It is with great sorrow that our family announces the passing of our beloved father, John Edward Johnson. Called home on February 7, 2023, he was surrounded by his loving children. He was born May 28, 1957, in Arcata. In his youth, he was known to move from place to place but he always made his way back to Humboldt. Finally settling in Eureka, he lived with his children for many years. He was so excited when he finally got his own place at Silvercrest at the ripe old age of 63.

John was a force in this world and he cheated death more times than we could count. He was stubborn, loud and cussed like a sailor. Known to smell overwhelmingly of body spray and icy hot, his hugs lingered on your clothes for hours. He was a damn good man. He loved his family very much, even though we all overwhelmed the hell out of him. Family functions meant bets were being made among the siblings on how long he would end up staying and who he would ask first for a ride home.

John will be remembered as an adoring grandfather and great-grandfather, a hard-working brother, an unruly uncle and an assertive father. And while he made his fair share of mistakes, he grew to be a kind-hearted and sincere man. Though he never lost his spunk, and you could find him sipping whiskey and watching old westerns almost every day of the week. He spent his last month living at the home of his youngest son, where his family came together and provided the most outstanding care for him.

John is survived by his children, son Clifton Lee Bowman and his wife Rebecca, daughter Karen Asbury and her husband Jason, daughter Alisha Johnson, and her husband Joe, son Travis Johnson and his wife Docia, and daughter Luana Johns and her husband Michael. Selfless and devoted they were to him in not just his final days but all the days before that, along with his grandchildren Gage, Mykai, Tru, Raven, Nathaniel, Andrew, Anthony, Arianna, Logann, Hunter, Isaac, Bryce, Jasmine, Jocelyn, Justin, Adrina, Ramsey, Raina, and Melina, all who loved their grandpa very much.

At John’s request, there will not be a funeral but we will come together for a celebration of life on March 18, 2023, at 2 p.m. in the Carson Building theater room. This is a potluck so please bring your favorite dish to share. Daddy, we will love you forever, forever and ever amen.

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

Ted Schroeder
April 7, 1954 – February 6, 2023

It is with deep sadness that we announce the passing of Ted D. Schroeder at Mad River Community Hospital in McKinleyville on Monday, February 6, 2023 at the age of 68 with family by his side.

Ted Douglas Schroeder was born April 7, 1954 in Atlantic, Iowa to Lloyd Frederick Schroeder and Janice Faye (Peters) Schroeder. He attended school in Atlantic, Iowa and graduated from Atlantic High School.

Ted’s interests were fishing, skiing, hunting and attending NHRA, NASCAR and dirt bike races. He will be remembered by his family and friends for his generosity, kindness and passion for life.

Ted began his career with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in 2012 and remained the Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP) Water & Sewage Plant Supervisor until his passing. The institution released the following statement after learning of his death, “Many of us knew Ted both personally and professionally. He was a good friend, a good person and a good human being. Ted will be missed. Our condolences go out to his family, friends, and loved ones.”

Ted will be missed by his wife Melody Schroeder; sons Jason Schroeder and wife Megan of Stuart, FL and Matthew Schroeder of McKinleyville; daughter Taylor Schroeder of McKinleyville; grandchildren Ryan Schroeder and Elizabeth Schroeder of Stuart, Florida; brothers Tim Schroeder and wife Laurie of Smithville, Missouri, Todd Schroeder and wife Ginnie of Atlantic, Iowa and Trent Schroeder of Atlantic, Iowa. He will also be missed by his nieces, nephews, other relatives and friends. Ted is preceded in death by his parents and son Joshua Schroeder.

A memorial service for Ted will be held on Saturday, April 8, 2023 at 11 a.m. at the United Methodist Church in Marne, Iowa.

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Are cooperatives the future of Humboldt’s cannabis industry? 

As corporate cultivation operations expand across California, small-scale cannabis farmers are joining forces to push back against their large-scale competitors.

The Cooperative Agriculture Network (CAN), a project of Cooperation Humboldt, launched an eight-week virtual academy this week to teach local cannabis producers everything they need to know about starting their own legal cannabis co-ops. ​​Local farmers and industry experts believe the development of a cooperative sector within the cannabis industry will lead to long-term economic viability for our region’s cannabis farming community.

“We were seeing that legalization was not going to support small family farms – it was actually destroying them,” Nicole Riggs, an affiliate researcher with the Center for the Study of Cannabis and Social Policy (CASP), said during this week’s introductory course. “We didn’t want to see Humboldt succumb to the desolation that’s happening to the rest of rural America. We looked to cooperatives because we know that that’s a tried and true pathway for small independent businesses to work together and establish a place in the industry against corporate consolidation.”

CASP surveyed farmers throughout the Emerald Triangle in 2021 to determine whether there was any interest in forming local and regional cannabis cooperatives. The survey, “Corporate Cannabis is Coming: Cultivators, Are You Ready?” asked around 80 cannabis producers what services are lacking locally. Over 85 percent of survey respondents said they wanted more local support for cooperative development.

“They told us that they wanted to see cooperatives that would reflect the legacy experience, meaning homesteading and environmental stewardship, sharing genetics, working together to get sales and marketing,” Riggs said. “We have solid data that people want to have tools for cooperation, that they believe it will be useful. We developed [this] academy to provide farmers with these tools.”

What would a legal cannabis co-op look like, you ask? There are actually two legal cannabis co-ops already operating in Humboldt County: Uplift Cooperative and Salmon Creek Legacy Farms. Rather than operating as independent farmers, co-op members can rely on one another and share the burden of the entire production process.

“Through cooperatives, we can get to essentially pull in more and more of these verticals that are taking away our capacity for our capital,” Shawn Cherry, co-founder of Salmon Creek Legacy Farms Co-op, said. “There are all these different steps in the supply chain [and] I’m pretty convinced that they’re extraneous, if not redundant. … For example, we have the ability to get our product [to distributors] without having to hire [someone] to transport. If one of us has [the permit], we can outsource it to the rest of the co-op.”

Because each member of the co-op has an equitable vote in the company, “it cannot be controlled by capital,” Drew Barber, owner-operator of East Mill Creek Farms and co-founder of Uplift Co-op, explained. “The person who has the biggest investment of money doesn’t get the biggest say about how it works, which obviously has its challenges, and we work through that as well,” he said.

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Co-ops can operate in a variety of ways, ranging from informal to formal, but tend to follow the seven cooperative principles:

1. Voluntary and open membership
2. Democratic member control
3. Member economic participation
4. Autonomy and independence
5. Education, training and information
6. Cooperation among cooperatives
7. Concern for community

“There are also all kinds of non-financial methods of cooperation,” Tobin McKee, cooperative developer at Cooperation Humboldt, said. “Just sharing the burdens of everyday life, watching each other’s kids and so on. … It doesn’t need to be a formal entity. … We make an agreement, decide this is how we’re going to do it together and then we keep those agreements. And then, if those agreements aren’t working, we say, ‘Hey, this agreement isn’t working for me, can we change it?’  and then as a group, we collectively work to change the agreement.”

Courtney Bailey, co-founder of Giving Tree Farms and a founding member of Hive Mendocino Cooperative, emphasized the importance of finding people with similar values and a compatible work ethic. 

“There was a lot of heavy lifting in the beginning, and if someone’s not answering emails, not showing up … it can really slow you down,” she said. “We had to let a member go early on … but now, we’re starting to see that [the co-op] holds itself together naturally. It’s nice to see that it’s now its own entity keeping us together.”

Interested in co-oping with your neighbors? You may have missed the introductory course but there are still seven weeks left in the free CAN Academy. You can sign up here.

HUMBOLDT TODAY: Senior homelessness is on the rise, the Arcata Gateway Plan moves forward at glacial pace, plus where in Humboldt are you watching the Super Bowl? Those stories and more in today’s newscast with John Kennedy O’Connor.

FURTHER READING: 

• NEXT UP in the GATEWAY AREA PLAN: Arcata Planning Commission to Discuss Building Designs and Bird Safety at Upcoming Study Session
• The Fastest-Growing Homeless Population? Seniors
• Humboldt County Cannabis Farmers Look to Co-ops As a Means to Compete Against Corporate Consolidation

HUMBOLDT TODAY can be viewed on LoCO’s homepage each night starting at 6 p.m. Want to LISTEN to HUMBOLDT TODAY? Subscribe to the podcast version here.

Press release from the Humboldt County Administrative Office:

Flights Expected to be Impacted for 12-Day Window in August 2023

The Humboldt County Department of Aviation will begin Phase 1 of the California Redwood Coast-Humboldt County Airport (ACV) Runway and Electrical Rehabilitation Project in June. This project will be conducted in three phases to make much needed improvements to ACV’s primary runway, which was last rehabilitated in 1994.

Work required for this project will take place in three phases from June to December; however, commercial air service at ACV is expected to be impacted from Aug. 14 through Aug. 25. Other airport users including medical operators, US Coast Guard and general aviation users will be impacted by overnight closures at various times during the duration of the project. Travelers are encouraged to review the projected project schedule below and take it into consideration when making travel plans. 

Overview

Funding for this project was provided thanks to the advocacy efforts of Congressman Jared Huffman, who helped secure a $13 million Airport Improvement Program grant through the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) covering 90% of the project costs.  The remaining 10% of the project costs will be funded by Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) Act Grant funding which was previously provided by the FAA to the County of Humboldt.
The Humboldt County Department of Aviation conducted a competitive bid process for this project, and awarded a contract to the low bidder on the project, Mercer Fraser, a Humboldt-based company.    
Work for this project includes two categories: upgrades to electrical/lighting infrastructure and pavement rehabilitation including, milling approximately two (2) inches off the surface of the airport’s primary runway and adding approximately six (6) inches of fresh asphalt for a new runway surface. This rehabilitation is expected to help the airport realize another 10-20 years of useful life out of the runway before another major rehabilitation project is needed. The work will be conducted in three phases with further details outlined below.  

Phase I

Phase I is scheduled to begin on Monday, June 5 and is currently expected to conclude on Aug. 12. This phase will focus on the initial electrical work including the removal of old lighting and electrical equipment and the installation of new lighting and electrical equipment. Work has been scheduled to minimize impacts to airline schedules with overnight closures of the main runway (Runway 14/32) from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. nightly (outside of normal airline scheduled operations at ACV) throughout Phase I. ACV’s secondary runway will remain open from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. each night for medical flights, US Coast Guard operations, and other general aviation users. Passenger airlines will not be able to utilize ACV’s secondary runway (Runway 1/19) as it is not large enough to accommodate commercial aircraft for takeoffs and landings.  

Phase II-A

Phase II requires a full airport closure. Phase II is scheduled to begin at 12:30 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 14, and is expected to be completed by 11:30 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 25. Airlines will not have scheduled arrivals or departures at ACV during this 12-day window.  As mentioned above, work for this phase will include milling 2 inches of pavement off the old runway surface and adding 6 inches of pavement to the runway. In addition, new markings will be placed on the new pavement. 

PHASE II-B

ACV will also be closed overnight from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. during this phase Monday, Aug. 28 through the morning of Friday, Sept. 1, and again beginning the night of Monday, Sept. 4 through the morning of Friday, Sept. 8. During this period, work will include milling and paving work on the taxiways connecting ACV’s runways. Regularly scheduled airline flights will continue to operate during this time.

Phase III

Phase III will include electrical work to bring the newly installed in-pavement lighting and electrical systems flush with the newly paved runway surface. This work is scheduled for 75 nightly closures of ACV’s main runway from midnight to 6 a.m. The dates for these overnight closures are expected to be Monday, Sept. 11 through Friday, Dec. 15.
Regularly scheduled airline flights will still operate during this last phase of the project outside of the overnight closure timeframes. Additionally, ACV’s secondary runway will remain open during the overnight closures for medical flights, US Coast Guard operations, and other general aviation operations. 

The Department of Aviation would like to thank the US Coast Guard-Sector Humboldt Bay, United Airlines, Avelo Airlines, and medical flight operators who partnered with the department to arrange this project’s schedule to minimize the impacts of this project for airport partners, operators, customers, and the community.

The Department of Aviation appreciates your patience while we work to make necessary improvements. This project will improve Humboldt County’s critical airfield infrastructure, providing many years of safe use for all airport partners moving forward. The Department of Aviation looks forward to completing a safe and successful project to improve the airport for the Humboldt County residents and visitors to enjoy in the future.  

For more information and updates on the California Redwood Coast Humboldt County Airport, please visit flyacv.com.

The other day Sheriff Billy Honsal stood up before the Board of Supervisors and gave board members something of a scolding.

The topic was an upcoming budget shortfall. His department stood at risk. There had been some talk in the air of allocating some hotel tax money to the arts and to community theater, as the county had hinted it would do in its ballot measure last summer, and whether or not that was what triggered him Honsal wanted to throw some ice water on the proceedings.

“I don’t feel the desperation that you all should be displaying here,” he told board members.

Now, the budget shortfall is indeed going to cause some pain in county government. That is true. But when I heard the sheriff talk about “desperation,” I thought: Desperation? My dude, didn’t your office just hand over $4,562.50 of the budget to our lawyer for no reason?

I checked. It had.

Here’s the story, which you should know because it involved your money and it says something about how your government works. Or how it can work, at times.

Back in December 2021, the county Office of Emergency Services announced that it had partnered with a private company called Zonehaven. Working with the company, the Office of Emergency Services divided the county up into 300 or so “zones” for emergency service purposes. In the event of fire or flood or tsunami, residents could go to the Zonehaven map and find out their live evacuation status, or they could get text message alerts tied to their particular zone. Pretty cool!

Because I collect geographic information that may be useful to our reporting, I wrote the Sheriff’s Office, which runs the Office of Emergency Services, to say: Hey, could you send me a copy of that map data?

And I was kind of surprised at the answer, which was: No, we will not send you that data. It was surprising because geographic data maintained by the government is, pretty unambiguously, a public record. It belongs to the public. The county itself maintains a web page where you can download all sorts of this kind of data whenever you like.

I filed a formal request under the California Public Records Act. About a month and a half later, the county finally responded. Again I was denied. I was told that giving the Outpost the data could put the community at serious risk — could, in fact, “result in otherwise preventable injury, loss of life, and/or damage to property and/or environment.” The fear, apparently, was that the Outpost would take the map we had requested and use it to make our own version of Zonehaven to compete with the Office of Emergency Services — and that our own, hypothetical competing version of Zonehaven wouldn’t be as up-to-date as the real Zonehaven in the event of an emergency, and therefore people would die.

This was ridiculous for a couple of reasons. One: We had no intention of building our own Zonehaven-killer, and the data we were requesting wouldn’t have allowed us to if we did. We only wanted to know how the zones were divvied up on the map, which we could use — just as an example — to figure out about how many people would be evacuated, in the event that a zone were evacuated. We didn’t ask for real-time information about which zones were under evacuation orders or not, and we didn’t want that information. The Sheriff’s Office was correct: The real Zonehaven works great for that purpose, and if we want people to have the most up-to-date information, which we do, that is where we will point people.

The second reason it was ridiculous, as the Office of Emergency Services would demonstrate a few months later, is that it didn’t really care about having out-of-date information out there in circulation. During the Willow Creek fires last summer it slapped Zonehaven screenshots all over social media, where a user might stumble over them days or weeks after the fact. They’re still there. (See here, here, etc.)

After the county turned me down with this excuse, I requested the same map data from six other California counties who had contracted with Zonehaven. One misunderstood the request and sent a PDF instead, one never wrote back, but the other four sent it straight over with no fuss at all. That was enough.

So that’s when I got my lawyer involved, which meant that the county had to get its lawyers involved, which meant that the Board of Supervisors had to discuss the issue in closed session, which meant god knows how much staff time spent on the issue.

Finally, at some point in the chain — I don’t know where — some cooler head prevailed and persuaded everyone that the law was what it was, and they’d do best to cut their losses before going to trial. Fourteen months after we first asked for the data the county gave use everything we’d asked for, without restriction, and it wrote our lawyer a check for $4,562.50 to pay for his time and expenses.

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How much is $4,500? If you look at it one way — the way county government looks at it — it’s almost nothing at all. It wouldn’t do anything to close the budget gap that Honsal was talking about. It’s about .02 percent of the Sheriff’s Office’s annual budget, or about .002 percent of the county’s annual general fund revenues. You wouldn’t think twice about throwing away .02 percent of your annual income on a whim. Maybe, if you’re like some people, you’d think even less of it if the money you were throwing away didn’t belong to you in the first place. If you were just the custodian of that money.

Look at it the other way, though — the way we citizens look at it — and $4,500 is a decent chunk of change. It’s about a month’s worth of wages for a beginning correctional officer in the county jail, or about two months of an in-home support services worker for the county’s disabled. A community theater company could do a lot with $4,500.

Maybe more to the point: $4,500 is about half again as much as my family pays in property tax in a year. Probably your family pays somewhere near the same. County government only gets a small percentage of our property tax. So think of that: County government took the property taxes it received from four or five of us this year, and it pissed it away on just this one petty and imperious and, finally, wrong effort to withhold public records. And you never would have known about it were I not writing this now.

There’s a third way to look at it, and that is from the perspective of the great Paul Nicholas Boylan, our bulldog-like attorney, who was just honored with a well-deserved lifetime achievement award from the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. For Boylan, $4,500, minus expenses, equals not such a bad bit of work. He’s done it up and down the state for 30 years, including several times in Humboldt County, and he’s going to keep doing it because it’s a gas. “It’s fun when they underestimate you,” Boylan tells the SPJ. “It’s fun creating attitude adjustments.”

And thank god he keeps at it, because there is sometimes a tendency for some people in government service to forget which way this is all supposed to work. You get in there, you make a career, you climb the ladder, you build your own little fiefdom … after a while, you don’t serve. You rule. This is the attitude that the Boylans of the world come along and adjust. We need a hundred more of him.

Do you think the county learned anything from this episode? I hope it did. Probably it didn’t. But now you know, at least, and maybe when you next talk to your representative on the Board of Supervisors — or the city council, or the school board, or etc. — you could put in a word. You could say: I know it’s not a lot for you, especially since its not yours, but could you please put aside your pride, follow the law, remember who you work for … and quit blowing our tax money on LoCO’s lawyer?

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It’s been a while since we’ve heard any Gateway Area Plan news, but the plan – which would rezone 138 acres of land mostly west of the downtown area to allow for the creation of high-density housing and mixed use developments – is still in the works, and the Arcata Planning Commission will be discussing the controversial plan during a big study session this Saturday, Feb. 11. 

Unlike a regular meeting, study sessions are meant to serve as an opportunity to go over documents, receive presentations and provide feedback, and no formal action is usually taken. So this session will not result in any binding decisions about the Gateway plan, but should provide some solid guidance for future decisions about how the city wants new buildings in the Gateway Area to look.  

The commission will primarily be discussing form-based code standards – a term you’ve probably heard thrown around a lot, if you’ve been closely following Gateway plan discussions. But what exactly are form-base codes? Well, form-based codes regulate land development based on the physical form of structures, such as height and aesthetic, rather than focusing on separating land uses. (If you want to learn more about form-based codes, you can watch this video from the City’s Form-Based Code Workshop.)

After taking public comment toward the beginning of the meeting, the commission will discuss building placement and massing standards, which includes how far buildings would be set back from the sidewalk, the footprint of the buildings, and the topic the community has seemed most concerned about: building height. There has been a lot of debate among the commission in the past about how many stories should be permitted for new buildings in the Gateway Area, but an official recommendation has still not been made. 

The study session will also focus on building façades and roof design standards and the commission will address features including windows, doors, roof forms, entryways and building materials and colors. In general, the proposed Gateway Plan aims to create buildings that are interesting, varied, not too “box-like” and reflect the character of Arcata. City staff has compiled a “look book” with some different examples of building designs that the commissioners can look at for some different ideas of what they want to see in the Gateway. 

Lastly, the commission will take a look at Emeryville’s bird-safe ordinance, which requires certain standards of new construction to help “reduce the risk of bird-to-building collisions.” Among other things, the ordinance requires that at least 90 percent of glass on new buildings include features that allow birds to view it as a solid object. This can include screens, grates, netting, patterns on the glass, opaque glass or other glass treatments. If Arcata is going to have a lot of new buildings, we want to make sure that this doesn’t cause an increase in bird injuries! 

The study session will be held in the city council chambers at Arcata City Hall (736 F Street) on Saturday, Feb. 11 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Yes, that is a pretty long meeting. Luckily, snacks and beverages will be provided! This meeting will be in-person only, and there will be no virtual option for attendance.

If you are unable to attend this meeting, there will be second form-based code workshop on Thursday, Feb. 23. There will also be other meetings leading up to finalization of the Gateway Area Plan, expected to be completed by the end of spring. The Outpost will do its darndest  to post meeting updates as they become available. 

You can view the full study session agenda here.

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PREVIOUSLY:

• ARCATA’S GATEWAY PLAN: City Releases Draft Plan For Developing Housing in the 138-Acre ‘Gateway Area’ of Town, and Wants Your Input
• Arcata City Council Approves Plan to Convert Valley West Hotels to Homeless Housing, Reviews ‘Gateway Area Plan’ to Create High-Density Housing in Town
• GUEST OPINION: Gateway Plan Does Housing the Right Way
• ARCATA’S GATEWAY PLAN: Planners Propose Converting K and L to One-Way Streets; Transportation and Safety Committee Will Review Plan This Evening
• Confused About Arcata’s Gateway Area Plan? There are Still Opportunities to Learn More and Provide Feedback About How You Want the City to Create More Housing
• Arcata Mayor Atkins-Salazar Can’t Participate in Gateway Plan Work, Says State’s Fair Political Practice Commission in Response to City’s Request for Guidance
• (UPDATE) Arcata’s Mayor Can’t Participate in the City-Defining Gateway Area Plan; These Two Current Candidates for City Council Probably Can’t Either, for the Same Reason
• HUMBOLDT HOLDING UP: Catching Up on the Arcata Gateway Plan With Senior Planner Delo Freitas
• Want to Learn More About Arcata’s Gateway Plan? City Holding Public Meeting on Wednesday to Answer Your Questions
• A Big Week for the Arcata Gateway Area Plan: Planning Commission, Historical Landmarks Committee to Look at the Area’s Past and Future 
• A Big Public Meetings on Nordic Aquafarms and Arcata’s Gateway Area Plan Tonight
• ARCATA’S GATEWAY PLAN: Big Meetings Coming! Planning Commission to Consider New Public Engagement Approach Ahead of Big Study Session Later This Month
• TONIGHT at ARCATA CITY COUNCIL: Council to Review Request for ‘Gateway Plan Advisory Committee’, Receive Update on Wastewater Treatment Plant
• ‘Gateway Plan Advisory Committee’; Councilmembers Brett Watson and Alex Stillman Argue Over Stillman Not Recusing Herself From Gateway Meetings
• ARCATA’S GATEWAY AREA PLAN: Arcata City Council and Planning Commission Joint Study Session Tonight; Maximum Building Heights May be Set
• Big Gateway Study Session Produces Few Tangible Results
• What’s Next for Arcata’s Gateway Area Plan? Community Development Director Offers Clarification on Results of Recent Study Session
• TODAY in the GATEWAY PLAN: Arcata Planning Commission Will Discuss Plan’s Potential ‘Community Benefits’ During Special Meeting