#109. Miles Slattery: Humboldt’s Crossroads: Growth, Grit, And Going Big

Tired of boom-bust promises that never land? We sit down with Eureka City Manager Miles Slattery for a frank, fast-moving look at what actually gets built, what stalls out, and how we change the rules so progress sticks. From a scrappy surf-kid past to a data-first public leader, Miles lays out how the Bay Trail moved from vision to miles of waterfront access—and how that same bias for action is shaping housing, transit, and the city’s approach to homelessness.

We get specific about why Eureka struggles to grow: legacy “coastal dependent industrial” zoning that blocks modern light industry, a small population base, and institutions allergic to risk. Then we talk solutions. A new transit center will anchor regional buses, Amtrak links, and ground-floor services under 51 new homes. Microtransit will offer $2 trips across town via app, with an Old Town circulator on the table to ease curb crunch. An automated parking structure is under study to deliver capacity where it counts. We also confront the parking myth with real data—summer peak studies show downtown lots below 50% capacity across a month, even if Friday Night Markets feel slammed.

Housing gets the reality treatment too. With RHNA pressure rising, Eureka put public land in play, navigated Old Town pushback, and traded sites to protect businesses while keeping momentum. The result: 302 of 332 required affordable units already funded. On homelessness, the city pairs low-barrier options like Bayside Village with embedded mental health teams, rapid rehousing, and job pathways, acknowledging that compassion works best with accountability.

If you care about smart growth, transit that connects, and rules that fit today’s economy, this conversation is a blueprint. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves Humboldt, and leave a review with the one policy you’d change first—we’ll feature the most thoughtful takes next week.

Transcript

Meet The Eureka City Manager

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors and Nick and Miles, Scott Hammond with the 100% Humboldt Podcast, back from my sabbatical and uh welcoming you, our listener, too. Hey, hey Miles Slattery, what's up? Nada, how are you? Thanks for having me. Thanks for being had. You're uh can you remind us who you are and what you do again one more time?

SPEAKER_02 0:49

I am Miles Slattery. I am the uh city manager for the city of Eureka. I've been in that position for a little over six years now.

From Del Mar Surf To Humboldt Roots

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Wow. Time flies. We have a a good time. Of course. Now, for you folks that don't know where we're at here, it's uh Humboldt County, which is one of the most northern counties in California. Pretty iconic place, wouldn't you say? 100 percent. Yeah. Humboldt, in fact. I see what you do with that. Yes. So city manager, six years, where'd you come from? Where'd you grow up? How'd you get here?

SPEAKER_02 1:23

I grew up in Del Mar, California when it was a lot different uh in the 70s and eighties. Um then I went to college up at Humboldt State in the late 80s, graduated early 90s, moved back down to San Diego, um, was a chemist for water quality monitoring, and then moved back up in here in 2006 and ran stormwater program and then moved my way up from there.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

With the city of Eureka?

SPEAKER_02 1:51

With the city of Eureka.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

So chemists, what did you study at Humboldt?

SPEAKER_02 1:54

I was a fisheries biology major.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Oh, cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:58

Yeah. I came up as that. Uh-huh. Him and his wife, uh Tim Mulligan, and I forget his wife's name, but they both taught at the uh in the fisheries department there. And I graduated in ninety-four.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Oh, uh from oh, you were born last century.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

You could use that later. Yes, nineteen ninety-four. That's a new saying.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

It wasn't eighteen ninety-four, it was nineteen ninety four. So with young people who go, You were born I was born last century. Yeah. And they're like, oh. And they had to think about it. Yeah. Oh, yeah, you're really old. Like my dad. Yes. So Del Mar was a fun place to grow up, I bet.

SPEAKER_02 2:37

It was. It was a lot smaller than there was uh nothing east of I-5 other than Torrey Pines High School, and it was uh uh a lot different back then. A lot of good surfing. We lived up in Delmar Heights and it was about a mile away a good surf. Um, you know, used to walk through the canyon to the beach and now the canyon's all full of houses.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

Aaron Powell It's all houses. Yeah. And traffic. And people.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

Other than that, it's great. Yeah. My my mom moved back up here and uh she always she calls it God's country. And there's too many cars down there to be calling it God's country for me. It is, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

I call it OG, original God's country. OG C.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

Yeah. It was nice back in the day. That's just it it's mind-boggling when I would go down there and visit my family and uh see the hundreds of thousands of people that sit in traffic for six hours a day. Aaron Ross Powell Commuting 40 minutes for two hours. I mean you're better off getting out and walking for the most part.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Get there quicker.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

Yeah. We go down to LA, same thing. Yeah, too much. It's painful. You go to Black's Beach ever?

SPEAKER_02 3:37

Oh yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Surf there often. Um I last time I served was probably about five years ago. It's been a while. Um but yeah, we used to go make the trek and walk down on the cliff there. Go. Didn't surf Tory Pines much. Most of the stuff I surfed was um Delmar Beach Break or the Reef, 15th Street.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

How about Georgia's Reef in Solana?

SPEAKER_02 4:03

Oh, yeah. That was so we used to have surf PE, which is God, amazing. Super cool. Yeah, we had uh for two hours. My senior well, junior, I left school if went to continuation school my senior junior year. I had two sessions of surf PE. So I had a first period and a and a second period surf PE, and we had 135 and 246. And so first first period was at fifth 15th Street in Del Mar. And then uh second period was at um uh w um Seaside up in uh Cardiff. Oh yeah, great spot. Yeah. Yeah. So that was cool. Uh Coach Nogle. He used to play for the Chargers. He's a football coach, and then he was also our surf PE coach.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

I know that last name, I think. Yeah. Huh. Yeah, this is code way back. I um so that's a pretty easy schedule. You just get prepared at 7 a.m. in the water.

SPEAKER_02 4:56

I mean, I ended up dropping out and going to continuation school halfway through my junior year.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:03

Like 15.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Oh, you're pretty y young?

SPEAKER_02 5:06

Yeah, I left uh had uh adversarial, I was a little poop head. Yeah, so I was super stubborn and and left and slept on couches, and then at sixteen I was in a apartment with a buddy of mine, uh an older buddy of mine, and then worked in the restaurant industry and did a lot of nefarious activities back then.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

Aaron Powell I'm sure you did, yeah. So say we all, right? Right, Nick? Yes. He's not agreeing at all. No, he's the guy with the filtered cold water. He's good. He's good. We're good. Yeah, I uh it's funny how uh I always marvel how a knucklehead like myself got out of uh the shenanigans that I created and went through myself to get to Humboldt to marry Joni to marry way up and have nine kids and do this and sit here with you and go, oh, I'm not a drooling idiot at 66. I'm actually somewhat here.

SPEAKER_02 6:03

Yeah, no, it's amazing to me. I always I would did a lot of uh different drugs at a very young age and did a lot of inappropriate things at a very young age. And uh my perspective on it was getting that over and learning from it and and understanding, you know, where you've made mistakes. I would go back after college and go back to folks that, you know, weren't like I was then and they were getting into it in their twenties and thirties, and uh it it caused a big delay in their life, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

In my opinion. It's interesting, yeah. Same journey for me. It's like I uh got sober coming to Humboldt, which is really interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:45

I went to Humboldt State for the weed, actually.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Right. You were insane. Mine was a guy. Wait, they have weed here? So it's funny. And and you look at that and you go, wow, checkered past. I learned from it, I become better for it. And I think, you know, uh my my dad always told my mom, Wanda, just let the kid grow up, man. You know, and it's like it's very wise.

SPEAKER_02 7:07

I have uh the same opinion. My kids go through their stuff like now, not much too different than mine, not as severe, but um my ex and I disagree on that. That we should I I I think you're young, make your mistakes now. Figure it out.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Yeah. There's lots of coaches to coach you back up and through and coach you through. I think um yeah. I I've noticed a lot of people with great privilege uh had it all. And and like you said, maybe in the twenties discovered the wildlife and it was a big delay. Yeah. Like maybe a lifelong delay.

SPEAKER_02 7:44

Yeah. No, for a lot of them.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

I mean, I had a buddy of mine called him Hector, I'll keep his name out of it, but uh he uh um good surf buddy of mine, and he went through addiction, you know, well after twenty. Didn't smoke weed or do anything at a young age in the twenties or so. He he didn't get out of it until well into his mid-30s.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

Off the hook, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's too bad. So you came to Humboldt and studied uh wildlife biology? Trevor Burrus, Jr. A fisheries biology. Just be a smart dude. Ixiology and those types of things. Oh yeah. Hey, what? Don't be cussing on the show, man.

SPEAKER_02 8:20

Uh the worst course was Hankins um population dynamics, which is a statistics-related course that was um I was good at math, so it wasn't that. It was just Was that over in the business department? No, it was in Fisheries Biology. Okay. So you basically can predict populations and stuff based on using different type of statistics and stuff. So anyway, it was Terry Terry Roloff still. Roloff was there.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Yeah. Hey Terry, what's up?

SPEAKER_02 8:47

Yeah, it was Terry and then uh Mulligan, Hankin um were basically my professors.

SPEAKER_00 8:53

Terry came by a couple of years ago, stead said hi at State Farm. Just hey, what's up? Oh, sweet. Remembered who I was. And I this is 78 or you know, I'm sorry, about 80. Yeah. And so he's he's a little older now. Yeah. So say we all.

SPEAKER_02 9:09

Yeah. Mulligan was super cool. He was from uh back east, I think Worcester or something. So he had that the Bostonian.

SPEAKER_00 9:17

Yeah, that was pretty good. East Coast guys. Yeah, he was a good guy. Yeah, we this is a free East Coast uh zone here to just rag on East Coast people. So let me tell you about two people.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

He was a good person from Worcester, but I knew a lady named Stacy that was a bad person from Worcester.

SPEAKER_00 9:30

It's funny how it's funny how the culture is so different. I'll have a mocha, please, and I'm from San Diego and we're in California, and then everything's super slow, and and these guys are like hey, where's my bill? Yeah. It's like it's like my friend Philip and I, who lives down the street, we're always joking about he's from Connecticut at the East Coast Ethos. It's just a different vibe, dude. It's a whole different Yeah. Is that generalizing too much?

SPEAKER_02 9:55

I mean, it's different I don't know. I mean, I don't know of very many people from Bad Beast. I've known some really cool I got uh Kenny, we call him double papa because he was a horrible golfer and his handicap was twice over par. So he was he was very entertaining and a pretty uh relaxed person. Aaron Ross Powell Nice.

SPEAKER_00 10:15

His handicap was his golf game.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

Yes. He was super entertaining.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

Aaron Ross Powell So you were a chemist down in San Diego?

Chemist Days And Marine Monitoring

SPEAKER_02 10:22

Yeah. I worked for uh basically their wastewater in uh their wastewater treatment plant for the um city of San Diego's environmental monitoring and quality control. And so I was a lab tech and then moved up to an as uh associate chemist. Is that downtown somewhere? Uh our lab was in so our marine lab was in um San Diego, uh right on the bay, and then by the airport. And then um uh the lab that I mostly worked at was in um La Mesa next to the Lake Murray.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

Aaron Powell Oh, at the Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:54

Right there at Lake Murray. And then we'd do, you know, we'd go down to the plan at Point Loma and take samples, and then I tried to get into marine biology, but it's um it's really weird. They don't pay a super cool job, but uh they were like it was weird. I didn't have I worked with a bunch of PhD chemists. I just had a a BS and um I really wanted to get into marine biology, which was my Bailey Wiccan super cool job. You'd go out and take ocean samples, you know, some outfalls two miles out in the ocean. So you'd go out and not only take uh um ocean samples, but you'd take sediment samples and then do rod and reel fishing because you want to, you know, when you're doing testing, you're doing these designs, and so you go out and you have a control area that's out from the outfall and you catch fish, and then you go over to the outfall and you catch fish, and then you take the the tissue samples from them, and we did the chemistries on the tissue samples.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

Wow. I thought go have a fish frack. Yeah, I don't know about that, but yes.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

Yes. A lot of uh barracuda.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

But it didn't matter whatever you cut. Big barracuda. Yeah. We used to catch those off San Clemente. They're nasty. They're nasty fish, man. They're t ugly looking.

SPEAKER_02 12:04

They're not quite bonito. We used to go surf and uh go down to Quatros and go surf and we'd go out on the Pongas, and um so you get, you know, Albuquerque. When we didn't hit Albuquerque, you get Benito, and Bonito's the nastiest. I mean, that's like the Miracle.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Uh huh.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

Yeah. Okay. Huh. Kind of by Toto. It's not quite Totos, but it's close to Toto's.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Been as far as Estero Bay and uh down where the Federalis start. Yeah. Having Uzi's. Yeah, been down that far. It was far enough.

unknown 12:36

Huh.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

So what do you miss about San Diego top three things?

SPEAKER_02 12:40

Uh warm water. Um I don't mind the weather. Um pretty much that's it. I mean, the beaches up here are the surfs up here is uh as good if not better. And uh I'm not you know, I can handle the cold. It's I've gotten used to. I rode my bike everywhere when I was in college and I lived up in McKinleyville, and I had rode my bike from McKinleyville to uh to HSU. And uh I always people used to give me grief all the time because I always wore shorts, but the first few times that I did it in the rain, you get pants get so wet and then you're sitting in wet pants all day.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

Good point. You're already dry.

SPEAKER_02 13:19

Yeah. So I'd always wear shorts.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

The benefit of the shorts, you guys. Heard it here first. Yeah. The uh our our date night is uh Camel Rock. Oh, sweet. So we sit right above Camel, pop up in the van, just here it is. It's it's surf in Trinidad and the bay and the water when it hits at a certain time of night just like refracts back up and it's it's beautiful out. I just get on my speedo, I'm right there. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:45

That's nice. And then it's 35 degrees. And the track getting down there, especially now that those sta I don't know, they haven't fixed the stairs on the on the south side that you go down, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:54

I think they're fixed.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

Are they?

unknown 13:55

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

I've been out there a while. Yeah. There's a lot there's always a lot of people there. Everybody's checking it out. So you got back to Humboldt. Uh oh, you got a job with the city of of of Eureka. And if you're by the way, if you're still just if you're still just joining us, my new best friend Miles Slattery from uh City of Eureka. City manager, that sounds pretty how are you managing?

SPEAKER_02 14:19

I I enjoy it. I love the city of Eureka. It's been uh um I'm very passionate about my work and I like doing uh good things for the city. Some people um you know a lot of the direction I take, um the majority of it is through elected officials. So a lot of you get grief for good and bad, but it's not necessarily you have to it I just let it slide because I'm doing the work of three people who choose to, you know, set the direction of the city. Um and then of course there's influences from the state and those type of things, and a lot of things that the state are bringing down a lot of people here aren't appreciative of, whether that's affordable housing or things like that, reducing parking requirements, those type of things. Right. My favorite stuff.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

Oh, we'll get there.

SPEAKER_02 15:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

Yeah. So you one of your new one of your new buildings is going up behind McRae-Neisson over where my own is.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

Yeah, Ethan G.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

And it you know, I go, Oh, this is gonna be good. It's two stories. You know? No, no. It's no, it's three. And I'm going, oh shit. It's six stories. The bottom is technically five, but yes. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr. I go on. This thing's this thing's massive compared with pretty much anything in Eureka. I mean, maybe the the Clark Museum or something. Not not the Clark, but the other there's a tall building down to downtown, I forgot the name of it. Corner of Fourth. Fourth and E. It used to be a bank. Oh, yeah. What's the name of the case? I forget the name of the building. It's right over there in Fourth and E. It's downtown.

SPEAKER_02 15:51

Yes, I know. I'm familiar. I think uh Katie Moulton, our council member's shop, is in that building.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

Yeah. Yeah, it could be, yeah. So um so I was doing some homework and I'm going, oh, you're y y uh everybody reports to you? Like all this the city.

SPEAKER_02 16:08

Yeah, so uh deletions, police, community services, development services, basket planning. Yeah, community services parking rack. Development services is uh planning and uh building, and then engineering is its own department, public works, they all report.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

You said planning, too.

SPEAKER_02 16:27

Yeah. So these are departments. We used to have we used to have fire, and then uh there is a basically a JPA Joint Powers Authority that was formed between the district and the city, and so while we, you know, contribute sixty percent to their um operations, um I technically don't oversee them. But we work closely with uh Hubble Bayfire.

SPEAKER_00 16:51

Trevor Burrus, Jr. So these are he department heads you meet with weekly, monthly, whatever.

SPEAKER_02 16:54

Yeah. And so the even though not an employee, but the HBF, the Chief Citro, he joins on that. So it's Chief uh Stevens, Chief Citro, and then our um department heads, finance, HR, community services, development services.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

You and Stevens get along okay.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

Yes. I I I I love Brian. He's great. He's uh Brian. He's been um great. I mean, we went through a lot um getting to where we're at now, and he is he's grown a lot, and I think that he is uh uh a really good human being and a and a great chief.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

Yep. I agree with that.

SPEAKER_02 17:32

Good man.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

So it seems to me like you're a guy that gets stuff done. Like there's stuff happening on your watch in a in a world where a lot of stuff hasn't happened for a long time. Yeah. So so whether we're talking about housing or we're talking about the bike the bike lanes, we're talking about we'll talk about those. Trail. Um The trail? The trail's were you part of the trail? Oh, come on. That was Did you invent the trail?

SPEAKER_02 17:58

I didn't invent it, but I got it done.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

The trail was uh We're talking about Eureka at Arcata, right? The Bay Trail.

SPEAKER_02 18:05

No, well the Eureka portion, basically from you know, Pound Road up to uh Tid Street. That's the city's we were, you know, of the Bay Trail. We were the first to do it. In 2008, we built the Hickshari and then completed the rest of it by 2014.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

Aaron Powell That's all y'all. Okay.

Trails Built, Vision Realized

SPEAKER_02 18:23

Yeah. So that was all grant funding. Uh the the the the idea behind it was a waterfront. Um we had a subcommittee of our open space parks and recreation commission that developed that vision. Um, and it was uh laying doing nothing for years, and then I took over environmental programs, and then we built um the major basically all of the trail with the exception of the extension, and now they're working on beta zoo.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

Aaron Ross Powell So you could go all the way from Tidd all the way back down Hickshari down to uh almost the power plant, huh?

SPEAKER_02 18:59

Aaron Ross Powell You can go to Tuby Road, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

Is it Tubi? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:02

Tuby Road is off of um uh South Broadway. Right, right. Humboldt Hill. How far is it? Do you know offhand? It's about 7.2 miles. It's a nice little walk. Back to front. Yeah. If you both ways, you're at four over fourteen.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

Aaron Ross Powell If you went three times how many?

SPEAKER_02 19:19

Good call. 21.6, rather. So you could almost get to a a marathon.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

Right. Yes. Hey, Hubble Bay Marathon coming up in August. Yes. They're great.

SPEAKER_02 19:29

No, they're doing it. They're on the um I think this year the intent is to be all trail, but I'm not sure. I think they go they do a loop for the whole one. But anyway, they don't have to be on the road anymore. Oh that's cool. They excuse me. They don't have to be on the freeway. But they go around 255. Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

They go up over the Do they go over the bridge? Must.

SPEAKER_02 19:51

Yeah. Yeah.

unknown 19:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:53

Terry's been on the show. They're great. Yeah. Our friend Sarah does the design for the Oh, for the logo. Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. And the the metals and the ceramic. Yeah. Yeah, you can stay on the trail. So that'll tie in at some point, I guess, to the Great Redwood Trail, right?

SPEAKER_02 20:09

It is technically the Great Redwood Trail right now. They own the railroad corridor. The vast majority of our I would say Yeah, the majority of our trail is is within the railroad corridor. So we had to get uh right of entry and easements from uh what used to be the NCRA. Now the NCRA is folded because of what Maguire did, and Maguire established the Great Redwood Trail folks, and so they own that corridor now. So our license agreements are with them. I don't we never really made the change, but we already have that portion of ours.

SPEAKER_00 20:44

So you had some piece of the Arcadia Bay Trail, too, where you had to cooperate or contributor because some of that's Eureka City. Oh property, right? Up to No.

SPEAKER_02 20:53

No. So the the county portion of it, as soon as it gets over the Eureka Slough it's all to Target that's so we don't we we provide um public safety services uh within City of Eureka limits, but the maintenance of the trail um basically from Eureka Slough all the way up to Brainerd is on um the county.

SPEAKER_00 21:14

Trevor Burrus That's cool, man. It's next level. I love uh going out there. Trevor Burrus Yeah, it's super cool. Oh my wife loves it. She rides all the way from McKinleyville to get a Dick Taylor.

SPEAKER_02 21:22

Yeah, I plan to do uh I haven't done it yet, but my daughter and I are gonna do the up and back up to Arcata and then back down to the Trevor Burrus. It's super military.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

It's really fun.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

You've heard of Dick Taylor chocolates, right? Of course. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:35

I'm a big fan of the chocolate chip cookie with the sea salt when they're nice and warm. Oh man. And I'm not usually a chocolate guy, but I ate one when we had uh the visitors, we had the visit California people come here, and we went over, had a couple of drinks, and um to one bar, and then went over and got the cookie. Delicious.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

Dude, they gave one of those uh Christmas, it was Arts Alive or something. We took it on the bus for the uh the uh decorations.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:59

Uh that was a pretty cool little event, huh? Aaron Powell That was fun, man. I ate that cookie and life was good. Yeah. No, they're delicious. Yeah, yeah. These guys do a good job. So uh set the stage for the the discussion. So Humboldt's had this boom and bust economy for two hundred years. Um we're not doing that great uh overall in terms of jobs, uh assuming you want smart economic development, who doesn't? Um we lost a fish farm or we're losing it, right? Or is it gone? Aaron Powell I could have told you that wasn't gonna happen from the get go. Okay, you probably Yeah, but us us common folk, we're we're believing news, don't you?

SPEAKER_02 22:34

I tried to scream from the mountaintops. When you have a company that's in Maine and they're leaving Maine because of permitting issues and they're coming to California, it was something's wrong with that picture. And then you find out that the people that started it and are operating it have never raised a fish ever. Is that right?

SPEAKER_00 22:50

So as a fishery guy, you'd have insight into that business plan.

SPEAKER_02 22:53

Aaron Powell Yeah. I think that just the idea of and it's not even just from working in government, somebody coming to California to do a pretty intensive, you know, uh industry here. I didn't say that.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

As regulated as we are, right? It's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 23:12

Yeah. And the fact that they hadn't done it before. Yeah. They had people that were components of it.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

Kind of a problem.

SPEAKER_02 23:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

Out of the game. Yes. And then offshore wind. I mean, that looks like that's tanking for now, right?

SPEAKER_02 23:24

Aaron Ross Powell, no, I th I mean I wouldn't say tanking. I think that there's um uh a a big um hurdle that's gonna happen is the Prop 4 money that's coming from the state. And there's gonna be people up and down the state fighting for that. And if we were to get that, it would it would be it would help a lot. Um is Prop 4 money gonna do for that? So there's a climate change money and it's I think there's 400 million? I I forget the number. But the the the issue is that Long Beach already has a port. Long Beach wants to take all that money and they want to manufacture all of the um uh turbines and stuff and have them shipped up here uh for the leases that are here, which to me seems ridiculous. But at the same time, uh the argument is they already have an operating port. If this doesn't work out and it fails, then um at least you're not putting a bunch of money into something that couldn't be supported. But our argument is that it's we're right next to the most wind that's off of our coast, and it would be best of those things to be manufactured here locally. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr. There's a big uh there's a uh wind energy conference that's coming up in Long Beach. And so we're trying to provide as much support down there. Try and get the lobbyists to look the let's go, man.

SPEAKER_00 24:50

Let's go avocate. So I I guess point being is that there's so much boom and bust and and and it seems like we can't get it right. I mean, Halverson's was gonna be a big thing when I was a young man and had had more hair. I mean, that was gonna be like the big rock and roll venue, the convention center, the whole nine, and uh Marriott, I forget whatever.

SPEAKER_02 25:10

Trevor Burrus, Jr. They even put in the elevator shaft. The the foundations for them are still out there.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

Aaron Ross Powell Right, right. So so you get the sense of like the the sense that we can't get anything right in the county or the city inside not any not everything, but economic development-wise, Hershey's came and left and left. And who know who knows what other, you know, Home Depot. I mean, we go on and on. And these are just things that I vaguely know about. Did Trader Joe's ever want to come?

SPEAKER_02 25:39

Maybe they're No, I think that's never been a uh release as far as reaching out to the city that I've been here for twenty years and they've never um reached out and had any c serious interests. Home Depot's always they're still looking right now. Home depots we talk to them at least once a month.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

Aaron Ross Powell And Walmart's gonna go to the old Kmart building?

SPEAKER_02 25:58

Uh so the Walmart going in there is just gonna be a grocery store. Okay. And it's not definitive net. I think uh I'm hoping I'm not talking out of line, but I talked to the property owner, they just extended their um uh basically put up or quit um to April. Um so definitely still interested. What they want to do is they have, you know, big grocery stores and that's just gonna be the grocery store component and they'll maintain the property at Bay Shore Mall for other merchandise.

SPEAKER_00 26:30

The back of a mall and an old God shop building.

SPEAKER_02 26:33

See, they own that though. So they bought Oh, they bought it. Yeah, so that's a separate parcel from the rest of the mall.

SPEAKER_00 26:38

I gotcha. So I guess where I'm going in in my conspiracy theory mind, which I don't do this much, is like there's there's some outside or inside force that keeps this thing from this thing from prospering. And I I love your insight as to what what you think some of that is. And you don't need to name names or or you I don't care. It's you're you're interviewed the but the idea of what what obstructionist uh people, uh organizations, mofos, are behind the fact that we can't frickin' get it right. I mean, Ukaya, Santa Rosa, I mean pla Reading gets growth. They get jobs. We don't we don't do that great. Um in fact we do we're on the declination usually, and it's kind of um it's making a lot of us, frankly, quite mad out there. Yeah. And I I don't expect you to answer for that, but I want to I I'd love your insight as to what the hell, man.

Boom, Bust, And Missed Opportunities

SPEAKER_02 27:33

Yeah. I well, I think a lot of it has to do with uh our zoning, believe it or not. Um we've had bigger companies come to our area and looking to do industrial-related work or light industrial-related work. And uh the majority of our vacant properties that are in our what we call industrial areas are coastal dependent industrial. And so that really limits the amount of uses that you can have there.

SPEAKER_00 27:59

What does that mean?

SPEAKER_02 28:01

So basically in order for it to be principally permitted there, it has to be directly tied to the bay. So basically commercial fishing. Um there's other uses that you could justify for that. Um but it's very much a a zoning that is specific to fishing because you know we wanted to protect our fishing industry and it was booming back in the 1960s when these codes were developed. Oh, actually 1980s, but either way, um when they were developed, it was very much with the intent of protecting the fishing industry. Now with regulations and other things associated with the fishing industry, I think that the more modern fishermen understand that um the fleet is going to decrease and the need for that isn't there so much anymore. So that's one thing that we're really trying to do is do an update to our local coaster program to make sure that we um have a little bit more leeway with that zoning district changing and getting rid of some of it because we have a surplus of it and being able to get um more opportunities for folks to be here. I also think that it's we just don't have the population. You know, the the people that wanted the east-west rail and or to replenish the old rail. Um the only way that that's viable is if you're shipping coal, and that would bring a lot of jobs. But I don't know if we want to turn in Humboldty into Pittsburgh.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

Yeah. How much coal is under underneath our us anyway?

SPEAKER_02 29:30

Aaron Powell So that's I think behind us. But I do think that there's opportunity now with um remote working and those type of things that we can be we have the new fiber cables here, we have the communication capabilities and we have the ability to recruit um businesses like that.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

Aaron Powell So the guys in Arcata with the cable is that what what is that designed to do? It's it goes to Singapore or Taiwan or wherever. Is it designed to be a redundancy for the nation for us? I'm it's to pipe into that?

SPEAKER_02 30:05

It's just provides us uh a more reliable and uh uh service. You know, I don't know the intricacies of like who benefits from it. I know that we definitely do. A couple of jobs, right? Yeah, and there's another one. Uh over by PGE is another one where it comes up to.

SPEAKER_00 30:23

Right.

SPEAKER_02 30:23

It allows I mean, now with Virofiber coming here and we're getting hardwired, it's not, you know, Wi-Fi and it's not done by that. It's it it makes it a lot more secure and much more reliable.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

Dude, we got Vero today in my business. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 30:36

It's insane.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

They conquered, they fired it up.

SPEAKER_02 30:40

And if I'm gonna poop on any company, it'll be optimum. Oh, yeah. So I feel good about this. But they're awful. They uh my daughter is in a rental over by the hospital and pays$75 a month because they're competing with Optimum. My mother lives on Unincorporated County over by the golf course, and uh she pays$152. Same service, one giga internet, that's it. And I called them and talked round in circles and round in circles, told them I was gonna get out of, which I wouldn't do because ATT doesn't work doesn't work. So I got them down to 120.

SPEAKER_00 31:25

I was gonna say usually they're worse. So you got a couple. You you negotiated a little bit. How'd you feel about that? I was still pissed. This is not a win-win. This is this is a win and uh No, I um it's a monopoly, dude. Yeah. When they bought Sedlink, it was uh it was kind of over. They cut half the work more than half the workforce nationally. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 31:47

Yeah. And you talk, did you ever have um uh come on, the Hawaiian guy that used to work for Access Humble. Um, yeah, McLaughlin. You get his Divca. Divca is the digital anyway, it's a regulation that it's just so backwards and so wrong that it needs to be fixed.

SPEAKER_00 32:07

Yeah. Yeah. Nice guy though. He's he negotiated that deal for all those channels. Yeah. Which you will be on here shortly. Yes. Hey. Do we look okay on TV?

SPEAKER_02 32:18

But anyway, I do think that there's there's opportunity up here. I think that there's a lot of folks who don't, you know, want development, you know, because they don't want to bring um, you know, that expansion. You have groups here that are very much um anti-spraw and don't want us to go, everything's gotta be in Eureka. That's where the jobs are, and we're not gonna look into McKinleyville, Trinidad, Rio Dell, those other areas that have not been built out and have more opportunities for growth.

SPEAKER_00 32:51

Right. Yeah, so it's an interesting battle of uh philosophies in terms of you know, I got kids and grandkids, you know, that will live here, and I don't know. I I don't know where they're gonna work. You know, and and I and I understand it's not gonna be Santa Rosa. We're gonna have, you know, um Micron come in with 500 jobs. That'd be great. It ain't happening. However, um I think a lot of that headspace poops on a future that could could have a lot of cool jobs if if people played their cards right. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 33:22

Yeah, I think that sustainably wise, I think those kind of remote working jobs are are are good because I think that A, they'll be more sustainable. I mean, if we you know put all our eggs into, you know, timber obviously didn't work, put all our eggs into fishing is still functionable. Weeds never build back, right? I don't know about never. I think if it the we do f we're not the county. The county it it hurts a lot because a lot of theirs is manufacturing. We don't have a lot of manufacturing. We have a lot of dispensaries. You have a lot of dispersions. And they've been we have a very almost as many Dutch brothers. Yeah, they've done um you know, their I see the numbers. They they they've been pretty straight. You know, there's been a drop just like our revenues dropped in sales tax. There's been a drop uh in the dispensaries, but it's not any more significant than what we've had for others.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

I always think weed would be tough because you you can't create a lot more demand. People that smoke weed or are eating weed are gonna probably do that. Are already doing that. So are we gonna raise up a new generation of weed smokers and it's free now. It's free.

SPEAKER_02 34:26

I mean, I remember so I mean, I remember buying ounce ounces of weed for for three hundred, you know, bucks. And you know, you you can get an ounce for like fifty bucks now.

SPEAKER_00 34:37

Aaron Powell Oh, in Oregon it's worse. It's like it's so and if we're local, it's pretty much free.

SPEAKER_02 34:42

Aaron Powell Yeah. If you know you know a guy. Yeah. So I understand that stuff. I think that the the feds changing it w would help, but I don't think you know the whole idea of us being the Napa of weed is um it's a good theory, and I think that there's certain niches where that would work, but it's not going to sustain cannabis up here.

SPEAKER_00 35:00

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah, I agree. So if you're just joining us, or you will be joining us, or you're joining us right now, it's my best friend Miles Slattery, Eureka City manager. And uh so we talked about trails. We talked about we'll go back to housing in a minute. Um talked about the bike stuff that's happened. What about uh the new transit center? That's gonna be cool, right?

SPEAKER_02 35:23

Yeah, and that'll incorporate housing too. We just we meet weekly on that. Uh Dan Coe has finally secured all the funding along with HTA. I think it's gonna be 51 residential units as well as the transit center.

SPEAKER_04 35:35

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 35:36

Um that's um gonna be great. We're also looking into a potential parking garage right now, too. So HTA is looking into some grant funding for that. But the transit centers, um it'll be great, you know.

SPEAKER_00 35:51

Parking garage. That sounds good.

Zoning, Industry Limits, And Fiber

SPEAKER_02 35:54

Yeah, it's uh there's an opposite. So they are looking for another revenue stream, and they've with the transit center being there, a park and ride would help with that. And so it this parking structure, we just met with this company called the Smith Group, and um it's pretty cool. They have these new parking structures now that are actually less costly as regular parking structures that basically just you have bays that you pull your car into and it's all automated. They grab the car and they just like Legos, they they put it on a lift and they slot it in a spot.

SPEAKER_00 36:26

Oh, that's cool.

SPEAKER_02 36:27

And put it in there. So we're looking at that as a potential option.

SPEAKER_00 36:31

Aaron Ross Powell The old school of driving round and round and round. Yeah, up in the curly cues. Remember the one in downtown the city con uh community concourse by the city center? Or UTC has a pretty fat one, too. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:42

UTC, yeah. University town center in La Halloween.

SPEAKER_00 36:45

Uh who else? There's a really cool uh Davis has a big one. But so this is just a racket stack. That's cool.

SPEAKER_02 36:52

Yeah. High tech. That's the idea. I mean, we're in the very early stages of it. We just met with them for the first time, and that was one of the options they brought up.

SPEAKER_00 37:00

So let's talk about the uh the tr the trans transit center. What does it do for those of us who have no clue why this is cool?

SPEAKER_02 37:08

Aaron Ross Powell It'll be the hub for our regional transportation for the bus system. It also includes Amtrak and those other things with Greyhound. And so um it will be a hub for that, and it'll be the bottom floor of a four-story building, and it will have um office space they're looking at leasing out, and then probably a cafe and a little trinket store uh uh uh there. It'll be you know, it's kind of this it'll be much more elaborate than what Arcada has, but it's uh similar with that idea. Aaron Powell So bike storage for people that are bike storage and um uh ride shares.

SPEAKER_00 37:45

Um, what high-speed train rail? Will they will they be able to come in there?

SPEAKER_02 37:50

You'll be able to get on a bus to get you to get to what? Yes. But yeah, that's that's uh rail's not gonna happen. But it's it's it's good. It's gonna increase the frequency of trips to um Arcata. We'll be going every half hour up to Arcata from H Street there. It's already their uh major transit um hub. It just doesn't have their facilities there. So it'll be nice for them to move in there. So Hubble Transit Authority will be there. And they've been talking to some local um nonprofits and other government agencies to fill up the rest of the spot.

SPEAKER_00 38:27

Cool.

SPEAKER_02 38:28

Down below.

SPEAKER_00 38:28

Aaron Ross Powell And uh I was talking to somebody about that maybe a little uh shuttle that goes around Old Town just drop the people around.

SPEAKER_02 38:35

Yeah, we're trying to do that to mitigate um some of the concerns people have about parking. We were looked at a grant to get a um automated shuttle and hold 12 people. And the idea would be that, you know, the a dorny parking lot is very rarely used. And so the idea would be you'd start there and then it'd go in a loop, go down to 1st Street, go up to C Street, go back up to 2nd, and just do a loop and be able to drop people off where they want to get dropped off.

SPEAKER_00 39:02

Automated in terms of time and schedule? No, no driver. No driver.

SPEAKER_02 39:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:07

That'll be fun.

SPEAKER_02 39:08

Super cool.

SPEAKER_00 39:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:09

You should check it out. They're cool. Anyway, also to mitigate some of the concerns and because people are worried um concerned about parking is the um the microtransit. So HTA just started a new program where you pay two bucks. Um they have virtual stops. Basically, they'll pick you up similar to dial a ride that they did for some of the um some of our elderly c community members, but this is open to the available to everybody now. There's an app you can sign on, you can get in, two bucks will get you where you want to go.

SPEAKER_00 39:40

Within the city?

SPEAKER_02 39:41

Yeah, within the city.

SPEAKER_00 39:42

That's a smoking killer deal.

SPEAKER_02 39:45

Yeah. I told them they should do it after two a.m. so I could use it at more appropriate times. Let's run that 24-7. Get that baby get that baby going. Right now it only goes, I think it's eight to six.

SPEAKER_00 39:57

Wow. Well, I like it. So uh before we go into parking real quick, we're gonna do the quiz, so maybe you get you win yourself a uh Dick Taylor bridge. Sweet. I'm in. But uh don't get too carried away yet. You have a one in the I'm not good at these.

SPEAKER_02 40:11

I do that Papstein show and I'm about I'm about two for sixty. Hey Brian. I'm about two for sixty. Does he uh does he do uh like quiz questions or something? Well it's better now because it's multiple choice. Prior to that, it was I was really embarrassing myself when I didn't have multiple choice.

SPEAKER_00 40:28

Maybe he renamed his show, that Papstein show.

SPEAKER_02 40:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 40:35

Talk shop. Yes. So you and Brian share a distinction. I'm gonna just uh ouch you right now. You're the only two people that have been on the show twice. Hey sweet. Hey, look at you go. Nice. I've been on twice. Nice. So join the club. Welcome. It's a green jacket in the back for you.

SPEAKER_02 40:51

Aaron Powell I'm gonna be the first to be three, though, Brian.

SPEAKER_00 40:53

Oh, look at this. This guy's calling you out, bro. So uh so we're all agreed that we have a housing crisis, we have a homeless crisis and a health crisis. Um I don't think you know, you're not St. Joe's. I don't know if you can really address medical and I don't even want to bring up Providence.

SPEAKER_02 41:09

Providence imaging, I I've been trying to get my mom, she gets a lump in her, and she got um uh referred for a mammogram and an ultrasound to look at it. This is back in October. Get the run around saying that they need her old mammogram. And I said it was 40 years ago. We called up scripts down in La Jolla. Good luck. They no longer have it. It's not there. I've been going back, I call them like at least once a week, if not twice a week. And still and then we finally get around it and they say, Oh, now we're booked out till July. It's like what if that's an issue?

SPEAKER_00 41:43

Yeah, what if that's an issue? Yeah. Yeah. It's mind-blowing. Yeah, that's tough, man. Anyway. Talk to me off off-camera. Yeah. Um, and then the homelessness, I I I I know that I I don't know. You must have some thoughts on that before we talk about parking and the new housing. So how how do we how do you fix that in America, Aaron Humboldt, or in Eureka?

SPEAKER_02 42:07

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, I mean, it's everywhere. But I don't think that there, you know, people say we're gonna solve homelessness. I think that there's that doesn't exist until we become socialist and everybody gets, you know, a certain portion of whatever it may be. But I think that we're doing our best to address it. I mean, a lot of the issues that we have are people not taking advantage of the services that are being offered. Um I'm not saying that's everybody, but there's definitely a good contingency of that that's out there. So what we've done is we've tried to establish um places for folks to go with very low barriers. Um a lot of our traditional I mean, we do really well here in Eureka. We have well over 300 uh shelter beds that are available. Uh then that are they have been full in the f six years that I've been twice. There's always been capacity. So that's a little frustrating, but a lot of those issues are because our traditional shelter spaces don't allow for couples, don't allow for dogs. And so we recently opened up with Betty, the Bayside Village. That is ultra low barrier. They allow dogs, they allow for couples. Um and you still don't get full participation. How many beds does she have? There's 38 at at that uh Bayview.

SPEAKER_00 43:23

Aaron Powell What did you say about Betty? She's freaking amazing.

SPEAKER_02 43:26

Aaron Powell No, she's amazing. You saw her today. We did our uh Pathway to Payday over there, and she is amazing. And you know, she's there's some struggles there when you're dealing with this population. We have people that have not lived inside for over 30 years. Yeah. And some 20 years.

SPEAKER_04 43:41

Wow.

Transit Center, Housing, And Smart Parking

SPEAKER_02 43:42

So just getting them there is a victory, but managing it is extremely difficult. Aaron Powell But with more experience, I think we get more of those around. And I think at some point in time when there's folks who we have these spots for folks to go, there needs to be some sort of deterrent and some sort of accountability. We've we are about as the most compassionate community and have done more related to social services and mental health as a municipal government than anybody in the United States, in my opinion. I mean, we've we've we've done a lot of things that cities don't typically do. They're typically done by counties or uh states. Yeah. Yeah. I I our mental health clinician, our our um social services manager, Jeff Davis, he just Got um invited to the National League of Cities to go report on our programs. Lenny, um, our commander, La France, and our managing mental health clinician Jacob Rosen, who you should have on here. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 44:43

Jacob Rosen.

SPEAKER_02 44:44

He's uh they go and they do trainings up and down the state for um the programming that we do.

SPEAKER_00 44:50

They're cutting-edge guys, right?

SPEAKER_02 44:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:52

Wow. Real quick, did you have anything to do with the uh skywalk at the zoo? Yeah, we got Is that part of your deal too? We got the funding for that. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 45:00

Our staff.

SPEAKER_00 45:01

Huh.

SPEAKER_02 45:02

Yeah. A lot of it was uh thanks to the lodging alliance, they gave us close to two million, about two million, and then uh or two point one and then uh land and water conservation fund, other grants, about seven million dollars for that.

SPEAKER_00 45:17

Aaron Powell So I don't think I ever got my my answer I was looking for earlier. Just circle back real quick. Yeah. And it to I think it's an easy answer. So why haven't we grown? What's what are the obstacles? You you said you said a couple things, but there's institutionally we're problematic with planning and uh stuff to grow and go, it's a pain in the ass.

SPEAKER_02 45:37

Aaron Ross Powell It is. And there's certain agency I I think a lot of I think that why I can get stuff done is I'm willing to take risks. I mean, when we started our CAPE program, which is a social services program, I was told I was sniffing glue. And we started that with just donations from um local events, bars would hold happy hours and we get 10 percent. So that funded that and started it.

SPEAKER_00 46:00

I think you just call it K?

SPEAKER_02 46:02

CAPE program. It's a community access program for Eureka. It's our uplift program that we do. You know, we started out with just young children and disadvantaged children and getting them so we would take that funny that funding and we would get them into after school programs, get them into camps, those type of things. Cool. And then we moved on and now we're doing it for for everybody. So now we do rapid rehousing, we do job skills training programs, we do um Pathway to Payday, which gets people's jobs. So we've been doing that for a while. Boys and girls clubs sort of. When we did that, you know, we even got a call from a government agency that will be made nameless and told us that what we're doing is not legal and that we had problems with that. And so there was threats of them coming after us. But a lot of folks, and I think this happens a lot with government entities, is you know, a lawyer is there to give you legal counsel and to uh tell you what the liabilities are. And if you're running a program or you're running a city or a government, you're you weigh that and you try to mitigate it as much as possible. But if it's something that's truly beneficial for the community, you take more risk, in my opinion. And the more risks you take, the more successful you are.

SPEAKER_00 47:16

Aaron Powell Do it for kids, man.

SPEAKER_02 47:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:18

Do you have pretty good counselor with the city?

SPEAKER_02 47:20

Yeah, yeah. Definitely. We've had we've had a lot of people. Do you have a guy or girl or he's a guy right now? Um we've had issues in the past, but um I think later? Well, no. So Bob's been doing this for years. Yeah. He's fully understanding that you are there. We both I don't oversee him, he doesn't say oversee me. We both work for counsel, but his job is to provide legal advice. My job is to make decisions on that legal device. Um sometimes in certain agencies that that line gets blurred. And I think that's a problem. I think that there's a lot of folks that are so risk averse that nothing gets done.

SPEAKER_00 48:02

Well, I like that. Part of leadership. Yeah. Hey, time for the quiz show. All right. Oh, wrong my bell. Miles Lattery for all the money. And a what? Oh, this is perfect. Orange bourbon pecan, 65% dark, my friend. Perfect. Don't be touching it too much. Orange is my favorite color. This is delicious, by the way. Question number one. What what gives you life and what sucks your soul dry?

SPEAKER_02 48:31

I don't know if there's anything that sucks my soul dry. I'm pretty jaded, but I would say what's what's all I would say my kids, my kids give me life for sure. And it's why I do what I do. For sure. So being with your kids.

SPEAKER_00 48:47

Yeah, 100%. And uh something's gotta be kryptonite for you that takes your takes you down. Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:56

Or south or I think that there's certain um I wouldn't I I wouldn't say sucks my soul, that's a little bit extreme. But there is a lot of frustration when you are dealing with um uh uh different agencies and not um like what I talked about before, when we you're you we have a s certain project that is so beneficial to the city and to our overall region. And I've been through a three-year process um trying to get to that point. And it has a lot to do with people not being willing to take a chance and and make it happen. Right. And um we're we're there now, and I'm very um happy that we've gotten there, but that sucked my soul for a long time because of you're sitting there and thinking you're on the same page, and then you come back and you know, there's this or that that wasn't done, and this wasn't crossed, and this wasn't done here. And people give me grief and say that I'm just haphazard about it. Believe me, I I do all the research and I I knowingly do these things, not just because um I d I don't want to listen to people. I think it's more because uh we want to get stuff done.

SPEAKER_00 50:13

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I see that foot draggers and obstructionists.

SPEAKER_02 50:17

Uh yeah, you have people that have uh not only from the risk-averse thing, but you have people that spend more time not doing their job than it takes to do their job or finding reason why they can't do things as opposed to finding reasons why they can do things.

SPEAKER_03 50:31

Yeah.

Microtransit And The Old Town Loop

SPEAKER_02 50:32

And you know, I don't want to nail all of them, but but there's planners are very uh you know, this idea, and I think that's the reason why I should have brought that up too, is for the lack of development here. People want this highest and best use, and it has no thought about what the market will bear. So when we have folks that want to do something on C to F Street and they want to build a canal that looks like, you know, you're in Amsterdam, well, that's great. I'd love to have that too. But you know, let's be practical. There has to be some sort of idea of what's going to be there. And so when people do and I've gotten a lot more affection for planning, but it's it's it's really hard to plan your way into. We had a former um uh employee that worked in planning that um changed one of our zoning districts to downtown because they felt that our car dealerships shouldn't be in the areas of there, and they wanted to concentrate the car dealerships. And so they changed this big chunk of service commercial to downtown. And I'm dealing with the repercussions like now not having the ability to put people into locations. I think that's a huge component. Now, I don't want it to be willy-nilly, and there has to be some sort of regulation so you don't turn into Las Vegas, but um you know, there needs to be a little bit more um common sense about what the market bears.

SPEAKER_00 52:02

Okay. Question number three. Are you ready? Yes. I didn't know you were cueing me. Yeah. Yeah, I'm teeing it up. So uh you got the day off. What do you want to do? It's fully paid, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. What's your schedule? What's in your schedule?

SPEAKER_02 52:18

I would surf in the morning, and then I would go and have uh a brunch with mimosas, and then I would golf in the afternoon. Nice. What would you do in the evening? In the evening, I'd probably just go to a nice dinner, or if I'm a little bit more uh in the mood, I'd probably go to karaoke.

SPEAKER_00 52:40

Karaoke. Whoa.

SPEAKER_02 52:42

Who does karaoke? Everybody does. I was there last night. Uh Shanty does it on Wednesdays. Uh Visa Del Mar does it on Thursday. Um I think the Sirens Song does it on the weekend.

SPEAKER_00 52:55

Cool places.

SPEAKER_02 52:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:56

Are you a karaoke guy?

SPEAKER_02 52:58

I get yes, I enjoy it.

SPEAKER_00 53:00

A little bit.

SPEAKER_02 53:00

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 53:01

Yeah. I do a a good rendition of King of the Road. Oh, nice. Roger Miller.

SPEAKER_02 53:06

I mix it up as much as possible. Okay, I bet you do. Yeah. I'm not too worried about what I sound like.

SPEAKER_00 53:11

That's good. Actually, that's good. That's good. Hey, guess what? You are the winner, winner, chicken dinner of the uh orange bourbon. It's gone. There was no wrong answer, though. Well, that's true. It's probably true. So uh last question about parking in downtown, and then talk about your legacy. What um walk me through the primer, the the the fundamentals of why we built uh why we're building out downtown and housing and state funding and why it's cool and why there's no parking and why we're under we're under studies show that we're we're we have plenty of parking and how that all pans out. When I look at that thing across from me and I go, oh crap, um, where are they gonna put all the cars? They're not gonna put them in McRae Nissan's lot. That's already full of cars. So tell me more about um from uh uh birth to death, how the arc of that housing story.

Quiz Break: Fuel And Frustrations

SPEAKER_02 54:02

So it all starts with the state. They have a RENA, which is regional housing needs allocation, which basically the federal government determines what your housing needs are through this ridiculous calculation, and um it goes to the region. Um the entity that houses this is uh Humboldt County Association's government. So we get I'm just gonna throw a number out there, 2,000 units that we need. That 2,000 units are mixed into different income levels, so it's above market, market, and then affordable. Um so for years it was just like a planning exercise. Um and then the state determined that affordable housing and not being able to live in California is a huge issue. So they got a little bit more stringent on it. Prior to that, um, the last housing cycle, which was 2019, it's every seven years. Um, they would just make you demonstrate through zoning and where you are with your city that you had the capacity to build this and not necessarily demonstrate building it. Then they got into affordable housing. Um, they wanted us to make it happen. I don't want to get into too long of it, but it eventually ended up and we have a very supportive council for housing and especially affordable housing. And so um we offered up our properties in order to make this happen and demonstrate we can get there. We've been extremely successful. We had 332 units that we were supposed to build in seven years. We're at 302 fully funded. Um so we're doing really well as it comes to that. Um so when we did it, we picked out nine properties, all owned by the city. Um we did the first round, which is the one with eighth and g and sunny and myrtle and six and M. Um, that was put out to proposal. There was some there was some um opposition for sure by the local businesses that were in that area, but then we started moving into Old Town and we were gonna do fifth and H, fourth and G, and fifth and D. That's when when we started doing notifications, we got a big, hey, this is gonna screw up my business, and there's not enough parking down here. So we went back and offered it up to everybody and said, hey, we'll put this on pause, let's trade some properties, um, and we're willing to do that. Um we worked with Security National and Redwood Capital Bank. Security National was about to pull the trigger on something and they backed out at the end and didn't trade. But then Redwood Capital worked with Greg Pearson, he had property, and we traded fifth and G, Fourth and H, and Fifth and K to them for the properties up there to lessen the impact. So um we once they got that property, we still move forward with the rest of our properties and can continue to do that. Um the parking issues, and I'm just giving you traffic engineering numbers here. We do a traffic study every single year on all of our parking lots. Um this more recent one, we did a traffic study, which incorporates all of the years of data that we had in the past. And when we do those studies, we do them in the summertime at peak hours and we determine what the what the capacity is and where they're at. Um when you're looking at that, we were below 50 percent capacity all the time. Now, everybody's gonna yell at me, but at when you Okay. When you go there at Friday Night Markets, of course it's gonna be filled. But when you look at the you know, a full month of it, that's where we were at. So anyway, we got um you know, we're still cognizant of that, and that's why we do those mitigation measures. So we're trying to make it so that um folks still have access to parking. Um, and if not, they have a way of getting, you know, from a parking lot to their cell, which will be that shuttle and then microtransit. So we'll continue to do that, and we're also looking at a parking garage. And the parking garage would be a game changer for that area, not only for HTA for their parking ride, but also for the businesses down there. So we're we're gonna pursue that. The grant is due in May, I believe. And so Go garage. We're putting that together now.

SPEAKER_00 58:17

Sounds good. Hey, thanks for being here. Of course. Yeah. Anytime. Tell us about your legacy. What do you want to be remembered for?

SPEAKER_02 58:22

We talked about this last time. I'm not a big legacy, but my children are my legacy. That's true. Whatever they do, I I I I want them to good be good people and enjoy life. And if they do that, I'm I'm happy.

SPEAKER_00 58:34

I like it. What's your tombstone say?

SPEAKER_02 58:37

Uh that's a good question. I probably won't have a tombstone, is what I'll do. I'm gonna be sprinkled. Yes. My tombstone will be somewhere in the surf somewhere.

SPEAKER_00 58:48

I like that. Mine's gonna say we'll see where this goes.

unknown 58:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:52

I will say this. My son came up with a really good one, which I thought is a great saying, and I don't know how to say it in Latin, but um um I will because I never thought I couldn't. And I think that's a great one.

SPEAKER_00 59:04

That's a good one. It's deeper.

unknown 59:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:06

Hey, well, thanks for being here, man. All right. Hey, thanks for joining us. Uh 100% Humboldt. Like us, love us, send us money, uh, send us. Really? You take donations? Yeah, we do. I got a little code on there. Okay. Yeah, no. Oh, oh, and don't forget Quality Body Works in Ross. Ross, what's up, really? Ross. Yeah, big sponsor. And uh yeah, sponsor us and uh see us on uh Access Humboldt, all the podcast platforms and YouTube too. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, Scott. Appreciate it. Thank you, Nick. Thanks, Nick.