call

San Francisco Call, April 19, 1910.

The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors just unanimously voiced its support for a feasibility study on the brand-spanking-new multi-gazillion-dollar east-west railroad line that will finally bring back the cargo.

After much public testimony and a presentation from Eureka City Manager Dave Tyson, who assured the board that his proposal will involve expenditures of staff time but no dollars from the county’s budget (yet), the board voted 5-0 to hop on board.

Many questions surrounding the east-west train are still unanswered. Such as: How much it will cost, who will pay for it, who would want to use it, where it would go, how the land would be acquired, and what economic benefit might it be expected to provide for the county were it to be built. But great public frenzy over the phantom train, combined with the assurance that the action would technically be a freebie for the county, propelled the feasibility study to success.

“This is a real thing without any money attached and people who know way more about it than we do, and they’ll tell us if it works,” said Supervisor Rex Bohn.

The sentiment carried the day. Even Arcata-area Supervisor Mark Lovelace, now the board’s only train skeptic, lent a tepid thumbs-up. Perhaps he finally concluded the most expeditious course is to let the bubble play out to its inevitable end. He asked a few pointed questions of Tyson and then called it a day.

Meanwhile, still no word from the county or anyone else on the Sims Mega-Humbo-riffic Superdevelopment Strategy proposed in these pages several months ago. Sad to say, the failure of local agencies to even investigate the possibility of this potentially 11-figure boost to the local economy is proof positive that they all hate jobs and actively want our children to move as far away as possible.

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