Annie Nehmer is glad she didn’t win her first Crescent City Harbor run.
Nehmer, a registered nurse turned commercial fisherman, said she began asking questions during the COVID-19 pandemic — things like, why were trash cans missing, why weren’t roads getting repaired and what’s with the constant weed eating — looking for answers, she started going to meetings.
Two years later, Nehmer ran against incumbent commissioners Rick Shepherd and Gerhard Weber. In a conversation with KFUG Community Radio’s Paul Critz and Redwood Voice Community News last week, Nehmer said they had experience that she lacked in 2022.
Now, as she nears the end of her second attempt to win a seat on the Board of Commissioners, Nehmer’s optimistic about the Crescent City Harbor District’s future. She has faith in the new interim harbormaster Mike Rademaker. She’s also excited about the impending change on the Board of Commissioners.
“The current Harbor Commission, in my opinion, is very torn or split, and so I think it’s kind of been a stalemate,” she said. “You have some that are very pro-commercial fishing and a couple that are anti-commercial fishing. Most of the candidates that are currently on the ballot will be replacing anti-fishing harbor commissioners, so I’m hopeful in that regard — that we can maybe make the harbor more centered on commercial fishing.”
Neher is one of six candidates vying for three open seats on the Crescent City Harbor District Board of Commissioners. She’s competing against Dan Schmidt, Linda Sutter, Devon Morgante, John Evans and write-in candidate, incumbent Harry Adams.
Like some of her opponents, Nehmer felt that, until the recent change in leadership, the Crescent City Harbor District lacked transparency. When in-person meetings resumed following the pandemic, Nehmer said she started noticing things happening differently. At that point, she said, Sutter began attending meetings to represent residents at the District’s two RV parks, who were worried about losing their homes after developer Alex Lemus presented a proposal to make the parks more attractive to visitors.
Roger Gitlin, former county supervisor and current writer for the Del Norte Triplicate, began advocating on behalf of Fashion Blacksmith — a 40-year Harbor District tenant that was forced to close due to a lack of dredging around its dock.
After boatyard owner Ted Long filed a lawsuit in 2022, the Harbor District reached a settlement agreement with Fashion Blacksmith that has it paying $2.6 million plus interest to its former tenant.
Nehmer said she felt that then-harbormaster Tim Petrick stonewalled members of the public who raised legitimate concerns and denied them access to information they were seeking. Though she was hesitant at the prospect of having to work with Petrick, Nehmer said she ran for commissioner anyway.
“As a member of the public, I could say many things, but I didn’t really have a vote,” she said. “I didn’t have an actual say in what happened behind the scenes. And so I thought, ‘Let me go from asking and speaking [in] the audience to actually having a vote for what matters for our future.’”
With Election Day nearing, Nehmer — if she’s elected — and the other new commissioners won’t be working with Petrick, who resigned on Sept. 30 amid questions about his expenditures using a Harbor District credit card.
The following day, Crescent City Harbor commissioners hired Rademaker as interim harbormaster for six months. Rademaker will receive an annual base salary of $94,000 and will continue to live in a studio apartment on Harbor District grounds in exchange for being on-call after business hours.
On Monday, Nehmer said she wanted to give Rademaker a chance to do his job before deciding whether the Board should extend his contract.
“When the previous harbormaster applied for the job, he was the only one that applied, and it may be to our current harbormaster’s benefit that no one else applies,” Nehmer told KFUG and Redwood Voice. “But if someone does, I would say let his record speak for itself.”
Nehmer spoke to the dichotomy between the Crescent City Harbor’s function as a “working harbor” and its role as a driver for tourism. She said she’d like to increase opportunities for fishing in the harbor, especially for children.
According to Nehmer, there’s an ordinance on the Crescent City Harbor District’s books that prohibits youngsters, or anyone, from fishing from the docks, except for the administration docks. She wants to change that.
Nehmer said she has also been researching the possibility of establishing salmon net pens or white sea bass pens in the harbor.
“It creates a terminal fishery,” Nehmer said, adding that salmon tend to gather around their natal streams before swimming upriver to spawn. “[If] they come from the harbor, they should return to the harbor and you [could] have a derby where kids and adults could come in and fish and then also provide food for their family.”
Still, Nehmer’s main goal, at least in the immediate future, is increasing transparency at the Crescent City Harbor. That’s a running theme for most candidates vying for the three open seats. Nehmer said things are already changing for the better and urged Del Norters to vote.
“A lot of people vote because [they say], ‘I know you,’ and I would really ask that they vote on what’s best for the harbor,” she said. “Just because you like someone doesn’t mean they’re a great candidate to run the harbor.”
