Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

All right, Mr. Black, are you ready to go? Kaylee and company? Yep. All right, there we go. Good to go. Let's see how we got here, okay. With that, welcome to the Board of Supervisors for Humboldt County, Tuesday, July 14th, 2026. And we'll start with a roll call.

Thank you, Chair. Supervisor Arroyo? Here. Supervisor Bone? Hey, good morning. Supervisor Madrone?

Present.

Supervisor Bushnell? Good morning. Chair Wilson?

Here.

All are here.

Great. Let's do the salute to the flag. Supervisor Bushnell, will you lead us? Thank you. Okay, we're done with that part and on to the next which is virtual attendance instructions. Take it away.

Thank you, Chair Wilson. This meeting is being conducted in accordance with the Brown Act and applicable state and local requirements. Members of the public may participate in person and or remotely as noticed on the agenda. For those participating remotely, public comment is welcome and encouraged. To help ensure your voice is heard, it is recommended that you raise your hand at the start of the item you wish to comment on. If you are joining by computer or mobile device, please use the raise hand feature to indicate your desire to speak. When it is your turn, you will be unmuted by staff. If you are joining by telephone, please press star nine to raise your hand. When recognized, you may press star six to unmute yourself and begin speaking. Please state your name for the record before making your comment. The board asks that all participants conduct themselves with respect and courtesy. Comments should be directed to the board as a whole and limited to the time allowed.

Good job. I'd like to introduce you to Faith. our newest employee here around the CAO's office, or not the CAO's office, our clerk's office. Anyways, we're gonna move on to modifications to the agenda. CAO?

Good morning, Chair Wilson. There are a couple modifications. Item H1 is being moved up to the consent calendar, and for the audience's situational awareness, item H2 will be heard last.

Yeah. And by last, the intention is H2 is the item that looks at potential land use ordinance changes around various subjects that were listed here, offshore oil, detention centers, and other things like that. We're putting it on last because that way we can kind of manage for the time for that. We have closed sessions scheduled for 11.30. It's expected we'll probably come out of there sometime after, 1 p.m., and so my expectation is that H2 will be heard sometime after, close to, but sometime after 1 p.m. That's my expectation. So I don't want people sitting around here all day waiting for it, and then we go into closed session, and so I just want to help people manage their time as best we can. All right, and what I'm also saying is we do have a closed session set for 11.30. So with that, we're gonna move into the consent calendar, and if there's items on the consent calendar that we wanna talk about, this is the time to do that. And so I think the only thing I see in the consent calendar that we may have, discussion about at all or some presentation on is the quarterly report of current projected vacancies on Humboldt County Board of Supervisors and appointed boards. And unless Tracy's here to do that, we'll skip that. And I just encourage people to read that. And it's basically all the announcements for all the openings that we have on our boards and commissions. And what I wanna say about that is it doesn't matter if they're full, please apply because you never know when someone needs to do something else. openings come up and that's just a good reminder to staff to get ahold of you and let you know that there's something happening. With that, we're gonna bring it back to consent calendar and I'm gonna open it up to public comment on consent calendar. I'm gonna move to anyone online and give it 30 seconds to make sure that folks are there.

There's none online.

None online. All right, consent calendar items for folks in-house. And oh, Tracy, you gonna jump in before that? We'll just do that. Yeah.

I heard my name, I was in the other room. I did wanna mention that on the item regarding the quarterly report that there was a modification and I have one alternate on measure Z that is not listed.

Okay.

So with that change, it is correct.

Is that an at-large alternate?

It is an at-large alternate.

Great, good to know.

Thank you.

All right, so we do have a new opening on Measure Z for an at-large alternate, so if you're interested in that committee, please put in your application. And with that, we're gonna bring it back to public comment in the House here.

I always act with this to Tracy the Great and Powerful at any time. I did wish to make comment on, you have a, Basically, my question first is, I'm not sure whether legally you can put something on consent that's already been agendized as far as another issue, but I guess your council can advise you on that one. You can go the opposite way, I believe, but pull things, and like I said, Tracy's things, technically, if she wasn't gonna speak for a long time or you were gonna have a discussion, should be pulled and taken off consent. I did wish to make comment on, we have multiple funding coming for our airports. And I wonder, and maybe I'm incorrect, but my perception of what was told to us before was our airports were going to get funding to bring them up to the level of infrastructure that you would have at SFO or LAX. In other words, we wouldn't be having all these flights canceled currently that we're having canceled where people don't get here, they drive back and forth. instead of being able to fly in and out. So my question is maybe sometime we can find out through your aviation people where that promise went and why that's not coming to fruition because that was a major improvement in our connectivity if we were able to get out of here under extreme conditions. So that's one thing on consent there. I think I'll leave it at that. We're gonna just try and keep my comments a little bit briefer than normal today. Thank you for opportunity to speak.

Thank you, is there anyone else that has comment on consent items? And if you do, feel free to line up.

Hello, my name is Juan Pablo Cervantes. I'm the clerk recorder and registrar of voters. And I'd like to talk on the consent item regarding certifying the election. Really, I just want to say thank you both to this board for the support that you all have given this democratic process to staff. We had folks across the county really show up when we needed them the most and our community for showing up. So thank you.

and thank you, Juan, for running such a smooth election process. Are there any other comments on consent items here? Yes.

I'm sorry, my name's Joanne McGarry, and I think Mr. Swatsky did have an interesting question to pose about putting something that was not on the posted consent calendar on the consent calendar, and I just am curious that that is, Okay.

Thanks, we don't tend to have conversations back and forth in this format but question noted and if you send an email in, I'll make sure that someone from staff gets back to you, okay? All right, is there any other comments for the consent calendar? Do I have a motion for passing consent?

I will move approval of the consent calendar. And thank you to our registrar voters for all the work to make that happen.

And it seems like Supervisor Bone has a comment or question.

Can we just take H1 and address it separately so there isn't a problem? Because it's a $62,000 line item for electrical and internet connections that should actually have been on the consent calendar. It was misplaced on this. But to disregard all problems, would there be an issue with that? I don't think we're going to probably extend our meeting by more than 90 seconds by doing that.

I'll modify my motion to pull H1 back on to the I don't know if we hear it right after consent as an item pulled from consent or in its other order. That's a point of order question but I don't think there's been a second otherwise for the motion.

It doesn't need it can go in the order as a departmental. It's within the chair's discretion to to move items around in the agenda including to consent.

In the interest of peace, I will still keep that motion as is.

All right. In the interest of peace, I think that's fine to do. And we'll put it back into the lineup, as we would call it. So there's a second to that motion to pass the consent calendar without the modification to move H1 into consent. And we have another comment from Supervisor Madron.

Yeah, I do want to thank the registrar of voters, but in particular, all of the workers. I mean, I don't know how, what is it, hundreds of people that you hire for temporary help, they stand up. I know us as supervisors, when we welcome new employees around election time, this room is full with 20, 30 people that are stepping up to help run what I think is probably one of the best election processes in the state of California, if not the country. And all of those workers deserve tremendous credit Juan you're a great leader there, but I know you lead by example and Those folks that step up to do that are why we have such a great election process So kudos to everybody in the community to step up to help do that work.

So, thank you All right, if there's no more comment from the board I Is there any objection to unanimous consent? Seeing none, the motion passes 5-0. All right, we're gonna move on to public comment on non-agenda items. That's what we're gonna do right now. And we're gonna start online. And is there anyone online that wants to speak to non-agenda items?

There is. Caller 3053, I will unmute you and you will have three minutes.

Good morning, Thomas Mulder here. I just want to confirm you can hear me there in the chamber?

Yes.

Thank you. A couple of things. First off, it's an opportunity to speak. I would say I'm going to ask again, I think I've asked about five times, maybe ten, I don't know. It would be great to see the board file a letter, especially being that the state's in a rulemaking process. It would be great to see an agenda item where the board takes a position and sends a letter of public comment to another regulating agency, DCC. about the rulemaking process. It'd be great to see support of one of the many economies that bring jobs and prosperity to this county being supported in a way such as that. I don't know. There's a lot of times public comment happens and we change rules or regulations or spend money we don't have. It'd be great to see this board come forward and support something and try to fight hard to keep jobs. It'd be great to see that logging and many other construction trades instead of over-regulation. And it's really disappointing, lastly, that we spend so much money that we don't have on continuing to try to over-regulate and chase an agenda item for the next political wave or whatever the new hot item is. So please be mindful of the budget we're in. Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

That is all on Zoom, Chair.

All right, well, we're bringing it back to the room. So again, this is public comment on non-agenda items, things that do not have anything to do with what's on the agenda. And you're up.

Thank you.

Can you put the microphone towards you a little bit there? Thanks.

Dear supervisors, my name is Karen Gaffney, and I've been a resident of Humboldt County for 12 years. I'm now retired. My last job is working for a privately owned publication that did tourist and advertising and local articles. I wanted to share an experience I had while working for this publication. We had mostly closed due to COVID-19. Our employees were furloughed. I was listening to KHOM, and there was a segment coming up in which we would find out about a survey Humboldt County wanted residents to fill out to help reopen Humboldt County. What I heard on the radio, however, that day was gossip about the county, the sheriff issues, only to hear about the survey at the last minute. I was bothered that we had a supervisor who casually gossiped and didn't tell us much about reopening after COVID closure. This supervisor was my boss's favorite, so I emailed him about this. I printed out a copy, put a personal note on it with my phone number, asking the supervisor to call me if they had wanted to or if they had any questions, and I sent it to their office. A few weeks later my boss came in, he travels a lot for his work, and told me that this supervisor had given him permission to give me his personal cell phone number over this issue. So instead of calling me directly, this supervisor still felt the need to talk to my boss Simply put, I am sick and tired of our government officials making enemies of their constituents, of bullying their constituents rather than picking up the phone and having a conversation with them. Supervisor Bone, I find your behavior unacceptable and objectionable. Thank you for your time.

Ken Sawatsky, I'm going to speak on more than three topics today, hopefully. Again, the fireworks is a topic. I think we can replace that with other kinds of options. I've been involved in this for many years as far as politics goes, and I found a list the other day. It had on it a phone number, 444-8263, and that phone number was important because it was a phone number for Lee Ulancy. And once upon a time, I felt I was doing him a favor. I heard that there were rumors out there that he was perceived to be guilty of RICO crimes. I left that message on his phone. His wife got it, and apparently there must have been something there because he retired and moved to Hawaii soon thereafter. So sometimes you try and do favors for people, and sometimes they listen, other times they don't. Another topic I highly recommend that you folks consider following the lead, I believe it's of Monterey County, and they're putting into effect some ordinances regarding spay and neuter. I think that's an important thing that we can help lead here in Humboldt County, seeing as how we're the focal point. Salute number two. But I do feel that we should look at this particular topic as far as what we can do in partnership with the state with what they're doing. Because I don't think the state's going to cover everything we need and would like to see locally. So maybe we can spend a little time on that particular topic. People would ask why I'm going down history lane and wearing a Rex Bone from 2012 shirt. I always wonder why things call to me and I find them and they kind of send a message to me. This particular shirt was purchased I think for 25 to 50 cents probably six years ago and it came from Miranda Rescue. And I was a strong supporter of them, and of course very disappointed in what's happening with that particular thing. And I've brought a comment before that a lot of these things, lack of moral compass, whether it's stealing hubcaps, stealing horses, giving children to pedophiles, may come down to some major drug problems we have. That's how people lose their moral compass, in my opinion. It's not an excuse, but it's a reason. We really need to look at that. I don't know whether Patrick Shannon, I mean, Shannon Miranda. Shannon Miranda was connected at the 4th Street Connection back in the day and started his habit. But I do take exception when I get comments from the dais and continually saying, well, we get too much fentanyl, we get too much stuff from down south, when it just seems to be maybe that's competing with friends and family who are actually in that business up here. Thank you for my opportunity to speak today, and off we go.

Good morning. My name is Joanne McGarry, and I'm not going to speak about three things like I have in the past, things like fireworks, bicycle parking, animal welfare, but I do want to kind of share with you the importance I see of this podium and why I come to it so often and speak up, especially on non-agenda items, because It is an important part. Staff is important, you elected officials are important, and we, the people, are equally important. So I appreciate the opportunity to have three minutes to share with you things that concern me and concern other people who do not come here to speak up, but do speak up in the community about similar issues that I have. The one issue that I really want to call our attention to is climate action. And I brought my little earth flag or my big earth flag actually because sometimes visuals are as important as words. And as you well know because it's all over the news, if you're looking at the right news, Climate action is hitting us right now. I mean, climate change is hitting us right now. So anything that we can do locally to thwart what's globally happening is so important. So the climate action plan and what we can do to put our mark on it. Mr. Zawadzki talked about we're in the spotlight right now about animal welfare. We can be in a really good spotlight about climate action in the Redwood Forest and territory and doing what we can to make a change and show people how we can adapt and do things better in our community. And that brings me in the last 50 seconds to what war has done in the world. And there was just a post I saw yesterday that what's happened in Gaza is 16 times the atomic bomb in Japan. and the pollution generated by the bombs that we supported to drop on innocent people are creating huge climate effects. And maybe we need to do something to tell the federal government no more money to drop bombs to kill people and harm our climate and our planet.

All right. Is there any more comments in the room for non-agenda items? Seeing none, we are going to move to, hold on a second here, public hearings. Is that right?

We'll get started, though.

OK. Morning, Chair Wilson, members of the Board of Supervisors. I assume the public hearing has been opened?

Yes, the hearing is now open.

Yeah. So my name's John Ford. Joining me is Augustus Cashel. And we're going to present the mixed density residential ordinance. And this is a ordinance that comes out of the housing element. It's a housing element policy. And ironically, it's one of those that the California Department of Housing and Community Development was very interested in seeing adopted. They've been monitoring our work to ensure that we're complying with the housing element. And this is one of the ones that they are very curious in. And so this is an ordinance to implement the housing element. The Planning Commission did ultimately vote to approve this with a 5-0 vote. recommend approval with the 5-0 vote one of the things that they struggled with a little bit was whether or not this adequately implemented policy t3 of the regional climate action plan and and i just want to say that this was not written to implement policy t3 of the climate action plan this was written to create opportunities for additional housing within housing opportunity zones. And the housing opportunity zones, we'll go through where those are, are really lined up, up and down Highway 101 from McKinleyville down to Garberville. And so if it were written to implement policy T3 of the Regional Climate Action Plan, it would be written differently. It would exclude areas that are not within an urbanized area. One of the comments that was made by one of the commissioners was that it makes sense that in some of the more rural areas that there would be a demand for housing and an opportunity to construct that housing in those areas and to exclude that would not be wise. And I think most of the planning commissioners agreed with that. So I know that you may receive comments today that it doesn't adequately implement policy T3. It was not written to accomplish that. It was written to create additional opportunities for a higher density housing within R1 and R2 zones that are within the housing opportunity zones. Are you almost there? I sent it to you already.

Kaylee, can you please send, I guess, this panelist link?

I just sent that to him. Yeah, he was looking to get it on the screen.

Perfect, thank you very much. So, these changes are in accordance with implementation measure number 61 from our housing element specifically, which calls for us to establish a mixed housing zoning district, and more specifically directs the implementation the county to amend the zoning regulations to add a principal zoning district to be applied within housing opportunity zones that allow higher residential densities and flexible housing configurations so that it can address workforce housing needs for both existing and new development. SO YES, JOHN MENTIONED, THIS IS WHAT HCD WANTS US TO DO, AND THIS ORDINANCE IS GOING TO BE A MEANS THAT WE'VE DETERMINED WOULD EFFECTIVELY AND SMOOTHLY FULFILL IMPLEMENTATION MEASURE NUMBER 61, DESPITE NOT BEING MORE CLEARLY A NEW PRINCIPAL ZONING DISTRICT. IT'S MORE OF A COMBINING ZONE THAT I'LL GET INTO IN A MINUTE. So this ordinance is gonna create an opportunity in areas where affordable housing is needed, but would otherwise tend not to be developed. AS MENTIONED, IT'S GOING TO TREAT THE HOUSING OPPORTUNITY ZONES AS A COMBINING ZONE-LIKE LAYER, ADDING OPTIONS SPECIFICALLY TO THE R1 AND R2 ZONES, SO SINGLE-FAMILY AND TWO-FAMILY ZONES, WHICH BOTH ARE IN A TYPICALLY SUBURBAN SETTING, AND THIS WILL ONLY APPLY TO INLAND AREAS OF REDWAY, GARBAVILLE, MIRANDA, WEOTT, SCOTIA, MCKINLEYVILLE, AND THE NEIGHBORHOODS SURROUNDING EUREKA. So in those areas, when you're building more dense housing structures on R1 and R2 than would normally be permitted, this is when it gets applied and does not apply to any uses that can be permitted otherwise. One example, potentially the only example where it adds a principal option that IS ALSO PRINCIPALLY PERMITTED BY THE UNDERLYING ZONE IS R2, WHICH PRINCIPALLY PERMITS ZONING, PERMITS DUPLEXES. SO THIS CODE DOES NOT APPLY TO ANY OF THE DEVELOPMENT STANDARDS TO DUPLEXES IN THE R2 ZONES. Those permitted uses that it's adding principally are duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, and apartments comprised of five dwelling units or other configurations of those dwelling units anywhere between two to five and some other principally permitted use just to make sure it's as flexible as possible and adds a conditionally permitted use of apartments comprised of six or more dwelling units. So just a visualization of what some folks call missing middle housing. Where this particular ordinance is kind of drawing the line is somewhere in the middle of multiplex. So you don't need to worry about the live work and triplex shapes. We're trying to be the bridge between detached single family and the mid-rise that you might see in more urban settings. One of the ways this tries to achieve that is increasing the density to 25 dwelling units per acre, and it shall not be construed to reduce any existing maximum densities. So if somehow your single family zone has some other source of a higher density, then you would be using that higher density instead. It also increases the maximum ground coverage from 35% by 10% up to 40%. That's about as high of a coverage you can get while also trying to accommodate both the outdoor space and the parking situations that might be required of so much housing on one parcel. Excuse me. So we can compare that 25 units per acre to the residential low density land use that a lot of these are sitting on top of, which applies a one to eight unit per acre density. And what that ends up calculating, too, is going to be about one unit per 5,400 square feet. But that is also including all the roads and other easements like sidewalks and such. So it's a significant difference and a much tighter of development. The next step in our densities from the general plan is the residential medium density land use, which is seven to 30 units per acre. So it's a little bit below what might be the maximum on that in certain areas. A COUPLE RELATED CODES TO CALL OUT. THE PARKING CODE, THIS CURRENT STANDARDS TYPICALLY ARE ABOUT ONE SPACE PER BEDROOM IN MOST SETTINGS. BUT FOR STRUCTURES WITH FOUR OR MORE UNITS, THIS PROPOSED CODE ONLY REQUIRES ONE SPACE PER UNIT PLUS FOUR UNITS FOR STRUCTURES WITH SIX OR MORE UNITS AND WHEN THEY'RE ALSO IN within one mile, excuse me, one half mile of an active bus stop. It only requires one space for two units. This was part of the alternative two, which was at the end accepted by the planning commission. It also makes a strong note that, for all cases, if the standard parking code would require fewer spaces, then the lower requirement would apply. There have been comments suggesting that we eliminate parking mandates in certain areas. But that kind of sweeping move will need a much more careful hand than this particular ordinance is kind of capable of applying. So that would be something we need to consider if we're revamping the entire parking codes at the same time. On a different note, the short term rental policy is that no short term rentals are permitted in mixed residential density developments like these by applying a 30 day minimum rental term. The density bonus ordinance is also tied in a little bit. Density bonuses are typically only applied when the maximum density is reached, but we want to further incentivize target unit development, so this also allows more than five dwelling units per structure without a conditional use permit, without requiring that maximum density to be met. This is based on the density bonus percentage tables. So if target units are included, additional units per structure are allowed and they need to be evenly divided among those structures. Density bonus... BONUSES ALSO APPLY INCENTIVES. SO IN THIS PARTICULAR ORDINANCE, IT JUST CLARIFIES THAT THE DEVELOPMENT STANDARDS MAY BE MODIFIED AND IT'S ONE STANDARD PER INCENTIVE AND IT DOES NOT GRANT ADDITIONAL INCENTIVES FOR ABSOLUTE CLARITY. Most of the development standards, excuse me, a lot of the development standards are partially dependent on underlying zoning. So for setbacks, it's going to mostly apply the underlying zoning. But instead of the five foot side yard setback or any other setbacks that are on the side yards, side and rear. It's a 10-foot setback from other structures. So that structure will be subject to the five feet setback, plus you would get another five feet on the inside. But that also applies to structures on site. So there's a minimum space between them to support movable ways of traversing between structures on site. Plus, for structures with three or more stories, that's just an extra five feet. Because the height limits are 35 feet and basically in almost all zones, that's not going to be applied very often. for four-story structures. The height, again, 35 feet as a standard, but where it's within 20 feet of a single-family residence, it shall not exceed that single-family residence's height by 15 feet. So if you have a neighboring two-story single-family residence, then you get... that extra 15 feet and that brings you up to the 35. But if they're only one story, you get a 15 feet and that's usually going to add up to 25 feet if they have a flat roof. Um, so this is a lot of wiggle room here. Um, This ordinance also requires that pathing between the units, their sidewalks, and their driveways, all that pathing needs to be ADA compliant hard surface. It applies a open space requirement, which is set at 10% of the property area. SHALL BE CONSOLIDATED INTO SHARED OPEN SPACE, AND THAT CONSOLIDATED AREA SHALL NOT BE SEPARATED INTO MORE THAN TWO SEPARATE AREAS PER THREE STRUCTURES. WE'LL HAVE A VISUALIZATION OF THAT IN A MOMENT. AND THERE'S A MINIMUM 100 SQUARE FEET OF TOTAL OPEN SPACE PER UNIT. but there are also opportunities to reduce those requirements associated with on-site recreation or nearby parks. So here we have just a visualization of three separate parcels. One has three structures of multi excuse me, multi-unit apartment style situations. The neighbor has two structures, each of multi-units. And then we have one more fourplex that is all just one structure. how we can see what the open space might be counted as. This is all not to scale. It's way more than 10%. So those gaps in between the structures aren't going to be counted. And since the parcel on the left is three units, you can count both the inner yard and the front yard. PARCEL IN THE CENTER IS COUNTING ALL OF IT BECAUSE IT'S SET ALL THE WAY BACK AT THE PARCEL. AND THE FOUR PLEX IS JUST COUNTING THE FRONT YARD BECAUSE THAT'S SLIGHTLY BIGGER AND IT WOULD BE COUNTING TWO SPACES OTHERWISE. AND HERE WE HAVE AN EXAMPLE OF A COMPLETELY SEPARATE JURISDICTION IN A SLIGHTLY MORE URBAN SETTING. And I want you all to take a moment to consider how many units per structure each of these might possess. And it turns out, when I looked at them, the structure on the left is four units, structure in the center is four units, and the structure on the right is just two units. These can architecturally fit in a lot of settings, is kind of what that is trying to illustrate. And here we have just where these apply in a more visual setting. The neon green that's really hard to see with diagonal lines through it, that is the housing opportunity zones. And then we have yellow and orange depicting the R1 and R2 zones. The orange also depicts R3 and R4, so it's kind of hard to tell. It's better to just assume that it could be R2 from these visualizations. But yeah, here we have Redway and Garberville, just to see them. Oh dear. Sorry about that. Let me reshare. One more time. There we go. So Redway and Garberville. Then we have Miranda, Weott, and Scotia next to each other just because they are more vertically aligned. Excuse me. then Pine Hill and Humboldt Hill, McKinleyville, and then Cutton, Myrtle Town, and Ridgewood Heights just fit together very nicely in a vertical map.

Did you have anything else to add, John?

All right. So planning staff recommends adopting the resolution, which is going to make the required findings, adopt the mixed residential density ordinance, and direct the clerk of the board to publish the post-adoption summary.

All right, is that the? That is the end of the show.

We're available for any questions you all have.

Great, this is a good time for the board to ask questions, and after that we'll go to public comment, and then we'll bring it back for more discussion. All right, board members, questions? Supervisor Arroyo?

Thank you. I'm curious about the design standards. They're pretty limited. I saw the item related to meeting the essentially looking like it fits in the neighborhood and then the offsets and recesses and I agree with both of those but the item around fit with the neighborhood seems a little bit hard to gauge and frankly when I look at places that have had a lot of infill, like some neighborhoods in Denver come to mind where there's some historic buildings and then there's some modern buildings and they look very nice together. I don't know that I necessarily agree that it has to look exactly like the neighborhood it's in, but I would love to see us have a little bit more in the realm of design standards and I wondered if that's incorporated by reference somewhere else or whether that's just something we haven't tackled yet. This made me realize I don't know what all our design standards are.

So if I could, we in the bigger picture of things have limited areas that have design standards. That's not a classic kind of thing. In residential neighborhoods, that's particularly true. So we were trying to walk a fine line between wanting A, to have things that are principally permitted, don't have discretionary permits, don't have reasons for these to be denied, and creating physical requirements that cause them to, by the size, more or less fit in to the neighborhood. And that's the reason for the limitation on the five units per structure, not parcel, but structure. So to try to limit the size that the structure would get. We did try to think about how could this affect the overall character of the neighborhood if somebody came in with some different material different colors that really was out of character to the area that may may be something that the neighborhood would take objection to and so we did put in just a small reference to design relative to that I think the struggle that we had, the struggle that I hear you having, is that we don't have a lot of design standards. And part of our attempt to achieve the state housing goals is to make the thresholds as low as possible in terms of the permitting. And so if we were to get into a more complicated kind of review, that could be inconsistent with that.

I'm just remembering the process of developing design standards for a new zoning code in Eureka, and it was interesting to get into what I think people will essentially embrace a more aesthetically pleasing building, even if it has a lot of bulk, oftentimes. And I know that's a generalization, but that is something I'd love to explore. I know it's... development of more housing is paramount, but it is something that I think can help with a relatively minimal cost. Some of these things like the offsets and the recesses are pretty expensive, but change in surface materials or some of the other features like adding shutters, things like that might be a smaller cost and could be nice to consider in the future, but I realize that's not what we're talking about here today. So I just wanted to note that and hear your thoughts about the incorporating materials that match the neighborhood. It was an effort.

Yeah. But an effort that is constrained.

Yeah.

That's as transparent as I can be.

Yeah. And then around, we've certainly heard comments about parking and a desire to limit the requirements. That it doesn't mean that a developer couldn't have more parking if they wished to. Do you have any thoughts about a middle ground related to parking flexibility? I know that we're talking about one per unit for four units and the flexibility with relation to transit accessibility. But any other thoughts or ideas from other jurisdictions that could be a middle ground around parking flexibility?

Well, first of all, I think the thing that The code currently requires one parking space per one bedroom unit, two parking spaces for a two and three bedroom unit, and two and a half parking spaces for a four bedroom unit. So right now, this code would require one parking space per unit regardless of the number of bedrooms. Okay, so if you were to put in a fourplex that each had two bedrooms, that right now would require eight parking spaces under the existing ordinance. With this ordinance, it would require four. So there is an attempt to achieve middle ground here. But, I mean, and there's an additional incentive when it's within a half mile of a, we didn't use a major transit stop. We said active bus stop.

Active transit stop, yeah.

And so that would allow basically a half unit or a half parking space per unit.

Okay. And then I appreciate that. We could come back to that if there's any, if there's desire from others. My last question is, is around the ADU, the either or with the ADU and ADUs, and in that section, this is maybe a little into the weeds, but it's 56.6.6.6.1, where it speaks to this section permitting four dwelling units per parcel, but some of the examples showed more than four dwelling units per parcel, and it had to do with the size of the parcel. So it wasn't as much about the ADUs and the substituting. I get that we're saying, nope, you can have more density, but then you can't have the ADU. I think that's what this is saying. But I'm wondering if it's too restrictive when it comes to the four units per parcel, et cetera, in here.

So four units per parcel is a minimum. So essentially, what you can get with an ADU and a second single family dwelling unit is going to be four units. This is saying you can either choose either one. If you're on a bigger parcel, you then you're going to be able to fulfill the density. If you're on a smaller parcel, about 5,000 square feet, this is more than what you would be getting.

Part of the reason for starting at four is because in single family, two family right now, you get the primary unit, the ADU, the JADU. So you get up to three already. So this then goes beyond that.

But the junior ADUs do have to be inside the house.

So it is a policy decision. If you would like to reduce it to allow a triplex that are all 1,600 square feet or whatever, that's totally fine.

I don't have any problem with having more. I don't have a problem with there also being an ADU in addition to everything else. I'm just curious. Yes, I agree that, yeah, by right, people can have that junior ADU and the ADU. I don't, I mean... I WAS GOING TO HOLD THIS TILL LATER, BUT I WAS JUST THINKING WHY NOT ALSO ALLOW THE ADU IF THEY CAN MEET OTHER REQUIREMENTS RELATED TO SETBACKS. BUT I COULD SEE THERE BEING APPEAL IN THAT AND THINKING ABOUT HOW A LOT OF FOLKS WHO WANT HOUSING WANT A MIX OF OPTIONS TO BE AVAILABLE, YOU KNOW, A STAND ALONE AND SOME OTHER UNITS SOUNDS LIKE IT COULD OFFER THAT WAS WHAT I WAS THINKING.

Well, conceivably with this, somebody could have a house on their property right now. Then they could decide that they'd like to put a triplex in the back. And this would allow that. And I mean, with a little fudging, you could reduce it down that they could put two more units in the back. And they wouldn't be subject to the same requirements as the ADU, JADU. I think that's fine.

So is this saying, like, if you're going to build, yeah. But this is saying, like, you've got to remove the ADU if you're going to do this other density stuff, right?

Not necessarily. It's about not calling it an ADU.

It's a terminology thing.

It's a Venn diagram of they're all dwelling units. So... you're just not applying ADU standards to whatever new units you're adding. I think that's, and you're going to be hitting whatever maximum this has.

Okay. I think I get it. Thank you.

Supervisor Bushnell.

Thank you. I'm wondering if this applies to Say you already have an existing subdivision that is qualifying for for acreage But hasn't been developed out all the way and whether it could apply to that Yes, so what happens with folks that have bought Parcels in that acreage under assumptions of

before and now they own a home that are going to be stacked upon each other in a new configuration that's that's one of the reasons why I think there was a real effort made in the development of this ordinance to try to limit the size of the structures to maintain some of the things that are characteristic yard areas open space things like that so that the folks that are there within an existing subdivision don't suddenly have a huge block building that you know going up right next to them but the setbacks are different according to this regulation correct the setbacks are functionally very similar or the same what was the setbacks or what are the setbacks now it'd be Typically five on the side, I believe it's 10 in the rear, 20 in the front. So that's why there's the one section that says the setbacks of the underlying zones still apply. So trying to maintain that consistency continuity with the development that is there within a R1, R2 setting.

Okay, so what happens, what would be the, say you have, in the Southern Humboldt area, you have something that's been constructed with five acre minimums and it is zoned quarterly or whatever, and now you want to do this to add structures. What would be the process of redoing

So this, number one, needs to be within the housing opportunity zone area. So typically areas.

Redway, Garberville area, right?

That would be within the town proper, largely, yeah. Okay. And same for Redway.

Okay. Okay.

So it really wouldn't have the parcels with five-acre minimums.

Okay. And so if there was an existing subdivision with homes already currently in it and they wanted to redo to accommodate to this, what would that look like? How would they do that? It's already an existed subdivision with all the subdivision restrictions now with current...

So I want to make sure I understand it's an existing subdivision. There's a vacant lot there and they want to come in and use this mixed density residential.

Yeah. There could be many, maybe many vacant lots, but there already is some existing homes.

Yep. So this right now, the way it's written, if they comply with the basic standards, not more than five units per structure, complying with the setbacks, complying with all the other requirements. it they go straight through to building permit they went it wouldn't have to so what if there's opposition with existing homes within that subdivision that's gonna be one of the things that's a policy decision for the board because the direction that the ACD is giving us is that you need to remove encumbrances or hurdles to creating housing and so one hurdle is discretionary permits And so we're trying to find a balance here with, yes, we're allowing more housing within these traditionally single family neighborhoods, but we're trying to do it in such a way that it's appropriate to approve it ministerially.

So discretionary to the board and who bears the liability of five homeowners bought land, built a home under different restrictions. Now we're gonna just say you get a discretionary permit and we're gonna redo this subdivision.

I think it's like any other ordinance that the board adopts. Certainly there have been ordinances where people haven't completely liked things. And in one particular case we went back and addressed some of that in a subsequent ordinance. We do have the ability to change things if we find out that this isn't working. But this is kind of a novel concept. It's funny how old things now are novel. But when you look in older towns, even in Eureka, there's this kind of development pattern all over. Any place that had development before the 1950s, this was kind of a normal development pattern.

Okay. Okay, that's all my questions for right now.

Supervisor Bell? So you mentioned earlier about having maybe no parking, which has been done in units being built around Humboldt now. And I think about the one that comes to mind is on 4th Street across from the co-op, which has a lot of cars parked around in it. Like nine at last count aren't even registered or currently registered. Because it's a possession that people, and it's for people on low income, if they have a possession, it's dear to them. We see it all the time, people hauling their cart around with an office chair that's been thrown out, because now they have furniture. And these are gonna be, So I think we need to address the parking because I mean, you guys won't get calls on the parking. We'll get calls. I can't get into my driveway. I can't get anything else. And I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I'm down here every day. And it's not that easy to park in downtown Eureka anymore already. It's not that fortunate. So I just, the parking issue needs to be addressed. The other thing that I tend to worry about, but I want to do a relationship. The subdivision we had in, McKinleyville a couple years ago. Would this have changed the footprint of that by allowing this? Would this allow them another story? Would this allow them more density? Because I think that was like three acres of different lots. And we were requiring two parking spaces at that time. So we take out, go to one space, they're set by, they would have been able to move. And the other thing is 15 feet setback for a three-story building, they're gonna see you. everything you do in your backyard.

If I could, the subdivision in McKinleyville was zoned R3. So that level of development, this would not apply to that. And then relative to parking, we have tried to reduce the parking and try to achieve a compromise. And one of the things we talk about a lot within the department is where change is needed, are you pursuing evolutionary change or revolutionary change? Revolutionary change is you just break things and see what happens right now. Evolutionary change is just recognizing you want to get to a certain point, but we're not ready for that right now, so we start taking steps in that direction. and that's what we're trying to do with the parking. We're still at a point where people are dependent upon their cars.

And we talk about cutting, and I'll go, you know, we have a, and I know the subject, it rates quite a bit different out there for like the McKay Ranch and other units out there, Forrester Gill, which was the hot topic 20 years ago. Does that change, does that hurt, help McKay? Does that, you know... I mean, because they have all the services. And are all these units, when there aren't, do they have to be able to be connected to services, city services?

They can't use on-site anything, right? Well, that's one of the important things about the housing opportunity zones is they are typically in CSDs. So they have services. Typically. Yeah. And they also mostly are in proximity to some kind of public transportation. And so they really do fit within the overall goal well of what we're trying to do on a lot of fronts. A, number one, creating housing, but B, creating opportunities for people to use public transportation to build, to have walkable communities and things like that. there this is not perfect this was not intended to only accomplish that this is intended intended the number one purpose is to create new housing opportunities and and I always love that because we were not taking advantage of the old housing

You know, I mean, I bring up, I can think of four or five that we're not taking advantage of because we're restricting them so much, or it seems to be, or the infrastructure, that type of thing. So the only thing I'd add, and again, Planning Commission went 5-0, and I appreciate that, and I would follow the lead of the Planning Commission because I think they probably looked into this very deeply and did not take it for, and they discussed it for probably a lot more than we're discussing it, but we're not gonna change the world. What I would like to see is a 18 month progress report if we do this, and 18 months says we have opened up this many pieces and are in the stages of development. Basically we spend a lot of time passing stuff, that doesn't get anything done. It looks good, it feels good, we can put it on our resumes, but it doesn't do any good if we don't put a head in a bed. So I would like to see all of this stuff we pass. I think we need to ground truth this, a lot of what we do up here, because we do a lot of stuff, man, it just, man, that's good. God, that sounds great. God, that's perfect. And none of it ever comes to fruition. And so I'd like to see a little follow-up, if that's possible. We can do that. Thank you.

Supervisor Madrona, do you have anything before I bring it back to Supervisor Bushnell?

Thank you, Chair. I just have a question around the 18 months. Is it feasible to assume that there could be response and completion within 18 months? I mean, it takes quite some time to do subdivisions, do all the things.

24 months would probably be better. Are you okay with that?

Yeah, I'm not looking for completion. Yeah. I'm just looking for somebody to throw the hook in the water and see if there's any fish there. I mean, I'm looking for somebody to come in and says, hey, what is the process for us to take this piece of property since you have now changed the zoning requirements and everything else for us to go further and they put something forward? We can go 24 months. We can go 30. We can go 36. We can do like we're doing now and not do anything. I just want to make sure that we do so many things that we never ground to them. And I think... If nothing else, since the big word's transparency, the people gotta know we're up here discussing stuff that's gonna affect you, but we should actually know if it's affecting them or if it's just to feel good. And I sit here and I look at how much time was spent on Forrester Gill. I look at how much time was spent on Forrester Gill. I look at how much time was spent, we've been on the McKay Ranch for over 30 years. Over 30 years. And there's nothing built out there. There's a snack bar. So I'm just wanting to, just so, whatever, let me, sorry to put a time limit on this. You guys pick what it would take for you to see if anybody is interested in anything that we've done and go from there.

So I'm gonna have a few questions. Thank you for answering the question around the services, water and sewer. So I just assume everything in those boundaries have water and sewer services that attach them. I wanna remind, is that this is an expansion of entitlements and a reduction in encumbrances all the way around. So there isn't, I mean at every level here. So this in no way is adding any restriction to housing opportunities in Humboldt County. So I just wanna be really clear about this is only an expansion of those opportunities. There's nothing here that I can see that further restricts housing opportunities. So I just want to be clear about that. Can you give me just a summary of sort of the discussion of alternative one versus alternative two in the parking and the discussion that the board or that the commission had?

So it started off, yeah, it was very split in terms of whether or not there should be that level of reduction that was shown in alternative two.

So the alternative is the more reduction in that requirement. That is exactly right. Okay, I appreciate that. And again, these reductions are not requirements of the, these are not parking maximums, these are parking minimums. So the developer, if the developer feels like that having more parking spots are more desirable to maybe get more rent or have different folks that they're looking for to wanna be in the space or just offer more opportunities, that is up to the developer in this case, right? True. So even if it says it's a one per bedroom minimum, they could do two, three, four, they could do five parking spots per bedroom if they wanted to, right? if it fits and they, and I'm saying that that's practical or there's any real reason, but I mean, they could put an RV spot in there if they wanted that. That's still part of their, of, of the opportunities for the, for the first person doing the development of that. Yeah, that's, that's correct. I appreciate that. Um, and I want to ask about, I mean, the, And also I also want to offer in sort of the discussion about like when people buy into a development where they bought in last year or they bought in 50 years ago or they moved into a subdivision. I mean almost everything that you live off your single family residential is mostly well in these zones was some form of a subdivision at some time. for the most part, and so we've been changing ordinances around development standards consistently and all the time, ever since any time that there's been development so i want to say there's there's nothing inconsistent about this and this is why we have these public processes is so folks if there are things that they're concerned about changes in their neighborhood this is the this is their this is their space for them to voice those opinions and have that that discussion i um the it's interesting because in humboldt county we don't have uh we except in mckinleyville and except in some of the cities, there is a fee for parks that then supports the development and or maintenance of parks and we don't really have that specific and we have sort of a parks department as part of our public works and they do county park type stuff. But in here you're trying to address with these open space requirements the fact that we could have some higher density in areas that don't have any sort of public space really. And so one of the questions I have here is like is this 20 foot setback requirement for the frontage and how much of that open space could be gobbled up with that in terms of like if you want to create some sort of consolidated area for people on the property to have some open space, like how flexible is that? I mean, do you see what I'm saying? And you had like a picture of one of your pictures that showed that, so. Right, so.

So there is no restriction on using that front setback area as part of the open space that's required on the parcel.

I hear you, but my issue is, for instance, if the solar exposure is much better in the back and there's just more opportunity for aggregated open space, then you're kind of wasting an opportunity if in the front you have this 20 foot required setback is what I'm getting at. It's like, and from a design perspective, it's like, I get it that in a neighborhood where there's 20 foot, 20 foot, 20 foot, that one or two spaces that might go to five feet would be an issue to some people for a minute, but what I'm, you see what I'm getting at?

I do understand the question here, and our thought was, because we were trying to allow for these developments to kind of fit within the overall framework of a single family residence and not violate some of the principal tenants, which is a front setback. That's part of a single family environment. That's why we maintain the setbacks. But that is entirely a policy decision. If the board chooses to allow some flexibility on that yeah that can certainly be done you know we could write probably write something into the ordinance I'm not sure I want to do it off top of my head as I speak right now right but is to allow encroachment into the front setback if it resulted in something open space pronounced open space in the in the rear yard or side yard or someplace else and

Again, we're trying to, one of the values of density and one of the problems we have with single-family zoning is the burden of the tax base to support all the infrastructure because when we have the single-family zoned areas, you still have all the sewer and water and roads and often sidewalks that are not that you still have to maintain, and the model that was created 50 years ago, or now it's 70 years ago around this, is showing that it's really strained, because you have infrastructure and buildings that are all now 70 years old, 50 years old or more, and And there's just a real stretch and strain on the taxation, especially with Proposition 13, to maintain those infrastructures. Whereas in higher density areas, you have more taxable revenue coming through those spaces. And so it's just very, and just more activity in general, retail, everything else that that density and so what I'm getting at is this 45% maximum coverage, is that what we have on here? That seems, for me that seems pretty limiting in terms of like the purpose of this and the transition that we're looking for and if Supervisor Bohn is correct and that, this transition is questionable, like how fast it will happen, like we aren't developing that quickly, then why are we, I guess, why are we limiting ourselves in terms of some of these requirements? And especially in terms of some of these setbacks and some of these limitations in terms of the coverage. One last question, not last question, but in speaking of that 45%, I think I saw you could reduce or you could expand that 45% if you were near a public park, is that right?

That was related to the open space requirement. You could reduce the open space requirement by being close to a park.

So clarify for me the difference between the open space requirement and the coverage requirement.

So the open space requirement has some dimensional issues or dimensional requirements, not issues, to achieve what would be called an open space. So we don't want it to be a three feet by 20 feet section that runs down along a building if that were to happen. And then the coverage requirement is intended to set a maximum area footprint on the property in terms of the building. And it really is overlapping with open space in all honesty. Oftentimes the coverage requirement is used to ensure that there is some open area on the property to ensure that the property doesn't turn into just a huge house on a small lot. And so there is a relationship there, and it is conceivable that the 45% could be increased or even removed because there are the open space requirements, there are the setback requirements.

Right, right. And it says that 10% of the open space that's created would be shared. Is that how I understand it? Or is it 10% of the developable area? I'm going to that right now.

I'm not sure which 10% you're speaking of.

Well, it was on your slide, so...

the 10% increase from 35% to 45%?

No, I thought it said 10% of the open space would be shared. There's some number. There was some requirement on the percent of open.

It says at least 10% of the area of the property shall be consolidated into shared open spaces, space to be used for shared lawn, outdoor seating, and or garden space. OK.

of the open space. So that number could be increased, right?

I mean, it seems like that the 10% could be increased.

Okay. All right. Um, and, and where, I mean, where did the 10% was come from in terms of like, there's no magic number there.

Okay.

So basically, Oh, all right. I've, I've, okay. I appreciate that. Okay. So, um, I mean because in my experience when you have multi unit spaces you know having an open common space is if you have kids running in this round and all is the bigger the better. I mean it just seems like that is just one of those things that is especially if you don't have parks nearby. That's my concern really is in this discussion here is like If you don't have parks nearby, then sure, this is okay. If you do have parks nearby, then I don't see why we are that concerned. If there's a park next door, and again, this is one reason you develop parks in your communities, is so that you can increase density on the lots, so that people have a place to go that's open space, they can access and go to, sidewalks and other things and people can access their community so that we can increase those densities because otherwise people are confined to their to their properties and it's not actually good for community building so um okay that's all i have for now i'm ready to open up to um to public comment um and with that we'll take it to online public comment if we can and then we'll bring it back to the room

Thank you, Chair. Caller 5603, I will unmute you and you'll have three minutes.

Good morning, Supervisors. This is Collin Fisk with CRTP. I want to start off by saying that I really appreciate the general intent and direction of this proposed ordinance to, you know, list some of the restrictions on infill development. I think that's great. We do still have some concerns, some of which you have been discussing and like to just address those briefly. An overarching issue is that as we discussed extensively with the regional climate action plan, we do think that it makes more sense to apply somewhat different standards in urban and rural areas. And, you know, this was, treat housing opportunity zones in both urban and rural communities the same. That said, I think the bigger issue is that within those housing opportunity zones, despite the lifting or easing of some restrictions, there are still restrictions that will functionally inhibit a lot of the density of new homes that we need. So regarding parking, which has gotten a lot of attention, we talked about the coverage standards for lots and this prohibition on building actual homes on 55% of any given lot. And that seems to be justified partly by the idea that parking requirements will often mandate that half or more of the lots are covered with parking instead of homes anyway. And that is in fact very common today. And it's a pretty good illustration of why even lower standards like this can be problematic. We also heard that removing parking mandates in these zones would be like a revolutionary change with unpredictable results. But I would like to challenge that a little bit and just point out that this has been done in hundreds of communities already. And if you're following parking news, you might know the entire state of North Carolina just eliminated parking mandates. And it's really widely acknowledged that removing these mandates is the single most effective reform to encourage more housing production. I also want to emphasize as I think you heard supervisors Arroyo and Wilson mentioned that removing parking mandates doesn't mean removing parking. It just means that builders would provide as much parking as they think they actually need. And if the current mandates are requiring more than people demand in order to want to live in a place, then we're wasting space and driving up construction costs for no reason. So we do urge you to go ahead and just remove the parking mandate. And then there are other, issues which you've heard discussion of already around height limits and setbacks, which really do, despite being in some cases somewhat eased from current requirements, still provide some significant deterrent to development of the plan that we're looking for. I also want to highlight that conditional use permit for buildings with six or more units. I think that also creates a barrier to the kind of quality that we need.

Caller 5603, your time has been used. Caller 3053, I will unmute you, and you will have three minutes.

Good morning, Phil. Thomas Mulder here. I just want to confirm you can still hear me in this chamber?

Yes.

Thank you. I just want to say, taking away parking is not something i feel supported it is so challenging when i get paid by someone and i'm able to try to go make a midrash payment i end up having to drive around so long to get a parking spot that sometimes i go during lunch break of tax collectors so food for thought um no parking i don't support that i think that's the most craziest idea, I would say. So please make sure you keep that parking in there. I do realize you're relaxing. I support what staff is presenting. Also, that height limit, I support that. It'd be nice to have a little bit of transition. I think staff is doing that with the proposed amendment here for that 15 foot over what the neighboring partial is. It'd be really a bummer to have a four or five story building with conditional use permit right next to a single story resident. Respecting neighborhood. It was really interesting hearing Prop 13 attacks and all that other stuff today on the agenda. I don't know where we're going with that. I think this is a simple housing thing, but it seems like the powers that be or believe that they be are kind of unhappy with where we're going. I just want to say I support staff recommendations and Just be respectful of everyone here. Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

That is all on Zoom, Chair.

Thank you. We'll bring it back to the room. And any comments, it's your time to talk about it.

Ken Sawatsky, it's always interesting to see a basically open room when a whole bunch of people are gonna come in eventually totally pissed off when they see this implemented, potentially. For your staff, John, I don't know whether it was 16 years ago or thereabouts, I had a thing on my bulletin board for a long time, it was to satisfy RHNA numbers, and there was a list of I think probably about 16 parcels that voluntarily came in and said they would take an upsizing as far as that goes. The ones I were tracking weren't being billed out. So if you wish to do something and actually can do it right now, would be to go back and assess and see what that particular thing happened. The biggest question is why is everybody driving for more housing? And I can answer that quite simply. It's because the millionaires, billionaires, trillionaires are dependent upon an expanding society. They need more little worker ants out there so they can continue. And also, your average business person, you know, the more people are in their areas, the more potential they have. But this is a fatal flaw. Regarding parking, I have, I as a developer, provide one space per, per bedroom, I have one unit in Blue Lake which has two, three bedrooms and a four and I have spaces for those people. Even then, when they have guests and things, they are parking in front of other people's houses and things. I strongly support not eliminating a requirement for parking. I know this enables people like me to still do it. The The thing that I see happening here is it's most unfortunate that you don't have a bunch of people in here. Back during the general plan process, they actually sent out notifications to everybody that would have a major impact here. When we start talking about entitlements, it seems to be ignored. A person has an entitlement when they buy a piece of property to have an expectation that other people will not receive entitlements that have a negative consequence upon their entitlements. And so that seems to only be a one-way thing when it's coming from the Chair speaking regarding entitlements. And I find, a question you may wish to ask your staff is if somebody has, I believe I have the right thing, CC&Rs where you have you have things, are those being even overwritten by this? I mean, or is somebody smart enough to live in a place with a CCNR, are they precluded from coming in and getting these permits? Will somebody, will you have a checking process if somebody comes in for an over-counted permit to see if there are CCNRs that would affect this? So you're possibly getting into a very large legal conundrum by possibly circumventing people's rights that have been established and that they've paid for to have as far as the right to live. Lastly, I would ask, are there any of you sitting up there right now that live in a house that has a fourplex right on each side of you living in a single-family house? If you're not, you're not walking the walk. You're condemning other people to potentially living in that situation, and I think they will object to it. Thank you for my opportunity to speak today.

Hello, my name's Joanne McGarry. I have mentioned before that I was a college student at UC Davis in the 70s, 50 years ago, when I was taking landscape architecture and urban planning classes, and there was a developer there named Mike Corbett, and he developed a subdivision outside of Davis called Village Homes. and at that point it was revolutionary, or let's just say it was evolutionary bordering revolutionary in the design of that neighborhood. Still single family units but green space shared in the back and smaller enclosed frontage and Of course, solar orientation, passive solar for water heating, small roads, narrow roads, and limited space. You know, the two-car garage, I think, was not a part of the design. And when we're talking now, in 2026, about Increased housing and design features and what can be allowed and stuff. I see a lot of straight lines and squares and rectangles and Nature there's few straight lines in nature and One of the things we need to do is not be slowly evolutionary, but we need to be revolutionary at this point in time and how people live, where people live, why they live there, in what kind of structure do they live in, the most important question we need to start asking is how they are living there. We need to move out of this sensation that everybody needs access to an individual vehicle. And there are definitely creative ways that people can live together in high density developments in a revolutionary way without the status quo and the old fashioned methods of well we've always had this so we always need this and that's not necessarily accurate anymore. So I think we need to be much more flexible in these measurements of open space and frontage and backage and setbacks and even square designs of buildings. I'm a big fan of Buckminster Fuller, and the geodesic dome is something that just has really resonated with me since the 70s when I was first exposed to the concept. and actually in Davis again on campus is a neighborhood called Baggins End which was built in 1972 and it's still there and it's a community of small domes on campus as alternative housing and there's no parking lots on that place and it can happen so think differently.

I'm going to bring it back to the board. Is there any more questions, concerns? Supervisor Arroyo?

I actually don't have any more questions. Did I have a questioning look? I'm feeling like after the explanation that the middle ground that we found through the Planning Commission was a reasonable path forward. I still would love to come back around to design standards eventually. I think, again, that'll help. just help ensure that these are great additions to neighborhoods and I think I am curious with respect to submissions, should this go forward, would staff be making the decision about whether it looks like it fits the neighborhood? And if you determine that it does not, what would that process look like?

It would be staff making that determination. So if somebody felt aggrieved by that, the first step would be to appeal it to a supervisor or director. And then if they didn't appreciate or like the director's decision, that can be appealed to you.

I see. Okay. All right. And when... We're thinking about the impacts on just considering if one developer were to own a lot of contiguous parcels and there would be pretty substantial increase from the sort of application of this in a larger area. How would the impact of that as an aggregated impact, say, on traffic mobility, things like that, be addressed?

So from a... review process these are ministerial so somebody could take advantage of that if they chose to and there is no discretionary action unless they apply for a cup for some reason even if they went for a density bonus if they weren't doing anything that required a cup that could still be done administratively so the the traffic would not be addressed, it would be allowed by right. The utility infrastructure concern, when we review building permits, that gets circulated to the CSDs. And if the CSD didn't have the ability to accommodate that, they would let us know.

But when it comes to some of those other impacts, that would just be... Um, we, we wouldn't have a provision that says if you're doing X number of acres, that's not, this doesn't apply because this is, you know, we wouldn't have any kind of provision that's like a larger project would have to go through additional review. Um, You know where I'm going with this, right?

I absolutely do. Okay. Yeah, thank you. There is no limitation on the number of contiguous parcels or parcels within the area that a developer could do this to. Yeah. There's not a lot of subdivisions out there right now that are completely undeveloped.

Sure.

So the practicality of that is not high. but conceivably it could happen.

Okay, all right. I guess the chair was right, I did have more questions. Thank you.

If that is a concern, we could put a limitation in there that not more than X number of parcels within a subdivision could be experienced by this, by a single individual or a single developer.

I mean, I suppose if everyone were to max out, and there's a number of parcels that are contiguous, and the infrastructure is just not quite suitable to support that level, and I think we've heard concerns in McKinleyville, for sure, and in some of the areas that are more likely to be developed with a larger number of units. So I'm just... I'm chewing on that a little bit.

I would like to kind of throw maybe a perspective into this. This is largely infill.

Sure.

So it's not really somebody coming in doing a 50-lot subdivision, and then they're going to do six units on each lot.

Okay.

Okay. Well, overall, I really appreciate the Planning Commission's recommendation and staff recommendation and feel that it kind of finds that middle ground while addressing what HCD is looking for us to do. And again, that doesn't mean that people can't develop more parking or any manner of things on the property should they wish to.

I have a bit of a lineup. I think I have Supervisor Bushnell, then Supervisor Bone, and then Supervisor Madrone.

Thank you. John, what happens with CSDs that are maxed out and aren't taking new applications or there's a waiting list? Like Redway, currently Redway CSD is not hooking new people up. What would happen if something like this were to go through down there?

Obviously, well maybe not obviously, the question is if it comes back that there's not the capacity to be served,

then we would treat that that they do not have adequate water and sewer to allow that amount of development so if the um i know you would contact the csd and say you know blah blah blah and then if they say you know we can put them on a waiting list we're not sure when the capacity will open would the application go forward with that contingency

No, because the permit would expire over time. It would be better for them to withdraw the permit, not pursue that, and then get on the waiting list when they're, if they were to come to the top of the list and be able to have entitlements for the water and sewer capacity to then fulfill the building permit.

Okay, and then also, and I think this is kind of around what Supervisor Arroyo was asking, if there was a subdivision that's already formed and they wanted, and then say there's, I don't know, five acres in the subdivision and there's already like maybe 10 homes in there. and they want to update it to allow for these conditions, is there a possibility that that could be a special permit application to make sure that the folks that already live there have notice and are aware of what's going on? Because if it's otherwise, then those homeowners don't get notified, is that correct?

It is correct.

so it's it's a policy decision if if the board wants these to be a special permit they can be done under a special permit well i think it's fair that the current home land owners in that subdivision if if they bought that subdivision and built that home with those conditions that they be notified that the conditions are going to change there is a incredible tension

starting at the state level, coming right down to our level, that not many homeowners want to see higher density housing in close proximity to them.

Of course, nobody wants somebody in their backyard.

And so one of the things that the state is asking is to remove that constraint.

Of course, because they want to say that they're addressing housing, but that also doesn't address people's quality of life if people are stacked on top of each other. I understand all that.

Yeah, okay. So it's just a policy issue. I mean, we are trying to remove constraints from housing. There are trade-offs with that. We know that.

Right.

And so... for our housing element to be deemed in compliance. These are the kinds of trade-offs that we are confronted with.

Well, I understand that. I don't think the trade-offs are... There are ways to mitigate that trade-off that also address the constituent concerns that may already live in these areas. I would hope my board would just have a discussion around that. I think it's fair.

Okay. Supervisor Boehm.

And reading this, it looks like the Planning Commission looked at all of this and were asking a lot of the same questions, which is fine. And I know if the CSDs, they have to, their application has to have a will serve letter in it, doesn't it? we don't necessarily require will serve letter we require the csd to say they're going to serve but functionally they're the same potato patata yep um and so that has to be part of the application so so we understand that um as far as parking we i don't care we get i mean maybe we should force people not to have cars i don't know that would make some people very happy that's not going to happen because Some people work in locations that change every day, and the bus doesn't go to it every day. Bus service does a great job. know they're doing a great job on transit and housing and and and i think that's good but they don't go everywhere and that you know and and i think to serve people i think transit is you know unlike europe would i don't know if it's increasing at all so um i'd like to make a motion to accept staff's recommendation um I'll leave it at that. We can all throw our personal stuff on there, but let's accept staff's recommendation. And this is knowing full well we're talking about these. You gave us an out all the way across. But if something's happening in their neighborhood, they're gonna come to their supervisor. Their supervisor's gonna crawl up you and say, hey, why are we doing this? And then we're gonna do an appeal back to the board, and then we're gonna decide. So they've got all the avenues, and I fully agree with quality of life, but And I understand, I don't want three story building next to me at all. I've had numerous complaints about people having a second story because they'll look at my hot tub, they'll look at my barbecue, they'll look at everything else. But I will accept this as staff's recommendation knowing full well there are avenues to discuss it afterwards.

Supervisor Madrone.

Second the motion. You know, I too understand the need for housing and what a difficult balancing act all this is. I appreciate the comments about, you know, you've got tension on both sides on this issue and you're trying to find that pathway forward. In McKinleyville, we have a design review committee process that actually weighs in on R3 areas under its current policy or goal statement for that design committee, which is a very small statement. It's like two sentences in terms of its objectives. And it certainly is very true that people that have a single family home, single story, suddenly there's a three story, two story, even two story coming in next to them has issues with privacy in the backyards. There's no doubt about it. We tried with a recent review in McKinnaville with our design review committee to encourage the developer, that's all we could do, was encourage the developer to not have windows on that side of the building looking into other people's backyards. Or to maybe make the windows very high up, right, like small rectangular windows that were high enough to where you're not really looking at anybody, but it lets light in on that side of the building still. So there are compromises in design that I think really can speak to this issue of privacy. It's still a big building next to you, but from what I've heard in my communities, it's the fact that you can look right down in people's backyards. And that invasion of privacy when they thought they were buying into a single family, a single story neighborhood, and then suddenly this change happens. So for that design review committee, John, to weigh in on these high density projects coming in, it's very much like an R3 situation. But these are R1, R2s. So they still would not, the design committee would not have any input on it unless we modified that policy in regards to what the design review committee weighs in on. Is that correct?

That's correct.

Yeah. Okay. Well, it's just something to consider. I mean, cause I certainly am sympathetic to that concept. I know I love to have the privacy in my yard. Frankly, I think most people do, especially if you've bought in and that's the way it is. Um, but I can support the staff recommendation because I understand the tension between trying to have more housing, And where do you put it? How does this work? And that's really the driving force behind all this. Thanks.

I do get to talk every once in a while. I don't want to disappoint you. I'm supportive of the motion moving forward only because from my perspective I would expand the entitlements in terms of even height requirements and reducing setbacks and those sorts of things. But that's just not what's gonna happen here today. But I do appreciate the conversation because we will be moving forward and My question is around if a developer wants to do this and looks at this, and I'll just use one example is say the 20-foot setback for the frontage. If they're like, OK, I'm going to do all these things, but I could really do a better project if it was a 10-foot setback, could they do all those things and come to you with a conditional use permit to do that? Or would that be excluded any modifications to these? Could they not even go with a conditional use permit to make some of those modifications, even if their neighbors were OK with it?

That's currently not written into the ordinance. It could be.

What's that? Yeah, that's .

But they could apply for a variance currently and achieve kind of the same thing. Conditional use permit may be a little different because it would give you a little bit more room to, or the commission, a little bit more room to negotiate what happens there.

Well, what do you think would likely produce a project, more likely to produce a project, the variance concept or the? CUP. CUP. Yep. Is, and I just wanna put it out to the, is that something we could ask for today? Yes. Okay, so I just wanna put out to the board an idea that we allow for a CUP process to make variances in this so that if a project is near to this, but not quite at this space, but would basically then allow for that discussion to occur because it would be a CUP, neighbors would be noticed, it would go through the Planning Commission and us, and we could potentially get better projects if they are a variance on this. So I'm gonna just put it out there to the board that maybe that would allow some flexibility and some notice to the community if there's a project in that space. I'm gonna... Does the motion maker think that that's something they're willing to entertain? Okay, thank you, appreciate that. And does the seconder willing to entertain that as a, okay. Great, I just wanna, because again, all it's doing is, it is allowing some flexibility, but at the same time, accountability through the process, so that we may get better projects in that. For whatever it's worth, I am a person who lives in a single family home, but I have six units next to me in a substantially taller structure, and I have a new addition, second story addition next door to me as well. I wanna say, like, I love my neighbors, and That's the evolution of neighborhoods. It's like we need spaces for people to live and we need to recognize that when we live in areas, especially with infrastructure and sidewalks, we have an expectation of some public facilities like parks and those sorts of things, it requires that we have other people around us to sustain those infrastructures and also to provide housing where we have a housing crisis. With that, I think Supervisor Arroyo is next and then Supervisor Bushnell.

Thank you. I just wanted to comment that in Section 56.6.5.9.1, there's already a discussion about windows being arranged so that they don't directly view a neighboring unit, so I appreciate that. I assume that that would also apply to anything like a window, like a sliding glass door with a balcony, etc. Anything where you're looking directly into a neighboring unit. I mean, that is a constraint for developers, but I think it takes care of a lot of people's most prevalent concern. So like trans windows or whatever else is already kind of CONSIDERED HERE, AND I ASSUME THAT PEOPLE COULD ACHIEVE THAT IN MULTIPLE DIFFERENT WAYS, BUT I JUST WANTED TO THANK STAFF FOR INCLUDING THAT SO THAT HOPEFULLY AS WE'RE TALKING TO OUR CONSIDERANTS ABOUT THAT, THAT WILL ADDRESS ONE OF THE BIGGEST CONCERNS. THANKS.

Supervisor Bushnell with thank you through the chair with the amendment that supervisor Wilson asked for Would that mean that anybody that already is in a subdivision that has homes would be notified?

If they were asking for changes to this ordinance, yes, they would be notified

Changes to this ordinance? Yes. But not changes to the current ordinance that...

If they were in compliance with this ordinance, they would not have to have a CUP.

Is there a way to have... neighbors notified without having a special permit? Just that if there's going to be changes within their neighborhood, because I understand that you said that they could appeal, but maybe they could work that out before they have to spend money to appeal something that they're forced to accept on an area that they thought differently when they bought.

The thing that you run into with notifying neighbors is there's an expectation that their voices are gonna be heard and that the decision maker is gonna do something about that. And so without adding a degree of discretion to it, it's a false promise. They're notified, but they're gonna be frustrated if it gets approved without any changes.

And so once they see construction going on, then they can come in. How do they get to appeal?

Under a ministerial permit, they won't. And as Supervisor Boehm mentioned, they will likely complain to the board first. And as he so eloquently stated, you'll then be talking to me. And once we see that, we will be looking to bring this back with a different solution.

Okay. Okay, I'm bringing it back. We have a motion with a minor amendment and a second, and I think we should probably take a roll call vote and see where we get with that.

Can I have it reread, please?

Yes, absolutely.

Director Ford. The motion is to basically accept the Planning Commission's recommendation to adopt the resolution, making the findings in support of the ordinance to find that it's exempt per the state provision that exempts housing ordinances, to adopt the ordinance with the change that if there are if there's a request to modify the entitlements of the ordinance, that it be done through a conditional use permit.

Okay, it's been reread. Can we have a roll call, please?

Thank you, Chair Wilson. Supervisor Bushnell?

No.

Supervisor Arroyo? Yes. Supervisor Madrone?

Yes.

Supervisor Bone?

No.

Chair Wilson.

Yes.

Thank you, motion carries, three two.

Great discussion. I will say this is the meat of our land use policy. Yeah, and we're gonna take, I'm gonna close this public hearing and we're gonna take a break for five, 10 minutes so people can shake it off a little bit. Let's do five minutes because we have a time set at 11.30. Technical end, good. Kaylee and co, all right, good. All right, we're gonna take a minute for planning to get it going, but I can open the public hearing, so I'm gonna do that now. And we'll go from there. When staff is ready, the item will be introduced.

I can actually read it in now, Chair Wilson.

Go for it.

Currently before the board is an ordinance amending section 314-6 and section 314-7 of the Humboldt County Code by rezoning property in the Eureka area. PLN-2025-19448, Green Diamond Resource Company Rezone.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Wilson, members of the board, John Ford, and Cliff Johnson, to present this request for a rezone. This is an applicant requested rezone, but it is a request to rezone property to reflect the lines and the land use that was outlined in the general plan. And so we're pulling the presentation up and Mr. Johnson will describe the property here.

I think we have it sharing.

It is not sharing on my end.

Oh, looks like we lost Zoom. We got booted out of Zoom. So Cliff Johnson with the Planning and Building Department. And what we have in front of you is an ordinance that would rezone approximately 100 acres in the Cutton area to follow the general plan designations of the property. So the property is at the end of Eggert Road adjacent to a larger Green Diamond Resources land holdings, which are managed for timber production, and it's also adjacent to some other private holdings to the west that are zoned single family residential. This would rezone approximately 60 of the acres to R1, single family residential, and would rezone approximately 40 acres to AE, agriculture exclusive, with a Q combining zone. The property is currently zoned AGB5 with a five acre minimum parcel size, and the remainder is TPZ. And that is a relic from the previous general plan designation where they matched, and it's unfortunate that we don't have the maps up here, but they matched the zoning. So in 2017, when the Humboldt County general plan was updated, the general plan designations were changed to residential low density and open space and the open space reflected the steeper topography that is to the east and south of the property further away from Eggert. And so what this rezone would do would implement that general plan designation to match, the zoning would match the general plan. The Q zone, which would apply to the portion that is steeper sloped, is intended to match the open space general plan designation so that basically the allowable uses in the Q zone would only be those that would be allowed in the open space designation. and that is basically fish and wildlife habitat management, public access, and recreation and timber production.

Cliff, could you move the mic just a little bit closer? Sure, yes. Thank you.

Thank you. And so one of the things that would happen here is because portions of this property are zoned TPZ and portions of it are not, there's a portion of this that would rezone and change to single family residential immediately, which would be 30 days after adoption of the ordinance. And the remainder that is TPZ, it would actually, under state law, follow that 10-year slide-out process. So you're going to have a portion that's going to be zoned single-family residential essentially immediately. The remainder would take effect 10 years from now. One of the interesting things about this parcel is it is on the end of Egert Road and the lands to the west are zoned residential. So it's been a long standing intent that at some point as those lands develop, there may actually be a connection from Egert down to Elk River Road. We do believe the findings for approval can be made. The findings are that it's consistent with the general plan and this would implement the general plan that was adopted in 2017. and it is in the public interest to align the zoning of the property with the general plan designation. So ever since adoption of the general plan element in 2017, that designation and zoning has been out of alignment. And if this comes up, I'll just show you some of the maps real quick, which will hopefully illustrate what I was showing. So this is the current zoning. And this actually reflects the previous general plan designation. This is the general plan designation that was adopted in 2017. You can see the open space there. showing here, which should be coming up with another slide. And I'll just keep talking as that delays. But as I was saying, it is in the public interest to align the zoning and the general plan designation. The Planning Commission did recommend approval of this when they reviewed it at their May 21st hearing. and any future subdivision that would happen would have to come back through a discretionary review process zoom is not catching up so i'm just going to end and say that staff does recommend that you adopt the resolution to make the required findings and adopt the ordinance that would amend the zoning as we've described here and i'll conclude my presentation answer any questions all right thank you very much good presentation

All right, we're gonna bring it to the board for just quick questions or long questions if you need to, but then we'll go to public comment. So Supervisor Arroyo and then Supervisor Bushnell.

Thank you, I think in the rezone cover letter that's in attachment three in our agenda packet, I think it has the maps that you're referring to. So just so I'm abundantly clear in my own mind, the zoning designation, existing zoning designations map and the land use designations map do not match, and that's the issue we're trying to rectify here.

That is correct, yes. So the current zoning designation doesn't match the general plan that was adopted in 2017. The intent was that the county would go through and update that, and it's still the intent, but this is a landowner request to get ahead of that.

So the, I'm not sure if you're able to pull up what we received in our packet. It doesn't, well, it could be on the screen, but it's page five in attachment three, the rezone cover letter, and it's labeled on LACO's documents as figure, or, submit E's documents as figure two. Is that the existing map that's in the general plan?

Okay, so this is the existing map in the general plan right now.

Okay.

And then if we just move forward, this is what they're requesting. So you can see that this would match the general plan designation. The AEQ follows the open space designation.

Okay.

Going back. And then as it stuck on this, what I was intending to show was the topography, which is obviously steeper in that open space designation.

But the existing zoning designations map is both AG and TPZ. Correct. Okay.

This right here is the existing zoning designation.

Okay.

And then this is what would occur. And then one thing I did want to show you is that basically this yellow right here is what would rezone to R1. ESSENTIALLY 30 DAYS AFTER ADOPTION, AND THEN THIS WOULD REZONE 10 YEARS. IT WOULD TAKE 10 YEARS TO SLIDE OUT FROM TPZ TO R1.

IT WOULD TAKE 10 YEARS. CORRECT. THANK YOU. SO CAN YOU JUST, BECAUSE I WASN'T HERE DURING THE JOY OF DEVELOPING THE GENERAL PLAN, WHAT WAS THE What was the discussion around this, or was there any individualized discussion around this that anyone can recall? Was it just a desire to eventually develop housing? Was there more to the line? I mean, it looks like it's topographic in nature, but.

I was not here as part of that.

Great. Rex got it.

All right.

Rex, you're responding? By all means. Well, if we're going to go historical, yeah. What the issue was with Green Diamond all the way up Walnut was to take out the interface. This has all taken place about the same time as the McKay Forest. This is all beyond we've bought or we've got given to us or whatever more McKay Forest properties down that way. This was to stop the interface between Green Diamond timber operations, which is what they do, residential now the part of the problem was part of the problem was was the there's no road infrastructure to support this I mean it's it's the Egret Road is a one lane road for most of it, for a good part of it, which why there hasn't been any really new development out there. And then with what we passed this morning, I'm wondering if this would allow four units or 25 units per acre, then I'm really getting excited. And it's a great idea to say we'd like to put a road down to Elk River. I've hiked it, we were out there hiking it a couple years ago when that lady was lost. Pretty steep. Pretty steep, I don't think we'd ever get that. And there's people that own property out there. Windsor and Slack have, but there's personal properties along that whole turn. And there's no way to get to Walnut easily at all. Plus it's on the hill, you'd never get it. So that's what a part of it was, was Green Diamond giving up a lot of their properties. They're not giving up, trying to negotiate with us. Craig Compton was big on it at the time, who just retired last week. was a big part of it. So that's a lot of it was the logging interface. It happened all the way along out there on along Home Drive and those whole areas out there. So that was a lot of it just to stop a lot of the logging interface.

Well, I'm glad you brought up the road. I mean, this isn't the development proposal. So I think as we're considering this, we don't have a specific project in mind, but it's clear that this would allow for development. I did notice the road constraints, and so that's something that would have to be resolved should this be developed. And it would probably not be easy. I think it's just worth saying that it's a substantial commitment that would be needed from the developer. But we can cross that bridge, road, whatever, when we come to it.

I want to limit this to questions of staff if we can and just to kind of keep the process going. Are there any other questions from Supervisor Bushnell?

Thank you. You referred to the tenure and that's for the TPC and can that contract be bought out sooner and allow for development because in Williamson Act it can be.

It could be under state law and it's just the same for Williamson Act. You have to go through a specific process to essentially buy it out and there has to also be public interest findings that would be made.

Right, so I just want to make sure that if we're putting in there the 10 year buyout that we also put in there and refer to that it can be bought out sooner than the 10 years and that would be the taxation update that would happen, right? Correct, and it would also have to come back to the board to have the board approve this for specific the specific findings But I just don't want to preclude it if it can happen if the person the develop the landowner wants to do that But it's allowed and then it's not restrictive with the discussion today.

I Would agree. It's not it's not restricted by what's happened here.

Thank you.

All right supervisor bone Do you have any questions of staff?

Well before we move to public comment. We've done this before on other pieces of, kind of on other pieces of property out there. There's a 38-acre parcel out there by, just past Cotton School on the west side that we did, that Green Diamond did. They're just trying to add values to their property, and so just like any piece of property as we discussed earlier, The developer buys the property. The price is based on the potential of what it can be done, and it may never be able to be done. But I don't think there's a lot of people buying property. So I would just take staff's recommendation on this also and move forward.

OK. Any other questions from the board before I move to public comment? And we will bring it back for discussion. Kaylee, do we have anyone online that wants to speak to this?

We do.

All right, please bring them in.

Caller 5603, I will unmute you and you will have three minutes.

Good morning again, Supervisor. This is Colin Fisk with CRTP. I'll keep it brief. I think, you know, you all just had a long conversation about the housing opportunity zones and areas that are intended to be some kind of infill development this by my reading of the map is not in a housing opportunity zone and really it's um it's a pretty stereotypical sprawl we're talking about you know if housing were to be developed there we're talking about cutting down trees um in an area sort of way at the edge of the eureka um the Eureka area that's not accessible by really any means other than a car. It's kind of the opposite of the direction that the RCAP would direct us to and really I think goes against a lot of the counties in the state's policy goals. So I would encourage you to not move forward with this. Thank you.

That is all on Zoom, Chair.

All right, bringing it back to the room. Any comments?

Well, I strongly encourage you, contrary to the prior speaker, to move forward with this staff recommendation. Many of us, and I sat in the meeting, I think Tina Christensen and I were the last two standing on the general plan update process, and it ended in 17. And I don't know when that puppy started, but it might have been in 2010. I think we're probably due for another general plan update if you go back to the date that one was started. The promises were made. I was in the chamber, there's literally hundreds if not thousands of parcels that are either zoned unclassified or are not in consistency with the general plan designation that we all hashed out and everybody came up with. and that's a big problem when you basically bill for kate a general plan process and you don't you have the general plan designations but your zoning is not consistent so that's the position there that we're in everybody uh uh there's literally i see hundreds if not thousands of us who who if we really want to have the uh uh that we fought hard for and were guaranteed, we have to come in and go through the particular process that Green Diamond has to go through for this one. We've been hoping that the county will do its obligation to us as citizens here and make our entitlements from the general plan designations consistent with our zoning. So anyway, you're gonna see, I guess people have to come in one at a time. I don't know what the expense have been for Green Diamond. I'd like to say I always enjoyed working with Craig Compton and it seems like his replacement here is also competent, somebody who you're gonna be lucky to work with. They have a qualified person to deal with your planning department. Anyway, that expresses a little bit of my angst, I guess you'd say, for a process that totally failed the public in getting halfway to a job done, and now we're all left with major inconsistencies and not having... having really knowing where we're at on things, unless we spend a whole bunch of money, which should have been spent at the same time. We do a general plan update, the two should happen at the same time, and this is why. Oh, Supervisor Roy, I can answer your question with those glasses, it always looks like you're about ready to ask a question, so you're looking very intelligent up there.

Anyone else in, Chair, the applicant is here. Okay, does the applicant wanna say anything?

Hi, good morning Board of Supervisors, Chair Wilson. My name's Mike Nelson, I am the agent for the applicant. And I just want to say first, I want to thank staff for their work on this. I think the recommendation is clear. I think all the findings are there. This definitely goes back to quite a ways. So this actually was originally identified in 1995 Eureka Community Plan. is how far back the egg or parcel goes. It was then reaffirmed in your general plan update process where it went from sort of straight lines that went across, you know, drainages and boundaries and slopes, which is the way that plan was drawn up in 95, to a more logical approach that follows the watersheds, the drainages, we have LIDAR data, we can zero in on the 30% slope breaks and produce a plan that fits better with the land. And again, that was over nine years ago. With the 10-year request, it can be converted to an immediate TPZ rollout, as Supervisor Bushnell asked. That does require a supermajority vote by the board, so that would have to come back to the board and would have to be a four-fifths vote to go to an immediate. So just wanted to clarify that. And with continuing on the tenure, you would be looking at approximately a 40-year timeline from the 1995 Eureka Community Plan to when this would be occurring. So not exactly lightning fast, but we appreciate the opportunity to bring this forward so that we can just clean it up and line it up with what occurred in the general plan update. So I'd be happy to answer any questions and just thank you for your time.

Supervisor Madrone, question of the applicant.

So let me be clear. You're asking us to approve something that fits the landscape better with better information and roll it out of a very low tax rate into a higher property tax rate. Am I clear about that? I'm being facetious, my apologies.

Well, the timing is delicate out there. I mean, Supervisor Bone referred to this earlier. I mean, you look at a whole lot of things go all the way back to that 95 Eureka Community Plan. And even with something like McKay Ranch that goes through all of this, still isn't all of a sudden it develops overnight. So this is still just a first step. There is a reality to carrying costs. for an applicant, Green Diamond or Kramer or whoever, that going through the rollout, the carrying cost absolutely increases. There's no question it costs the owner more to have it sitting there, but you have to be able to time things for when the demand is. So there is a certain amount of risk of rolling out, increasing tax base, and then not having the market demand to support a project. So this is a smaller one of the remaining parcels. The Mid-McKay one off of Walnut is a much larger parcel. That's not something we're bringing forward right now for this similar action. This is a smaller area. Seems to fit better than some of the other areas that go back to that 95 community plan. We recognize there are constraints. Eggert is a narrow road. as Supervisor Bushnell also referred to, and there will be subsequent entitlement action. The eventual developer of this property, which would not be Green Diamond, would come forth with a subdivision. They'd have to look at all of those things. Roads, access, improvements, water-sewer connections. All of those things will be under a subsequent entitlement action and subsequent CEQA document. Appreciate it, thanks.

Thank you. Okay. Unless does anyone have questions of the applicant supervisor Arroyo.

I'm sorry I think it may be more of a question for staff so I can. Do you want me to just go ahead.

And then Supervisor Bone did you have another question or. OK. Thank you. Hold on. Not you.

OK I got the green light. So the Q combining zone is, I'm trying to test my knowledge here. So the ZDC zoning designation consistent with the OS land use designation. Do we not have a zoning designation that fits that? That's so weird. Why don't we have an open space zoning designation?

We need to work on that.

Okay. So the Q combining zone is to be able to zone this as One parcel, but in two ways that has, can you help me understand the queue? Is that a little bit more?

Yes, so the portion of the parcel around the outside where the slopes are is where the open space is currently designated in the general plan. then it's gonna go to AE, agricultural exclusive, with the Q. AE fits the open space best. And then what the Q does is reduces the types of uses that can be done in the AE to open space compatible uses. So basically it's a complicated way of getting to an open space land use and an open space zone.

And it was a survey done at this stage, or would it be done when there's a development proposal?

A survey?

Yeah, like to define the precise parameters.

I'm sorry? How was it recognized?

I think what she's referring to is the map looks very surveyed.

That would be surveyed to definitively mark it on the ground. Right now it's a map, but it generally follows the topo lines. Got it.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

I'm going to take a turn here, if that's all right. Just for whatever it's worth, I... voting no on this in opposition and the main reason is uh partially for what was stated by a public commenter i mean this is just the outside zone this is not infill and by any means uh it's it's not density and it doesn't attach to or not there's not really any services uh in terms of like uh from a public's perspective, but also I was part of the general plan process and I did vote no on its final approval based on the expansion of development into these resource lands and the impacts that would come from that. And I guess from my public good value of this, the impacts to traffic in terms of there's just no way anyone that lives here can do anything without accessing anything without a vehicle. There's no public transit out there. There's no parks. VMT is an issue, all the associated climate issues. And then also just the conversion of our forest lands and the carbon sequestration and habitat values of that, all the other resource values and potential impacts. So I mean, what I'm getting at is I'm not expecting the board to deny this necessarily, but if so, we would need findings for that, and I think I've enumerated the findings, which I think would be, would get us there. Again, this was during a time when there was just, it appeared to me there was like a list, there was, large landowners and landowners in general were asked to just give a list of properties they would like converted for development. And in my interpretation, the board at the time mostly writ large just approved those requests and the environmental analysis reflected that there would be impacts from that and there was overriding considerations. And that's the way I viewed that process. This isn't, in my mind, a strategic location to develop low density housing and that's just the way I feel about it. So I just wanted to put it on the record and unless there's more comments or questions, and I'll get to Supervisor Bone. If he's in your, Supervisor Bone, by all means, this is your time.

Well, it's evolution. I'm in all deference to Simpson, Green Diamond, Louisiana Pacific. When you go back, I started Redwood Fields in 1992 with Craig Compton and Jim Brown, Dave Caney, historical figures back in the days. Moving forward, as this was brought forward and came through, took eight years to develop, take out a TPZ, and that included, I took 89 acres out at the time in conjunction with Louisiana Pacific. That's 30 plus years ago, and there's no housing out there. Like I said, there was a snack bar. I don't think we'll see housing out here. And I'm trying to figure out the people I've talked to out there. There hasn't been, I haven't heard any opposition out off of Everett Road, because part of the reason is is they know that it'll probably never be developed, which means they're never gonna have logging in their backyard, though, if we change this residential. So I'm gonna go with staff's, I'm gonna make a motion to accept staff's recommendation. I'll make a motion to accept staff's recommendation.

Second.

Okay, unless there's any more comment from the board, I'm just gonna, okay, Supervisor Arroyo.

Just zooming out and thinking about not, you know, some of these comments here. We're in the process of initiating our housing element update, which would likely, well, I don't know if it's going to come with a recommended amendment to the general plan, but I imagine it likely will, because it has to be consistent, so... Is the process still moving forward per the timing here to be due August 2027 for the housing element update?

Yes.

Okay. So the next time we have a bite at this apple is now through next year to talk about what we will want the general plan and the housing element to be in the future related to housing. But right now we're operating under what we have.

Correct.

Okay. I'm inclined to support this just because I don't like moving the goalposts once we already have a plan and a process that has identified something. in agreement with some of the concerns that were raised, but again, I just, I have a hard time with changing right at the very end of the process what has already been outlined, and it was the, it, I don't want to say it seems capricious, but something less severe than that. It seems that we're just moving things kind of in a manner that's hard for folks who own property here to follow and track, and I think that's a fair approach, but I look forward to... considering our climate impacts and all of those other matters more as we address the next update of the housing element. So anyway, thank you.

Yeah. I will say that I... would be, and that's not gonna happen, but I'd be more amenable to having this zone change come back with a project outline. That would be, in my mind, so we would know what that would look like. That being said, whatever project is proposed will come back for discretionary review, message to the potential developer, We care about VMT, we care about our forests, we care about the, and there was a comment about the concern about the the potential conflict between housing and logging activities, and from my perspective, this only increases that. It potentially exacerbates that. Depending on what kind of housing is developed in this space, so I think that that would be a really big concern. And so, I really feel that there's a need I feel like we have three votes to move forward but I want to message that to whoever kind of moves forward that those are issues we're going to have to be dealing with. And also looking for the potential for areas developed that this is a space where or an opportunity to create public access and public space in an area that doesn't really have it. I will note that across the street we just approved, as part of the housing opportunity zones, the area that was, I think, the sort of Ridgewood development that I think Supervisor Boehme was referring to, that we, yeah, Forest Gill, Forest Gill, excuse me, Forest Gill, thanks for the correction, And that area we just approved for is part of the, was that not part of that area right above it? Isn't that in that mapping?

It is within the Housing Opportunity Zone, yes.

Right, right, it's in the Housing Opportunity Zone, so I just wanted to say it's right across the street, more or less, I mean with a couple houses in between. So I think that's something to consider in this. So if we are gonna move forward with real higher density development in this area, then we should be really considering the community perspective in terms of real access to the amenities that are needed to create a community. as was proposed back when Forrester-Gill was first proposed. There was zoning for commercial and recreational and all those things, and that's not happening in this moment. Now it's just housing without any of the sort of public provisions that you might expect for those kinds of densities. I would even have considered approving this zone change with an amendment that it become part of the housing opportunity zone. But the problem I have here is we're proposing, that would be proposing densities in a place where there's just zero infrastructure for humans to really interface and be part of a community. And I just, I think it really needs to be addressed in this space. So with that I think there's probably no more questions and we have a time set that was 15 minutes ago so I'm ready for a roll call please.

Thank you Chair Wilson. Supervisor Bushnell.

Yes.

Supervisor Arroyo. Yes. Supervisor Madrone.

Yes.

And Supervisor Boehme.

Yes.

Chair Wilson.

No.

Motion carries 4-1.

All right, thank you, great discussion. Good job, people. We really got through some meaty stuff, and so now we're gonna go into closed session. Could you, oh, and the hearing's closed, by the way. And so we'll take it on to the next thing.

Thank you, Chair Wilson. It is the intention of the board to meet in closed session pursuant to California government code section 54957.6 in order to review the county's position and instruct its designated labor negotiators. It is also the intention of the board to meet in closed session pursuant to California government code sections 54954.5 and 54957 in order to consider the public employee performance evaluations for the positions of the human resources director and the interim county council. Finally, it is the intention of the board to meet in closed session pursuant to California government code section 54956.9D1 in order to discuss existing litigation in the case of Lindsay Idler versus County of Humboldt, Humboldt County Superior Court case number CV2201675.

Great, do we have public comment online?

We do not, Chair.

Right. Do we have some comment in the room?

Again, I will continually support the in-home health care workers as far as getting their contract. If you have to pull them out of the rest of them, that's fine with me. We get major benefit from those people. A majority of it, my understanding, is financed by the state. And to keep whatever you can do for those people, I understand there's no money, but... whatever we can do to help those people who are important part of taking care of the elderly the handicapped and everybody else in our society did want to make mention when you're looking at litigation it's always good to learn you've got a case or two there you've got a couple couple of reviews and i i have no problem with what our county council is doing uh Interim County Council, I do still continue to have problems with your HR department there and its director. But it's always good to learn from other people's mistakes. And if you take the time to look at the front page of today's Times Standard, there's an article on there regarding a water tank on Aaron McClure. The city of Blue Lake is setting itself up for a multi-million dollar litigation which includes such things as chlorine going into a salmonoid-bearing creek and things could end up in a kill. So learn from other people's mistakes also and do you have an estimate as far as time that you'll be in closed session and if that would be appreciated and when we might reconvene for the remaining of the meeting. Thank you for my opportunity to speak.

Thank you. We're already 15 minutes behind schedule. We have, I'm gonna say, I had a goal of getting back by one, but I think 1.30 is probably much more reasonable at this time. So that's my estimate in getting back, and I'm gonna just put it out there. We're not gonna be back before 1.30, so that's what I'm gonna put out there, okay? All right, thanks. And their staff is, okay. We have just come back from closed session. We'll read that out in just a second, but I just wanna do a little housekeeping. Right now the order of items is gonna be H1, which is a budget item. It's expected it'll be uncontroversial, but we'll see. And then after that is the planning department item with the four, no, it's not after that. Oh, I thought the reform was gonna go back last, because we had said it would go last. No, all right. then nevermind. Then nevermind, we're gonna do the tort reform after that and then we're gonna get to the planning department item. For everyone's, we've gone through most of everything. We've had a couple of, 10 minute breaks, we had one that was just out getting out of closed session, so, which was enough time for me to make a little ramen for myself, so if you see me eating that, that's what's happening. I will try not to do that when that is on me. All right, so with that, we're gonna move into H1, and, oh, excuse me, we're gonna do a report out of closed session, and then we'll get into H1.

Thank you, Chair Wilson. There was no reportable action taken with regards to items K1 through K4.

Okay, now we're gonna go into H1. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Chair Wilson, and I'll take on this staff report as it is a very procedural item. This is a request for your board to approve an appropriation transfer as Health and Human Services needs to improve on technology in a training room in order to meet training mandates. This is just an appropriations transfer and is in accordance with your board's policy because we're establishing fixed assets over $10,000. So this will not increase the overall county budget or the overall Health and Human Services budget. And with that, We seek your board's approval for the creation of the fixed asset line item and the appropriation transfer of $62,500.

Okay, I'm going to bring this to public comment. Is there any public comment online for this item?

There is not.

All right, seeing none, is there any public comment in the room?

I wish to thank Supervisor Bone for coming up with this particular fix. I would hope that in the future you, I guess at the discretion of the Chair, would have a policy that, an item that most people would have come in to speak on at nine o'clock, if they knew it was on consent, and it's 2-10. I mean, there's a heck of a discrepancy there. Anytime people feel that something's on an agenda, they get a feel for when it is, and I'd hope you would never go ahead and take something that would happen at two o'clock or afternoon, likely, and put it at nine o'clock, because that is sending a major message to the public. You really don't value their opinion on things. I strongly support moving ahead with this. I always support the improvements in our technology, so thank you for my opportunity to speak.

All right, is there any discussion from the board? Supervisor Bolton? I make a motion we accept staff report. Is there a second?

I'll second.

Is there any objection to unanimous consent? Seeing none, we have a 5-0 vote. So moving on to the next item, which is the tort reform. I don't know if staff wants to jump into this first or Supervisor Bone, you wanna lead us off, because I think it was brought to us by you.

Yeah, and if you read the staff report, it's just an idea to sign on to looking at tort reform for the, I mean, tort reform is, involved in over 30 states out of our 50, so 60% of the states have some sort of tort reform and that's what we're looking on at this. Setting guidelines, some of the things AB 218 has brought upon us and other things. It's just, if you look at, there's municipalities, there's counties, I think even the city of Eureka has signed on to this letter, so I just... It was sent to me. RCRC is backing it. I talked to Graham from CSAC. They haven't taken it on, but they are deep in the midst of trying to help out with other tort reform items. Basically, lawyers don't like it. As we hear, there are a lot of things happening that are beyond our control, and we should have some sort of reform available.

Yes, Supervisor Bushnell.

Thank you. So I read the staff report and the attachment. Is there, and I looked up a bunch of stuff, but really couldn't kind of clue in on if there's a negativity to constituents or do you have kind of something to add around that?

There's a negativity to everything that we do.

Can you identify specifically whether there are the pros and cons of doing it?

The pros are we limit some of the payouts, the massive payouts. We bring them into reality of, and a lot of it has to do with the public being sued. Does it have benefits? Yes, less taxes, less hit on our budgets and everything else. This doesn't change anything. This just allows us to look at different avenues and I think all the agencies, and you'll see a lot of schools, I think there's four or five counties that have already signed on, two more that I've heard just in the last week, because the letter went out June 26th, we just happened to get it on there fairly quick, so I just, it's something that needs to be looked at, and this is an avenue for them to look at it on a broader sense rather than us looking at it individually.

I'm wondering if it restricts, like, it looks like to me that it restricts lawsuits and the amount of payout for organizations. And, you know, sometimes folks sue and there's a reason. And so I, is that true? Like, is that, that's kind of like.

I didn't hear that last part.

I mean, sometimes people sue and are deserving. And so I'm wondering if it limits payouts for, through organizations or governments. That's what it looked like to me. I'm just curious.

I did not get that feeling. I think what they're trying to do is it says is reasonable compensation for something that you have been wronged is right. But we have had some here locally in the past of six and seven million dollars that I think we could look back over and over and say, well, Jesus did not warrant this kind of money.

No, and I understand that. I just was trying to rationalize it in my head. So thank you.

So where's Arroyo?

Thank you. So it looked like it's the CAO who would be joining. Would that expressly be the CAO or at her discretion to send someone to her stead? I mean, I just don't know what the time frame and commitment is. Can you specify? CAO Hayes, do you have any input on this?

I mean, it's likely a task I would delegate should your board be okay with that.

Sounds fine with me. I just wanted to, and then it sounds like there's not a request for a supervisor to participate. This is just amongst CEO, CAO type folks right now.

anybody that is supervisorial, like school superintendents, city managers, the same thing, kinda like, there's quite a few people have signed on to this. Basically, it's gonna try to stop unreasonable, Basically we had an ADA lawyer going around at one time here. It's to stop some of the unordinary people that have filed up to 50 complaints and some of them being unreasonable.

All right, sounds good.

Okay, and then we'll take the public comment. Okay, do we have public comment online?

We do not.

All right, public comment in the room.

Well, tort reform can be going both ways. I totally support going after this. For so many years, I see a functional third world country, which I relate to down in Mexico, they don't have the lawyers. There's very just about no lawyers there whatsoever. So you're not having people suing. They have notarios, which do land use transactions and things like that. But the amount of money, and I consider it to be probably a 20 to 30% cost we have, which is the lawyers, the necessity to have insurance to protect you from the lawyers, and everything that goes, and if we can limit that in any way, shape, or form, and make these costs reasonable, set forward, eliminate a lot of that process, there's no reason for us to have, a good lawyer is someone who is compassionate and is a peace broker. The ones who are out there like the ADA that was referred to here, that was ridiculous. It bankrupted some businesses or nearly bankrupted some businesses just to shake down and put money in someone's pocket. The person went around having a client or two that he'd go in and do the complaint and they'd go ahead and run this through. And it was nothing but a money grab thing and that's why some countries have some very negative things to say about attorneys. So strongly support moving forward with this. the more you can do to limit this and make it regulated to the point where maybe all awards go before three judges instead, and there isn't these juries coming out with these multimillion-dollar ridiculous judgments. Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

Okay. I'm going to bring it back to the board. I'll just give you my comments about this. I think Supervisor Bushnell is correct in her – understanding that tort reform can go both directions. There's a reason why we have the ability of organizations and individuals to litigate even up and beyond what we may perceive as the damages to just them and their lives because maybe it changes the behaviors of the organization, corporation, government, whatever that may be. And so, of course, there has been a longstanding discussion around the reform of that, especially from those organizations to get sued. We are definitely in one of those organizations. I will say that what I view in front of us today is a request to be a part of the conversation for a group of jurisdictions to get together to talk about, it sounds like, some legislative language or something like that, or to promote something to that effect, there's nothing wrong with being part of that conversation, which I think is reasonable. And then at the time when they come together and figure out what that is, then we can choose as a Board of Supervisors to support that or not support that. So I think one of those, if you're not at the table, you're the meal sort of situation. So I feel like I think we're, I'm okay with us being in there, but I'm also very cautious of tort reform in general, so. Supervisor Bushnell.

Thank you. I thank you, Supervisor Bone, for answering my questions. I also think that at some times there is harm caused by organizations and it can be lifelong damage and that is where some lawsuits are born and I do understand, though, that, you know, what has been referenced with public comment and on the board to attorneys sometimes get away with that. I am going to vote yes on this because I think that we'll have an opportunity for it to come back. And I also don't, you know, like taxpayer money being abused in those payouts sometimes. It is always taxpayer money and so it is you know we need to be diligent about that.

And but those those are just my concerns around it.

All right. Unless there's any other comments from the board and not seeing any objection necessarily is there any objection to unanimous consent. Oh is there a motion in a second. Let's get that first on the record please. Is there a motion.

Anybody.

Well, you brought it forward, so we're giving you the opportunity to make a motion. I'll make the motion to accept. All right, over.

I'll second.

Great, there's a motion and a second. Is there any objection to unanimous consent on this item? Seeing none, the motion is approved. So now we're gonna move to the departmental item, which is brought to us by the planning department.

Good afternoon, Chair and members of the Board of Supervisors. John Ford with the Planning and Building Department. And this is a petition that's being brought to you by staff. It's not requested by a private landowner or anybody else. But there are four different uses that are currently receiving a lot of attention. Other jurisdictions are beginning to take action on some of these. And the county doesn't currently have any specific ordinance or policies or regulations addressing these specifically. So the uses in question include detention facilities, and specifically detention facilities really for the federal government associated with ICE. The review of the Amazon facility in McKinleyville caused a lot of suspensions that Amazon would build this facility and turn it into a detention facility. So currently detention facilities would only be allowed in the public facility zone, so they wouldn't be allowed in the McKinleyville context anyway, but in order to address some of the issues public sphere an ordinance could be written to prohibit the use and that may give some comfort to people who are concerned about that sort of thing happening. The next would be related to onshore support facilities for offshore oil. This is kind of an interesting one because in 1988 the county in addition to other coastal communities and counties had an initiative approved which required that onshore support facilities would require a vote of the voters before being able to be approved. I don't think that was ever put into an ordinance. Some of the things I've read was because at that time, onshore support facilities in the Coastal Act were a coastal dependent use. And so they would be considered principally permitted. However, in 2023, SB 703 was passed into law, which removed onshore support facilities for offshore oil to be removed from the definition of a coastal dependent use. So we're addressing that as we update the Humboldt area plan. That does not preclude that use. It doesn't prohibit the use. It just means that it's not principally permitted, which means it would need to get a conditional use permit. And so there may be some things there to do relative to identifying a different discretionary path and even creating performance standards for something like that. It could also be prohibited. A similar use is onshore support facilities for deep sea mining. And one of the things about this is, I've tried to research this a little bit, is that oftentimes efforts will be undertaken to extract minerals from the ocean floor, but as with other deposits of valuable minerals, there is a limited supply, and those may run out. And so that could require that there would be a lot of very intensive developments installed within, say, the Humboldt Bay Area, that once that supply of minerals runs out, that they would no longer be utilized. It'd be somewhat temporary. So it'd be worth looking into that a little bit more to see what the real likelihood of that is and to see if there are performance criteria that could be added to that, or it could be something that the community just does not want to see within Humboldt County. The other one that gets a lot of attention is data centers. This was also brought up as part of the public meeting for Amazon. The two big issues with data centers are water and power usage. And if power can be obtained from a renewable source, from a non-carbon source, the impact is not nearly as severe, particularly if the backup power comes from batteries rather than from diesel generators. And the same thing with water. If the water source can be from something that wouldn't be damaged either because of excessive withdrawal from a well or from a source that doesn't have public trust issues, then perhaps the water use would be acceptable too. But that, again, would require developing some performance standards for what that looks like, what the water source would be, what the power source would be. Within each of these uses, the real decision is whether to try to develop some kind of performance standard to regulate them, whether to prohibit them. Some uses may be considered incompatible with the values of Humboldt County. That seemed to be the case in 1988 when the electorate declared that they didn't find onshore support facilities for offshore oil to be consistent with the community values. So the board could choose at this time to A, take no action on any of these, The board could direct staff to pursue regulations for allowing these uses could choose to pursue an ordinance that would prohibit one or more of the uses or you could direct staff to prepare a moratorium for a certain period of time to allow additional research to be done. to determine whether or not the moratorium should be extended and sustained or whether there are performance criteria that could be incorporated into an ordinance that would satisfactorily address these uses. So I want to make clear the board doesn't need to take one action on all four uses. These are four different use issues. And so each one really has its own set of things to address. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Okay, I'm gonna bring it back to the board for some questions. We'll just start with questions and then we'll take public comment. So looking down this direction, questions? Oh, back here. Supervisor Bowe.

And I'm not, I'm gonna have to look back to the year, but it was in the 80s. late 80s that the property where the Warfinger sits and all that was actually leased to Exxon, and they were going to build, and they actually did site prep. That's how it all ended up getting leveled and stuff. They were actually gonna build the infrastructure for oil wells and stuff, and I remember that, and I don't know if that was what drove the voting and everything else. Is there anything when we... and there's nothing planned as of right now, but there are worries, so I've got so many worries we could vote on. Is there anything that we could vote on that would kind of restrict offshore wind? I mean, if we're gonna do cranes, because we got, I just, there's 600-foot cranes from what I understand. They're gonna be up there forever, which is like twice as tall as the, and bigger than the pulp mill towers. Is there anything in there that could restrict our offshore wind?

I didn't bring that forward as a concept for the board's consideration, but that could be within the jurisdiction of the board.

Again, we need to be careful what we do. Are we addressing all these, or are we doing one at a time?

Right now we're just gonna go through, if you have some general questions about this. And then I'll try to manage the discussion after public comment so that we can get through those. Hopefully just kind of one at a time and we'll see where we go. I'll probably straw poll on a few of those and see how we can get, we might take multiple votes, it seems like probably the best way to get through this. So by all means continue and then we'll kind of get to, again, questions, I'm really, that's where we're going for.

So on the Amazon Center, if we restricted that just to be

I do want to interject just only because. It's a question. I get it, I get it. But my concern is that what this discussion is about is supposed to be about general, we're not supposed to really be talking about a particular project that's being proposed at the time. At your risk is all I'm saying. I would strongly advise you to keep it generalized. It may have been what has been brought up as a reason or as an activation to the subject matter, but what we're being asked about is not to discuss a particular project, but a land use ordinance that is broader, either regionally or across the county, And if I can, can I have you clarify that? Because I really just don't want us to go, I don't want us to get into litigation over this discussion. I'm trying to help everybody out here.

I just want to add that in A on staff report, it says it specifically and says McKinleyville.

Please clarify if I can. I'm really going to take the prerogative as the chair to keep us as best we can out of hot water and also moving forward. As much as maybe some people don't care about that, but I want, excuse me, Director Ford, can you address this question so that we can be clear on that and so that board members can have- Which question? Yours or mine? My question. in terms of process, could you please help us out with that?

I apologize if I was unclear. Relative to the item on A, the questions came up during the discussion of Amazon, during the review of Amazon. And there are members of the public that suspect that the Amazon distribution facility is not really an Amazon distribution facility. I don't want to get too deep into that. people are concerned that a facility like that could be turned into a detention facility or into a data center. That's the only reason I brought up Amazon is because the public has brought this up during the review of that. And so this is not intended to be related to Amazon itself. It really is intended to be a much larger discussion that impacts the greater county.

And the question is, about detention centers and or data centers that could be in warehousing spaces regionally across the county, either our end zones or whatever. So I just want to clarify our intention today because we don't have on the agenda specifically that project. Correct. Okay, thank you. Proceed, yes. Thanks for indulging me in that clarification.

Now that I... now that I know exactly what we're supposed to be doing, is the staff here that recommended this, you said staff recommendation, the petition, I didn't quite understand the word petition, and the staff that brought this forward. This wasn't brought by anybody but your staff and a petition?

No, the petition is brought forward by staff because we're getting...

we're hearing a lot of comments about these uses was there any influence brought by any other parties basically from us or anything else there was no direction from any member of the board of supervisors to do this all right i could see what okay thanks uh supervisor arroyo and then supervisor bushnell

Okay, so part one is potentially, just so I understand, a moratorium to allow time to evaluate further. That's one part of what I see in the staff report. And then I heard you say that we could be, taking action around some of these uses to just disallow them, that seems like it would still require some additional information to be brought back. But I also see in here established standards or criteria for a number of these uses. So, We wouldn't be able to, and this is for the purpose of helping be clear so that public comment can be directed to the issues at hand today. We wouldn't be able to take action to disallow writ large these uses today.

That is correct. There's nothing the board can do that would disallow any of these uses outright today. Gotcha.

Okay. And then with respect to the... Ordinance that was not developed based on the 1989 ballot initiative, was it a ballot measure? It was on the ballot.

Even was an initiative. Okay.

Okay. Um, and so we don't exactly know why that was never implemented, but we suspect it was because the coastal act at the time was sort of made that incompatible. Um, is there any kind of, Is there any kind of... Because that seems like unfinished business. Is there... I mean, none of us knew because it was so long ago. So it was brought forward to our attention, a few of us for sure, and it was news to me at the time. Is there any... requirement to enact what has been voted on in a ballot initiative. This is a this is completely a mystery to me especially if so much time has passed.

I did not seek legal counsel about that. My. thought whether correct or incorrect is that after nearly 40 years the statute of limitations on forcing that to happen has probably expired okay okay but we could go back to that as like this was the will of the people at the time as as a way of informing future steps should we wish to Yeah, I think that action was taken, and I bring that up really for that purpose, that I think there was a point in time when people were very concerned about that.

Okay. I was just curious about that. That seemed like an unprecedented situation for us.

And my last question... What was the ballot initiative that you're referencing to? It was the...

there was a ballot initiative that basically the the within Humboldt County and it was similar initiatives were in other coastal counties and I think even cities that basically said that an ordinance shall be passed requiring that in order to approve onshore support facilities for offshore oil, it requires a vote of the people.

I can give a little history on this, if that's all right. So I think it was 1983, So there was an initiative, Measure M, that was put on the ballot because the Board of Supervisors was not going to take it up. And you are correct, there were multiple cities and counties up and down the coast that were basically creating what they're calling even today the Blue Wall when there was a big push for offshore oil and that was starting to happen, and I think it was the Reagan administration was pushing very hard, and I think the Energy Secretary James Watt was trying to make offshore oil in California to expand that, and so there was a lot of jurisdictions that did similar measures as this and put them on the ballot, and pretty much most of them won, almost all of them won. In giving that direction, I think actually Wes Chesbrough was on this Board of Supervisors at the time and he wrote the pro language for that. The Board of Supervisors was not friendly to taking that direction and so just never did. and there was no formal action from the public to enforce that, and so that's why we are where we are today on that, and that's just a little bit of background. I appreciate you indulging me on that.

I pulled it up. Would you like me to elaborate further? It was 1988. And the pro argument was authored by Wes Chesbro, Tim McKay, Bryce Kinney, some other folks. And it did receive a majority of the vote for sure. Juan Pablo Cervantes provided a little while ago some information that I got to see about it, what they have on file. So it reserved the right for the voters to decide on the siting of oil facilities onshore in Humboldt County, storage tanks, pipelines, staging sites, waste disposal facilities. So specific to oil facilities. And then it seemed that after that nothing was was executed Thanks appreciate that clarification.

I just was going off staff report which had 1983 but 1988 is correct. I had 88 in one place in 83 and another so I apologize for that If supervisor Bush notes more questions, okay, please continue I

Those were the questions that I have for now. I think the rest are going to blur into comments, so I'll wait.

Okay, thank you. On the detention facilities discussion on A, although I appreciate your statement, Mike, I don't think... telling this board what to say and how to act around that is okay. And so it's advice, okay. Multiple places and times it's mentioned in here about the Amazon Center in McKinleyville and refers to it probably eight times. I'm wondering if the board takes action action or direction today, I guess action is something that would come back, there's already a project in process. What would it do to the project in process if we change?

Nothing.

Then why would we do this?

The concern is that a facility like that would be turned into something else.

And so I Googled that to see if that has happened. And it hasn't. It has not.

Right.

And so why would we do that?

I think the reason staff's rationale for bringing this forward is because that's very much in the minds of the public. And so we've got an Amazon facility going forward and frankly it would be helpful not to have to argue whether that is or is not.

Just for clarification, you can generally describe it as a warehouse facility. We don't really have to name it in this discussion, because that's really the concern, is whether or not a new warehouse facility, doesn't matter what it is, is that there is a concern that any warehouse facility, including a new warehouse facility, could be converted to either a data center and or a detention facility. I will emphasize that the federal government in its efforts around its immigration efforts, I mean, spent, I think, it was like six billion dollars or some huge amount of money buying warehouse facilities around the united states with the intention of converting them into detention centers so i think that that precedent of that effort is what drives or animates this that discussion and so i think that that's something that people have concerns about. And then also, in relation to data centers, that also is something that is animating because there is an expansion of data center development that's very concerning. And I think the state of New York or some state just recently did a moratorium on new development for data centers so they could get more information on the potential impacts of that. if you correct me if I'm wrong, I think what you guys are trying to do is sort of get ahead of that and get some direction from the board and how this community might be perceiving that or wanting to respond to those concerns.

Can I finish?

Yes, by all means.

Thanks. I am supportive of things not being turned into detention centers but I think through this staff report you've already largely said that it's prohibited out there already. And so I'm not sure besides updating the public and saying that it's not a possibility for a detention center to be placed on a warehouse in McKinleyville where the Amazon facility is proposed right now is is.

It's non-loggiest right.

Yeah so I am confused also around what Supervisor Wilson said. This is very much brought up because of that center out there although it is already a restricted use so I'm not you know, if we're, we're going to provide an ordinance that says we don't, um, we won't allow buildings to be converted into detention centers. And is that something that, I mean, I really want to understand that if the federal government comes in and says, we're going to use this as a detention center, can we say no? Is that something that happens?

That's part of the exploratory process that we would need to do with county council before we would put an ordinance out.

So we haven't done that work previous to bringing this discussion to this board?

No.

Okay. And I'm I'm I am supportive of not having detention centers. I want you to understand that I just am very confused when it already is not a proposed use and already can't happen. And you say you're responding to the public through an ordinance change that we don't exactly know what we're doing.

So in context. The citizens of Humboldt County have been very clear that they do not want to see detention facilities.

Yes, I understand that.

I'm asking you if you want to regulate them or not.

OK. I am also, again, John, confused because it already says it's not a use that can happen.

I understand that. But sometimes having things that are extraordinarily black and white, binary, are helpful for people.

I guess then for me it would have been better if the wording of the Amazon Center because it very much looks like it's about that was not in there.

I'm sorry. What all I was trying to do by referencing that is to say I did not pull this wild idea out of some dark and hairy place. This is something that is very much on people's minds.

I understand that. I mean we hear it. So I understand that. OK. Go ahead.

Bring it to Supervisor Madrone and then Supervisor Arroyo.

Thank you, Chair. Well, John, I appreciate staff bringing this forward and why they may not be allowed at the airport business park in McKinneville. Detention centers might be allowed in other places in the county without some sort of ordinance that actually regulates it. Isn't that correct?

in the particularly the public facilities zone. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. So I think, you know, I'll just state very clearly that I very much would like to direct staff. I'm not going to make a motion now cause we want to hear from the public before we do that. But I would very much strongly stand for directing staff to establish standards for prohibition. of detention centers, for prohibition of onshore support facilities for offshore oil, and for prohibition of onshore support facilities for deep sea mining, and for prohibitions of data centers. And I would very much like to support requesting staff return with a temporary moratorium while staff work on these zoning ordinance details. Data centers, I mean, one of the big issues is they use a tremendous amount of electricity and that power usage, it says here in the staff report, can result in higher electricity rates for local electric customers. We already have an electric crisis here in the county in that, as I remember, Southern Humboldt in particular has been told that they are kind of maxed out PG&E in being able to provide electrical support for any number of projects in Southern Humboldt including the Metol the Old River Valley and other places and we've even heard that as a concern throughout the county. JUST THE TOWN CENTER PROCESS IN MAKINDA. WELL, THAT WAS A QUESTION. THERE'S SEWER AND WATER, BUT IS THERE ENOUGH ELECTRICITY AND STUFF? SO THAT'S AN ISSUE IN THE COUNTY ALREADY WITHOUT DATA CENTERS COMING IN. THERE IS A DATA CENTER IN ARCAIDA, IF PEOPLE AREN'T AWARE OF THAT. THE SINGAPORE CABLE THAT CAME ACROSS THE OCEAN LANDED IN ARCAIDA, AND I BELIEVE THAT IS WHAT IS GOING INTO THE DATA CENTER in Arcata down by the Creamery District, fenced in, high security site. So there's one of those that already exist. So I just want to go on record in supporting, directing staff to come back with standards for prohibiting all of these and for the temporary moratorium.

Okay, trying to keep it into questions if we can, bringing it back. Supervisor Bone, do you have any questions before we move to public comment? No. Back to this end. Supervisor Arroyo and then Supervisor Bushnell.

So I realize you were bringing this in part because of the community's requests. And this wasn't, you haven't done the delving into this because you're getting our direction about whether to delve into it. But on the topic of any facilities that really are for holding people, I mean, we have, I guess I wanna be clear about what's in our purview. I mean, the state regulates detention related to other activities, law enforcement related, like jails, for example, administered by counties. So I think it's important that we I guess I'm wondering how you've contemplated this piece. I'm sure there's a lot of research that needs to go into it. But we also have AB 3228, which was passed in 2020 that prohibits counties specifically or local law enforcement from entering into federal contracts to detain people. So, and engages, and it refers to existing law that engages the Attorney General for review of private detention facilities for that same purpose. So, I'm just kind of wondering what the gap is that you're seeing, or is it something that your team would have to research a little bit more?

So, honestly, in my mind, there is questions. and and i don't even know if we were to tell the federal government no you can't have a detention facility here whether that would mean anything to them or not that's something we need to research and thank you for recognizing that before i spend a lot of time on that before i ask county council to spend a lot of time on that i wanted to see if the board was interested in having us spend time on that

Yeah, I guess my only thought about that is we can make a statement of our values, but AB 3228 is pretty robust around what is the state's responsibility with respect to both local operation of a facility or federal operation of a facility. And I would love the state coffers to address any legal action that should come from this. Anyway, I think I'll leave it there for now and wait. Again, I'm trying to rein in my comments, thank you.

My question around detention facilities is related to, we hear the term private prisons, and so I would wonder if that is if that's outside the zone of public facilities.

I think it doesn't, usually from a land use standpoint, it doesn't matter who owns the facility. It's the use that's being regulated.

I appreciate that. I'm going to open this up to public comment. I'm going to start online. Oh, Supervisor Bone, you got...

Federal government can supersede county ordinances or objectives. Private companies can't though, right?

Private companies cannot. I'm not sure what the limit of the federal government is. I have a strong suspicion that just what you stated is correct.

Okay, just clarification before we start throwing the private terrible prisons and all this stuff. And need, there's also gotta be need, as it was certainly mentioned earlier, they have bought a lot of warehouses, or supposedly have bought a lot of rest, and they're not being utilized now. So I don't, Since we had one person taken by ICE last year out of our county, I'm beginning to think we probably aren't a hotbed for a detention center when there's empty ones sitting all over. But that's what we do best. We make laws for things that are never gonna happen, too.

All right, I'm gonna take this public comment. We're gonna start online and then we'll bring it back to the room. We have comments online.

Yes, thank you chair caller zero nine zero nine two zero I will unmute you and you will have three minutes Yes

Regarding the topic of detention centers, I would like to see an ordinance prohibiting detention centers of any kind, with the exception, of course, of the existing county jail, which will specifically remain under the sole supervision of the county of Humboldt. That should be obvious. Regarding data centers, I want to see an ordinance banning them altogether because of higher electrical rates for everyone, And if they are permitted, the only power sources, that is, if they were permitted, the only power sources would have to be from non-carbon sources, such as sunlight or wind. And the only backup power systems that would be permitted must be from batteries. The water usage for data centers must be much more tightly regulated than is suggested in the staff report. Thank you for considering these comments. Bye-bye.

Thank you caller 3 4 9 3. We will unmute you and you will have three minutes. Caller 3 4 9 3 you are unmuted. You're welcome to speak.

Press star six.

Hello? Hi, thank you. We can hear you.

Oh, hi, thank you. Sorry about that. Good afternoon. My name is Elizabeth Connor and thank you for the opportunity to comment. I'm just calling to encourage your board to pass the monitoring suggested by staff on all four issues while language to control all four uses are also discussed and completed. Lastly, I just want to appreciate staff for bringing this forward to a justly concerned community. Thank you.

thank you caller three six seven eight we will unmute you you'll press star six to speak good afternoon this is jennifer colt with humboldt waterkeeper and i am calling to say thank you to staff for bringing this forward because it has all four of these things have been major topics For the past, I don't know how long, quite a while, but offshore oil and gas drilling and the onshore support facilities have obviously been a hot topic for much longer and are currently under threat from the federal administration, which is planning on holding lease sales in the next few years off our coast. And deep sea mining is also a current threat since we have known deposits of deep sea minerals off the coast of Punta Gorda and the federal government has recently been weakening protections that would regulate such mining. So Humboldt Waterkeeper strongly encourages you to prioritize those two ordinances prohibiting offshore drilling and mining and directing staff to bring back data center and detention facility either prohibition or regulation in the future after the drilling and mining ordinances are complete because I don't think that those topics have been the subject of public discussion at your board previously and there's a lot to consider about both of them. Thank you very much.

Thank you. That is all the public comment we have online.

Great, we're bringing it to the room. This is your time to speak on this item, and feel free to line up so that we can keep the flow going here.

Good afternoon, my name's Sabra Steinberg. I'm a longtime resident of Humboldt County and the last 34 years in McKinleyville. I appreciate that the county is considering these issues for anywhere in Humboldt County proactively. Given their community and environmental impacts, I strongly support a prohibition on all of these types of facilities in our county. But I'm gonna focus on data centers because I only have three minutes. I'm hoping that staff has provided you with information about how data centers have negatively impacted communities where they've been built across the country. Briefly, among other issues, there's the 24 hour a day noise, the commandeering of water supplies, and in some cases, contaminating discharge and skyrocketing electricity rates for communities. The Union of Concerned Scientists did a webinar last month on data centers in California, and they created several fact sheets on issues like the one titled Protecting Electricity Ratepayers, Clean Energy Progress, and Grid Reliability from the Data Center Buildout. and there was another fact sheet on water impacts and protection measures. I urge you to check out the recorded webinar and the fact sheets are available online at the Union of Concerned Scientists website. There are currently at least six bills in the California State Legislature on these topics, ratepayer protections, protecting state water resources, et cetera. But currently, these bills are not laws, and certainly the protective measures in them are not in place at this time. We at least need time to get some protective sideboards before any new data centers come to Humboldt County. Local governments can do things to protect their own communities now, and I'd be thrilled if Humboldt County also enacted regulatory protections on this issue. But in the meantime, I have suggestions, actually two. that the Board of Supervisors impose a five-year moratorium on approving or allowing new data centers in the county to provide time to get protections in place, and that the Board of Supervisors prohibit any county official, elected or appointed, from signing any nondisclosure agreement with companies or their representatives about data centers. because that has been a problem in other places across the country. I started a petition and started gathering signatures in my neighborhood a couple weeks ago, just spent a few hours on a few afternoons so far, and I was gonna keep going, but then I saw it's on your agenda today. So I've provided copies of my petition for you along with the original, and while I only have 41 signatures in my neighborhood, I can tell you that nearly every single person signed it. and a lot of them said they wanted a permanent AI data center ban in the county. Please at least put a moratorium on data centers and prohibit officials from signing NDAs. Thank you.

Strongly support, before any time spent on this, John Ford working out with county council to see what our limitations are. It's been brought forward to you and I have confirmation from people that speak. If federal government wants to do something here, they declare this to be a strategic port and they can do anything they want, basically. They also probably could do that at the airport in any surrounding areas. And then you're permitting processes of no value. which is sad. I think you're pretty well protected unless there's some warehouse definition I've never heard of that when they're giving a CPU for ability to do a warehouse, they're limited in what they can do. The tension centers I find to be an interesting thing. I think you might want specificity there. insofar as detention centers would be using for deportation of alleged illegals or by ICE. I can see many scenarios in this day and age where a detention center would be absolutely necessary. In fact, if there wasn't one allowed during certain time periods, it would be fatal to everybody in Humboldt County. Worst case scenario, we have a contagion. It's 100% death ratio. Would you at that time feel that people should be isolated at or should they continue to intermix with the rest of the population? Detention centers do have different uses. So, specificity should be necessary on that one. Offshore oil and deep sea mining, we're already moving in that direction as far as the same as the Eel River. If you leave the straw on there, they're going to use it. Same with this, if you have your port made to handle large things that also would handle the oil, then you're gonna possibly see that happen in the future. Same with deep shore mining. So I strongly hope that we will find out our legal constraints before we spend a lot of time and money putting into effect things that don't sound like they may be necessarily necessary. They may be a feel good thing to codify that. Lastly, regarding the Chair Mike Wilson attempting to hobble the supervisors from speaking and using examples such as the Amazon project or any other thing, the public should not feel that's a constraint. You have a right to use examples. The best way to get your point across is by examples with specificity on specific projects. So I would encourage anybody to not feel like they were chilled as far as using that particular avenue to making their point. Thank you for my opportunity to speak.

Hi, my name is Krista Bornman. I live in Arcata and I work in Eureka at the Welcome Center in Old Town. I'm speaking just on behalf of myself and the interactions that I've had. I meet tourists from all over the country and all over the world who've chosen to come to Humboldt County. We talk about the Redwood National Forest and Sumac State Park. We talk about Arcata Marsh and Samoa Dunes. We talk about elk and red pandas, mountain lions and migratory birds. We talk about banana slugs a lot. We talk about murals and books and Ewoks. We talk about hiking shoes and chocolate and oysters. We talk about weddings, reunions, anniversaries, funerals, first dates, five-year plans, and what happens when we die. We talk about changing tires, changing careers, changing economies, making friends, making memories, making out, losing wallets, losing homes, losing parents. At the Welcome Center, we talk about our fears, our hopes, and our dreams. Tourists have never talked to me about offshore drilling. They've never talked to me about deep sea mining. Tourists have never talked to me about detention facilities or data centers. Tourists have also never talked to me about Guy Fieri, which I find surprising. But we know why people love Humboldt. We know why we love Humboldt. I think we should change with the times, and we should make this place better for everyone. But we don't have to lose what makes Humboldt our home. I asked that the board pursue a temporary moratorium and prohibit detention facilities, data centers, offshore oil and deep sea mining in order to reassure our community and protect our environment, create a blueprint for other communities and to create a legacy that we can be proud of. Thank you.

My name's Diana Preston, and I live in North Eureka. Oh dear, now I've all frozen up. The thing is, we want to keep these things out of here. The thing is, they don't suit us. They don't suit our place. And we're at a hinge point now. If we never invite them in, like the old vampire stories, if you never invite them in, then they can't do you any damage. But once you've said yes to any part of it, then they're free to expand and do whatever. But yeah, it would feel really good to prohibit. That the government does want you to think that they're all powerful and that you can't do anything against them. But the truth is that they do respond to pushback. That there's been communities that have kept lots of things out because the people were so up in arms about it. And that the least we can do is to do what we can. And if it doesn't work, well, it doesn't work. But you don't get any farther than you shoot for. You don't have things happen that you haven't made happen. And then sometimes you succeed and sometimes you fail, but it's certainly up to us to do the very best we can. And, you know, I consider this all in terms of apocalypse and everything and the great evil hanging over our country. And these guys, man, these people that do the data centers, they're just sociopaths. How could anybody have nearly a trillion dollars and not want to pay any taxes? I mean, proof positive. How could anybody, like, you know... All that. And the same with ICE and the detention centers. We knew with the tremendous damage, they're traumatizing an entire generation of children, especially Hispanic children. And it's just being so awful and everything. And it seems like if we could be one of the great shining communities in this world that says no and tries to say no and does our best to say no and does our best to keep them out like white blood cells. Anyway, that's how I feel.

Hi, my name's Eileen Mandelbaum and I'm a resident of Arcata, California. And I cannot thank this board enough and the planning staff enough for being proactive on these issues. Humboldt County would not be alone in acting as jurisdictions all over our country are banning detention facilities. They're placing moratoriums on data centers and banning fossil fuel extraction facilities and deep sea ocean floor mining facilities. This is happening and we can find out how and under what circumstances. The state of New York just announced they are banning detention centers. The urgency is great. We don't want to see any more daily headlines about deaths and torture and incarceration of children in jails where humans are held in bondage for profit. We don't want to hear after the fact that a huge data center has sneaked in and overwhelmed our rural communities. You are doing the right thing right now and your constituents will support you. Prohibition is the most important thing you can do on all of these items. If you can't reach that conclusion right away, then moratoriums on all those are required while you consider how, how to get there. Thank you.

I'm actually my name is Joanne McGarry and I'm actually quite emotional by the previous speakers here at this public podium that I spoke about earlier how important it is to hear the voices in the community and I echo so much of what so many people before me have said here at this public podium and poetically and poignantly and potently and the people speak and And there was a word that was brought up in Supervisor Arroyo's talk earlier about value. And there's so many things that have a value in our community, whether it's a cost monetarily or otherwise, but the value of who we are in Humboldt County and our values really do matter on issues like this. So, Bravo to everybody who spoke before me because I could not have said it better. And again, I talk about visuals a little bit. I still have the Earth flag there. I lived in Santa Barbara. I just want to say they know a lot. The Environmental Defense Center down in Santa Barbara could be a good source for information for you about offshore oil and onshore. facilities in that regard and then of course we as a sanctuary county have a lot to say about how we treat people in our county with human dignity and data centers let's talk to aaron brockovich bring her up here she has a lot to say about data centers um just you know the value of our community humboldt county is an important value of who we are. And this proactive effort I applaud and I promote and I want the prohibitions and the moratoriums to go forward. And thank you, thank you for everyone who came out here and called in to speak up on this.

Good afternoon, supervisors, my name's Jeff Dunk, I live in McKinleyville. I too appreciate staff bringing these issues to the board. I think it's a good idea to, as the previous speaker said, be proactive on some of these things. You don't want to install a seatbelt when you're in the middle of a car crash, it's too late. And some of these things, it is too late for other communities, so I would support and encourage you to vote for a ban on ice detention facilities, the onshore oil and deep sea mining facilities. And for those, I mean, I probably have philosophical reasons for it, but another is, you know, we have, we're trying to rescue commercial fishing and recreational fishing, deep sea mining, not gonna be positive. for fishing, they're literally non-sustainable when you're mining minerals, when you're mining fossil fuels. Fish, renewable. It can be something in 500 years that's a contributor to the county here. The others are sort of a quick bolus, if you will. Data centers, the AI data centers, I mean, think about seven, eight years ago. None of us had ever heard those words before. In fact, AI was, it was in movies. It wasn't on your phone. It wasn't ubiquitous. But now they're developing all over the country. And we do have an option to learn from other communities. So what we know is they use vast quantities of energy. They use vast quantities of water. crazily, some local governments engage in NDAs before the information comes to the public. And shockingly, the public gets second shrift on getting energy and water. Of Brown Outcomes, the AI data center has priority. I'm sorry, this is insanity that public officials negotiated that against the interests of the members of their community. Another reason I'm against this. They're noisy, they have fans, the backup energy almost always comes from gas or diesel. That's noise, it's pollution. So I'm just gonna briefly say, please don't engage in NDAs on any subject before something comes to the public. So I'm for the ban. I would ask that you guys pass that, but if not, a moratorium until we can get to to something that seems reasonable. I was on that Union of Concerned Scientists webinar too, and one thing they said is most local communities were underprepared for what happened when the data center was built in their communities. I don't wanna be part of those communities, thank you.

Hi, for the record, my name is Debbie Harrison Rumberger and I appreciate the opportunity to address you today. Planning is forward thinking. When we're in planning circles, we're told to look out the next 20 years. And because we're looking at Humboldt County under different kinds of industries and businesses coming in, I think it has just been absolutely amazing and I am so pleased to see the planning department address not just the issue that we had about warehouses and the petition drive, but also about the environmental impacts that may well be coming. I don't think the question is a trust of local government. I think it is a question of are we going to be forced by entities other than ourselves to accommodate interests that aren't necessarily our interests? So I want to thank you so much. Very forward thinking, the consideration of the moratorium is critical to making sure that we have enough time to accumulate all the information for each one of these to be able to educate the public about what these constraints or approvals would look like and get their feedback. So it really impressed me that we can take a deep breath. I know it doesn't address in particular that that will not be named, but that who will not be named has had multiple 50 million and higher a year contracts to provide surveillance to ice. And that's why there's such a fear. not only did um the last appropriations bill in the federal government include hundreds of millions of dollars for homeland security and ice we just passed 35 billion dollars to create new detention centers around the country one of the leaders in the ice division has a personal stake in providing private prison facilities. So there's a lot to be concerned about. But in Humboldt County I think we're feeling safe, we're feeling comforted and we are feeling very grateful for the work that has been done here today. Thank you so much.

Good afternoon. My name is Beverly Cumberling, and I live here in Eureka. And I also want to thank Director Ford for bringing forth this petition. And I feel that it actually was as a result of the Amazon warehouse that we really have been called, it's been called to our attention, the need to look at some banning, to look at moratoriums. As you know, all across the country, this is happening. And we live in a location where I feel especially for an AI center would be premium because of the coolness of the weather that we have and also our water facilities that we have. But aside that, the purpose for me addressing you today is to share with you I'm a member of Eureka Indivisible and at one of our meetings we were talking about the warehouse, but it was also brought up about AI data centers and also AI data centers initially. And so we decided that we would start a campaign to try and bring attention to all of the residents here to contact our Board of Supervisors and our mayors to ask them to do something. to put a ban in, to put a moratorium on. And during that discussion, it was like, okay, well, since we're gonna be asking for some kind of relief or rules or ordinances around AI data centers, let's include detention centers as well. So I appreciate that, but I feel that the warehouse actually bought attention to these issues because there were fears of what would go in at that warehouse. So what I wanted to share with you also is the fact that we've created flyers, And at various events, we distributed those flyers and explained, you know, asking people to make contact with Board of Supervisors and mayors. And everyone we spoke with were was in total agreement that this was something that we needed to do for our county to protect our county and to protect our resources so i just want to share that with you that there not only did is you know uh director ford hearing this that when i've encountered people in public arenas they yes absolutely want something to be done whether it be a ban, a moratorium, whatever, and so we just thank you for that, and we thank you for all the attention that you'll give to this, very, very important matters, all four of those issues. Thank you.

Okay, is that it for public comment? All right. I'm going to take a minute just to clarify. I want to apologize and say I'm sorry if what I said said before sounded like it was trying to restrict people in some way. What I'm trying to get at is just making sure that we're on the subject matter of the generalized issues that we're talking about today. I want to just caution our board and others that particular projects coming our direction we should it would be good, it'd be advised to limit our personal opinions about those subject matters as they are specific to things that might be coming to us so that we're not perceived as biased at the time when those happen. That's all I was trying to get to. If I did it in a way that was clunky and upsetting, I apologize. I didn't mean to do it that way. With that, I'm gonna bring it back to the board. I may have a few clarifying questions. I'll just start out this time, because usually I don't. On the construct of moratorium, is there a general, is that a one year, can it be five years, can it be 10? What's the purview of this body to?

I think staff would recommend that if that's the direction of the board, that you, direct staff to come back with the moratorium. That gives us a chance to look at a timeframe and look at what needs to be done and make sure that we're walking in a comfortable legal ground relative to the moratorium.

Okay. So, and for me, I'm just to put it out there, like I think if a couple of these things, moratorium seems reasonable, a couple of them, I'm like, we can move forward with prohibition. So I just, and we can sort of subdivide those up. Um, The NDA question, I wanna be clear, I've never been approached about an NDA that I can remember anyways as an elected official, and I'm not sure I would actually sign that or be comfortable with doing so, but maybe to council, have you heard of this before, or is that something we, maybe staff might get that occasionally, but I don't know if I haven't been asked to do that.

I have not heard of that happening in Humboldt County in regard to this matter.

That's not saying it hasn't happened.

That's not saying that it hasn't happened. I haven't been made aware of those types of issues.

Yeah, I'd personally be very uncomfortable with that. And so I just want to put that out there. And I don't know, I'm just going to say today probably isn't the day for us to opine about how we might regulate NDAs for board members and staff. But thank you for putting it on our radar is what I'm going to put out there. In terms of, and so my inclination is for both the offshore oil and the offshore mining is to go straight to prohibition. I just feel like we're there. My question, John, is... is that mess with your local coastal plan process or is there any, and I also feel like there's pretty strong language circulating right now about where other communities have already done this and so I was just kind of wondering, do you feel like that's a heavy lift to get that in front of our board?

It's not a heavy lift. We're doing a lot right now, I do want to say that. So it may be a little bit of time before we bring that back.

And that would come before the Planning Commission first, I imagine?

Correct.

OK. Those are just my three questions, or my kind of questions. I just want to say that from my perspective, I prefer a moratorium on the data center part of this only because I just feel like it is such a moving target at the moment and both the technologies and the uses are changing pretty dramatically and more broadly the policy at the state and federal level is also moving around all over the place. moratorium for me is pretty reasonable. And also on the detention center, just because I don't know what, I don't even know how to, there's just a lot of definitions in there that I think that would need to be worked on and those sorts of things. But I don't wanna preclude the county if we needed to move our county jail or something like that. I just don't wanna, and we also have a, we also have the juvenile detention facility, juvenile hall as well. And so I just wanna make sure that we're we have those roles and I just wanna make sure we're just not impeding our ability to maybe modify or have to move those things. Because frankly, the choice to have our jail in the middle of downtown is not one I thought was... the best move but that's where we are today and I don't think we're gonna be moving in anytime soon but those are my thoughts on this and so if there are other thoughts on the board, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna bring this back, I'm gonna address, if I can, the offshore oil and the mining part together unless there's objection to that at some point after we're done with sort of the next phase of this discussion and Supervisor Bushnell is next.

Thank you. I have a question on the offshore oil and drilling. So would the moratorium be for within our jurisdiction of waters? 21 miles out is not our jurisdiction any longer. So what does that look like?

The only restriction would be on the onshore facilities. We don't have any jurisdiction over the water.

So then would it limit the heavy lift terminal?

It's an interesting question because the heavy lift terminal is intended for offshore wind. But could be utilized for other things? Yes.

Okay. So this would be only for onshore. And I don't want the public to think that by this moratorium that we would have anything to say about the offshore drilling that would happen. Is that correct?

That is correct. We have no jurisdiction there.

That's what I understand. Thank you.

Supervisor Arroyo.

Thank you. And I definitely have more to say on the other matters, but we're going to limit it to offshore oil and mining-related actions. Well, first of all, I want to say back in October of 2025, we passed a resolution that was really more of a statement of values opposing expansion of or new offshore oil and mineral mining and drilling. So that was some time ago that this board took that position. However, I appreciate the point that the jurisdiction would only be in the county's land use jurisdiction, and so that wouldn't apply within cities. But also, I'm looking back at the argument in favor of Measure B, which was the one from 1988. And I actually feel that I don't agree with some of the language in here because it speaks to waste disposal facilities and staging and the part of the heavy lift marine terminal multipurpose vision was the potential decommissioning of oil platforms or anything in that sector. And broadly speaking, I think when people heard that in the community, they were, oh, that's a great idea. So there certainly has Matt involved and the need to carefully handle those materials. But I don't know that I would want to rule out the decommissioning activities as an industrial use that we would want to be potentially involved in. So I think there's a little nuance there. So I'm not sure that we should look to the way that that is written as the guidance is all. I'm perfectly happy to request that something come back around not only a temporary moratorium but a longer term provision around processing or some of the other items related to those uses. I just wanted to note that maybe we wanna have some definitions that carve out decommissioning as a potential use.

And I guess I'll just kind of move with that parsing as we are right now, which is we're just, let's just keep it on talking about the offshore oil and mining. And again, this is about the onshore land uses in support of those efforts. Supervisor Madrone.

Thank you, Chair. Well, it's hard to just keep it on those two. I'm going to talk about all four of them. I appreciate your suggestion, but I really want to talk about all four. I frankly don't see any reason to not have a temporary moratorium on all four of these. It's going to take time to parse out all of the details in regards to any one of these four items. We're not going to do that here today. All we're really doing on the agenda is providing direction to staff to delve into each of these four items and to come back to us and the public with a discussion about the pros and cons of various prohibitions or standards that might be developed around these four items. That's really what we're here today for, is to tell staff whether or not we want to direct you to come back with the details. Again, we're not doing that today. So I do very much support that direction to staff. on all four of these items, and it's not so much standards for these things as much as standards to prohibit them for me. I'm just one of five, but that's really what I'm looking for. And you know, it was mentioned there's only been one ICE detention here in the county. I think there are really good reasons to be concerned. I mean, we've got a petition here with 41 signatures concerning data centers. And we got 37 emails opposed to offshore drilling and mining. They're not necessarily here today, but those were members of the public speaking to us by written comments or by petition drives and things like that. And I do think there's really good reason for concerns around detention centers. While ICE has not focused on our community yet because we didn't have a vice presidential candidate like Minnesota did, or other reasons, we're a small community, we're rural, whatever, we are a sanctuary county. We have two cities with sanctuary ordinances, and our own sheriff fought against Measure K vehemently and suggested that it was gonna cost a massive amount of money to implement Measure K, the sanctuary ordinance, when in fact, as was stated in a meeting here just a month ago, it's only costing us a few thousand dollars a year to actually manage the data around all of that and present it. Our sheriff has also endorsed a candidate for governor, Sheriff Bianco from Riverside County, who has been adamantly opposed to the sanctuary ordinance and stated in his campaign speeches that he would dismantle the sanctuary ordinance at the state level. And he was endorsed by our own sheriff. So I think there's very good reasons to be very concerned about detention centers and the possibility of that occurring. which is why I very much support having prohibition standards for those things. So that's just my general comments. Again, the details have to be worked out and I trust staff to really delve into that, come back to us. I think as Supervisor Arroyo pointed out, there's some potential parsing of issues as well as Supervisor Wilson on some of these items, but that's not what we're here for today. Please let's support getting that data done, getting that information together, come back to us. But what can happen quickly is staff coming back with a temporary moratorium for our consideration. And that's probably the most important part of this today is to give that direction to come back with a moratorium for all four of these items because we could do that quickly. As I understand, I think staff could develop that quite quickly, bring that back, because these other items aren't gonna happen in a couple of weeks. It's gonna take some time, months probably, for staff to develop the information for us to consider what those standards might look like. So that's my statement.

Okay. Supervisor Bone, I'm still trying to keep it into the offshore oil and mineral, but you know, If you have any comments on that or other stuff, I'm happy to... Okay, great. I have a question about what was just talked about, which is in the moratorium construct, and I'm just wondering, is the moratorium, would there be an expectation that that would also come through Planning Commission as well?

I don't believe a moratorium has to go through the Planning Commission. It's not part of the zoning ordinance.

Okay, so that, I mean... the idea is that a moratorium on any one or all these could happen quicker than maybe like an ordinance or.

Particularly if they're temporary, correct.

And I wanna go back to that question about how temporary, is it a year, five years, what's the two years, what's the norm for that?

Um, I don't think five years is the norm. I think a year would probably be on the outer limit. Um, I, and I don't want to go really much further committing beyond that because I want to be able to talk to County council about what we can effectively do and sustain.

Okay. Um, and bringing it back to the board, I I'm, I'm still of the mind that, um, I don't, Can you give me the time frame difference between a moratorium on the offshore oil and the mineral versus us actually just getting the ordinance and the land use changes required?

So what a moratorium would do is it doesn't require the same degree of policy development as prohibition would or policy support. The moratorium could just simply be to stop anything until those permanent regulations are developed. All right. And so I think we've done that in the past. We did that previously with hemp. And we did with STRs as well. Right. Okay.

Do you have a preference? I mean, would you like us to just do a moratorium? Seeing that there's probably a majority of the board that would like to see minimally regulations, if not prohibitions on all of these, all four of these, what would help you in helping us move forward with that? Because again, I'm not, personally I'm not totally clear about where data centers will even be or what that conversation will be like in a year necessarily. It's moved so quickly in this moment, so I'm just a little, technical person not really clear and for for all I mean I live within a block of a data center currently so I do know what that is like and and you there are times when it's when it's on its generators it can be heard for sure and and so I just wanted to say like we do have that does exist So I guess I'm interrupting the question I'm asking you, which is, can you give me some guidance on where you feel like you would like to see us do this?

a moratorium would give more immediate action because obviously there could be no applications or things coming forth but if what the if the board already has a sense of where it would like to go it would probably be time better spent to just working on getting those regulations done then drafting a moratorium maintaining the moratorium because I recall we have to we had the renew the moratorium for both STRs and hemp fairly regularly. And so there's a bit of work involved in that. Okay, Supervisor Bush now.

So I'm a little, I understand the request. And I... I'm supportive of certain portions. I also, I wanted to understand why, if there was a permit pulled for any of these types of things, why we wouldn't just go through the normal process of having it go through Planning Commission or having it, because it would be a permit, it would be a large one, Having it have the community way in have and I don't think that the detention facility I don't think that's a realization that Humboldt could even have one honestly but the rest of it like the deep-sea mining and drilling I understand that but once again, we don't have a lot to say off of our shores and So are we going to restrict ourselves like with the heavy lift terminal because it could be utilized for that? How do you delineate between that? While I understand people's feelings and I understand this is a very sensitive, I also know that we in Humboldt County have stopped progress and I'm not saying this is progress, but in general, I have seen in six years on this board, things come into this community that could have created economic growth. And I'm not specifically talking about these items because I am not supportive. I have already set up detention centers, so forth. But here we are again, gonna do something that has a process already in this county and can go through commission, can be appealed, all the things. And we're gonna say no blanketly not knowing really what the consequences are for other development. Because if you're going to say that deep sea mining and anything on our shores, then what if it could co-do something? Are we going to say no? Or are we going to permit it and say, but you can't do this? And how are we going to monitor that? My concern is that we are, again, talking ourselves out of economic viabilities within Humboldt County because we tend to say no more than we say yes. I'm not specifically talking about these five items, but in general. And it concerns me. It concerns me a lot when we already have processes in place to address these things that are on here today. and and i don't know why we don't follow our own processes and we supersede the majority 41 folks and 31 emails are not the majority of folks in humboldt county and i understand that there are large concerns and i thank you all for coming here and and having your opinions and being able to to say how you feel and i largely align myself with some of those concerns as well but we have processes in place and i don't understand why we're not following those

Well, we would follow the process, so you're entirely correct. I mean, if an onshore support facility for either offshore oil or for deep sea mining were to be proposed in the coastal zone, it would require a coastal development permit. at least it may also require a conditional use permit those would be processed the question that the the value question for the board is is that where something you want considered and if it is then there should be no action taken to prohibit that use if there are boundaries that you want to put around that use then that would be now would be the time to say you know i'm okay with this use as long as And then that would give us direction to develop those boundaries. I think just one more thing is data centers are not a principally permitted use in any zone because they're a more recent thing than our zoning ordinance. So it would fall under the other things not specifically identified, which would be a conditional use permit. So there would be the process there. And if you're okay relying on the process and working through the environmental work and doing all that, then these actions aren't necessary.

But isn't that what the public process is for? Isn't that what we've put in place is to have public process and public display and public comment and all of those processes that we normally follow? That's what constituent base have said that they want is public process on projects. We don't have that today on these projects, and I understand everybody's feelings, but I really want to make sure that we're following processes and not superseding those processes that have been placed for the constituents, you know, base for this board. We haven't heard what these projects would be. Not that once again, I'm not in in, you know, I don't agree with detention facilities and offshore oil. drilling however you can launch whatever you want out of fort bragg and it can be here in two hours so we're gonna restrict our onshore capabilities and they're gonna say okay humboldt county screw you basically what most of them have said with development and economic growth and gone somewhere else and it still is going to affect our coastline and i know that we uh supervisor wilson brought a letter in whatever that, April, I think is what you said, Natalie? Somewhere in that.

It was October of last year, yeah.

Yeah, around that, which nothing has happened yet with that. I just worry that we're superseding the processes that are there for the communities, and we're not hearing the majority of constituents around these items.

Understood.

Okay, I did want to address one question that was put out there, which was, could a development on the bay that had the capability of doing offshore oil support be used in that way, and it wouldn't be permitted as such, so it would be a change in use, and thus would require a permit, and so a prohibition would block that from occurring, right? That is correct. Yeah, okay, so I'm not concerned about another development on Humboldt Bay that would be, so long as we had that prohibition. Prohibitions have another impact, which actually can have a sort of a positive impact, economically from a perspective of it allows developers to know what is not, why even bring a project forward? It's not worth the time to bother our staff or this community with bringing a project forward that is undesirable. And I will tell you, I can't imagine that the vote that was taken in 1988 has decreased in any way, shape, or form in terms of its support for a prohibition on this land use. And so from my perspective, I think we should just move forward with the ordinance to do that. There's other reasons for that too, which is, We are not alone, as was mentioned. There are communities up and down the coast doing this because, as was mentioned, the federal government is seeking to do offshore oil leases, right? And so those leases, The companies that wanna come and look at that, they're gonna be looking at what's the viability of that, where can they actually get their onshore support for those sorts of activities. So what we do matters in that conversation. And I wanna also acknowledge that if folks are interested in that as a subject matter, currently NOAA is reviewing its Coastal Zone Management Act review. of the California coastal zone management processes. They're having their comments are due, are starting, or will be in person on August 10th, I think, and so that week in August, there are comments related to that. What they're seeking to do is to limit, or could, at least, I don't know if that's what they're seeking to do, but it is a concern of some that if they reduce that, that Californians would have less of an ability to comment and actually participate in those discussions around offshore oil specifically, because that's the subject we're talking about right now. So I just want to say there is concern and there is action that is occurring both at the federal and state level on these issues, and I think a statement through an ordinance from us basically saying that we we object to and we prohibit offshore oil drilling support on our land uses is something we should do. So from my perspective, I'm ready to, I think we should, there's no point in doing the moratorium because the statement of us starting that process I think is good enough. No one's gonna be proposing a product between now and when we get that done. I think that's, On the other two issues, again, I think a year's moratorium is fine for me, but I'm happy to take any other suggestions. If we could, I'll just do this. I'm just gonna make a motion to request staff bring back an ordinance that prohibits the support for offshore oil and deep sea mining for Humboldt County onshore facilities, and I don't have a timeframe for that, but I'm just gonna say I support that we do that, and that's my motion. I'm suggesting we do multiple motions. So we can get a motion on the floor and keep moving.

I'll support that motion in a second.

All right, there's a motion and a second. Is there any discussion on this from board? Supervisor Buon.

Yeah. I'd like to have a lot more information before we do this. There's already so many things in place that I'm glad you're gonna be able to say you brought one forward. But there are so many restrictions. And in all honesty, the way offshore, oil's going i'm not saying i'm for it or against it or anything else the way it's going now is in places they do this they're just going to bring in super tankers and and load and have a floating tanker out next to it and then take it to wherever they take it it won't be oregon and what we'll we'll have accomplished is um it won't happen in our backyard but we'll be able to send it to mexico and they can deal with it so we don't solve anything With that being said, I feel there was a lot more into this than is brought forward, so I'm gonna have trouble voting for it. Not that I'm against it, it just, I think this isn't being, anyway, I'll just leave it at that. There are so many restrictions in place, and I appreciate the input you guys gave. I do appreciate it. 37 emails and It's pretty amazing the involvement of the community in this, but I've had just as many going, why are we doing this? And I honestly don't have a good answer except it sure sounds good.

All right, so we have that, neutral on offshore oil. Is there any other discussion on this particular motion? Seeing none, can we have a roll call vote, please?

Yes, thank you, Chair Wilson. Supervisor Bushnell? Abstain. Supervisor Arroyo? Yes. Supervisor Madrone?

Yes.

Supervisor Bone?

No.

Chair Wilson.

Yes.

Thank you. Motion carries.

Thanks. So I'm going to move to, if we can, to see where we can kind of come down on either both or one or other of these other two items. And Supervisor Arroyo, I'll let you lead us off.

All right, thank you. I'll just say, hot out the gate, I'm not interested in any private detention facilities in Humboldt County. I don't see that as an industry that I'm interested in. interested in seeing our county land used for. So that is hopefully a good delineator. The assembly bill I mentioned before, 3228, it does incorporate references to other existing law, but it actually is specific to private detention facilities. It talks about what the state's role is in regulation of them and how they operate under requirements of a contract. But it does have some helpful definitions of what is and isn't a detention facility, so thinking of some of the public comment. It exempts public health purposes for quarantine or isolation. It exempts certain county operated facilities. So we operate a jail and a juvenile hall and it wouldn't touch that. This is about privately operated detention facilities. I think we, I would be happy to pursue that. And then on the other matter of data centers, you know, I was thinking about, you know, it's not, it's in the city of Arcata's jurisdiction, but I was thinking about the data center that Supervisor Wilson mentioned, and while I don't live near it and can't speak to the impacts of noise or energy usage there, it is a relatively small amount of power. I mean, it's a little under 1.2 megawatts, which is not that small. Similar to a large commercial facility can power hundreds of homes, so it could support a neighborhood if it was at full usage of its power capacity. But it was lauded as an exciting thing when it came to sort of high-capacity fiber Internet landing in Arcata, a trans-Pacific, excuse me, I was going to say trans-Atlantic cable. A lot of folks who were excited about the technology upgrade of that for our community at the time, this was 2020, 2021, really saw that as a potential benefit. So there may be, I'd be happy to have staff come back with recommendations for standards for data centers. You know, what's here in the staff recommendation. And I wonder if it is, if there's a cutoff for power usage or water usage or both under which our community may want to make some allowances. I hear pretty loudly that people don't want data centers, but then I don't know if folks are considering projects similar to the one that is already in existence. Maybe people don't want any of them at all, but there may be instances where if there's an appropriate scale. So I would hate to move forward with something without knowing more about it. So I think the whole tenor of this conversation is directing staff to bring back information about all of these things. We're not really able to make a decision on any of these items today per se, but we are providing direction. And those are the two items that I would, or the two, Items I'd like to see come back, and I think data centers, we may want to just understand the matter a little bit better.

Okay. Supervisor Bone, and then Supervisor Bushnell, and then Supervisor...

I can sign on in a complete band of detention centers. I mean, I think that's an obvious, especially private detention centers. This is a, because whatever, you know, and so anything that is county operated, i.e. juvenile halls, facilities, or any public municipality, because there are most of cities have, well, a lot of them have holding cells, some don't. I just think that one's easy enough. Data centers, I mean, I can tell you right now, 10 years ago, would you have voted to have something you carry in your pocket that could tell you everything about everybody? You would have voted no against that, but yet we can Google anybody on an iPhone and find out more stuff. I saw it on the newsletters. Some guy says, how do you know my address? I googled your pilot's license. I mean, that's how, and so there are so many availabilities. But data centers, good, bad, or indifferent, there's a, I believe a county in Virginia, I think has 247 of them in their county. It's been an economic boom. It's also been a huge headache. So fully aware, very aware of the old Copeland lumber yard where the data center is now. You know, the distribution, you know, the distribution center, I don't know if it fully qualifies as a data center. It does qualify as a distribution. as a internet distribution center, you know, but I don't know if that's qualified as a data center. I'm not sure. So, and we had no say so in that. So we're just talking about, um, I know a lot of the data centers now that are coming out now are air cooled. We would probably be better off with a water cooled one because we're not using the water we're contracted for out of the mad river. Now we could lose some of those rights I think because of the loss of the pulp mills. Um, But the detention centers is a no-brainer, I understand. Greatest thing you ever brought forward, staff. Staff, the greatest thing you've ever done. But with that being said, I don't know if we can restrict things, data centers, because I'm of the age, and a couple of you others are, where a handheld, calculator was ninety nine ninety five from texas instruments now you can buy a happy meal and get one for free so uh... things change needs change and if we're going to restrict these things to that level maybe we're going to have to restrict the use of that we'll have limited i mean everything i see on news i can get you your i can get you your internet quicker faster speedier everything speedier and faster but that takes hardware to do that, and they have to put that hardware somewhere, so. I mean, I can't put it here, but we'll use it. So I'm just saying I would like to see something on the data centers, and we have no permits for data centers. We've had nobody even, we've had a couple nosing around, but we've had a couple people nosing around for a lot of different things, so. And I think we have full control over what we approve and don't approve, so. I don't know of adding more restrictions on top of it actually work in our best benefit. And I think Supervisor Bushnell said it best. If we keep saying no to everything, the first thing a business does before it comes to Humboldt County, whether they're gonna make a bunny factory or nuclear devices or whatever the case may be, they look to see what the business climate is here. And I don't know if you, and it's not just Humble, it's California as a whole and everything else, because we go all in on things, you know, fish farms and everything else, and then they go away. And I don't know what the reason is for that, but I still know that they're here and then they're gone. And people do look on what the business-friendly environment is. of Humboldt County. The only advantage we have is we do have a deep water port that we don't really use, eight ships a year. So I think there's a bigger picture to be looked at rather than just the short term, God, this looks good.

For the interest of time, what I'm hearing is that there's support for prohibition of detention centers, an ordinance that will do that. So I'm gonna put a motion forward that we do an ordinance to prohibit detention centers.

Can, uh, I'll second, but can you, are you specifying the private detention facilities as we discussed?

Yes. Private detention facilities are basically anything but the County facilities. Um, and, uh, I'll just put it that way. And it will go through, you know, something will be written. It'll go through Planning Commission and us. And so if there are details to that that need to be ironed out, at least we'll know we're moving in the right direction. And so if there's a second, I'd like to get a vote on that. Could I? Yes, sir. Can we amend that to ICE?

detention centers? Because that's the big fear. I mean, otherwise they're jails, they're prisons, they're things like that. I mean, they're Pelican Bay. Can we just make them ICE? Because it's about ICE. Let's just be honest about it. It's the ICE detention centers that are causing the controversy, and they're not buying all these detention centers for anything but illegal immigrants or So can we generalize that so we don't run into a situation?

I think that's making it more specific.

Specific has not been a bad thing, Mike.

Well, I think what you, okay. what I'm you said it was more general and what I'm saying is more it is more specific.

Can I ask a question please because I was sure you and you see over me again I'm just trying to move I know but I so everybody up here has a right to talk. Thanks. So around the item that Supervisor Bohn just talked about Dr. Ford what would be the difference between say and excuse me. to be in, what would be a detention center that isn't an ICE detention center that is a private facility? I'm not understanding.

I think there are situations where there may be people who offer the service of having, they offer the service of having a detention facility. Whereas maybe like ICE operates their own. functionally, and this is something we need to look at as part of the research, is that they're both the same land use, and I think this is what Supervisor Wilson is trying to get at. They detain people. And so.

Can I ask a hypothetical? Sure. I'm sorry for interrupting. So if the, say the county jail becomes inoperable and there was a private person out there that was going to build a facility to house, that the county could rent from to house in place of the jail currently. and I don't know that that could happen, but possibly it could, would this moratorium prevent that?

Well, the thing that I've got written in my notes all over the place is accept the county.

Okay.

So that there would be a clear exception for county facilities and probably city facilities because they do have holding facilities as well.

But if it was a private facility built that the county leased, would this moratorium preclude that? And I think that's where Supervisor Bone is going.

We don't have an ordinance written yet. But if we were to write one, we could write it in such a way that anything the county needed to do, the county could do.

Okay. That answers my question. Thank you.