Spotted today in an Old Town Eureka parking lot: A Toyota 4Runner with a license plate issued by the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. I knew that some Native American nations issue passports. I remember the showdown earlier this year when the U.K. shamefully refused to let members of the Iroquois National lacrosse team […]
Government
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Humboldt County Has Received $121M in Recovery Funds
$121,125,647 to be (more or less) exact. That’s how much of Uncle Sam’s money flowed into Humboldt County between February 17, 2009, and September 30, 2010, as a result of President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. And the vast majority of that cheddar has been in the form of grants. If you […]
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Thompson Lands $9.8M For Open Door Clinic
Health care reform is coming to town: Congressman Mike Thompson today announced that Open Door Community Health Centers will receive $9.8 million in federal funding to build a new facility in Eureka. The money stems from the federal Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law in March and is aimed at curtailing insurance industry abuses and expanding coverage […]
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Welcome, Market Square
There was a pretty impressive turnout at the dedication of Eureka’s new C Street Market Square earlier this morning, and why not? The square, located down at the bay, was the first-phase roll-out of the City’s biggest and most impressive new public space since the construction of the Boardwalk, which it borders. By this time […]
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A Break For Our Rural Heroes
Back in June 2008, Willow Creek VFD firefighter Tom Smithey phoned us up to vent some fiery frustration: The feds had made it so difficult for rural firefighters to get licensed to drive a fire truck that they feared one day their crew — waiting on a driver — might arrive too late to control […]
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County Takes Measures to Reduce Airport Woes
A month after a long-planned airport construction project began — a project that has inconvenienced countless local travelers whose flights have been delayed, redirected or canceled outright — backup measures have finally been provided. County Supervisor Mark Lovelace yesterday evening sent an e-mail to concerned community members updating them on measures being taken by county […]
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Extra Sunny Fortuna
Remember Janelle Egger? You know, the Fortuna resident whose attempts to find out more about her city government’s plans to build a new water tank turned into a Kafkaesque quest and public records lawsuit against the city? Well, with the help of Access Humboldt’s citizen-production services, she’s made a documentary of the saga: “Boondoggle in […]
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Eureka Approves Medical Marijuana Ordinance
Medical marijuana proponents Laura Benedict, Ian Hammon-Hogan, Bob Wiener and Charles Davy outside the Eureka City Council chambers last night. Council chambers erupted with applause when the Eureka City Council unanimously voted to approve the city’s first medical marijuana ordinance last night. The ordinance regulates land use for patients, who grow for personal use, and […]
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Scenes From Tribes’ MLPA Protest
Big rigs, many of them empty log trucks, blared support as they passed the 25 or so protesters, most from local tribes, gathered on both sides of Highway 101 Tuesday afternoon in front of the Red Lion Hotel in Eureka. Inside the Red Lion, the California Marine Life Protection Act Initiative Master Plan Science Advisory […]
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Reggae Rising’s Busy Beaver Survives
At their last meeting, the Humboldt County Planning Commission set a condition for approval of the Reggae Rising permit for this year — Tom Dimmick must pay off a slew of agencies he owed money to, or the party’s over. (See previous blog post for details.) When I tuned in the meeting tonight on TV, […]
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Visual Blight or Gateway to the Future? (updated)
It took a Eureka ad hoc committee a year to draft “Wireless Telecommunications Facilities,” an ordinance that seeks to regulate the placement of cell phone towers within city limits. But it took only 30 minutes of public testimony to set it back at least another month. “We asked for an ordinance to protect the residents […]
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Skinny Fortuna
The City of Fortuna likes to say, in official missives, that it frowns upon fiscal irresponsibility and teetering budgets at all times, not just dark times. It likes to be Sunny, yes, but also fit. Lean and Friendly. And so, for the City’s 2010-2011 budget, City management is proposing some belt-tightening it attributes as much […]