An outside investigation has sustained an allegation against Supervisor Michelle Bushnell, finding that she violated the county’s code of conduct by mistreating a staff member during a meeting in the Planning Department late last year.
As we reported in April, an unidentified county planner accused Bushnell of losing her temper, berating and threatening the employee and slamming a door.
The investigation, conducted by Monterey County-based attorney Richard “Ren” Nosky, concludes that the county planner wasn’t blameless in the incident. Their own behavior at the Dec. 29 meeting “played a large role in provoking Bushnell and created an awkward and hostile tone,” his report summary says
But the Second District county supervisor, who was less than a year into her first term at the time, responded poorly.
“Bushnell reacted combatively to the employee, which escalated the tension at the meeting to the point where Bushnell left the room,” the summary notes.
Back in April, Bushnell admitted to getting upset and said she accidentally slammed a door on her way out Planning Director John Ford’s office. Reached by phone on Monday she reiterated that she’d become distressed during the meeting because she felt the county planner was mistreating constituents who were seeking help with cannabis permits.
“I do not wish for my constituents to be treated poorly by any staff member — that’s what happened,” Bushnell said. But she added that she doesn’t want to make excuses for her own behavior. “I still need to do better and not react and let the proper people deal with that. … I’ll do better.”
The investigation report summary says Bushnell’s behavior violated the county Board of Supervisors’ code of conduct in two ways:
First, Bushnell’s conduct violated Section B(3) of the Code of Conduct, which requires that Supervisors, “practice civility and decorum in discussions and debate, and refrain from abusive conduct, personal charges … or verbal attacks upon the character or motives of … staff … which has the effect of disrupting the County’s business … .” Even though Bushnell was provoked, she was overly confrontational with the employee and questioned the employee’s qualifications in front of a constituent. This did not show proper decorum and reflected poorly on her office.
Second, Bushnell’s conduct violated Section B(10) of the Code of Conduct, which requires that Supervisors “support the maintenance of a positive and constructive workplace environment for County employees … .” The policy also requires that Supervisors “address County employees, whether in public or in private, with courtesy and respect.” While Bushnell was provoked by the employee to a degree, it was inappropriate for her to engage with the employee in such a provocative fashion in front of her constituent and other staff members. The confrontation produced a highly awkward situation and did not serve to support a positive workplace environment for those staff members.
The code of conduct was revised last spring in the wake of the employee’s complaint.
That complaint also alleged that Bushnell inappropriately interfered in the cannabis permitting process by personally advocating on behalf of the applicant while disregarding evidence that the applicant had violated a number of county codes.
That finding was not sustained, nor were additional allegations that came in after the Board of Supervisors’ April 4 meeting.
At tomorrow’s Board of Supervisors meeting, Bushnell and her colleagues will discuss the findings of the investigation and consider whether to formally censure her, which would require a “yes’ vote from at least two-thirds of the board members present and voting, per county code. In other words, if all five supervisors are present and Bushnell recuses herself, at least three of the remaining four would need to vote in favor of the formal rebuke for it to pass.
Bushnell said she doesn’t know what will happen tomorrow, but in the past 10 months she’s worked to improve her behavior.
“I’ve done a lot of classes and training since [the incident] just to bettermyself,” she said. “I’ve been in many meetings with the director and staff and constituents and have not had a repeated incident — nor will I, ever. But I do want to say, I won’t let my constituents be beat up.”
After hanging up, she called back to speak on behalf of staff, generally.
“County staff, for the most part, are amazing,” she said.
The Board of Supervisors meeting is scheduled to begin Tuesday at 9 a.m. inside board chambers at the county courthouse. You can download the full meeting agenda, which includes instructions for participating remotely, by clicking here.
Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:
On Oct. 29, 2022, at about 8:26 p.m., Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to a local hospital for the report of an assault that had occurred earlier that evening in the Willow Creek area.
At the hospital, deputies contacted a 22-year-old male victim, who was being treated for moderate injuries, and the suspect, 23-year-old Dante Blade Rhoades, who was being detained by Arcata Police Department officers.
Rhoades.
During their investigation, deputies learned that the victim was working at a gas station on the 39000 block of State Highway 299 when he observed Rhoades shoplift from the store. The victim reportedly confronted Rhoades about the shoplifting and a physical altercation occurred between the two. Following the assault, Rhoades and the victim were transported separately to the hospital. At the hospital, Rhoades reportedly began causing a disturbance, prompting law enforcement response.
Rhoades was arrested and booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility on charges of battery with serious bodily injury (PC 243(d)).
Anyone with information about this case or related criminal activity is encouraged to call the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 445-7251 or the Sheriff’s Office Crime Tip line at (707) 268-2539.
Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:
On Oct. 30, 2022, at about 10 p.m., Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputies on patrol in the Samoa area observed a suspicious occupied vehicle parked along Vance Avenue.
Deputies initiated an investigation into the vehicle and contacted two occupants, 37-year-old Quentin Laone Bell and 37-year-old Bianca Cassandra Welton. Bell initially gave deputies a false name. However, upon proper identification, deputies learned that Bell had outstanding warrants for his arrest. Welton was also found to have outstanding warrants.
During a search of Bell, Welton, and the vehicle incident to arrest, deputies located approximately 9 grams of methamphetamine, drug paraphernalia and suspected fentanyl.
Bell was arrested and booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility on charges of possession of a controlled substance (HS 11377(a)) and false identification to a peace officer (PC 148.9(a)), in addition to warrant charges of possession of a leaded cane (PC 22210), violation of probation (PC 1203.2(a)) and inflicting corporal injury on a spouse (PC 273.5(a)).
Due to medical concerns, Welton was cited and released on charges of possession of a narcotic controlled substance (HS 11350(a)), possession of a controlled substance paraphernalia (HS 11364(a)) and violation of probation (PC 1203.2).
Anyone with information about this case or related criminal activity is encouraged to call the
Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 445-7251 or the Sheriff’s Office Crime Tip line at (707) 268-2539.
It’s difficult for housing advocates to criticize Gov. Gavin Newsom because he’s done more to boost production than any other governor in recent memory — but that’s mostly because the bar is so low.
Measured against the goal he set for himself, Newsom’s record is less impressive. Just 13% of the 3.5 million homes he campaigned on building have been permitted, let alone built. He’s walked back the goal many times, settling on a new target earlier this year: Cities need to have planned a combined 2.5 million homes by 2030. So, a million fewer homes planned for, not built, and over a longer time frame.
But as he finalizes his first term and coasts into the second, Newsom finds himself mired in an even deeper housing and homelessness crisis than the one he inherited.
Running for governor in 2017, then-Lt. Gov. Newsom pledged to spur a never-before-seen tsunami of homebuilding in California to bridge the gap between the growing population and shrinking stock of housing driving the affordability crisis.
“As Governor, I will lead the effort to develop the 3.5 million new housing units we need by 2025 because our solutions must be as bold as the problem is big,” Newsom wrote on Medium.
The goal was true to character: big, hairy and audacious. It would have required building an average of 500,000 homes a year in a state that has only surpassed the 300,000 mark twice in more than 50 years.
Newsom didn’t get even close.
In the nearly four years since he took office, California cities are projected to have permitted a total of about 452,000 homes — less than he pledged he’d build in one year alone, according to local data collected by the Construction Industry Research Board.
“The biggest risk in life, however one defines risk, is not that we aim too high and miss it. It’s that we aim too low and reach it,” Newsom said. “It was always a stretch goal.”
Housing advocates acknowledge that policy change is by nature slow and incremental, and like many other proposals, long-term housing goals took a backseat to the COVID-19 pandemic.
But the reality on the ground — that there aren’t enough houses for everyone and the ones that exist are hideously expensive — continues to exasperate Californians who repeatedly rank housing and homelessness among their top concerns.
“We need government to treat this the way we treat a natural disaster, because that’s how it’s impacting people’s lives,” said Chione Lucina Muñoz Flegal, executive director of Housing California, a housing advocacy organization. “And that’s not what we see happening.”
A Marshall Plan for housing?
Housing policy advocates described Newsom’s stated goal of 3.5 million new homes in four years the same way he has: aspirational. They say that’s because the state doesn’t build housing in California — private developers do, with the approval of local governments. So what really grabbed advocates’ attention was the “Marshall Plan for affordable housing” Newsom pledged to launch during his inaugural speech, recalling the multi-billion dollar program to rebuild Western Europe following World War II.
“As much as the number was important, the idea of building a streamlined process of building, that was amazing, because that’s really the challenge of California,” said Dan Dunmoyer, president of the California Building Industry Association. He said that dream remains elusive.
California has some of the highest housing costs in the nation because of how little “marshaling” there is, Dunmoyer said. Land costs are prohibitive, and zoning rules limit much of what can be built. Housing must get approved at the local level, which has ample opportunity for community input. Those communities can then block unpopular projects, such as multi-family or affordable housing. Another culprit: impact fees cities charge to fund infrastructure that can exceed $150,000 a home, some of the highest in the nation.
The closest Newsom may have gotten to bulldozing those barriers is Project Homekey. After COVID-19 hit, the administration scrambled to turn 94 hotels and motels into more than 6,000 shelter units for people experiencing homelesnsess, which would later become permanent homes, within record-setting months. The projects bypassed local land use rules and a marquee environmental law often blamed for slowing or killing controversial projects. The state has since expanded the $800 million project with more than $2.75 billion in new funding.
Newsom signed more than a dozen bills allowing housing types that met certain conditions to skip lengthy approval processes at the local level. Two are expected to have the biggest impact: one which legalized duplexes and fourplexes on the two-thirds of developable land in California previously zoned for single-family homes, and another that allows apartments on land previously allotted for retail centers, parking lots and offices along arterial roads.
While a zoning change doesn’t build housing, it’s a first step to making it legal. Combined, the two laws could open up previously blocked space for more than 2million housing units.
“The effect of legislation is often hard to prove, because it’s only one factor of many in the development process,” said Louis Mirante, vice president of public policy at the Bay Area Council. “To stop a project, you only need one red light. But to make a project go, you need at least 100 green lights. A lot of the legislation the governor has been signing has been those green lights.”
But yellow and red lights abound, including rising interest rates and prohibitive material costs. While it took political courage to sign a controversial measure like the one streamlining duplex and fourplex construction, Newsom remained largely quiet on those bills until they reached the finish line, and hasn’t championed a more sweeping production policy proposal on his own.
“He can step in and resolve the problems if he really wanted to prioritize the issue,” said Chris Martin, policy director at Housing California. “He has the power to do it but politically, it’s challenging. He’s going to have to make some uncomfortable decisions.”
“To stop a project, you only need one red light. But to make a project go, you need at least 100 green lights. A lot of the legislation the governor has been signing has been those green lights.” — Louis Mirante, vice president of public policy, Bay Area Council
Moving the goalposts
While Newsom has repeatedly called the 3.5 million goal taken from a 2016 McKinsey study a moonshot, he has put his weight behind another number: 2.5 million. That’s how many homes the Legislature has mandated California cities to plan for by 2030, and Newsom’s team is making sure they do.
“Before we can reach our stretch goals, before you can reach the moon, you’ve got to get off the launch pad,” said Jason Elliott, Newsom’s senior counselor on housing and homelessness.
The planning law has been on the books for decades, but it wasn’t until 2017 that the state Legislature gave the process teeth by creating standards and penalties cities must abide by. The plans for the housing that those standards and penalties apply to weren’t even due for most cities until this year. And the deadlines are different for different regions. It’s a slow process.
“For many years in California, the Regional Housing Needs (Allocation) process was an afterthought at best,” Elliott said. “It was not taken seriously because there were largely no consequences for local governments failing to meet their responsibilities. And that’s not ancient history, but through a very concerted effort by this governor and the administration in partnership with the Legislature, RHNA is now very serious. And I think communities are taking it seriously.”
But planning isn’t building, and a recurring complaint about the process from cities is that while it requires a lot of affordable housing to be planned for — 1 million of the 2.5 million units must be affordable to the lowest earners — the state doesn’t provide nearly enough tax credits and other subsidies to build it.
“We’re funding a quarter of that, at best,” said Paavo Monkkonen, associate professor of urban planning at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. “So that’s an interesting conundrum, where their own goal is unattainable. And there’s not really a Manhattan Project to make that happen.”
With the Legislature, Newsom has dedicated unprecedented dollars to affordable housing, including $10.3 billion in 2021. Funding the current affordable housing need alone, however, would require nearly $18 billion a year over a decade, according to a recent estimate from Housing California and California Housing Partnership. And there is no long-term source of funding for housing in California. As budget projections for next year sour, affordable housing advocates worry those funds might dry up.
“In these years of good budget outlook, the administration has done a really good job,” said Marina Wiant, vice president of government affairs at the California Housing Consortium, a non-partisan housing advocacy organization. “It’s going to be interesting to see what they do when they have to make tough budget choices.”
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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.
Not the dumbest thing
I’ve ever done, but it’s up there. I’d picked Per up at 3.30 that
morning, and we’d driven the 30 miles south to National Park,
thence east, and south again, to the Ruapehu parking lot, which, in a
few hours, would be cram-full of skiers’ vehicles. We were early,
pre-dawn, no ski lifts for us as we slogged up, first on the packed
snow of the steep runs, then shin-deep in the virgin snow above the
top-most lift station. It took us four hours of heavy going to get to
Tahurangi, the highest of the mountain’s three summits. There we
panted, catching up on our oxygen demands, just the two of us in that
heady world, higher than anything or anyone else in New Zealand’s
North Island.
We hiked up at dawn, following the lift towers. Image: Daltonfox, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In our youthful
ignorance and bravado, we’d both dressed badly. I wore my ancient
Boy Scout anorak, no longer waterproof or even windproof, over a thin
sweater suitable for New Zealand’s warm climate. Thin pants. And
not much else. It was cold, man! Seemed like a hurricane was
blowing up there at 9,000+ feet. But hey, no problem! A few hundred
feet below us we could see steam rising off Ruapehu’s crater lake.
Its warm water called out to us, and we responded by shimmying,
slip-sliding-away, down a steep snow field. At the lake, we stripped
and waded in, cold air giving way to warm water. It should have been
bliss, except …
… have you ever swum
in the crater lake of a volcano? You do know, don’t you, that what
you’re smelling, that rotten egg smell, is hydrogen sulfide? And
that what you’re swimming in is basically sulfuric acid, aka
battery acid? We sure knew it soon enough. With a pH value of around
1 (drinking water from your tap is near-neutral, neither acid nor
alkali, pH 7), Ruapehu’s crater lake is lethal. Or would have been
if we hadn’t gotten out, fast, feeling like a thousand knives were
attacking our skin. Nearly 60 years later, I still shudder.
Crater Lake and Tahurangi, the highest peak. When we summited, it was all snow-covered. Image: Michal Klajban, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
That lake is notorious
for other things than trying to turn regular humans into
flesh-drooping zombies. Late on the evening of Christmas Eve, 1953,
the tephra dam holding the lake within the crater broke, sending a
mudflow (lahar) racing down the slopes into the Whangaehu River
below, destroying the Tangiwai railway bridge minutes before an
express passenger train would have crossed it. The locomotive and six
carriages plunged into the river, killing 151 people in New Zealand’s
worst rail accident.
Twelve years after the
tragedy, those two young men — kids, really — got the hell away
from the lake, skin smarting — oh, did it smart!—chastened by
their dumb exploit. We hustled down the mountain as fast as we could,
back to my car, and drove back to Taumarunui. Neither of us never
really felt right again until we’d taken long showers to get the
remnants of acid off our skin. Like I say, I can still re-experience
what it felt like many, many years later.
Pardon the pun, but I
like to think I’m smarter now.
A pack of lies, or testimony that stands uncontradicted?
Self-defense? Or a cold-blooded intent to kill?
On Friday attorneys in the jury trial of murder-for-hire suspect Isreal Soria Jr. presented their closing arguments, with Deputy District Attorney Luke Bernthal urging jurors to believe what Soria told the deputy who arrested him: that he was hired by the Norteño gang to kill McKinleyville resident Dylan Eubanks for stealing from the gang.
Soria.
In contrast, Bernthal argued, when Soria took the witness stand to present a new story, his “ridiculous’’ testimony was “a pack of lies” that should be entirely disregarded.
But defense attorney Christina DiEdoardo told the jury Soria made a false confession because he was high on drugs and alcohol. And because Eubanks did not testify, she said, Soria’s testimony about June 2021 shooting was never countered.
Soria testified he was not ordered to kill Eubanks but acted on his own after seeing Eubanks on Snapchat boasting about his guns and marijuana. His only plan was to rip Eubanks off. Further, he says, he fired 11 rounds at Eubanks only because Eubanks was preparing to shoot him with an assault rifle.
Eubanks told the ambulance crew he was shot while talking on his cellphone in the kitchen. The bullet shattered his right forearm and lodged in his wrist. Bernthal, showing jurors a photo of the wound, said the path of the bullet shows Eubanks had his arm up, as in holding a cellphone to his ear. Soria testified Eubanks was holding an assault rifle and his arm was down.
It is “physically impossible” that Eubanks was shot with his arm down, Bernthal said.
“Mr. Soria told you a lot of lies over the past couple of days,” he said. “This was probably his biggest one.”
Soria says he first walked up to Eubanks’s front door, looked through a window and saw Eubanks holding a machete. He panicked, ran to a back window outside the kitchen and then saw Eubanks holding an assault rifle and “cocking it back.”
When officers searched the house, no weapons were found. Bernthal said Eubanks, after being shot, would have kept the assault rifle to protect himself. And why didn’t he fire at Soria after being shot?
“He didn’t fire back because he was never armed,” the prosecutor said.
Bernthal argued Soria stayed in Eubanks’s neighborhood after the shooting because he intended to finish his job. And while being questioned after his arrest, he asked more than once if the person who was shot had been murdered.
“He’s trying to confirm his kill,” Bernthal said.
Soria claims he confessed only because he had consumed huge amounts of alcohol and drugs.
“We know he’s lying about that,” Bernthal said. Former sheriff’s Deputy Jordan Walstrom, now a police sergeant in Willits, arrested and interviewed Soria. He saw no signs of intoxication. Walstrom also said if someone had ingested the quantity of drugs and alcohol that Soria claimed, he would have been barely able to move.
DiEdoardo, in her closing argument, said it was Walstrom’s privilege to opine that Soria was not under the influence.
“Mr. Soria said he was,” DiEdoardo argued, “and the jail nurse agrees.”
When Soria was booked into Humboldt County Correctional Facility, the nurse evaluating him indicated he appeared to be either under the influence or suffering from withdrawal. The nurse did not testify.
As to what the path of the bullet shows, “Neither Mr. Bernthal nor I are ballistics experts,” the defense attorney said.
She said Soria was under the influence of “multiple mind-altering substances” when he confessed, and he had been under the influence for several days.
“So he says some crazy things to Sgt. Walstrom,” DiEdoardo explained. She described Soria’s confession as “noise.”
Also noise, DiEdoardo said, were taped phone conversations between Soria and family members when he was incarcerated. He later posted bail and remains out of custody.
Soria was trying to act tough, she said, because while on the phone he was near Norteño gang members and was afraid to be overheard.
But Soria also admitted many times during those phone conversations that he had “ratted myself out, threw myself under the bus, snitched on myself.”
“It’s all there in black and fuckin’ white,” he said at one point.
DiEdoardo stressed no-one has countered Soria’s testimony about firing in self-defense.
“Only two people know what happened and you only heard from one of them,” she told the jury. “It’s uncontradicted testimony.”
Soria, she said, “had every reason to believe Mr. Eubanks was going to shoot him. He fired and fired and fired; he wasn’t even looking at Mr. Eubanks.”
Soria testified he had his head down, looking away, when he fired the 11 rounds into the kitchen.
And Soria’s account of the incident, DiEdoardo said, “is the only evidence you have.”
“The shots were not aimed at all,” she said, “let alone with intent to kill.”
DiEdoardo questioned why, if Soria had a plan to commit murder, he didn’t shoot Eubanks when he first spotted him holding a machete.
“Wouldn’t that have been the moment to do it? And Mr. Soria doesn’t shoot.”
What should have Soria done, she asked, when he saw Eubanks loading an assault rifle?
“Should he run? You can’t outrun a bullet.”
As to officers finding no weapons in the house, DiEdoardo pointed out Eubanks’s bedroom was not searched. And officers only searched places large enough to conceal a person.
Also, she said, Eubanks’s roommate testified she was allowed to enter Eubanks’s house after the shooting. He was lying wounded and bleeding on the ground and was asking for his cellphone.
“We don’t know how long she was in there or what she might have moved,” DiEdoardo said.
Soria’s charges include attempted first-degree murder, attempted robbery, attempted burglary and firing into an inhabited dwelling. He essentially admitted to attempted burglary and robbery by testifying his plan was to arm himself and steal from Eubanks. It’s also clear he fired into an inhabited dwelling.
As to the argument of self-defense, if Eubanks did arm himself after hearing an intruder outside his home, can the intruder claim self-defense after he shoots him? That’s up to the jury to decide.
Because the prosecutors have the burden of proving guilt, they are allowed two closing arguments. Deputy District Attorney Trent Timm is scheduled to rebut the defense argument on Monday morning.
This
week on the EcoNews Report, your host Tom Wheeler chats with Friends
of the Eel River’s Alicia Hamann about the fantastic news that the
Grrrreat Redwood Trail is finally in the clear from threats to take
the public right of way. It’s now full steam ahead on trail master
planning - tune in to learn about how you can be involved, and check
out greatredwoodtrailplan.org.
And in other grrrroundbreaking news: Alicia shares information about
the lawsuit just filed to protect public trust flows impacted by
unregulated groundwater extraction in the Eel River.
