Press release from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife:

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) has been detected for the first time in California’s deer and elk. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) received confirmation on May 6 samples collected from two deer, one in Madera County near Yosemite Lakes and the other in Inyo County, near Bishop. The deer in Madera County was found dead due to unknown causes and the Inyo County deer was found dead after a vehicle collision.

CWD is a fatal neurologic disease in cervid animals such as deer, elk, moose and reindeer that has been detected in free-ranging cervids from 34 states, including California, and five Canadian provinces as well as Scandinavia. It affects the brain, causing progressive damage and eventually, death. There is no effective treatment or vaccine to combat this disease.

There appears to be no known link between CWD and human disease, although a similar prion animal disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or mad cow disease in cattle, has been linked to fatal disease in humans through the consumption of infected beef. As a result the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend keeping the agents of all known prion diseases from entering the human food chain (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Chronic Wasting Disease).

CDFW has been monitoring California elk and deer populations for CWD through lymph node sampling and testing since 2000, testing over 6,500 deer and elk, and has been working to increase surveillance efforts, with the help of hunters, taxidermists and meat processors since 2018. 

Clinical signs of the disease include progressive weight loss, clumsy movements and lack of coordination, listlessness, drooling, excessive thirst or urination and behavioral changes. Once these symptoms develop death occurs quickly.

The disparate locations of these two detections indicates that CWD has probably been present in California for some time, since the incubation period can be months to years.

“CWD infected animals can excrete infectious prions before clinical signs appear and these prions can persist in the environment for years, making it very difficult to prevent or control the spread once it has been introduced,” says, Dr. Brandon Munk, CDFW’s wildlife veterinarian who oversees CWD surveillance and response efforts. “The public can help limit the spread of CWD by reporting any signs of illness in deer and elk populations, and hunters should strongly consider testing their harvested deer or elk.”

CDFW continues to provide surveillance, response, long-term management plans and public outreach and education through their “No Time to Waste” campaign to limit the spread. Hunters can assist in the efforts by voluntarily participating in CDFW’s statewide CWD surveillance and sampling efforts and encouraging other hunters to participate.

To report a sick deer or elk: Wildlife Mortality Reporting

To learn more and find out how to get your cervid harvest tested: Chronic Wasting Disease

Press release from the Cal Poly Humboldt administration:

The University wants to acknowledge that this has been an extremely challenging time for Cal Poly Humboldt. It has also been a very emotional time for our campus community and beyond, and we have much work in front of us to reset, rebuild, and heal. To clarify misinformation and rumors, here’s a timeline of the events beginning on April 22. We invite people to continue to ask questions and more information will be coming.

The University’s Time, Place, and Manner policy is content-neutral, approved by the University Senate, and fully supportive of First Amendment protections. In fact, this policy exists to protect freedom of speech and assembly while also protecting the rights of the entire campus community to a secure environment that is conducive to our educational purpose.

These approved policies, which have had extensive review, should be supported and enforced regardless of context. There is no First Amendment right to enter and occupy a building to stage a protest and it is a clear violation of the University’s Time, Place, and Manner policy.

• Multiple people called the University Police Department (UPD) concerned due to the actions of the people who were protesting in Siemens Hall on the first day of the protest. Several staff members asked the people who were protesting to leave the building prior to UPD arriving on the scene. The people who were protesting refused.
• UPD officers were inside the building with the people who were protesting and asked if they could facilitate a protest in the public space of the Quad, where it would have been a lawful assembly. Those requests were rebuffed by the people who were protesting.
• Tents in hallways and barricades were being assembled in front of exit doors, and vandalism of the building’s interior had already begun before UPD arrived.
• Students, faculty, and staff who were not part of the protest were evacuated with the assistance of UPD. Classes were canceled out of safety concerns because exits were already being barricaded.
• UPD ordered the people who were trespassing to leave the building. They refused to vacate the building and construction of barricades continued. UPD called for additional police presence on campus.
• Efforts to clear those barricades in the lobby were met with assault on officers. Police were attempting to enforce a lawful order, arrest those who were assaulting officers, and clear the building. Several people who were protesting and police officers were injured. Additional police officers were called from throughout the county.
• On the first night, administrators were told that if law enforcement was removed that the protesters would leave the building.
• The Provost, Vice Provost, and Dean Crane went into the building twice on Monday. The first time to check on the safety of the protesters, establish dialog, and to see if any needed medical attention. The people who were protesting offered a set of demands.
• The second time the Provost, Vice Provost and Dean Crane entered on Monday night was to announce that law enforcement was leaving the scene and that protesters could leave, as they agreed, without consequences. The people who were protesting shouted the Provost down and threw water at her.
• The UPD Chief of Police recommended that law enforcement depart. President Jackson concurred. Law enforcement left the scene. The people who were protesting then reneged on their promise to vacate the building and continued to build barricades.
• On Tuesday, the focus was on deescalation, and administrators waited for the protesters to keep their promise to leave the building. They refused. Efforts to dialog occurred throughout the day with the protesters both inside and outside the building. The people who were protesting refused to let any administrators into the building.
• After Tuesday, administrators realized the extent of the damage to the building and leaving without consequences was taken off the table. Nelson Hall East was then also occupied, doors were barricaded and protesters controlled who was allowed in or out of the building.
• Throughout the week, there were many attempts to get the protesters to agree to leave the buildings, beyond those efforts that were widely discussed. Faculty, staff, and administrators were actively talking with protesters throughout the week.
• We took the protesters’ demands seriously, and researched those demands and answered them to the best of our ability on the 26th of April.
• A total of 12 buildings were vandalized. The John Van Duzer Theatre, Music A, Art A, Founders Hall, Van Matre Hall, Harry Griffith Hall, Student Business Services, Forestry, and the Gutswurrak Student Activities Center were either broken into or attempted to be broken into. Several others were defaced. Fortunately University staff were able to retake these buildings.
• To date, the initial estimate is that there is more than $1.9M in financial impact, which includes physical damage to the campus and emergency operations. This number is not final due to the campus still assessing physical damage, costs to restore the damage, and gathering a full picture of the financial impact.
• It was difficult to dialog with the protesters to leave the building because there was no clear leadership. There were only a few students that began the protest that were on site during the arrests, which is what made ending the protest without arrest so difficult.
• More than half of those arrested were not students.
• The tagging and efforts to reoccupy buildings on campus have continued since the arrests, which is why the campus has not yet been reopened.

California’s massive effort to shelter homeless residents during the COVID-19 pandemic was a success, according to a new report that says the effort changed the state’s homeless services system for the better.

But at the same time, the researchers pointed out a troubling dearth of available data on the program. With the little information they were able to access, they found that people who left the program had at least a 40% chance of returning to homelessness.

Project Roomkey, one of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature pandemic initiatives, temporarily moved about 62,000 homeless Californians into hotel rooms in an effort to prevent them from catching COVID. The model, which provided residents with their own private room and bathroom, as well as (in some cases) healthcare and other services, was a world apart from traditional shelters where dozens of people sleep together in a room and services are limited.

The independent evaluation of the program, released Monday evening, says Roomkey succeeded in saving lives while also shifting the way the state thinks about homeless shelters.

“I believe the program was successful and I believe it has a further reach beyond just what happened during the program itself, because many communities and many providers have seen the value of this type of program and are trying to continue with it,” said Nichole Fiore, a principal associate with research firm Abt Associates who co-authored the report. The report was funded by the California Health Care Foundation and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.

But the researchers acknowledged large holes in the accessible state and local data. For example, they couldn’t cross-reference death records or information about participants’ health, meaning they had no way to prove Roomkey prevented deaths or kept people healthier.

Initial responses to public records requests filed by CalMatters revealed dozens of deaths in Roomkey programs spread across the state.

In Ventura County, 32 people died in Roomkey hotel rooms, the majority “due to health conditions and COVID related,” said Jennifer Harkey, program director of the Ventura County Continuum of Care. Twelve people died in San Diego County, eight in Tulare County and seven elderly people in Riverside County, officials told CalMatters.

Still, officials say the individual hotel rooms saved many more people from the more hazardous alternatives of staying on the street or crowding into traditional group shelters.

“This has been a highly successful program by offering safety and stability to highly vulnerable unsheltered people,” Harkey told CalMatters in a statement. “This has proven that non-congregate shelter is a model we need to continue in our community.”

In addition, though many program operators tried to move people into permanent housing as COVID vaccines were released and Roomkey hotels closed, they succeeded less than a quarter of the time.

Did Project Roomkey end people’s homelessness?

Project Roomkey launched in March 2020 and was most heavily used between April 2020 and June 2021. It primarily accepted residents who were considered particularly vulnerable to COVID because they were 65 and older or had medical conditions such as asthma, diabetes or heart conditions.

It started as a hastily-deployed health program — its primary goal was to prevent people from dying of COVID-19, not to permanently end their homelessness. At the outset, both state and local officials expected it would operate for just a few months. As the pandemic dragged on and the hotels stayed open much longer than anticipated, many counties began trying to move Roomkey participants into permanent housing.

As of January, 22% of people leaving Roomkey programs throughout the state went to permanent housing, and 11% to temporary housing, according to state data compiled by the researchers. Another 40% remained homeless: 25% went into other emergency shelters and 15% went back to the street. Another 18% went to unknown destinations, meaning they didn’t tell staff where they were going, or staff didn’t track it.

The positive connotation the researchers gave those results shows just how low the bar is for homelessness programs. Housing is notoriously scarce and expensive in California, and there is a massive shortage of rental subsidies and other resources to help pay people’s rent.

“22% is actually pretty good for an exit into permanent housing,” Fiore said.

The state spent $24 billion on housing and homelessness over the past five years, but as the crisis continues to get worse, lawmakers increasingly are demanding to know where that money is going and why it isn’t getting better results. A recent state audit found huge gaps in the data collected on massive California-wide homelessness programs. And legislators in the state assembly held an oversight hearing on homelessness Monday.

Because Roomkey was so large — and started when counties had access to an unprecedented amount of federal COVID relief dollars that could be spent on housing — the sheer number of people Roomkey permanently housed was impressive, said Vivian Wan, chief executive officer of Abode Services, which ran 16 Roomkey sites in Santa Clara, Alameda and Napa counties. More than 14,000 Californians moved from Roomkey into a permanent home, according to state data obtained by CalMatters.

“More people got housed during this time than any other time that I know of,” Wan said.

Even so, she was hesitant to say 22% was a “good” result, percentage-wise. By comparison, people who left Abode’s shelters in Alameda County last year moved into permanent housing 24% of the time.

The positive connotation the researchers gave those results shows just how low the bar is for homelessness programs.

San Francisco’s largest navigation center (a shelter that provides beds and other services) reported just 8% of the people who left its program ended up in permanent housing in 2022.

Roomkey also didn’t always do a better job of ending people’s homelessness than other shelters, and housing placements varied widely county by county.

Some counties struggled even to track that data.

Officials in Fresno County, for example, said that in the frenzy of opening nine Roomkey projects originally planned to operate for just a few weeks or months, not all site operators tracked where residents went.

There was no data available for four of the county’s nine sites. Officials reported that about 120 out of the nearly 670 people served by the remaining sites — or roughly 18% — moved into permanent housing.

They tried to get participant data from the state’s homeless services system to cross-reference with Medi-Cal and death record data… but couldn’t.

Amina Flores-Becker grew up in Fresno and has watched housing become unaffordable for many middle class and low-income neighbors. One major challenge with Roomkey, the deputy county administrative officer said, was a lack of housing options for people who left hotels, leading many back to the street.

“There was definitely a mass exodus from those shelters when that went away,” Flores-Becker told CalMatters in an interview earlier this year.

One takeaway emphasized by the Abt researchers: The longer people stayed in Roomkey, the more likely they were to move on to permanent housing (at least in Tulare, Los Angeles and Ventura counties, the only counties for which the researchers obtained detailed outcome data). In Los Angeles County, more than half of those who stayed in Roomkey 18 months or longer moved into permanent housing.

The researchers also compared the demographics of Roomkey residents with residents of other shelter programs in Los Angeles County. Roomkey residents were more likely to be White and less likely to be Black .

Researchers struggled with a lack of data

The evaluation determined Roomkey met its goal of saving lives (a claim anecdotally backed by experts who say the state didn’t see the flood of homeless deaths during the pandemic that they initially feared). But the Abt researchers weren’t able to obtain data on deaths or health outcomes as proof. They tried to get participant data from the state’s homeless services system to cross-reference with Medi-Cal and death record data — but they couldn’t, due to data privacy restrictions and other bureaucratic roadblocks, Fiore said.

Many people came to Roomkey from crowded shelters where as many as 300 people might share a room — perfect conditions for COVID to spread, Wan said. Without Roomkey, Wan suspects homeless shelters might have seen COVID mortality rates similar to those of nursing homes – which, at the height of the pandemic, accounted for more than 40% of California’s COVID-related deaths.

“I can’t imagine the spread had we not been able to decompress (homeless shelters),” she said. “People sleep nose to nose in many of these sites.”

In the absence of extensive statewide data, the Abt researchers surveyed and interviewed Roomkey providers and participants throughout California. They sent an online survey to all counties that participated in the program, and conducted interviews with city, county and program staff in 15 of those communities. They also went on site visits to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tulare, Ventura and Santa Cruz counties.

The researchers asked for data on participant outcomes from the five counties where they conducted site visits, but Los Angeles, Tulare and Ventura were the only ones that complied.

That lack of access to data is a problem, Fiore said.

“It’s critical to be able to collect, analyze and evaluate that data across systems,” she said. “And right now all the data for those benefits are sitting in different systems.”

Roomkey gets positive reviews, despite problems

Most Roomkey participants surveyed reported having a “positive experience,” according to the Abt report. They said they particularly appreciated having their own bathroom.

“It really was a place for people to stabilize,” Fiore said. “Get rest. Get nourishment. Get services.”

One participant from Ventura County told the researchers that he could refrigerate his insulin, consistently take his medication and make his doctor’s appointments.

But the Roomkey hotels were not designed for long-term living, which posed challenges as the pandemic continued for multiple years, according to the evaluation. Residents couldn’t cook (not even on hotplates) and the minifridges in the rooms could store only enough food for one or two days. Roomkey staff told the researchers the motels tended to be “decrepit” and didn’t have enough rooms accessible for people with disabilities. Some residents complained of cockroaches and rodents.

Roomkey programs also struggled to provide enough services. Many residents had been living on the street for a long time and suffered from chronic health conditions such as kidney failure, cancer and seizures, as well as PTSD and other mental health issues. Some counties, such as Los Angeles, provided on-site nurses. San Francisco provided counseling and therapy.

Wan said some of her team’s Roomkey sites could have used more health services. “Frankly, because there just weren’t enough resources to go around,” she said.

“People will come indoors if they are offered autonomy, safety, privacy, if they’re able to keep their partners, their pets, their possessions.”
— Nichole Fiore, principal associate, research firm Abt Associates

Statewide, Roomkey staff also enforced strict rules to prevent the spread of COVID, such as requiring residents to mostly stay in their rooms and prohibiting guests. In some cases, the isolation exacerbated residents’ mental health issues.

“Physically I was getting better when I was at the (shelter-in-place) hotel, but mentally…I was too isolated,”one participant told the researchers. “I needed more interaction. It eventually came to a point where I was talking to the TV and arguing with myself in my room.”

Some participants left the program because of those rules.

Funding was another challenge. Cities and counties ramped up their Roomkey programs with the understanding that the federal government would foot a large chunk of the bill. But the Federal Emergency Management Agency recently said it wouldn’t reimburse them for Roomkey stays of longer than 20 days between June 11, 2021 and May 11, 2023.

That limit, which state and local officials are urging the federal government to reverse, will cost California and local governments more than $300 million, according to an estimate from the governor’s Office of Emergency Services.

But the program has made its mark on California. For example, hotels are a key part of the homelessness strategy in Los Angeles, where the new Inside Safe initiative moves people from encampments into hotels. But like Roomkey, that program has struggled to provide residents with enough health and mental health services, and to move people from the hotels into permanent housing.

Roomkey also helped dispel a myth that Fiore says is often perpetuated about homeless residents: That they don’t want to live inside. People who never accepted beds in traditional shelters were willing to try Roomkey, she said.

“People will come indoors if they are offered autonomy, safety, privacy, if they’re able to keep their partners, their pets, their possessions,” Fiore said. “When their needs are met and their needs are considered, then people will come indoors.”

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CalMatters investigative reporter Lauren Hepler contributed to this story.

For the record: Both the California Health Care Foundation and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, which funded the independent report, also are among funders of CalMatters. Our news judgments are made independently and not on the basis of donor support.

The CalMatters Ideas Festival takes place June 5-6! Find out more and get your tickets at this link.

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

Christian Leslie Nielsen was born on April 10, 1963 and passed away suddenly on March 30, 2024 due to influenza. Christian was the oldest son born to Gerald and Rosemary Nielsen of Loleta. We grew up on our family dairy and beef ranch in Loleta and Ferndale where we learned a great work ethic from our father.

Our brother went to Loleta Elementary School and graduated from Fortuna Union High School, Class of 1982. Christian then attended College of the Redwoods and graduated with a degree in drafting. Christian work for over 30 years at the Humboldt County Planning and Building Department.

Christian was an active member of the Ferndale Danish Lodge for 44 years. Our brother enjoyed being an active member of Valhalla No. 11, Brotherhood, the Scandinavian Festival, and various other groups and was very proud of his Danish heritage. He attended and loved to dance at the Scandinavian Festival every year in Ferndale. He met lots of lifelong friends at meetings and conventions he attended through the lodge. After his passing Christian was honored with the “Member of the Year” award at the California and Nevada State convention, an honor we know he would have been very humble by. Our brother was a devout Catholic and attended Sacred Heart Church as well as St Joseph’s Church in Eureka. He had a strong faith and love for God.

Christian is proceeded in death by our parents Gerald and Rosemary Nielsen. He is survived by Ken and Camie Nielsen of Loleta and Jim Nielsen of Fortuna; his nieces and nephews Lisa Nielsen, Sara and Jason Blum, Kayla Lundy, Ashly Maxwell, Gracie and Parker Bryan, Hunter Nielsen, Brady Nielsen; his great-nieces and great-nephews Albert, Walter, Waylon, Hazel, Everlee and his dog Daisy.

We will be holding a celebration of life on May 18 at 1 p.m. at the Ferndale Danish Hall, 430 Ocean Ave, Ferndale. Bring your favorite potluck dish and stories of Christian to share. In lieu of flowers please make donations to Tail Waggers Thrift Shop, 2737 F St Eureka Ca 95501.

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

James (Jim) Perry St. John passed away peacefully on March 12, 2024, at his home in Willow Creek, California. Jim was born September 2, 1943, in Arcata at the old Trinity Hospital — the son of Perry Leroy and Barbara Caroline (Weirup) St. John. Jim was raised in McKinleyville, where he attended elementary school and later graduated from Arcata High School. He enjoyed gardening, singing, reciting poetry, and building and fixing machinery, especially Oliver tractors.

Jim worked for several Arcata Bottoms ranchers in the hay fields as a teenager. At sixteen, he purchased his first Oliver tractor, going into custom farming. Jim was a well-known machinist throughout Humboldt County. He was the go-to guy if you had a difficult job. Jim took great pride in analyzing and problem-solving a project to make it work. Jim started his machinist career at Humboldt Machine, later moving to Gene’s Machine in Arcata and Redding. Jim married Ella Gleave in 1967. They had two children, Perry and Hiedi. After moving his family to Willow Creek in 1972 he went to work for California Pacific in Hoopa as a Mill Wright. Jim and Ella divorced in 1981. After the divorce was finalized, he opened his own machine shop, J & V Machine during the late 1980s in Arcata. He would later move his business to Willow Creek. He married Virginia (Yarborough) Skaggs in 1993. They lived together happily until her death in 2021.

Jim was preceded in death by his wife Virginia St. John, parents Perry and Barbara St. John, and sister Carole St. John. He is survived by his children Perry (Tammy) St. John of Adin, Calif., Hiedi (Keir) Johnston of Willow Creek and niece Dolly Bott of Kansas City, Kansas, in addition to his two step-children Clifford Mac (Melinda Sue) Skaggs of Leggett, and Tina Skaggs of Estacada, Oregon. He also leaves behind his grandchildren Jeremiah St. John, Jossie (Robert) Cornish, Kyle (Heather) Duncan, Dylan(Joanna) Duncan, Logan (Alice) Johnston, Tess (Patrick) Moran, and Shae (Joshua) McKnight, his step-grandchildren Krystal (Stephen) Wainwright, Timothy Valjean Skaggs, and Gerelyn Jean Skaggs. He is also survived by his ten great-grandchildren Sophie and Shepherd Cornish, Bronc and Rorie Lear, Dixie Long, Keagan and Grayson Duncan, Clyde Johnston, Jasper Ambrose, and Sunny Wainwright.

A celebration of life will be held on May 11, 2024 at 1 p.m. at Willow Creek Veterans Memorial Hall. A potluck lunch will be held following the celebration. We look forward to hearing stories and memories you may have about Jim.

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

Marvin “Ike” Ganfield Jr., a man known for his love of good company and a friendly chat, passed away on April 7, 2024, in McKinleyville. Born in Oregon in 1945, Ike moved to California at a young age.

Ike was predeceased by his parents, Thelma and Marvin Ganfield Sr., and his in-laws, Otis and Odessa Wright. He joins his brothers David, Roger and Darel Ganfield, and sisters Cheryl and Sharon, in heaven.

An avid outdoorsman, Ike cherished his hunting and fishing trips. He was also a social butterfly, relishing visits with friends and family, and never shy about striking up a conversation with anyone he met. Casinos held a special place in his heart, where he enjoyed mingling and playing the slots.

Ike’s true love was his wife of 53 years, Peggy D. Ganfield. Together, they shared a life filled with love and companionship, surrounded by their many beloved dogs. He is survived by Peggy, his brothers Dennis and Robby, his sister Sandra, and a large extended family of nieces, nephews, great-nieces, and great- nephews.

Ike will be remembered for his warmth, easygoing nature, and love of a good conversation.

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“Grim.”

That was the blunt assessment of Humboldt County’s budget outlook offered this morning by Deputy County Administrative Officer Jessica Maciel.

She was addressing the Board of Supervisors at a special hearing that kicked off the planning process for the upcoming 2024-25 fiscal year, and while the fiscal picture she painted was indeed dour — to the tune of an estimated $12.4 million deficit for the current fiscal year, which wraps up on June 30 — the reality is not as bad as the $18.4 million deficit projected when the budget was first adopted.

Still, that shortfall represents a loss of nearly a third of the county’s $38.3 million fund balance at the start of the fiscal year. Maciel explained that if the county maintains this structural deficit, and certain costs (like employee salaries) continue to increase at their current rates, then the general fund will run out of money before the end of the 2025-26 fiscal year, which is less than just over two years away.

What would that mean for county departments and the services they provide? Maciel said this kind of fiscal hemorrhaging would require a 20 percent cut in general fund allocations across the board by the time fiscal year 2026-27 rolls around. 

“Budget cuts at this level are not attainable without reductions in staffing and services,” she said. 

In the current fiscal year, the board implemented a program of voluntary furloughs, separation incentives and a hiring freeze. Those measures should continue to save the county money in the upcoming year, according to Maciel, though she warned, “these alone will not provide enough savings” to balance the budget.

Money could also be saved by reducing staff through attrition and potentially by reorganizing some departments. Staff plans to present some reorganizing options to the board on June 3.

A budget ad hoc committee comprising Fourth District Supervisor Natalie Arroyo and Second District Supervisor Michelle Bushnell recently met with supervisors from each of the county’s 21 departments to brainstorm ways to stanch the bleeding.

“Truly, it was a difficult set of meetings and a very productive set of meetings,” Arroyo reported to her board colleagues. 

Bushnell said she looks forward to collaborating with department heads to figure out how to balance the budget in the future, though she said the county is about to head into “a few lean years.”

Following this broad overview, county department heads took turns presenting reports that included accomplishments and challenges over the past year and goals for the future. Roughly half of the county departments delivered their reports today; the remaining departments will present their budget overviews at a follow-up hearing on May 20.

Yana Valachovic, director of the University of California Cooperative Extension in Humboldt and Del Norte counties, offered a rare ray of financial sunshine, saying her department was able to absorb some reduced funding thanks to a fortuitous new hire and some structural changes, so she’s requesting no additional funds for the upcoming fiscal year.

However, Valachovic went on to highlight the destabilizing economic impacts of climate change, including the effects of California’s increasing wildfire risks on the insurance industry.

Humboldt County Assessor Howard LaHaie also had some good news. In recent years, the county’s total assessed property values were going up by about four and a half percent, and in both last fiscal year and this one, the tax roll value has gone up by nearly six percent, he said.

He said his office currently has 27 employees. “And actually when I started in 2008, the assessor’s office had 36 staff so we’ve decreased it quite a bit,” he said. “I think that, in my opinion, 27 is probably the minimum to be able to continue to to produce the required assessments that we’re supposed to do. Anything below that would be detrimental to not only to our office but to the county as a whole.”

The county recently purchased artificial intelligence software called Just Appraised, which reads deeds and automatically enters the data into the county’s property tax database, so the work doesn’t need to be done manually.

At the end of LaHaie’s presentation, First District Supervisor Rex Bohn asked about the potential for A.I. to further streamline operations in the department. He went on to joke that some people “are looking forward to the day [when] there’s five computer screen sitting up here” on the board’s dais.

During his turn, the county’s director of aviation, Cody Roggatz, said Humboldt has seen a 50.6 percent increase in commercial aviation passengers from 2018 to 2023. 

“More passengers leads to more parking lot revenue, which is actually our biggest revenue generator for our entire department,” Roggatz said. He noted that his department has completed a series of major capital improvement programs in recent years thanks to funding from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, aka the CARES Act.

Aside from the Sacramento International Airport and the Santa Rosa Airport, he added, “we have garnered more funding and accomplished more for Humboldt County’s airports than anybody else in Northern California.”

Other county department heads said they’ve experienced significant staffing challenges, including difficulty recruiting and retaining employees. For example, Child Support Services Director Bennett Hoffman said his department has averaged a vacancy rate of 35 percent, and this year it was more like 60 percent among case management workers.

District Attorney Stacey Eads said she’s also having trouble with staffing amid a nationwide shortage of applicants for deputy DA positions. 

“We also live, obviously, in a very rural community; we’re very isolated,” Eads said. A number of people who’ve come to work in her department have loved the job and their coworkers but wound up leaving “due to the lack of adequate medical care,” she said.

Other department heads who presented today included Planning and Building Director John Ford, Human Resources Director Zachary O’Hanen and Library Services Director Chris Cooper. Each outlined the challenges they’ve faced this year and the ones they anticipate in the near future.

As noted above, the rest of the county department heads, including Sheriff William Honsal and Public Works Director Tom Mattson, will offer their fiscal presentations to the board two weeks from today.

Over the coming weeks, departments will submit their official budget requests, and the board will be tasked with finalizing a spending plan that preserves as many services as possible while minimizing the structural deficit.