news story / By Ryan Burns

Hail to the Chief

Muckraking Marthas fete Nielsen with activism, baked goods

(July 16, 2009)  Sue Brandenburg — Eureka’s grande dame of activism, the domestic demagogue of the West Side — figured the police chief could use a cookie. And some punch. Maybe a piece of homemade carrot cake with a little sculpted-frosting carrot on top. Above all, she surmised, he needed the city’s public safety budget to remain fully funded. The City Council recently approved its draft budget, which addresses Eureka’s $32 million budget gap by allowing for possible cuts from all sorts of areas, including public safety. Nothing will be finalized until union negotiations are completed and public comment taken at Tuesday’s council meeting. But as Councilman Larry Glass noted in voting against the draft budget, public safety cuts are indeed on the table.

Brandenburg wasn’t gonna stand for that. Over the years she’s taken on everything from the Eureka Redevelopment Agency to the city’s approval of certain drug-treatment houses to Verizon’s new Henderson Center cell tower (disguised as an ugly church bell tower, which now hovers over her own property). But nothing gets her goat like crime. “We can’t afford to have our police laid off because the budget can’t handle it,” she told the Journal last week. “We need to just make it a priority.”

California Assemblywoman Patty Berg (left), Eureka Police Chief Garr Nielsen, County Supervisor Bonnie Neely and former Arcata councilmember and mayor Connie Stewart. Photo by Ryan Burns

GALLERY >

So Brandenburg decided to host a gathering in her own backyard. Literally. With help from her cohorts in the West Side Improvement League, she set out to sprinkle the gears of government with cookie crumbs, to incite a movement with sweets, to entice the citizenry (and local media, hello) Hansel and Gretel-style through her open garage door and into her lush, flower-filled yard. There, mingling and munching in the Sunday sunshine like amiable church-folk, local luminaries gathered to express support for Eureka Police Chief Garr Nielsen, Eureka Fire Chief Eric Smith and the public safety these two men represent.

Nielsen himself, recently exonerated by the Grand Jury of charges including unauthorized use of city property, illegal hiring practices and abuse of authority (see “Broken Blue Line,” July 2), seemed to be feeling pretty good. “I was invited to this event by Sue,” he said, iced tea in-hand, wife nearby. “She explained it to me as an opportunity for the community to turn out and support public safety.”

In arguing for the need for such an event, Brandenburg called attention to statistics she’d found online showing Eureka’s violent crime rate to be higher than that of Oakland. And she’s right: The stats are intimidating (if debatable). Real estate research site neighborhoodscout.com, for example, ranks the city a two on a crime scale of one to 100, meaning it’s safer than only two percent of cities in the U.S. Nielsen was in the middle of explaining why (“During the day, our population doubles,” he said) when former Assemblywoman Patty Berg strolled into the yard.

“Hi, Honey,” she said cheerily.

“Hey! How you doin’?” came Nielsen’s sing-song response. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Bonnie and I came, and Connie came, too,” Berg said, referring to County Supervisor Bonnie Neely and former Arcata Mayor, Councilwoman and Berg employee Connie Stewart, who were strolling in behind her. Turning to the reporter, Berg announced, “We love our chief of police.”

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