The Fremont City Council gave final approval this week to an ordinance that bans camping throughout the entire city, while also making anyone “aiding, abetting or concealing” a homeless encampment guilty of a misdemeanor.
The aiding and abetting clause has sparked alarm from local outreach workers who worry they could be targeted for helping people living in camps, and experts in homelessness law who say they’ve never seen anything quite like it in California. Council members considered changing that part of the ordinance Tuesday night, but ultimately passed it as-is 6-1.
“Our public spaces belong to the entire community and it’s really not compassionate at all to cede our public spaces to a select few individuals at the expense of everyone else in the general public,” said Councilmember Raymond Liu, who voted in favor. “Families should be able to take their children to the parks, to the libraries, without fear, and all residents should be able to use our public spaces without encountering any unsafe conditions.”
Council members discussed the camping ban at length in a five-hour meeting Tuesday, where nearly 200 people lined up to speak for and against the measure during public comment. It was an unusual amount of fanfare for an ordinance that the city council already passed once earlier this month – Tuesday’s vote was a “second reading,” which typically is just a formality that warrants no discussion.
But the controversy surrounding the ban, which prohibits camping on all sidewalks, streets and parks in Fremont and makes anyone who aids or abets such a camp subject to a $1,000 fine or six months in jail, prompted the City Council to reevaluate the ordinance.
Three council members, plus the mayor, expressed interest either in removing the aiding and abetting clause or adding language to specify that it wouldn’t be used to punish people for handing out food, water and other essentials in homeless camps.
That change seemed likely to go through until minutes before the final vote. But after City Attorney Rafael Alvarado said multiple times that the aiding and abetting clause would target people who help unhoused people set up illegal camps, not people who give out food, council members changed course. Ultimately, they passed the measure as-is.
Changing the language would have forced council members to re-introduce the ordinance, meaning they’d have to go through two more votes. By the time the City Council voted Tuesday, it was almost midnight.
The text of the ordinance doesn’t specify what qualifies as aiding, abetting or concealing a homeless encampment. That leaves some uncertainty as to how the ordinance will be enforced, despite Alvarado’s assurances, UC Berkeley Law professor Laura Riley told CalMatters.
“That might be their stance at the time of adoption,” she said, “but there’s nothing in the language of the ordinance itself that prevents targeting people from doing things as humane as giving unhoused people tarps when it’s raining.”
In practice, local police often determine how they will enforce an ordinance, Riley said. How the Fremont aiding and abetting clause is interpreted could change when the city’s leadership changes, she said.
The city attorney’s statements were small comfort to Vivian Wan, CEO of Abode Services, which provides food, tents, clothing and other services to unhoused people living in camps.
“We worry about the ‘concealing’ portion, as PD/City staff in Fremont have been known to pressure us to share confidential information, including where a participant is staying,” she said in an email to CalMatters. “I think this ordinance may be used to compel such information, breaking the trust with folks that often takes years to build.”
The measure also puts the city of Fremont at odds with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern and Southern California, which, in a letter to council members signed by several other aid and human rights groups, said the aiding and abetting clause is “patently unreasonable and will expose the City to legal liability.”
More than two-dozen California cities and counties have either passed new ordinances or beefed up old ordinances banning camping in recent months, after the U.S. Supreme Court gave them more freedom to do so. But none of those bans appear to include specific language that makes it a crime to aid or abet a camp.
In a statement to CalMatters, the Fremont city attorney’s office said the aiding and abetting language is nothing new – it’s already illegal in Fremont, as in many cities, to aid or abet any crime. When asked about that by council members during Tuesday’s meeting, Alvarado said even if the new camping ban didn’t have that specific clause, “in theory,” someone could still be penalized for aiding and abetting a homeless encampment.
But Riley said it’s significant that the new camping ban explicitly makes it a crime to aid and abet an encampment – language she’s never seen in any other active camping ban in California.
“This does seem to be going further,” she said. “Because by making it explicitly tied to this section of the code, to me, it signals that there is intent to prosecute under this section.”
Legal experts CalMatters spoke with said this is extremely unusual. No other city, to the best of CalMatters’ knowledge, has attempted to use general municipal code in the fashion this ordinance would.
More than two-dozen California cities passed, strengthened or are considering ordinances that penalize people for sleeping outside, after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed cities to crack down.
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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.
A Kern County baker violated California law when she refused to sell a cake to a lesbian couple for their wedding, a state appeals court ruled this week in a suit brought by the state’s Civil Rights Division.
If the scenario sounds familiar, that’s because it’s central to a series of cases that have for years been shaping the nation’s legal debate over free speech and anti-discrimination laws.
In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Colorado ruling that a baker had violated that state’s nondiscrimination law when he refused to bake a cake for a same-sex couple’s wedding. The ruling was based on the court’s finding that the Colorado civil rights commission handling the case had been prejudiced against the baker’s religious beliefs.
The court in 2023 ruled, also in a Colorado case, in favor of a website designer who opposed same-sex marriage on religious grounds and who was afraid the same state statutes could in theory force her to design a wedding website for a gay couple. That would violate the designer’s First Amendment rights to free expression, the Supreme Court ruled in a decision that LGBTQ rights activists said could open the door to more discrimination in public spaces.
The California decision this week draws boundaries on what counts under a business owner’s right to free expression.
In a statement, California Civil Rights Commission director Kevin Kish praised the ruling for upholding “the longstanding principle guaranteeing all Californians full and equal access to services and goods in the marketplace.”
The case stemmed from the marriage of Eileen and Mireya Rodriguez-Del Rio, who visited Tastries bakery in Bakersfield to buy a cake for their wedding in August 2017.
The couple spoke with an employee and selected a pre-designed plain, white, three-tiered cake that the bakery often sells for various celebrations including birthdays and baby showers, according to court filings. When the couple returned with friends and family for a tasting the following week, Tastries’ owner Catharine Miller refused to sell the cake upon learning it would be served at a same-sex wedding.
Miller is a devout Christian who also refuses to make cakes depicting marijuana use or sexual imagery. She later told the courts she has a bakery policy stating that “wedding cakes must not contradict God’s sacrament of marriage between a man and a woman.”
The couple filed a complaint with the state Civil Rights Division, which sued Miller in 2018. Miller, who is represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, argued her policy was based on her religious beliefs about marriage, not animus toward LGBTQ people.
A Kern County judge sided with her, ruling that Miller’s policy did not violate the state’s Unruh Civil Rights Act because it applies to all customers, and because Miller referred the couple to another bakery that had previously agreed to sell cakes to same-sex couples (but which the Rodriguez-Del Rios had already ruled out).
The state appealed the decision last year, and a three-judge panel of the 5th Appellate District reversed it in a unanimous ruling.
The judges ruled Miller’s policy is not neutral because it could only apply to customers on the basis of their sexual orientation. They also ruled that reproducing a plain cake with no writing or decorations that Miller would have sold to anyone else does not count as being forced to express support for a same-sex wedding.
“Drawing the contours of protected speech to include routinely produced, ordinary commercial products as the artistic self-expression of the designer is unworkably overbroad,” the judges wrote.
Miller, through a spokesperson at the Becket Fund, declined to comment. In a statement, her attorney and Becket Fund vice president Eric Rassbach said Miller would continue to run the bakery while they appeal the decision to the state supreme court.
“This case is not just about Cathy Miller — it’s about protecting the rights of all Americans
to live and work according to their deeply held beliefs,” said another of her attorneys, Charles LiMandri. “We will continue to fight in the courts on Cathy’s behalf to ensure that the freedom to live out her faith through her creative work is upheld and that justice is fully served.”
The case could be primed for more appeals by conservative legal groups that ultimately seek to extend the Supreme Court ruling in the Colorado web designer case and establish exceptions to anti-discrimination laws allowing businesses to refuse services to gay Americans, said Matt Coles, a law professor at UC Law San Francisco.
But he said the California ruling makes important distinctions between designing a wedding website and making a standard cake.
“This was not a great case for them,” Coles said. “The challenge in this case was, how do you draw a line between stuff that’s clearly speech or expression, and stuff that’s clearly not? If what you’re selling is some kind of generic cake, you don’t have 1st Amendment claims.”
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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.
It
is with the heaviest of hearts that we announce the passing of
Kenneth Lee Rose of Rio Dell. He was known by many names to those who
loved him — Baby, Honey BunBun, Dad, Opa, Kenneth Lee, Kenny,
Rosebud and Wolfie, to name a few.
Ken
was born to Carl and Nancy (Cowart) Rose on December 16, 1969. He was
the fifth child and last son born to Carl and Nancy. He grew up in
Fortuna and Hydesville, attending what was then known as Town School,
Hydesville Elementary, Fortuna High School and East High. Some of his
favorite childhood memories were spending time with his brothers and
friends on Vancil Avenue
in Fortuna, playing in the woods.
In
1984, Ken met the love of his life, Cindi Mock. They spent his
freshman year riding around Hydesville and Carlotta on his dirt bike,
getting gas at the old Murrish Market before riding on the river bar
at the end of Fisher Road, exploring the trails and woods around
Martin and Shirley’s, Fox Creek Road and Starvation Flats. They
separated when Cindi graduated from high school. When Ken was 16,
he and Brenda Beebe became parents to his first son. Ken quit school
and went to work as a timber faller. He then went on to work at
Humboldt Printing and then Pacific Lumber Company. He married Carrie
Stephens in 1991 and they became parents to Ben, Amy and Matthew.
After Ken and Carrie divorced, he and Monica Warden had a son
together.
Ken
and Cindi reconnected after both divorced their spouses and were
married on May 3, 2008. They both said it was like no time had passed
while they were apart and they picked up their friendship and romance
right where they had left off. They liked to share that they were
high school sweethearts; they knew God had made them for one another.
During their nearly 18 years together, they built a life they both
loved. They started a firewood business, Log Dawg Firewood, in 2020.
While the rest of the world was shut down, Ken and Cindi spent
countless hours in their truck and in the woods making firewood. Some
of their best times were spent being surrounded by nothing but trees
and God’s creatures.
Although
Ken liked to complain that Cindi was crazy and she didn’t have to
sing quite that loud in the truck, he always tuned the radio to the
oldies station so she could sing along with the songs from the 1970s
and 1980s.
In the following years, anytime Cindi would get crabby Ken would tell
her to get in the truck so he could take her to the woods. He knew it
always made her feel better to spend time with him outdoors.
Ken
accepted Jesus as his Savior in 2007 and was later baptized at Rio
Dell Baptist Church by Papa Pastor (Darrow Sanderson). His was a
quiet faith, but he loved Jesus and knew he would see many loved ones
again in Heaven someday. Ken was also proud of kicking alcohol and an
addiction to opiates that he had been prescribed for a back injury.
Ken
passed away suddenly at the age of 55 from a massive gastrointestinal
hemorrhage on the morning of February 7, 2025. He was preceded in
death by his parents, Nancy and Carl Rose, and his special friend,
Andy Crase. He is survived by his adoring and devoted wife, Cindi
Rose; his children Kenneth Lee Anderson-Rose, Benjamin Rose, Amy
Rose, Matthew Rose (Melissa) and Jared Warden; Cindi’s children
which he loved like his own, Molly Buck (Felix), Callie Buck, and
Levi Buck; his grandchildren, Lauriana, Nevaeh, Braydon, Teheya,
Trae, Bellamy, Braxton, Kaliyah, Kaysen, Natalia, and Lily; his
siblings David Cowart, Ronald Rose (Heidi), Steven Rose (Audrey),
Brian Rose (Tammy), and June Rose-Castro (Noe); and his in-laws, John
and Arlene Mock, Aaron Mock (Ruth), and Ammi Mock (Mark). He also
leaves behind nieces, nephews, cousins, and friends who mourn his
passing.
There
will be a memorial service for Ken on Saturday, March 1 at 11 a.m. at
Fortuna Church of the Nazarene, 1355 Ross Hill Road, Fortuna. Family
welcome you to attend and share your memories of Ken.
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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Ken Rose’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here. Email news@lostcoastoutpost.com.
How’s your New Year’s resolution going, Humboldt? Maybe you’re one of those people who said, you know, I’d like to cut back on my drinking this year but — ack! — I find myself struggling come the end of the day with that craving to sip on something delightful and delicious.
Well, can we interest you in some water kefir?
These days more and more people are experimenting with sobriety, which is one of the topics discussed on today’s edition of Wellness Wednesday — KHUM’s weekly Lizzerd Kween-hosted discussion of all things health. Today we chat with Ivy Lucco, founder of The Water Kefiry, whose passion is crafting high-quality and innovative probiotic-rich beverages right here in Humboldt County.
Click the audio player above to hear Lucco and Lizzerd Kween chat about the mental and physical benefits of healing your gut and/or click on over to The Water Kefiry website for more information. And be sure to tune into KHUM 104.3/104.7 to hear a new Humboldt-based health enthusiast share their passion on the next edition of Wellness Wednesday.
Ivy Lucco discusses her passion for healthy, fermented foods
Lizzerd Kween, your KHUM Wellness Wednesday host
The KHUM studio in Old Town Eureka | Photos: Andrew Goff
A few members of the Mad River Old Crows, the volunteer group leading the restoration effort. From left to right: John Bartholomew, Shawn Delaney, Jim Brown, Ron Perry, Bob Felter, Keith Morrison and Rick Willits. | Photos by Jennifer Kramer
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A routine maintenance project has turned into a full-blown renovation of the Mad River Grange Hall in Blue Lake, following the discovery of the 136-year-old building’s hidden ceiling.
“This is one of those stories you hear about renovating an old building — each time you peel off a layer, you find this wonderful thing that was there before and wonder why in the heck someone covered it up,” Mad River Grange President Marlene Smith told the Outpost. “It really is stunning.”
For decades, the building’s original wooden structure was covered by a generic drop ceiling, a secondary ceiling that hangs below the original and is often used to conceal unsightly infrastructure or to improve acoustics. Last month, a volunteer with the Mad River Old Crows, a men’s service group, uncovered the historic beadboard while installing a new heat pump in the area above the false ceiling.
“He had to remove one of the acoustic tiles from the ceiling and when we looked up and saw the beautiful wood and height, we saw the potential of the hall,” Hall Manager Jennifer Kramer told the Outpost. “We have many talented woodworkers, electricians, contractors and architects in our group, and they’ve decided to take the hall back to its original beauty.”
The drop tiles and wall panels have been removed, and the original ceiling has been sanded, repainted and outfitted with new lighting, as seen in the picture below. A mural that wraps around the interior of the hall was slightly damaged during the ceiling removal process, Smith said. The artist, former Blue Lake resident Jerry Lee Wallace, came down from Portland to touch it up and add new colors that will fit with the new wall color.
The grange set up for an event before the renovations.
After! The historic ceiling has been restored and repainted, but the hardwood floors are still in progress.
So far, volunteers have put approximately 500 hours into the renovations, which have been funded through donations. Right now, they’re focused on repairing and refinishing the hardwood floors, which were previously hidden under a layer of drab linoleum. Once the floors are done, they’ll replace the windows.
“Our main focus on improving the space is to make it more attractive for people to hold their events there, whatever it may be,” Smith said. “[The grange] is the heartbeat of the community. It’s a gathering place where the whole community can get together and put on their event, whether that’s a celebration of life, a birthday, a potluck or a local forum.”
Smith added that the renovations wouldn’t be possible without the help of the Old Crows.
“The Old Crows are a really wonderful group of guys,” Smith said. “They get together weekly for their own socialization and recreation, either playing bocce ball down at the courts, throwing darts at the Logger Bar or horseshoes at the park. They just get together and do projects like this to exercise their skills and give back to the community.”
The race to decide which Sonoma County resident will represent us in the California State Senate come the year 2026 is heating up!
Rogers.
Via the Press-Democrat, we are made aware that Santa Rosa City Councilmember Natalie Rogers is throwing her hat in to succeed State Sen. Mike McGuire, who will be termed-limited out at the end of next year.
According to her bio on the city of Santa Rosa’s website, Rogers is a family therapist who was first elected to the City Council in November 2020. She’s a union member. She served as the city’s mayor from 2022-2024.
Welcome, Ms. Rogers! Humboldt County here.
As linked above, Sonoma County Supervisor James Gore announced in January that he would seek to follow McGuire after the latter is booted out next year.
But according to the P-D, which is physically very close to the population center of the Second Senate District, the race is about to get more crowded still in the coming days.
The paper mentions that Assm. Damon Connolly, who currently represents the Marin/Napa half of the Second Senate District in the lower house, is expected to jump in at any minute.
Nice that legislative seats are contested once again. It didn’t use to be this way.
Fun note: Natalie Rogers’ Santa Rosa City Council colleague, Chris Rogers, was the eventual victor in last year’s assembly race. So if Natalie ends up victorious in her campaign for the Senate, she would reunite with Chris in Sacramento and the North Coast would have both a Mr. Rogers and a Ms. Rogers representing us in the Capitol. Makes you think.
