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

Welcome to California: The Board of Supervisors congratulated Caltrans representative Julia Peterson after she unveiled new California welcome signs that they said were far superior to Oregon’s.

Peterson showed supervisors an early rendering of the signs created after a public survey showed that the most favored themes were bears and elk. Three-dimensional bears will grace the sign on U.S. 199 while elk and salmon will welcome motorists driving south on U.S. 101, she said. 

“The elk is in relief, it sticks out about 6 inches and is three-dimensional,” Peterson said of the coastal sign. “The hills are also three-dimensional — at the top it’s much narrower than the bottom — and the letters are recessed although we are experimenting with glow-in-the-dark and reflective paint.”

Three six-foot long salmon will also be included on the coastal sign’s base, Peterson said. She acknowledged the likelihood that children will climb on them, but said that Caltrans did its best to avoid making the signs vulnerable to vandalism.

As for the sign on U.S. 199, Peterson said the bears will be high enough to avoid the potential of children climbing on them. The signs will be about 13 feet tall and 18 feet wide. The actual colors for both signs have yet to be finalized, she said.

Tsunami Preparedness Summit: County supervisors went along with their District 3 colleague in urging Sister Cities International to provide grant funding to host a tsunami preparedness summit in Crescent City.

District 3 Supervisor Chris Howard said he hoped that Del Norte’s sister city relationship with Rikuzentakata, Japan as well as Crescent City’s vulnerability to tsunamis across the Pacific would leverage its petition to host a tsunami preparedness summit locally.

“This grant application is focused on bringing Japanese recovery technology and information to our community through this pathway and having a summit here for West Coast communities from Washington, Oregon and California,” Howard told his colleagues.

Howard said he also wanted to use the summit as an opportunity to impart the lessons Rikuzentakata learned during the March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami to communities on the West Coast.

“This could be an incredible opportunity to continue to put this relationship on the map and the benefits from that relationship long term,” he said of the community’s friendship with Rikuzentakata.

Supervisors approved a letter to Sister Cities International as part of their consent agenda urging the organization to support a tsunami preparedness summit. 

2026 Committee Appointments: County supervisors unanimously approved committee appointments for the 2026 calendar year. 

Those appointments include having Howard represent Del Norte County at the California State Association of Counties with his District 1 colleague Darrin Short as the alternate. Meanwhile, Short will represent Del Norte at Rural County Representatives of California with Howard as the alternate.

Short and Howard also represent Del Norte County on the Border Coast Regional Airport Authority, which oversees the Del Norte County Regional Airport. District 5 Supervisor Dean Wilson is the alternate.

Short and Wilson are on the Del Norte Solid Waste Management Authority with District 2 Supervisor Valerie Starkey and District 4 Supervisor Joey Borges as the alternate.

Borges, Short and Howard also represent Del Norte on the Del Norte Local Transportation Commission with Starkey and Wilson acting as alternates. 

For a full listing of committee appointments, click here.

Canceled meeting: Supervisors approved canceling the Feb. 24 meeting due to lack of a quorum.