A short and unsubstantial Arcata City Council meeting last night was highlighted by a public hearing where commenters shared their opinions on public transportation with a focus on their “unmet needs.” On the whole, much of the feedback was positive — but the Humboldt Transit Authority’s inability to run buses on Sundays and late at night got some flak.

The comments will be forwarded to the Humboldt County Association of Governments. Other jurisdictions have done the same; both the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors and the Eureka City Council heard from residents this past week. 

Both speakers and councilmembers talked about the difficulty people without cars have getting around Humboldt County; councilmember Kimberley White even mentioned she had to hitch rides after meetings back to Valley West when her car needed repairing recently. The lack of public transport to Bayside and south G Street was also mentioned.

Councilmember Stacy Atkins-Salazar said there was a chance the requests for late night and Sunday routes may never be realized, despite their frequency. 

“Obviously, it’s important to hear all of the unmet needs,” she said. “But I think when they get evaluated, they go through a process of what is reasonable to meet, which is a whole metric. So just because we might want Sunday service or Bayside (which lots of people do), if the metrics don’t show that it’s reasonable to meet for funding, then it doesn’t get met. Which is why sometimes we hear the same requests year after year.”

It wasn’t all bad news; Mayor Alex Stillman said that over 1,000 Cal Poly Humboldt students were riding the bus to and fro the new Hinarr Hu Moulik dorms daily, and White said she was excited to be able to take a cheap public bus all the way to Willow Creek to see family during the holidays. The route to Ukiah got a few shoutouts as well from the councilmembers, as did HTA’s affordability, dependability, and speed.

“You have to have numbers to run all night. We’re not an urban area like San Francisco,” Stillman said. “…We’re not there yet. Our population base is still 134,000 people for the entire county. It’s going to take a while for this to come.”

Other tidbits: Hyland Fence, Forest Update, End of Stillman’s Tenure

City Manager Merritt Perry said during his report that he’d reached out to the owners of a property on Hyland Street in Bayside whose recently installed fence was blocking pedestrian access to Golf Course Road (a few Bayside residents complained about the fence at the last city council meeting. The old shortcut shaved off about 200 yards). However, both the fence and the path are on private property, and Perry said they didn’t seem too interested in removing it. No action for future meetings was planned. 

Michael Furniss, the chair of the Forestry Management Committee, updated the council on the various going-ons in city-owned forests, complete with trail cam footage of cougars and owls and other creatures. Surprise: there are a lot of ‘em out there!

Last night’s meeting was the last city council meeting 86-year-old Alex Stillman will preside over as mayor. A special meeting to elect a new mayor and vice mayor will be held Dec. 11.