UPDATE, 4:50 p.m.

Blue Lake Mayor John Sawatzky emailed the following statement:

I’m excited to get this recall off my plate and move on to getting work done for this city. This recall was based on false narratives. We knew this recall was coming before we parted ways with our City Manager, based on statements made by Safety Commissioner [Alex] Ricca and ex-Mayor [Adelene] Jones. Ex-Mayor Jones stated she wasn’t happy with the 5-page evaluation we had provided to City Manager Magger [sic] and told us, “Don’t you even think about it.”

As for Elise, she has been steadfast during her tenure, has always asked the hard-hitting questions, and brought things to light that others didn’t see. She is the kind of person you want in an oversight position.

[NOTE: After emailing this statement, Sawatzky asked the Outpost to redact the sentence that has been stricken-through, above, saying it lacked sufficient context.]

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Original post:

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The citizen-led effort to recall three Blue Lake city councilmembers has fallen short for all but one of the targets: Mayor Pro-Tem Elise Scafani, who will soon be the subject of a special election to consider her removal from office.

A signature-gathering effort that wrapped up Saturday fell five valid signatures shy of the 250-voter threshold necessary to trigger a recall election for Mayor John Sawatzky; a parallel effort for Councilmember Kat Napier fell just four signatures shy of the mark, leaving both of them secure in their seats.

In Sawatzky’s case, recall proponents had gathered 267 signatures, but three were found to be duplicates and 19 others were deemed insufficient by the Humboldt County Elections Office. Similarly, the petition for Napier had 269 signatures with three duplicates and 20 others deemed insufficient.

Petition signatures can be rejected for a variety of reasons, such as when they’re illegible, when they don’t match what’s on file with the Elections Office or when they come from people who live outside city limits.

The petition for Scafani likewise had 22 signatures rejected, but with 276 collected, that left four to spare.

The recall effort was launched in response to community uproar over the departure of longtime City Manager Amanda “Mandy” Mager, with many residents concluding that she’d been forced out. Recall proponents were also upset about the council’s delays in adopting an updated housing element despite threats of fines and other legal consequences from the state. (That document has since been adopted.)

There had been some concern and confusion about what would result should all three recall efforts succeed. The prospect of simultaneous removal of a majority of a governing body was virtually without precedent in California. That conundrum won’t have to be solved in Blue Lake. 

Someone from the county Elections Office dropped off the official signature verification certificates this morning at City Hall. In a phone conversation, Blue Lake Acting Interim City Manager Jill Duffy explained what comes next. 

At the next city council meeting, scheduled for Aug. 26, the council will consider those certificates, she said. Per California Election Code, the council then has 14 days to issue an order calling for a special election. Staff will then present the council with an array of potential dates for that election, though it must fall somewhere between 88 and 125 days after the day the council issued its order. 

Could the council simply decline to accept the certificates? Or perhaps refuse to call a special election? Duffy said no. Per state law, those actions are now mandatory.

Having checked the calendar, Duffy said the earliest possible date for Blue Lake’s recall election would be Nov. 25, which is just two days before Thanksgiving and thus a poor option. The last possible date is Dec. 23, so Blue Lake residents should expect the election to take place on the first, second or third Tuesday in December.

The location of this time window of opportunity on the calendar means that Blue Lake’s special recall election can’t possibly be consolidated with the statewide special election being cooked up by Governor Gavin Newsom in a bid to counteract blatant partisan gerrymandering in Texas. 

Duffy said it’s impossible to know exactly how much this special election will wind up costing the City of Blue Lake, but it’ll likely be in the neighborhood of $10,000. That estimate is based on the cost of a 2023 special election in Garberville, which cost about $8,800. 

A voicemail left for Scafani seeking comment was not immediately returned. Sawatzky declined to immediately comment on the record. An email to Napier had not been returned by the time this post was published.

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Dozens of activists swarmed the Arcata City Council meeting, demanding everything from Arcata becoming a sister city with Gaza to divesting from CalPers to reforming Arcata’s relationship with its homeless population. About two hours and 15 minutes of the two-and-a-half-hour-long meeting was taken up by public comment. 

City staff were ready for disruption after protests at a special meeting of the city council meeting last week forced it to end prematurely. The only substantive items on the agenda were a proclamation supporting Two-Spirit and intersex people and the consent calendar; a report from the Energy Committee was postponed. An area in the back of the chambers was reserved for people with signs, of which there were plenty. Posters around the chambers reminded people to not disrupt the meeting by clapping or insulting council members and told them that if they did, the mayor has the power to eject them. City Manager Merritt Perry also asked the crowd to be calm at the beginning of the meeting.

“Let us now be sweet to each other and nice,” Mayor Alex Stillman said, “and not clap and make each other feel odd.”

The city council had trouble passing even their abbreviated agenda. Half an hour into the meeting, after seven public speakers addressed the council, the council attempted to move the meeting along and accept the consent calendar but was overwhelmed by jeering and chanting. They left the chambers, and Perry attempted to convince the crowd to let them at least get through the consent calendar. 

“All I would ask is that we would be ready to go through the consent calendar,” Perry said. “It’ll be two minutes, and we can spend as much time as we need to hear from everybody in this meeting.”

The council did end up accepting the consent calendar.

Despite the requests, the protesters didn’t go easy on the council, mostly blasting them for not passing a resolution to become a sister city with Gaza and for supposed sweeps of homeless encampments and perceived Brown Act violations. (Perry denied last week that Arcata was destroying homeless encampments.) Dozens of protestors spoke in a row, interrupted only by occasional moments of screaming, yelling, and clapping, and transitions from one to the next.

“Alex Stillman, you have been a politician as long as I have known your name, and I can’t name a single fucking thing you’ve done for this community,” said one speaker. “You are incompetent, senile, and jaded. Just quit your job.”

“Why not spend your money on shit the Arcata people actually want?” another asked. “Fuck you. You guys can’t even do a cease-fire? That’s the bare minimum! Those are words on paper, and you can’t do it! You would allow the Nazis to come and kill my ancestors. I will never forgive you.”

Most of the public commenters on Zoom slammed the idea of an Arcata-Gaza sister city and were roundly mocked by the in-person commenters.

Two hours after the start of the meeting, most of the demonstrators had left. Public comment went for another half hour or so, and the meeting ended. 

# # #

BELOW: Some moments from last night’s meeting. Full meeting here.

UPDATE, 4:30 p.m.: In a message to customers just now, Vero says it is aiming to have service back up by 10 p.m.

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UPDATE, as of 1:45 p.m.: Vero says…

We are currently experiencing a network outage in the Eureka, CA area. Our Engineering and Field Services teams are working diligently to resolve this issue. Field crews are on site and have found fiber has been damaged from the Pond Fire. An assessment of the damage is currently underway, and repairs will begin shortly. We do not have an ETR at this time but will update as soon as we have more information.  

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UPDATE, 10 a.m.: A communication from Vero to its customers a few moments ago confirms that the fiber break was due to last night’s Pond Fire outside Laytonville. It says crews are currently repairing the line.

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ORIGINAL POST:

Eureka Vero customers woke this morning to Day Two of their internet being down, as well as a note from Vero customer service fixing blame for the outage: A fire, they say, has cut the line, and they are waiting for Calfire to allow crews to enter the area to repair the line.

Says Vero:

We want to update you on the service outage currently affecting the Eureka area. The disruption is due to a fire in the region, and repair crews are currently awaiting access approval from CalFire to begin restoration work.

At this time, we do not have an estimated time of resolution. However, please know that we are actively working to restore service as quickly and safely as possible.

We appreciate your patience and understanding, and we will continue to provide updates as progress is made.

Which raises the question: Which fire was this?  We’ll try to get hold of Vero today for further details. To the company’s credit, it seems willing to be transparent with the public.

Until we get hold of them, we will advance a pure hypothesis: That this outage was caused by this fire in the Laytonville area last night. The time time stamps roughly align.

But wait a sec, you say: If that’s the case, doesn’t it mean that Vero is renting its bandwidth on the old north-south AT&T cable — the one that used to get cut, like, every other day, back in the bad old days of non-redundant fiber? That it doesn’t have any deal in place for backup on the newer east-west cable to the Central Valley? That it is thus at the mercy of this historically problematic cable along 101, for the time being — at least until its own main line along Highway 299 is completed?

That is the hypothesis, and it’s bolstered somewhat by a report from Ferndale, last night underneath our previous post on this outage, that Frontier internet is also down in the Victorian Village. Such was the case during the old AT&T outages of yore.

But it’s only a hypothesis. We’ll try to find out more today. One thing is clear: Vero wasn’t quite ready for the North Coast’s historical need for more than one way to move the bits and bytes out of town.

Robbie Young was born on May 30, 1974 in Fortuna and left his tired body for a new one in God’s kingdom on July 9, 2025. He loved Fortuna and spent his entire life here.

Robbie was lovingly raised by his mother, Anna May Young. Many Fortunans can remember Anna May pulling Robbie all over town in a little red wagon. They once even made the front page of the Times-Standard! Oh, how Robbie loved his mother!

Robbie had a most impressive work ethic. He held two jobs while still in high school. He later worked at Winco, which he loved. Robbie was very determined to climb the working ladder at Winco and surely would have had he not suffered a major stroke at just 29 years of age.

Despite his physical disabilities Robbie was a fiercely independent individual. He could be seen speeding all over Fortuna on his three-wheeled scooter. (Heartfelt thanks to the men’s breakfast crews at Our Saviors and Christ Lutheran churches for purchasing Robbie’s scooter for him). And I do mean speeding. His scooter would do over 20 m.p.h., and that’s the only speed he knew. The only place he slowed down just a little was inside Ray’s Food Place and that was only because he couldn’t take the sharp corners at full speed.

Despite many adversities in his life Robbie never complained. Never “why me”? He had an infectious personality, was very social and you need only to meet him once to become a grateful friend. He will be so very missed by so many for so many reasons.

Robbie is survived by his partner in life, Rebecca Arnold. Robbie was so blessed to have Rebecca in his life for over 20 years.

Robbie was preceded in death by his loving mom, Anna May, and his grandparents, Bea and Glen Iversen.

A special thank you to his spiritual friends at the LDS Church and Christ Lutheran Churches of Fortuna. Also to all those who treated Robbie so kindly at Coast Central Credit Union and Ray’s Food Place in Fortuna. Thank you to his personal caregivers (you all know who you are), the kind staffs at Fortuna Rehab and Redwood Memorial and Kathy at Goble’s Chapel. Bless you all.

A celebration of life for Robbie will be held on Saturday, August 23 at 2 p.m. at Christ Lutheran Church in Fortuna.

Jack Casey
October 13, 1940 – August 2, 2025

Longtime Eureka resident Jack Casey left us quietly and without warning on the morning of Sunday, August 2, 2025. He was no stranger to the Irish goodbye – the habit of ending a conversation by walking away or hanging up the phone when done saying what he needed to say, with no pretext or apology, usually to the surprise of the other party who is left hanging. Such goodbyes are not mean spirited, it’s just how Jack was wired. And after 84 years and a full life, it is how he left us.

Jackie Joe (Jack) Casey came into this world as a ten-pound baby on October 13, 1940, in rural Pittsburg County in eastern Oklahoma. He was the fifth of the nine children born to Elsie and Hersel Casey. Jack was a bookish child who loved to read to his younger siblings. As a teen he excelled in school and dreaded the summer break, which brought full-time work on the family farm in the oppressive heat and humidity of an Oklahoma summer. Dust Bowl hardships eventually claimed the farm, and his parents moved the family west to California. Hersel followed work throughout the Central Valley, often taking on three jobs, while Elsie maintained the home. Hersel was strict, especially with Jack, and brooked no lip or tardiness.

By the early-1950s, the family had settled in Laytonville. After graduating from high school, Jack was eager to leave home and returned to Oklahoma to be close to older brothers Jay and Bill. However, tragedy followed, as Bill was diagnosed with terminal service-related bone cancer, prompting Jack to move back to California. Over the following years, he worked odd jobs and took some college courses. As the Vietnam War loomed, Jack became convinced he would be drafted, so he decided to beat the government to the punch and enlist. His favorite part of the Army was completing boot camp, which he thought was easy compared to 12-hour days pulling green chain at the local mill. His first duty assignment was at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where he served as a general’s clerk. Jack then received orders to ship out to Vietnam, something for which he was prepared but not at all eager. With the combat orders in hand, his general asked him, “Casey, do you want to go to war?” Jack replied, “No sir!” “How fast can you type?” asked the general. “Seventy words per minute, sir!” replied Jack. “Well then,” said the general, “give me those orders.” Nimble fingers kept Jack stateside during his Army service, something he believed may have saved his life.

After an honorable discharge, Jack returned to California. On a fateful night in 1967 he attended a high school play performance in Laytonville, where he met one of the theatre program’s creative stage managers, Diana Penna. Jack and Diana shared many of the classic ’60s liberal values and soon fell in love. Diana lived in Eureka, and Jack followed her there and they soon married. He earned a history degree at Humboldt State and was accepted to UCLA’s doctoral program. It was the early-’70s, and duty of another kind soon called, as Diana gave birth to their first child, son Rion – and two years later, daughter Kirin was born. Family obligations required Jack to shelve higher education aspirations for something that paid the bills, and he began a long career in the US Postal Service – a good portion of which was spent in Eureka’s Henderson Center office.

Jack’s hobbies included music (a true stereophile), woodworking, family back packing outings (most often with good friends Liz and Sef Murguia), and reading an endless collection of World War II and Civil War histories. As the children grew, the Casey house on Lowell Street became central in the community and with the peers of their children. The house had an open door and open fridge policy and was welcoming to all. Jack truly enjoyed hanging out with his children’s friends. He was even known to belly laugh at episodes of Bevis and Butthead while simultaneously stating, “That’s so stupid!” He had a great laugh. Jack was an O.G. techie nerd which included a ridiculously complex stereo system, a voluminous record collection, hundreds of Betamax movies (which he would tell you were far superior to VHS), and a love of researching camera manuals and consumer reviews to find the perfect camera for Diana, an avid photographer. Perhaps Jack’s greatest pleasure was listening to music with others while dishing out some esoteric point related to the song or artist being played.

Jack and Diana were regulars at Maxwell’s and then Café Waterfront, where they made many good friends. When their kids were in their teens, Diana and Jack hosted informal home dinners almost daily. Diana could cook anything (very well), and did, performing kitchen magic while Jack would often hover in the background philosophizing, debating some obscure point with whoever would listen, or serving as DJ with his store of vintage LPs, depending on what the situation called for – while Rion and Kirin and their friends hung out. Theirs was a welcoming, happy home – a second home to many. This is perhaps their greatest legacy.

Jack loved sports. He was a lifelong Giants and 49ers fan and followed college football and basketball with regional and family affiliations. In later years, he was a PGA tour junkie – watching every round and making weekly tournament bets with brother Jim that kept them in consistent communication. He counted Evergreen in Laytonville (sister Judy’s home) and the house and grove in Branscomb (sister Becky and Art’s home) among his favorite places to be. People he loved gathered there. Jack loved his family and was sentimental to his core.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Hersel and Elsie Casey; wife Diana Casey; brothers Bill, Bob, and Jay Casey; and sister Colene Halverson.

Jack is survived by his son Rion Casey (Janet; grandchild Alexandra); daughter Kirin Hickcox (David; grandchildren Thailan, Hayden, Maxwell, and Harper); brother Jim Casey (Susan); sisters Judith Bailey (Guiness McFadden), Debby Comer (Brad), and Becky Harwood (Art); and scores of nieces, nephews, cousins, and countless friends who are as family.

A heartfelt thank you to Julia Sheehan for being there.

A celebration of Jack’s life will be held at 6060 Noe Avenue in Eureka on Saturday, August 30 at 2 p.m. Rion and David will cook – bring a side or dessert if you can. We will push information to family and friends. Contact Rion or Kirin for details or questions.

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Vero Fiber — the county’s new last-mile fiber Internet provider — has only been up and running in Eureka for a couple of months now, and now it’s dealing with its first major outage.

At least the company is transparent. The following message was sent to Vero customers in Eureka a few minutes ago:

SUBJECT: OUTAGE - Fiber services in Eureka 8/6/25

Dear Vero Customer -

We are aware of an outage affecting all customer fiber services in Eureka. We have techs on site and are looking further into a possible fiber cut. We do not have an ETA for resolution at the moment, but we will keep you posted as we progress to get the issue resolved as quickly as possible.

We appreciate your understanding and patience.

Thank you,

Vero Fiber Technical Support
support@verofiber.com
970-230-8376

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The City of Eureka is rolling out a new program to address an uptick in stolen and abandoned shopping carts scattered around town.

At last night’s meeting, the Eureka City Council voted 3-1, with Councilmember G. Mario Fernandez dissenting, to advance an ordinance — linked here — that would allow staff to return abandoned shopping carts to the grocery stores and retailers that own the carts, rather than sending them to the landfill or salvage yard. The ordinance, if approved at the council’s next meeting, would implement a citywide tagging, tracking and billing system to hold retailers accountable for abandoned carts. 

Under the city’s current policy, retailers are subject to an $80.34 per-cart fee to cover the cost of retrieval and disposal, but it isn’t really enforced, according to Eureka’s Chief Building Official Brenden Reilly. The new ordinance would impose additional fees for business owners who fail to adopt deterrents against shopping cart theft. 

“An abandoned cart fee is in place with the current policy, but from a practical perspective, we don’t get around to actually charging the fees just because of the number of people that are grabbing them and dropping them off at the corp yard,” Reilly said. “There’s a multitude of departments that are grabbing these things. … I mean, everybody’s working to get these things out of the public view. … It’s just a mess to keep track of, and we don’t have a good system in place.”

Under the new system, staff will zip tie tags to the carts and upload a picture of the tags into the city’s GIS system. Retailers with tagged carts will be billed at the end of each month.

“Additional fines can be levied against businesses that are repeat offenders,” Reilly continued. “It starts at $50 per incident, which is not per cart; it’s per however many we find in one spot, and then they can escalate from there. … The only change to the ordinance is an added provision that the fees for collecting the abandoned carts can be charged whether we return them to the business or dispose of them.”

Councilmember Scott Bauer asked why it’s taken so long for retailers to be held accountable for so-called shopping cart litter, noting that modern shopping carts often come with an anti-theft locking mechanism that prevents the cart from being wheeled out of a designated area.

Reilly said staff have asked retailers, many of whom are “big out-of-town corporations,” to hire someone to wrangle the carts, but “they just don’t seem to care.”

“It seems to be a cost of doing business,” Reilly said. “We’re trying to come back and try one more push [to] say, ‘Hey, can we get a handle on this?’ and hopefully we can get through to those businesses. Whether or not it’s going to work, I’m not sure, but at least we’ll have a way to recuperate staff’s time for having to deal with all of these carts.”

Development Services Director Cristin Kenyon added that most of the stolen carts are coming from corporate retailers, not local grocery stores.

“We just have some bad actors in businesses that really don’t care about their property getting stolen,” Kenyon said. “Our code enforcement manager would call all [the retailers], and some of them — like Eureka Natural Foods — would be like, ‘Oh, yeah! I want that cart! I’ll come and get it from you.’ The majority of [the carts] are from just a few of these businesses … and when we’d call the manager … they’d never show up to collect them, and then we were responsible for dealing with them.”

Still, Councilmember Renee Contreras-DeLoach expressed concern about the ordinance targeting local businesses. She also took issue with the prospect of charging any retailer — local or corporate — a fine for the return of stolen property.

“I understand the staff time involved, so I get that aspect, but I also just want to be cognizant and careful of not making things more difficult for businesses operating locally,” she said. “Granted, Walgreens is a large chain, but I know the employees there … [are] deeply frustrated at how frequently they’re the victims of theft.”

Councilmember Leslie Castellano made a motion to advance the ordinance, which was seconded by Bauer, and thanked staff for amending the city’s policy to keep stolen carts out of the landfill.

After the motion was made, Contreras-DeLoach and Fernandez floated a few ideas aimed at reducing potential impacts to local businesses. Fernandez asked if penalties could be based on gross earnings or the locality of the business to target corporate entities rather than small businesses. City Attorney Robert Black wasn’t sure if that would be legal, but said he’d be willing to look into.

Contreras-DeLoach suggested a few freebie cart returns to reward businesses acting in good faith. “Maybe there could be, like, a minimum threshold?” she asked, adding that the city could charge retailers more per cart if they exceeded a certain threshold. “That would offset staff time, and it would deal with those larger offenders instead of dragnetting smaller groups.”

Castellano said she would be open to a friendly amendment to her motion, but wasn’t willing to make it herself. A few moments later, Bauer asked to “call the question,” a parliamentary procedure used to end a debate on an ongoing issue and bring the matter to an immediate vote.

The council approved the motion without a friendly amendment in a 3-1 vote, with Fernandez dissenting and Councilmember Kati Moulton absent. The council will make a final decision on the ordinance at its next meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 19.

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What else happened at last night’s meeting? I’m glad you asked!

• The council unanimously approved a 9.45 percent increase for trash pick-up as a part of the city’s annual rate review and service rate adjustment for solid waste collection in Eureka. The service rate increase is higher than in previous years, largely due to recent wage increases for Recology staff. Staff recently determined that the city has overpaid for street sweeping by about $119,000 over the last decade, which brought the rate increase down from 10.6 to 9.45 percent. The council lamented the ever-increasing cost of living for residents, but acknowledged the importance of wage increases for Recology employees. The item passed in a 4-0 vote.
• The council also approved an appeal to a recent Historic Preservation Committee decision regarding the replacement of three mismatched doors on a former carriage house. The committee approved the request with a special condition that the applicant install a five-panel wooden door. The applicant, who wasn’t able to attend the committee’s June 4 meeting, appealed the decision to the city council, asking that she be allowed to install nine-lite wooden doors instead. Her request was approved in a 4-0 vote.
• The council also approved a small amendment to the city’s inland zoning code to accommodate a state-mandated update for accessory dwelling units (ADUs). The changes allow for up to eight ADUs with an existing multi-family dwelling, as long as the number of ADUs doesn’t exceed the number of units in the dwelling itself. The amendment also grants amnesty to unpermitted ADUS that were constructed before Jan. 1, 2020.

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