District 4 Supervisor Joey Borges was absent. Among the items discussed at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting:
CDBG Application: Del Norte County will pursue a total of $600,000 in Community Development Block Grant dollars to allocate to CASA of Del Norte and the Del Norte Senior Center’s nutrition program. Four members authorized Administrative Services Manager Toni Self to submit the CDBG applications to the California Department of Housing and Community Development.
According to Self, HCD announced in August that $34 million was available through the federally-funded CDBG program. HCD began accepting applications on Oct. 29 and will announce award recipients next spring, Self said.
For competitive programs like CASA of Del Norte, which advocates for youth navigating the foster care system, and the senior nutrition program, the potential award allocation increased to $300,000 each, Self said. Previously it had been $250,000.
Those programs also have 33 months to spend those dollars rather than the previous 36 months, though Self said the senior nutrition program would likely have spent those funds within about a year.
In January, the Del Norte Senior Nutrition program had spent the last of the CDBG dollars it received in 2021 and had been seeking donations from the community to continue to meet the needs of its 873 clients. A Del Norte Healthcare District contribution of $250,000 would allow the Senior Nutrition Program to continue to operate through the fiscal year, according to Senior Center Executive Director Charlaine Mazzei.
Raffle Basket Reservations: Though she acknowledged that $250 isn’t a lot of money, District 2 Supervisor Valerie Starkey voted against a proposal for the county to put together and donate a raffle basket at the Rural County Representatives of California annual meeting in Placer County in September.
Her colleagues Darrin Short, Chris Howard and Dean Wilson approved the donation. Howard said that while the proceeds of the raffle goes toward a charity in another county, the goodwill the donation generates among RCRC staff and officers toward Del Norte is beneficial.
He and Wilson also noted that a gift basket that included contributions from those attending RCRC’s most annual meeting in September generated more than $31,000 for the Kamome Foundation, which facilitates student exchanges between Del Norte County and Rikuzentakata, Japan.
Starkey, however, said she was standing on principle since the gift basket Del Norte County is paying for will be auctioned off in another county to a charity of that county’s choice.
County/City Dispatch Agreement: Del Norte County supervisors approved an updated contract between the county and Crescent City for the sheriff’s office to provide dispatch services to the Crescent City Police Department.
The agreement follows an analysis by the DNSO on the costs associated with operating the dispatch center and providing services for CCPD. It also comes after the Board of Supervisors approved the county’s 2024-25 budget, which calls for an additional two dispatchers in the DNSO to handle 911 calls for CCPD.
According to the agreement, Crescent City will pay 25 percent of the county’s actual cost for providing dispatch services on a quarterly basis. Those costs will include dispatch staff salary and benefits, according to the agreement. CCPD will also help train new dispatchers and will meet with the Law Enforcement Administrators of Del Norte County (LEADN) Communications Committee to discuss staffing and operations issues.
Pyke Field Improvements: The Board approved a contract with Whitchurch Engineering for design services related to the Pyke Field Sports Complex improvement project. The Humboldt-county based firm will provide those services for up to $35,500, according to the county’s staff report.
Del Norte County is expected to receive $500,000 in federal appropriations dollars to improve drainage, lighting and accessibility at the sports complex. To obtain those funds, the county has to submit a federal grant application to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that includes a more detailed project description, budget as well as an environmental review. In addition to developing plans the county can submit to HUD, Whitchurch is expected to provide an estimated cost for the project, according to the county’s staff report.
In 2023, Del Norte had initially submitted a $1.83 million federal earmark request to U.S. senators Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla as well as Congressman Jared Huffman for the Pyke Field improvements.
Economic Development Services County supervisors authorized staff to create an economic development services manager position. The creation of this position comes after the dissolution of the Tri-Agency Economic Development Authority and the inclusion of economic development in the county’s 2024-25 strategic plan.
A county-based economic development services manager could act as a liaison with other agencies, including tribal governments, and could assist with developing the county’s Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy, or CEDS, Assistant CAO Randy Hooper told supervisors in August.
In October, the Board of Supervisors authorized $140,000 to go toward economic development professional services in its 2024-25 budget.
According to the county’s staff report on Tuesday, the county’s economic development technical advisory committee said Human Resources and Administration should create the position before including it in the 2025-26 budget.
Human Resources is expected to submit a final job description to the Board of Supervisors at a future meeting, according to the staff report.
