_{Thumbnail photo by Gavin Van Alstine}

County supervisors sent a facilities plan back to the Crescent City Harbor District, criticizing its vagueness and stating that the agency hadn’t yet met the plan’s first stated priority — making this year’s U.S. Department of Agriculture loan payment.

The Board was also skeptical that the USDA would agree to a Harbor District proposal to accept 10% of CCHD’s annual $260,000 payment for three years with the remainder of the funds going toward maintenance and being put into a reserve account. 

District 2 Supervisor Valerie Starkey said she and her colleagues have a legal obligation to voters to ensure that the stipulations of the transiency occupancy tax measure, Measure C, they approved in 2018 were being met. 

“My concerns are you don’t have an agreement with the USDA, you’ve had a conversation. That is all you’ve had,” Starkey told CCHD Fiscal Officer Sandy Moreno who assured supervisors that the federal agency was receptive to the Harbor District’s proposal. “I heard you say at the last (Harbor District) meeting that you need to have $262,000 in a restricted fund, you don’t have that. You don’t have your insurance and you have money this county has collected to pay a loan. I believe that that needs to be paid. That’s the guarantee that we gave this community.”