Thumbnail: Curry County Sheriff’s seal. Right: Curry County’s seal.
Curry County commissioners are seeking help from a judge to reopen communications with Sheriff John Ward.
The Board of Commissioners filed a declaratory judgment suit against the sheriff in Curry County Circuit Court on Jan. 13, the county announced Wednesday. Officials say they hope to “resolve long-standing disagreements” with the sheriff about their roles and responsibilities.
“Filing suit was an option of last resort that was taken after the Board and county legal counsel made multiple requests for cooperation, information and records from the sheriff’s office that were not satisfactorily fulfilled,” the county stated in its press release.
Thumbnail photo courtesy of Del Norte & Tribal Lands Community Food Council.
The Wednesday farmers market will be under new management and in a new home when the season starts this June.
Crescent City councilors gave their blessing to the Del Norte and Tribal Lands Community Food Council to move the Downtown Farmers & Artisans Market to the old Bank of America parking lot at 2nd and H streets for the 2025 season.
“I just want to encourage everybody that in the Bank of America parking lot, there is great potential, great growth for that farmers market,” said Cristina’s Mexican Restaurant owner Claudia Hooper, who was a neighbor to its previous 3rd and K street location. “And an opportunity for a lot of people, who we don’t necessarily think of, that will be able to use that farmers market.”
During the start of its 2024 season, the downtown market, then operated by the Downtown Divas, was set up at the parking lot adjacent to the Del Norte County Library at Front and K streets. But due to the active construction along Front Street, the Divas determined it could no longer continue in that location, according to the city staff report.
Del Norte County supervisors backed a proposal to transfer roughly $1 million out of a California Public Employees Retirement System-managed trust to a private firm after a representative assured them that the county wasn’t abandoning the state’s pension program.
Matt Spooner, senior consultant with Public Agencies Retirement Service (PARS), said Del Norte County wasn’t leaving CalPERS’ defined benefits program, which offers pension and other retirement benefits to its employees.
Instead, county officials are seeking to establish a trust fund with PARS that would offer greater flexibility when it comes to paying its share of those pensions and other retirement benefits, Spooner told supervisors Tuesday.
Though she congratulated her colleague Joey Borges, Valerie Starkey didn’t hide her disappointment at being passed over for chair of the Del Norte County Board of Supervisors.
Starkey, who was sworn into her second term as representative of Del Norte County District 2 earlier this month, was nominated on Tuesday to preside over the Board’s meetings by District 1 Supervisor Darrin Short. That nomination died due to lack of a second.
“I’m only responsible for District 2 and District 2 has supported me and I know where I stand with them,” Starkey told Redwood Voice Community News. “But we go where the need is — we don’t just work in our districts. I have to say that if the supervisors in districts 3, 4 and 5 are not confident in my abilities, then that’s between them and their constituents.”
Del Norte County’s online jail inmate database is available to the public once again following an upgrade that took nearly three months to complete.
The new system went live on Tuesday and features a mapping tool that allows users to track calls for service. As the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office gets more use out of it, people will be able to track police activity within specific time frames, Lt. Kyle Stevens told Redwood Voice Community News.
“We switched over, I believe, towards the end of October so it’s only got about two to three months worth of information,” he said, referring to the public-facing portion of the system. “As the year goes on, it’ll get more and more robust.”
Curry County Board of Commissioners Meeting from Dec. 19.Thumbnail: Keina Wolf, the county’s finance and human resources director, sits at the far left on the dais. | Screenshot
(Update at 2:51 p.m. Dec. 30. Curry County commissioners delayed renewing an employment contract with Finance and Human Resources Director Keina Wolf at their Dec. 19 meeting.)
Curry County commissioners declined to renew delayed renewing an employment contract with their finance and human resources director, Kiena Wolf, at last week’s meeting.
Wolf, who was in attendance at that meeting, found herself on the defensive against critics arguing that the county couldn’t afford the expense.
One critic, Michele Martin, a member of a Facebook group called Citizens For Curry Justice, criticized Wolf’s proposed salary of $130,000 per year and said the $15,000 professional development allowance it calls for is more than the training budget at the Curry County Sheriff’s Office.
Rod Palmquist, a representative for Teamsters Local 223, which represents sheriff’s office employees, repeated the statement regarding the training budget for Wolf’s department, comparing it with that of the sheriff’s office. He told commissioners that the proposed employment agreement prioritized bureaucracy “over the very safety of the community you were elected to serve.”
A third critic was County Assessor and Tax Collector Kylie Wagner, who said that Wolf, who does much of her work from her home in Lane County, “should be here in the trenches with the rest of us.”
In the face of more public criticism over budget cuts at the sheriff’s office, Curry County commissioners agreed to place another law enforcement tax levy before voters next May.
But they took umbrage at some of the statements citizens lobbed at them on Thursday, including accusations from local Teamsters representatives that they abandoned the sheriff’s office.
That statement came from Rod Palmquist, labor representative of Local Teamsters 223, which represents Curry County Sheriff’s Office employees. Palmquist criticized a proposed employment contract between the county and Finance and Human Resources Director Keina Wolf, charging commissioners of prioritizing bureaucracy over public safety. He mentioned a potential consideration to consolidate jail services between Curry and Coos counties — an issue that’s in the early stages of exploration at this point, according to Commissioner Jay Trost.
The Tolowa Interpretive Walk at Beachfront Park will feature a redwood tree, a burden basket and a canoe with kiosks focusing on their origin story, culture and the atrocities they lived through at the hands of white settlers. | Image courtesy of Crescent City
Among the items discussed at Monday’s Crescent City Council meeting
New Council, New Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem:
A new Crescent City Council appointed Ray Altman as the new mayor with Isaiah Wright taking on the job of mayor pro tem.
Altman had been mayor pro tem under Blake Inscore, who finished out his final two years on the City Council on Monday. Wright had been mayor in 2023.
Photo courtesy of the Crescent City Harbor District
Among the items discussed at Tuesday’s Crescent City Harbor District meeting.
Grant Dollars:
A proposed contract with Community System Solutions on Tuesday turned into a debate over whether the Harbor District should continue to rely on grants to shore up its infrastructure.
Sam Strait, county resident and frequent commenter, says no. He argued that the Harbor District’s grants are “in reality other people’s money.”
“I thought the idea here was to live within your means so you no longer have to use other people’s money to support your wishes,” he said.
Linda Sutter didn’t take kindly to a proposed set of guidelines governing public comment during Crescent City Harbor District meetings.
Though the author of those guidelines, newly-elected commissioner Dan Schmidt, didn’t initially mention her by name, Sutter warned that any attempt to remove her from the building will result in a lawsuit. “My opinions are my opinions,” she said Tuesday. “You don’t have to like them. But the first time you lay hands on me and escort me out of this building, I will own this building.”
Schmidt didn’t mention Sutter’s name in his introductory statement or in his proposal, but he referred to statements she made at the Board’s Dec 3 meeting after Community System Solutions CEO Mike Bahr introduced himself and his staff to the Board of Commissioners.
