August
6, 2014
Lost
Coast Outpost
By
Hank Sims
Pretty good Grand Jury report this
year!
The annual reports from the Humboldt County
Grand Jury — that august body of (mostly) senior citizens that convenes to
scrutinize local government — vary wildly in quality. Sometimes the thing is
dominated by supine rubber-stampers, A-OK with almost everything and
disinclined to dig too deeply. Other times the report seems guided by a
conspiratorial and frustrated hand, which sees dirty doings behind every matter
it fails to comprehend completely.
On first reading, the past year’s crop of
jurists seems to have been Just Right — curious, inquisitive, firm. Here are
some possible headlines.
I. End Midnight Releases Now! One
of the hot-button issues of the year, which sprung to the forefront of public
consciousness after the killing of Father Eric Freed on January 1. Why does the
Sheriff’s Office release people from the Humboldt County jail in the dead of
night, when they are without transportation and possibly dozens of miles from
home?
The Sheriff’s Office revised its procedures
in response to public outcry — but it didn’t revise them enough, the GJ thinks.
The annual report recommends that the Sheriff’s Office completely stop
releasing people from jail between the hours of 9 p.m. and 6 a.m., and it
basically pooh-poohs the sheriff’s position that such a policy might violate
the civil rights of the incarcerated.
II. Mattole Valley Charter School and the
Humboldt Lodging Alliance are Pretty Shady. Each of these
organizations gets a big thumbs-down for transparency, in addition to some
question as to the particulars of their finances.
The GJ goes over the county’s charter school
scene pretty thoroughly and offers a lot of high praise all the way around.
Test scores are good to great, are parents and community members are (mostly)
kept in the loop. (A couple of schools could do a little bit better, but it’s
all good.)
The big exception: Mattole Valley Charter,
which operates 12 “learning centers” around Humboldt and neighboring counties,
and, according to the GJ
There […] appears to be a complete lack of specific School
Accountability Report Card data generally on the Mattole Valley Charter’s
website for any of the individual “learning centers” that are spread throughout
Humboldt County and the contiguous counties bordering Humboldt.M attole Valley
Charter School runs these “learning centers” and receives full funding for the
enrollees. However, there is virtually no specific information for interested
parents regarding the quality of information in these “learning centers.”
…
In short, the public must simply take on faith, rather than on hard
data, that 1) there are revenue-generating students at those “Learning Centers,”
educated by qualified teachers; and 2) those students are, indeed,
participating in the state’s mandated testing program, a requirement for
funding.
Moreover, the Grand Jury notes that the
Mattole Unified School District appears to be squirreling away the $6 million
it receives from the state at a shocking rate. In 2011-2012 it had reserve
funds of $2.75 million, on an annual budget of $6.2 million — something like 6
times the recommended levels of reserve funding.
Meanwhile, the Humboldt Lodging Alliance —
that entity, essentially the same personnel as the Humboldt Convention and
Visitors Bureau, set up to spend the millions raised by a 2 percent bed tax
that local hotels and motels decided to bill themselves a few years ago — is a
shambles of transparency, the GJ charges. The Lodging Alliance is failing to
post meeting agendas and minutes to its website, and it doesn’t appear to be
reporting to anyone exactly what it’s doing with its cash, as would technically
be required by state law.
III. Let’s Zone Land for Homeless
Encampments! In a section on the plight of homeless
veterans in Humboldt County, the GJ recomments, contra Rob Arkley, that county
government should actually zone to permit “sanctuaries and/or campgrounds” for
the homeless population, and looks at other communities where such programs are
working.
IV. Humboldt County Code Enforcement Sucks …
Because It’s Not Enforcing Code! Kind of a flip-around from
the days of the backwoods reign of terror of the Kode Kops: Complaints to the
Housing and Community Development’s Code Enforcement Unit are being habitually
ignored, the GJ says.
Plus: The above are perhaps
the highlights, but there are a whole range of other matters discussed in the
text of the report. The Northern Humboldt Union High School District is, in
fact, complying with the Brown Act, the GJ says. Last year someone witnessed
the Eureka Police Department handcuffing a distressed 13-year-old — this leads
to an investigation of and meditation on “How Do We Deal With Children In
Crisis?” Humboldt County roads are in a shocking state of repair, but we appear
to spend as much here as they do in Del Norte and other counties. City of
Arcata employees seem unsure about what is historically significant
architecture and what is not.
Good reading! Let us know what you find.
Thank you, Humboldt County Grand Jury!
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