###

Early in today’s meeting of the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors, Mike Wilson, the board chair and Third District representative, remarked on the “huge agenda.” Sure enough, the board covered a lot of territory before adjourning to closed session shortly before 2 p.m. 

Let’s get right into our rundown of what happened. 

Felled old growth in Lower Redway

Early on, during the designated time for public comment on matters that weren’t on the agenda, a dozen SoHum residents complained to the board about some old growth redwood trees that a Lower Redway property owner was recently allowed to cut down after obtaining a hazard exemption from CalFire. (My colleague Isabella Vanderheiden reported on the situation back in January.)

Collectively, these speakers argued that the towering Sequoia sempervirens in question were healthy and sound, and that they should have been protected by a Q Zone overlay the county created in 1996 specifically to protect old growth redwoods near the John B. DeWitt State Natural Reserve.

“I believe the landowner and CalFire abused the exemption process,” Redway resident Sue Maloney said. “In addition to that, Humboldt County clearly failed to enforce its own ordinance. This never should have happened.”

Property owner Robert Scarlett is a CalFire employee, and several speakers accused him of gaming the system to obtain the hazard tree exemption, which allowed him to remove at least five old-growth redwoods, estimated to be between 200 and 300 years old, from a residential parcel on the corner of Oakridge Drive and Briceland Road in Lower Redway.

“I think that CalFire basically allowed old growth logging under the guise of home safety, and that the Humboldt [County] Planning Department allowed this to go through is just egregious,” Ettersburg resident Amy Gustin said.

“It looks like the site of a massacre,” Redway resident Kathy Glass offered. “It’s a slashy, muddy mess. It’s going to be a scar for many years, and I think we can all acknowledge that these trees are irreplaceable.”

Patrick Mulligan, a retired registered professional forester, suggested that the hazard exemption was only approved because both the applicant and the forester were CalFire employees who “figured they could abuse their positions and slide in illegal action under the wire.” He accused Planning and Building Department Director John Ford of enabling corruption.

That allegation earned a mild rebuke from Wilson on procedural grounds and a more pointed refutation from First District Supervisor Rex Bohn, who said who said the incident was strictly a CalFire matter than never reached the planning director’s desk.

“You pretty much lose all respect for me when you come up and attack our staff,” Bohn said. “Director Ford had nothing to do with this.” 

Several speakers asked the county to bring these issues up for a formal review — a “post-mortem” to find out where the process failed. But since the matter wasn’t on today’s agenda, Wilson reminded those present that the board couldn’t deliberate or solve the matter on the spot.

Second District Supervisor Michelle Bushnell noted that the exemption process is on hold and under review at the Planning Department.

Fifth District Supervisor Steve Madrone, meanwhile, quoted from Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax (“We need to speak for the trees…”) and recommended agendizing the Q Zone item for a full discussion.

Tobacco retail licensing ordinance revisited amid legal dispute

The board has been tinkering with a countywide tobacco retail licensing ordinance for more than two years now. The ordinance was designed to limit youth access to tobacco and vaping products in the unincorporated parts of the county by capping the number of retail licenses and tightening enforcement.

Public Health Director Sophia Pereira and other staff today reported that it’s proving effective; the number of retailers in unincorporated areas has dropped from 60 to 53, and flavored‑product violations have fallen from 60% of stores to just 4%. All current retailers are now in compliance with state, federal and local tobacco laws, according to staff.

But more tinkering in required! Staff asked the board to adopt a set of “clarifying” amendments, including one explicitly limiting the ordinance to unincorporated Humboldt County and another spelling out an internal administrative review step before appeals. Mario Kalson, the county’s director of environmental health, noted that the ordinance’s existing appeals process goes through an administrative law judge, which he said is time-consuming and expensive for both the county and the appellant.

Those issues have come to the fore thanks to an active legal dispute. Redwood Oil Company, a family-owned gas station and convenience store operator, last year sold 24 of its outfits (most of which include Chevron stations and Aztec Grill restaurants) to Idaho-based chain Jacksons Food Stores. The value of the deal was based on the assumption that Jacksons could retain the tobacco retail sales licenses at each location. 

Redwood Oil Company CEO Julie Van Alyea called in on Zoom before the board today and noted that three applications for such sales were denied based on a population-based license cap in the ordinance. The matter was appealed to an administrative law judge who negated the county’s reason for denial, she said, and she asked the county to process those three applications immediately. (An attorney representing Redwood Oil appeared in-person to make the same request, with a threat of litigation should it decline.)

However, the board wasn’t considering the specifics of that matter today, despite the fact that Bohn kept bringing it up. (He argued that Redwood’s deal with Jacksons should be exempted from the ordinance.)

The matter at hand concerned the specifics of the ordinance, and the board split over two contentious issues:

1. whether or not to create an exemption from the cap for retailers located more than 10 miles from the nearest tobacco seller, and
2. whether appeals should continue to go to a state administrative law judge rather than the Board of Supervisors.

Bushnell advocated for a five-mile radius for exemptions, rather than 10, in defense of retailers along Avenue of the Giants. Bohn reiterated his standing skepticism of the ordinance more broadly, noting that he grew up in a corner store and defending the right of private businesses to sell legal products that generate sales tax revenues for the county.

The others supervisors, however, argued any new exemptions would undercut the ordinance’s public‑health purpose. Madrone and Fourth District Supervisor Natalie Arroyo, in particular, held firm. Arroyo noted that the purpose of the ordinance was always to reduce the number of licenses in the county while addressing the region’s second-leading cause of death.

Ultimately, Arroyo made a motion to amend the ordinance in several regards, adding an administrative review officer to the appeals process and retaining the 10-mile minimum for exemptions to the ordinance. The motion was approved by a 3-2 vote with Bushnell and Bohn dissenting. The amendments must come back to the board at next week’s meeting to be officially adopted.

New McMAC member

There was a great deal of interest from the community in an open seat on the McKinleyville Municipal Advisory Committee, often referred to as the McMAC (pronounced “Mick Mac”). At-large board member Maya Conrad retired from the commission with about two and a half years left in her four-year term, and the county received a dozen applications to fill that vacancy. 

Several of them appeared in person or called in to make their case to the board today, and after each supervisor had a chance to name their top candidates (and to commend all those who stepped forward), the board coalesced on a choice: 33-year-old Michael Smith, a property owner and aviation enthusiast who talked about growing up in town and his plans to raise his own kids there. 

Code of Conduct complaint procedures

Before adjourning to closed session, the board returned to the matter of its own Code of Conduct and how to handle allegations of misconduct by county supervisors. Bushnell has pushed for changes to the complaints procedure after disagreeing with the results of an investigation into her own alleged misconduct last year. (She was censured by her board colleagues and removed from her position as chair in November.)

Today, staff explained that since November, when the board voted to refer the code to the Civil Grand Jury for possible improvements, the internal committee responsible for processing complaints — consisting of the CAO, HR director, and county counsel — has been effectively stuck, unsure whether to continue under existing rules or wait for outside recommendations.

And those recommendations aren’t necessarily forthcoming. The Grand Jury explained in a January press release that, as an independent judicial body, it doesn’t take assignments from the Board of Supervisors or anyone else, so it’s not bound to weigh in on this matter. Even if it does so, its report won’t be published until the end of the fiscal year in late June, so staff sought direction on how to proceed with both pending and new complaints.

Bushnell recommended that complaints about supervisor misconduct should go to an independent mediator, rather than putting staff in the awkward position of adjudicating complaints about their bosses. She also took exception to the way she was treated by her colleagues last year.

“I’m never going to censure anybody on this board,” Bushnell said. “It’s not my place, and so I just publicly am going to say that I am not your judge and jury. Your constituents are.”

Ultimately, the board agreed to process complaints under the current Code of Conduct for the time being, and to form an ad hoc committee of two supervisors and key staff to review and propose updates to that code — including possible mediation options.

The board also agreed to fold in any feedback the Civil Grand Jury may provide, so long as that feedback is received before the end of June.