By Linda Sutter, February 8, 2017 –
Monday, February 6th, 2017 at 3:00 p.m. a 2 x 2 meeting between Supervisor Cowan, Supervisor Howard, City Council Member Darrin Short and Mayor Blake Inscore, as well as Del Norte County, CEO Jay Sarina and City Manager, Vandermark, took place at the Flynn Center Chambers.
The only agenda item of discussion was regarding the West Park Mobile Home Park formerly called CRASHERS.
But first some history.
In an article printed by the Triplicate newspaper on January 23, 2015, $850,000.00 of Community Development Block Grant money was utilized to create a lift station near West Park Mobile Home Park to connect the 39 mobile homes to the Crescent City Sewer System. The City’s capacity fees or hook-up fees charged the park $226,000. Normally fees are $9,700 per unit to hook into the sewer plant. But mobile homes are considered 60% of a whole home so they were charged $5,800 per unit.
Spending $850,000.00 for $226,000.00 is very interesting. What else is very interesting is the fact that no one from the City will tell the public or the local Crescent City-Del Norte County Taxpayers Association how many single family resident equivalent hook-ups the Harbor uses being connected to the sewer plant. In some public meetings they said 1,000 and in other public meetings, they said 1,850.
Well, if the mobile home park is charged $5,800 each for 39 hook-ups equaling $226,000, just think how much richer the City would be if they actually charged the Harbor $5,800 x 1,000 = $5,800,000 . Or $5,800 x 1,850 = $10,730,000. TEN MILLION BUCKAROOS! That would make a humongous dent in paying towards the State Revolving Fund Loan. So much of a dent the city wouldn’t have to be in default on their loan after losing the 20% sewer rate increase on November ballot by 57%.
During the 2 x 2 meeting it was discussed how Mayor Inscore came up with the generous and grand idea to have the City of Crescent City finance this $226,000 with a low interest loan and giving them 20 years to repay the loan. This is very generous of the Mayor of Crescent City to provide loan services to public entities at such reasonable rates. The question asked during the meeting was whether or not this set precedent.
Supervisor Cowan asked, “What if they can’t pay it back?” That was a very interesting statement from Ms. Cowan, as her past experience in business gave her first hand insight on her own business bankruptcy.
Jay Sarino discussed minimally about the Proposition 1 Water Quality, Supply, and Infrastructure Improvement Act of 2014. And the administration is waiting to hear if they are eligible to receive those funds for this project. City Manager Vandermark stated, “CHROMIUM IN WELLS IN OUR AREA IS THE REASON WHY THEY ARE PUSHING WATER SYSTEM TO BE UPGRADED.” REWIND….CHROMIUM IN OUR WELLS IN OUR AREA IS THE REASON WHY THEY ARE PUSHING THE WATER SYSTEM TO BE UPGRADED?” Bam! Should we be talking to Erin Brokovitch?
The meeting continued on without any specific agenda item, the possibility of raising Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) for hotels and vacation rentals was brought up by Supervisor Cowan. “Everyone else in the state is paying 12% while our county only receives 8% and the city’s is 10% tot tax. Don’t you love it when an elected official thinks we ought to raise our taxes…. again…. and again….. and again.
What about reducing expenses? Huh?
Memorandum of Understanding (MOU’S) for Animal Control was discussed. The animal control received a 17% increase. That is also very interesting since the SEIU county workers were offered 6% when they requested 9%. Dispatch MOU has expired, and is an ongoing process to negotiate.
Much talk about how to go about the discussion for shared services between law enforcement and one question brought up by Mayor Inscore was whether or not the Sheriff should be an elected position. It appears the City of Crescent City was successful in waiving the citizens rights to vote for the City Clerk which the citizens of Crescent City voted for, however the County residents should be very concerned about voting to waive their right to elect a sheriff.
More news later……….
Did anybody record this 2 x 2 meeting that discussed how to eliminate the public’s right to ELECT their sheriff? Was there an agenda or a transcript?
I DID NOT KNOW THE CITY VOTED TO APPOINT A CLERK! WHY WOULD ANYBODY DO THAT? This sounds exactly like Agenda 21’s goal to replace the people’s elected representatives with an APPOINTED representative. First, there is a declaration, “citizens cannot afford to have a special election to replace the people’s elected official, who can no longer perform their duties (for what ever reason). For example, the first elected official position to be converted to an appointee position was the CITY CLERK. Her job is to count votes, make sure the rules are followed, voters are registered, one vote per registered citizen, all the polling places are open and accessible to the voters, all necessary steps are taken to secure the ballots, PROP 218 is observed when RATE INCREASES ARE ANNOUNCED. The City Clerk protects civil rights. Imagine if a voter had Parkinson’s disease and could barely hold the pen to sign his name. The voter brought photo identification, birth certificate and his wife to verify the voter is who he says he is. He remains registered and wants to vote to have fluoride removed from the cities drinking water. And what if the city clerk continues to DENY this man his civil right to vote. Her reason for denying his right to vote, his signature does not match the signature she has on file. “MANY NEW TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD” public members found “LAWS NORTH OF THE KLAMATH” and voted that city clerk OUT. The new citizens did not know about retaliation from the STAKEHOLDER OFFICIALS. We did not even know that there was an agenda 21 in process with a goal to have one government, one global monetary system, ONE God, NO privately owned property, no elections no representation for citizens.
HOW COULD SOMETHING LIKE THIS HAPPEN ??????
NEXT the public ELECTED ROBIN I can’t remember her last name. I only know she left before her term was up and a city clerk was appointed to her position. The next thing I heard was the position of city clerk would no longer be an elected position, with the transparency that goes along with PUBLIC OFFICIALS, policies and procedure, job descriptions, access to public records . GONE. A PUBLIC, ELECTED REPRESENTATIVE, WHO WORKS FOR THE PUBLIC’S INTEREST, WITH ALL THE REQUIREMENTS AND SCRUTINIZED FOR CONFLICT OF INTEREST. AND MUST BE RE-ELECTED TO KEEP THEIR JOB. GONE!
Remember elected Sheriff Dean Wilson? When he was up for re-election I received a call wanting to know if I was voting for Sheriff Wilson. When I said “No” they asked if I would mind saying WHY?
I said I was beyond bothered when an innocent citizen’s door was busted down, he is hog tied, beaten unconscious, no
Miranda rights given, jailed and denied medical care after sustaining a brain injury from the hands of the Sheriffs department, denied a phone call, never charged for any crime, held hostage and while the sheriffs department spent seven hours ransacking his home and removing anything of value, including a gun collection, inherited from his grandfather, coin collections, with a warrant from an out of county judge, with false information, FALSELY accused of being a felon, was released FOUR DAYS LATER by those who held him hostage. The woman on the other end of the phone said,”Yes, that was an unfortunate incident”
An unfortunate incident in my mind is when the jelly side of a PJ sandwich falls onto your clean shirt.
THAT WAS, IN MT MIND, A TERRORIST ATTACK. TO MY KNOWLEDGE, NO ATTORNEY HAS HELPED DAVE RECOVER FROM THE MOST EGREGIOUS ATTACK AND THEFT ON A CITIZEN, WITHOUT SOME TYPE OF RETRIBUTION TO THESE PUBLIC SERVANTS.
Dean Wilson was not re-elected. I voted for the man who claimed he would need help due to a new kind of criminal. They do not steal because they need money. They steal because it is profitable.He stated what I see going on and it was not an unfortunate incident.
WHAT IF YOU DID NOT HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO ELECT A DIFFERENT SHERIFF? AND THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT SOME OR ALL OF THE 2 X 2 MEETING MEMBERS
ARE “MULLING OVER”. I THINK EACH ONE OF THOSE WHO ARE MULLING NEED TO BE RE-CALLED FOR EVEN ENTERTAINING THE THOUGHT OF DENYING THE CITIZEN’S THEIR RIGHT TO ELECTED REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT.
ANTONE INTERESTED IN READING ABOUT DAVE EGAN’S CONTINUING NIGHTMARE READ THE BLACK HAWK PISTOL ON CRESCENT CITY TIMES.
Did not note in my previous comment that the Triplicate article from 1986 is in a banner across the highest space of the front page headline of “City Council prepares water, sewer collection for prison.” I have original paper. While Cres City did not receive an increase in its water quota; Pelican Bay did receive a quota of 1066 acre feet in 1996~ possible emergency allotment. All of this is quite strange as the Smith River was designated as a “Wild & Scenic River by the US Congress on1~19~1981 and as a National Recreation Area 11~16~1991.
To Nicholas & anyone who doubts my facts, but to Nic especially. I don’t understand where you have the concept that my “math is wrong”.Did not use any math calculation! Just made reference to the existing water quota belonging to Cresent City since 1958 {2600 acre ft]; frozen at that quota due to the Smith River designation as “wild & scenic”which controls water taken from river flow. To verify my comment, the library, or the office of “The Daily Triplicate”has microfliche of this Triplicate edition : Friday, October 31, 1986, Vol. 107, # 84 . Want to do some math, as I have; an acre foot is 325,851 gallons, estimated monthly use per resident1600 cubic feet, cubic foot is 7.48 gallons, exact # of residents now. In 1984 CC had less than 2,00 residents, less development, prison not built, but used 1500 acre feet. Checked every state & federal agency involved in water use & allocation. So far any repayment by State of Cal to CC are MIA.
Linda, you are completely wrong!!! We’re using COMMON CORE math these days.. get with the times already. 🙂 LOL
Thank you for that valuable piece of information Lin J Ryan
It may be beneficial to check into past records to determine exactly the expenditures incurred by Crescent City via their agreement with the California Dept. of Correction to add PelicanBay Prison, as it was being built, to Crescent City water and sewer services. The City paid to run lines to the Malarkey farm prison site. Did the State of California ever repay those expenses as agreed? Are those records available? Also,the water quota is frozen at the 1958 amount due to Smith River’s designation as “Wild & Scenic.”as it was when CDC was added. CC has numerous water issues beyond West Park!