Whoohoo! It’s officially the first day of summer, which means that it’s not only the longest day of the year, but also the start of fair season! And the event that always kicks it off – Redwood Acres Fair – was in full swing on its opening day, upholding the annual fair’s 2023 theme: “Summer Starts Here.” 

All of the things that you would usually expect were there – greasy funnel cakes, cotton candy and other standard fair fare, lots of livestock and other animals, toy trains, somewhat unsafe-looking rides and, of course, carnival games that are usually almost impossible to win. 

Though the fair seemed noticeably less packed on opening day than it was in 2022 (likely because the fair offered free admission on opening day last year), there were still plenty of people out enjoying the splendidly sunny Humboldt day at Redwood Acres. And, hey, less people means shorter lines for the food, tickets and rides!  

Of course, things will probably pick up quite a bit over the weekend, especially on Friday evening when stock car racing takes place on the Redwood Acres Raceway (4 to 11 p.m.) The fair also added another special event to this year’s racing, turning Saturday into Motorsports Night. It’ll feature sports car drag racing from the Redwood Sports Car Club and “slideways exhibition” put on by Grassroots Drifting.

Image from a previous ‘Hillbilly Boat Race’ | Submitted by Redwood Acres 

The main event of motorsports night will be the Down & Dirty Hillbilly Boat Race – where the race cars drag speed boats behind them and attempt to dislodge the boats of their competitors.  According to a press release sent out by Redwood Acres, this will be the first boat race at Redwood Acres since 2016. The races are free with admission to the fair.

“The twist to bringing boat races back will be that the event will be run on the infield of the 3/8-mile track,” the release states. “The main reason boat races have been off the schedule for so long was because of the damage the events did to the racing surface. Boat racing in the dirt should add an all new and exciting challenge to the action that fans will not want to miss out on.” 

You can find more information, rules for the boat race and footage of past boat races on the Redwood Acres Raceway Facebook Page. Redwood Acres Fair runs from June 21-25, from noon to midnight. You can find more info on Redwood Acres’ website. 

Scroll down for more photos of the fun on opening day!

PREVIOUSLY: SCANNER TRAFFIC INDICATES: Car Over the Side Off Scenic Drive

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Press release from the California Highway Patrol:

On June 21, 2023, at approximately [10:20 a.m.], CHP Humboldt Communications Center received a report of a vehicle off the roadway, and down a steep embankment, on Scenic Dr., north of Baker Ranch Rd. in Trinidad.

Emergency personnel responded to the scene and located a 2023 2003 Toyota Camry approximately 200 feet down a steep embankment.

Two unidentified males were located inside the vehicle. One party was determined by medical personnel on scene to be deceased. The second party was extricated and transported to the hospital with major injuries.

At this time, it is unknown exactly when this crash may have occurred.

The CHP Humboldt Area office is continuing its investigation and asks anyone who may have additional information to contact the California Highway Patrol at 707-822-5981.

Press release from the Humboldt County Drug Task Force:

On June 20, 2023, Humboldt County Drug Task Force Agents and Officers with the Fortuna Police Department served a multi-location search warrant at a residence located in the 500 block of Francesco Place in Fortuna, a storage unit in the 1000 block of Airport Rd. in Fortuna and on the person of Heriberto Posos Cantu (age 37). After a multi-week investigation, the HCDTF believed Posos Cantu was in possession of large quantities of methamphetamine for the purpose of sales.

HCDTF Agents and FPD Officers responded to Heriberto’s storage unit on Airport Road. Upon their arrival Fortuna Police Officer [Dennis] Stevens and his K9 Partner Cain conducted an open-air sniff inside of the storage unit. K9 Cain alerted on several locations inside of the storage unit indicating that narcotics or firearms were hidden inside. Agents searched the storage unit and located approximately five pounds of methamphetamine, packaging materials and indicia for Posos Cantu.

After Agents were finished searching the storage unit, they responded to Posos Cantu’s residence in the 500 block of Francesco Place. As Agents were approaching Posos Cantu’s residence, a vehicle was seen backing out of the driveway. Agents conducted a traffic stop on the vehicle and three subjects were detained.

Fortuna PD Officer Stevens and his K9 partner Cain conducted an open-air sniff around the vehicle. K9 Cain alerted on the vehicle, indicating that narcotics or firearms were hidden inside. Agents searched the vehicle and located approximately seven pounds of methamphetamine.

It was later determined that Posos Cantu learned that law enforcement was serving a search warrant on his properties. Upon receiving that information, Posos Cantu called a family member and requested that they remove the methamphetamine from the residence prior to law enforcement’s arrival.

Agents searched Posos Cantu’s residence where they located more packaging material, a digital scale and approximately $10,000 in US Currency. As Agents were conducting their investigation at the residence, Posos Cantu arrived on scene. Posos Cantu was placed under arrest without incident.

Posos Cantu was transported to the Humboldt County Correctional Facility where he was booked for the following charge:

• 11378 HS Possession of a controlled substance for the purpose of sales
• Anyone with information related to this investigation or other narcotics related crimes are encouraged to call the Humboldt County Drug Task Force at 707-267-9976.

Grizzled farmworkers are the hot new commodity as community colleges try to reverse a years-long enrollment decline.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the “golden age” of higher education — where more and more adults were attending college every year — came to a halt, and California’s community college enrollment plummeted to a 30-year low.

The state community college system lost hundreds of thousands of students, but it was those 50 years and older who left at the highest rates compared to other age groups.

From Siskiyou County, on the border with Oregon, to the Inland Empire, college leaders told CalMatters how older, low-income adults often had to work “essential” jobs or to step back into the workforce to support their families. Because of their age, they faced an increased risk of COVID-19. Many were less comfortable using Zoom or they lacked an adequate internet connection for online classes. As a result, these older students left their college ambitions to the wayside during the pandemic.

Now they are also trying to reel older students back in with new programs and concerted outreach efforts. While some colleges have managed to buck the downward trends, others have found themselves competing for the same students.

Enrolling farmworkers

During the pandemic, the College of the Sisikyous saw one of the biggest enrollment declines across all age groups.

With roughly 2,500 fewer students total in 2021-22 compared to the 2018-19 academic year, the College of the Siskiyous could lose about $2.3 million dollars — just over 10% of its total funding.

Compared to other age groups, students over 50 years old left at the highest rates. And it’s a problem that’s been happening for years, even before the pandemic: COVID-19 was just “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Samantha Worthington, who oversees adult education at the college.

Instead, the college’s enrollment issues began as a result of competition from other schools.

Similar to many California community colleges, which have looked to out-of-state residents and even international students, administrators at the College of the Siskiyous started to look beyond the county line about seven years ago, especially for older students.

The college partnered with an organization called the Farmworker Institute on Education and Leadership Development to offer classes to farmworkers who live hundreds of miles south in places such as Monterey and Kern counties. Often, these students study to improve their English, to learn new career skills, or work towards a degree.

In the 2017-18 academic year, the College of the Siskiyous enrolled 827 farmworkers over the age of 50 in the program.

This year, the College of the Siskiyous has 11 such students over 50 years old.

Along with consistently low wages, these farmworkers had high rates of COVID-19 infection and few worker protections that ultimately pushed them away from classes, Worthington said.

Community college enrollment decline and competition

The decline in students is also because other colleges — faced with their own declining enrollment numbers — saw an opportunity to target the same students.

In 2021, Bakersfield College launched a partnership with the same nonprofit organization to target local farmworkers and declined to sign the collaborative contract it had previously made with the College of the Siskiyous.

In the course of a few years, Bakersfield College launched a flurry of new initiatives, all aimed at boosting enrollment for older students. Administrators opened new teaching centers in South Bakersfield and in the rural town of Wasco. They created a new program to educate people experiencing homelessness and another one, in partnership with the local school district, to teach parents about child development.

From the 2018-19 academic year to 2021-22, the most recent year with verified enrollment data, Bakersfield saw an increase of more than 41% in students over the age of 50, the largest increase of all the state’s 116 community colleges.

Bakersfield College is also a leader in enrolling high school students. In fact, the new California Community College Chancellor Dr. Sonya Christian — a former Bakersfield College president — has said she wants to enroll every 9th grader in a college course, something she first piloted in Kern County.

Now, College of the Siskiyous has turned its attention from farmworkers to prisoners, joining the many colleges who seek to enroll more incarcerated students. The college is also preparing for budget cuts. For example, Fields said the college is canceling classes with only five or six students.

Popularity of noncredit courses

The key to recruiting and retaining older students lies in the way which classes are taught, but most colleges aren’t making the necessary changes, said Kathy Booth, a project director at the education research group WestEd.

To lure older students to school, community colleges need to offer flexible and engaging courses that have clear and specific career outcomes. “The most frequent award that’s given out is a general studies associate’s degree,” she said. “There are very few employers that are asking for associate’s degrees outside of a few technical fields, so that sort of general education is less valuable to a working adult.”

Instead, adults over the age of 50 often want to take noncredit courses, which do not count toward degrees. Noncredit courses are short, free and typically vocational, covering topics such as HVAC repair.

But across the state, colleges struggled to move many of the most popular noncredit courses, such as those in automotive repair, healthcare, and early childhood development, to an online format.

In the 2021-22 academic year, Mt. San Antonio College had about 34,000 students taking noncredit classes, the largest volume of students in the state. Like most colleges, Mt. San Antonio saw a drop in the number of students over 50 who enrolled since the start of the pandemic.

Madelyn Arballo, the vice president of continuing education, is not worried, though. “The first year of the pandemic was really bad, but the second year, we rebounded,” she said. Arballo expects that the college has already reached pre-pandemic levels once the final numbers are tallied for the recent spring semester.

Moving quickly

Arballo attributed some of Mt. San Antonio’s success to her department putting together new classes and certificates quickly, such as a course on COVID-19 contact tracing that it offered for just a few months. Of the 103 students who enrolled in contact tracing courses in the 2021-22 academic year, 41% were over the age of 46, she wrote to CalMatters.

Instead of telling prospective students why they should go to college, she tries to tell students what they could earn or do after college: Contact tracers, for instance, were making $25 an hour at the time the class was running.

Even though these adult students often start out taking one or two quick, noncredit classes, they may end up working towards an associate’s degree, or even transferring to a four-year university, once they realize the earning potential of a bachelor’s degree, said Arballo.

Marcelo Baca, 62, started taking noncredit courses last year in an effort to get his GED, but he isn’t stopping there. He plans to graduate with an associate’s degree in business and then transfer to California State University Fullerton to ultimately become a financial advisor.

It’s not his first attempt at a degree. He immigrated from Argentina in 1989 to attend community college in Orange County, but he couldn’t afford it and dropped out. He became undocumented and despite living in the state for decades, he was ineligible for financial aid. When he was finally in a position to restart school, he said he was diagnosed with colon cancer, and later, sent to the ICU for complications due to COVID-19.

Now he’s finally pursuing his dream, even if his children beat him to it.

“I may be super old, but I don’t care.”

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Adam Echelman covers California’s community colleges in partnership with Open Campus, a nonprofit newsroom focused on higher education. CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

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In its latest report from the 2022-23 session, the Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury says the Humboldt County Sheriff and Board of Supervisors have been “casual to a fault” when it comes to organizational preparedness for large-scale disasters.

The report notes that communities in our region are especially susceptible to such catastrophes given the extreme weather fluctuations, wildfire risk, tectonic activity and steep, erosive topography. 

“When such conditions coincide – cascading events – the potential for unmitigated catastrophe grows,” the report says before immediately mentioning the 2011 Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant meltdown in Japan, which triggered widespread radiological contamination. Yikes!

The Civl Grand Jury doesn’t have authority to investigate private companies such as PG&E, which maintains an underground storage area near King Salmon for highly radioactive material left over from the decommissioned Humboldt Bay Nuclear Power Plant. 

Both PG&E and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission say that storage facility is secure enough to withstand any catastrophic event, and the Grand Jury notes, “County government officials take these assurances at face value.”

But the Civl Grand Jury does have authority to investigate the county’s own preparedness, and as noted above, they found it lacking.

Among other findings, the 19 volunteer members of the Civil Grand Jury note that the county’s Emergency Operations Plan hasn’t been comprehensively updated since its first publication in 2015, though they note that the Office of Emergency Services (OES) intends to rewrite that plan over the next two years.

Cutting to the chase, the report says, “We find that Humboldt County is not adequately prepared to deal with a major natural and unnatural disaster.” 

The county government formed a “Disaster Council” back in 2011, but the Grand Jury found no evidence that the council has met since 2015, nor could they find anyone with the county who could provide a list of the council’s current members.

This lack of activity is bad news given the “rapidly developing science” on such matters as climate change, sea level rise and plate tectonics, the report says. 

“The Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury concludes that while individual companies and various first-responder agencies and departments seem to adequately respond to incidental emergencies, the Board of Supervisors and the Sheriff have been lax with respect to their responsibility to maintain a comprehensive plan for responding to large-scale disastrous events,” the report concludes.

Ultimately, the Civil Grand Jury makes seven recommendations, paraphrased below:

1. The Board of Supervisors should fully staff the Disaster Council and schedule meetings before the end of the year.
2. Before the end of next year, they should also expand the council’s membership to include “state-mandated members from culturally diverse communities, utilities, and emergency communications, as well as the integration of interpreters and translators.”
3. They should direct the council, in coordination with the Sheriff’s Office, to submit a comprehensively updated Emergency Operations Plan by the end of next year.
4. Sheriff Billy Honsal should clarify the chain of command and direction of the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) and other local volunteer emergency preparedness groups by the end of this year.
5. Sheriff Honsal should direct the OES to “write and print for release an easily-understood emergency preparedness handbook, including emergency evacuation routes and destination maps to all county residents and visitors by no later than March 31, 2024.”
6. Honsal should direct the OES to update its contact directory regularly and distribute it to county emergency agencies and local volunteers by the end of the year. And …
7. Honsal should direct the OES to include a contingency plan in the Emergency Operations Plan addressing spent nuclear fuel storage emergencies, by the end of next year.

Both the Sheriff and the Board of Supervisors are required to respond to the report over the next three months.

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DOCUMENT: Humboldt County Emergency Preparedness: Ready or Not?

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Previous 2022-23 Grand Jury reports:

• ‘IT’S OK TO VOTE’: Grand Jury Issues Its First Report of This Cycle, Focused on Humboldt County Election Integrity
• In its Second Report of the Year, the Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury Tackles the ‘Dysfunctional’ State of Child Welfare Services in the County and the ‘Toxic’ Work Atmosphere Within the Department
• CITY of MCKINLEYVILLE? It’s Time for Real Talk About Incorporation, Grand Jury Sez
• Civil Grand Jury Finds ‘Appalling and Dangerous Conditions’ at Humboldt County Animal Shelter

Amping up their concerns as a deadline looms, key California legislators today escalated their pushback on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s efforts to streamline the Delta water tunnel and other infrastructure projects.

The stalemate could become a critical lever while lawmakers haggle with Newsom over the 2023-2024 budget leading up to his June 27 deadline for approving the spending plan.

A bipartisan group of 10 lawmakers from the Assembly and the Senate signed on to a letter today urging Newsom and legislative leaders to stall Newsom’s package of infrastructure bills “for as long as the Delta Conveyance Project remains a part of the proposal.”

The legislators said Newsom’s proposals — which would overhaul permitting and litigation for expansive projects like the controversial tunnel plan to replumb the Delta and send more water south — could cause environmental harm.

“Rather than taking up a few blocks like a stadium, the tunnel would span multiple counties and impose water and air quality concerns throughout the region. If the project is litigated under (the California Environmental Quality Act), the process should not be rushed,” said the letter, spearheaded by Assemblymember Carlos Villapudua, a Democrat from Stockton and a member of the Delta Caucus.

In mid-May, Newsom unveiled an executive order and package of wide-ranging proposals to streamline state approval of major infrastructure projects, such as bridges, reservoirs, semiconductor plants and the Delta tunnel. Some of his proposals aim to keep transportation, energy and water projects from stalling under legal challenges related to the California Environmental Quality Act and make the state more appealing for federal funding.

The fight pits Newsom against lawmakers who say they feel “jammed” by Newsom’s use of the budget process to fasttrack the bills. Environmental groups and salmon fishermen are squaring off against building and labor groups. And Delta counties are once again waging a decades-long battle against a massive water project that would reshape their region.

The Newsom administration says the changes are urgent because California needs to more rapidly build water and energy projects to prepare for climate change.

“The proposals that the governor brings forward we don’t bring forward lightly into the budget process, but because we have to take action now,” California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot said at a joint hearing of the Assembly Judiciary and Natural Resources committees in early June. “We need to be in a dead sprint implementing what we call our water supply strategy for a hotter, drier future.”

Newsom’s Deputy Communications Director Alex Stack said the package “ensures California would still have the same nation-leading environmental protections while also cutting unnecessary red tape that has stalled key climate projects for years.”

The final budget is not contingent on Newsom’s infrastructure proposals, and they could be enacted after it’s signed. But experts suspect they will be a political lever as negotiations hashing out the budget continue through the end of this month.

Introduced as budget trailer bills less than a month before the Legislature’s June 15 budget deadline, Newsom’s proposals bypass the typical legislative policy committee lineup and give lawmakers and the public less opportunity for deliberation or amendments.

“It feels disrespectful to the process, to all the work that we’ve done … to have something come at this late date and want to be rushed through that has had such an impact on my district, and the state and the 4 million people who reside in that area,” Sen. Susan Talamantes Eggman, a Democrat from Stockton, said in a committee hearing this month.

Assembly consultants warned in a report that this approach “significantly limits transparency and public input” and “increases the potential for creating unintended consequences.”

“They (Newsom officials) want to rewrite more than a century of California law in a backroom deal,” Doug Obegi, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told CalMatters.

The package of bills “ensures California would still have the same nation-leading environmental protections while also cutting unnecessary red tape that has stalled key climate projects for years.”
— Alex Stack, Newsom Deputy Communications Director

During informational hearings held in early June, lawmakers noted that this is not the first time that the Newsom administration has brought policy proposals into the budget process. “It is starting to feel like we are being jammed by design,” said state Senator Monique Limón, a Democrat from Santa Barbara, said at the Senate Natural Resources and Water hearing.

‘Overly onerous’ regulations or ‘railroading’ projects in?

Water providers, business interests and several labor unions have voiced support for Newsom’s policy package.

“Major infrastructure projects are too often bogged down in overly onerous regulatory processes and a siloed approach to permitting approvals, which increases overall costs and delays critical projects,” the Association of California Water Agencies, Mojave Water Agency, and the Almond Alliance all wrote in individual letters.

Much of the opposition stressed the impact on the tunnel project, including a coalition of the five counties ringing the Delta — Sacramento, Solano, San Joaquin, Contra Costa and Yolo.

Newsom officials “want to rewrite more than a century of California law in a backroom deal.”
— Doug Obegi, Natural Resources Defense Council

“The Legislature is being asked to railroad over the objections of 4 million people and the 25 county supervisors that represent them and are trying to protect their homes and communities,” said Karen Lange on behalf of the Delta Counties Coalition at an informational hearing of the Assembly Committee on Water, Parks, and Wildlife. “In the case of the tunnel, every county and city that is affected by it opposes it.”

Stockton community organizations, salmon fishers and environmental groups said Newsom’s plan would remove guardrails and hamper litigation against the Delta tunnel and other projects.

One Newsom proposal, for instance, would exclude certain internal communications such as emails from the administrative record prepared for litigation if they didn’t ultimately reach the final decision-making body.

Assembly analysts warned that this “allows the agency to pick and choose what documents to include in the record.” Though these records could be available under a separate California Public Records Act request, this too can lead to lawsuits and delays and “could prove very costly to public agencies.”

In today’s letter, legislators criticized parts of the package that would set a time limit for lawsuits challenging the tunnel and other projects and reduce protections against killing certain wildlife species, such as sandhill cranes that winter in the Delta.

Crowfoot told CalMatters that the proposals were not developed specifically to push through the tunnel project.

“I haven’t been part of any internal conversation on fully protected species and our need to modernize it that discuss the Sandhill crane or its relationship to the project,” he said. “The intent is not to short circuit any environmental review or public input, but it is to ultimately get to an answer around whether this project can be supported and move forward.”

Decades in the making yet still decades from completion, the proposed tunnel has been called both a water grab and a critical update to water supplies for 27 million people, mostly in Southern California, and 750,000 acres of farmland. State officials say it would protect a vital water artery from earthquakes, sea level rise and extreme swings from wet to dry, while local communities and environmental groups say it would upend the way of life and sensitive ecosystems of the Delta.

The estimated price tag, last updated in 2020, is around $16 billion, which would eventually be paid back by water agencies receiving its supplies. Last year, a draft state environmental report warned that the tunnel project would harm endangered and threatened species, convert 2,300 acres of farmland, and disrupt cultural and historic sites.

Asked why the administration included such a fiercely contested issue in the infrastructure package as part of the budget process, Crowfoot said in an interview, “We simply can’t kick the can down the road on this question because it generates disagreements and controversy.”

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