This afternoon, against the backdrop of Indian Island and the Samoa Peninsula in the parking lot of the Wharfinger Building, outgoing Eureka City Councilmember Marian Brady officially launched her campaign to unseat the city’s incumbent representative on the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District, and to start working toward a “renewed vision” of the harbor as an “economic driver of the North Coast.”

 

Incumbent Richard Marks, she suggested, has not been up to the job.

“Don’t you think that nine years of poor decisions is enough?” Brady asked the crowd.

Brady’s campaign launch was attended by about 60 people — most of them on the grayish side — and included a who’s-who of the local conservative political establishment, fellow candidates for office and harbor hangabouts: Supervisor Rex Bohn; McKinleyville Community Services District director Dennis Mayo; right-leaning candidates for Eureka city office Michelle Costantine, Anthony Mantova, Joe Bonino and John Fullerton; former city councilmember Mike Newman; onetime harbor commissioner Dennis Hunter; former harbor district CEO David Hull; east-west train booster Pete Oringer; and Corky Cornwell.

In her speech, Brady softly but firmly excoriated the work done by the current incarnation of the Harbor Commission — which clawed its way back from bankruptcy after years of big spending, mostly fruitless, on freight/rail development — and advocated, in so many words, a return to the old days. She decried the district’s acquisition of the former Louisiana-Pacific pulp mill at Samoa and the subsequent federally funded cleanup of stockpiled toxic materials, saying that the mill’s (insolvent) former ownership should have been held to pay for that work. She lamented the loosening of zoning restrictions on hundreds of acres of land around the bay that had been set aside for coastal-dependent industrial businesses, which have lain fallow for decades. She took issue with the district’s purchase of a dredge that she claimed was not in compliance with California law, and will never be used in Humboldt Bay.

At the same time, she said, she has been encouraged by the development of recreational infrastructure around the bay, including Eureka’s Waterfront Trail and the coming construction of an RV park underneath the Samoa Bridge.

Audio of Brady’s full speech below.

Marian Brady addresses supporters at her official campaign launch.

The Harbor District’s Fourth Division has the same geographic boundaries as the county of Humboldt’s Fourth District. It covers most of the city of Eureka, as well as everything on the Samoa Peninsula south of the bridge. Election day is November 6.

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LINK:

• Marian Brady for Harbor Commissioner Facebook page.