Thumbnail photo by Amanda Dockter
Mike Rademaker will continue as Crescent City’s harbormaster for at least another three months.
Four members of the Harbor District Board of Commissioners approved a three-month contract with Rademaker. Vice Chair Annie Nehmer dissented, later telling Redwood Voice Community News that the agreement included a raise despite commissioners’ not being fully aware of the port’s current financial situation.
“It is my concern with everything,” she said. “We haven’t been presented with financials in over a month. And when presented with financials, we haven’t been presented with a semi-annual budget.”
Rademaker said his current contract includes an annual base salary of $114,000. He will not receive health insurance, and apart from the pay increase, the terms of the contract are almost identical to his previous agreement with the Harbor Board.
The previous Harbor District Board hired Rademaker in October at an annual base salary of $94,000. He replaced former harbormaster Tim Petrick, who resigned on Sept. 20, 2024 after commissioners released credit card statements outlining questionable expenditures.
As part of Rademaker’s contract with the Harbor District in October, he was allowed to live in a 360-square-foot studio apartment on harbor property in exchange for being on-call during and after business hours. His housing arrangement with the Harbor District had been in place when he was assistant harbormaster prior to Petrick’s resignation, according to CCHD’s legal counsel, Ruben Duran.
Rademaker’s new contract on Wednesday came after he told commissioners that the district’s finance director, David Negus had resigned unexpectedly. As a result, Rademaker said, financial statements to the Board have been lagging.
The Crescent City Harbor District is working with an independent consultant who is handling the district’s financial needs until Sandy Moreno takes over on April 22.
Moreno, a former bookkeeper with Fashion Blacksmith, who had been a Harbor District tenant for more than 40 years, said she looked forward to working with Rademaker.
“I think he will get a great review in three months because I feel like we are going to do really great things together,” she said, adding that she had been asked to lend her financial expertise to the Harbor District for about two years. “I think you’ll see a lot of good things in the next three months because the finances will show you that.”
Though she wasn’t there to offer her comment in person, Alicia Williams, who calls herself a community activist, criticized Rademaker’s proposed salary increase via a text message Nehmer read out at the podium on Wednesday.
Williams asked for more information about an existing framework for communication and said that the Board of Commissioners should be involved in a delegation of duties to ensure the workload is distributed better.
“Also, the severance, compensation and benefits [package] need to be reduced because the previous harbormaster was essentially rewarded handsomely for costing taxpayers money and contributing to a toxic dynamic at our Harbor District,” she said.
Just before he voted with three of his colleagues to approve Rademaker’s contract with the Harbor District, Board Chairman Gerhard Weber noted that at some point the interim harbormaster will be evaluated on his performance.
Weber said it’s important for Rademaker to know the parameters of what that evaluation would look like.
“It’s like taking a class at a university and not getting a syllabus and the instructor says I’m going to question you on ‘blah blah blah,’ it’s just not fair,” Weber said. “I think Mike, in addition to getting the [contract] extension, I believe he should know the tools we’re going to use to evaluate these three months.”
