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During its second budget-related discussion this week, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved a preliminary $606.7 million spending plan for the upcoming fiscal year. The board will convene a public hearing next week to go over proposed changes to the draft budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year. The budget is slated for final approval on June 25.

In the weeks leading up to these end-of-the-year budget talks, staff has painted an increasingly “grim” picture of the county’s budget outlook. If the county can’t drastically reduce its spending, the General Fund will run out of money by the end of the 2025-26 fiscal year, which is just over two years away. 

The budget for the current 2024-25 fiscal year was on track to end up more than $18 million in the hole, eating up a significant portion of the county’s General Fund reserves. However, the board earlier this year decided to use $4.7 million in unspent Measure Z funding from prior years will be used to cover a portion of that deficit, meaning the county is on track to lose $13.86 million by June 30, the end of the current fiscal year.

The board has taken several actions over the past year to reduce spending, including voluntary furloughs, separation incentives and a hiring freeze for some county departments. Deputy County Administrative Officer Jessica Maciel said the cost-saving measures have resulted in a four percent reduction in full-time staff.

“The total personnel for the coming year is 2,344.73 full-time equivalent,” Maciel said during Tuesday’s meeting. “This is a decrease of 98.54 positions or four percent. … Your board directed staff to deallocate unfunded positions, and that accounts for a large portion of this decrease. The primary decreases were in the Sheriff’s Office, Planning and Building, Public Works and DHHS [the Department of Health and Human Services].”

The board has also looked to departmental reorganization as a means to reduce county spending. During a special meeting on Monday, the board reviewed several strategies to centralize services, to allow for more collaboration among departments and to improve succession planning. The board also considered the possibility of implementing mandatory employee furloughs, which was widely opposed by department heads. After four hours of discussion, the board ultimately agreed to move toward centralizing services and close county offices on Fridays to give employees more time to focus on their workloads.

Still, staff recommended that the board continue the hiring freeze for “departments that receive ongoing personnel cost requests” in the 2024-25 fiscal year, including the Auditor-Controller, Human Resources, Public Works Land Use, Public Works County Surveyor, Sheriff Operations and Public Defender Conflict Counsel.

Speaking on behalf of the Sheriff’s Office at Tuesday’s meeting, Regina Fuller, deputy director of financial services, asked the board to exempt the department, or “at least our deputy sheriffs and our dispatchers,” from the hiring freeze. 

Fuller | Screenshot

“If you intend for us to reduce dispatch or patrol services in the next fiscal year, then yes, [approve the] hiring freeze, but if you don’t, we would appreciate an exemption,” Fuller said.

Since the beginning of this year, the Board of Supervisors has granted the Sheriff’s Office two exceptions to the countywide hiring freeze. In January, Humboldt Sheriff William Honsal asked for an exemption to recruit up to 25 new hires to counter turnover within the department. A few months later in March, Honsal asked for another exemption to hire three full-time administrative employees.

Fuller emphasized that the Sheriff’s Office isn’t asking for more full-time employees, “we’re just asking to fill the [positions] we have,” she said. 

“So what we’re asking [for] is, if the [positions are] funded for the fiscal year, that we be allowed to hire for them as needed,” Fuller explained. “We can’t predict our turnover but, you know, our turnover is pretty high. When the sheriff [asked] your board for an exception this fiscal year, you gave us one … but because of turnover, we had to come back to your board today, in fact, and request for more. … We may still come back to your board because we’ve lost 25 people even though we’ve hired 25 people.”

First District Supervisor and Board Chair Rex Bohn spoke in favor of the exemption, noting that it’s “not an added value” to the county. “If they’re budgeted, they’re not asking for any more money, and they’ve got to stop hiring when they run out of money,” he said. “I don’t have a problem with them meeting what they’ve lost.”

Second District Supervisor Michelle Bushnell felt similarly and expressed interest in discussing the matter further. County Administrative Officer Elishia Hayes said the board would have an opportunity to suggest changes to the proposed budget during next week’s public hearing.

Third District Supervisor Mike Wilson noted that there are likely other departments with similar exemption requests and asked the CAO’s Office to send out a memo seeking additional information before the upcoming budget hearing. 

Fourth District Supervisor Natalie Arroyo agreed, noting that the hiring freeze “there are barriers to hiring for law enforcement, and I know that it’s a lengthy process but the same is true for other departments.”

Wilson made a motion to approve the proposed budget allocations, which was seconded by Arroyo. After a bit of discussion, the item was passed in a unanimous 5-0 vote.

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Other notable bits from Tuesday’s meeting:

• The board approved a $2 million loan from the Headwaters Fund to help support predevelopment financing for Life Plan Humboldt’s mixed-income retirement project in McKinleyville. The development, slated for a 14.58-acre property south of Hiller Road, will include 168 senior residential units, various on-site amenities and a subdivision with approximately 60 affordable housing units. At its May 20 meeting, the Headwaters Fund board approved the loan request and an extension to its current lender agreement with the Redwood Region Economic Development Commission (RREDC) and the Arcata Economic Development Corporation (AEDC). The request was approved in a 4-0 vote, with Wilson recused.
• The board adjourned and reconvened as the governing board of the Humboldt County Flood Control District to authorize a $300,500 reimbursement to the City of Fortuna for maintenance associated with Rohner Creek and Strongs Creek. The item was unanimously approved.
• Rural County Representatives of California (RCRC) President and CEO Patrick Blacklock presented an annual update on the organization’s Strategic Plan. Blacklock also talked about upcoming legislation that will affect rural residents, as well as RCRC’s ongoing work with the Golden State Finance Authority, National Homebuyers Fund, Golden State Connect Authority, Rural Alliance, Inc., Golden State Natural Resources, and Environmental Services Joint Powers Authority. 
• The board also approved a proclamation for Two Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex and Asexual (2SLGBTQIA+) Pride Month.

Your children could be some of a growing number of California kids having their writing graded by software instead of a teacher.

California school districts are signing more contracts for artificial intelligence tools, from automated grading in San Diego to chatbots in central California, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

English teachers say AI tools can help them grade papers faster, get students more feedback, and improve their learning experience. But guidelines are vague and adoption by teachers and districts is spotty.

The California Department of Education can’t tell you which schools use AI or how much they pay for it. The state doesn’t track AI use by school districts, said Katherine Goyette, computer science coordinator for the California Department of Education.

While Goyette said chatbots are the most common form of AI she’s encountered in schools, more and more California teachers are using AI tools to help grade student work. That’s consistent with surveys that have found teachers use AI as often if not more than students, news that contrasts sharply with headlines about fears of students cheating with AI.

Teachers use AI to do things like personalize reading material, create lesson plans, and other tasks in order to save time and and reduce burnout. A report issued last fall in response to an AI executive order by Gov. Gavin Newsom mentions opportunities to use AI for tutoring, summarization, and personalized content generation, but also labels education a risky use case. Generative AI tools have been known to create convincing but inaccurate answers to questions, and use toxic language or imagery laden with racism or sexism.

California issued guidance for how educators should use the technology last fall, one of seven states to do so. It encourages critical analysis of text and imagery created by AI models and conversations between teachers and students about what amounts to ethical or appropriate use of AI in the classroom.

But no specific mention is made of how teachers should treat AI that grades assignments. Additionally, the California education code states that guidance from the state is “merely exemplary, and that compliance with the guidelines is not mandatory.”

English teacher Jen Roberts uses Writeable, an AI platform, to grade students’ work at Point Loma High School in San Diego on May 3, 2024. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

Goyette said she’s waiting to see if the California Legislature passes Senate Bill 1288, which would require state Superintendent Tony Thurmond to create an AI working group to issue further guidance to local school districts on how to safely use AI. Cosponsored by Thurmond, the bill also calls for an assessment of the current state of AI in education and for the identification of forms of AI that can harm students and educators by 2026.

Nobody tracks what AI tools school districts are adopting or the policy they use to enforce standards, said Alix Gallagher, head of strategic partnerships at the Policy Analysis for California Education center at Stanford University. Since the state does not track curriculum that school districts adopt or software in use, it would be highly unusual for them to track AI contracts, she said.

Amid AI hype, Gallagher thinks people can lose sight of the fact that the technology is just a tool and it will only be as good or problematic as the decisions of the humans using that tool, which is why she repeatedly urges investments in helping teachers understand AI tools and how to be thoughtful about their use and making space for communities are given voice about how to best meet their kid’s needs.

“Some people will probably make some pretty bad decisions that are not in the best interests of kids, and some other people might find ways to use maybe even the same tools to enrich student experiences,” she said.

Teachers use AI to grade English papers

Last summer, Jen Roberts, an English teacher at Point Loma High School in San Diego, went to a training session to learn how to use Writable, an AI tool that automates grading writing assignments and gives students feedback powered by OpenAI. For the past school year, Roberts used Writable and other AI tools in the classroom, and she said it’s been the best year yet of nearly three decades of teaching. Roberts said it has made her students better writers, not because AI did the writing for them, but because automated feedback can tell her students faster than she can how to improve, which in turn allows her to hand out more writing assignments.

“At this point last year, a lot of students were still struggling to write a paragraph, let alone an essay with evidence and claims and reasoning and explanation and elaboration and all of that,” Roberts said. “This year, they’re just getting there faster.”

Roberts feels Writable is “very accurate” when grading her students of average aptitude. But, she said, there’s a downside: It sometimes assigns high-performing students lower grades than merited and struggling students higher grades. She said she routinely checks answers when the AI grades assignments, but only checks the feedback it gives students occasionally.

“In actual practicality, I do not look at the feedback it gives every single student,” she said. “That’s just not a great use of my time. But I do a lot of spot checking and I see what’s going on and if I see a student that I’m worried about get feedback, (I’m like) ‘Let me go look at what his feedback is and then go talk to him about that.’”

First: A student uses Magic School, an AI platform, to help generate ideas for a classroom writing prompt. Last: A student reads their writing out loud. Point Loma High School in San Diego on May 3, 2024. Photos by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

Alex Rainey teaches English to fourth graders at Chico Country Day School in northern California. She used GPT-4, a language model made by OpenAI which costs $20 a month, to grade papers and provide feedback. After uploading her grading rubric and examples of her written feedback, she used AI to grade assignments about animal defense mechanisms, allowing GPT-4 to analyze students’ grammar and sentence structure while she focused on assessing creativity.

“I feel like the feedback it gave was very similar to how I grade my kids, like my brain was tapped into it,” she said.

Like Roberts she found that it saves time, transforming work that took hours into less than an hour, but also found that sometimes GPT-4 is a tougher grader than she is. She agrees that quicker feedback and the ability to dole out more writing assignments produces better writers. A teacher can assign more writing before delivering feedback but “then kids have nothing to grow from.”

Rainey said her experience grading with GPT-4 left her in agreement with Roberts, that more feedback and writing more often produces better writers. She feels strongly that teachers still need to oversee grading and feedback by AI, “but I think it’s amazing. I couldn’t go backwards now.”

The cost of using AI in the classroom

Contracts involving artificial intelligence can be lucrative.

To launch a chatbot named Ed, Los Angeles Unified School District signed a $6.2 million contract for two years with the option of renewing for three additional years. Magic School AI is used by educators in Los Angeles and costs $100 per teacher per year.

Despite repeated calls and emails over the span of roughly a month, Writable and the San Diego Unified School District declined to share pricing details with CalMatters. A district spokesperson said teachers got access to Writeable through a contract with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for English language learners.

QuillBot is an AI-powered writing tool for students in grades 4-12 made by the company Quill. Quill says its tool is currently used at 1,000 schools in California and has more than 13,000 student and educator users in San Diego alone. An annual Quill Premium subscription costs $80 per teacher or $1800 per school.

QuillBot does not generate writing for students like ChatGPT or grade writing assignments, but gives students feedback on their writing. Quill is a nonprofit that’s raised $20 million from groups like Google’s charitable foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation over the past 10 years.

English teacher Jen Roberts explains to her students how she uses Magic School, an AI platform, for classroom exercises and grading at Point Loma High School in San Diego on May 3, 2024. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

Even if a teacher or district wants to shell out for an AI tool, guidance for safe and responsible use is still getting worked out.

Governments are placing high-risk labels on forms of AI with the power to make critical decisions about whether a person gets a job or rents an apartment or receives government benefits. California Federation of Teachers President Jeff Freitas said he hasn’t considered whether AI for grading is moderate or high risk, but “it definitely is a risk to use for grading.”

The California Federation of Teachers is a union with 120,000 members. Freitas told CalMatters he’s concerned about AI having a number of consequences in the classroom. He’s worried administrators may use it to justify increasing classroom sizes or adding to teacher workloads; he’s worried about climate change and the amount of energy needed to train and deploy AI models’ he’s worried about protecting students’ privacy, and he’s worried about automation bias.

Regulators around the world wrestling with AI praise approaches where it is used to augment human decisionmaking instead of replacing it. But it’s difficult for laws to account for automation bias and humans becoming placing too much trust in machines.

The American Federation of Teachers created an AI working group in October 2023 to propose guidance on how educators should use the technology or talk about it in collective bargaining contract negotiations. Freitas said those guidelines are due out in the coming weeks.

“We’re trying to provide guidelines for educators to not solely rely on (AI), he said. “It should be used as a tool, and you should not lose your critical analysis of what it’s producing for you.”

State AI guidelines for teachers

Goyette, the computer science coordinator for the education department, helped create state AI guidelines and speaks to county offices of education for in-person training on AI for educators. She also helped create an online AI training series for educators. She said the most popular online course is about workflow and efficiency, which shows teachers how to automate lesson planning and grading.

“Teachers have an incredibly important and tough job, and what’s most important is that they’re building relationships with their students,” she said. “There’s decades of research that speaks to the power of that, so if they can save time on mundane tasks so that they can spend more time with their students, that’s a win.”

English teacher Jen Roberts checks her student’s work at Point Loma High School in San Diego on May 3, 2024. Roberts uses AI platforms for classroom exercises and grading. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

Alex Kotran, chief executive of an education nonprofit that’s supported by Google and OpenAI, said they found that it’s hard to design a language model to predictably match how a teacher grades papers.

He spoke with teachers willing to accept a model that’s accurate 80% of the time in order to reap the reward of time saved, but he thinks it’s probably safe to say that a student or parent would want to make sure an AI model used for grading is even more accurate.

Kotran of the AI Education Project thinks it makes sense for school districts to adopt a policy that says teachers should be wary any time they use AI tools that can have disparate effects on student’s lives.

Even with such a policy, teachers can still fall victim to trusting AI without question. And even if the state kept track of AI used by school districts, there’s still the possibility that teachers will purchase technology for use on their personal computers.

Kotran said he routinely speaks with educators across the U.S. and is not aware of any systematic studies to verify the effectiveness and consistency of AI for grading English papers.

When teachers can’t tell if they’re cheating

Roberts, the Point Loma High School teacher, describes herself as pro technology.

She regularly writes and speaks about AI. Her experiences have led her to the opinion that grading with AI is what’s best for her students, but she didn’t arrive at that conclusion easily.

At first she questioned whether using AI for grading and feedback could hurt her understanding of her students. Today she views using AI like the cross-country coach who rides alongside student athletes in a golf cart, like an aid that helps her assist her students better.

A student scrolls through their laptop during class at Point Loma High School in San Diego on May 3, 2024. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

Roberts says the average high school English teacher in her district has roughly 180 students. Grading and feedback can take between five to 10 minutes per assignment she says, so between teaching, meetings, and other duties, it can take two to three weeks to get feedback back into the hands of students unless a teacher decides to give up large chunks of their weekends. With AI, it takes Roberts a day or two.

Ultimately she concluded that “if my students are growing as writers, then I don’t think I’m cheating.” She says AI reduces her fatigue, giving her more time to focus on struggling students and giving them more detailed feedback.

“My job is to make sure you grow, and that you’re a healthy, happy, literate adult by the time you graduate from high school, and I will use any tool that helps me do that, and I’m not going to get hung up on the moral aspects of that,” she said. “My job is not to spend every Saturday reading essays. Way too many English teachers work way too many hours a week because they are grading students the old-fashioned way.”

Roberts also thinks AI might be a less biased grader in some instances than human teachers who can adjust their grading for students sometimes to give them the benefit of the doubt or be punitive if they were particularly annoying in class recently.

She isn’t worried about students cheating with AI, a concern she characterizes as a moral panic. She points to a Stanford University study released last fall which found that students cheated just as much before the advent of ChatGPT as they did a year after the release of the AI.

Goyette said she understands why students question whether some AI use by teachers is like cheating. Education department AI guidelines encourage teachers and students to use the technology more. What’s essential, Goyette said, is that teachers discuss what ethical use of AI looks like in their classroom, and convey that — like using a calculator in math class — using AI is accepted or encouraged for some assignments and not others.

For the last assignment of the year, Robers has one final experiment to run: Edit an essay written entirely by AI. But they must change at least 50% of the text, make it 25% longer, write their own thesis, and add quotes from classroom reading material. The idea, she said, is to prepare them for a future where AI writes the first draft and humans edit the results to fit their needs.

“It used to be you weren’t allowed to bring a calculator into the SATs and now you’re supposed to bring your calculator so things change,” she said. “It’s just moral panic. Things change and people freak out and that’s what’s happening.”

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

President Biden’s long-predicted executive actions restricting asylum claims at the U.S.-Mexico border could take effect at midnight in remote parts of California where some migrants gather in open-air camps to await federal processing.

White House officials argue the new measures announced Tuesday will bring much-needed order to the border, while advocates for migrants argue the changes could cause the California border to become more chaotic and deadly as migrants seek increasingly remote areas to cross undetected and illegally.

Border crossings are already exceeding the average of 2,500 daily over a seven-day period that triggers the new rules. That means the order and accompanying Department of Homeland Security interim rule could immediately allow border agents to instantly return migrants across the border into Mexico or deport them to their home countries within hours or days — without considering their asylum claims.

The new measures are meant to discourage migrants from crossing the border irregularly or illegally. “It’s going to change the calculus of those intending to cross,” a senior White House official told reporters this morning.

If migrants know they’re likely to be returned to Mexico or deported rather than allowed into the United States while their asylum claim is processed, they’re less likely to pay a coyote thousands of dollars to make the dangerous trek, the official argued.

But advocates for migrants say Biden’s order unravels long-standing international agreements that allow anyone who gets a foot on U.S. soil the right to seek safety through an asylum claim.

Migrant smuggling routes have shifted west in recent months towards California as Texas uses militarized force with state agents and the Texas National Guard to secure its border, and heat has claimed the lives of at least four migrants near El Paso, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

While California mayors and lawmakers were noticeably absent at the White House announcement, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria issued a statement supporting Biden’s decision. Like the president, he highlighted Congress’ lack of action on the hot-button political issue in a presidential election year.

“In the face of Congressional Republicans’ continued inaction on legislation to help improve the situation at our southwest border, President Biden is acting decisively. The current system is failing both local communities and asylum seekers; the fact remains we need comprehensive immigration reform,” Gloria said.

A spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a similar statement supporting the president: “As President Biden affirmed today, executive actions aren’t enough — Republicans must do their job. Congress needs to act on the bipartisan border deal, and finally work with President Biden to pass a pathway for citizenship and fix our deeply outdated immigration system.”

For several weeks this year, San Diego became the busiest location for migrant arrivals along the southern border for the first time in 25 years. For example, 8,303 migrants were apprehended in the first week of May, according to the Border Patrol. By comparison, San Diego area Border Patrol agents took 3,311 people into custody during the entire month of May in 2020.

Though some framed Biden’s executive action as “closing the border,” it does not apply to the millions of people who legally live in border communities — or the some 150,000 people who daily cross back and forth between Baja California and California for work, school, medical care or shopping.

Gloria was invited to the White House for Tuesday’s announcement but had a prior commitment, a spokesperson said. The mayors for the border cities of Calexico and Imperial Beach said they were not invited.

U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, a Democrat and outspoken critic of the action, accused Biden of reviving former President Donald Trump’s “asylum ban.”

“President Biden has undermined American values and abandoned our nation’s obligations to provide people fleeing persecution, violence, and authoritarianism with an opportunity to seek refuge in the U.S.,” Padilla said in a statement.

According to Adam Isacson, the director of the defense oversight program at the Washington Office on Latin America, the 2,500 threshold has been exceeded in 110 of the past 296 months, and in every month since February 2021.

The right to seek asylum between ports of entry would not be restored until migrant apprehensions drop below a daily average of 1,500 per day, which has not happened since July 2020.

The American Civil Liberties Union immediately said it planned to challenge the order in court, as it successfully did when Trump issued a similar order under the same legal authority, known as 212f, which allows the president “to suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens” whenever “the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

Karin Elke Stogner
May 5, 1959 - May 18, 2024

Karin Elke Stogner passed away on May 18th, 2024, shortly after her 65th birthday. Born on May 5, 1959 to Georg and Waltraud Knaupp in Bad Nauheim, Germany, Karin spent her childhood and teenage years growing up working for her family’s roofing company, and held various professions throughout her 20s, such as a lifeguard and teacher.

In the late 1970s, she met Glenn “Teddy” Stogner, a member of the US Army stationed in Germany, and the two eventually fell in love and were married. After years of moving back and forth between the US and Germany, they settled in her husband’s hometown in North Carolina, where Karin struggled to adapt to a country where she did not speak the language well. During this period, Karin had four children, one of whom tragically passed away in 1988. Over time, they decided to leave North Carolina, and after trial and error, settled permanently in Eureka in 1990. During these early years of her life in the states, Karin worked as a social worker and as a food bank truck driver.

Upon arriving in Eureka, Karin and her husband spearheaded improvements in the “Housing Authority” apartment buildings, being responsible for initiatives such as a park being built for the residents in front of Waremart (now WinCo), putting up fences to protect residents’ privacy, making minor apartment upgrades, and personally delivering bread and food to residents who could not make it to the food bank themselves.

After losing the love of her life to a heart attack in 2003, Karin followed her passion and attended the North Coast Bible Institute to earn her pastoral certification and become a minister and pastor. During this time and after graduation, she co-led a program that helped women who were victims of domestic violence get back on their feet, as well as those in jail looking to better themselves. She also assisted with GriefShare at Faith Center Foursquare Church, a place where people who lost loved ones could get support. Most people came to know her as the Gentle German Giant, as she towered over many people at 6‘2” and had an infectious personality you couldn’t resist chatting with.

When the programs ended in the early 2010s, Karin became more focused on being a mother and grandmother, and spent most of her days relaxing at home, watching true crime shows, and playing her Facebook games.

Karin was preceded in death by her father, Georg; her husband, Glenn; and her son, Christopher. She is survived by her daughters, Kimberly and Stephanie; her son, Timothy; grandchildren, Jayden, Anabella, and Xavière; and chosen family, Jolene Rowen and Ethan Thompson. She was also survived by family in Germany, including her sister Astrid; her brother, Jörg; her estranged mother and brother, Waltraud and Hans-Gerd; and several nieces and nephews.

A celebration of life is not planned, but for any questions, feel free to contact her son Tim at Tim.G.Stogner@gmail.com. Karin’s life passion was helping the homeless and women who were victims of domestic violence, so to help carry on her memory, consider donating to organizations such as the Eureka Rescue Mission or Humboldt Domestic Violence Shelter.

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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Karin Stogner’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here.

Frances Jenett Lowe passed away on May 31, 2024, peacefully in her sleep at the age of 89; only 18 days away from her 90th birthday. She was born to Albert and Cora Gee in De Queen, Arkansas on June 18, 1934. Frances was only 16 years old when her husband Jim first laid eyes on her. Never did he look at any others after that, and were they married on July 9, 1951, in Vancouver, Washington. They settled in Blue Lake, where they raised three wonderful children, two sons and one daughter. They were blessed to build their dream home in Arcata where they tenderly cared for their five grandchildren. They were happily married for 51 years. When she lost her husband Jim in 2002, she focused all her attention on spending as much time as she could with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

She was a loving wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother who was always available for her family. Frances will always be remembered for her love of gardening with special attention to her roses. Hummingbirds always brought that special smile to her face that people will remember her for. Her generous ways were infectious to all. Her love for family and her sisters was unsurmountable. Her and her sisters Wilma, Sally and Eunice had such an incredible bond that all sisters should have. She was able to spend most of the last two years of her life living with her grandson Aaron, his wife Dakota and their two kids. Making special memories with her great-grandchildren that they will never forget.

She is survived by her son James Lowe and wife Ida, daughter Carol Beason, sister Eunice Richmond and her husband Robert always known as Bob. Grandchildren: Elizabeth Williams and her husband Justin, Sarah Beason, Jason Lowe and his wife Rhonda, Ashley Brown and her husband Brandon, Aaron Lowe and his wife Dakota, along with 9 great-grandchildren, 1 great-great grandchild, and many nieces, nephews and cousins.

She is preceded in death by her parents Albert and Cora Gee, her husband Jim Lowe, one son David Lowe and grandson James Beason; sisters Wilma Brown, Sally Wilson and her husband Cecil; brothers Robert Gee and Donald Gee and his wife June.

Her wishes were no formal funeral services, just a simple graveside service which will be held on June 15, 2024, at 11 a.m. at the Greenwood Cemetery in Arcata, which all friends and family are welcomed to attend. After service has concluded all are welcomed to join a small celebration of her life at Aaron and Dakota’s home in Fortuna.

Janet Darlene Waddell Eastburn lost her heroic fight to cancer May 8, 2024. Janet was born October 23, 1972 in Fortuna. She grew up in Rio Dell and attended Fortuna Junior Academy from first to tenth grade. She graduated from Rio Lindo Adventist Academy in 1990. She was a lifelong member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

In 1999 Janet gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Kitana, and in 2019 she was blessed with a granddaughter, Saphira. Janet married Kenneth Eastburn in 2020 and they have had the privilege of raising Saphira for the last five years. Saphira was Janet’s joy and her reason to fight her illness far past the time the doctors gave her.

Janet loved fast cars and spent a lot of time helping with the races at Redwood Acres. She loved to spend time birding and collecting flowers with her mother. She was an amazing cook and baker. This past year she crossed several items of her bucket list, including swimming with sharks in the Bahamas. Her favorite thing though was to spend time with her family and friends at the beach. She loved to play in the waves and sink her toes in the sand. The ocean was where she went find balance and restore her peace.

Janet is survived by her husband, Kenneth Eastburn, her daughter Kitana Neller, her granddaughter Saphira,her sisters Robyn Waddell, Kimberly Unruh, and Valerie Wikander, her brother Timothy Elwell, and her niece Robyn Meija, plus aunts, uncles, cousins and friends who miss her dearly. She was proceeded in death by her mother Barbara Kanen and her son Arman, who she is waiting to meet at Jesus’s return. Janet loved the Lord with all her heart and knew the next thing she would know is her Savior telling her, We’ll done, my Daughter.”

Per her request a party to celebrate her life is being planned for July 27 at 1 p.m. It will be held at her friends: 790 Ireland St in Rio Dell.

An Outpost reader sent us the following screenshot last week, shortly after a New York jury found former President Donald Trump guilty of 34 felonies he committed as part of a “hush money” scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election:

That’s kind of odd, right? For a local TV news station to “Love” react to such a blatantly religious and partisan post? (The Del Norte Republicans Facebook page has since deleted the post after commenters objected to the Christ-Trump comparison, but the Outpost confirmed that North Coast News “Loved” that thing.)

As it turns out, whomever is managing the station’s social media account has a history of “Love” tapping right-wing religious content, including anti-LGBTQ posts from one particularly divisive Ferndale pastor.

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Perhaps it’s a bit less surprising once you learn that North Coast News, the local ABC affiliate broadcasting as KAEF in Eureka, is among the whopping 193 TV news stations owned or operated by Sinclair Broadcast Group, a media conglomerate known for its overtly conservative political tilt. 

KAEF’s Redding-based sister station KRCR, aka “the Northstate’s News,” is also Sinclair-owned. The local affiliates have produced some award-winning reporters and popular TV news personalities over the years, including Nazy Javid, who’s now an anchor over in Redding. 

But as PBS NewsHour reported a few years back, Sinclair often mandates that every single one of its stations run its “clearly conservative editorials and features” verbatim.

North Coast News did not respond to emails seeking comment on its social media activity. We’ll update this post if we hear back. 

In the meantime, here’s a 2018 montage displaying the kind of lockstep messaging broadcast by Sinclair-owned stations across the country.