Authorities said they were seeking a sex offender this week who removed his GPS monitoring device on Wednesday.

As of Friday evening, Ervan L. Doyle was at large.

He has been deemed a high-risk sex offender by the Sheriff’s Office.

He is listed as a white male 5 feet and 8 inches tall, weighing 160 pounds, with blond hair and green eyes.

He resides at 731 9th Street.

Volunteers with Our Daily Bread Ministries move pieces of wood into a wheelbarrow outside a home on the 500 block of McNamara Street on Thursday. Our Daily Bread Ministries volunteers spent much of the day cleaning up the home, which was the first chosen to benefit from County Supervisor Roger Gitlin’s Take A Bite Out of Blight program. Del Norte Triplicate / Jessica Cejnar

Properties owned by elderly, disabled targeted for help

A few short minutes had passed since Scott Scherer and others began volunteering for the “Take a Bite Out of Blight” program, but the difference was already visible.

Scherer and other volunteers with Our Daily Bread Ministries wheeled barrows full of firewood to the back of the first house chosen by Supervisor Roger Gitlin and County Code Enforcement Officer Dave Mason for cleanup as part of the new program. 

Slowly the wood pile began to shrink.

“We’re removing everything from the front yard,” Scherer said. “(The homeowner) will still possess what he has, but it makes the front of the house and the yard more palatable to individuals that come by.”

Gitlin and Mason stood outside the home on the 500 block of McNamara Avenue on Thursday watching Scherer and other workers grab pieces of wood and toss them into wheelbarrows. They were joined by Our Daily Bread representatives Mike Justice and Daphne Cortese, Rural Human Services representative Tim Hoone and Walmart store manager Nick Gonnella. 

Two huge trash bins stood on the street, courtesy of Recology Del Norte, waiting to be filled up.

The release of a prison inmate into Del Norte County got off to a rocky start and ended with the convict’s return to custody, authorities said.

Kevin M. Tennin, 49, of Minnesota was released from Pelican Bay State Prison on Monday after serving time for a sex-related crime and arson committed while in prison, according to the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office.

Tennin was under supervised parole and was being monitored with a GPS device, according to the Sheriff’s Office, but it was removed Tuesday by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation parole office in Humboldt County without proper notification to the Sheriff’s Office.

Eventually, a detective at the Sheriff’s Office was notified of the removal, sheriff’s Commander Bill Steven said.

An agent with the parole office was unable to be reached for comment Friday.

Tennin was subsequently arrested in Crescent City for a parole violation based out of Minnesota for failing to notify the state’s law enforcement that he had been released from prison, Steven said.

Tennin had been serving time in a Minnesota prison when he was deemed too disruptive and shipped to Pelican Bay, Steven said.

“If he’s back there and he’s just being a complete problem, sometimes they’ll ship them to California,” said Steven. “If they send him out here, California can send (a prisoner) out there.”

The March theft of a safe from the Del Norte Solid Waste Management Authority’s office remains under investigation.

The safe contained an unspecified amount of cash up to $5,000, said sheriff’s Commander Bill Steven.

The suspect cut through a wall of the prefabricated building where the safe was located, Steven said.

Video surveillance showed a dark figure that was unidentifiable, Steven said.

“They used a hand cart to carry the safe away down a trail (near State and Benson streets),” said Steven.

The theft is not suspected to be an inside job since there was a report of a break-in at the office in February when the burglar was unsuccessful in taking the safe, Steven said.

The Del Norte County Unified School District discussed the following issues Thursday:

• School closure: The subject of potentially closing Bess Maxwell Elementary School will appear before the board at its May 21 meeting, but Superintendent Don Olson said he will recommend that the item be tabled. 

“I recommend that at this time we do not proceed with the recommendation to close Bess Maxwell School,” he said, adding that school district staff will search for other ways to increase revenue. “I don’t believe it’s in the community’s best interest.”

Olson said he met with more than 50 representatives of the Hmong community, which has a strong presence at the school, who had concerns and suggestions over the use of the word “segregation” on a list of arguments for and against closing Bess Maxwell.

“It was never our intention to desegregate the Hmong students,” Olson said. “I assured them that I didn’t believe the board will close the school.”

• Retired employees: In response to a new state law that took effect in January, the school board unanimously approved three resolutions that would enable an employee to continue to work for the district despite being newly retired.

Assembly Bill 340, the California Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act of 2013, requires newly-retired employees to wait 180 days before coming back to work, said Human Resources Director Pamela Holloway. But there is a provision in the new law that allows a retired employee to work within that 180-day window if it serves a critical need and is approved by the County Office of Education Board of Trustees.

Here are excerpts from the Crescent City Police Department call logs for May 3–May 9. 

Friday, May 3

• At 5:40 p.m. a report of vandalism on the 400 block of 9th Street.

• At 8:03 p.m. a public intoxication arrest made near 3rd and N streets.

• At 9:52 p.m. a public intoxication arrest on the 900 block of Northcrest Drive.

Sunday, May 5

• At 10:15 a.m. a warrant arrest made near 3rd and O streets.

Tuesday, May 6

• At 3:30 a.m. a warrant arrest made on the 1000 block of U.S. Highway 101.

• At 1:30 p.m. a warrant arrest near 3rd and N streets.

Here are excerpts from the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office call logs for May 3–May 9.

Friday, May 3

• At 3:27 p.m. a report of a gas theft from a vehicle on the 12400 block of U.S. Highway 101.

• At 7:08 p.m. a report of a person hiding from officers in a shed on the 300 block of Amador Street.

Saturday, May 4

• At 3:59 p.m. a report of a motor vehicle accident near U.S. Highway 199 and Second Bridge.

• At 8:06 p.m. a report of a vehicle stuck at Enderts Beach.

Monday, May 6

• At 3:39 p.m. a report of a vehicle over an embankment on the 2100 block of U.S. Highway 199.

• At 5:58 p.m. a report of a burglary on the 100 block of Burke
Lane.

Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office Communications Officer Wendy Malone sits at her workstation in the dispatch center. Malone is one of three full-time dispatchers who handle all of the county’s 911 calls. Each dispatcher works 12-hour shifts without breaks. Del Norte Triplicate / Bryant Anderson

She also works to ensure the safety of emergency responders by figuring out whether there are guns in a house, whether there are warrants for a person pulled over in a traffic stop — and the location of that house on the unnamed drive off a poorly lit highway.

She’s quarterbacking information relayed during police chases, tsunamis and manhunts.

And she does it all sitting in front of six computer screens in a small room at the Sheriff’s Office.

“We’re the eyes and ears before anyone gets on scene,” said Malone, communications supervisor for the Sheriff’s Office.

Now her job has gotten harder.

Until last November, the Sheriff’s Office dispatch — the only dispatch center in the county — had 12 lines to service 911 calls. Then it was integrated by the state into the California Enhanced 911 network, supposedly so it would start receiving wireless calls directly with the accompanying location information. It’s the work of the California Public Safety Communications Office, the state agency that oversees the 911 system for emergency dispatch centers. It is funded by a telephone surcharge on California residents.

In order for the integration to fully occur, the system needed to be built from fiber optics and a microwave/radio tower installation, said Christine Lally, assistant secretary for legislation and communications for the California Technology Agency.

Work to begin this summer; full scope is not yet decided

Crescent City has begun the bidding process for a major sewer project on 2nd Street that is scheduled to begin this summer.

The City Council on Monday unanimously authorized city staff to advertise and receive bids for the project, which will replace an existing 18-inch clay pipe with a 24-inch pipe made of high-density polyethylene and polyvinyl chloride. 

The city plans to use a $1.28 million Community Development Block Grant to pay for the project, said Public Works Director Eric Wier. The project is expected to begin after July 4.

The existing pipe that was installed under 2nd Street following the 1964 tsunami is one of two major sewer collection lines that serve the Crescent City area, Wier said. The line connects to another pipe under B Street, which leads to the wastewater treatment plant. 

But after nearly 50 years, city workers have noticed sink holes appearing along 2nd Street. The clay pipe is extremely brittle and is easily broken, Wier said. The Public Works Department has had to repair sink holes using gravel before they are repaved, he said.

“That gravel has ended up at the treatment plant,” Wier said. “This is telling us that the line has been compromised.”

The contractor working on this project will have the option of replacing the pipe using a “cut and cover” method or a trenchless method, Wier said. The “cut and cover” method involves digging up the street to replace the pipe. The existing line could be used as a sewer bypass while the new pipe is being installed, but the city would have to repave the street, Wier said.

Airport needs wetlands as set-aside for project

The local airport authority is closer to acquiring land in the Pacific Shores Subdivision needed to mitigate the loss of wetlands for a runway improvement project, but some property owners might balk at the price offered for lots.

Last week, the Border Coast Regional Airport Authority unanimously approved a motion to accept a new appraisal report that valued Pacific Shores Subdivision lots at $5,000 apiece and to send letters to some buyers offering a one-time offer for the lots at that price.

Offers-to-purchase letters will be going to 225 properties whose owners have expressed a willingness to sell or have requested more information. Thirty-seven properties in tax default and 20 properties owned by the county will also be receiving the purchase offer, according to authority officials.

Del Norte County approved the Pacific Shores subdivision near Lake Earl/Tolowa in 1963.

Kelly Smith, an attorney who represents the Pacific Shores Property Owners Association, which accounts for roughly 150 of the remaining private lots, said in a phone interview on Wednesday that the $5,000-per-lot offer is “a rate that’s obviously intended to find suckers.”

The Runway Safety Area project, which would create an open, flat buffer zone in case a plane over- or undershoots the runway, is a congressionally mandated project that must be complete by 2015.

The project will disturb just under 17 acres of land that state regulators have deemed environmentally sensitive habitat, home to nine protected plant and animal species.