As we near the end of June, inland temperatures in Humboldt, Del Norte, Trinity and Mendocino counties are projected to soar into the triple digits by the end of this coming weekend. 

This is the prediction of the National Weather Service, who warn the public to guard themselves against potential heat-related calamities.

“Drink plenty of water, wear light-colored clothing, take frequent breaks in the shade and use sunscreen with a Sun Protection Factor (SPF) of 30 or higher to protect your skin from UV rays,” NWS says. 

Find a list of projected temperatures and health advice below:

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Press release from the City of Eureka

The City of Eureka, in collaboration with Eureka Main Street, Humboldt Made, and the Eureka Police Department, is announcing that dogs will no longer be allowed at this year’s Friday Night Markets or the 4th of July Festival and Fireworks.

The decision follows record-breaking attendance in recent years, with over 13,000 people joining last year’s 4th of July festivities and more than 7,000 attendees at recent Friday Night Markets. While these events are a celebrated part of summer in Eureka, the large crowds have led to an increase in dog-related incidents — resulting in injuries to both pets and people.

“This policy is focused on safety and prevention,” said Eureka Police Chief Brian Stephens. “With large crowds, loud noises, and fireworks, these events can be extremely stressful for dogs. It’s just not a safe setting. We’re asking the community to help us protect both pets and people by keeping dogs at home.”

Clear signage will be displayed at event entrances, and reminders will be shared across social media leading up to each event. The City asks for the community’s support in helping create a safer, more enjoyable environment for all attendees.

For more information about these events, including schedules, entertainment, and vendor lineups, please visit and follow:

• Eureka Main Street – eurekamainstreet.org and @EurekaMainStreet on social media
• Humboldt Made – humboldtmade.com and @FridayNightMarket and @HumboldtMade on social media

For questions about the dog policy, please contact the City Clerk’s Office at cityclerk@eurekaca.gov.

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A CalMatters investigation found that courts didn’t report hundreds of vehicular manslaughter convictions to the DMV, prompting officials to belatedly take many drivers’ licenses.

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

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California courts have failed to report hundreds of vehicular manslaughter convictions to the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles over the past five years, allowing roadway killers to improperly keep their driver’s licenses, a CalMatters investigation has found.

Marvin Salazar was convicted in May 2023 for killing his 18-year-old friend Joseph Ramirez, who was in the passenger seat when Salazar gunned his car, lost control and slammed into a tree, court records show. Under California law, the state should have taken away Salazar’s driving privileges for at least three years.

But the Los Angeles County Superior Court didn’t report the conviction to the DMV. Two months later, the agency issued Salazar his most recent license. Since then, he’s gotten two speeding tickets and has been in another collision, records show. 

“How can he keep driving?” said Gaudy Lemus, Ramirez’s mother. “We wanted consequences for him. Remove his driver’s license.” 

LA court officials belatedly reported the manslaughter conviction to the DMV last month, after CalMatters discovered the failure and asked about the case. It was only then that the state sent Salazar a notice revoking his driving privileges, records show.

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CalMatters uncovered the error and others like it by cross-checking convictions in vehicular manslaughter cases against motorists’ DMV records, as part of an ongoing investigation. Earlier this year, we reported that the agency routinely allows drivers with horrifying histories of dangerous driving — including fatal crashes, DUIs and numerous tickets — to continue to operate on our roadways. 

But this isn’t just a DMV issue. Reporters identified about 400 cases from 2019 to 2024 in which the drivers’ convictions weren’t listed on their driving records, largely because the courts failed to report that information. The review wasn’t comprehensive; records were unavailable or incomplete in a number of counties.

In Los Angeles, about one-third of all convictions in manslaughter cases we identified were missing from drivers’ records. In Santa Clara County, it was half. We found no missing convictions in Orange County.

In response to our questions, 32 county courts so far have reported more than 275 missing convictions to the DMV. As a result, nearly 200 drivers who’ve killed have had their driving privileges suspended or revoked, updated DMV reports for these drivers show. While some already had a separate license suspension, 70 appear to have had a valid license before the agency took action in response to our reporting.

County courts, law enforcement and the DMV have a long history of poor communication that dates to the days of paper records. Today, court administrators blame the breakdowns on a mix of human error and technological bugs.

Chris Orrock, a spokesperson for the DMV, said the agency sends out revocation and suspension notices “as soon as we’re notified.” 

Even without a conviction, the DMV does have the discretion to strip a driver of their license for a fatal crash. We reported earlier this year that the agency often doesn’t use that power.

But in many cases, there is no discretion. State law, for example, requires the agency to revoke a driver’s license for at least three years after a felony vehicular manslaughter conviction.

As a result of the delayed reporting by the courts, some drivers could end up losing their licenses for far less than three years. That’s because the DMV typically enforces the sanction from the date of the conviction, not the date the court communicates it to the agency. 

Salazar’s current driving record shows him eligible to reapply for a license next spring — three years after his conviction but just a year after records show the state took action to revoke his driving privileges. 

His attorney declined to comment on his driving record but said Salazar did everything the court required. 

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For Lemus, the months after her son died in Salazar’s car were a blur. The loss was haunting, coming just as the teenager had decided to pursue a career building tiny homes for the homeless. 

She started having such bad panic attacks that she moved to a new city and switched jobs, unable to bear the drive to work through the intersection where the crash occurred. Her 25-year-old daughter still refuses to drive at all.

Lemus said she didn’t initially want Salazar to go to prison, “because it was an accident.” Now, she wonders whether that was a mistake. 

“I don’t want another family to go through whatever we went through,” Lemus said. 

A series of errors leads to reporting failures

State law has long required courts to report vehicle-related convictions to the DMV, including for speeding, DUI and vehicular manslaughter. The agency then puts the violations on a motorist’s driving record and, if necessary, suspends their license.

Last month, CalMatters reporters sent hundreds of names and case numbers to dozens of courts throughout the state and asked why convictions from vehicular manslaughter cases didn’t appear on drivers’ records. Most courts responded to questions quickly, thanked us for telling them, acknowledged the mistake and indicated that they would report the convictions to the DMV.

“They were errors on our part. I’m not going to sugarcoat it,” said Tara Leal, the court executive officer in Kern County, where we found 22 missing convictions.

In many counties, court staff simply neglected to send the information to the DMV.

Court clerks typically enter convictions into a case management system. Many courts use a system that has a tab for them to click on to transmit the information to the DMV.

Vehicle code violations like speeding tickets and DUIs clearly need to go to the DMV, court officials said. But most penal code violations, including offenses like robbery and assault, do not. Vehicular manslaughter is a penal code violation.

Heather Pugh, the Yuba County Superior Court executive officer, confirmed that her court should have reported conviction information to the DMV for eight cases CalMatters flagged. “To address that, we will reach out to the DMV to provide training to our staff on reporting requirements,” she said. “Additionally, we have instituted manual reviews of reportable non-vehicle code convictions to ensure they have been properly reported.”

Similarly, Fresno County’s director of court operations, Vidal Fernandez, acknowledged “the element of human error” in his court not reporting a half-dozen convictions in recent years. After realizing the problem, he said, staff checked further back, to 2015, identified an additional 17 cases and sent those convictions to the DMV as well.

Other counties have their computers essentially programmed to send conviction information to the DMV when clerks update the disposition information on a case, in theory taking human error out of the equation. But in response to questions from CalMatters, some administrators discovered that the programs were missing certain codes and had failed to function as intended.

“Ultimately it’s our responsibility,” said Jake Chatters, the court executive officer in Placer County, where a coding issue kept the court’s system from reporting two manslaughter cases.

In other courts, convictions were apparently reported, but there was some mistake in the information sent — like an incorrect birth date or a missing digit in a license number — and the DMV kicked the report back with an error message. Administrators said clerks are supposed to fix any errors and resubmit the information to the DMV, but in some cases that didn’t happen.

The result of the patchwork process is that even convictions from some of the most high-profile traffic deaths in recent years were missing from drivers’ records.

A deadly street race that grabbed international attention

Ricardo Aguilar was racing his Dodge Challenger Hellcat in South Los Angeles one December afternoon in 2021, according to the Los Angeles Times, when he struck and killed a pedestrian — Arian Rahbar, a 21-year-old USC student and aspiring medical researcher.

Rahbar’s father, Sam, summarized the void left by his only child. “Without Arian, life as we know it has ceased to exist,” he told a judge.

The story made global headlines amid a spike in traffic deaths in Los Angeles and other California cities. Aguilar was convicted of felony vehicular manslaughter in 2023, court records show. But until a few weeks ago, that was never reflected in his state driving record.

In the section of his DMV report where collisions and traffic violations are supposed to show up, there was instead this message: “NONE TO REPORT.

His driver’s license was still listed as valid.

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It was only in May, after CalMatters asked the LA court for an explanation, that officials reported his and more than 100 other convictions to the DMV as required. Aguilar’s license is now listed as revoked.

Aguilar’s attorney did not respond to requests for comment.

Rahbar’s friend and former high school tennis teammate Ashwin Yedavalli was saddened and frustrated all over again to learn about the court error that allowed Rahbar’s killer to keep his license. 

Yedavalli, now 25, lives in Long Beach and still stops by the crash scene when he’s nearby. He helped organize a tennis tournament in his friend’s memory, and he said it’s unfair that the legal system failed to deliver on fundamental consequences for his death.

“It’s basically been brushed off,” Yedavalli said. “What about Arian’s life and legacy?”

A decades-long failure to communicate

This is not a new problem.

In the early 1990s, the California DMV was so concerned about getting timely and accurate reports from courts and law enforcement that it produced an educational video called “The Traffic Citation Trail.”

Frank Zolin, the agency’s director at the time, sat behind a desk wearing a crisp suit and chunky glasses, his silver hair swept to the side, to deliver the film’s key message: “We cannot achieve traffic safety without effective teamwork between local law enforcement, the courts and DMV.” 

The film goes on to tell the fictionalized story of a reckless young driver who is able to avoid a license suspension because a ticket wasn’t reported to the DMV. In an early scene, the young man rushes to the mailbox to intercept a letter from the agency before his parents can see it.

“They told me four tickets means bye-bye license. There’s only three tickets here,” the driver says in surprise as he reads a warning letter from the state. “The one I got more than a month ago isn’t even here. … It’s party time tonight.”

In a tragic, real-life twist, the actor who played the motorist was killed by a drunken driver more than a decade later. And communication continued to be an issue. 

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Robert Bullock worked at the DMV for more than three decades. In that time, he said, drivers would sometimes come in wanting to know whether they could renew their license, despite a conviction.

“We’d pull up the record and it wasn’t there,” said Bullock, who retired in 2019. He said he would tell them, “The court has screwed up, and you kind of got a freebie.”

Technology has, of course, improved from the era of grainy ’90s videos. Back then, police drove boxy sedans and held walkie-talkies the size of bricks. DMV clerks picked through mounds of paper forms, copying information into clunky gray computers with white text on black screens.

Today, at courthouses equipped with online records and modern digital tools, some administrators said they’re upgrading to a new case management system that should ensure conviction reporting is automated. Others said they’re going to do more training and manual checks to make sure the information is sent to the DMV.

In Los Angeles — one of the nation’s biggest county court systems, where we sent a list of 150 convictions that appeared to be missing from driver records — administrators declined an interview request. Instead, they emailed a statement from Rob Oftring, the court’s chief communications and external affairs officer: 

“The Court continues to work expeditiously to identify ways to ensure the successful electronic transmittal of all abstract of judgments to the DMV from its case management systems. This includes additional manual checks to identify in advance technical issues that prevent an abstract from being sent to the DMV. This also includes ensuring all criminal courthouse locations timely process their queues for transmittal and additional mandatory training for court staff.”

A trail of disappointment

For someone like Angie Brey, who’s had to confront a system that often treats deadly crashes as accidents rather than crimes, the promises of change sound hollow.   

She lost her partner and the father of her son, Gregory Turnage, on Mother’s Day in 2021. That’s when wealth manager Timothy Hamano drove onto a sidewalk and hit the 41-year-old Turnage, according to records prosecutors filed in court. Hamano had been drinking beer on the golf course and a bloody mary at lunch in San Francisco before the crash, his wife later told police.

Gregory Turnage with his son. Photo courtesy of Angie Brey.

Hamano pleaded no contest to felony vehicular manslaughter and hit-and-run early last year. He received virtually no time behind bars after getting credit for wearing an ankle monitor at home while the case was open. The conviction should have prompted the state to revoke Hamano’s license, but the Alameda County court didn’t report it.

“They essentially let him get away with murder, in our minds,” Brey said. “The fact that they didn’t even take away his license … is just mind-blowing.” 

A spokesperson, Paul Rosynsky, said the Alameda court reports hundreds of criminal convictions to the DMV every month, but he acknowledged that staff had missed sending two for manslaughter in recent years, including the Hamano case.

Hamano’s license appears to have been valid as recently as May 7, when DMV records show he got in another collision. (The records don’t detail who was at fault or the severity.) 

The agency sent Hamano a notice on May 28 that his driving privileges were revoked, following CalMatters’ inquiries.

Hamano’s attorney, Colin Cooper, said his client “is traumatized by what he did” and will never forgive himself. Hamano didn’t drive while the case was open and drove afterward only because he had a valid license and insurance, Cooper said. Hamano stopped driving after getting the revocation letter from the DMV, he said. 

Brey said holding drivers accountable for death is the least the state can do. She said she worries every day, when their son has to cross a busy intersection to get to school, that history will repeat itself.

“If somebody can come up on the sidewalk and kill my partner,” she said, “it just makes me really scared for my son.”

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Court research by Robert Lewis, Lauren Hepler, Anat Rubin, Sergio Olmos, Cayla Mihalovich, Ese Olumhense, Ko Bragg, Andrew Donohue and Jenna Peterson.

This is the second piece in a series about how California lets dangerous drivers stay on the road. Read the first story here. Sign up for CalMatters’ License to Kill newsletter to be notified when the next story comes out, and to get more behind-the-scenes information from CalMatters reporting.

PREVIOUSLY: Eureka Police Arrest Food Delivery Driver on Sexual Assault, Burglary Charges

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Press release from the Eureka Police Department:

Eureka, CA — The Eureka Police Department (EPD) is issuing a public safety advisory following a recent incident involving an alcohol delivery service. A delivery driver — while purportedly verifying the recipient’s identification — forced his way into a residence and assaulted a female victim. The driver was apprehended.

The incident, which remains under active investigation, is a reminder that while convenience services like alcohol delivery offer many benefits, they also pose unique safety challenges.

Chief Brian Stephens stated:

“We are deeply concerned about this incident and want to assure our community that we are taking this matter very seriously. The safety of our residents is our top priority. While this appears to be an isolated event, we are asking the public to take extra precautions when accepting deliveries, especially those that involve alcohol and ID verification.”

Recommended Safety Tips for Alcohol Delivery Services:

• Choose a Well-Lit, Secure Area: Keep the front of your house well-lit and avoid letting strangers into your home.

• Verify the Driver: Use the app or website to confirm the name and photo(if available) of the delivery driver before answering the door.

• Have Someone With You: If you live alone, consider asking a friend or neighbor to be present when accepting alcohol deliveries.

• Trust Your Instincts: If something feels off, do not open the door. Contact the delivery service to verify the driver’s identity, or call 911 if you feel threatened.

• Report Suspicious Behavior Immediately: Contact EPD’s non-emergency line at (707) 441-4044 or call 911 in the event of a crime or emergency.

Community Involvement

We urge all residents to remain vigilant and to report any suspicious or inappropriate behavior involving delivery services. If you or someone you know has experienced a similar incident, please contact EPD immediately.

For ongoing updates and safety resources, follow the Eureka Police Department on social media or visit our website at http://www.eurekapd.net

PREVIOUSLY: 

• Hoopa Tribal Chairman Joe Davis Disputes Allegations of ‘Gross Negligence’ as Tribal Council Attempts to Remove Him
• At Contentious Public Meeting, Hoopa Tribal Council Removes Chairman Joe Davis From Office

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Joe Davis

Joe Davis has been reelected as chairman of the Hoopa Valley Tribe, just 15 months after he was ousted by the tribal council over allegations of gross negligence, neglect of duty and abuse of power. A tribal court judge later determined that the council acted unlawfully in removing Davis. During the tribe’s General Election earlier this month, Davis secured nearly 55 percent of the vote, beating out his opponent, Angela Jarnaghan.

The Outpost sat down with Davis this morning to talk about his history on the tribal council and to learn more about what’s to come. Our interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

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LoCO: How does it feel to be back in your role as chairman of the Hoopa Valley Tribe?

Joe Davis: It feels great. It’s a great blessing to serve my tribe in any role. I’ve worked in various roles over the years, and it’s great to contribute to your own tribe and community. But having the opportunity to serve as chairman is something I really want to make the most of. It’s a tremendous opportunity, and I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of great progress for our tribe because I believe we have a tremendous amount of potential.

I don’t know if you check the Hoopa Community Facebook page, but someone posted a photo montage of you set to “Hey Daddy (Daddy’s Home)” by Usher. What’d you think of that? That seems like a pretty warm welcome back to the council.

I didn’t see it directly, but a few people did send it to me. I thought it was pretty funny, though! You gotta have a sense of humor when you deal with tribal politics [on Facebook]. It can be dark at times, as far as the anonymous posts and the bitterness and anger that’s behind some of that. It was nice to see something that was a little more lighthearted.

Definitely! I wish Facebook as a whole were a little more light-hearted. On a more serious note: Can you describe the role of a tribal chairman? I don’t think many non-tribal members of our community know how tribal governance structures differ from city or state governments. Can you talk about that as well?

Well, it’s similar to a president or CEO. You’re responsible for representing the tribe at the federal, state and local levels, but it also involves management and oversight of our more than 60 tribal departments. It’s also about being accessible to over 3,600 tribal members. It’s a really big job.

One of my goals is to work with our tribal council to reorganize our tribal government to make it more efficient. I want to empower different sectors of our tribal government and the community so it doesn’t all just fall on one person or one elected body’s shoulders. We all have a responsibility to lift up our tribe. 

You were removed from the position as chairman following a tribal council vote in March of 2024. What’s happened in the time since, and how did you find yourself back in the chairman’s seat?

I think it’s been difficult for the tribe as a whole. Our tribal election ordinance says a special election must be held within six months [of a chairman vacating the position], but that never happened. Our tribe has kind of been in a period of uncertainty. 

For myself, I’ve had the opportunity to come to work at the Northern California Indian Development Council (NCIDC), and it’s allowed me to get out and visit over 30 tribes across Northern California. It’s been an awesome opportunity, but my heart has always been at home with my own tribal community. I’m really thankful for the opportunity to be able to serve my community. I feel like I learned a lot during my first stint as a council member and chairman, and I feel those things will serve me well going forward. I’m looking ahead to the future and trying not to dwell on anything negative in the past.

You were reelected to the position with nearly 55 percent of the vote during the June 17 General Election. Who has served as the interim tribal chair over the last year or so?

The vice-chair, Ryan Jackson, served as the interim chair. He had previously served as chair, I think, between 2015 and 2019. He’ll remain a council member, but there wasn’t an officially elected chair, as per our tribal constitution.

When you were ousted from the council last year, you were accused of gross negligence, neglect of duty and abuse of power — which you denied — and were even prohibited from entering tribal buildings. And if I recall correctly, you and your wife sued the tribal council. Did anything come of that?

Well, we were initially successful in getting an injunction from the Hoopa Valley Tribal Court, which ruled that the tribal council had violated our civil rights. However, all that really did was lift the restrictions that they had placed on me when they said I wasn’t able to speak with any tribal departments without a police escort. … Later on, we sued for monetary damages, but the tribal court ultimately ruled that the council — while they were in violation of their tribal constitution and tribal rights — were immune from monetary damages due to sovereign immunity because they had acted within their official capacity as council members. I decided not to appeal and to just move forward. I don’t want to dwell on the negative things from the past, but I do want to make sure that something like that never happens again. It’s a really dangerous path to go down when you allow a tribal council to take away somebody’s most basic human rights.

Not to dwell on it any longer than we need to, but do you feel the dust has settled on the controversy from last year? I know there are some new faces on the council, but do you feel that there is any residual resentment there?

I do feel that things have settled down. There’s only one councilmember left from that group that removed me; the rest have either stepped down or been voted out. And again, my focus is on the future and looking at the bigger picture and moving forward as a tribe. We have more important things to deal with. 

You mentioned wanting to improve efficiency within the tribe. Do you have any other goals or projects you’d like to tackle during your time as chairman?

I want to have an official strategic plan for the tribe to ensure that all the goals and priorities of the tribe are clear and that every tribal member has an opportunity to provide input on that. Education is also very important to Native people, you know, making sure that our young people are exposed to opportunities and career pathways. Tribal health is also very important, and that includes environmental health and protecting our fishing rights. 

I want to set a great example of somebody who is appreciative of their opportunities with the tribe by getting up early every day, working hard for our community and spreading the love amongst our people. We’re all in this together, so we need to come together as a tribe and fulfill our own purpose in life. Everybody has a purpose and calling, and so it’s important to make sure that every tribal member feels valued because every tribal member is extremely valuable to our tribe. When people are forgotten, they lose hope. We have to inspire our tribal members to understand their own value.

Are there any other exciting projects in the works?

Yeah! We have a new elders housing village coming up, and we also have a new education center in the works. 

The Bureau of Reclamation recently awarded the tribe $600,000 to expand and upgrade our irrigation system. We’ve also received $1 million to create an agricultural plan to promote food sovereignty and be less dependent on outside food sources. Our young people can learn how to raise livestock or how to raise crops. Ideally, all the meat and all the vegetables that come through our own grocery store will be produced locally. 

We’re still a “timber tribe,” if you will, so we’re looking to upgrade our sawmill so we can sell value-added lumber products, but in a sustainable way.

And when is your first meeting back on the tribal council?

I believe it’s July 3. That date may change because of the holiday, but we usually meet on the first and third Thursday of the month. I’ll be sworn in on Friday at noon, and I intend to hit the ground running. I’ll probably be working all day on Friday, and then come Monday, I’ll be out meeting with tribal departments and setting up meetings with the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), because they have a finger on the pulse of federal government and all of the changes that are happening under the administration. We’re going to have to come up with a plan to address that as a tribe and work with other tribes to form a unified voice that supports all tribal rights.

There’s much water imminent, we’re told. 

The Eureka arm of the National Weather Service notes that a gnarly high tide tonight could result in minor flooding around Humboldt Bay, possibly both tonight and Wednesday night. As such, they’ve issued a coastal flood advisory for between 9 p.m. and 1 a.m. tonight. The current might be stronger, too.

Now you know. 

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At a special meeting last night, the Blue Lake City Council voted 4-0 in closed session to terminate the city’s exclusive negotiating agreement with PowerTransition LLC, a Texas-based energy developer that was in line to transform the city’s defunct power plant into a 20-megawatt lithium-iron-phosphate battery energy storage facility.

The council had approved the agreement with PowerTransitions last year after a company representative approached the city with a plan to demolish some power plant infrastructure and build a battery energy storage system (BESS) that would repurpose the existing transformer and substation. PowerTransitions proposed to pay for site clean-up and remediation, with an estimated price tag between $750,000 and $1.5 million.

For the past four years, city staff have worked closely with the Redwood Coast Energy Authority (RCEA) to develop a small-scale BESS that would collect and store excess energy from the grid in rechargeable batteries for future use. At a meeting in February, PowerTransitions Senior Advisor Jeff Goldstein said the project would provide a five-day energy supply during a long-term power outage.

But the proposal drew criticism from some Blue Lake residents who argued that the project posed significant risks, including fire, environmental damage, such as potential contamination of Mad River. They also worried that it would create noise and light pollution. 

PowerTransitions’s proposal came in response to a request for offers (RFO) issued in December by RCEA, our region’s community choice aggregation energy provider. That agency was seeking offers for new or incremental capacity projects that include solar energy generation plus battery storage.

Last night, when Blue Lake Mayor John Sawatzky announced the council’s vote to terminate its agreement with PowerTransitions, he said the decision was made due to the fact that the company had not been shortlisted as a finalist in RCEA’s procurement process.

Reached via phone today, Blue Lake City Councilmember Elise Scafani, who represents the city on RCEA’s Board of Directors, said that the city’s agreement with PowerTransitions was contingent on its inclusion on RCEA’s shortlist, because without a purchasing agreement from that agency, PowerTransitions wouldn’t have a customer willing to buy the energy stored at the facility.

Scafani added that the termination of this agreement doesn’t preclude a different project from being developed at the former biomass power plant site. Scafani noted that the city has a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with RCEA, established in early 2023, to explore possibilities at that property. 

“This MOU said, ‘We understand that the biomass plant is kaput,’ but we have this grid interconnection — nobody can put a dollar figure on that,” Scafani said, highlighting the value of the plant’s transmission lines linking to the statewide energy grid. “To get those [built] now costs millions,” she said.

RCEA Executive Director Beth Burks said the power plant location remains a valuable asset, and the MOU to explore possible uses for it remains valid.

“We’re willing to work with the city to explore what could go out there and be a partner with that, to help the city evaluate what to do,” Burks said. She added that the proposals shortlisted in the RFO process will be revealed at the next RCEA board meeting, this Thursday. 

Asked what comes next from the city council, Scafani said, “Next is we start at the beginning where maybe we should have started in the first place — that’s my opinion. The beginning needed to be town hall meetings so there was a full understanding of our potential and determining a direction with our citizens [for] where we want to go with this power plant. Very honestly, we don’t understand what we have and what our potential could be, and that should be a decision our community makes together.”

The Outpost reached out to PowerTransitions seeking a comment on last night’s decision but did not hear back before publication time.

RCEA will be hosting an informational community meeting and workshop on battery storage on July 23, 5:30 p.m. at the D Street Community Center in Arcata. Burks said it will offer a broad overview of the technology, addressing why it’s important, what communities should be concerned about and debunking some misinformation. 

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PREVIOUSLY

• Blue Lake City Council to Consider Controversial Battery Storage Facility at Tomorrow’s Meeting
• After Chaotic Public Meeting, Blue Lake City Council Opts to Extend Timeline for Proposed Battery Storage Facility