mailbox / By North Coast Journal Readers

Pro-Titlow

Nate King, Willow Creek

Editor:

Bravo to former Supervisor Eric Hedlund for his thoughts on the recent hysteria centered around the neighborhood at Titlow Hill (“Mailbox,” March 4). Certainly there have been some ill-advised plans aired lately to straighten out that area of Humboldt County real estate. There’s plenty of blame to go around in the fiasco, settling on our oblivious-at-very-best Planning Department, and on the shoulders of “villain-developer” Ken Bareilles. The politics of today’s Humboldt are a far cry from what they were in the 1970s and 1980s. During the years when these parcels first sold, there was a wide acceptance in Humboldt County of development and land use practices very different from the norm today. Rural living was still the “Humboldt Dream,” and our Planners and Supervisors weren’t bent on keeping their constituents efficiently parked inside urban boundaries and out of the woods.

The parcels created (legally and otherwise) between Redwood Creek and Titlow Hill were not unlike many rural neighborhoods in our county. Families settled into these new-found places, improved their properties, raised families and paid their taxes. New roads, barns and houses were built mostly without the benefit of county oversight, as had long been the norm in rural Humboldt County. Though these lands were previously logged hard, they’ve recovered well, and are now stocked with vital stands of timber. Nearly all current owners of these parcels manage their forests better than larger corporate “resource lands” nearby, without clear-cutting or herbicide use. While most of these properties are steep, they rest largely on shale/bedrock, and aren’t unstable as has been suggested.

Many of these parcels have changed hands several times since the 1980s. Title insurance policies were generally issued at each transfer, and property taxes jumped up as fast as Prop. 13 would allow. The County of Humboldt sat idly by, collecting this growing revenue, and saying very little about these “gross violations.” Now, a generation and a half later, there is suddenly a half-baked movement to turn back the clock 30 years, and to force these seasoned homesteads somehow “into compliance.” By the Community Development Department’s own estimates, there are more than 5,000 such “shaded parcels” in this county. (Others in the know put this figure much higher.) The Titlow Hill properties represent one percent (or less) of non-compliant lands in Humboldt.

It’s high time we do what other counties have long been doing, and create a reasonable path for the owners of such parcels to get them out of the “shaded” column, and to move forward as a society. Some reasonable fees would/should be collected for legitimizing each of the parcels. Ken Bareilles would/should contribute to those fees, and then be allowed to continue on with life, older and wiser for the experience. The Community Development Services Department would/should tap this much-needed source of cash and help the families who live on these properties join with the rest of Humboldt County, working toward the future in back of the Redwood Curtain, rather than ripping away at a messy past.

Doug Frink, Elk River

Sweet Spot: Nate King wins a Bon Boniere sundae for sending our favorite letter of the week.

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