Tuesday, September 17th marked the 2nd semi-monthly Crescent City Harbor District (CCHD) Board of Commissioners meeting, which was the only meeting of the month as the first (of two) had been canceled without notice, due to Labor Day being the day before.
Tensions seemed high in the meeting room, most likely due to an ongoing Grand Jury investigation, not to mention the fact that 3 out of 5 commissioners are not running for re-election during the upcoming election in November.
The meeting opened with a roll call followed by an anything but optimistic public comment that saw citizens concerned with the spending habits of the Harbormaster with the harbor’s credit card, combined with a nihilistic questioning about how effective the proposed fireworks ban in the harbor would actually be due to a general lack of security on July 4th countywide.
The first agendized item concerned the CCHD Strategic Development Plan. The commissioners felt a pause was needed concerning the plan since most of them were leaving soon and wanted the new commissioners to take it over. Public sentiment seemed to agree with the commissioners.
“Docks & Piers Insurance Renewal” as an agenda item was added mid-meeting without notice due to the fact that the policy’s renewal date had slipped through the cracks and it was discovered that the policy had to be renewed this meeting or it would likely lapse. The motion passed unanimously.
Public comment had many unenthused citizens questioning how this happened since they felt the insurance of one of the city’s most important and irreplaceable resources had been mismanaged. This year’s insurance policy will, due to inflation, cost $30K more than last year.
Thanks to a citizen’s letter of request to the Grand Jury in 2022, an investigation was opened into the lack of any sort of policy regarding the Crescent City Harbor’s use of their business credit card. Harbormaster Tim Petrick apparently used the credit card for things that certain citizens find unacceptable, such as DoorDash and a round of golf. Petrick explained why he placed the personal charges, and presented his executory response to the Grand Jury as well as a draft outlining the new CCHD credit card policy.
But as attention had been turned to the previous lack of policy, Commissioner Stone asked Commissioner White why the new policy took so long (two years) to be enacted in the first place. White said it “had a lot of language,” and he personally disagreed with the consequences that would take place if a personal charge was made on the credit card.
He instead stated that he felt that no personal charge should ever take place with the card and that he wasn’t happy either with how long the policy has taken to be enacted.
President Adams broke out yelling saying he was “desperate for something,” and that credit cards have been a problem for years. Commissioner Weber and Adams went on to say that they felt that only the office manager should actually have access to the credit card.
Public comment continued to berate Petrick’s previous use of a harbor credit card, with some asking why the harbor even needed a credit card.
They then examined an executory letter in response to the Civil Grand Jury report from Tim Petrick which was highly debated regarding wordage, with Commissioner Stone claiming that Petrick had “had his hands all over the letter,” and had offended everyone in the room by ignoring a conflict of interest by being involved with the letter, threatening to recuse himself from the meeting if the letter was approved. After about 30 minutes of deliberation, legal counsel revealed that this letter was only being presented for the sake of transparency from Petrick, that it didn’t need any board approval, and that there was no conflict of interest for Petrick. The letter the board would have to approve still had a deadline several days out and was not drafted yet.
“I’m simply trying to dial back the heat,” legal counsel Reuben Darun said.
Humbled, the board moved on.
Next on the agenda was whether to approve a letter of support for adjusting shipping lanes, which was simply a minor quality of life improvement to one moorer. The motion passed 5-0.
Next up was two slip revocation appeals, the first of which was regarding a sailor who stated he simply needed a smidge more time to pay his mooring fees. President Adams stated “I don’t think we should punish fishermen, let’s give fishermen a break whenever we can”. The first slip revocation appeal passed 5-0.
Next was an appeal regarding the non renewal of a mooring fee for an 83 foot boat. Commissioners and the Harbormaster argued that a vessel of that length was simply unsustainable due to the fact that as the water level in the harbor changes from high to low tide, the ship in turn put to much weight on the dock lines, which Petrick claimed had already damaged a water line and would cause future damage to the docks.
“The boat’s just too big,” Adams said.
“And there’s just not another spot for an 83 foot vessel in our harbor,” Petrick added.
Petrick did, however, after a short discussion with one of the boat crew, state that he would let them stay until November as long as they monitor their dock lines to ensure changes in conjunction with tides to minimize risk.
After that came the voting of changes to the harbor bylaws.
Most of the proposed changes regarded transparency involving where, exactly, the money that the harbor is allowed to allocate goes. But, no changes were made, as agreements couldn’t be settled upon and the motion was pushed down the line.
The actual owner of the aforementioned 83 foot vessel, mentioned previously, called in during the bylaws public comment period (from his other boat coming down from Alaska) and threatened legal action with allegations against Petrick regarding bullying and discrimination if he was kicked out of the harbor.
Petrick, unfazed, then presented his harbormaster report, which included the announcement of the upcoming longboard surfing festival and a new dredging plan for the harbor from the US Army Engineering Corps which will cost 5.3 million dollars and will involve dredging certain parts of the harbor to a maximum of 20 feet.
Discussions shifted to what to do with the dredged sand, as they can only dump it on the South Beach side of Whalers Island, where the sand just slowly washes back into the harbor from. Stone asked if they could donate it to the city, and talks of how to get an offshore dumping zone transpired, with Adams abruptly cutting the meeting short and going to closed session, where a performance evaluation of Petrick as Harbormaster was to take place.
The Crescent City Harbor District Board of Commissioners meetings take place every first and third Tuesday of the month at 2pm. Meetings are held in the harbor office at 101 citizens dock road. You can find agendas for future and previous meetings here, on their website.