Blue Lake’s newest city councilmember, Terri Bayles, takes the oath of office at Tuesday night’s meeting. | Screenshot.

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Facing threats of fines and enforcement actions from the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), the Blue Lake City Council finally passed its long-overdue housing element update last night via a unanimous vote. 

In passing the update, the council acted more than half a year ahead of the nine-month timeline it had proposed back in May, though City Planner Gary Rees, of SHN Consulting, explained that rezoning work connected to the update may still take the city until mid-December to complete. 

Blue Lake Mayor John Sawatzky and Councilmember Kat Napier recently attended meetings with staff from HCD, who passed along the agency’s desire for the city to “expedite the timeline as quickly as we possibly can,” Acting City Manager Dani Burkhart said while introducing the matter for discussion.

The state agency asked Blue Lake’s council to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) formalizing its commitment comply with state housing law by coming into compliance with the (current) 6th Cycle Housing Element Update and planning ahead for the 7th.

If the council were to decline to sign that agreement, HCD could issue a stipulated judgment, according to Burkhart. That type of court order would have much more severe consequences for noncompliance, she said. City Attorney Ryan Plotz backed that assessment and urged the council to choose the MOU. 

The city planner agreed. “Some of the benefits the MOU is … , one, they would provide enhanced technical assistance for the city to help with coming into compliance, [and] they would commit to a fast review process,” Rees said. 

Mayor Sawatzky asked whether the pressure being put on Blue Lake is connected to grants the city received through HCD. (Blue Lake was awarded $65,000 in 2021 through the state’s Local Early Action Planning Grant (LEAP) program for the explicit purpose of updating its housing element.) 

“I think the way they look at that is, that’s one more reason for them to be like, ‘We literally paid for it. Come on, guys,’” Rees said. 

Napier noted that she has been bringing forward public concerns about a prior draft update, which the council chose not to adopt back in March, and she asked how the latest draft compares. Rees explained that this version is largely the same, though staff reduced the projected number of housing units on a few specific sites while still meeting the city’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA), the minimum number of housing units it must plan to accommodate in the coming years.

The rezoning work that lies ahead for the city will focus on making it easier to build multi-family housing on certain parcels with only a building permit — no special use permit required. Rees noted that it’s intended to spur development by minimizing uncertainty around obtaining such permit.

During the public comment session some local residents urged the council to pass the update and sign the MOU. One woman asked about what this would mean for a mixed-use Danco project that has been proposed for the Powers Creek District. The council did not provide an answer, though staff has previously noted that the project could proceed with or without an update. Other commenters argued that there should be more environmental review and mitigation, which Rees said is not legally required.

The council wound up passing the update without any further discussion, following a motion to approve from Councilmember Elise Scafani and a second from Napier. 

New Councilmember

Earlier in the meeting, the council set about choosing a fifth member to fill out the remainder of the term of Chris Firor, who unexpectedly resigned mere minutes before a council meeting in late May. As we reported on Monday, there were only two applicants for the position: former Blue Lake Mayor Adelene Jones, who only lost her re-election bid through the flip of a coin, essentially, and retired public school educator Terri Bayles.

To anyone paying attention to Blue Lake’s fractious politics lately, the choice appeared like a foregone conclusion. Jones is actively involved in a campaign to recall Sawatzky, Napier and Scafani, three of the four people charged with making the decision, while Bayles’s civic involvement has mostly been limited to organizing public opposition to a proposed lithium-iron-phosphate battery energy storage system (BESS) at the city’s defunct power plant.

Terri Bayles. | Photo from Arcata School District via Facebook.

Indeed, the council wound up picking Bayles. Jones made her pitch to the council ahead of the selection, arguing that her ballot-box tie with Napier reflects the will of the public to see her continue her 30 years of involvement in city government. She faced critical comments from the public but said, “I think the city has been run beautifully the last 10 years.” She later added, “I stand on my record, and I think it’s a good one.”

Some members of the council pressed Bayles on whether she’d be able to keep an open mind should the city council be faced with proposals similar to the BESS project in the future. 

“I can’t say that I would close my mind off to that, for sure,” she replied, somewhat cryptically. “I do have some strong feelings about the setting of it right there by our river.”

But in her initial speech to the council she struck a populist tone.

“I promise that I will work hard, I will be diligent [and] I will honor you by being honest and trustworthy and working with everybody in this community, because we’re all part of one community,” Bayles said.

Bike and Skate Park Grant Application

Later in the meeting, the council agreed to apply for a grant from The Land and Water Conservation Fund Coalition in hopes of subsidizing the cost of the city’s partially finished bike and skate park. 

The current iteration of this city council has had a lot of questions about the park, including the as-yet-undetermined total cost and potential liability.

Burkhart explained that the grant request would be for between $20,000 and $200,000 to cover the remaining work in phase one of construction though phase three. The award would be contingent on the city providing matching funding of at least 50 percent, and both Napier and Scafani questioned whether donations received through the Redwood Coast Mountain Bike Association (RCMBA) could be included in that. Burkhart assured them that they could.

Napier also expressed concerns about wording in the application suggesting that the city must have 100 percent of the balance of project funding before accepting a grant. Plotz explained that “the project” could be defined narrowly, so that wording doesn’t necessarily mean that the city must have enough money to finish the park.

With assurances that the details could be worked out later, the council unanimously voted to have staff apply for the grant.

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