June 27, 2009 11:13 am
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The Del Norte County Grand Jury’s Final Report issued last week
produced good news along with a healthy dollop of constructive,
sometimes scathing, criticism about the twisted path Crescent City has
taken to expand its wastewater treatment plant.
The first bit of good news is the overall quality of the report. In
addition to evaluating facilities and programs such as Pelican Bay
State Prison and the county Mental Health Department, jurors completed
work begun by the previous Grand Jury to analyze what has happened at
City Hall from 2002 to present in regards to the wastewater plant.
Jurors deserve medals for sifting through hundreds of documents and
conducting 16 interviews to produce a thorough account of what
transpired, lucid analyses and reasonable recommendations that, if
followed, would guarantee that the city does a better job of handling
major projects in the future.
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June 18, 2009 08:33 am
Jim Erler raises some points (“Hurdygurdy Creek watershed should be sold to county, not feds,” June 10) that warrant more information.
Regarding the fire buffer: this is a “Top Priority Fuel Reduction Project” in the Del Norte Fire Safe Plan, which is available on the county’s Web site. (See pages xii, 95, and 98.) The property is four miles northeast from Big Flat, not six as indicated by Mr. Erler, and as stated in the Fire Safe Plan, “given that major fire conflagrations often are pushed by winds from the northeast, this is a direct threat to this community.”
At a meeting with local fire chiefs and Cal Fire representatives earlier this year, it was emphasized that during conflagration conditions a fire can travel very fast — and that was the case during the Biscuit Fire where it traveled 8.5 miles in 3 hours.
Regarding the site quality for timber: the property is mostly poor quality for growing trees. This is due to the shallow, rocky, often serpentine soils found there — and the slopes which range from 30 percent to 70 percent. Del Norte’s best commercial timber land is located further west in the more productive soils found there. These better soils support double the growth rate than is possible on the Hurdygurdy Creek property. Mr. Erler is correct that the property needs timber stand improvement work.
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May 30, 2009 02:27 pm
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Just when it seemed our leaders had done the ultimate job of botching their responsibility to pay for state government, along comes a still-higher level of ineptitude.
Gov. Schwarzenegger’s proposal to close almost all state parks is just plain dumb. We could almost forgive him if this fell into the typical cynical realm of making citizens suffer by cutting popular services so that next time they’ll be more supportive of proposed tax increases. But in a remote area such as Del Norte County that is heavily dependent on tourism, a call to close not some of our state parks but all of them amounts to political terrorism on the part of the Terminator.
These are financially desperate times in Sacramento. State leaders spent too much when the treasury was flush, and now revenues are way below what’s needed to support our current level of services and bureaucracy. The governor and legislators have been absolutely hapless in dealing with this situation, first going months past their deadline for adopting a budget, then presenting voters with a hopelessly complicated combination of propositions that wouldn’t have fixed the problem anyway.
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May 28, 2009 10:05 am
There is not much that people from all political parties can agree on. Almost everyone, however, agrees that our state government is broken and is completely unable to address the issues surrounding the budget while ignoring the critical issues of the day such as energy, water, education and health services.
Sacramento lawmakers continue to offer hundreds of bills that cater to special interests yet fail to address the real issues that face Del Norters or Californians. Often these bills are contradictory and when passed, create a lawyer’s dream case that can land in the courts for years. New state mandates are often imposed before the prior reforms have had a chance to work, and they typically give the state control over the details of services delivered at the community level. For school districts, Sacramento now wants to dictate the brand and type of cleaning supplies to be used in Gasquet Mountain School’s bathrooms. That gives you an idea of how much they want to micro-manage and take away local control.
This top-down, centralized governance system is at the root of many of our problems as a state. Community government leaders no longer have the tools to set and fund community priorities and be held accountable to the voters for them. Moreover, the state provides neither adequate funding nor the flexibility in using state funding for effective community service delivery. Sacramento believes that what is good for Los Angeles is good for Crescent City.
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May 26, 2009 10:15 am
I was a judge at a polling location in Klamath and yes, about 22 percent of our voting public voted in our precinct.
It was a slow 13-hour day at the polls allowing the one or two voters, at any one time, to make comments about the propositions. The sense I got was that they were going to send a message to Sacramento, not to Washington.
The message involved fiscal responsibility by our state elected officials. The common theme was a need to reduce and control government spending, reduce taxes and stop hiding government finances in rainy day slush funds or unspecified plans that divert large sums of money to the general fund from existing children’s and mental health funds.
Oh, sure we Californians are threatened by our state governor and legislators with reduced services, but like the rest of the country, few will notice any change from the diminished level of service we currently receive.
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May 24, 2009 07:26 pm
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“Support.” “Buying local.” “Championship.”
Divergent ways of defining those words make for three capsules of thought at the beginning of this long Memorial Day weekend.
• “Support”: Just what did it mean when Crescent City Council members stood up along with more than 50 people in the audience Monday to demonstrate their “support” for the Visitors Bureau?
The audience members, after all, showed up to back the bureau’s efforts to gain an ongoing source of funding from the council. Dedication of one-quarter of the city’s revenue from the hotel/motel tax is sought. This would provide the bureau with the financial stability to much more aggressively promote tourism in our area, which would in turn produce more revenue from that hotel/motel tax while boosting the local economy.
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May 16, 2009 10:26 am
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When times are tough — and all you have to do is look at the
governor’s latest state budget proposals to see how tough they are —
individuals, families and whole communities need to decide what their
priorities are and how they can most efficiently achieve them.
City leaders are asking today for the public’s input on priorities
for Crescent City during a town hall from 9:30 to noon at the Crescent
Fire Protection District, 255 Washington Blvd. What they hear could
have immediate impact, because City Council members may be talking
about their budget Monday night.
It’s the type of discussion that needs to be taking place at all
levels, from family budget meetings to overall community
consensus-building. No doubt a lot of time already has been spent
setting local priorities, but they must be reinforced and reassessed
constantly, especially when the economic landscape shifts.
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May 16, 2009 10:23 am
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Next week Crescent City and Del Norte County will be considering
two things that have a significant impact on our economic priorities.
Tuesday’s ballot initiatives impacting the budget for the state of
California ask us to make difficult choices on what should be funded
and as a consequence, what will not be funded. Our community has a
similar decision to make about the future of the Visitors Bureau and
the major economic returns possible if it receives permanent and
sustainable funding.
An actual vote will not be held at the Flynn Center on Monday night
at the City Council meeting. The Visitors Bureau is having Chris
Howard make a brief statement during public comment, present the
council with a six-page summary of facts, and then ask those in the
audience to please stand if they want the council to prioritize
permanent and sustainable funding of the Visitors Bureau from the
Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT).
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Opinion 
