How are things going in Rio Dell? A short-handed Humboldt County Board of Supervisors got a bit of an update today, some two years and change after a sharp 6.4 magnitude earthquake damaged some 350 buildings in the town, leaving 90 homes at least temporarily uninhabitable.

By the end of the meeting, there seemed to be a pretty clear consensus: Homes are getting repaired, things are plugging away … but not nearly as quickly as would be ideal.

The board heard from Camille Benner, the director of family services at the Yuba/Sutter office of Habitat for Humanity. Shortly after the earthquake, the Board of Supervisors set aside $1 million for recovery efforts, and part of that went to Habitat and its partners, to help cash-strapped Rio Dellers to repair their homes. The nonprofit received $250,000 up front, with the promise of another $250,000 when its work was complete. (Read the original contract here.)

Today, Benner came to the board, which was missing both Supervisor Steve Madrone and Supervisor Natalie Arroyo, with a presentation on the the work her organization has done so far, and also with a request. All told, she said, Habitat has been part of a coalition, with different organizations and different funding sources, that has repaired 33 Rio Dell homes. It was the lead agency on seven of those cases.

A summary of one Habitat for Humanity-led repair job in Rio Dell.

The request she had for the board was: Would it be possible to get that additional $250,000 now, so as to start repair work on four additional homes immediately? Those projects are pretty much ready to go, and at least one of them is suffering from rain damage that will only get worse the longer they delay.

“We are not in a position right now to cover the construction costs and I don’t want to leave contractors waiting to be reimbursed,” Benner said. “So these families are approved, they have all of their paperwork in and they have waited an incredibly long time and they’re very, very excited.”

The decision to release the funds will apparently be relegated to a future meeting, though the board as a whole seemed very receptive. The funds have already been budgeted, so it won’t cost any more money.

But first, as is his habit, Supervisor Rex Bohn wondered why there was so much red tape, and why the hell things are taking so damn long. He reminisced about immediate aftermath of the quake.

“I mean, we got burrito trucks galore down there in two days,” he said. “We had, I mean, there was two houses put up the same weekend. And they put them up that weekend. Two houses, foundations, everything. And you’re right, no permits or anything else. But they got the family back in the houses. Is there a way we could do this quicker?”

He had a receptive audience this time. Supervisor Michelle Bushnell, said that the whole rushed process of providing relief in the immediate aftermath of the quake was “a learning curve.” To that point, Kerry Venegas with Changing Tides Family Services, one of several local organizations working with Habitat for Humanity, told the board that she had created a system to track the work done in Rio Dell and the lessons learned throughout, and that she would be eager to share those conclusions with the county.

“We definitely have some ideas about what worked faster, because there were things that rolled out by April,” Venegas said.

The only vote the board took on the matter was to accept the report from Habitat for Humanity. It passed 3-0.

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Often times, the ceremony involves the snapping of photographs with the governing member. These may be framed, if the honoree chooses to frame them. Screenshot.

Every meeting of every public agency devotes at least a little bit of time on ceremonial matters. It works like this: A member of the governing body will propose to recognize next month as “The Month of the Young Marine Biology Student,” for example. The member reads a formal proclamation, possibly written by ChatGPT, which contains lots of “whereas” clauses leading up to one climactic “therefore” clause, in which the month is so proclaimed. Then a representative young marine biology student, or possibly several of them, stands up to accept this honor bestowed upon their discipline, and talk a little bit about the importance of their work and what drew them to it.

Possibly because it was such a short meeting, otherwise, the Board of Supervisors packed in a whole enormous load of these things today, taking up a total of an hour and a half to get through what Supervisor Mike Wilson took to calling “Procl-a-thon 2025.”

Here are the things that were honored today:

Click those links to read florid language in praise of those things.

“Sometimes I have people say, what does Humboldt County government do?” Bushnell mused near the end of the item. “And today we did everything from sheriff’s department to dispatchers to the DA to public health and a lot of proclamations to childcare … And there was a lot of happy things today and not so happy things, but it is what makes us work as a community.”

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And that was almost all. As Izzy wrote yesterday, a potential settlement agreement concerning Kernan Construction’s controversial Glendale gravel operation, originally scheduled for today, was put off until next week.

But also: Coming out of the board’s closed session, which was largely devoted to ongoing negotiations with the unions representing county employees, Bushnell, the board’s chair, had an announcement. 

“So typically the board addresses their compensation and benefits once all bargaining units have been negotiating,” Bushnell said, “That said, I would like to direct staff to return with an item next week to publicly state that the board does not intend to increase their base pay in calendar year 2025.”

Union negotiations have been tense this year, and it looks like they’re about to get more tense yet.