Supervisors Split 3-2 Over Road Widening Requirement for McKinleyville Senior Housing Project
Ann Lindsay of Life Plan Humboldt
Though Humboldt County supervisors appreciate the Humboldt Commons project’s development of senior housing, a majority of them voted to stick with a road widening requirement requested to be waived.
An appeal of the county Planning Commission’s approval of the requirement was filed by the project’s developer, Life Plan Humboldt, and denied at the May 12 Board of Supervisors meeting.
The Life Plan Humboldt non-profit organization will build 109 senior housing units in McKinleyville on a 15-acre parcel along Hiller Road between McKinleyville and Central Avenues.
Hiller Road now consists of two vehicle travel lanes and shoulders bordered by grassy areas.
To accommodate the addition of its project, Life Plan Humboldt is required to add a sidewalk and landscape buffer and a paved 13-foot wide travel lane that will be temporarily used as a bicycle lane.
The travel lane is what Life Plan Humboldt wants waived.
The ultimate design – as approved in the McKinleyville Town Center plan – is for the section of Hiller Road to have two auto travel lanes with medians and landscape strips, a bicycle lane and sidewalks.
Emma Haskett of Life Plan Humboldt
As noted by Humboldt Commons Project Manager Emma Haskett., Life Plan Humboldt has agreed to do almost $1 million of improvements, including the sidewalk, improvements to Nursery Way and a bicycle trail connection from the Central Estates subdivision to Hiller Road.
“The only thing we’re contesting is an additional $200,000 for the road widening,” she said. “That cost directly affects the affordability of a project designed to address the shortage of senior housing in Humboldt County.”
Haskett added that the project will only increase traffic by eight to 10 percent and the requirement is not proportional to that.
Life Plan Humboldt President Ann Lindsay said widening Hiller Road will actually reduce safety by adding width to a traffic corridor senior pedestrians will have to cross.
“A scary road crossing could be dangerous and be a deterrent to our marketing effort,” she continued.
The only taker during a public comment period was McKinleyville resident Wesley Chesbro, who agreed with Lindsay’s safety assessment.
But a majority of supervisors supported the Planning Commission’s approval of the road requirement, including Supervisor Rex Bohn.
“We’ve got some pretty smart people on our Planning Commission that are full blown engineers and have done projects like this,” he said. “I think it was perfectly vetted and I like the idea of abiding by what they brought forward.”
The project is in Supervisor Steve Madrone’s district and he supported the appeal and recommended its approval.
“It’s really rare to include additional paving,” he said. “More often than not, curbs, gutters and sidewalks are put in and they butt up to existing paving. At least in my time on this board, I haven’t seen a requirement to actually add in paving as a condition of a project.”
He added that the requirement “does seem unproportional to me” and highlighted the improvements Life Plan Humboldt has agreed to.
Madrone also questioned the wisdom of requiring something that’s “part of a bigger picture” in the future.
“When we put these things in, it confuses the heck out of the public and I believe it does increase safety hazards,” he said.
With Board Chair Mike Wilson in support of the appeal and Supervisor Michelle Bushnell in favor of denying it, the vote of Supervisor Natalie Arroyo would sway the appeal’s fate.
Saying “this may cause some tension,” Arroyo agreed with Bohn’s comments and described the requirement as “absolutely reasonable.”
The board voted 3-2, with Wilson and Madrone dissenting, to deny the appeal.
Life Plan Humboldt has five years to do the improvements and as directed by the Planning Commission, the county will try to get grant funding to pay for them.
Also during the meeting, the county’s enforcement of Measure S cannabis excise tax payment continued with approval of the revocation of 36 cultivation permits due to non-payment of the tax.
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IMHO:
Repeat after me. (With great enthusiasm.)
—
Bicycles are king… despite the howling 30 mph winds.
Bicycles are king… despite the chilling fog-rain.
Bicycles are king… despite the 7 hours of winter daylight.
Bicycles are king… despite the freezing daily fog.
Bicycles are king… despite the torrential fall/winter/spring rains.
Chorus: (Best performed by kneeling with the arms raised… then lowered each line.)
All hail the green paint ! (Raise Arms !)
Say it again ! (Lowered Arms, wiggle the fingers !)
All hail the green paint ! (Raise Arms !)
—
Then… let’s get started with the Snowy Plover, Spotted Owl, Snail Darter, Giant Salamander, Marbled murrelets etc etc…
Yee hah.
Oh no! Bicycles and attempts to protect animals from extinction! The horror!
>”Biologists estimate that over 99% of all species that have ever lived—amounting to billions of species—are now extinct.”
Oh well…
Ah solid logic. 100% of all humans who have ever lived will die, so why even eat?
The irony of the beliefs that you spout is that it’s clearly motivated by an emphasis of short term human pleasure (honestly, just your pleasure and convenience) over all else but the exercise of that belief system as weve seen over the last few centuries represents the greatest single threat to human survival.
And no, im not talking about the current fetish around atmospheric carbon. Im talking about the wholesale destruction of the ecosystems upon which human life relies, in pursuit of short term “profit”.
Malignant ignorance at it’s finest
>”the exercise of that belief system as we’ve seen over the last few centuries represents the greatest single threat to human survival.”
What ‘belief’ system are you talking about ? This ‘human-based’ belief system has been around since we left hand outlines on cave-walls.
It hasn’t changed.
Technology has changed.
Medicine has changed.
Agriculture has changed.
Religion hasn’t changed.
Humans are spending their ‘efforts’… to maintain a ‘small tiny slice’ of world time history… which is in turn based on a small temperature rise… based at the end of an ice age… based on the rise of a small neotenous (*) segment of an ape population.
Oceans rise. Oceans Retreat.
Asteroids impact. Asteroids fly on by.
Glaciers Advance. Glaciers Retreat.
Magnetic field is North. Magnetic field is South.
Solar discharges impact the earth Solar discharges go elsewhere.
Species expand. Species go extinct.
Go figure.
(*) Exhibiting retention of juvenile characteristics in the adult.
Again, im not talking about ocean levels or mean average global temperature. Im talking about the decimation of the ecological systems that provide the basics for human survival. Fresh water, breathable air, sufficient calories, relative climatic stability.
These are things that we are losing through the expression of your oft emphasized belief system that any effort to live at all more in alignment with the wider natural systems in which we are embedded and on which we are dependent is somewhere between ignorant and malicious.
And no, that belief system has not been exercised since Paleolithic times. The available evidence shows us that these prehistoric people very often had developed spiritual and philosophical systems that taught of human responsibility to and for ecological abundance. The utter disregard for the non human world in pursuit of maximum human luxury is a relatively modern belief system.
You ‘aims’ are contrary to the natural order (or dis-order) of things.
You’d better read about the Milankovitch cycles
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles)
> “Fresh water, breathable air, sufficient calories, relative climatic stability.”
Sorry.
It ain’t going to happen… well, unless somehow human technology can alter the (solar/earth/orbit/precession) of the Milankovitch cycles. (Some scientists are proposing reflective mirrors and other satellite changes to the global climate.)
But that is way beyond the grasp of paleolithic people.
(Photo is the ending of ‘Look Up’).
Go figure.
Yeah you’re back to this lazy nihilism.
It’s embarrassing when teenagers do it. It’s honestly sad when allegedly grown adults do it.
“Nothing matters because the science is cherry pick to believe, despite aggressively ignoring the science i don’t want to hear from the same groups, says that everything will be ruined eventually. So that justifies me desiring my whims be fully catered to no matter what the consequences are to the wider ecology.”
Malignant ignorance.
Highlighted by a still from a piece of fiction as if it was evidence of anything.
As you so precisely stated above, anyone for bike lanes MUST be required to use them all year and NOT drive a motor vehicle. Right, now we see about 3 users. So the demand for bike lanes is a phallacy.
I have to admit, yesterday’s 19-mile round trip ride from the home in Arcata to the Bike Celebration in Eureka and back home wasn’t as bad as I had thought it would be; the first trip we had a trail wind for a few miles before the bay curved around. The return trip wasn’t fun, riding my cake-powered bike into that 20mph headwind/crosswind, but it was doable. And I was surprised to see over a dozen folks on the Bay Trail, mostly on bikes. I’m spending today on the couch to give my 63-year-old legs time to recover.
Also, no bike rider likes green paint; we want physical protection, but the local governments can’t/won’t give it to us because it might inconvenience some drivers. So yes, as you believe, your convenience is considered to be more valuable than my life. Yay, you win.
If Ann Linsay is for it, I support it.
Ann Lindsay:
An opportunist, whiner, and charlatan who has a long history of being highly averse to the truth, transparency, and accountability.
OMG, you described the human species!
They should put in a bunch of bumpouts to calm traffic. In fact just ban all auto traffic.
36 weed grow permits revoked. Even selling on the black market didn’t work for these permit pansies. Now make sure to inspect them anyways-you know they are still growing, right? That’s what everybody does now- lets their permit payments lapse but keep growing anyways. They lied to all of us back then and now they are lying to you!
They are cracking down on sites with unpaid fees. The most old school raid (body armor and assault rifles, hiding in the trees awaiting workers arriving, chopping everything while worker is handcuffed) that I’ve heard of in years was at an acquaintances spot who had let their permit lapse and was trying to just bang out a nursery crop.
Last I talked to them (a yearish after the raid) it didnt sound like they were going to push anything legally but theyre removing all the infrastructure and trying to sell the property now. And the tax/fee bill is attached to the property currently.
There was an article, just last week, in this newspaper, about the actions Mendocino is doing about this.
A good step. Humboldt should follow suite.
Dismiss all unpaid fees and change the tax code so that growers pay the same county taxes as any other business.
Growers may likely willingly pay such taxes (I think Mendo said it was 2.5%) in exchange for legal recognition, loss of the fear of law enforcement, the ability to use banking systems, the ability to pay into Social Security and Medicare, and the prestige of being a contributing local business.
I also don’t know how the black market is faring in this era of cannabis outlets… I wonder if there is enough demand for them to stay in business?
For small, family businesses, especially, one would think that the jeopardy of losing one’s property would be paramount.
Earning a profit from cannabis is one thing, but losing one’s home and property and legacy is another. It hardly seems worth it.
I agree, I think the whole legalization scheme in our area has been embarrassingly predatory and destructive.
And as far as I know, basically no one is really thriving through the transition, whether they stayed in the dark and dipped a toe into the legal market. As usual, the worst actors tend to fare the best since a total disregard for your neighbors, the surrounding natural world, your employees, and the end consumer tends to reduce costs.
Everyone i know from back in the day who is really doing well is someone who transitioned out of the industry a while ago and are pursuing something else these days.
Humboldt County is doomed. The Bay Area liberals have move into this county and brought with them everything they hated about the Bay Area! Current BOS Wilson and Arroyo are radical democrats that hate everything to do with progress. Madrone is just an old hippy. And people wonder why Humboldt is a crap hole with no tax base supporting citizens.
OMG! What a fiasco!
One hears about how regulations cripple progress and construction in California. This is a very local example.
Those seniors will all be dead before this project is even started…
These supervisors are getting paid fat salaries to sit around and diddle these fine details. Ridiculous.
Two things come to mind. Not that these comments will ever be read or make any influence.
One is 109 units on 15 acres? I guess they never heard of elevators?
Seniors only need a studio apartment with good elevators, good access, good security and a staff with a wheelchair accessible van to take them shopping.
I live on just over an acre. That math, of 109 units divided by 15 acres is only 7 units per acre. I know that I could have much more than 7 units on my land. Even if they were single story. And that would be stupid.
It feels like this management board, behind this project, has found a cash cow that they are likely milking for large, disproportionate salaries. Someone ought to look at what these people are getting paid during this long, drawn out process.
109 units is not even a drop in the bucket of what is needed. Thousands of units need to be prepared for the many aging seniors in this county.
They should be stacked at least 20 stories high with hundreds of units in each building.
Secondly, the issue about the road. They are talking about paving and expanding the road and a 13 foot strip that is not for cars or bicycles. I’m not sure for what… But if some ideal city plan has a brilliant idea that needs to have a 13 foot wide path as part of the road, why not do what towns all over have done? Instead of spending an additional $200,000 on pavement, on top of whatever amount they are already paying for pavement, why not just spend a tiny fraction of that in making that part of Hiller a one way street???
Lots of places do this. The last time I went south, we drove through, I think it was Hopland. The whole downtown was one way streets. There were barricades in the middle of the road to route traffic away from an upcoming one way street. A stop sign and some brightly painted oil drums did the trick.
Just make the side streets into one way traffic. It will slow down traffic, making it safer, and they could still have the 13 foot path.
Having more than just a conventional crosswalk would be wise, also. At the entrance to the complex, a longer than usual walk time crosswalk could be installed, with a closing, railroad type gate that opens and closes with the light would actually stop traffic until people cross.
Those units will cost so much that taxpayers will be paying for them centuries into the future. They feel more like a token, a virtue signalling by the planners, rather than a realistic effort to house people.
Follow the money. Someone(s) is making a buttload of money off of this.
You seem a little confused about what this project is. It’s not a public project. Its a private developer who is planning to built 50 something high end cottages for old folks and then put 50 low income apartments for old folks on 2 acres of the property, likely to satisfy some aspect of state/county housing development mandates.
They’re plan is to have a lot of outdoor space, including walking trails and gardens.
The county is planning to allow a lot of development in that same stretch of Hiller (the so called “mckinleyville town square”) and for that they are planning to make Hiller wider with medians separating the road from bike paths on both sides. The county is basically requiring this private developer to do the paving the county plans to do, or make other developers do, at some point before they can build their senior housing. It’ll just be a big bike lane until the county gets to adding the medians and widening the rest of Hiller.
You didn’t get your way, Ann Lindsay and Emma Haskett. Grow up and get over it.
With Amazon set to start operating out of McKinleyville, the more pavement in McKinleyville the better.
Is it me, or does this sound like the County saving some money by making someone else pay for it?
It is you.
Yes.