Humboldt Hit with Funding Losses in 2025

Stock photo of money

2025 was a year more affected by national politics than ever, as Humboldt County rallied to sustain services in an era of funding cuts. It was an active year for county government, which completed major planning efforts and dealt with a variety of social and financial challenges.

Federal Impact

The county struggled to deal with national policy changes throughout 2025. Donald Trump returned to office with an immediate flurry of executive orders included a freeze on federal funding that affected local community services grants.

The Community Economic Resilience Consortium (CERC), formed during the pandemic to forge collaboration on community issues, emerged as an important forum for networking local response.  “Rapid response work,” including turning to endowments and foundations to fill funding gaps, was described during a March 12 CERC meeting.

The group’s members described the federal moves as “very scary” and “terrifying.”

Further funding cuts came with the late fall passage of the grandly-titled One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a sweeping budget law that includes food assistance cuts.

Surveying of non-profit groups by the Northern California Association of Nonprofits quantified the impacts, as discussed during a late October CERC meeting. The effects include a collective loss of $6.86 million in funding during the year.

Democratic lawmakers also convened community forums, with Congressman Jared Huffman answering questions about endangered programs and agencies, deportations and cuts to services at a March 30 town hall in Eureka.

Concern about lack of food assistance grew so intense that Senator Mike McGuire hosted a mid-October online town hall forum on it, with leaders from the region’s largest food assistance programs warning of impacts on people struggling with food costs.

Local government meetings at times became town hall-like events, particularly in November, when Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week was proclaimed by cities and the county.

Trump’s moves have also impacted the offshore wind energy mapped off Humboldt’s coast.

His wind energy grudge was directed at funding in September, when a $427 million federal port development grant to the Humboldt Bay Harbor District was reeled back.

But there’s one way Trump’s rule-by-fiat approach could help Humboldt County – as the year ended, he issued an executive order that directs federal agencies to re-classify cannabis as a Schedule III substance, acknowledging its medical use and potentially lifting prohibitions on cannabis business tax deductions and banking.

Climate Action

Humboldt County’s quest to reduce its carbon emissions got off to a lurching start, with a draft of a Climate Action Plan scrapped due to its “unrealistic” proposals. In October of 2025, the county’s Planning Commission considered an overdue final draft of the plan for recommendation to the Board of Supervisors.

The plan gained the commission’s support but it wasn’t unanimous.

A main point of debate was the plan’s total greenhouse gas emissions threshold. The cap is consequential because it provides a basis for evaluating whether development projects will have significant impact under the California Environmental Quality Act.

A majority of commissioners vouched for a version of the plan with a cap set at a higher level than recommended by an outside consulting firm. 

The emissions cap was similarly divisive when the Board of Supervisors took up the plan for final approval two months later. At issue were the effects of new emission control rules on new development and their impacts in rural areas.

When he was asked which sector will be most affected by the plan’s emissions reductions measures, Planing Director John Ford said the need to address climate change is an across-the-board responsibility.

The board’s approval was unanimous and although the plan’s emissions threshold is still not as low as recommended by the consulting firm, it’s higher than what was recommended by the Planning Commission.

The plan covers the entire county, targeting the emissions of various transportation and development activities with 12 strategies for limiting them.

They include the “cornerstone” measure of creating an inter-governmental “regional climate coalition,” a variety of measures to reduce vehicle use and encourage use of electric vehicles, and “decarbonization” of new construction.

Cannabis: ‘The Money Is Not There’

In 2025 the county began taking an action that symbolized the decline of the local cannabis industry – revoking cultivation permits due to non-payment of excise taxes. The Board of Supervisors approved 21 permit revocations – representing $343,000 worth of debt – at a meeting in March, their holders having failed to enter payment plans.

Smaller-scale farms are having the hardest time adapting to the legal cannabis economy and that’s seen in the tax debt scenario. Most of the revoked permits were for cultivation areas under 10,000 square feet.

More revocations followed in April and June, bringing the total number to 65.

But during hearings, farmers described the Measure S excise tax as “dysfunctional” and supervisors voted to repeal it in late October.

It had been suspended for two years, then reinstated at a level of 10 percent.

But farmers told supervisors “the money is not there” even for the drastically lowered level.

2025’s end was the deadline for paying back tax debts. Although supervisors had previously been firm on it, they approved a further four years of payment opportunity, provided the debts are paid a rate of 25 percent a year and payment agreements are entered.

The approval wasn’t unanimous, as Supervisor Steve Madrone supported a shorter payment timeframe.

At the time, the county was owed $13.4 million in Measure S taxes.

The county also took actions to support the cannabis economy during the year, with rule changes making it easier to do smaller-scale business and adding payment of state licensing fees to grants available under the county’s Project Trellis program.

The near future of the local cannabis industry doesn’t look much better than its recent past, with the county’s formerly advantageous remote location now a liability due to the high expense of compliance in a legal market that favors high crop volume.

During a public comment period preceding supervisors’ repeal of Measure S, one farmer said “things have changed dramatically and they’re not going to change back.”

Homelessness Dilemma

July 1, 2025 marked the start of the county’s fiscal year and the new budget featured a boost to address homelessness – $5.7 million in state grant funding.

This year will include a new layer of homeless assistance bureaucracy, a committee tasked with formulating a “compassionate assistance ordinance.”

The call for doing that was made by supervisors, although not all of them, during a November discussion on drafting an ordinance banning overnight camping on county properties.

Sheriff Billy Honsal described the camping as widespread and causing public health issues. He said the Sheriff’s Office would continue its practice of “leading with compassion” when it comes to enforcement.

But Supervisor Natalie Arroyo said a similar law was enacted when she was on the Eureka City Council and it “caused a lot of strife” and wasn’t effective.

Taking enforcement actions against homeless people – even if the stated goal is to use it as leverage to help them – is controversial.  And during a public comment period on the no camping ordinance proposal, the effort was described as “criminalizing the homeless.”

Madrone proposed drafting a “compassionate assistance” ordinance instead.

A majority of Supervisors approved forming a committee made up of county staff and two supervisors to figure out how to etch the concept into law.

Arroyo voted against doing so, as she has doubts whether it will be a good use of staff time.

The challenge of addressing homeless was starkly depicted, with Supervisor Michelle Bushnell describing her mother’s experience with it.

“She could have came and stayed with me – she didn’t want to, she chose under the bridge,” she said.

A ‘Unique Identity’ for McKinleyville

The McKinleyville Town Center Ordinance, the county’s most formidable land use planning task of 2025, saw completion and approval after six years of contentious work.

On the surface, the ordinance seems crowd-pleasing.

It applies mixed use zoning to create a 134-acre “viable town center” that encourages pedestrian and bicycle travel in a higher-density, multi-story development with a “community focal point” feel.

It moves McKinleyville away from the suburban-style strip mall design that shaped the town during a building boom in the 1990s and aims to give it something it’s long said to be lacking – what Planning Director John Ford described as “a unique identity.”

But it also narrows the section of Central Avenue that runs through the town center area from four main auto lanes to two, a change that many McKinleyville residents oppose.

Dubbed as the “road diet,” the lane removals became the plan’s biggest speed bump.

The county’s Planning Commission avoided a potentially split vote on recommending the ordinance by proposing further study on the road diet.

The debate resumed when the Board of Supervisors held an approval hearing in October.

Those in support of the Central Avenue change described it as a safety improvement and key to the achieving plan’s vision.

But others said it will turn the thoroughfare into a congested mess and divert traffic onto bordering streets.

There was mixed opinion on doing further study, as some supervisors didn’t want to delay the plan’s advance.

The ordinance was approved in a 4 to 1 vote, with Supervisor Rex Bohn voting against it due to “having a hard time” with the road diet.

It’s a move that opens the door for the plan’s implementation but that hinges on many stars aligning.

During a Planning Commission workshop in August, Ford said elements of the plan like reconfiguring Central Ave. won’t be paid for by developers. They’ll be done in “a phased manner,” with grant funding.

And build-out of the ordinance will be long term. Ford said full development could be “20 to 40 years out.”

Budget Crash Feared

The start of the year was the mid-point of Humboldt County’s fiscal year and a “status quo” budget for the current year was in the development process. The 2024-25 budget was approved with a projected $15 million deficit but by early 2025, the deficit was at $10 million due to a mix of savings and one-time revenue increases.

But spending of the General Fund, which pays for county services, still outpaced revenues by about $20 million, and salary and benefit increases added pressure to the flat-lined budget.

During a staff presentation, Assistant County Administrative Officer Jessica Maciel said “across the board, all sales tax is not performing very well.”

Several departments had negative budget balances, which she described as “concerning.”

The current year’s $629 million budget began July 1 with fewer staff positions and no room for the additional funding requests departments have made in past years.

At their last meeting of 2025, supervisors fielded a mid-year budget update that seemed positive. Although the county’s roads and aviation funds and the Department of Health and Human Services have deficits, the previous fiscal year ended with a General Fund balance $7 million higher than expected.

Maciel said between one-time revenues and savings, the county budget is in better shape than projected.

But Supervisor Natalie Arroyo noted the budget’s structural deficit, which had risen to $12 million.

Federal cuts will also pose budget challenges.

According to a Dec. 18 staff report, the federal actions mean “counties face substantially greater administrative responsibilities and costs” for the SNAP food assistance program starting in 2026, and Medicaid changes “will affect the county’s ability to deliver services, primarily in the Department of Health and Human Services.”

The state is also affected and is expected to have a budget shortfall in 2026.

The written staff report also says that in April through June of 2025, “the county as a whole was down 2.1 percent in adjusted sales tax,” with the unincorporated county area down 3.4 percent compared to the same period last year.

In an exchange with Maciel, Arroyo said the county can balance its budget for one more year “before we really are up a creek.”

“Correct,” Maciel replied.