The following remarks do not necessarily reflect the views of the Trinidad City Council as a whole, and are intended only to exercise my First Amendment right to voice my personal opinions.
The Humboldt County grand jury report states that it had determined that an investigation into the Trinidad Short Term Rental Ordinance was warranted after consideration of “points raised by Trinidad residents.” While not named in the report, it can be surmised from a local blog post on July 1 and an email sent to the city manager and members of the City Council on July 12 that the “Trinidad residents” who requested the investigation were members of a citizen group called “Save Trinidad Neighborhoods.” I urge readers to take a look at the entire grand jury report at https://bit.ly/2NBb7wu and the “Save Trinidad Neighborhoods” comment (14th comment from the top) which follows it. This comment is representative of emails received on a regular basis by City Council members and staff.
I have spent six years on the City Council. Prior to moving to Trinidad I had served on the Southern Humboldt Unified School District Board of Trustees for a dozen years. I am proud to have had the privilege of serving my communities in these capacities, as do thousands of California citizens each year. I take my job of representing all the citizens of Trinidad, including every member of “Save our Trinidad Neighborhoods,” seriously.
To state the obvious, each council member has only one vote. The only real power an individual council member has is the capacity to influence the votes of the other members through persuasion and debate in open session. Similarly, whatever power the collective council possesses is dependent upon maintaining the continued trust and confidence of the majority of its constituents. The ultimate measure of this confidence (or lack thereof) is expressed by citizens at the ballot box. There is an upcoming election on Nov. 6. The last day to apply as a candidate for one of the three seats available on the Trinidad City Council is Aug. 10.
I challenge “Save Trinidad Neighborhoods” to put forward three resident members of its group to run for those seats. If there is, in fact, the citizen support of their platform that they claim, they will have a majority vote on the council and will immediately be able to begin the implementation of everything they have been advocating for. I doubt that they will do so, since it would also mean that they might actually have to govern rather than simply cast aspersions and innuendo. I hope I will be proven wrong.
As far as a critique of the grand jury report itself, I offer the following data and observations:
1) The title of the report, “A Tale of Two Cities,” does not reflect the reality of life in Trinidad if the implication is that there is widespread discontent among Trinidad citizens over the STR issue. Trinidad’s 2016 population was 359 permanent residents. “Save our Trinidad Neighborhoods” routinely lists no more than eight residents in its correspondence. That is 2.2 percent of the total population. To be charitable, it is 3.1 percent of the total number of registered voters (255) in the city, still hardly an indication of a Trinidad replay of the French Revolution.
2) Current data indicates that the STR ordinance is accomplishing its goals. There were three fewer STR licenses issued this year than in the first year of the ordinance implementation. The number of allowable guests in residential zones has been reduced by 26 due to property sales and lower allowable occupancy rates.
3) A year ago, council member Jack West and I offered to independently investigate, as an ad hoc council subcommittee, the issues which “Save our Trinidad Neighborhoods” had documented through their public records requests. We met with members of the group several times and issued our report to the council and the public at the March 14, 2018 council meeting. Despite the fact that our report offered more detailed criticisms and suggestions for improvements in the ongoing implementation of the STR ordinance than did the grand jury report, it was apparently completely ignored by the grand jury during its “investigation.” I would appreciate an explanation of why that occurred and why no City Council members were included in the secret interview process undertaken by the grand jury.
July 24, 2018
Eureka Times Standard
By Jim Baker, member of the Trinidad City Council
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