Among the items discussed at Tuesday’s Del Norte County Board of Supervisors meeting:
California Automated Response and Engagement System: County supervisors received an advocacy letter from the Del Norte County Department of Health and Human Services to state legislators concerning the launch of the Child Welfare Services-California Automated Response and Engagement System (CWS-CARES).
According to a staff report from DHHS Director Ranell Brown, the County Welfare Directors Association asked the department to weigh in on the issue. The project is expected to go launch on Oct. 26, according to Brown’s letter to Assembly members Jesse Gabriel and Corey Jackson and State Senators John Laird and Carolin Menjivar.
“Moving forward with the planned Oct. 26, 2026 launch date is no longer acceptable to county child welfare agencies and our county social workers who rely upon this automated system to protect vulnerable children from abuse, neglect and exploitation,” Brown’s letter states.
Citing ongoing testing by county frontline workers in a CWS-CARES Production Simulation environment, Brown’s letter points to gaps within the system’s functionality.
On Tuesday, Del Norte County Chief Probation Officer Lonnie Reyman said he supported DHHS’s letter.
“This issue has a direct impact on probation as well because we’re having to utilize the same system, albeit much less often than Child Welfare, to enter information regarding our placements too,” he said. “It’s extraordinarily frustrating and extraordinarily difficult to work with.”
Modified Road Improvement Standard: Three county supervisors authorized the construction of a 20-foot roadbed on a 30-foot easement across land owned by Wetherell Ranch Inc. in the Fort Dick area.
According to Assistant County Engineer Rosanna Bower, the proposed private road is connected to an application from Wetherell Ranch Inc. to subdivide an existing parcel on Bailey Road into two parcels. The Del Norte County Planning Commission approved that application at its meeting earlier this month contingent upon the Board of Supervisors approving a “modified road improvement standard.”
The 30-foot easement would encompass 2-foot graded shoulders in addition to the 20-foot-wide roadbed, Bower told supervisors.
District 3 Supervisor Chris Howard and District 4 Supervisor Joey Borges recused themselves from the discussion. Howard’s employer, Alexandre Family Farm, owns land adjacent to the parcel in question. Borges said there’s a potential that either he or his son would be working on the road construction.
According to Bower’s staff report, the county’s private rural road standards typically calls for a 50-foot-wide easement. The parcel being subdivided is about 170 acres and includes a farmhouse. No other road easements exist.
Nuisance Abatement Services: Supervisors unanimously approved a $50,000 on-call agreement with DDR Cleaning and Hauling for on-call nuisance abatement services.
“We utilize on-call services when we have cleanups that are well beyond our capabilities,” Community Development Director Heidi Kunstal told supervisors. “They typically require heavy equipment that we don’t own (or) specialized training that we don’t necessarily have. Our staff does the case work to get it before a public hearing officer, etc.”
The services DDR Cleaning and Hauling may be called upon to provide include demolishing shanties, pallet houses, makeshift shelters and “other unlawfully constructed nuisance shelters.” They may also be asked to demolish RVs or other vessels deemed unfit for safe hauling or perform other equipment-based tasks to alleviate a public nuisance, according to Kunstal’s staff report.
The agreement with DDR Cleaning and Hauling establishes a not-to-exceed amount of $50,000 for their services through June 30, 2029. Funding for the company’s services comes from the Code Enforcement Division’s professional services budget as well as the lien repayment fund and other “project-specific funding sources.” Measure R dollars may also be used, according to Kunstal’s staff report.
