Why I am Running for City Council

I am running for City Council because I love Eureka and care greatly about what happens in this very interesting and likeable place.

Nine years ago I chose Eureka as my home when I could have chosen to live anywhere. I chose Eureka because I noticed some unusual characteristics that I thought would make Eurkea a great place for me, a retired city and environmental planner, to live. I noticed that the location of the city on the shores of Humboldt Bay portended low-tech economic and recreational opportunities and great scenic beauty.

I recognized that Eureka was built as a compact urban place with some of the most outstanding architecture of the 19th century that I have ever seen (and I have lived in beautiful large and small cities: Georgetown and Foggy Bottom neighborhoods of Washington, D.C.; North Beach in San Francisco; Springfield, Ohio; Pacifica, CA.; and Kodaikanal, India).

I noticed that Eureka is surrounded by ranches and farms and open spaces that are backed by more distant mountatins and saw that they are close enough to be accessible by trails for walking. hiking and biking. I noticed that the climate is cool and damp and has produced a lush forest and meadow landscape crossed by many rivers. I noticed that the local beaches are almost unused by people, sea and sky are wrapped in a misty, foggy, opalescent brightness. I also noticed that although Eureka is sadly lacking in neighborhood parks, a network of gulches criss-crosses the city along natural creeks that keep these areas green

Some of the first buildings I noticed in Eureka's downtown and West Eureka made me wonder why a city blessed with such a beautiful setting and features also included large severely blighted areas in such highly visible areas of the city. While Eureka's houses are almost all attractively designed, their conditions are often shabby and neglected--often exceedingly deteriorated. The neighborhoods where these neglected houses stand appeared to also be forgotten. I noticed that there were few trees and a lot of concrete and asphalt, no planter strips for street trees and no boulevard or divider strips in the middle of wide streets. I also noticed that there were no people about.

However, I did not think these problems were insurmountable and they certainly did not encompass the entire city. As a consulting planner I had worked on what we called "conservation areas" to remove blight and make rundown areas of a city liveable again in several cities. A city with so many natural and built assets can only change for the better, I thought.

Several indicators of what is wrong became apparent after I moved to Eureka. I discovered that the people of Eureka and their leaders did not aspire to anything great happening in Eureka. There was a kind of resignation and indifference to trying to make things better, as if Eureka was somehow an inferior place or backwards compared with the rest of Humboldt County. There also was a sentiment that Eureka needed to remain that way so that it could be affordable to those who have nowhere else to go. I heard people refer to Eureka as Butt-reka and Freaka-reka. Sone people in Arcata told me that there are no neighborhoods in Eureka. A woman at a public hearing on the Waterfront Drive plan told me Eurekans had no right to complain about traffic on 101 because they had wanted it to go through Eureka. I could go on and on about the horrible stones thrown at Eureka but fortunately I found that even though I live in West Eureka I have wonderful neighbors and I certainly consider my home to be part of a neighborhood.

I believe it is my right as a resident of my city and my neighborhood to let the city officials and staff know when there are problems in the neighborhoods or the city as a whole and to try to find a way to solve them. There are many problems, just as there are in other places too. However, some of the city officials and staff do not respect this right of the citizens and do not welcome citizen participation in government. They give lip service letting people testify about their concerns and then move on without discussing or thinking about these problems.

I am running for City Council because I believe all of us can help solve problems and I welcome new ideas and old ones too. I believe citizen participation is an important element of planning and governing and, if elected to the City Council, I will always be available to listen and consider the thoughts of others, particularly the residents and workers of Eureka.

Key Elements of My Vison for Eureka

My blog and my vision for Eureka are about Slow Cities and Conservation. Slow Cities is a movement that takes us back to the days when we did things slowly and thoughtfully. We made things well: we were craftsmen and artists and workers of all kinds. We built buildings to last, we made zippers that outlasted the jacket. We prepared our food slowly and ate it slowly and it was tasty. We do things fast nowadays and the things we make are rarely made well and our fast food is eaten in a hurry and our favorite taste is sweet or fatty. Not only do we do things fast but we are destructive in the ways we make things and how we dispose of the remnants and wastes that remain from our efforts. And we make things intending that they do not last long so that they will have to be replaced, promoting spending. My blog and vision and my wish list for Eureka are about striving for excellence in those things that we do and make and in cleaning up behind our work. Striving for excellence is a key element of the Slow Cities movement.


Conservation is the second tenet of my Vision. Conservation of resources is what I have in mind. Conservation is not punitive; I do not seek to punish anyone by asking him or her to conserve resources and non-renewable energy. I merely want the people of our region to share in the wealth of natural resources that the people of earth have been blessed with and I want us to not use a disproportionate share of this wealth. I want us to think about future generations and their share so that we do not spend it instead of passing on their share to them. Conservation means using less fuel and it means walking a little more, and it does not mean finding alternate fuels to keep doing as much put-putting around as we are in the habit of doing.

Slow cities and conservation are about breaking bad habits. To start I am going to demand that we change our outlook from one of being ashamed of "ugly, stinky, blighted Eureka" to an attitude showing we are proud of the beautiful bay-edge location that is on its way to featuring a 6 1/2 mile bay-edge trail on both sides of our seaport Old Town and boardwalk. We are proud of our fine restaurants and our coffee shops and our art scene and our thrift shops and book stores and two big healthfood supermarkets. We are proud of our farmers' markets and our music venues and our festivals. We are proud to join with the other towns of Humboldt in the Kinetic Sculpture Race and numerous other activities. We are proud of our historic architecture. We are proud of our rainy, foggy, cool climate and our lush green gulches, our rhododendrons and our expanding green areas.

But beyond being proud of who we are and of Eureka, we need to strive for excellence. We need to implement our trails plan and make it beautiful, we need to keep our restaurants in business and make sure new ones can afford the costs of permitting and buying leases and running a business. We need to make sure our farmers can afford to sell at the farmers' markets and we can afford to buy the foods. We need to take care of our historic architecture and not allow it to be destroyed by neglect or without analyzing the posibilities of restoration or rehab. We need to make sure the housing we invite the poor to live in is decent as required under the Housing Act of 1949. We need to take care of all our housing and neighborhoods, tame the traffic and protect pedestrians. We cannot be afraid that improving living conditions and beautifying our neighborhoods will raise the cost of housing. If a low-income persons come to Eureka because it is affordable, is it wrong for them to want to improve their neighborhood? There are ways to control the excessive rise in property values or at least control their costs. This will be the discussed in my position paper Homeless in Eureka and consists of reminding local banks to participate in the directives of the Community Reinvestments Act by making available low-interest long-term loans to low-income persons. In addition, the City had a good First-Time Homewowner loan program which was recently revised to make it less useful.

We also need to do a better job of enforcing laws that already exist to protect people from noxious fumes and toxic emissions, harmful rays and dangerous substances in our neighborhoods, schools and commercial districts. We need to encourage walking and biking by making it safer and more pleasant to be on the sidewalk. We need to use trees and labor as resources instead of high-cost engineering solutions to increase open spaces and intra-urban trails and buffers to make our city greener, safer and pleasantly free of toxic odors. Simply stated, we need to make our city liveable for the people who live here. We need to pay attention to what other cities do and value citizen participation in the planning process. We cannot afford to reject good advice. Planners learn by studying other places and learning from their mistakes and successes.





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Write to your County Supervisors about Raw Milk

I wrote the article below on Raw Milk in 2007 and I stand by it today. Urania has gathered over 2000 signatures of people who support the need to change the law in Humboldt County to allow the sale of raw milk. I currently buy raw goat milk every week from a friend and pay $12 per gallon. I also have bought cow's milk from another friend for $16 per gallon. I used to go to Crescent City to buy raw milk. This is a most ridiculous micro-managing system. Those of us who care about our health will continue to buy it whatever the cost. The dairy folks will continue to drink it and feed it to their kids but the general public will have to be satisfied with homogenized pasteurized milk.

Does the county forbid us to buy raw meat or raw anything else? The state certifies the raw milk. Does Humboldt know better than the state what is good for our health? Humboldt is advertizing its ignorance. All the other counties in California allow raw milk to be sold in stores. There are reams of literature on raw milk and its medicinal and health uses. Homogenizing and pasteurizing milk deprive one of the enzymes that the milk is blessed with and make milk less easy to digest. Tell you Supervisor to read up on it (e.g. Weston Price Foundation on the internet) and vote to allow raw milk to be sold in Humboldt and bring us into the 21st century!!!