This from North Coast Journal intern Scottie Lee Meyers:
Newly appointed County Supervisor Rex Bohn said Thursday that his only child's arrest on kidnapping, assault and other charges shouldn't interfere with his political duties, and he stressed that he has faith in the system.
"I have full faith in the legal system and law enforcement," Bohn said in a phone interview with the Journal. "Family is what we're all about, and I'll stand by son. Am I happy? No. Is he my son? Yes. That's first and foremost."
Bohn's son Trevor could not be reached immediately for comment. Officers confiscated his phone before he was released on bail last night, his father said. Rex Bohn didn't bail his son out and doesn't know yet what arrangements he's going to make for an attorney.
"He's a 27-year-old who lives in his own house."
Bohn was elected in June to represent the county's First Supervsiorial District but was appointed last month to begin his term early in the wake of Jimmy Smith's resignation. Bohn has said he is still working on learning the job and recently expressed interest in getting a clearer explanation of the county's general plan update because it is so complicated and he is new to the board.
Still, he said the arrest should have no impact on his job.
"I know it doesn't affect county business. This is a family matter, but I understand people are going to talk."
Trevor Bohn was one of four men arrested in Fortuna yesterday morning and booked on suspicion of burglary, felony child abuse, kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon and false imprisonment, according to Fortuna Police. Police say the four broke into an apartment, assaulted adults and children inside with bear pepper spray and tried to kidnap one of them in a dispute over stolen marijuana.
"I am certainly pleased there were no guns involved," Rex Bohn said.
The full press release, posted yesterday on the Fortuna police website, is also below:
On September 19, 2012 at about 10:00 am, officers with the Fortuna Police Department responded to an apartment complex located in the 100 block of 12th Street for a report of a strong odor of pepper spray about the complex.
Upon arrival, officers contacted several subjects who reported that they had just been assaulted by a group of male subjects who had fled the complex in two vehicles.
Moments later, officer located and stopped the involved vehicles and contacted the occupants who were all later arrested.
During the investigation, victims reported that the subjects had forced entry into an apartment and forcibly held two subjects in a bedroom while demanding marijuana that they had allegedly stolen. The suspects then allegedly discharged a canister of bear pepper spray at numerous occupants within the residence including minor children. The subjects then attempted to forcibly remove one of the victims from the apartment.
As a result of the incident a total of ten victims experienced symptoms associated with the pepper spray. City Ambulance responded and transported three adults and two minor children to the hospital where they were treated for moderate injuries.
The following subjects were arrested:
Gregory Stephens (age 36) of Eureka, Wyatt Williamson (age 26) of Eureka, Trevor Bohn (age 27) of Eureka, and James Michael Oneil (age 58) of Loleta.
All four subjects were transported to the Humboldt County Correctional Facility and booked on the following charges:
Penal Code Section 459 (Burglary)
Penal Code Section 236 (False Imprisonment)
Penal Code Section 273 (Felony Child Abuse)
Penal Code Section 207 (Kidnapping)
Penal Code Section 245 (Assault with a Deadly Weapon)This investigation is ongoing and the department is asking anyone with information to contact the department or to remain anonymous, contact the department WeTip Hotline at
1-800-78-CRIME.
Press release from Assemblyman Wes Chesbro's office:
SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a bill by Assemblymember Wesley Chesbro (D - North Coast) to boost California's growing aquaculture industry. AB 1886 expands the role of an industry funded aquaculture coordinator within the Department of Fish and Game (DFG).
"Aquaculture is a clean, sustainable industry that has great growth potential in California, especially on the North Coast," Chesbro said. "The coordinator program is important to the continued growth of California aquaculture, especially when it comes to helping the industry to meet high environmental standards."
"The California Aquaculture Association requested this legislation and the industry asked for an increase in licensing fees to pay for the expansion of the aquaculture coordinator's duties," Chesbro added.
Specifically AB 1886:
- Requires DFG's aquaculture coordinator to coordinate with California's Aquaculture Development Committee, which is comprised of industry representatives, state regulators and other stakeholders.
- Increases fees for first time registration and renewal of aquaculture operations and increases the base penalties for engaging in aquaculture without paying registration or renewal fees.
- Requires the DFG to apply revenue from these fees specifically to the aquaculture coordinator program and maintain an up-to-date cost accounting and provide it to the Legislature and the Aquaculture Development Committee.
Greg Dale is the Eureka-based regional manager for Coast Seafoods, which is a major producer of oysters on Humboldt Bay. He is past president of the California Aquaculture Association and currently serves on the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District.
"The aquaculture industry is pleased the governor signed Assemblymember Chesbro's bill," Dale said. "The coordinator helps the industry collaborate with the DFG on sustainable aquaculture practices and relay our successes to the public."
"The California Aquaculture Association offered to pay higher fees to expand the coordinator program and in return require the DFG to increase transparency and accountability," Dale added. "This legislation ensures revenue from these fees is applied to the aquaculture coordinator program and that an accounting of the program is provided."
Previously: The World is Yours, Oyster Farmer
It was standing-room only at yesterday's special meeting of the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors.
"Was it something I said?" joked Fifth District Supervisor Ryan Sundberg, who last week expressed confusion and concern over the general plan update process and suggested possible changes to that process. Many, including this reporter and Sundberg's fellow supervisor, Mark Lovelace, interpreted those comments as the opening salvo in an effort to undo some or all of the work that has been done on the update process thus far. Not so, Sundberg asserted.
"Just to be clear, I don't want to kill the general plan. I don't want to start over." Sundberg said he was just seeking a way to clearly track the changes between the existing framework plan, which has been in effect since 1984, and the updated draft, 12 years in the making and approved by the planning commission. "I take responsibility for my part in not being clear about that," Sundberg said.
Interim Planning and Building Department Director Martha Spencer then laid out a proposed method to help make things more clear. For each element of the general plan under consideration, Spencer said, staff would prepare two reports: one looking back and the other looking forward. Report No. 1 would compare the framework plan with the planning commission-approved draft (as Sundberg requested) and provide background on the reasons for any changes. This would be prepared prior to any board vote on the element in question.
Report No. 2 would be prepared after the vote, examining the big-picture implications of the board's decision, clearly stating the changes that had been made to the framework plan and providing a potential blueprint for implementation.
Sundberg was pleased, and tranquility settled across the land.
Or not. The crowd had come loaded for bear, and while many commenters eased off the trigger in appreciation of Sundberg's comments, most fired away. Developers, contractors and other property-rights advocates thanked the three conservative supervisors for the suggestion they now disavowed -- namely, starting from scratch with the 1984 framework plan and updating it just enough to comply with state and federal laws.
Others, including environmental activists, argued that the update process represents years of hard work and compromise from all corners and urged the board to move forward.
Even county planning commissioners, who spent years helping to craft the current draft plan, disagreed on the best approach. Current Second District Commissioner Mel Kreb urged the board to respect the efforts of others. "You inherited the work done by previous supervisors, planning department staff and the planning commission. You need to ask yourself if you trust any of the work that those people did, because you repeatedly hear from people here who say you should not trust anything that's ever been done in this process. And I just reject that idea outright. It's an insult," Kreb said. "You must get to work."
But former commission chair Jeff Smith urged the board to think independently. "None of you were on the board when this ship set sail ... but the bottom line is, whether you've been on the board for 15 minutes or 15 years, it doesn't matter. This is gonna be your plan, and it's up to you to do what you think is right."
Public comments continued for nearly three hours, leaving the supervisors no time to proceed with the task at hand -- continuing its review of the general plan's land use element. Instead, the board elected to skip the remainder of that contentious element for now and move on to chapters five and six (community infrastructure/services and telecommunications) at the next meeting, to be held Oct. 1. Staff will prepare new reports for those chapters, as proposed.
Press release from the Eureka Police Department:
On 9-15-2012 at about 6:42 am, officers with the Eureka Police Department responded to a burglary alarm at Mr. Fish (2740 Broadway).
Upon arrival, officers found a door of the business had been forced open and it appeared items had been taken. The business owner was contacted and requested to respond. While awaiting the owner’s arrival, officers deployed a K-9 to attempt to track the suspect(s).
The K-9 led officers to the greenbelt area just northwest of Mr. Fish where they located, Shannon Lyn Hodgden (38 years old of Eureka). Hodgden was in possession of items believed to have been stolen from the business. The business owner later identified the items.
Hodgden was taken into custody for possession of stolen property and probation violation. Hodgden in on active probation for theft related offenses. Hodgden was soon transported to the Humboldt County Correctional Facility and is being held on $25,000 bail.
This is an ongoing investigation. Anyone with information regarding this matter is urged to contact Sergeant Patrick O’Neill at 707-441-4081 ext. 6.
Wait, it is Californ-i-a. It's the North Jetty, Humboldt, California, actually, and they're surfing down there today -- and tomorrow!
Our production dude Drew Hyland went down to the jetty today ("working," you know, wink wink) and took some fine photos of the Surf4Peace action, an event to raise money for Humboldt Surfrider and The Humboldt RampArt Collective.
Drew reports:
I watched heats 3, 4 and 5 today. Looking back, they seemed to be about 15 minutes long, but time flies when you're taking photos on a beautiful day. The sun was out and the water was glassy and smooth, but the waves were small and the surfers struggled to get good rides.
Tomorrow, the men's competition will continue and then the women will compete. When I left, I saw people constructing a skate park in the gravel/sand/dirt parking lot near the north jetty. According to the Surf4Peace ad in Savage Henry magazine, skate ramps are also a featured venue/event. Surf and ocean art phenom Matt Beard was there with merchandise and is supposedly going to do live painting. He was not painting when I was there.
"If everybody had an ocean/Across the U. S. A./Then everybody'd be surfin'..."
Hey, you've got an ocean, get out there! If not to get all BeachBoysy on us, then at least to watch these porpoise-like people do their thing.
The video of Monday's contentious general plan update meeting of the county board of supervisors is now available for viewing (here). If you have the time it's well worth your while.
The original report* on the meeting mentioned a handful of reasons offered by the board's new conservative majority -- Ryan Sundberg, Rex Bohn and Virginia Bass -- for throwing the switch to derail the general plan update process, now in its 13th year. But as the full video reveals, over the course of the meeting this trio of supervisors suggested a wide variety of excuses for undoing much of the work that's been done so far. Here are the ones we caught. (The relevant debate starts around the 84-minute mark.)
1. It's too confusing
"I guess the more I look at this the more confused I get. ... It's super-overwhelming to me, I know, to try to go through this thing and understand it. The more I read it, it seems like, the more backwards I get. So [Bohn and I] met with [Interim Planning and Building Department Director] Martha [Spencer] to ask, is there a way we can bring this thing down to something digestible ... basically take the [1984] framework plan, is what we talked about, and then making it up to state code [emphasis added]."
--Ryan Sundberg
"I wished I had the knowledge that, I mean, that Mark [Lovelace] had. He's got to work on this for 12 years. I'd like to have some of that knowledge so maybe I'd have a little bit of understanding."
--Rex Bohn
2. Though nearly complete, the updated plan might somehow cost more money than scrapping it and starting over
"I don't know if we can afford the plan that's here. I think we can afford a Yugo and I think we're building a Cadillac sometimes with all the extra addendums and everything else when we just need to worry about the state and federal mandates."
--Rex Bohn
3. Private property rights and values need more protection
"I made promises to people that I would protect their property rights and their property values, and I've got to stand by that. And if somebody up here can say that property rights and property values are gonna be held in whole when this gets through, I'll vote for the whole thing right now and we can walk away from here, but I don't think anybody can do that."
--Rex Bohn
"Getting all this paper and documents at one time and trying to digest it and know what's in it and be able to look somebody in the eyes at the end of this and say, ‘This is not going to affect your property rights. This is doing what we want it to do' -- I just don't know how I can get there with this."
--Ryan Sundberg
4. [?]
"We gotta start a new plan in a year anyway."
--Rex Bohn
5. Someone might sue the county for reasons unknown
"I'm worried that at the end of this it's gonna be sued, [though we'll] probably get sued anyways."
--Ryan Sundberg
"I don't want to make it the lawyers' full-employment plan."
--Rex Bohn
6. The update and its supporting documents have too many pages
"This just is so big. I had a conversation with [former county supervisor] Jill [Duffy] this morning and asked, ‘How did this thing get this big?' ... Is there a way to pare it down to make it more understandable for me, for the general public, for people who are going to come in and get permits?"
--Ryan Sundberg
7. Despite holding more than 200 public meetings, the county didn't give people in rural areas enough opportunity to comment
"The one thing I got out of so many meetings, there's always somebody to get up and says, ‘You haven't come at the citizens advisory committees.' That pops up, and I'm just grabbing it ‘cause it's in my notes in about three places. We heard from Mattole and Honeydew. They didn't feel like they were included. ... I don't know what we did in Willow Creek, Orleans and the outside areas."
--Rex Bohn
8. Virginia Bass's vague sense of unease at fate's unpredictability
"What my uncomfortableness at this point, especially when you, you know, we're looking at the document, we have asked for so much information ... but what I don't have in there, and I have never really asked or we haven't really been able to get to the bottom of, which really rises to my radar today is, again, the unintended consequences and my needing to have a level of confidence in moving forward."
--Virginia Bass
9. No big government
"The level of governance -- how much more bureaucracy are we throwing in on top of this?"
--Rex Bohn
Members of staff, along with Supervisors Mark Lovelace and Clif Clendenen, attempted to address this dizzying barrage of complaints. Lovelace said breaking the plan up and addressing its individual elements piece by piece, as Sundberg suggested, would be impractical since the elements are all interrelated. Spencer added that breaking the process up would only make it longer and more complex, since each piece would require a separate environmental impact report. Addressing concerns over litigation, she said breaking the plan up would be far worse. "Your board is always subject to more litigation the more environmental documents we do."
Lovelace addressed what he saw as the core issue:
"The hardest part isn't the process, isn't the policies. The hardest part are the issues. These are hard issues. And if you're waiting for somebody to be able to say we have policies that fully protect all of the resources while also fully protecting all of the property rights, I don't think that's gonna happen. This is a balancing act, and it's gonna tilt this way on one policy, that way on another policy. ...
And when I say that that's what we signed on for, it's the nature of the job is that we have to make some really tough decisions that some people are gonna like, some people aren't gonna like. Sometimes our friends are gonna pat us on the back, sometimes they're gonna stop returning our calls. ... Nothing gets at the difficulty of our job more than trying to balance their property rights with their neighbor's rights and with the environment and with these other issues.
Phillip Smith-Hanes, the county administrative officer, sounded a similar note. "Land use decisions are among the most controversial that a governing body gets to make, and the general plan in particular is a mountain," he said. "And, I mean, there's no way around it."
As the meeting's designated end time approached, there was widespread confusion as to what exactly the trio of conservative supervisors was asking of staff. "I guess I'm a little bit lost," Spencer admitted.
Lovelace said he hadn't heard a request for any information that isn't already included in the current draft. In an apparent effort to alleviate the confusion of his colleagues, he made a motion to direct staff to prepare a workshop for next week's meeting, a sort of "Planning 101" session to discuss the process at hand. No board member would second the motion, and so the board agreed to continue the discussion next Monday, starting at 1:30 p.m.
Of the various plan-scrapping justifications mentioned at the meeting, the most familiar is No. 3 above, the concern over private property rights. This is the raison d'être of a number of shadowy, development-friendly groups trying to influence the general plan update, including the Humboldt Coalition for Property Rights, Sunshine for Humboldt and the Humboldt Economic and Land Plan (HELP).
The latter is run (seemingly entirely, at this point) by Sacramento lobbyist Kay Backer, who on Tuesday sent a letter to board chair Virginia Bass expressing her satisfaction with the previous night's performance. (The letter can be read in pdf form here.)
"We were pleased to see your Board decide to step back and consider various options for moving forward with the General Plan update," Backer writes.
She also offers a familiar-sounding suggestion:
"HELP, and others have long recommended going back to the Framework Plan (existing General Plan), and updating it to comply with current Federal and State laws ... . If you choose this option, there is no reason why you could not evaluate the potential of adding additional elements at a later date."
Could these be marching orders? Or is it coincidence that Sundberg and Bohn's confusion and concerns led them to this very same idea?
Update, 4:15 p.m. If Sundberg's reason for objecting to the plan was truly confusion over the process, then he would seem to have missed a golden opportunity for clarification by failing to second Lovelace's motion. If, on the other hand, his purported confusion is merely a smokescreen designed to allow him and his fellow consservative supervisors to tilt the balance of the plan toward property rights, well, then he's bound to be disappointed by what county planning staff came up with for Monday's meeting.
While not quite as dumbed-down as Hank Sims's parody draft over at the Lost Coast Outpost, staff nonetheless took Sundberg, Bohn and Bass at face value and, logically, is offering to walk them through the major issues "in a narrative format."
*Footnote of very minor significance: Since the Humboldt Sentinel's story was posted Monday night, its publisher/producer, Charles Douglas, has ignored several requests to prove that "Thomas Bradshaw," the story's purported author, is a real person and not a pseudonym of his own creation. Douglas himself films most of the supes' meetings as part of a contract between the county and Access Humboldt, where he is a media production specialist.
...for growlers, kegs and merchandise, anyway. Tasting Room Manager David Franklin called to let us know that the previously announced closing only lasted a couple of days. So while you'll have to wait until the new tasting room opens (date TBA) before you can sit around a barrel with friends enjoying frosty pints, you can now stock up on the brew in bulk volumes. Cheers.
The Humboldt Sentinel reports on a stunning ideological coup attempt at Monday's special meeting of the Humboldt County Supervisors, wherein the conservative majority moved to invalidate the nearly complete General Plan Update and potentially start from scratch.
According to the report, Fifth District Supervisor Ryan Sundberg complained that the document, which has moved through a lengthy public input and planning commission process, is "just too big and unwieldy to digest." Brand-new First District Supervisor Rex Bohn agreed, saying he didn't have enough time to familiarize himself with the update, according the to report.
After the meeting, Third District Supervisor Mark Lovelace sounded an exasperated note on his Facebook page:
At our meeting today, Supervisors Sundberg and Bohn asked staff to bring back some "alternatives" to the General Plan Update we have before us, such as just 'tweaking' the old 1984 plan. The draft before us was guided by 11 Supervisors and 14 different Planning Commissioners, with input from over a thousand community members at over 200 meetings over 12 years. There is no magic shortcut.
The matter will be considered at what's sure to be a heated meeting next Monday, Sept. 17.
The following news post is by North Coast Journal intern Scottie Lee Meyers:
It was welcome news when the Arcata-Eureka Airport received a $750,000 federal grant last month to help bring a new eastbound route to the area. The airport has seen turbulent times in the past couple of years - airlines have left, ticket prices have gone up, and there've been airport management complications.
With most the money now in place, the airport can sit in the, ahem, pilot's seat by offering an airline a revenue guarantee and dictating fee waivers for landing, fuel and terminal rent.
With the help of local businesses and industry consultants, the county has put together an airline recruitment package. The 95-page package notes Humboldt's top employers, new infrastructure projects and passenger demand analysis statistics. It also boasts, "Voted one of Sunset Magazine's ‘Best Places to Live.'" There's even a pretty picture of that famous National Geographic cover shot of one of our towering redwoods.
But the package sits on the runway awaiting liftoff until partially matching funds come through. Don Ehnebuske, executive director for the Redwood Region Economic Development Commission, said Humboldt won the competitive federal grant because the Headwaters Fund agreed to put in up to $250,000, contingent upon his agency's pledging to try to match that with an additional $250,000 the federal grant is contingent on his agency's ability to raise an additional $250,000 within three years. The Headwaters Fund agreed to put in up to $250,000 in matching funds, meaning RREDC needs to raise at least $125,000.
But it's been hard to find those matching funds during these cash-strapped times. Ehnebuske has been able to land $10,000 from the City of Eureka, $5,000 from Cypress Grove Chevre, $1,500 from Republic Parking and other smaller contributions. But it's not adding up to $250,000.
Ehnebuske hopes that the Headwaters Fund board will accept non-cash in-kinds to meet the match - such as fee waivers, for instance, for advertising the routes. The seven-member board will meet Sept. 18 to vote on the issue. If the board agrees to accept in-kinds, the county can begin shopping the package to airlines within the next couple of months - which is timely, because airlines typically add new routes in the fall.
The Arcata-Eureka airport is looking at four eastbound hubs - Dallas, Denver, Phoenix and Salt Lake City. The grant can't be used for a direct flight to Los Angeles International Airport, said ACV program coordinator Emily Jacobs; the county got a similar grant in 2004 to establish LAX-direct flights, which disqualifies the destination this time around. "That being said, sometimes that can be worked around," she said. LAX could be a stop to one of the required eastbound hubs.
No matter which company comes in, United Airlines will still be here. Tom Mattson, director of the county's public works department, said the county just renewed a lease with United for another year. (Note: Those of you frustrated with the delays and cancellations in and out of ACV shouldn't necessarily blame United, said Ehnebuske. The problem is congestion at San Francisco International Airport because of runway work, which will be ongoing until 2015. Airports with the closest proximity to SFO generally get interfered with most, he said.)
Well, this is embarrassing: Apparently I've been sitting on a humongous color-scheme-change scoop. Over at the Lost Coast Outpost there's a contest to guess -- or, rather, suggest -- the Sheriff's new colors for his cruisers, which will be revealed all nice and proper tomorrow in a press conference, according to a news release posted on LoCO and sitting in my inbox.
Press conference! Will there be angrily shouted questions? Disorder? Dismay? Outrage?
Depends on if you have a fear of traditional paint jobs. They're not gonna be green and white anymore, at least not the new Ford Crown Victorias that Sheriff Mike Downey told me about in July. The Crown Vic has been discontinued as a police cruiser, and some departments are shedding their surplus -- even brand new ones, like the seven Downey just got from the Anaheim Police Department, apparently for a steal.
And those babies are ... black ... and ... white! So, yeah, just like the CHP's -- and others'.
"Los Angeles County, San Diego, Sacramento County -- they all run black and whites," said Downey.
Fortuna's going that route, too, fading out the good ol' red-and-whites.
Why? WHY??
"It'll cut down on graphics costs," Downey said. The black-and-white scheme's cheaper to repair than that finicky green decal.
As for the current green-and-whites in the stable, each will be phased out as it hits the 120,000-mile mark on the odomoter that signals it's time to be put to pasture.