Annie Nehmer is glad she didn’t win her first Crescent City Harbor run.

Nehmer, a registered nurse turned commercial fisherman, said she began asking questions during the COVID-19 pandemic — things like, why were trash cans missing, why weren’t roads getting repaired and what’s with the constant weed eating — looking for answers, she started going to meetings.

Two years later, Nehmer ran against incumbent commissioners Rick Shepherd and Gerhard Weber. In a conversation with KFUG Community Radio’s Paul Critz and Redwood Voice Community News last week, Nehmer said they had experience that she lacked in 2022.

Now, as she nears the end of her second attempt to win a seat on the Board of Commissioners, Nehmer’s optimistic about the Crescent City Harbor District’s future. She has faith in the new interim harbormaster Mike Rademaker. She’s also excited about the impending change on the Board of Commissioners.

“The current Harbor Commission, in my opinion, is very torn or split, and so I think it’s kind of been a stalemate,” she said. “You have some that are very pro-commercial fishing and a couple that are anti-commercial fishing. Most of the candidates that are currently on the ballot will be replacing anti-fishing harbor commissioners, so I’m hopeful in that regard — that we can maybe make the harbor more centered on commercial fishing.”

Linda Sutter can’t say why she wanted to see the former harbormaster’s credit card statements from January through August of this year other than “something hit me wrong.”

Sutter spent three years investigating alleged misuse of public funds at the Crescent City Harbor District. She submitted a complaint to the Del Norte County Civil Grand Jury over their lack of a credit card policy and $75,000 in unapproved credit card use. After the Grand Jury “picked out one transaction” to focus on in its investigation, Sutter said she felt her claim was validated, but was disappointed in the results.

She resumed her investigation in August and filed a writ in Del Norte County Superior Court when Harbormaster Tim Petrick initially refused to let her see his credit card statements. Three weeks later — after the Crescent City Harbor District released Petrick’s credit card statements — the harbormaster had submitted his resignation.

Sutter says Petrick wouldn’t have resigned had it not been for her. As one of six candidates vying for three open seats on the Crescent City Harbor District Board of Commissioners, Sutter said the current commissioners have caused the harbor to “lose so much money.”

“I can no longer stand by without trying to get on as a commissioner because I believe I can bring real change,” she told KFUG Community Radio’s Paul Critz and Redwood Voice Community News last week.

Dan Schmidt approaches his candidacy for Crescent City Harbor Commissioner the same way he viewed his job as editor of the Del Norte Triplicate — he wants to help.

That philosophy was emblazoned on the absurdly large wrench he brought into the KFUG studio last week where he sat down with Community Service host Paul Critz and Redwood Voice Community News. The Crescent City Harbor District needs repairs, Schmidt says, but it has potential.

“There are a whole lot of things that were allowed to fall apart in previous years that need to be corrected,” he said. “The whole Fashion Blacksmith fiasco — where the Harbor ended up owing millions and millions of dollars because they neglected their job to maintain and repair the harbor facilities. That should never have happened, and worse, they allowed a very hard-to-get permit to do that work to expire. Somebody wasn’t paying attention, and they allowed that to happen, and then they got embroiled in the lawsuit.”