###

The City of Eureka is making headway on the new emergency homeless shelter planned for Second and A streets in Old Town. The shelter, which is slated to open early next year, will provide beds for up to 40 community members in need.

At last night’s meeting, the Eureka City Council approved a $698,626.50 contract with Indiana-based contractor Mattingly Construction ($635,115 for the bid award, plus a 10% contingency to cover unexpected costs) for development of the new shelter, which will host 27 prefabricated modular buildings with sleeping quarters, restrooms, laundry and meal prep facilities. The city has already purchased prefabricated “sleeping modules” for the site, each containing two single-occupant units produced by Portland-based manufacturer LIT Homes. 

The city purchased the half-acre lot at 16 Second Street in June after receiving a $2.9 million donation from the Balay Ko Foundation, a Santa Barbara-based organization that provides private funding for projects that address food and housing insecurity. The Betty Kwan Chinn Foundation, which purchased the site a few years ago with the intention of selling it to the city in the future, will oversee operations at the shelter.

Speaking at last night’s meeting, Eureka City Manager Miles Slattery said most of the donation funds — approximately $2.1 million — were used to purchase the property and the prefabricated units. The remaining funds will be used for engineering and construction costs. He added that the city is trying to get the shelter up and running by February 2027.

Slattery | Screenshot

“Everything is set up right now with the manufacturing of the units and getting the contractor on board to have these up and running by the end of February,” Slattery said. “The only kind of X-factor in this is PG&E. … In recent years, there’s been delays with getting [solar] panels … and getting work orders processed. PG&E has been very busy doing underground work for gas lines and other projects, so it’s just been an unknown [for city] projects, and we want to prepare for that.”

Councilmember G. Mario Fernandez said he was impressed by the progress made on the project thus far. “I don’t think there’s anybody up here who would be disappointed in how quickly this is moving,” he said. “That’s fantastic.”

Fernandez asked if staff were concerned about the project being delayed with rainy season right around the corner. 

“Barring any significant rains and flooding, we should be fine,” Slattery said, adding that the Public Works Department has already plumbed the property for water and sewer. “The majority of it’ll just be grading. We actually have to bring in fill to raise the level of the property a little bit. Other than those extreme weather episodes, we should be able to meet that time[line].”

Councilmember Scott Bauer asked how many shelter beds are currently available in the city. Slattery didn’t have the exact figure on hand, but he estimated that the new shelter would expand the number of beds to 350-plus.

Bauer asked how many beds are typically available and how often the city reaches capacity. 

“We have an emergency overflow shelter agreement with St. Vincent de Paul,” Slattery said. “During COVID, it was triggered, and I think [it] was only triggered one other time. That’s still in place, and if we do get to that point, we can still rely on that to pick up another 25 beds. For the most part, especially during inclement weather, they’ll exceed capacity, but there’s never been a call — other than those times I mentioned — for the overflow shelter.”

“So we’re able to essentially house all those that need it?” Bauer asked.

“Those that are wanting it, yes,” Slattery said. He later clarified that the new shelter will differ from the Rescue Mission in that it will provide individual units for people, rather than a single cot in a large room. People staying at the shelter won’t be forced to leave in the morning and will be allowed to hang out during the day. 

After some additional discussion, the council approved the bid award in a 5-0 vote.

Fixing Up (Some) Eureka’s Streets

The city council also approved a $2.17 million contract with Kernan Construction for several street paving projects identified through the city’s Capital Improvement Project. Streets slated for construction include:

• N Street between Fifth and 14th streets
• Second Street between C and Commercial streets
• Harris Street between California and M streets

The Second Street project, slated to begin this month, will be particularly challenging. City Engineer Jesse Willor said the road will require “extensive rebuilding” because “the street’s just too far gone.”

Willor | Screenshot

“It’s to the point where it’s failed in a number of locations, and we can’t do surface treatments, like a grind and inlay that you see in a lot of the streets that we approach, which is a much more cost-effective way to get at it,” Willor said. “We’re going to have to do pretty extensive digging down to past the subgrade, install geogrid and build it back up from there. When we do that type of work, it’s often the type of work that [requires] more contingency dollars on hand because you don’t know … what you’re going to kind of encounter along the way.”

If there are funds left over, “other priority streets and sidewalks” will be added to the list of paving projects for 2026, Willor said. Staff were hoping to get Spring Street, between Wabash and Henderson, on the list this year, but the city had to push it out a bit to accommodate PG&E’s work. The project is currently planned for 2027.

Going back to the Second Street project, Fernandez asked how the road got to this point. “Is it just [that it’s] been deferred so long?” he asked. “Is it environmental issues?”

It’s a little bit of both, Willor said. When Old Town was first built out, many streets were built on “really soft soils that can move around,” not solid rock.

“We have construction techniques that we used over in the area of Second Street — S, T, Y and that whole area over there — and in Old town on F Street … [where we] had to basically dig all of F Street, between First and Second, out down to the clay and build it back up from there. It’s a good technique, [and] it seems to be working for us, and it’s about as financially efficient as we could hope for.”

The city council approved the bid award in a 5-0 vote. 

Citizens Oversight on Police Practices Annual Report

The city council also received an annual report from the Citizens Oversight on Police Practices (COPP) Board, which was established in 2022 to enhance transparency and accountability within the Eureka Police Department in the wake of the texting scandal. The COPP board works with an independent police auditor (IPA) that reviews department complaints and presents its findings at quarterly meetings. 

Board members Dino Novello and Mark Pardoe noted that there are several models for police oversight, but felt the city’s current model “works best for our community.” 

Since the board formed in 2022, the IPA has reviewed and closed 74 code of conduct investigations, which account for the vast majority of complaints, as seen in the table below. 

Most of these complaints — to the tune of 46% — were determined to be “unfounded,” while 29% were “sustained” and 11% were “withdrawn.”

Eureka Police Chief Brian Stephens explained that a “sustained” finding means there there was “at least 50.1% probability” that the alleged incident occurred and was a policy violation.

“If it’s 49.99%, and we can’t get over that hump to say yes or no [as to] whether it happened … we can’t say that it didn’t happen, but we can’t sustain the allegation because we don’t have the evidence to show that,” Stephens explained. “‘Unfounded’ [means] there was an incident that occurred — and may have occurred just like the complainant had spelled it out — however, it was not a policy violation; it was done within the grounds or within the parameters guidelines of the policy.”

The council asked a few follow-up questions, but expressed broad support for the COPP Board. The council did not take any action on the report.

###

What else happened at last night’s meeting, you ask?

• The council unanimously agreed to extend the city’s 45-day moratorium on new data center siting to give staff more time to draft an ordinance that could limit the development of such facilities. The urgency ordinance can be read here.
• The city council also got an update on staff’s efforts to expand restroom access in Old Town and along the waterfront. City Manager Slattery said staff was had pinpointed a potential location along the Waterfront Trail at the end of Pound Road. The council wasn’t necessarily against the proposal, but council members Leslie Castellano and Kati Moulton felt the  funds could be better spent expanding access to and servicing the city’s existing public bathroom facilities, most of which close at sunset. Slattery said it would be near-impossible to keep the bathroom staffed 24/7 to ensure it was properly maintained. The council talked about a few pre-fabricated, self-cleaning restrooms, like the Portland Loo, but didn’t take any action. Slattery said he would update the council at a future meeting.
• The council also formally adopted the Foreclosed and Vacant Property Registration Ordinance — linked here. The ordinance will take effect on Jan. 1, 2027.