Supervisors Approve $1.65M in Measure Z One-Time Funding After Tension Over Arcata/Fortuna School Resource Officers

K’ima:w Medical Center’s ambulances in 2019. [Image from K’ima:w Medical Center’s Facebook page]

Humboldt County’s Board of Supervisors has made its picks for the coming year’s round of Measure Z funding.

At its April 21 meeting, supervisors debated how to spend $1.65 million of Measure Z public safety tax revenue that’s available for what’s referred to in a written staff report as “one-time funding.”

Most of the $13 million of Measure Z allocated for coming fiscal year is for sustaining previously-funded public safety services.

The largest amount from the one-time funding pool is $1 million to the county’s Fire Chiefs Association.

The rest of it is split between the North Coast Rape Crisis Team, the Fortuna Police Department’s Eel River valley school resource officer, Humboldt County Drug Task Force “operational support” and K’ima:wMedical Center’s ambulance service for eastern Humboldt County.

An additional spending item, $20,000 for the Boys and Girls Club’s teen court diversion program, was also approved. The money for that will come out of the county budget’s reserve fund.

The picks are based on priority recommendations from the Measure Z Citizen’s Advisory Committee and they were made amid lengthy discussion.

The most debate was over $230,000 for the Fortuna Police Department’s school resource officer, which was weighed against a similar funding request from the Arcata Police Department.

Arcata is in Board Chair Mike Wilson’ s district and he questioned why its request didn’t get priority ranking.

“I see a pretty similar request in scale and scope, and so I’m just kind of wondering why there wasn’t some sort of resource-sharing in this and is there such a fundamental difference between these two programs and the youth that they serve and the way they serve them that this would be so stark in the choice that was made here?” he said.

Wilson noted a “geographic weight” tilting toward the Eel River Valley among members of the Measure Z Advisory Committee.

“’I’m just getting some, I guess, heartburn and some feedback from my constituents that this seems a little unfair,” he said.

Earlier, Supervisor Steve Madrone had alluded to how’s he “struggled with idea of how almost everybody on the committee has a serious, at least, appearance of a conflict of interest.”

The committee is chaired by Tami Trent, a Fortuna city councilmember, and also includes
Sue Long, the city’s former mayor.

During a public comment period, Southern Humboldt resident Thomas Mulder described some of the commentary as “disrespectful to people that do things for the county at a volunteer level.”

He added, “If you want more funding, loosen up some of your regulations, allow people to do more things, back off the logging, back off the cannabis, back off of development and make more pro-development housing opportunities, then you’ll get more funding because people will have money to spend.”

The committee’s reasoning was explained by Dylan Feierabend, its vice-chair.

“The committee has had a policy, especially given the lack of increasing revenue, to not fund any new positions,” he said. “Of course, we would love to be able to fund more positions. We know it’s a very worthy cause. Most of them are. But given the fact that we didn’t want to fund new positions and the fact that Arcata does at least have one (resource officer) currently, even though it may not be ideal, they do have something in place.”

Arcata seeks to expand its resource officer program into what Wilson described as a “Mad River Valley” version of its existing program.

When the idea of shaving $20,000 from the Fortuna allocation to fund the teen court was floated by Wilson, Supervisor Michelle Bushnell said, “Fortuna cannot fund any portion of the school resource officer, they are in a very bad budget way.”

Ultimately supervisors unanimously voted to approve the one-time funding allocations as recommended by the committee plus the $20,000 for the teen court program from the county’s reserve fund.