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February 16, 2006
RUNNING: It was the perfect way to end a
week of perfect weather, hanging out on Clam Beach Saturday morning
listening to the Marching Lumberjacks play their oddball David
Bowie and A-ha covers. If you got there early enough, there was
plenty of time to dig your toes into the sand and throw pebbles
into the surf. Then, at around 11:45, the first runners started
showing up on the horizon, eventually gasping their way to the
finish line, to the cheers of friends and family. This was repeated
750 times throughout the early afternoon, as 750 participants
in this year's Trinidad to Clam Beach found their way to the
end of the run. The slower the runners, the louder the cheers,
as those who finished first joined the chorus to congratulate
their worn-down peers.
To a non-runner, it was all very mysterious and
amusing. Lounging down on the beach, underneath the magnificent
sun, the day seemed an inexplicable gift, a pat on the shoulder
and a friendly chuck under the chin from whatever invisible forces
jerk us this way and that throughout the cruel quotidian. Soon
the chill winds and black clouds of February would return --
indeed, they were returning, right there on the beach, as the
runners kept tromping toward the finish -- but for now, the day
was glorious. Why ruin it by working yourself into a lather,
forcing yourself to ache and pant and sweat? It would seem that
one of the principal benefits of civilization is that no one
has to run anymore, anywhere, ever again. Like stone tools or
clothing made of untanned animal hides, the very act of moving
yourself at anything greater than walking speed without mechanical
assistance is outmoded and obsolete, and thank goodness for that.
This was put to a party of running freaks from
Mendocino and Lake counties over dinner at Tomo that night. The
runners were disoriented by the salvo at first, exhibiting just
a glimmer of that confused hostility that so gladdens a killjoy's
heart. Running just felt good, they said. ("Ha, ha!")
It's a healthy, fun group activity. ("Moooo!") But
Isabelle Brown of Lakeport finally hit upon a formula gauged
to make an impression on a skeptic. Speaking slowly and pronouncing
every word with the care of a preschool teacher desperately trying
to keep her cool, she said, in effect: When through running,
one is hungrier. After running, one can eat more.
This was a veiled threat. The sushi was on its
way, and it would be served family-style.
ARKLEY AND OUT? That was quite a bombshell,
dropped in there at the end of a small story in Saturday's Baton
Rouge Advocate. In the story, entitled "N.O. called
city of opportunity," Timothy Boone, a business reporter
at the paper, mainly just gives an account of a speech at Lousiana
State University's business school by one Robin Arkley II, of
Eureka, Calif. According to the paper, Arkley is bullish on post-Katrina
New Orleans. "The opportunities to build nice businesses
are beyond belief," Arkley is quoted as saying. "The
only way things could be better would be if they would make New
Orleans and St. Bernard Parish tax-free zones."
Standard stuff, and interesting, but Boone probably
had no idea how his final four throwaway sentences would likely
be taken in Arkley's home town. "Arkley is in the process
of solidifying his Baton Rouge ties," he writes. "He
and his wife, Cherie, are leaving California and moving to the
city. California's high taxes and weak business climate are causing
the Arkleys to leave. 'California is a disaster of socialism,'
[Arkley] jokingly said."
Jokingly? He doesn't know his man. Reached Tuesday,
Arkley confirmed that the couple would be changing their official
address to Baton Rouge, at least for tax purposes. "We're
not going to sit around and pay California income taxes forever,"
he said. "California is imposing another tax for high-income
people. At some point, you realize there are other ways."
Arkley said that they are building a new home in Baton Rouge,
and it should be completed in a year and a half. (They've owned
a different home there for several years, he said.)
But though the couple may be spending more time
in Baton Rouge over the coming years, he said, that doesn't mean
they are abandoning Eureka. "Let's face it: Eureka is where
we are, and it's our home, and it's been our home for 100 years,"
he said. "And it'll be our home for another 100 years."
He said his principal business, Security National, will continue
to be headquartered in Eureka, and that he is looking to expand
the operation and to acquire another national business and relocate
it to Humboldt County.
"This isn't a story," Arkley said, putting
on his newsman's cap (he is the owner of the Eureka Reporter).
"When I have a story, I'll call you."
NAMASTE: Hmm, moving to Baton Rouge, eh?
Whither, then, Eureka's beloved but blighted Balloon Track?
Well, as far as anyone knew last Thursday night
at the overflow continuation of Tuesday's public comment session
before the city redevelopment board, Security National's Rob
and Cherie Arkley still loomed large on the hometown development
track, with buckets of cash and good intentions to buy the contaminated
Union Pacific switching and maintenance yard, study it, put a
cap on it and erect the elaborate mixed-use Marina Center. All
they needed was a few zone changes to get the land out of public
use and into something more amenable to shops, offices, homes
and, um, Home Depot.
Zone changes generally kick up a few protests.
Home Depots on small-town waterfronts whip up a frenzy. "It
breaks my heart," said one public commenter. "I've
been here all along, and it's been a dump the whole time,"
countered another. "Namaste I just want to say peace and
blessings to everybody," soothed a nice woman. "Many,
many sensible people are not here tonight," another woman
sneered. "Corporate America is here to stay what is everybody
afraid of?" a man said.
The meeting turned macabre when another guy told
of three occasions at Home Depots where heavy stuff had fallen
from a high-up shelf and crushed someone to death. Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap
called the Arkleys' proposal "ignorant" and said Union
Pacific needs to be forced to thoroughly clean up the site, and
then the public should decide what goes there. Old Town resident
Louisa Rogers said the neighborhood has disappointed her. "People
are not moving into Old Town Eureka does not have energy. I urge
you to accept the proposal and negotiate like hell with the Arkleys."
The council -- Chris Kerrigan alone dissenting -- complied, voting
to let SN apply for the zone change.
Now, let the games begin: This Wednesday (Feb.
15), from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Wharfinger Building, several
groups concerned that the city's on a runaway money train will
hold a forum to talk big box, brownfields and bringing the public
more powerfully into the debate. On Thursday, 4 to 7 p.m. at
the Wharfinger, the Arkleys will hold an open house on their
proposed Marina Center. We hear they're serving gumbo -- just
kiddin'.
WILLIAMSON ACT: Developer Robert McKee won
another round against the county last week in the ongoing battle
over his subdivision of Tooby Ranch, which is under a Williamson
Act contract. On Nov. 14, 2005, the county asked Humboldt County
Superior Court Judge W. Bruce Watson to reconsider his Nov. 2
ruling, in which he said the county can't nullify property transfers
McKee made to third-party buyers, nor can it unilaterally modify
existing Williamson Act contracts. On Feb. 6, Watson ruled that
"the County has not met its 'heavy burden' ... to prove
both the reasonableness and necessity of the unilateral modification
of the 1977 Tooby contract by the 1978 [amended] guidelines."
Therefore, he said, "nullification of property transfers
is not an issue."
The county's not happy about this, and after the
ruling told local media that the judge's ruling contradicted
the state's advice to the county and threatened to shake the
foundation of the Williamson Act program statewide.
Deputy County Counsel Richard Hendry said on Tuesday
that the county plans to file a writ with the First Appellate
District Court in San Francisco "to have the [court] review
whether the trial court committed an error of law." He also
said Watson's ruling on the two issues in the McKee case "has
no application to any other Williamson Act contracts."
PALCO SALE: On Thursday, Humboldt Watershed
Council's Mark Lovelace announced to the media he'd "confirmed
a secretive move by Maxxam" to sell off about a quarter
of its Humboldt County land. Next day, Maxxam Inc. filed a notice
with the Securities and Exchange Commission announcing proceedings
to sell some 60,000 acres "to address future cash flow requirements."
The land for sale is mostly ranch and recreational lands and
"non-strategic timberlands" (Douglas fir). Also that
day, Maxxam subsidiary Pacific Lumber Company sent a letter to
employees announcing the move -- although they'd already read
about it in the paper -- and deploring Lovelace's pre-emptive
news release, calling it overblown and flawed. Palco said the
company isn't beginning to rid itself of its holdings as prelude
to bankruptcy, as Lovelace characterizes it, but is simply concentrating
its efforts on redwood production. Lovelace, on Tuesday, countered
that it's really the company's long-term plan to "do less
and less and less" over time, then liquidate.
How did he hear about the lands for sale before
the company announced it? "They had been circulating some
information publicly but discreetly," Lovelace says, and
word just got around. "I basically heard about it from three
different avenues from the lands end, from the financial end
and from the regulatory end. And from just the little voices
on the wind end."
BEACH RESCUE FAILS: An investigation is
continuing into Saturday's U.S. Coast Guard helicopter crash
off of Manila during a mission to rescue four people thrown from
a fishing boat. Vesta Lorraine Baker, 78, and her son Charles
Wayne Baker, 59, both of Eureka, stayed afloat for some time
after the boat was hit by a rogue wave, but eventually drowned.
The surviving passengers, Terry Winkle, 55, and the boat's owner,
Richard Pincsak, 59, also of Eureka, stayed with the capsized
18-foot vessel until it was pushed in to shore by waves. Apart
from Pincsak, no one was wearing a life vest. The four-member
crew of the U.S. Coast Guard HH-65B Dolphin helicopter, which
was dispatched to rescue the boaters, was uninjured. The cause
of the helicopter crash was not released. A report will be forwarded
to the state.
TOP
Bring down those home prices
Hundreds talk affordable housing, builders'
group responds
by HANK SIMS
Hundreds of people -- elected officials, members
of the county planning staff, developers, contractors, representatives
of non-profit agencies -- gathered at the Wharfinger Building
Thursday for an all-day seminar on Humboldt County's housing
crisis and what can be done about it. They brought with them
gripes, schemes and hand-outs, and they shared their frustrations
and ideas with each other before heading back to their places
of employment.
According to the Humboldt Association of Realtors,
housing affordability in Humboldt County stands at about 12 percent,
meaning that only 12 percent of residents can afford an average
home. The average household income in the county is about $37,000;
the median home price is about $320,000. Everyone agrees that
this is a problem. Few people agree on the solution. The idea
behind the affordable housing summit was to develop a consensus
on what could be done to bring prices down into the more affordable
range.
That didn't happen, foremost because a major player
-- the Northern California Association of Home Builders (NCHB)
-- announced that it would boycott the meeting. The NCHB shares
some of the same members as Humboldt Economic Land Plan, another
group, one that has carried its protests against county land
use policy to the state level. In their view, the talking has
gone on long enough, and they say it's time for the county to
start opening up additional land for development, now.
Still, attendees and presenters at the summit had
a lot more to say about how to put a home into the average person's
hands, and had interesting insights about why housing affordability
has been steadily sinking in recent years.
Dan Johnson, owner and CEO of Danco Builders and
one developer who did not boycott the summit, told attendees
that his company has developed or is developing a total of five
large-scale affordable housing developments -- three in Arcata,
one in Ukiah and one in New Mexico, with many more underway,
in five western states. He said that land is expensive in Humboldt
County, and likely always will be -- that people simply want
to live here more than they do other places. That and California's
sometimes Byzantine regulatory process mean building for low-income
people is always going to be a tough nut, comparatively.
"We don't attract outside developers here
because of the complexities and because the market is too small,"
Johnson said.
Elizabeth Conner, director of the Humboldt Bay
Housing Development Corporation (HBHDC), said that the critique
offered by groups like NCHB and HELP -- that the county simply
needs to open up more land for development in order for new home
buyers to see some relief -- was off the mark, given the influence
of state, national and global economic factors at play in the
local housing market.
"Increasing the supply of land, alone, will
not increase the supply of affordable housing," she said.
Instead, Conner -- who, with the HBHDC, works as
a non-profit developer of new affordable housing -- said that
other jurisdictions have great success with a variety of different
and innovative regulatory schemes, some or all of which could
be implemented here. Among them: inclusionary zoning, which is
currently being looked at in the city of Arcata, and affordable
housing overlay zones -- "the stick and the carrot,"
as she called them. Inclusionary zoning mandates that any new
development exceeding a certain number of units make a percentage
-- say, 10 percent -- available at prices that can be met by
low- or very-low-income families. Overlay zones award bonuses,
in the form of eased regulations or waived fees, to developers
who wish to build low-income housing.
For most of the summit, though, the spotlight was
on Humboldt County Planning Director Kirk Girard, whose department
oversees all planning and development in the county's unincorporated
areas. Girard came with news: He said that according to recent
numbers out of his office, the county had recently met its goals
for new housing construction all the way into 2008, with some
2,100 new units built by private industry in the unincorporated
areas since 2001. However, the county had still not met its state-mandated
numbers for new housing affordable to low-income households,
and was not likely to.
During a presentation in the afternoon, Girard
outlined some of the problems that the county faces going forward.
Foremost among them, he said, was the fact that most of our roads
and sewage and water systems were built before 1978, the year
that California rewrote its rules for financing public works
projects.
"The infrastructure that houses are hooking
up to was by and large built before Proposition 13," he
said. "We are now at the limits of our pre-Prop. 13 infrastructure.
Other counties hit that limit years ago."
Hitting that limit means that any new construction
is bound to be expensive, especially in areas that are not currently
served by sewer and water lines, he said. Either developers must
agree to pay fees for these services up-front, or home owners
must pay for them in the form of tax hikes (which are not likely
to happen often, since post-Prop. 13 they require a 2/3 majority
vote to pass).
One solution the county was working on, he said,
was to institute a number of what are known as "Mello-Roos"
districts around the county in order to pay for fire, water and
sewage systems. Under Mello-Roos, developers may borrow the money
to pay for new infrastructure up-front, passing the cost on to
homeowners as part of their property tax bill afterward. Unlike
regular tax hikes, they do not require a vote of the residents
of a district.
Surprisingly, a consistent theme throughout the
summit was the problem of NIMBYism. A variety of people said
that promising affordable housing projects are often squashed
because neighbors organize and rally to defeat them at the political
level. Many expressed hope that educational efforts aimed at
the citizenry, combined with the election of government representatives
willing to take an unpopular stand, could provide the best hope
yet for getting new projects through.
"My speculation is that the actions in this
community speak louder than its words, in some cases," said
Johnson. "Do we really want affordable housing?"
A couple of days later, a group of people representing
the NCHB gathered at the Fairhaven offices of Kramer Properties
to explain why the organization refused to attend the summit
and to respond to some of the ideas presented there. Two members
of the NCHB's board of directors -- Nick Luchessi of Pacific
Builders and Kramer Properties' Kurt Kramer -- had penned opinion
pieces in the Times-Standard in the days leading up to
the summit, Kramer's opening with a mouth-watering invocation
of the housing market as it exists elsewhere.
"In the coming months, people will be able
to purchase 64 new homes ranging from 1,050 square feet to 1,250
square feet," it began. "The price: Starting at $139,900."
The kicker, of course, was that this was a Kramer Properties
project in Salem, Ore., not here in Humboldt County.
Why not here? For Kramer, Luchessi and property
manager Linda Disiere, another NHCB board member, the answer
is simpler than it might seem, and it didn't require another
all-day conference to figure out. The county hasn't planned adequately,
they say, and the scarcity of currently buildable parcels has
driven land prices through the roof.
"We need to have available lots to build,
and we need to have a committed planning department," Kramer
said. "There's a no-growth attitude in that department,
and that needs to change."
For the NCHB, it all boils down to supply and demand.
The county's policy is to plan only for a .25 percent yearly
increase in population, and it only releases enough land to developers
to meet that goal. That leads to a terrible scarcity in available
lots, NCHB board members said. For every vacant lot that goes
on the market, a bidding war between builders drives up land
prices, and price of a finished home shoots up in suit.
Luchessi said that he knew this was an unpopular
position to take, but that if elected officials didn't respond
to the real needs of the community's poorest citizens the problem
would only get much worse.
"They have to overcome the political opposition,"
he said. "There's always going to be political opposition
to development. The neighbors are always going to be there with
pitchforks and rakes. There just needs to be political will to
say, 'This is the best thing for the community.'"
TOP
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