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PREVIOUSLY:  

• TONIGHT at ARCATA CITY COUNCIL: Possible Regulations on Sidewalk Vendors, Changes to the City’s Vacation Rental Ordinance

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If you operate an AirBnB or VRBO rental in Arcata, or are thinking about opening one up, you should know that during Wednesday night’s Arcata City Council meeting the council requested a few changes to the city’s Short Stay Vacation Rental Ordinance. 

Council adopted that ordinance last year, and it placed a few stricter regulations on how vacation rentals are permitted and operated and capping the number of vacation rental units permitted in the city at 100. Since passing the ordinance, the council has requested that staff do some additional outreach and research to see if any changes needed to be made. 

One of the biggest concerns brought up by operators of vacation rentals in Arcata, Community Development Director David Loya told the council, was the requirement that operators publicly display their phone number. When the ordinance was first passed, it required that there be a phone number visibly posted on vacation rentals, so that community members could call with concerns or complaints about the renters. Many owners of vacation rentals felt that it was unfair to ask them to do this, but not other property owners who rent to people. The council understood the concern and unanimously agreed to remove the requirement to post a phone number from the ordinance. 

The other big change the council made was eliminating an exemption for long-term tenancy, which allowed vacation rentals on the same property as long-term rentals to not be counted as part of the city’s 100-unit cap. All vacation rentals still need a permit, but if a property is exempt, the operator can still obtain a permit even if more than 100 permits have already been issued.  Under the change, it would no longer be possible for, say, an owner of an apartment building that rents some of the units to long-term tenants and some of the units as short-term vacation rentals.

There was also some discussion of removing the owner-occupied exemption, which allows vacation rentals where the owner lives on the same property to operate outside of the cap. But ultimately, the council decided to keep allowing owner-occupied rentals to be exempt, because it benefits people who live locally who use vacation rentals to supplement their income. 

The final change the council made to the ordinance was adding an exemption for historic landmarks. So if a property is registered as a historic landmark, the owner can get a permit and operate a vacation rental there, even if the city has hit the 100-unit cap. 

To be clear, Arcata is already past the 100-unit cap currently, with about 130 vacation rental units being operated in the city. All of those folks who are currently operating a vacation rental are grandfathered in, so the changes to the ordinance will not affect them. But, as that number dwindles, the city will limit the number of permits it issues moving forward. 

There was also a lot of discussion about limiting the number of permits that a single owner/operator can have. Ultimately, the council asked that staff tell the council if some people are taking a lot of permits and to revisit the issue if it seems to become a problem. 

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In other business, the council introduced a resolution regulating sidewalk vending on city property and right-of-ways, to ensure that the city is in compliance with SB 946 – which was passed in 2018 to decriminalize sidewalk vending. 

Arcata’s draft resolution prohibits sidewalk vending on roadways or median strips, within 30 feet of an intersection, within 20 feet of a driveway and within 20 feet of a fire hydrant, electrical box or other emergency facility. The resolution allows sidewalk vending in parks, but not on the lawn or landscaped areas. 

During the meeting, Emily Sinkhorn, environmental services director for the city, explained to the council that the resolution only applies to people selling food, beverages, or goods either directly off of their person or from a non-motorized cart. The resolution does not apply to food trucks. It also does not apply to special event vendors, which obtain their vending permits through a different process. 

The resolution also specifies that vendors who aren’t permitted through a special event, cannot operate within 200 feet of the event – including the Arcata Farmers’ Market, the North Country Fair and more. 

The vending permits are proposed to cost just $10. The cost will be officially determined when the council adopts the city’s master fee schedule. The resolution is not yet official and will return for adoption, probably in December. 

Councilmember Alex Stillman was grateful for the regulation of sidewalk vending, which she feels does have an impact on the town’s brick and mortar businesses. 

“We have a lot of brick and mortar businesses and they feel like they’re paying their fair share, they’re paying their interest, they’re paying their taxes, they’re paying their rent, et cetera. And then they have someone show up on their corner or next to their doorway selling pants…I’m thinking its a disruption to some of our businesses who are paying their fair way. ”

This election cycle has been pretty quiet so far, but the most exciting thing about it is the emergence of a whole new generation of leaders rising up to make their voices heard in the city of Arcata.

These new influencers may sound­ familiar – in fact, they all share at least part of their name with well-known women who have served on the City Council in recent years, or who work for City Hall – but that seems to be just a really weird coincidence.

One thing’s for sure: These women aren’t waiting around to see their city go straight to hell. Nope – they’re squadding up and taking it to the Internet in support of embattled Arcata City Councilmember Brett Watson, who in their eyes is a really upstanding citizen who has accomplished a lot for the city and has filled out his financial disclosure forms correctly.

Let’s meet these social media movers and shakers who have burst onto the Arcata scene!

Amelia Sinkhorn

Don’t confuse her with Arcata Enviromental Services Director Emily Sinkhorn! Amelia Sinkhorn, according to her bio, is a photographer living in Bayside but originally from Breckenridge, Colorado. Not much else is known about her, except that she is a big fan of Councilmember Brett Watson and she uses Protonmail.

On Aug. 12, after the Outpost published a story about the final candidates who had qualified for the Arcata City Council race, Amelia created a new Disqus account — @Sinkhorn — to post a comment. At 10:49 p.m., she wrote:

Brett Watson is an outstanding council member and a really good person. There are MANY people in Arcata who never believed any of this nonsense investigation. Anyone who has dealt with the city staff over any significant project will tell you they can be real shysters. Youve got people there making 100K a year with absloultely no qualifications for their jobs. The council trys to trust them and they abuse their power.

It’s not clear whether the comment was deleted or whether the post was in “premoderation” status for the time being. In any case, nearly an hour later, at 11:47 p.m., an email signed “Amelia Sinkhorn” arrived in our inboxes demanding to know the reason why the comment wasn’t appearing on our site.

Now, that happens any number of times a day, but what doesn’t usually happen immediately after that? An email from an elected official demanding answers on behalf of one of his constituents! A few minutes later, just after midnight, Councilmember Brett Watson wrote the LoCO:

Hi,

I received two complaints this evening from supporters who said they had their comments deleted when they spoke out in favor of me. Is this true? I’d appreciate it if you looked into it. I didn’t know the comments sections were moderated at all.

Always happy to answer any questions.

Thanks,

Brett

Amelia Sinkhorn got instant action from one of her elected representatives within minutes, at a time when most people are asleep. That’s what makes her a girlboss!

All three of Amelia Sinkhorn’s Facebook friends.

Sinkhorn is pretty new to Facebook, with her first post dated September 16. She has only three friends: Delilah Goldstein, Brett Watson and Brett Watson. Despite owning a business called “Sinkhorn Photography,” she has posted only two pictures.

Her profile pic, swiped from Shutterstock.com, is an image of a golden retriever wearing earphones that she has captioned “Henry in the park.” Brett Watson gave it a like. The other photo, for whatever reason, is an Associated Press picture of a dude shoveling snow in Virginia. Watson gave that a like too.

Delilah Goldstein

Amelia’s non-Watson Facebook friend, Delilah Goldstein – no relation to Arcata City Councilmember Emily Grace Goldstein, so far as we are aware – is probably the most ambitious of the three social media power users (and counting?) who we celebrate today.

If you recognize Delilah Goldstein from her Facebook profile pic, that’s probably because you spend a lot of time on the American Girls Whatsapp Phone Numbers for Friendship website. She’s a dead ringer for “Aadhira.”

Hail Goldee!

As a trendsetter, Delilah jumped on the Facebook train well before her friend Amelia, with her first post dated Sept. 1. Her hobbies include skateboarding, hip-hop dance and cosplay. She grew up in Bellevue, Washington (though, confusingly, her high school was in Bellevue, Kentucky) and has family in Austin, Texas. Side note: She really approves of “Women for Watson,” a group of ladies supporting the candidacy of Kirk Watson for Mayor in that city!

Delilah is new to town, but she really wants to try out journalism. On October 9, she pitched the Outpost a story about the financial disclosure forms filed by candidates for Arcata City Office. She had done some research and discovered Brett Watson was the only candidate to submit the Fair Political Practices Commission’s Form 460, which is required of candidates who raise over $2,000, and she managed to get Watson on the phone to talk about that with her. An excerpt:

What interested me the most was a donation Watson made to his campaign of $705.00 worth of “bottles of wine”. Watson said he no longer consumes alcohol and hasn’t for almost a year, so it was an easy donation to make to his campaign. He then auctioned off the bottles and sold glasses of wine at a fundraiser he held in early September. He said his collection was very modest and he had 40 bottles of wine he estimated to be valued between $10 and $25 dollars a bottle, if you were going to buy them at the store.

“People were really generous with their donations and I raised four times what the bottles were worth. I was so grateful,” he said.

We finally got around to replying to Goldstein’s pitch to the Outpost yesterday, and unfortunately have not heard back yet.

But in the journalism game: You snooze, you lose, and one mistake can be fatal! Goldstein has since gone on to create her own website, ArcataTruth.com, in which she exposes the truth about Arcata. As of this writing, it consists of a couple of LoCO articles that seem to have been plugged into Google Translate, rendered in Swahili and then sent back to English, along with a couple of other similarly repurposed pieces. But just you wait! The Outpost will undoubtedly go bankrupt in six months’ time, and we will rue the day we first heard the name “Delilah Goldstein”!

Sofia P

When you think “Sofia P” and “Arcata,” who do you think of? Former mayor Sofia Pereira? Well, maybe not for long, because there’s a new Sofia P on the Arcata political scene – and she’s a big supporter of Arcata City Councilmember Brett Watson!

Remember, back when we were talking about Amelia Sinkhorn, that Watson wrote with concerns about the Outpost deleting comments from two of his supporters? Amelia Sinkhorn was one. The other was Sofia P.

Now, “Sofia,” as she was known on Disqus, had lots of things to say about any number of topics. But cross Brett Watson and her hackles rise! When Scott Greacen of Friends of the Eel commented to say that he’d run his dog against Brett Watson should Brett Watson decide to run again, Sofia retorted: “You’re that fake environmentalist guy, huh?”

When “Phyllobates terribilis” wrote, upon learning that Watson had decided to run for re-election,

I guess we get to find out how large is the sexual predator constituency in Arcata.

Sofia clapped back thusly:

Why, did you throw your name in the hat?

Oh snap!

When a different commenter voiced support for incumbent candidate Meredith Matthews, Sofia wasn’t having it. “Why would you vote for Meredith?” she asked. “It seems like she falls in line with the other council members and just does whatever the staff tells her do.”

The Outpost didn’t learn “Sofia”s surname – “P” – until she wrote to ask why her comments were being deleted, a few hours after Watson did so on her behalf.

 Sofia P hasn’t been much on the scene since the Outpost banned her, but expect a comeback anytime. You can’t keep sass like that bottled up for long!

Wait, Are These People Brett Watson?

Definitely not. We know for certain these people are not Brett, because as Brett said at the City Council meeting last night:

As far as he can recall, he doesn’t remember having created a fake profile, ever. Case closed!

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Last fall, a group of disgruntled Kneeland residents arranged a meeting with Humboldt County officials at Kneeland Elementary School. The neighbors were upset because they’d recently learned that an out-of-towner planned to build a 40,000-square-foot cannabis-growing operation in a bowl-shaped valley near their properties. In fact, the grow op’s hoop houses would be plainly visible from some of their own homes atop Barry Ridge, a 2,660-foot-tall peak from which, on a clear day, you can look down and see Freshwater five miles below, and beyond that, Arcata Bay and the Pacific Ocean.

One of the neighbors, retired U.C. Davis professor Mark Thurmond, told the Outpost that somewhere around 100 people attended the meeting, including First District Supervisor Rex Bohn, Third District Supervisor Mike Wilson and Planning and Building Director John Ford. 

The neighbors wanted answers. “We were all pretty upset,” Thurmond said. They’d learned that the applicant planned to drill for water, which they saw as a threat to their own water supplies. They were also worried about increased traffic, noise, environmental impacts and unsavory characters — like the “quite well-armed” Bulgarians who Thurmond said ran an illicit grow in the area.

The neighbors wanted to know why only one among them had been notified about the application. (The answer: geographic proximity.) They wanted to know why county staff wasn’t doing more to crack down on permit violations, and when Ford said planning staff was often busy processing cannabis applications, it didn’t go over well. “Everyone shouted almost simultaneously, ‘Then stop the permits!’” Thurmond recalled.

Above all, the neighbors wanted to know how they could stop the proposed project from being permitted.

They couldn’t, as it turned out, and they left the meeting just as disgruntled as they’d arrived.

“It became clear … that neither the Planning Department nor the Board of Supervisors was going to entertain any discussions for how we could get more say in the process,” Thurmond said. “Some of us, two or three, said, ‘We need to look into this more. So we began an informal working group of people on the hill, all of whom were retired. … Most of us are in our 70s. We garnered the derogatory name of Gray-Haired NIMBYs Twisting in Their Depends.”

They continued meeting and strategizing, researching and collecting data, and eventually they hired San Francisco attorney Kevin Bundy. 

Roughly a year after the hilltop meeting, the Gray-Haired NIMBYs have prepared a ballot measure that could fundamentally alter the legal cannabis industry in Humboldt County. The Humboldt Cannabis Reform Initiative recently qualified for the ballot thanks to a vigorous signature-gathering effort that included tabling outside local grocery stores, the Humboldt County Fair and elsewhere. If passed, the measure would dramatically restrict the size and number of permitted cannabis cultivation operations in the county while increasing government oversight and adding new rules for water storage, well-drilling, access roads, generators and more.

Organizers argue that since legalization, the Emerald Triangle’s quaint mom-and-pop weed scene has been transformed by greedy newcomers who exploit our county’s name recognition while running noisy, polluting, water-guzzling mega-grows. On their website they say the initiative would “protect residents, land owners, and our beautiful natural environment from harm caused by large-scale industrial cannabis cultivation.”

But local cannabis cultivators interviewed by the Outpost say that if the Humboldt Cannabis Reform Initiative passes, it could be a death knell for a local industry that has supported families for generations. They say the proposed new rules are an inflexible and ham-fisted overreaction at a time when the industry is already reeling — at least here in Humboldt County, where growers are struggling to make ends meet amid rampant statewide overproduction, the proliferation of massive corporate greenhouse grows to our south and a renewed surge in illegal cultivation.

“I’m concerned that the ramifications of this thing getting passed is going to be the complete destruction of Humboldt County’s cannabis industry,” said Drew Barber, a licensed cultivator operating a 10,000-square-foot grow in Petrolia. 

On Tuesday, the Humboldt County Growers Alliance, a cannabis industry group, published a 15-page analysis of the initiative that reaches the same conclusion. It says that if voters pass the initiative it will lead to “the practical elimination of legal cannabis agriculture in Humboldt County.”

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The Humboldt Cannabis Reform Initiative would cap the number of cultivation permits at or slightly below the current number, which Humboldt County Planning and Building Director John Ford estimates at 1,200. It would also limit all new and expanded grow permits to a maximum cultivation area of 10,000 square feet while prohibiting grow lights, phasing out generators (except small ones for emergency power) and requiring a hydrologic study that proves “no negative impacts” for any new well.

Applicants would also no longer be allowed to “stack” more than one permit, a term for growers with multiple permits for a single piece of property. The window for water diversions from streams would be reduced by a month while water storage requirements would increase. Furthermore, public hearings would be required for all new cultivation-related permits. Neighbor notification requirements would increase, and county staff would be obligated to investigate all public complaints, among other provisions.

The signature-gathering effort wasn’t initiated or completed in time to make it onto next month’s general election ballot, which means voters likely won’t get to weigh in for almost a year and a half. However, there are a couple other possibilities. 

The Board of Supervisors will soon be presented with the certified petition, at which point they’ll have three options, per the state elections code: Most likely they’ll choose to submit it to the voters, without alteration, at the March 2024 general primary election. But if they want they could adopt the ordinance exactly as written. The third option would be to schedule a special election. That last option would likely cost the county between $35,000 and $40,000, according to Clerk-Recorder and Registrar of Voters Kelly Sanders.

The project that inspired this whole effort — that 40,000-square-foot grow op in Kneeland — got downsized in the permitting process and has yet to be built. Regardless, Thurmond and his fellow organizers say their reform initiative is necessary to protect people who aren’t part of the industry.

“I have empathy for growers who spent a lot of money getting [their operations] going,” Thurmond said. “But I think what we don’t hear about is all the lives that other people put in, the decades of saving to build a place in the country to not only retire but to live the last years of their life — only to have it essentially done asunder, in some cases, destroyed by the county forcing upon them these operations that take water, they pollute the air, cause a lot of noise, create dangerous traffic issues, bring in criminal elements … . This is the other side of the coin that we don’t hear about.”

Thurmond believes that the county’s existing permitting system — the Commercial Cannabis Land Use Ordinance (CCLUO), adopted in 2018 — is legally indefensible because its Environmental Impact Report doesn’t comply with the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA.

“The whole ordinance is CEQA non-compliant,” he told the Outpost. He said the authors of the environmental report acted as if the entirety of Humboldt County was a single type of environment rather than analyzing the unique conditions within each watershed. He also said the authors failed to conduct a cumulative impact analysis, accounting for the net effect of all cannabis-related water diversions, traffic and other impacts.

Thurmond and his allies also object to the fact that county staff historically have not conducted annual inspections on every licensed cultivation site and that the county has allowed operators to conduct their own road assessments and self-attest that they meet Category Four standards. 

Fundamentally, though, they’re just tired of the nuisances.

“I agree with many of the growers who complain that there are a lot of complicated issues they have to address, and it can be very expensive,” Thurmond said. “But it seems to me that once someone makes that investment — which is huge, sometimes several hundred thousand dollars, I’m told — it would be prudent to keep neighbors happy, keep their lights covered up, don’t make a mess of the road [and] drive sanely.”

Natalynne DeLapp, executive director of HCGA, said the complaints about CEQA compliance ring hollow.

“That ship sailed years ago,” she told the Outpost. “There was a 45-day opportunity in which they could have done something about it,” she added, referring to the public review period for the Environmental Impact Report. 

But she has more fundamental objections to the Humboldt Cannabis Reform Initiative: for one, the fact that it’s a voter initiative. DeLapp said she was consulted early in the process by the organizers, including another retired college professor, Elizabeth “Betsy” Watson, and explained to them her concerns about the initiative process. Once a voter initiative is passed, it’s extremely difficult to make changes except to render the rules more restrictive. The only way to make larger changes is through litigation or by submitting another initiative to voters and hoping it passes. DeLapp feels this is a bad approach to industry regulation.

“Look at what we see with the Planning Commission pretty regularly,” she said. “They’re like, ‘Oh, what are we going to do with groundwater? Are we going to require rainwater catchment?’ These things happen on the dais, from the public, from the planning director, from the Board of Supervisors. Little amendments are always being made. You cannot do that with a citizen’s initiative.”

HCGA Policy Director Ross Gordon agreed and said there’s “a pretty substantial gap” between the initiative’s stated purpose and its actual text. While proponents say they aim to encourage small-scale farmers, Gordon said 90 percent of the initiative’s rules and restrictions are applicable “to every farm in the county regardless of size, down to the smallest 2,000-square-foot farm.”

Worse, he said, is that the initiative’s definition of expansion is written to include any increase in the “number or size of any structures used in connection with cultivation,” including water storage, solar panels, drying sheds and other infrastructure he believes are necessary for compliance and environmental sustainability.

The initiative would also require the county to hold a discretionary review hearing for every application it receives for new or expanded commercial cannabis cultivation activities. HCGA’s policy paper says this would dramatically slow the approval of water storage, renewable energy and other compliance-oriented projects.

“As a concrete example,” the paper says, “the county is currently distributing $12 million in grant funding to cultivators to install water storage and renewable energy infrastructure, and has received hundreds of applications for these grant funds. Under the [initiative], each of these hundreds of ‘expansions’ would require an independent discretionary approval.”

Barber finds that provision particularly onerous. “This is absurd, right?” he said. “So, if I want to put in a 3,500-gallon water tank or I want to put another 1,000 watts of solar panels in, now I have to go back through the multi-year-long process of getting a new zoning clearance certificate for my farm. That’s like many thousands of dollars that I don’t have.”

Barber said he understands why the initiative’s organizers are pursuing this. “They’re just trying to make their neighborhood better, and I totally get that,” he said. “But this is the wrong tool for that job. … It’s a countywide solution for a neighborhood problem.”

Barber believes it would make him and other farmers less capable of succeeding in the statewide marketplace. “It will make it so that my farm cannot be adaptable to both the changing environmental conditions as well as the changing market conditions,” he said.

Fellow cultivator Geoffrey Churchill operates a 13,000-square-foot farm near Berry Summit (not to be confused with Barry Ridge). He said it took him six years and about $150,000 to get through the permitting process, and he believes the initiative would have unintended consequences on the many local farms that have entered into compliance agreements with the county — to-do lists for coming into compliance. In his case he worked out a schedule with the county to complete a cannabis processing building, an irrigation pond, solar infrastructure and improvements to his property’s access road. 

Under the Humboldt Cannabis Reform Initiative he’d be unable to make any of those improvements without reducing the size of his farm, and even then each component would require a discretionary hearing with the county.

“It’s just gonna make things super difficult for both the farmer and the planning department to move us all through [the compliance agreements],” Churchill said, “and I would say probably 85 percent of farms that have been permitted still have compliance agreement issues that they have to finish.”

Allison Shore owns and operates a 10,000-square-foot farm near Kneeland, meaning she’s neighbors with some of the initiative organizers. Shore said she’s worried about a provision that would change the definition of “outdoor cultivation.” 

Under the county’s current permitting system, outdoor cultivation can include the use of tarps for light deprivation, a technique growers use to maximize yield and stimulate flower growth. But the reform initiative defines “outdoor” to mean cultivation “without the use of artificial lighting or light deprivation in the canopy area at any point in time.” Light dep, therefore, would get reclassified as “mixed light,” which would bump Shore and hundreds of other growers from Tier 1 to Tier 2 of the county’s Measure S excise tax framework, thereby doubling their annual tax bills. 

Shore said she’s already working 9-to-5 at a bank to make ends meet, so she couldn’t handle that extra expense.

“And I think [this provision] would also encourage people who are then trying to foot that bill to add extra lights and be more environmentally damaging,” Shore said. “If this [initiative] was to go through, it would be the nail in the coffin for all kinds of people like me, small farmers whose families have been here for generations.”

Not every grower in the county is against the initiative. Ettersburg resident Robert “Woods” Sutherland, whose organization the Humboldt-Mendocino Marijuana Advocacy Project (HuMMAP) sued the county over a previous cannabis ordinance, recently told the Outpost that members of the group are divided.

“I’ve taken a survey among our members, and we have more supporting it than opposing it,” he said. “But a few of the people opposing it are pretty strongly opposed, so it’s a bit of a tossup.”

Sutherland himself is conflicted. “I saw some things in it I’m not entirely fond of,” he said. “At the same time, the major changes we need are not going to be made by the sit-on-our hands [county] supervisors.”

Sutherland has long been a proponent of reducing the maximum size of farms allowed in the county. He resents the people who came here to “parasitize” the Humboldt County reputation for the sake of profit. “They killed the goose,” he said, referring to the proverbial bird that laid golden eggs.

He envisions a return to the days when Humboldt County earned its reputation for high-quality bud that was grown in harmony with nature for the benefit of the whole community. Sutherland doesn’t have much sympathy for most of the folks currently struggling to keep their farms in business. 

“HCGA says it’s just the outlaws who are making the problems, but that’s not the case at all,” he said. “Many [permitted growers] are engaged in consciously illegal practices. … We attracted a lot of lowlife people up here, and they’re still here. The people who are having a lot of trouble, that’s just what we knew was gonna happen. The people [making big profits] were always going to head to perdition.”

Sutherland thinks these nefarious growers deserve their comeuppance. 

“That’s why I support this initiative,” he said. “I don’t like a lot about it, and nobody does — no growers do. But it’s a step forward.”

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Thurmond said the initiative is not anti-cannabis; rather, it’s about making sure the industry doesn’t destroy the quality of life for those who aren’t involved in it. 

If passed, the measure would cap the total number of cultivation permits at 1.05 times the number of unexpired permits that existed in each county watershed as of March 4, 2022. As Thurmond explained it, the system for permitting new grows would then operate much like state liquor licenses — if the county has reached its cap within a given watershed, applicants must wait until someone else goes out of business and relinquishes their permit.

He argued that this is a much more reasonable cap than the 3,500 cultivation permits allowed under the county’s existing ordinance, the CCLUO. 

Given the current number of active permits — somewhere around 1,200 — Thurmond finds that prospect absurd. “They want to triple it!” he remarked. 

DeLapp said that’s an unreasonable fear. “Their ordinance, I believe, will be functionally irrelevant” by the time it’s on the ballot, she said. HCGA’s policy analysis argues that Humboldt County’s cannabis industry is retracting rather than expanding at this point. Citing state licensing data from the California Department of Cannabis Control, the paper notes that the number of licensed cannabis farms in the county declined by 28 between February 28 and October 10 while the total​​ cultivation acreage decreased from 435 acres to 419 acres.

Reached by phone, Planning and Building Director John Ford said the majority of cultivation applications were submitted under Ordinance 1.0, then tapered off after passage of the CCLUO in May of 2018. 

“Within the last year we’ve seen maybe a handful” of cultivation applications, Ford said. 

Thurmond isn’t convinced that the current market forces will last. 

“We have a situation where there are large corporations, cartels and syndicates interested in Humboldt County — in the name and the fact that it’s an accepted culture here to do this,” he said. “They can sit out the low price for several years and then buy up land, if they haven’t already.”

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It will likely be a while before voters get to decide which vision of the future is more likely and which approach to regulation is wiser. Both HCGA and the organizers of the Humboldt Cannabis Reform Initiative say their goal is to support a localized, small-scale and sustainable cannabis Industry in Humboldt County, and yet each side sees the other as a threat to that objective.

There are other elements of the initiative that weren’t explored in this story. If you’d like to dive into the details you can read the full text of the initiative by downloading it via this link. You can also read HCGA’s policy analysis via this link.

Press release from the Humboldt County Office of Emergency Services:

Individuals and communities throughout Humboldt County, and beyond, are set to participate in the Great ShakeOut earthquake drill tomorrow.

Held annually on the third Thursday of October, the International ShakeOut Day is Thursday, October 20, 2022, at 10:20 a.m. During the self-led drill, participants practice how to “Drop, Cover, and Hold On”. 

As part of this drill, the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office of Emergency Services (OES) will also be conducting a test of Humboldt Alert, the county’s emergency notification system. Additionally, for those who have the California MyShake App downloaded on their smartphones, the state will be testing the Earthquake Early Warning System with an alert as part of this drill.

“A large, devastating earthquake can occur at any time, without prior notice in Humboldt County.” Sheriff’s OES Manager Ryan Derby said. “The Great ShakeOut drill reminds us of the importance of preparing and practicing for an emergency, because when it’s the real thing- every second matters.” 

Endorsed by emergency officials and first responders, the safe response to an earthquake is to: 

If Possible

DROP where you are, onto your hands and knees. This position protects you from being knocked down by shaking and reduces your chance of being hit by falling or flying objects.

COVER your head and neck with one arm and hand.

• If a sturdy table or desk is nearby, crawl underneath for shelter
• If no shelter is nearby, crawl next to an interior wall
• Stay on your knees; bend over to protect vital organs

HOLD ON until the shaking stops.

• Under shelter: hold on to it with one hand; be ready to move with your shelter if it shifts
• No shelter: hold on to your head and neck with both arms and hands.

Or Adapt to Your Situation:

If you have difficulty getting onto the ground, or cannot get back up again without help, then follow these recommendations:

• If you are in a recliner or bed: Cover your head and neck with your arms or a pillow until the shaking stops.
• If you use a cane: Drop, Cover, and Hold On or sit on a chair, bed, etc. and cover your head and neck with both hands. Keep your cane near you so it can be used when the shaking stops.
• If you use a walker or wheelchair: LOCK your wheels (if applicable). If using a walker carefully get as low as possible. Bend over and COVER your head/neck with your arms, a book, or a pillow. Then HOLD ON until the shaking stops.

The ShakeOut drill is free and open-to-the-public, and participants include individuals, schools, businesses, local and state government agencies, and many other groups. To date, over 19.4 million people are registered to participate in this event worldwide.

Learn more about local emergency preparedness at humboldtsheriff.org/oes.

Amanda Dee Freemantle
November 27, 1985 - September 22, 2022

Amanda Freemantle, of Eureka passed away on September 22, 2022, in Ava, Missouri following a hard-fought four-year battle with liver cancer. Amanda was born on Thanksgiving Day November 27, 1985, to Suzanne Shaw- Brady and Jim Lapham in Eureka. Amanda attended local schools, she graduated from Eureka Senior High school class of 2003. Amanda and her high school sweetheart Nick Freemantle married on June 13, 2015. Together they were raising their five beautiful children, Kaidence, Paul, Wyatt, Kodi, and Liam. Amanda’s husband and children were the sunshine of her soul…

Amanda graduated from Columbia College with her AA and continued her education at Humboldt State University. She graduated with her BA in Fine Arts May 13, 2017. Amanda’s goal was to become an elementary art schoolteacher. Amanda was a woman of many, many talents! She illustrated several “Barney Tales” books for local children’s author Noni Morton. Amanda also participated in Arts Alive and Pastels on the Plaza. She entered her artwork with the Arcata Oyster Festival and Arcata Main Street. Amanda was very proud to have her first art show with the Redwood Art Association.

After Amanda’s diagnosis with cancer, she started her rock painting to pass time, she created wonderful, stoned paintings to give to family and friends. When Amanda was little, she wanted to learn how to crochet like her grandma Dee. Grandma Dee taught Amanda and the outcome was cute baby blankets.

Amanda discovered another of her many talents: a green thumb and became an awesome gardener. She was always creating her secret garden retreat, which evolved into her canning and preserving anything she thought she could get her family to eat. Her canned Tuna was a family delight! Amanda enjoyed entertaining family and friends, especially on the holidays. She could cook and bake like no other because many of her baked goods were artistic creations. There was no end to her baking skills!

One of Amanda’s favorite events of the year was hosting her annual Halloween party, every year had a different theme. She created extremely detailed face paintings and costumes for her family and friends. The girl rocked every designshe created. Amanda also discovered her love for photography, she captured the love she had for life in many of her photos, from weddings to her children’s events.

Amanda refused to let cancer dictate how she lived her life. She did her best to live each day to the fullest with high spirits. She was a very tough woman and fought courageously to the very end. One of Amanda’s last posts on Facebook said it like it was, “Amanda is like no other woman you will ever meet - she has the heart of an angel and the spirit of a warrior”. She also posted a note to all of us back in August, “don’t take life for granted, you never know how many moments you’re promised!”

Amanda is survived by the love of her life/soul mate Nick Freemantle and their five beautiful children, Kaidence, Paul, Wyatt, Kodi, and Liam. She is also survived by mother Suzanne Brady (Mark), her father James Lapham (Dorothy), her stepdad David Bowerman, her grandfathers, Jim Shaw and Ron Lapham, her in-laws Bob and Nancy Freemantle. She is also survived by siblings, uncles, aunties, cousins, nieces, nephews, and an extremely large group of wonderful friends, especially her soul sister Alisha McNeese. Though she may seem far away, we will never part. For part of her lives on with all of us, forever in our hearts.

Amanda will be greatly missed yet her legacy lives on in all her children, family, and friends. We walk in a better place because of the present she gifted us is love. Our beautiful loving daughter Amanda left of us to spread her wings across the Ocean.

There will be a Celebration of Life for Amanda on this Saturday, October 22, 2022, at 1 p.m. Humboldt Grange 5845 Humboldt Hill Road, Eureka. The celebration will be Halloween-themed in honor of Amanda’s love of the holiday.

Juan Alonso Rodriguez passed away on Saturday, October 15, 2022 at the age of 84.

Juan was born on April 17, 1938 in La Piedad, Michoacan, Mexico. He was raised on a little rancho named “El Pandillo” with his 7 siblings.

At the age of 19 he married the love of his life Esther Rodriguez. Together they started a family and soon Juan realized he wanted more for them so he migrated to the United States in search of a better life. He started out working in agriculture and saved up enough money to bring his wife and three kids to America. He continued working in agriculture in Southern California but shortly moved his family to Humboldt county to work in the lumber industry. Juan and Esther had an additional three kids while living in Eureka, where they also purchased their first home.

Juan was a hard worker and was always looking for new opportunities. In 1983 Juan and Esther opened a Mexican restaurant in Arcata named Alcapulco. It was a family-run business with the help of their children.

In 1992, once all their children were grown, they moved to Fortuna. Juan loved to stay active and he walked around town almost every morning. Everyone always recognized him because he always wore his cowboy hat. One of Juan’s passions was gardening and he would grow tomatoes and other vegetables. He would sell to local restaurants and family friends. Juan was very well known for his kindness and hard work. He was always willing to help any friend or family member. Juan was a family man who enjoyed family gatherings. He will always be remembered by his warm smile, his sense of humor, love for dancing/singing to mariachi music and most of all the love he had for his family.

Juan was preceded in death by his parents Ysidoro and Concepcion, brothers Joaquin and Ramon, sisters Francisca, Guadalupe, Dolores and Consuelo and his grandchild Jesse. He is survived by his wife Esther; sister Carmen; children Ramon, Concepcion (Ron), Gustavo (Lupita), Johnny (Sarah), Joaquin (Sheri) and Jose (Lea); grandchildren Erica (Juan),Monica, Veronica, Alex, Anthony, Hunter, Ariana, Destiny, Natalie, Cecilia, Preslee and Cruz; great-granddaughters Sophia and Jasmine.

A rosary for Juan is planned for Friday, October 21, 2022 from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. at Goble’s Fortuna Mortuary on 560 12th Street Fortuna. A mass will be held on Saturday, October 22, 2022 at 12 p.m. at St Joseph Church on 810 14th St. Fortuna. Reception to follow.

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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Juan Rodriguez’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here. Email news@lostcoastoutpost.com.

Hilda White, born December 12, 1930, passed away peacefully at home, surrounded by her family, on October 14, 2022 at the age of 91.

Hilda was born in a small village in Honduras where she spent her youngest days growing under the love and kindness of her father, mother, brothers and sisters. She was the youngest of nine. In those quiet beginnings she developed the deep sense of family and community that would define her character, qualities that endeared her to so many over the course of her life.

She left Honduras when she was 19 years old, immigrating first to Texas where she worked as a waitress. She often recollected that the menu’s grasp of the English language was greater than her own at the time. She recalled this fact frequently and with great pride in her later years when she became well known for her remarkable inability to lose at the game of Scrabble.

As a young woman Hilda’s path led her to a career as a bookkeeper in San Francisco, a city whose personality was as large and as vivacious as her own. In the lively streets of the downtown scene, she made timelessly entertaining memories and met some of her dearest lifelong friends. It was here that she met the love of her life, Al White, a Merchant Mariner in town on shore leave. Al and Hilda were wed in Reno after a six-week courtship, a whirlwind story that they told with increasing fondness and frequency throughout their 49 years of marriage.

In the avenues of San Francisco, they bought their first house and had their daughter, Sandy. They moved to Fremont in 1965, to raise their daughter close to family and made many friends there. Hilda’s kitchen was the site of many extended family dinners as she was an amazing cook. She always had a meal available for everyone and her home was the breakfast spot for neighborhood kids before school. Tortillas and chorizo was usually the breakfast of choice. Al later built a family home along the water in Clear Lake where they moved when he retired. It again became a frequent gathering place for family and neighborhood friends. In the decades thereafter, their grandchildren, nieces, and nephews would visit this home in the summers. Al and Hilda eventually followed their daughter and grandchildren to Eureka in 1995, where they would spend the remainder of their lives watching their grandchildren grow and immersing themselves in the community that they came to call home. Hilda and Al were an open book with one another, embodying a love that was deep and complimentary.

Hilda’s greatest joys in life were her family, her friends, and her church. Above all else she valued the bonds of family and she never let those connections fade with time or distance. She carried such immense pride for her grandchildren that she could not help but regale everyone she knew with stories of their accomplishments. She remembered everyone as the best versions of themselves and she believed this unwaveringly. Hilda never stopped making friends and she never stopped finding new ways to bring comfort to others’ lives. Whether through her deeply personal wisdom or her comical mannerisms and phrases, her feelings of warmth were infectious to all in her company. Hilda also held a fundamental closeness with her faith, and she guided her life by the teachings of Christ. Her Church was her community, one in which she found great solace and fellowship.

Hilda lived for the moments that she could share with other people, whether they were in celebration or in sorrow. She made the brightest moments in life shine brighter because she shared that happiness with you. She also made the heaviest moments in life feel lighter because she shouldered those burdens with you. Her heart knew only love and kindness, and she saw it everywhere she went and in everyone she met. Hilda had an unrivaled ability to make people feel special. Those who knew her were made to believe that there was a space in her heart only for them. If you are one of those people, then you know that this space was real. If there was one woman in this world with a heart large enough to hold the love of everyone she met, it was Hilda White.

Hilda’s life was long and wonderful and filled with love. She spent her final years under the care of her loving and devoted daughter, Sandy, whose support allowed her the time and the dignity to know a comfort that she truly deserved. Sandy’s husband Michael, whom Hilda loved like a son, was a great source of stability and happiness for Hilda, especially during the final years of her life. When her independence waned, she was furthered cared for by a small group of devoted caregivers, Lisa, Cindy, Patrice and Rosanna, all of whom she considered the closest of friends.

For many years Hilda dearly missed the friends and family who had gone before her, especially her beloved Al. Our sadness at her loss is comforted by the knowledge that she is with them now. May she find the peace in rest that she brought so many of us in life.

Hilda is survived by her only daughter, Sandy Bakke (Mike), and grandchildren Brian Bakke (Kristen) and Lauren Bakke Kalfsbeek (Tim). She also leaves behind a large extended family, nieces and nephews and many friends. She loved you all!

A celebration of life will be held for Hilda on Saturday, October 22, at 10:30 am at the Eureka First United Methodist church located at 520 Del Norte Street.

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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Hilda White’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here. Email news@lostcoastoutpost.com.