Spoor addresses the council. Photos by Dezmond Remington.


PREVIOUSLY

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The Arcata City Council decided last night that the city should attempt to earn state money to replace water meters instead of fixing damaged apartments and upgrading infrastructure at the low-income housing project the Grove. 

It’s a blow for the Arcata House Partnership, the homeless services organization that runs the Grove. AHP had appealed to the city, asking Arcata to apply to California’s Community Development Block Grant (CDGB) program for $2.9 million that AHP would use for various repairs and improvements, including installing ADA-compliant sidewalks, adding solar panels, and fixing 12 apartments that are too damaged to live in.

Darlene Spoor, AHP’s executive director, framed AHP’s pitch as an equitability issue; funding AHP would benefit the entire city, Spoor said. AHP could house at least another 12 homeless people with the funding by fixing the damaged units, and AHP could improve the lives of the 56 current tenants, all of whom have a disability and were once homeless. AHP knew when the Grove opened in 2022 that it would eventually need more money for upgrades, but decided it was more important to house people immediately and figure out where the funding would come from later. The city council could, she said, try to buy stability for its tenants.

“We knew we did not have every dollar we needed for capital improvements,” Spoor said at the council meeting last night. “That is not an oversight — it is a choice…We made a mission-driven decision. We chose to house people immediately so they could be safe and stable, rather than wait until every infrastructure upgrade was fully funded.”

Many of the public commenters at the meeting agreed with her proposal, as did councilmember Sarah Schaefer, who was the lone dissenting vote in favor of applying for CDGB funding for the Grove. 

“I think we need the housing,” Schaefer said. “It needs to be rehabbed. It’s a pretty strong need right now, and we’ve seen that federal and state grants are kind of going away for a while. I think to maintain what we have, and try to get grant funding to be able to do that, is going to be important.”

But it was an uphill battle for AHP. There’s no guarantee Arcata will get grants for any project. Councilmembers and city staff pointed out that Arcata was less likely to get the state funding if they applied on behalf of AHP than if the city applied to replace water meters, both because of stiff competition from other municipalities with housing issues and because Arcata’s CDGB program has never used that source of funding for a project like that before. They pointed out that the city is losing $100,000 a year because of old, faulty water meters, according to councilmember Stacy Atkins-Salazar, and they claimed that most of the people they talked to in their off-time preferred the meter project. The vote was 4-1. 

The council spent a lot of time justifying their decision. All four of the councilmembers who voted for the water meters had mixed feelings about their decision. 

“I’m sorry we can’t do both,” Atkins-Salazar said. 

“It’s a very hard decision,” replied councilmember Alex Stillman. 

Alex Stillman (left) gesticulates.

Mayor Kimberley White.


Mayor Kimberley White talked for three minutes straight before the vote, explaining why she preferred the replacement project. 

“Water meter replacement project is highly competitive, measurable and impacts everyone,” she said. “So while the Grove is important, as we have all pointed out, it’s facing some uncertain scoring [from California] due to project readiness…So choosing the meter project maximizes our chance of securing funding that benefits the greatest number of our residents.”

In a brief interview with the Outpost after the vote, Spoor, effusive and teary, said she was disappointed with the decision. She said city hall should look for water infrastructure funding elsewhere. 

“I live in Arcata,” she said. “I want our water to be wonderful too, but there’s more opportunity for big money for water infrastructure, than for housing…I understand that city council has to look out for everyone, but when we have hundreds and hundreds of people who are homeless in our community — they are everyone.”