– There was a meeting yesterday. Donna Tam of the T-S has written about that meeting.

– And there will be a meeting tomorrow, too. The T-S‘s Allison Edrington raises the curtain on Thursday’s meeting of the Humboldt Waste Management Authority, which is pressing ahead with its plans to contract with a private Willits firm to haul away our recyclables. The spurned Arcata Community Recycling Center originally proposed to charge us $60 per ton for such services; the Willits firm proposed to pay us $8 per ton for the same services. 

The ACRC came back with an alternate proposal, which would have charged the public nothing to process the county’s recycling, but this secondary came in late and would be subject to price fluctuations every year. Therefore the board is now inclined to press forward with Willits, and seems prepared to finalize a contract next month. There has been outcry over the loss of local jobs that would entail, as well as the death blow it would likely deliver to the ACRC, a storied Humboldt County institution.

– The Blue Lake Rancheria may be shutting down its temporary employment agency today, due to $16.4 million disagreement with the California Employment Development Department, the Sac Bee and the Sacramento Business Times report. Mainstay Business Solutions, which carries an average of 8,000 employees on its books at any time, has long been at loggerheads with state regulators. Back in 2003, the company got into an epic fight with the state over the question of whether, as a tribal-owned entity, it was required to pay unemployment benefits for its temporary workers.

[Since this is the first time it’s come up, let’s do the full-disclosure thing big. The Lost Coast Outpost is a project of Lost Coast Communications, Inc., which operates four local FM radio stations – KHUM, KSLG, KWPT and KXGO. The Blue Lake Rancheria is a major LCCI shareholder, but not a majority LCCI shareholder.]

– State cuts to the budget of the Humboldt County Fair means that fair organizers are looking for other revenue sources.

– Assm. Wes Chesbro co-sponsored the nation’s most ambitious bills to promote renewable energy; Calif. Governor Jerry Brown just signed it into law.

– The compulsive list-makers at Forbes Magazine have named our own Ferndale one of the prettiest towns in the United States.