the town dandy / By Hank Sims

Livestock and Tract Homes

(April 24, 2008)  What’s the first thing you think of when you think of Humboldt County’s First Supervisorial District, that one-fifth of the county’s population that fisherman Jimmy Smith has represented since 2000? Even if you’re someone who pays attention, it’s likely as not that you first think of cattle, creameries, quaint Victorian villages. And so it looks on the map. The district takes in a wide swath of the county’s southwestern edge, from the Lost Coast up through Petrolia, Ferndale and Loleta.

But we’ll let you in on a secret. When you get right down to it, that isn’t the First District at all. If you’re counting registered voters rather than raw acreage, that vast pastoral landscape is only about 20 percent of the First District. The real weight is concentrated in the tip of the district’s head. That other 80 percent is concentrated in Eureka and its outskirts — Henderson Center, Cutten, Humboldt Hill, King Salmon/Fields Landing. When you get right down to it, the First District is by far the most suburban in the county. Suburbs generally being in short supply up here.

Why does this matter? Just that there’s a pretty decent chance that this time around these suburban voters will decide the direction of the county over the next 20 years or so. The next Board of Supervisors will be the one to ratify the long awaited update to the county’s general plan, and as you’ll surmise in the item below there’s no shortage of big money hoping that it can reverse the current board’s preference for restrictive, low-impact “smart growth.” In that sense, the sleepy, little-noticed First District is probably the season’s key political contest. Not just because a good chunk of the county’s future growth is currently set to occur in the Eureka outskirts, but because the smart money has to know that the First District is the only place it has a decent shot of picking up a vote. Reason one: No one’s paying much attention. Reason two: It’s the most conservative district in the county, constantly flirting with an actual Republican plurality, and the man in the seat now is a Democrat — not an Arcata-style lefty firebrand, but a Democrat nevertheless.

Smith’s challenger is Ferndale dairyman John Vevoda, and the most concise way to draw the difference between the two men is tempermentally. By nature, Smith is patient, low-key and conciliatory. He’s principally interested in the wonkish, public works aspects of governmental service: what water goes where, which way the pipes run, how to prepare for a tsunami, how to best operate the infrastructure and bureaucracies the county is charged with operating. Vevoda, who we spoke to Monday, has more revolutionary ideas. He thinks things have gone badly wrong with local government, and that the economy has suffered as a result. The county, he says, needs to build.

“We have to start turning some dirt,” he said from his dairy. “I’m not talking about bringing in some factory or something. But when we have the permitting process here in Humboldt County, it seems to be cumbersome no matter what you want to do.” He said that port development and the resuscitation of the county’s 10-years-dormant railroad are critical to the county’s economic future.

Like many people who do business with the county’s regulatory land-use apparatuses — the planning and building departments — he is frustrated by the seemingly endless amount of red tape that must be conquered before a project can go ahead. (This sentiment is far from unique to developers, or conservatives, but they naturally feel it the most.) He seems to promise direct action on that front. said that he hoped to provide the leadership to “get the county up and moving.”

Smith, too, has recognized that something is broken in the way planning and building operates, but his approach to addressing the problem is far more subtle, and is not likely to involve firing everyone in the building (as Eureka kazillionaire Rob Arkleyonce famously promised to accomplish). He recently sponsored the development of a letter to be given to project applicants at the start of their work with the department; it promises that staff will provide “hard work” and “professional service” to see the project through, and that they will serve as guides through the morass of state, federal and local regulations that govern development.

How does it play for Smith? “He’s a really nice guy, and nobody will argue that,” says developer and Vevoda supporter Alan Bongio, who sits on the board of Cutten’s Humboldt Community Services District. “Everybody likes Jimmy. But he needs to get the job done.”

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