Eureka business owner and “Housing for All” initiative proponent Mike Munson. | Screenshot.

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On Tuesday night, the Eureka City Council unanimously opted to submit the pro-parking lot “Housing for All and Downtown Vitality” initiative to voters at the next municipal election, which, despite claims to the contrary by the initiative’s backers, is scheduled for November 5, 2024, not March 5, the date of the next statewide primary.

The only other option available to the council, per the rules of qualified citizen initiatives, would have been to adopt the measure then and there, during the meeting, and no one on the council was inclined to do so.

Earlier on Tuesday, proponents of the initiative Mike Munson and Michelle Costantine-Blackwell had filed the latest in a series of lawsuits against the city, this one alleging that the Eureka personnel were “improperly” trying to postpone the measure’s appearance on ballots by five months. In an apparent misreading of the state Elections Code, they argued that the city was obligated to place the initiative on the next statewide general election, rather than the next municipal election.

Munson and Costantine-Blackwell also allege that city staff should have placed their ballot initiative on the agenda for the previous city council meeting, on October 3, though Assistant City Manager Pam Powell said that the October 3 agenda had already been published and publicly notified by the time staff received the necessary verification from the county Elections Office.

At any rate, the conversation about this measure began with such calendar quibbles. During the public comment period, Munson asked the council to adopt the initiative itself or place it on the March primary ballot.

”Downtown business owners have been attending public and city council meetings for many years to express our concerns about removing the parking spaces that are vital to our businesses … ,” he said. “You have continued to ignore the requests to work on a better plan, and so you’ve left us with no choice but to let the voters of Eureka decide this. We support housing downtown but not to the detriment of the businesses.”

Fellow downtown business owners Linden Tyler Glavich and Roy Gomez also spoke in favor of retaining the parking lots, as did Kenny Carswell, an employee of Security National Properties speaking on behalf of the company, which has supplied funding for the “Housing for All” initiative.

Caroline Griffith, director of the Northcoast Environmental Center (NEC), spoke in support of the city’s plans to build affordable infill housing in Old Town in downtown and said the initiative contains false and misleading information.

“Specifically, I’m talking about the misleading information about the [former] Jacobs campus and the assumption that simply rezoning that site will result in housing being built,” Griffith said, referring to property at the south end of the city owned by Eureka City Schools, which has been negotiating a sale to the California Highway Patrol.

She also noted that people who’d be eligible for the proposed low-income housing on city-owned lots include grocery store clerks, city maintenance workers, health care professionals and even some employees at Security National, where a few current job listings start at $18 per hour.

“[A]nd they wouldn’t even need to worry about parking because they would live so close to work,” she quipped.

Speaking via Zoom, Costantine defended the initiative, describing it as “pro-housing” and criticizing members of the council for spreading alleged misinformation.

“The initiative allows the city voters to decide where housing developments should be built and if parking [capacity] should be reduced, maintained or increased,” Cosstantine said. “Our voters should make these decisions based on current and verified information, not flawed parking studies and the threat of not meeting the RHNA [Regional Housing Needs Allocation] criteria established for Eureka.”

Following the public comment period, Councilmember Leslie Castellano said that the initiative, if passed, could create “some serious problems for the city” by compromising its compliance with state law, costing taxpayers money and jeopardizing millions of dollars in grant funds.

“And so, you know, I definitely support continued education and access to public process around this issue so that we can really ensure that people have a deep understanding of what they’re voting on,” Castellano said.

Fellow councilmembers Renee Contreras-DeLoach and Scott Bauer said they wouldn’t be comfortable passing an initiative signed by only about five to 10 percent of the city’s residents, so they advocated putting it on the ballot.

Councilmember Kati Moulton said, “I really wish this ordinance did what it says it wants to do and made housing more accessible in the city of Eureka. I wish that that was true. If we could just vote to make housing appear on the Jacobs campus, as the representative of the Second Ward I would really like that, but that is simply not an option no matter what this ordinance says.”

The vote to send the measure to voters next November was unanimous.

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