on the cover / By Hank Sims

Three for Fourth

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As she did in her successful run for the mayorship of Eureka four years ago, Virginia Bass, 48, pitches herself as someone who can bring people together. In an interview at Ramone’s in Old Town last Wednesday, she presented an almost philosophical case for her candidacy: The voters’ number one concern these days is for jobs, she said, and if we want to see movement in that direction we’re going to have to change our attitude.

“I think that what needs to be changed is how we look at where we’re going for our economic future,” she said. “I think we have to bring an open mind, bring diverse viewpoints together and find what works for this community.”

Bass said she is concerned that Humboldt County has developed a poor reputation among the business community, particularly among outside investors. When asked for specific examples, she cited the city’s 2003-2004 talks with the energy company Calpine to build a liquefied natural gas plant on Humboldt Bay; negotiations around the plant disintegrated after a town hall meeting on the proposal, at which many residents expressed strong criticism or condemnation of the project. (Calpine itself went bankrupt shortly afterward.) Bass also mentioned another proposal from roughly the same period, in which a private firm proposed to transport water from the Mad River to Southern California in massive bags pulled by tugboat.

Those episodes, she said, left a bad taste in the mouths of both outside investors and locals concerned about jobs. One of her principal goals as supervisor would be to work to change that impression. “Say a business wants to come here,” she said. “I truly believe we need to give them a full, fair hearing before sending them off.” Neither Calpine nor the water bag may have been right for the county, ultimately, but Bass says that neither got a fair shake. She said that she would like the county to develop, in cooperation with other local entities, something she called a “rapid response” team to field inquiries from outside investors who might be considering doing business in the county.

Bass had no specific criticism of the Headwaters Fund or the “Prosperity!” economic development strategy, which emphasizes fostering the development of local industry rather than attracting outside investors. But she did say that growth from inside was not everything: Prosperity “needs to be part of a bigger picture,” she said. “When you talk about the economic engine that runs this community, we’re in a real downturn. I think timber is making a resurgence, to some extent … fishing is having some challenges. But we haven’t been able to bring anything in.”

This aspirational approach informs Bass’ ideas about the general plan as well. In a debate sponsored by the League of Women Voters and the Healthy Humboldt Coalition a couple of weeks ago, Bass said that she supported the idea of preserving working agricultural and timber lands. When asked about this position in the interview, though, she expressed qualms about the standard way to go about that, a subject that has been at the heart of much friction in early drafts of the new general plan — tighter regulatory limits on the subdivision of ag and timber parcels.

“I haven’t really thought in detail about that,” she said. “I’ll be honest with you. But I think it’s bad news when you change the rules on people in the middle of the game. In that respect — and though I think there’s part of each sketch plan that makes sense — when it comes to property rights, I don’t like changing the rules in the middle of the game.” Instead, she said that she would prefer to protect working lands by doing everything in government’s power to assure that there is still a market for products produced on those lands.

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