A Community of Interest

What makes a community?  Is it proximity? Is it culture? Is it interests in common?  Start thinking folk and start communicating by bulletin board or by broadcast.  Cause it is redistricting time.  That means that Humboldt County is going to draw some lines deciding which group of folks get to vote together on each county supervisor.  For us here in SoHum, we’ve had a continuing problem that Fortuna folk vote with us but they don’t have the same culture (whew, is that an understatement or what?)  So as Ernie Branscomb recently put it in an email to me,

We have absolutely nothing in common with Fortuna, yet it has been the very powerful tail that wags the dog for a very long time. Fortuna precludes us from having any true representation for our end of the county. We need a supervisor that can represent our rural lifestyle. I don’t think, that at this point, we can get a supervisor elected who advocates rural living, as the last election strongly suggested.

I have nothing against Fortuna or the people in it, I have many fast friends that live there, but Fortuna has Nothing in common with the far south end of the county, as they themselves would be quick to point out. … Just about anybody with an open mind will agree that we are NOT Fortuna. It’s high time that we represent ourselves.

Currently, there are three plans for redrawing the districts.  The county has done an excellent job of putting together maps of this.  Please take a look.  The red lines are the current districts.  To the right are bubbles for the three plans which if clicked change the map to show the options. (Hank and Eric Kirk have good posts on what is happening.)

I asked Estelle Fennell, a candidate for supervisor last time what she thought of these plans. Her response,

Of the three new proposals, 2A, 3A and 6A, only two keep Southern Humboldt intact.  2A splits Weott off from Southern Humboldt and I’ve heard from some Weott area residents that they’re not happy with that.  It may be possible to correct that and still have a workable plan. Both remaining proposals, 3A and 6A keep us intact and the reactions I’ve been hearing favor 3A just because 6A seems to be too radical and to create a fairly unwieldy district.
The bottom line for me is that we do have a couple of choices that keep Southern Humboldt intact and that makes me very happy. Now all we need is support for a united Southern Humboldt at the Board of Supervisors.

 

Now 3A throws us and Ferndale together which might be whole new ball of wax.  6A is a big checkmark of unknown linking SoHum with rural districts up north. We have a few months to gather information and speak out before a decision is made.  Gather your information and make a decision because this is going to affect us for years to come.

PS to those of you in SoHum who did not fill out the census forms, if we had more people on the books here in SoHum then we would have our own district.  And to the census folk, next time, please, if you really are serious about getting accurate accounts, hire folks from within their own watershed to do the count.  We had so many wide-eyed folk wandering around our neighborhood for days that I thought someone might be filming a new reality TV show called “Fear and Failure: Trying to Locate the Lost Tribes in the Dangerous Hills of Humboldt.”

UPDATE: See Hank’s excellent analysis of the Board’s decision to put their eggs in the 2A basket.

Facebooktwitterpinterestmail

Join the discussion! For rules visit: https://kymkemp.com/commenting-rules

Comments system how-to: https://wpdiscuz.com/community/postid/10599/

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

12 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Jim Ferguson
Guest
12 years ago

Actually, at yesterday’s Board of Supervisor’s meeting, they voted to pursue Plan 2a with some minor modifications, but include Weott back in the So Hum sphere. The next public hearing is September 13 @ 1:30 and they could vote then to make that their final choice, especially since they need to have something locked into place by the beginning of October. So, the reality is, if people have a problem with 2a and want others considered, they have less than a month.

longwind
Guest
longwind
12 years ago

Apparently Carolyn Crnich present option 2a as the ‘least radical’ option, meaning I think it’s the one that moved the fewest precincts. It just gouges Scotia out of the Second District, I believe.

3a is the one folks down here united behind, so of course it didn’t receive attention at the Supes yesterday. Sad to say, I couldn’t read the Times-Standard’s reporting this morning because of the new paywall, and I turn out to be too thick to erase the right cookies, though I tried, God knows I tried.

Does anyone know what Clif didn’t do for us this time?

trackback

[…] Blackbelt also has a post on subject. Advertisement GA_googleAddAttr("AdOpt", "0"); GA_googleAddAttr("Origin", "other"); […]

trackback

[…] Blackbelt also has a post on subject. Advertisement GA_googleAddAttr("AdOpt", "0"); GA_googleAddAttr("Origin", "other"); […]

G.I.B.
Guest
G.I.B.
12 years ago

Clif? Oh yeah, that’s the guy that supposedly represents SoHum. Another pandering politician. 🙁

G.I.B.
Guest
G.I.B.
12 years ago

Clif? Oh yeah, that’s the guy that supposedly represents SoHum. Another pandering politician. 🙁

tra
Guest
tra
12 years ago

Well there wasn’t anything in the Times-Standard article today to indicate whether Clif had anything to say about the way option 2a would split up Scotia and Rio Dell, and the way it would divide the Avenue of the Giants (in fact the T-S report didn’t even mention the fact that Scotia would be split off from Rio Dell in option 2a).

And there was nothing on whether or not Clif even expressed a preference for option 3a and whether he did anything to try to persuade his colleagues that 3a was a better option from the point of view of not splitting up “communities of interest” that are currently in his district. The T-S article doesn’t even mention whether the vote to move forward with 2a was unanimous or not, and if not, then who voted against it.

And, at least so far, no post-meeting report from Hank. I guess we’ll have to wait for the Access Humboldt video to be available online to find out whether Clif made any contribution to the debate, and if so, what that contribution was.

tra
Guest
tra
12 years ago

Well there wasn’t anything in the Times-Standard article today to indicate whether Clif had anything to say about the way option 2a would split up Scotia and Rio Dell, and the way it would divide the Avenue of the Giants (in fact the T-S report didn’t even mention the fact that Scotia would be split off from Rio Dell in option 2a).

And there was nothing on whether or not Clif even expressed a preference for option 3a and whether he did anything to try to persuade his colleagues that 3a was a better option from the point of view of not splitting up “communities of interest” that are currently in his district. The T-S article doesn’t even mention whether the vote to move forward with 2a was unanimous or not, and if not, then who voted against it.

And, at least so far, no post-meeting report from Hank. I guess we’ll have to wait for the Access Humboldt video to be available online to find out whether Clif made any contribution to the debate, and if so, what that contribution was.

Ernie's Place
Guest
12 years ago

I have no problem with Cliff. We just want all of Southern Humboldt as a district. Fortuna would become part of a differnt district. We have tried meetings, we’ve tried letters, we’ve tried emals. Pitchforks anyone?

tra
Guest
tra
12 years ago

Clif’s a nice guy. But the question is, did he make any effort to represent the interests of SoHum in this re-districting, or is his hometown base of Fortuna the only “community of interest” that really matters to him?

Ernie's Place
Guest
12 years ago

I have no problem with Cliff. We just want all of Southern Humboldt as a district. Fortuna would become part of a differnt district. We have tried meetings, we’ve tried letters, we’ve tried emals. Pitchforks anyone?

tra
Guest
tra
12 years ago

Clif’s a nice guy. But the question is, did he make any effort to represent the interests of SoHum in this re-districting, or is his hometown base of Fortuna the only “community of interest” that really matters to him?