, a 35 year resident, told her story to the North Coast Water Quality Control Board at a town hall meeting at the Smith River United Methodist Church on Monday and to the Del Norte County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.
Both meetings, and a third at the United Methodist Church in Crescent City, focused on the Water Quality Control Board’s efforts to develop water quality regulations for Easter lily bulb production in the Smith River plain. Those regulations will be in an order monitoring and mitigating the impacts of copper diuron and other pesticides and fertilizers on the watershed aquatic ecosystem.
Curry County commissioners considered two proposed uses for opioid settlement dollars on Thursday. The first proposal was an agreement with Gold Beach for a school resource officer position, while the second involved opioid use disorder treatment at the jail.
Competing proposals on potential uses for opioid settlement dollars put jail commander Lt. Jeremy Krohn at odds with the Curry County Board of Commissioners on Thursday.
Krohn’s request for $36,000 in opioid settlement dollars to provide telehealth services to inmates struggling with addiction came after commissioners supported a proposed five-year intergovernmental agreement with Gold Beach to create a school resource officer position.
Under that proposal, Curry County would pay Gold Beach $149,100 in opioid settlement dollars for the first year. This cost would cover the officer’s salary and benefits, vehicle accessories and insurance, outfitting for the officer as well as software. The county would continue paying for those expenditures throughout the five-year term of the agreement, which includes a 5 percent cost of living adjustment and step increases for the officer.
During the summer, the school resource officer would transition into a community resource officer, according to Commissioner Brad Alcorn.
Though Curry County Finance Director Keina Wolf said there were enough opioid settlement dollars to fund both programs, Krohn took issue with the SRO proposal. He said he was perturbed that he had to make a presentation to obtain approval to use those funds, but Gold Beach and the school districts benefiting from the SRO position didn’t have to make a presentation.
Without naming who they were, Krohn said he sent the proposed intergovernmental agreement between the county and Gold Beach to “colleagues who handle opioid settlement funds” for review.
“They said you could not fund a full position based on that IGA through opiate money,” Krohn told commissioners. “They conservatively said 20 percent to fund it. So, with that, be prepared for that to come up — that we’re over funding out of the opioid settlement funds. There will be an audit for that.”
Commissioner Jay Trost called for a forensic audit of Curry County’s treasury department and its accounting practices on Thursday, saying that an investigation of past practices revealed it may have short- changed the area’s special districts.
Trost told his colleague Brad Alcorn that he, Finance Director Keina Wolf and the current county treasurer, Nick Vicino, had conducted a reconciliation of the county treasury for two fiscal years leading into the 2023-24 budget season.
That reconciliation revealed that the county had been holding on to tax revenue that belonged to other special districts and had erroneously recorded the transfer of those dollars when they were never actually transferred, Trost said. When the error was discovered, the dollars were no longer available to be transferred, he said.
The reconciliation also uncovered several other errors, Trost said, including bank fees and $66,000 in deposits that hadn’t been recorded and $3.7 million that had been transferred into other accounts “other than those recorded in the fiscal system.”
“We had overdraft charges to the county bank account that had rolled over for 11 months,” Trost said Thursday. “We had $601,180.32 in deposits that weren’t recorded in the fiscal system for up to three months — we were obviously behind in our reconciliation by two years. And we had over $32 million in bank adjustments during that time period.”
Crescent City cut the ribbon Saturday on the first amenity at Beachfront Park built using Prop 68 grant money. | Jessica C. Andrews
Wesley Phillips’ experience with pump tracks is limited — the new course at Crescent City’s Beachfront Park was his first taste.
Though the official grand opening wasn’t until last Saturday, Wesley’s dad, Tom Phillips, said his son had already been practicing. Wesley and his friends Aidan Evans and Landon and Chase Feight were demo riders — zipping over the jumps and scaling the wall ride, the wooden structure towering above the rest of the track — while Tom looked on.
“He’s blown away by it,” Tom said, watching Wesley and his buddies. “He had always ridden bikes and asked [me], ‘Can you build me a jump?’”
As the bike pump track took shape over the last two months, Wesley’s thoughts have been “nothing else but BMX,” his dad says.
A 75-year-old Brookings woman sustained facial injuries after someone threw an apple into the crowd at a Harris/Walz rally Friday.
The woman, who asked that her name not be used for fear of harassment, said the apple hit her left eye and fractured the orbital bone. She said she sustained scratches to her cornea and has had to put off cataract surgery. She said she had just had surgery on her right eye.
“I was just standing there waving the Harris/Walz sign and, bam!” She told Redwood Voice Community News on Monday. “We were getting some fair response — people honking horns and waving, so we were all waving back and stuff — and then, wham!”
To make her case for why voters should favor Measure H, Coleen Parker drew the Crescent City Council’s attention to another proposed bond — this one aimed at improving school facilities statewide.
If Del Norters approve the $59 million general obligation bond Del Norte Unified School District placed on the ballot this presidential election, DNUSD stands a better chance at receiving state facilities money should California’s Proposition 2 succeed, Parker told councilors on Monday.
“The way the Office of Public School Construction works is … if you are in a community that has passed a bond, now your community says, ‘Yes, schools are important to us.’ They help with matching dollars in a variety of things,” said Parker, who retired from DNUSD about two years ago and is part of the Support Our Kids — Yes On Measure H Committee. “If our [Measure] H doesn’t pass and the state bond does, the chances of Del Norte seeing any of that money is very slim.”
A Sacramento-based nonprofit organization combating factory farming and animal abuse in the poultry industry is suing Alexandre Family Farm alleging “rampant cruelty” at their Humboldt and Del Norte County dairy operations.
Legal Impact for Chickens filed its lawsuit in Humboldt County Superior Court last week. The organization’s complaint contains the same cruelty allegations another organization, Farm Forward, outlined in a report released six months ago. In an Oct. 1 news release, Legal Impact for Chickens references that exposé and accuses the dairy of pouring table salt in cows’ eyes to treat maladies, dragging disabled animals across concrete and starving them.
“We saw the exposé and we saw that Alexandre was accused of pouring table salt into animals’ eyes and dragging cows across concrete and starving them,” Legal Impact for Chickens Executive Director Alene Anello told Redwood Voice Community News on Thursday. “Being familiar with California’s animal cruelty laws, we immediately thought to ourselves, ‘that is illegal, we need to stop them.’”
Crescent City councilors approved bike pump track rules ahead of its Saturday grand opening.
The new rules require users to wear a helmet, elbow pads and knee pads and states that kids under age 12 must be under adult supervision, City Attorney Martha Rice said Monday. The regulations set the facility’s hours from dawn to dusk and limit its use to “non-motorized wheeled devices.”
Anyone flouting those rules will either be suspended from the facility or receive an administrative citation, Rice said. Though the ordinance won’t take effect for another 30 days, the rules will be posted at the pump track’s entrance.
The pump track grand opening will start at 11 a.m. Saturday at Beachfront Park and will include giveaways and riding demonstrations. Kids are also urged to bring their helmets and bicycles. The city and the Del Norte Trail Alliance are sponsoring the event.
