Lee Ulansey was drawn into the world of Humboldt County politics during a bizarre game of brinkmanship back in 2007. The stakes were local, including thousands of acres of timberland, but the game was being played in a courtroom on Texas’ Gulf Coast. It was the bankruptcy trial of Pacific Lumber Co., which, under the stewardship of Charles Hurwitz and his Houston-based Maxxam Corp., had spent 20-plus years operating like some rapacious clear-cutting machine straight out of The Lorax.
Now drowning in debt, Pacific Lumber presented the bankruptcy judge with an audacious proposal: The company could cash out its remaining chips and pay off its creditors by subdividing some 22,000 acres of Humboldt County timberland, chopping it into 160-acre parcels and selling them as “kingdoms” for the uber-rich. The affluent buyers could then build their dream mansions in the forest because in Humboldt County, unlike some other rural counties in the state, single-family residences are allowable on land zoned for timber production (TPZ). All you need is a building permit.
But the Board of Supervisors, which was following the trial closely, didn’t want all of that viable timberland subdivided; it didn’t want a bunch of new homes built in the hinterlands; and moreover, it didn’t want any more dealings with the loathed Maxxam Corp. And so, in a bold counter-maneuver, the board enacted a 45-day moratorium on building permits for TPZ land. In doing so it hoped to send the Texas judge a message — that Pacific Lumber’s mega-ranch liquidation sale would not be tolerated.
It seemed to work: The judge rejected Pacific Lumber’s proposal, and eventually the company was dismantled, its assets awarded to the Marathon Capital Group and Mendocino Redwood Co.
But the TPZ moratorium — and a subsequent flirtation by the left-leaning board with permanently tightening home-building restrictions for TPZ land — had a dramatic side effect: It pissed certain people off something fierce, among them Lee Ulansey.
Although many environmental advocates supported the change as a way to protect rural watersheds and wildlife, property rights advocates, including many of Humboldt County’s 1,700 owners of TPZ land, saw it as a threat to their property values and way of life. They considered themselves stewards of their own land, and their right to build on it sacrosanct.
Ulansey, a Kneeland resident who identifies himself as an artist and woodworker, responded by founding the Humboldt Coalition for Property Rights, or HumCPR, a group that quickly attracted commercial developers, contractors and Realtors along with SoHum pot growers and back-to-the-land homesteaders, an unlikely alliance bound by a mutual distrust of the government.
In the years since its formation, HumCPR has become an ever-more-powerful — and secretive — political force. With financial support from its members, whose names it won’t reveal, the organization has produced and distributed tens of thousands of newsletters filled with warnings about an assault on rural lifestyles. In recent election cycles it has harnessed the resources of sympathetic wealthy developers to flood the campaign coffers of its chosen political candidates. It has called for the removal of planning department leadership and accused county staff, the Planning Commission and various environmental groups of “social engineering” and “forcing our children into cities.” One year, a handful of the group’s most active members got appointed to the Grand Jury, where they had subpoena powers to continue the campaign against county officials and staff. All the while, HumCPR has worked hard to influence the general plan update, and it has filed two lawsuits against the county that have yet to be fully resolved.
And now the group’s three most prominent members have become policymakers in county government, filling one fourth of the 12 available seats on the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors. On Jan. 7, Estelle Fennell, who spent almost three years as HumCPR’s executive director, assumed the Second District seat on the Board of Supervisors. A week later she appointed to the Planning Commission professional forester/real estate investor Bob Morris, who remains listed as HumCPR’s treasurer and agent of service. And late last month the board voted 3-1-1, with Supervisor Mark Lovelace dissenting and Supervisor Ryan Sundberg abstaining, to appoint Ulansey himself to the Planning Commission.
With the long, long-overdue general plan update still under review by the board, and with the Planning Commission yet to craft the details of that plan through zoning ordinances, HumCPR’s rise to power comes at a very opportune moment for shaping the county’s future.
[][][][][][][][][][]
With his burly physique, a mountain-man beard and hair like steel wool, Ulansey cuts a striking figure. Visually he’d fit in as a prospector on HBO’s Deadwood or, if you add Birkenstocks and tie dye, standing in the beer line at an outdoor blues festival. Friends say he’s smart, passionate and politically savvy. Adversaries say he’s hot-tempered, vindictive and devious.
After graduating from Beverly Hills High School in 1978, Ulansey moved to Humboldt County where he took classes at both College of the Redwoods and Humboldt State University. A few years later he moved back to Southern California, attending Pepperdine University in Malibu from 1982-1985 and earning a bachelor’s degree in business administration. (This information, from Pepperdine University records, differs slightly from the résumé Ulansey provided to the county, which gives his Pepperdine enrollment dates as 1981-1983 and describes a degree in both business administration and economics.)
Though he lists his occupation as an artist and woodworker, Ulansey spent years working as a property manager for the Eureka-based commercial real estate firm Carrington Co. He now owns or co-owns more than $2 million worth of property in Humboldt County. His holdings include commercial real estate (he owns a storefront on Main Street in Fortuna and half a block of businesses on Eureka’s Fifth Street, including the HumCPR office) as well as several Eureka apartment buildings and nearly 200 acres of redwood TPZ land on Greenwood Heights Drive in Kneeland, where he lives.
When the Journal first called Ulansey and requested an interview for this story, he hesitated, remaining silent for almost 30 seconds before saying he needed to give it some thought and check his schedule. Over the next two weeks, Ulansey did not respond to numerous voice messages and emails. Early last week he sent Journal Publisher Judy Hodgson an email declining the interview request. He expressed concerns about his views being portrayed fairly and accurately.
In response, the Journal offered to post two audio files of the entire interview on our website — one recorded by Ulansey and the other by the Journal. He again declined, saying in an email that it would be too troublesome for readers to find and listen to the audio files.
With HumCPR’s activities readily available in newsletters and online, the Journal was mostly hoping to ask Ulansey about his behind-the-scenes political organizing. It is widely rumored that Ulansey has worked as a political operative of sorts alongside Rob McBeth, co-owner of Arcata-based industrial fabrication company O & M Industries.
What’s known is that during the last few election cycles the duo made personal visits to several candidates and potential candidates, urging them to either support their property rights agenda or step aside for someone who would.
Annette de Modena, a retired teacher and Republican who ran for the First District Supervisor seat against Rex Bohn and Cheryl Seidner last year, said Ulansey and McBeth came to her home very early in the campaign, ostensibly to see if she was someone they wanted to support. She never heard from them again — “never gave me the courtesy of a phone call,” she said. But Ulansey did call her campaign manager later in the race and tried to convince him that de Modena had no shot of winning, she said.
Ulansey also paid a visit to (now former) Second District Supervisor Clif Clendenen early in the last election cycle, telling him that if he didn’t support his positions on certain issues then Ulansey would raise money for a candidate to challenge him — this according to Eric Kirk, an attorney who considers Ulansey a friend. Of course, Clendenen did end up with an opponent, losing the election narrowly to former HumCPR head Fennell.
Before voting to appoint Ulansey, Supervisor Virginia Bass admitted that she had concerns about him, but she said that after meeting with him and asking some tough questions she felt reassured. What were her concerns? “He’s very blunt when he speaks,” she told the Journal. She said she told him that staff needs to be treated respectfully, as do public speakers who come before the commission — “just kind of setting out ground rules there,” Bass said.
Despite these concerns, Bass admires Ulansey’s “knowledge and passion.” (As a Eureka City Councilmember she nominated him for the city’s Planning Commission but failed to get the 4/5ths vote required to appoint someone who doesn’t live in city limits.) She thinks he’ll do a good job on the commission. Chair Ryan Sundberg, who had abstained from the vote because he wanted a candidate from McKinleyville, told the Journal that he thinks Ulansey is “a nice guy” and “a smart guy.”
“I think he’ll be very strong on property rights,” Sundberg added.
In financial disclosure statements to the county Ulansey values the three TPZ parcels he owns on Greenwood Heights at more than a million dollars. And his tax records reveal the value of developing such land. Last year, for example, he was assessed just $7,040 on a 40-acre parcel of redwood timberland. Another $9,856 was assessed for an adjacent 51-acre parcel. But the third parcel, which was purchased from Simpson Timber in 2001, was assessed at $522,336, more than three-quarters of which was for a house that the Ulanseys built in 2002.
Before Ulansey applied to be a planning commissioner, before he hired Estelle Fennell to run his corporation, before he even launched HumCPR, he submitted a request to the county concerning his TPZ property. This request was made on Oct. 11, 2007, just two days after the Board of Supervisors issued its 45-day moratorium on TPZ building permits.
Ulansey asked to have about 30 acres of his TPZ land rezoned as residential agriculture or agriculture general, so that it could be split up into parcels as small as 2½ acres, with the potential for a house on each one. The request went before the Planning Commission, which recommended to the Board of Supervisors that the land remain zoned TPZ. But since the request is related to land use it is now attached as an amendment to the general plan update. The board has yet to rule on his request.
[][][][][]
Property rights, of course, are a complicated thing. Does my right to do anything I want on my property let me dump a reeking cow carcass in the creek that provides my downstream neighbor’s drinking water? Does my right to build a new subdivision entitle me to create a bunch more traffic on your quiet street, or do I have to make amends by paying for a traffic signal? In public policy circles, liberals sometimes accuse conservative business people of wanting to socialize costs while privatizing benefits. That is, taxpayers pay for the costs of growth, while landowners or business owners pocket the profit. Developers of big projects often counter that growth helps everyone, creating more jobs and a stronger economy. Landowners often say that limiting what they can do on their property is pretty much the same as taking it without paying for it. (This was the position the other HumCPR official who is now a planning commissioner, Bob Morris, took in 2003 with an unsuccessful lawsuit against the federal government for preventing him from cutting down old-growth redwood trees.) From all sides, it’s a complicated equation — who has the right to use his own property in ways that make a neighbor miserable? And how miserable? Is a river drained dry OK? Are toxins in the groundwater OK? When does it stop being fair?
Ulansey outlined the HumCPR position in its spring 2009 newsletter.
“HumCPR has evolved from the basic premise that the people of Humboldt, not a few bureaucrats, should have the absolute choice over where and how we live our lives,” he wrote in a column that bore his picture.
Absolute choice.
Around that message, Ulansey has rallied a diverse coalition of those who disdain government and those who could profit greatly from less of it. Kirk, who also writes the blog SoHum Parlance II, said Ulansey has cleverly tapped into southern Humboldt’s independent streak and developers’ anti-regulation streak and united them under the banner of rural issues.
Kirk sees a distinction between what he calls “HumCPR right” — developers, foresters and real estate agents such as Bob Morris, Ben Shepherd and Tina Christensen — and “HumCPR left” — people like Peter Childs, a progressive Democrat living in Miranda, and Charley Custer, whom the San Francisco Chronicle profiled in a story called “Charley Custer, Humboldt County pot grower.”
“What HumCPR did, and I think this is political brilliance on the part of Lee … is he put this coalition together way back when the code enforcement stuff started happening,” Kirk said. That “stuff” was the campaign by armed and overzealous county agents who roamed the hills, raiding rural residences and enraging locals before the Board of Supervisors reined them in a few years ago.
Kirk said that the “back-to-the-land hippies” of southern Humboldt differ from their more urban counterparts. Many of them moved here in the 1960s and ’70s, settling on agricultural parcels that may or may not have been legally subdivided. (The practice continued into this century: In 2000, landowner Bob McKee split up the 13,000-acre Tooby Ranch and sold 49 large parcels. A county lawsuit against McKee has yet to be resolved.)
SoHum residents may be socially progressive, Kirk said, but they have a libertarian attitude toward government, and they take pride in their land. “To suggest that their lifestyle might actually be detrimental environmentally, that’s just not a concept that a lot of them are willing to stomach,” he said.
“And then on top of that,” said Kym Kemp, another SoHum resident and blogger, “people became marijuana growers, and the government was their absolute enemy.” Kemp cited Operation Green Sweep as particularly traumatic for locals. The 1990 federal anti-marijuana campaign brought black helicopters and more than 200 armed feds to the county, including National Guardsmen and a 60-soldier Army unit fresh from invading Panama. (Kemp remembers having a gun drawn on her that summer while she walked down a rural road.)
“We have different experiences and attitudes,” Kemp said. Southern Humboldt folks “don’t trust the government to come in and do right by the hill people.”
Not everyone sees HumCPR’s alliance as benevolent. At a general plan update meeting last year Arcata City Councilman Shane Brinton described the group as “an unholy alliance” of pot growers and developers.
“The linkage there, really, is buyers and sellers of property,” said former supervisor Clendenen. “Both stand to gain.”
Kemp believes that most of Fennell’s supporters cared less about her tenure as executive director of HumCPR than they did about the years she spent as KMUD radio’s news director, when she often gave listeners the heads-up about impending drug raids and forest fires. “She was a friend, a voice in their living room who could be trusted to tell them the truth,” Kemp said.
Like Ulansey, Fennell was reluctant to grant an interview request. Ultimately she agreed to answer questions only if they were submitted via email. The response she sent several days later left most of the questions unanswered. She wrote, “I reject the manufactured concerns of my political foes” and added that she has full confidence that Ulansey and Morris “will carry out their duties in a professional and ethical way.”
It certainly didn’t hurt Fennell’s campaign to have the financial backing of a long list of donors from the business community, many of whom also made big contributions to Supervisors Bass, Sundberg and Rex Bohn. As the Journal reported previously (see “Interested Parties,” Oct. 14, 2010, and “District Soup,” May 10, 2012) these donors have deep pockets and remarkably lockstep patterns to their contributions.
Prevailing wisdom holds that this coordination was not coincidence but rather the result of careful planning and execution by Ulansey and McBeth. The latter chairs a political action committee called the Humboldt Builders Exchange.
In all, more than 30 donors contributed $1,000 or more to two, three or all four of the above-mentioned supervisors (that is, everyone but Mark Lovelace). The effort was especially coordinated in 2010, when at least two dozen donors gave exactly $1,500 to both Sundberg and Bass. McBeth was among them, and his PAC gave even more — $4,500 to Sundberg and $2,500 to Bass. Two years later McBeth gave $1,000 to Fennell. Morris, HumCPR’s former secretary, now a planning commissioner, gave $1,500 to Bass, $500 to Sundberg and $250 to Fennell. Ulansey and/or his wife gave more than $2,000 to Sundberg, another $2,000 to Fennell, $1,500 to Bass and more than $500 to Bohn.
The vast majority of the other big donors came from the development crowd: Kramer Investment Corp., C & K Johnson Industries, Barnum Timber Co., Eureka Readymix and many more. All of the candidates favored by Ulansey, Morris, McBeth and these mega-donors outspent their opponents in the supervisor races. And with the exception of Karen Brooks, who failed to unseat Lovelace in the Third District, they all won.
[][][][][][][][][][]
For the general public, HumCPR’s most visible presence has been the full-color newsletters that have blanketed the county. The company published more than 60,000 copies of its latest edition, distributing them inside local publications (including this one) at public meetings and on distribution racks at local businesses.
Filled with opinion pieces, candidate questionnaires and a certain amount of name calling, the newsletters have consistently criticized county staff, called for reversing or dramatically altering the general plan update process and sounded alarm bells about the environmental extremists who have allegedly hijacked the general plan and infiltrated the county planning department.
The other new HumCPR planning commissioner, Bob Morris, lamented in HumCPR’s summer 2009 edition that the county has set aside only 158,000 acres for rural homesteads. “This seems like a large number, but let’s analyze it in a little more detail,” Morris wrote. “The County is comprised of approximately 2,300,000 acres, so it is apparent that 93.2% of the County is OFF LIMITS for ‘rural homesteads.'”
These limits have financial significance for Morris, whose extensive land holdings exceed even Ulansey’s. He personally owns hundreds of acres of TPZ land and has invested in another 1,000-plus acres through investment groups, limited liability companies and land holding entities.
Morris did not respond to half a dozen messages left on his voicemail over a period of two weeks.
After years of loud and public calls to action, HumCPR is coming under increasing scrutiny of critics who say it doesn’t walk its own talk.
For example:
•When HumCPR took on the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, Ulansey called it a “shadowy” group. And yet, like all nonprofits, the foundation must report its finances annually to the IRS and they’re readily available online. HumCPR, on the other hand, is a private corporation, classified by the state as a “business entity.” As such, its finances are kept hidden from public view. The company is answerable only to its secret financiers. HumCPR does not disclose salaries, its meetings are not open to the public, and its membership is a closely guarded secret. (A list of members used to be listed on HumCPR’s website, but it was removed years ago.) If the nonprofit Resources Foundation is a “shadowy” group, then HumCPR is completely opaque.
•HumCPR called on Supervisor Mark Lovelace to recuse himself from all general plan deliberations because he once served as the executive director of Healthy Humboldt, an environmental coalition which was partly funded by the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation. His refusal to do so is “inherently wrong ethically and morally,” the organization’s board wrote in a newsletter last summer. And in last year’s supervisorial campaign, the HumCPR board said that since Fennell might also be looked on has having a conflict, “We have the utmost in confidence that a Supervisor Fennell would immediately recuse herself from discussion and/or votes.” Now that Fennell holds that seat, neither Ulansey nor Morris nor anyone else with HumCPR has called on her to recuse herself from voting on the general plan. Asked twice, in two separate emails, whether Ulansey or Morris should recuse themselves from any votes, Fennell declined to respond directly, writing only that many public officials have strong feelings about building on TPZ land. “Should those who represent one point of view be favored over others on a commission that is supposed to represent the whole of Humboldt County’s citizenry?” she asked.
•At least five members of HumCPR served on the 19-member 2009 Grand Jury. That jury concluded, among other things, that the county needs to manage its money better, should create an audit committee, and should wring out inefficiencies by having the Board of Supervisors delegate all day-to-day operations to a CEO/manager. HumCPR criticized the county for brushing off the panel’s suggestions. “It is not an appropriate response to a year’s investigation done by dedicated Jurors,” the board grumbled in its newsletter. “The Jurors are citizen volunteers looking at data from an impartial viewpoint.” Nowhere in the newsletter did HumCPR disclose that that that “impartial” viewpoint came from jurors who were members of its own leadership, including Morris and Ulansey.
•HumCPR supporters and other property rights advocates often suggest going back to the county’s “framework” general plan, which was written in 1984 (and is so out of date that it no longer complies with state law). But in fact, that plan actually set aside even less land for remote rural development — 131,000 acres — than the county’s current level. It also contains a number of concepts that have recently been attributed to environmental extremists, including “clustering development” near existing services and discouraging residential subdivisions on resource land. Which raises the question — what exactly does HumCPR want?
[][][][][][][][]
During its rise to power, one of HumCPR’s frequent strategies was to dismiss and belittle government. Now its officials and former officials are part of that government.
Much of the fine tuning for the county’s land use rules will eventually be handed back to the Planning Commission, which now includes Ulansey and Morris. Disputed issues could rise to the Board of Supervisors, which now includes Fennell and many who received donations from HumCPR allies.
According to Senior Planner Michael Richardson, the county will ask the Planning Commission to weigh in on whether to require a conditional use permit to build houses on TPZ land or whether such homes should be principally permitted, meaning they require only a building permit.
The state gives significant tax breaks to TPZ landowners in exchange for their commitment to maintain timber production on that land. Counties can make their own rules about building homes on TPZ land. Some rural counties, including Del Norte, Shasta and Trinity, require both a building permit and a conditional use permit. Others, including Humboldt and Mendocino, consider homes on TPZ to be principally permitted.
Given their former zero-tolerance policy for conflicts of interest, the Journal had been eager to ask Ulansey and Morris how they feel now about whether to recuse themselves from any of these deliberations. We remain open to scheduling any follow-up interviews.
Environmental groups will be watching closely, and if the updated general plan falls short of their standards, lawsuits are likely to follow. Gary Graham Hughes, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC), said his group has been telling the county that it needs to develop a habitat conservation plan, “and there’s been no indication that there’s movement in that direction.”
Hughes said he doesn’t want to discount the possibility of working with “nontraditional allies,” but he couldn’t help but wonder what people would say if a leader of EPIC had been appointed to the Planning Commission.
But Eric Kirk, the SoHum blogger and lawyer, said he’d be surprised if Ulansey, Morris and Fennell govern in the same fiery way that they led HumCPR. Holding public office tends to have a moderating effect, Kirk said. “I do think that people from HumCPR understand that politics can change on a dime. … The group that has come to power, they’re savvy enough to realize that they could lose it quickly. They could lose it just as quickly as they took it.”
This article appears in HumCPR Rising.
appears the progressives are afraid of the new wave coming on. Kirk, needs to bone up on libertarianism, it is by definition anti-statist and pro individual liberties (anti-government and socially progressive by kirks incorrect terminology). most regular folk are sick of the left and right argument to increase government regulation over our activities and denying individual liberties. this new movement will free us from the political zealots that populate our government. as for joining government, you can stand outside the gate and complain all you want, but if you want real change in the forests, get in there and help make it happen.
This entire “movement” is based on property values, nothing else. TPZ property will always be worth a hell of alot more if a residence is an allowable use. Now if they can convince the County to let them subdivide 160 acre parcels into 1 acre lots, then the PL plan plan will actually become a reality. It may happen initially at a snails pace, but it could potentially become a big deal as more retirees move north, looking for value. It will also make the land speculators a LOT of money.
Read the list of CPR political donors to know who’s set to be rewarded from these new positions on the planning boards.
Actually I’m sick of the special interest corruption in my local government where growers (and some others) get to push their way into local government using money or other tools. I am not anti-grow anything but But I sure don’t like it when the rest of the community needs objective representation and it is out of our reach because of the specialized interests. I think Estelle Fennell is the worse thing to happen to Humboldt County in a very long time. What Mr. Burns has described is a mere beginning of cronism. SoHum has suffered from this type of insular political social structure. I don’t want it imported to Northern Humboldt and I will turn out and organize to stop it certainly. Estelle is a one term girl as far as I am concerned. Regulations are sensible when they benefit the most people and those people are paying all their taxes and our local officials are not owing to specialized, corrupt, influences distorting legislation and asking for exemptions because they are, well, special.
Once again the NCJ covers a topic that all other local media avoids, the rightward tilt of local politics. Thank you for doing that. I would suggest that not all back to the landers are involved in the Faustian bargain achieved between the growers and the business owners. A good number of have fled north. As I look back on my years in Southern Humboldt, I remember a steady outflow of visionary, dedicated residents who saw the writing on the wall when marijuana became the highest value and all manner of environmental degradation became rourtine because of that. I hung on later than most hoping for a new awakening. When I finally made my escape, I discovered many like minds already up here and still practicing the old values of being in and of the place.
Thank godess for Arcata.
It’s another Progressive hit piece that attacks any development proponents so that yuppies like Ryan and owner of NCJ Hodgson can bask in Berkeley north development where yuppies can buy overpriced food and staples at Wildberries or the Co-op that replaces Safeway. But it does not replace Winco where Humboldt’s working class and poor buy their groceries. Now, not content to destroy planning for stores that cater to local working class and poor stores, not content to destroy the working class major employment anchor businesses, complete with a whole bunch of lies about PL that Ryan seems to have read off the walls of E.F! and EPIC posters, forgetting all about the fact that PL under Hurlwitz’s ownership was the most highly regulated timber company in the world. And let’s not forget our beloved enviros refusal to help the local tribe recover PL lands as lost ancestral territory, again, NCJ aiding that effort by refusing to publish the Bear River Heartlands Project.
So what we have with Ryan’s hit piece is more propaganda than fact, more inuendo than fact, more trashing people’s reputation than fact. and all of it done for political manipulation reasons to gain political control that’s been lost by the stupidity of Progressives attacking local working class people and their needs, including the need to have land for family home, and investment.
Steven Lewis is the most annoying tool in this County
Steve, I wonder what percentage of TPZ properties are owned by “working class” folks?
1%? Probably less.
Gee whiz, the horrors of it all. If Ryan had changed the name to Mark Lovelace and the politics to the left, he’d have the same story, though I doubt he’d have the horrified “how could this happen” tilt to his story…
I like how when it is about Walmart, the neo-liberals support local business, but when local businesses support moderate candidates opposed to the liberal elites they scream land raper developers and selfish rich people. your rhetoric has been exposed and the voters have called bs.
When you outspend your opponent 10-1, it’s pretty easy to win an election
This is an excellent article. What HumCPR is doing is no grand experiment, its been done before. Just look to the south in mendocino county, where subdivided 2-200 acre parcels are everywhere. The county road system is hopelessly underfunded and overburdened by hundreds of miles of rural roadways serving relatively few people. Its one of the most underfunded in the entire state and getting worse, even if they doubled the property taxes the roads would still be in trouble. The crime is rampant, the sheriff is constantly underfunded, there is no enforcement so people dont even bother getting building permits. The county is broke, and the cities are going that direction too. Half the parcels dont even have water, so it is normal to have it trucked in, even when there is no drought! If you think things are bad in Humboldt today, just wait another 10 years when the bill for for rural “development” comes due.
I’m a bit confused. So there are now 2 people on the Planning Commission that are in the middle of suing the county over a plan update that they will have influence over?
It seems that we have a Board of Supervisors who are not smart enough to realize what a GIANT conflict of interest any this.
What sort of lawsuits will this open up the county to?
I smell some recalls
“Gee whiz, the horrors of it all. If Ryan had changed the name to Mark Lovelace and the politics to the left, he’d have the same story, though I doubt he’d have the horrified “how could this happen” tilt to his story…”
ditto
the progressives are concerned somebody took a play out of their book.
It’s always amusing to read about the horrors of “liberals” who have never been in any kind of political power in this county.
Who could have imagined that “liberal” Arcata would cram housing onto its flood plains?
Big Timber passed the baton to the next in line…the local development community that’s doing their part to limit regulations and extract every public subsidy available, just like their predecessor, while tirelessly complaining about the Gubmint that’s still bailing out their malfeasance…big subsidies for environmental degradation, remote McMansion subdivisions, the big loans for deceived buyers, big foreclosures, big profits, big increases in poverty, crime, deadly streets to walk, and doubled sewer bills..
It’s a story as old as civilization’s first king that made damn sure public wealth was properly transferred to the wealthiest families.
If media REALLY did its job, they would not shy from outrage over the excesses of the local plutocracy…as opposed to printing and airing NOTHING about the corruption surrounding the Rex Bohn campaign.
If the the local plutocracy were routinely reported, the U.S. wouldn’t have the lowest voter turnout of the industrialized world, in effect, the reason the right-wing plutocrats cannot afford to allow ONE liberal candidate or issue to succeed.
Kirk says Fennell’s media background made her a respected “truth teller”.
After her election, she prefers to dodge media questions in writing only?
Ooops!
Ryan Burns dug deep to find any local reporting on this issue from 2010 and 2012! Wow, 3 stories in 4 years on who runs county politics!?
Little wonder the self-serving class is sitting at the dinner table now!
Fortunately for “low-impact” Ma and Pa homesteader who want to keep sucking all the water out of their little stream, Lee Ulansey’s subdivision dreams are not upstream, or on their road.
When they discover that “social engineering” actually protects them from “social engineering by the highest bidders” it will be too late…(if the rest of the state, the nation, and the world is any indication).
Ulansey “expressed concerns about his views being portrayed fairly and accurately” because a fair and accurate portrayal of his views isn’t flattering.
I was unaware ulansey had hired fennell. That sheds a lot of light on part of the situation they’d rather have stay in the dark.,
As an ex-homesteader who finally woke up to what I was doing to our streams when ordering driveways, clearings and one pond all punched out of typical unstable SoHum hillside to create our homesites, I have come out repeatedly against unregulated homestead subdivision development. But in no way was I a supporter of what’s become known as the “urban enviros” who now aim their lawsuit guns at rural land developers–which is not what is needed. We don’t need these stupid community divisions happening because some people seem to think the only way to move up in social status and/or political power is to create unnecessary social warfare. I created two eco-community models for how to develop our rural land without trashing it’s ecology systems. It can be done and unlike our Proggie yuppies and now urban enviros I have no delusions about how population pressure is going to force us, everyone, to open up land for human occupation. Progs don’t want to see this happening in Humboldt County because it inevitably means major development to service the inevitable population climb that will be in effect until America and the world population stabilizes with equal distribution of wealth. Industrialized societies go down in population as their standards of living go up. So to stop over-population it is incumbent upon us to raise the standard of living for all Americans, all peoples all over the world. That means Humboldt County will become home for more working class and poor and Progressives are fighting against this inevitability to protect their IDEA of what Humboldt County should be–for yuppie comfort.
If land use can become environmentally regulated it should be open to ALL Humboldt County citizens and that means not locking up huge tracts of land for a privileged few ownerships, many outside ones at that. If unregulated development problems are the issue, address them and create sustainable rural community development models. I would be more than willing to help in that because our professionals haven’t the experience of long time assessment of environmental damage to rural lands that I have and probably quite a few other veterans of the back to the land movement.
CPR is creepier than I thought it was. That was some great reporting by Ryan Burns, by the way. I’m sure that those who refused to be interviewed will now howl that their voice was not heard.
I just love all of the “rants” against “development”. It’s rather humorous to view the paradigms people in Humboldt County project. It’s as if they are sounding the rallying cry of anti-1,000 unit subdivisions in Orange County.
You people are proof positive there are a lot of wealthy families who are glad their child/sibling is behind the Redwood Curtain out of sight, out of mind, and definitely out of earshot.
steve lewis you forgot accumulating environmental impact on dwindling resources that are projected to continue dwindling. “Awareness”, call it what you will, of environmental crisis is growing, and this is exactly the kind of “industry” that needs changing first and foremost. Humcpr doesn’t represent AN individual’s rights at all, they represent their own cooperative corporate allowance to profit by several powers of ten to the dollar, through building lots of infrastructure on lots of forested land.
Well stated Steve Forgot.
What you don’t hear at any planning commission meetings is that the infrastructure belongs to all citizens, not just those with the power to harvest it into moratoriums for high profit developments beyond the reach of most local incomes.
Despite Mr. Lewis’ comments, I’ve never heard one rural resident request that a single low-impact practice be codified for future developments.
Lee got what he paid for didn’t he? He bought Estelle, and now he’s on the Planning Commission. He needs to recuse himself from every freaking vote. He has a conflict of interest: by suing the County, he’s got a conflict in enforcing its rules, laws and ordinances.
Steve Forgot is right. Steve Forgot forgot to think straight about future Humboldt County residents, the sons and daughters and grandkids and newcomers who will inevitably need land to live on. What is so irksome is that enviros and Progs do not realize that HumCpr is the natural reaction of local citizenry to being pushed around by two groups: County Planning pencil pushers who don’t live with the consequences of their actions and haven’t the brains to figure out they represent Humboldt County citizens and not their own tiny bureaucracy and the other plague on land use policy, enviros who once they got their share of rural land development, e.g. two of the most vocal of protesters, Ken Miller and Darryl Cherney, both quite quiet now with their own land holdings, while the rest now scream and holler to stop anyone else enjoying what they’ve got. I’m not saying HumCpr is right but am saying it is the natural karmic result of overkill by both Planning and Enviro interference in rational land use and development policies.
Progress means more people–so plan for it rationally, and not for current political expediency catering to political ideas that come and go with the seasons.
ROFLMAO
Great article, Ryan. You exposed Lee Ulansey in all his naked glory with a factual, unbiased article. How dare you!
As was said above, naysayers are going to protest that their voice wasnt heard. You fabulously documented otherwise. Brilliant.
Steve Lewis, HumCPR is not “the natural reaction of local citizenry being pushed around” as you state, but a select group of rich real estate investors with a specific and focused mission to profit from the construction of new infrastructure in rural Humboldt County. And Lee Ulansey, a multi-millionairre real estate investor from Beverley Hills, is not represent of “local citizenry” in the first place.
*what infrastructure is serving remote developments, aside from roads and power, which are built by the property owners.
i call bullshit.*
If that’s the case, then they wouldn’t be charged with anything, since the fees would be imposed in local context only – as was reported to the BOS when they voted. The infrastructure does in fact extend out there, and has to be maintained with public funds – minus economies of scale.
is there a reason my comment was removed?
is there a reason my comment was removed?
It’s called political censorship, Patrick. Your comment just happened to be too close to mine which was also censored because the NCJ is in the hands of anti-working class, pro enviro, pro-Prog, yuppies like Ryan and Hodgson who don’t give a rat’s ass about giving a true balanced viewpoint for readers to make up their own minds about important issues. With the NCJ in these hands it becomes only the Big Brother of Heraldo, both using current event interest to peddle their selfish yuppie anti-working class, anti-poor, pro Berkeley-ization of Humboldt County so they can feel comfortable with their spendable incomes as they chime in with enviros to see that local employment anchor businesses go down the tubes putting more Humboldt workers out of work. Expect dirty tricks from NCJ as far as censorship of opposing political viewpoints. Sorry your post was collateral damage as they sent their drone into the wrong comment slot.
steve, i want to say that i did appreciate your earlier comments and i’m sorry they were removed as well. Ironically i’ve been reading Orwell…our whole town is reading Animal Farm as a community read and i re-read 1984. it was never more chilling in light of recent events. I have noticed a new tendency to re-write history and suppress information but i’m shocked that it’s become such a blatant art form. meanwhile my kids are the sixth generation of our family from Humboldt. we lived through fires and floods. we can endure. There should be no wedge riven between the environmentalists and the working class. what will we accomplish always arguing?
Patrick, Regretably, the Journal regularly removes comments that do not agree with the party line. This practice has gone on for some time but usually goes unnoticed because, well because the comment is gone so no one notices and any new readers simply assume that everyone is in lockstep. Perhaps the Journal is the real ‘secret’ organization? When does the North Coast Journal, INC as in “corporation!” have IT’S public board meetings anyway? Perhaps they hold themselves to a different standard.
“…anti-working class, pro enviro, pro-Prog, yuppies like Ryan and Hodgson who don’t give a rat’s ass about giving a true balanced viewpoint for readers to make up their own minds about important issues…”
So…how exactly did the NCJ get Estelle, Ulansey and the others NOT to provide a “balanced” view???
Maybe HumCPR’s deep-pocket backers can shed some light by interviewing Bareilles?? Barnum?? Kluke???
What?
No comment??
It’s the NCJ’s fault!!!
It’s 1984, and Animal Farm all over again!!
Good observation Eric Kirk!
It’s that old-timey fear and favor in our rural newsrooms that keeps folks ignorant about how the local land attorney’s, ie, speculators have been Gaming the people’s infrastructure like a private goldmine to build high-profit McMansion subdivisions for the last 30 years, contributing their part towards the largest economic collapse in a century.
A mediocre reporter could divide the cost of the $35 million Martin Slough Interceptor Project serving those new developments, compare it to the fees these hucksters have been paying, and discover just how much the public (that needs affordable housing now) has been subsidizing ruthless profiteers to build homes few locals can afford.
It wouldn’t be that difficult to provide similar research for all of Humboldt County.
Urban planning professionals have been doing this kind of research for decades…which is probably why we’ve never had any planning professionals elected or appointed to committees here.
Not one rural resident has called for fundamental water carrying-capacity studies in this county, and Rex Bohn just booted the only planning commissioner that’s been calling for them for many years (Nelson),
“We don’t need no lettered do- gooders preachin’ no science-talk in these parts.”
Can someone at the NCJ please remove every comment from Steve Lewis?
Why is it that the same lengthy spam ad appears after NCJ censors comments of critics? Poor Northcoast Journal readers do not know or do not care that their community information outlet is keeping vital information from them by censoring opposing community viewpoints. Freedom of press here at NCJ? More like freedom to abuse the news and views of local community people with such a heavy duty Prog/enviro anti-worker, anti-community, pro-continuation of the Timber War in essence political spin to NCJ articles as to to rob local people of real community feedback. I gave quite a bit of early history of the McKee empire that shed some further light onto why the County and he have blown so much money in courtroom shootouts where the only winners are the lawyers and judges who will pocket their enormous fees while Humboldt County service budgets suffer the consequences of greed.
There’s another kind of greed going on here in Humboldt County. Greed for political power and the NCJ is right there smack in the middle of it acting now as our Big Heraldo, e.g. censoring my comments which included correcting Eric’s political bias that forgot to include homestead road associations which certainly do contribute private funds into rural community infra-structure. NCJ readers were robbed of seeing this comment. To stop these Progs who want to control every bit of Humboldt media and political office they can get their mitts on, we have to expose their political manipulation chicanery every time they do it and get the information to the community in other ways. Heraldo was vulnerable to exposure of extreme political bias and this rag is devolving fast into a bigger version of Heraldo with the same kind of cynical manipulative anti-worker, pro-yuppie political mindset at the helm of NCJ policies.
Steve Lewis sure drones on a lot for someone who is “censored.”
By the way, lots of comments are unintentionally deleted when they sweep out the spam. The NCJ hasn’t figured out that spam can be filtered out through the magic of software.
How can I be “trippin'” when I report NCJ censorship when your posts disappear too. Two critics of NCJ disappear vs. one NCJ groupie comment. And that big long ad spam appearing each time a major post of mine is censored. Is that ad appearing at other times? I’d actually like to know if it appears when I don’t post any comments here. At Northcoast Heraldo, you can expect manipulation of comments just like at little Heraldo, now defunct it seems, and on Eric’s blog–it’s the mark of Progs at the helm to carry on political warfare at every level of community involvement they can control with community interest in current events being their carrot to draw in the public.
Steve Lewis out of Hum Co
“There’s another kind of greed going on here in Humboldt County. Greed for political power.”
(Held by the same class forever… the plutocrats).
“it’s the mark of Progs at the helm to carry on political warfare at every level of community involvement they can control with community interest in current events being their carrot to draw in the public.”
The problem with that “logic” is that your “liberal, pinky, prog, commie, lefty, libtard bugaboos have never had any kind of political power in this county aside from a couple of popular ballot initiatives and isolated candidates.
And the ONLY way that our “liberal” rural homesteaders were EVER going to change this legacy was to make a deal with the plutocrat devil.
And that’s exactly what they did.
Now, thanks to their greedy self-interest, the “rural lifestyle” is more likely to have its quality of life and property value devastated by Lee Ulansey clones as they were from the “evil” planning commission and its regulations and moratorium.
How shockingly convenient to ignore this same scenario that has already played-out 50+ years ago along California’s countless imperiled streams, rivers, aquifers, and the sharp decline of native species and wildlife that once depended on that water.
Human beings repeatedly prove ourselves incapable of planning beyond our immediate life spans. Otherwise, no further rural development would be allowed without fundamental water carrying capacity studies and enforcement of low-impact regulations on a scale equal to CAMP.