Category Archives: Infrastructure

Del Norte County Board of Supervisors Recap, July 8, 2025

Among the items discussed at Tuesday’s Del Norte County Board of Supervisors meeting:

Mavris To Work With DA’s Office: Local attorney George Mavris will take on cases for the Del Norte County District Attorney, county supervisors decided Tuesday.

The vote on the consent agenda item was unanimous, but it prompted District 2 Supervisor Valerie Starkey to ask for an update on the county’s progress on creating a public defender’s department.

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Crescent City Uses Local Contractor To Replace Swimming Pool Roof

Thumbnail photo courtesy of Andrew Goff

Crescent City is turning to Red Sky Roofing to fix the seagull problem at the Fred Endert Municipal Pool.

Four month after Public Works Director Dave Yeager told them that the birds had poked hundreds of pinholes in the roof, councilors unanimously approved a contract with the Crescent City-based business to replace it. According to Yeager, Red Sky will replace the asphalt roof that was installed about a decade ago with a steel seam roof “so we don’t have this problem in 10 years.”

“Hopefully it should last 30 to 50 years,” Yeager told councilors on Monday. “It’s the same material that’s on the Cultural Center [and] it’s the same on the wastewater treatment plant.”

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Harbor District Board Drops Property Insurance On Marina Docks To Save $181,500

Thumbnail photo by Gavin Van Alstine

Crescent City Harbor commissioners took Sandy Moreno’s advice and decided not to renew property insurance that covers damage to the docks in the marina from fire and collision.

Moreno, who became the Harbor District’s financial advisor in April, urged commissioners to hold off on renewing the Commercial Property — Inner Boat Basin Docks portion of their coverage with Redwood Leavitt Insurance Agency. She proposed taking the $181,500 premium it would have cost, putting $50,000 of it toward maintenance and using the remainder to keep the Harbor District solvent through the fiscal year.

“I’m giving you guys a year to get your shit together and if we do this one thing it does that,” she said Wednesday. “We will get through a year and if revenue generation and our cost savings and all the things we’re looking at doing — you will be in a really good place come July 1 of next year.”

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Del Norte’s Youth Opportunity Center To House Adult Inmates During Jail Rehab Project Next Spring

Thumbnail photo: Consultants with NMR Architects, of Redding, are proposing a more open dormitory style layout rather than the row of cells that are currently at the Del Norte County Jail. | Screenshot

Though they echoed the probation chief’s sentiments that they didn’t want their employees “living out of a bag,” Del Norte County supervisors green lit a proposal to house adult inmates in the Youth Opportunity Center while the jail undergoes a significant remodel.

It was the less expensive option out of two members of a working group presented to the Board on Tuesday. Those group members, which included Assistant County Administrative Officer Randy Hooper and Del Norte County Sheriff’s Capt. Kyle Stevens, also asked the Board to consider using Measure R and capital improvement dollars to close a funding gap in the jail rehab project.

The Board agreed, but asked staff to continue to work to secure state funding for the remodel. Supervisors also directed staff to make sure Del Norte County Probation has input into where they will be housed when construction starts next spring.

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Proposed $1,500 Rock Contribution Leads To Debate Over Repairs to Non County-Maintained Roads

Thumbnail photo by Paul Critz

Despite her initial worry that approving a purchase for a private road would open a tin of segmented invertebrates, Valerie Starkey came around to the idea of contributing $1,500 in rock for the Carole Lane area north of Crescent City.

The Del Norte County District 2 supervisor had initially told County Engineer Jon Olson on Tuesday that she would oppose adding the purchase to the budget set aside for repairs to roads not maintained by the county. Starkey’s no vote turned into a yes after her colleague, District 1 representative Darrin Short, made a motion to approve the purchase but only if the rock were used on parts of Carole Lane that are public.

“Just the public road intersections of Carole, Monopoly and Embarcadero,” Short said.

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Supervisors Renew Advocacy For Secure Rural Schools, And Other Del Norte County News

Thumbnail photo by Paul Critz

Among the items discussed at Tuesday’s Del Norte County Board of Supervisors meeting:

Secure Rural Schools: Supervisors reaffirmed their support for a century-old program that brought nearly $1.4 million to Del Norte County in 2023. 

Acting on information from District 1 Supervisor Darrin Short, the Board authorized a support letter for the Secure Rural Schools Act to U.S. senators Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla and Congressman Jared Huffman.

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Curry County Removed Lead Paint At Jail, Waiting On New Bunks

Thumbnail photo by Ken Lund via Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons License

Though he didn’t speak up earlier, Curry County’s director of operations said complying with a detainer request from Immigration and Customs Enforcement would be “a lot to ask” when there’s only 16 beds in the jail.

About a month after the discovery of lead paint in its bunk beds prompted the Board of Commissioners to cut the jail’s capacity from 35 to 16 beds, Ted Fitzgerald, who also acts as county counsel, said the county was still waiting on permanent replacements.

“We still have the temporaries in there until we get the permanence delivered,” he said, referring to temporary bunk beds Curry County borrowed from Josephine County shortly after he notified commissioners of the lead paint concerns at an emergency meeting April 4. “The old bunks have been cleared. Maintenance went in there and cut them out. They were metal, installed directly into the concrete, and so, in order to keep things safe, we had to cut the metal and then grind the concrete down…”

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Crescent City Will Add A Four-Way Stop To 5th and A Streets

Thumbnail image courtesy of Google Maps

Public Works Director Dave Yeager convinced the Crescent City Council on Monday that a four-way stop sign would urge motorists to slow down as they approach A and 5th streets.

Six reported collisions have occurred at that intersection between June 2021 and August 2024, Yeager stated in his staff report. On Monday, he cited concerns raised by Crescent City Police Chief Richard Griffin as well as people who have witnessed those collisions.

Yeager also referred to the Del Norte Local Road Safety Plan in his staff report, which noted “one historical collision event”: A rear-end collision with one injury in 2011.

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Charter, Frontier Push Back On Underground Utility Efforts, And Other Crescent City Council News

Thumbnail photo courtesy of Crescent City

Candace Tinkler was absent. Among the items discussed at Monday’s Crescent City Council meeting.

Underground Utility District: City councilors approved the creation of Underground Utility District No. 1, taking yet another step toward ridding the gateway to Beachfront Park and downtown of most of the overhead electricity and telecommunications lines.

But representatives from Charter Communications and Frontier Communications, which provide cable and Internet service in the area, opposed the proposal, stating that the same work credits available to PacificPower aren’t available to them.

In a May 5 letter to Crescent City, Lisa Ludovici, Charter’s director of government affairs, asks the city not to pursue the undergrounding of its utilities, warning that the cost for the company to participate could be passed onto its customers.

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Crescent City Harbor May Charge More For Boat Owners to Moor Uninsured Vessels At Port

Thumbnail photo by Amanda Dockter

Boat owners may face an increased fee if they want to moor their vessels at the Crescent City Harbor and they don’t have insurance.

As she and her colleagues slogged through an update of the Crescent City Harbor District’s ordinance code on Wednesday, Vice Chair Annie Nehmer pointed out that the port currently charges $180 per month to house uninsured vessels in its marina.

“Our insurance agent says that is simply not enough money for any vessel,” Nehmer told her colleagues.

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