County Supervisor Elections: Healthy Humboldt Quizzes The Candidates

The General Plan Update is in its final review by the Planning Commission, and is likely to go to the Board of Supervisors for a vote some time after the upcoming elections. So it’s important that voters know candidates’ views about the Plan.

On April 19 and 26, Healthy Humboldt and the League of Women Voters co-sponsored candidates’ forums for the 4th and 5th District supervisors’ seats. The forums featured questions on the General Plan and other issues that will affect the health of our communities, forests and farmlands, salmon streams and Humboldt Bay. Below are excerpts in the candidates’ own words. Both forums are being re-played frequently on Access Humboldt Channel 11.

UPDATE: Since this article was published in ECONEWS in late May, the general election on June 8 resulted in a run off in both races. The winners of the runoff are Patrick Cleary and Ryan Sundberg for Fifth District, and Bonnie Neely and Virgina Bass for Fourth District. Their responses to forum questions are represented below.

Four For Fifth

The 5th District includes McKinleyville, Blue Lake, Trinidad and extends east to Willow Creek, Hoopa, Orleans and north to Orick. The candidates are Patrick Cleary, Pat Higgins, Jeffrey Lytle, and Ryan Sundberg. The forum, held April 26 in McKinleyville, can be viewed in its entirety online at http://www.archive.org/details/AH-lwvhc_hh_bos4-26-10.

Q: Which alternative of the General Plan do you favor, and why?

Cleary: “I’m very much a believer in smart growth…We can’t afford to be maintaining roads out into rural areas…We need to be able to provide public safety for everyone, and we can’t do that if we have all the growth out in rural areas. We need to be looking at infill strategies, mixed use, and thoughtful solutions...There’s a lot of people who think that Plan A is a no-growth plan, an anti-jobs plan, and that’s not true. I think that the key to Plan A is to make sure that we have planning for industry and jobs…and to make sure that we have the water and sewer in there to support those businesses.”

Sundberg: “I think it’d be very pre-decisional to pick a plan right now. I think what is important is to take elements that you see in the plan, and then focus on those elements and making sure those are in there. Those would be protecting our resource lands, like our ag lands and our timber lands, making sure there’s public safety, making sure there are the right kind of ordinances in there to make sure that our community keeps the quality of life that we enjoy now.”

Q: What are your views on port development?

Cleary: “We need to…scale it appropriately. That includes short sea shipping…and revitalizing our fishing industry…I think there’s a lot of opportunity for recreational use as well.”

Sundberg: “I think that the port is completely underutilized right now. We used to have 300 ships coming in and out of Humboldt Bay...We only use it for the fuel ships coming in and out. We have to get that going…Shipping is definitely something that needs to happen, we need to get those jobs here.”

Q: If a property is a legal parcel, should you have the right to build a home there?

Cleary: “There’s a fundamental conflict in the world where everybody thinks they ought to be able to do what they want on their own property and everybody thinks they should be able to tell their neighbor what he should be able to do on his property as well….There’s reasons we have zoning, because society has a valid reason…it is a balance between the rights of property owners and the rights of society as a whole…There are balances and protections for the good of society.”

Sundberg: “I believe that if you have a legal parcel…the person should be able to build a house on it…With the right to property, the county has rights too—they have the right to close down the beach to protect snowy plover, so…the rights go both ways…We just need to inject some common sense into the way we plan things.”

Three For Fourth

The 4th District includes Samoa, Fairhaven and parts of Eureka. The candidates are Virginia Bass, Jeff Leonard and Bonnie Neely (the incumbent). The forum, held April 19 in Eureka, can be viewed in its entirety online at http://www.archive.org/details/AH-lwvhc_hh_bos_4-19.

Q: Which alternative of the General Plan do you favor, and why?

Bass: “I’m not a fan of Option A…I think Option C actually gives a larger range of housing opportunities…but if I were to choose an option tonight, I would say that Option B is a good compromise between the two, but…there’s an awful lot to be learned and a lot of educating to do.”

Neely: “I am only looking at Options A and B. I see some great policies in Option A in terms of building our future, retaining our economy, and I see some options in B that keep things more flexible…I’m looking for priorities that firmly establish the county’s agricultural and forestland policies. I’m looking for policies for revitalizing towns in the county area, and plans to protect water resources and address climate change.”

Q: We live next to a bay that has potential as an economically viable port. However, we have little to ship to the rest of the world. As supervisor, would you move to change this condition?

Bass:  “I definitely agree that our bay is a very viable port…Perhaps that is something we can look at in the future, whether it is by barges or by short sea shipping…I don’t think it’s that we don’t have much to ship, we just have to be very creative in helping businesses find a way to ship their products abroad.”

Neely: “I think the best option right now to make the port more viable is the short sea shipping option…Steve Pepper…wants to put short sea shipping in place right here with existing port facilities…The federal government is focusing on maritime highways…If they’re going to invest any monies in the port, we’re going to have to show that we have customers that can use these facilities in terms of shipping things out and bringing things in.”

Q: Are you all aware that sprawl and big box malls require public subsidies far in excess of their contributions to infrastructure and social services? What actions have you supported that limit sprawl and reduce Eureka’s saturation in poverty wage jobs?

Bass:  “I believe there are healthy ways local businesses can compete against big boxes…The way to handle big box development…is to give current existing businesses the tools they need to compete…The City of Eureka had the opportunity to look at a big box ordinance…and decided that it wasn’t necessary because we felt we had the proper zoning in place along with other stop-gap measures such as Coastal Commission and Coastal Development Permits.”

Neely: “We at the County have adopted a big box ordinance, and that means that anything over 40,000 square feet has to go through a Conditional Use Permit. Then you can address a variety of issues with regard to sprawl, or jobs, or anything else. You have to have a process to address the issues, and that’s the way you create it. Poverty wage jobs are not what I’m looking for in our economy. I’m looking for prevailing wage jobs, and I’ve done a lot of work to bring money into this area to ensure that people that work in the trades get a good salary.”

To learn more about the Board of Supervisors candidates’ views, you can view the forums online in their entirety at the links above, or visit John Osborn’s candidate pages

Elizabeth Conner is the Director of Healthy Humboldt. Jennifer Kalt is a Policy Analyst for Healthy Humboldt. For more information, please visit the Healthy Humboldt web site.

What is the General Plan?

Simply put, the General Plan is the constitution for all future developments within a city or county. There are many sections, but the core part of the Plan is the zoning and land use designations.

The draft of the plan is presented as four alternatives, A, B, C, and D, which are basically four different scenarios for how and where our county will grow. The Supervisors don’t have to pick all of one Alternative or another; they can, and likely will, choose some policies from different alternatives.

Plan Alternative A is the “environmentally superior” option, as required by California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), and it protects the most agricultural and timber lands and concentrates housing near current services and infrastructure.

Plan Alternative B is the “identified proposed project” under CEQA, or staff alternative and allows for some protection of resource lands while allowing some residential development.

Plan Alternative C is an “alternative proposed project” under CEQA, and would allow for the most residential expansion in resource lands and recognition of existing large lot entitlements.

Plan Alternative D is the existing 1984 General Plan, called the “no project” alternative by the CEQA.

To read the current draft of the General Plan or learn more about the process, visit the county’s website.

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