Commissioners are expected to reach a decision, finally, on who should develop the Crescent City Harbor District’s two RV parks.
A special meeting will be held from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. today at the Harbor District Office.. The open session will follow a closed session meeting scheduled for 11:30 a.m.
“Tuesday’s the drop-down deadline,” Board President Rick Shepherd said at CCHD’s April 22 meeting. “We’re going to make a vote and the winner will be the lessee of the RV parks.”
Thumbnail photo: The Redwood Downtown is a 36-unit residential and retail development that’s slated to go in space that’s currently occupied by the vacant Daly’s department store building in Downtown Crescent City. | Image courtesy of Crescent City.
At least one city councilor said he would support a bill that would allow local governments to “claw back” authority from the state.
But, while representatives of State Sen. Christopher Cabaldon, author of State Senate Bill 1216, say Crescent City would be eligible for the greater discretion his proposed legislation offers, councilors were reluctant to offer their support just yet.
Though he liked the idea of regaining some of the authority he feels is lost to state government, Councilor Jason Greenough on Monday recommended that he and his colleagues table the proposed letter of support. Mayor Isaiah Wright seconded this recommendation, saying he didn’t have a full grasp of what SB 1216 would do.
Two weeks after Crescent City councilors took the first step toward increasing water and sewer rates, City Manager Eric Wier attempted to quell concerns about the Proposition 218 protest process.
Wier also addressed the idea of moving the wastewater treatment plant from its current location at B and Battery streets to the area behind Safeway, which was once the McNamara & Peepe lumber mill site. The city manager said that was before he began working with the city, however a cost analysis determined that it would not be feasible.
“When you talk about relocating the treatment plant, it’s not just about picking up the treatment plant and moving it,” he said. “It’s all of the infrastructure that goes into the treatment plant that still goes into the location it’s at now.”
Mayor Pro Tem Candace Tinkler and Councilor Ray Altman were absent. Among the items discussed at Monday’s Crescent City Council meeting:
Citizens Dock Pier 2 Project: Crescent City councilors agreed to send a letter to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration, supporting the second phase of the Citizens Dock rebuild.
The Crescent City Harbor District was encouraged to apply for $11 million in 2026 Port Infrastructure Development Program dollars from MARAD. If awarded, those funds will be an addition to the roughly $15 million in 2022 and 2024 PIDP grant moneys CCHD received to reconstruct Citizen’s Dock Pier 1 and an adjacent seawall, according to Mike Bahr, CEO of Community System Solutions, the consultant managing the Harbor District’s grant-funded projects.
Del Norte is joining a statewide effort that seeks to shield counties from the “health and human services tsunami” that’s coming with the implementation of H.R. 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
In an April 14 letter conveying a “multi-year countywide H.R. budget request” to state lawmakers, county supervisors stated that California counties may see an impact of between $6 billion and $9.5 billion due to the federal legislation.
The demand for indigent care is expected to increase, which will force counties to expand their workforce, according to the letter. H.R. 1 will also strain other safety net programs due to people losing access to MediCal as a result.
But there are so many parts, it’s unclear how much of an impact Del Norte County itself will feel.
Thumbnail photo: Takeya Owada, who is in the oyster fishery business, shows his fellow delegates from Rikuzentakata how to shuck one of the oysters Mike Schmidt and Erik Karle, of Schmidt’s House of Jambalaya grilled at the Taste of Japan event on Friday. | Photo courtesy of Jen Schmidt
Cal-Ore Lifeflight CPR instructor Aubree Arneson shows the life-saving technique to a Joe Hamilton Elementary School student as part of the Kamome Festival’s focus on emergency preparedness Friday.|
Taku Sasaki gave a simple “nice to meet you, konnichiwa,” when he and his fellow travelers filed into the Del Norte County Airport on Thursday.
After exchanging hugs, handshakes and bows, the Rikuzentakata mayor and his fellow delegates from Japan grabbed their bags and were whisked away to their first event, the cardboard boat races at the Fred Endert Municipal Pool.
Coinciding with the Kamome Festival, this visit marks a new development in the Sister City relationship between Crescent City, Del Norte County and Rikuzentakata. The current delegation, consisting of 21 city officials, business leaders, students and educational leaders, is the largest to visit since cultural exchanges began more than a decade ago, according to Kiyoshi Murakami, Rikuzentakata’s senior international affairs advisor.
Thumbnail photo: Paul Place near Charm Lane and Old Mill Road was selected for repairs as part of an effort to ensure emergency vehicles have access to public roads that are not on the county-maintained road system.| Photo courtesy of Del Norte County
Del Norte County supervisors agreed to commit about $20,000 from the general fund to repair a ditch and grade Paul Place.
But they rejected a proposal to spend an additional $26,000 to pave the first 250 feet of Paul Place, adding it to the county’s network of maintained roads, despite County Engineer Jon Olson arguing that vehicles were tracking mud onto nearby Charm Lane and Old Mill Road. There’s also water puddling up onto Old Mill Road, which is damaging the asphalt, Olson said.
District 2 Supervisor Valerie Starkey said Olson’s argument could be made for Napa or Lake streets, which impact Washington Boulevard.
Thumbnail: SitelogIQ representatives proposed installing a solar array near Bess Maxwell Elementary School. | Image courtesy of SitelogIQ
Del Norte education officials decided that waiting 15 to 17 years for substantive savings installing a solar array might bring wasn’t worth committing to a $5 million project even with a $1 million federal rebate.
Reporting back from a March 20 meeting that included officials from the county, the airport and representatives from Pacific Power and SitelogIQ, Del Norte Unified School District Superintendent Jeff Harris said that the community’s utility stated that tying solar into its grid would be difficult.
Meanwhile, quotes DNUSD had received from SitelogIQ were only for solar panels that would be installed at what is currently Del Norte High School’s arboretum near Bess Maxwell Elementary School, Harris told trustees.
Thumbnail photo: Sewer rates for customers within Crescent City limits go toward the conveyance and treatment of their wastewater. | Photo by James Brooks
Linda Sutter vowed to fight planned water and sewer rate increases, telling Crescent City councilors that she’ll be “pounding pavement and getting the signatures” to keep them from going through.
But City Manager Eric Wier corrected a statement Sutter made on Monday about the community’s low-income housing developments and what she said was the expectation that “everybody else who works or gets a decent wage (will) pay for all those people.”
Using Danco Communities’ Harbor Point Apartments as an example, Wier said the developers of the 26-unit senior apartment building paid more than $100,000 in sewer rate connections. The property owners will pay monthly sewer charges based on their water consumption, the city manager said.
“The individual might not be paying that directly because they don’t have an account individually, but that apartment complex does through a master meter,” he said. “The owner of the apartment complex pays that large bill for all those sewer connections. They absolutely pay their equitable fair share for that development.”
Thumbnail photo: Randy Hooper was arrested on a DUI with injury charge after he struck Megan Postma’s vehicle at Sand Mine Road and U.S. 101 on April 19, 2025 | Photo by Heather Polen
Randy Hooper will serve 44 days in jail, a Del Norte County judge decided on Monday nearly a year after officers arrested the assistant county administrative officer on a DUI with injury charge after leaving Elk Valley Casino.
At a sentencing hearing before Judge William Follett, Hooper offered an apology to Megan Postma, the Grants Pass woman whose vehicle he struck at U.S. 101 and Sand Mine Road on April 19, 2025.
“I wish I could have apologized sooner, but I was advised not to by my attorney,” Hooper told the judge. “I think my conduct was not of character — it certainly is not the way my parents raised me nor the way my wife and I are raising our children.”
