November 18, 2019
Del Norte County Supervisor, Bob Berkowitz, representing the 5th District, announced today that he is running for a second term. Berkowitz is a 40 year resident of Del Norte County. He built radio station KCRE-FM and served as its owner and manager for 10 years.
In the 1980’s he was appointed to serve as the Del Norte School District Personnel Commission. In the 1990’s he served two terms on the Del Norte County Grand Jury and taught TV Production at the College of the Redwoods. In 1998, he was elected to the Del Norte School Board and served three terms.
During that time, he traveled to Washington D.C. to help pass the Secure Rural Schools and Communities legislation that brought over 12 million dollars to our county and local schools. In 2016 he was elected to the Del Norte County Board of Supervisors.
In a statement, Berkowitz said he is proud of the accomplishments that the board has made during the last three years, getting $50 million to start the process of replacing Last Chance Grade. “It’s long overdue”, said Berkowitz.
One of the accomplishments he said he is most proud is implementing his campaign promise to be available to everyone in the county 6 days a week. To that end, he established the “Daily Town Hall” meeting. 6 days a week people can meet with a county supervisor. To date, there have been 1,254 meetings with local people. This is one forum where citizens can meet with a county supervisor with a complaint, or suggestion, or idea and have more than 3 minutes to express themselves. This concept is so unique that it was written up in a national publication.
Berkowitz says, in a second term, he wants to bring more innovative ideas to our county.
I suspect that we as voters are supposed to forget that Kevin Hendricks was once the executive director of the DNSWMA Transfer station) when a sum of money went missing under his watch. As I recall he was shortly there after asked to resign or be terminated (correct me if I’m wrong). After his departure there have been no further instances of missing money that the public knows of to this date. It also appeared at the time that due to shoddy record keeping and the destruction of records kept at the time, no one was held accountable for the missing funds. The question might be asked, is this the kind of person the fifth district wants to represent them?
I left out the fact that Bob Berkowitz was there talking with us at the Farmers Market when Kevin Hendricks came up to us and made his statement regarding Last Chance Grade.
Just to let people know that when we started our community committee for the Last Chance Grade Bypass Doris and I were at the Farmers Market at the fair grounds a few years ago and we were run down/attacked by Kevin Hendricks who stated why were we doing this it should be left alone. I hope that any of you reading this will contact everyone you know to the fact that I wouldn’t support Kevin running against Bob Berkowitz. Bob has supported Last Chance Grade Bypass from the beginning of our efforts.