715 offers his apologies but could not attend otherwise.
So.
You're sitting behind a little list whose name is on.
Just call me Lou.
Didn't call me Greg.
Didn't call me Jay.
Is that you Dan?
Dan, Dan, right inside the front row.
Found your placard.
It's official, Dan's in the circle.
So before we get into it, has everyone had a chance
to familiarize themselves with the agenda
and are there any adjustments that you think we need to make?
Pat.
Yes.
I'm not speaking about wind surfing, just surfing.
Okay.
Sorry.
Thanks very much.
I took a little license with the title.
Some of these things came together relatively quickly
here at the end but I think we have really a good
and diverse presentation on the recreational options
for Humboldt County and there, at our next meeting
I didn't have a chance to compile the statistics
but I just went to the demographic presentation
by Mr. Gallo about Humboldt County
and how our economy's changing
and how different sectors are shifting
and that's mostly historic
but I think there's a lesson therein
so I'll try to recap a few of those things for us next time
because they certainly have bearing.
So we have a number of speakers who are involved
in the fields that they're presenting on
as is the custom of our forum
and we will first have presentations
and then we will break into a panel
so people can respond to questions at the beginning
but they can also then get more of a dialogue going
with the presenters and in deference to a request
from a committee member, I will give preference
to committee members who wish to ask questions
which is only fitting since they are committing to service
and so Mr. Klassen, Tim Klassen's gonna present first
and Tim actually is getting prepped for salmon season
and is frightfully busy so he will be given dispensation
from participation in the panel
so you can go a little longer with your questions for Tim
at the beginning since he'll be leaving us thereafter.
We're star crossed trying to get the Arcada visitor center
and Chamber of Commerce Brenda Bishop.
She would have made a perfect co-presenter with Jim
since they do a lot with the Godwit days
but she banged her D last weekend
and so we'll get Brenda in at some point
because she's really a ball of fire
but so then without further ado,
I'll introduce Tim Klassen and Tim is Sportfish Captain
par excellence, I can testify personally
to riding out with him and he knows where they live,
he knows what they want and people come from around the world
to fish here because of the opportunities
and Tim can expand a little on that.
He's also very active in the Humboldt area
Saltwater Anglers which is a group that tries
to maintain fishing access and rights
and this crosses over with another
Harbor District Subcommittee
and it also will actually be touched on in our next forum
which is fisheries and aquaculture
but because there is a significant recreational component
to this, Tim's gonna address that part of it
so please enlighten us.
Okay, let's start out with a couple of numbers
from California Department of Fish and Game.
Last year, 2008, over four million
saltwater angling trips were made from California ports.
Sport fishing, saltwater sport fishing
generated over $2 billion in economic activity
that includes of course boat sales, fishing tackle,
charters, motels, all the related stuff.
Supports over 20,000 jobs in California.
So saltwater angling is a fairly substantial
economic power in California.
Locally, there are about a dozen charter boats
here in Shelter Cove, Eureka and Trinidad.
There's a couple in Crescent City
and some in Fort Bragg as well.
Most of the boats are what they call six backs
like my boat is where we take a maximum
of six passengers out at a time.
The old days of cattle boats are kind of gone now
so it's a little more personal and experienced for people
and I think most people appreciate that kind of thing.
We can take the time to stop and watch whales or dolphins
and spend some quality time on the water.
In the last couple of years, I've taken out people
from Belgium, Ireland, China, New Zealand.
Earlier this year, I took out a fishing club from Austria.
They had researched our area on the internet
and they specifically came to Humboldt County
to fish for halibut and they rented an RV in San Francisco
and they were traveling to Portland and they only made
I think two other stops on the way to fish
and they were here specifically to fish
so I think that says a lot about our area
and the potential that our area has.
There are people coming from all over
and of course, we get a lot of people
from all across the United States as well.
Not everyone of course comes specifically
to our area to fish.
A lot of people come to see the Redwoods, do other things
and it's a nice day excursion for them as well
and then there are a lot of local people that enjoy fishing
and they go out on our boats,
the guys that don't have their own boats.
And even some of them that do.
Yeah, and even some that do have boats.
As a matter of fact, our upcoming 10 day salmon season,
I'll be taking out a couple of charter boat operators
from Half Moon Bay that didn't get a salmon season this year
and they're just dying to remember what one looks like.
All the local charters booked up pretty quickly
after the announcement of our 10 day season.
There's a lot of pent up demand for salmon fishing.
It's a pretty important activity here
and in most of Northern California.
There's I think three or four charter boats
coming from out of the area
to fish the 10 day salmon season here.
One from Fort Bragg, one from Bodega Bay.
I stopped by and I talked to a couple
of tackle shop owners today just to get an idea
how they felt their business changed
because of the salmon season.
They felt that they'd probably have a 50% increase
in sales this month over the same period last year
with no salmon season.
They say it may even be more substantial than that.
That's before the salmon season has started
so they think they're going to continue to get business.
I know here at Woodley Island there were over 80 boats
on a waiting list to get slips
so that they could avoid the rush
at the launch ramps and stuff.
So that's boats that aren't normally moored
here at Woodley Island.
There are a lot of boats that are going to be launching
at all of the launch ramps.
I know the city of Eureka and the county
have made some arrangements for extra parking and stuff
but I think it's going to be a pretty big deal around here,
just a 10 day season.
It would be a lot better for us and everyone
if that was spread out over a longer season
rather than concentrate all this effort
and stuff at one time.
I think it stretches our infrastructure
and our ability to deal with that many boats in the bay.
It should be an interesting time,
especially if it's foggy out there.
I think that recreational ocean angling
has a lot of potential here.
People that have lived here for many years
know that at one time it was a really big deal around here
and it missed salmon seasons because of issues
with the Klamath River system
and the Sacramento River system.
Some of that activity has declined somewhat
but the demand is still there
and I think we can maybe make better use of it
and I think we can do that.
We don't need really large quantities of fish,
we just need more opportunity really.
We have some obstacles for improving
recreational fishing opportunities around here.
Our seasons of course like I said are one of them.
We have a lot of closures around here.
For example, rockfish at Shelter Cove
and Fort Bragg this year was a three month season
which means the season is closed
nine months out of the year.
In our area up here it's a four month season
which means it's closed eight months out of the year.
We're only allowed to fish out to water 120 feet
maximum depth so anything deeper than that
and farther out is closed.
So basically 99% of US territorial waters
is closed rock fishing and when the other 1% is open
it's only open for three or four months a year.
So really there's much less effort now out there
than there has been in years past
and the fishery has really responded to that.
And there's scientific papers that document that.
Yeah.
Thank you.
In fact for rockfish we basically catch our limits
every trip if the anglers want limits.
Frequently we take out people that don't feel the need
to fill their bags with fish and stuff.
They want to catch a few and move around and look around
and enjoy the whole experience out there and stuff
which I can really appreciate.
But the guys that do want to go out on a trip
and maybe can't afford a lot of trips
and they want to put a few fish in their freezer
then we do that as well.
But I think in the last three years
we've limited on every rockfish trip that we've taken.
So they're really in pretty darn good shape out there.
Of course weather's a big constraint.
We have our 10 day salmon season.
The forecast for Sunday is 11 foot swells,
25 knots of wind which will keep a lot of us
probably off of the water and definitely
the small boat guys should be off of there.
You know we have the MLPA coming up, marine reserves.
So that 1% area that we're allowed to fish in now
is going to be cut down by another probably 15% or so.
Due to that we have high hopes that some compromises
can be reached with that where we don't lose
important fishing grounds and still be able to protect
resources and stuff.
I was asked to mention about some of the things
that fishermen want around here as far as infrastructure
and that sort of thing goes and I always hate
to come asking for stuff or even appear that way.
We have good launch ramp facilities around here.
We have a couple of real nice marinas.
There's a lot of motels and other tourist oriented
infrastructure around here.
One thing that we really don't have and that we really need
are some fish cleaning stations so that fishermen
when they get to the dock they can clean their fish
and dispose of fish waste in a proper manner
rather than put it in a garbage can and sneak down
to the launch ramp at night and dump it in
like some guys want to do.
I think that they would dispose of that stuff properly
if they knew how and where to do it
and if there was a facility to handle that.
The ramps that we do have, we could use a little more
floating docks at some of those.
The county ramp out at the old blimp base or seaplane base
depends on what you call it, doesn't have a floating dock
at all and it's fairly surgy there and it's a pretty dicey
place to launch a boat although some guys do launch there.
Ramp maintenance has been an issue because the two ramps
over on this side of the bay tend to silt in
quite regularly and the city of Eureka did a pretty good job
of cleaning those out this year but they probably
could be cleaned out annually would be a big help.
Better parking at probably the Eureka Marina facility there.
There's not a lot of parking areas there.
There's a little bit of parking on the street
that's frequently taken up.
Could probably use a little more parking there.
One of the biggest complaints that I hear from guys
is restrooms which because of vandalism problems
are locked at night and generally aren't opened
until business hours, eight o'clock in the morning.
Well that's, all the fishing guys are long gone.
By then they would have liked to have used the restroom
at daybreak or maybe a little bit before.
And better security which is a real problem
because all of our launch ramps really are in kind of,
I don't know how to say, high transient areas
and low visibility areas without a lot of traffic
and stuff like fields landing and the one under the bridge
and stuff, there have been a lot of break-ins and stuff.
So those are some of the things that would help
make this a nicer area for out of town fishermen
and for local fishermen as well.
I think there's a lot of potential to increase
fishing related tourism here.
There are now a lot of internet fishing websites and stuff
and information travels real quickly.
If we get into a, I'll use tuna for an example,
if we get into a good tuna bite it's about a day
and a half later and everybody's ready to go
tuna fishing and stuff and that's people from,
we get people from all over the area
call for that sort of stuff.
So I think that if we can provide people
a good experience here, especially this upcoming 10 days
and we'll probably see a lot of these people come back
and I think that benefits all of us.
That's about all I have.
Awesome.
Good stuff Tim.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Good.
Go ahead Greg.
Could you tell us typically what your year looks like?
Granted we've got 10 days this year
but what does the year look like?
What are the economic opportunities for you?
What are the challenges?
Are you and your cohorts making a fair living?
Can you support your family doing what you're doing?
Those kinds of things.
Sure.
If you're meaning fair by between poor to good.
Ha ha ha ha.
We are.
Ha ha ha.
It is difficult for, because of the season structure now,
we have a, with no salmon season,
that basically pushes us to halibut or rockfish.
The halibut has a one fish limit,
so a lot of people don't want to go out and spend,
you know, what is it, you know, fairly expensive trip
for a lot of people to catch one fish all day.
And then rockfish is a four month season
and out of the four months
we probably lose a month and a half to weather.
And the remaining time we have to have customers lined up
at that time, which doesn't always work out.
So between the weather, seasons, and customers,
our season, basic fishing time starts basically in May
and early, or actually middle of November now
because of some crab trips that we can run.
And then you take out weather
and you take out, you know, client availability,
then we probably actually fish for half of that time.
So, and some of your guys actually,
like Tom up at Trinidad, he fishes crab
and then he does party boats.
That's right, they do both.
They stay diversified, I think is a fair bet.
But that one fish that comes over the rail
could be 140 pounds.
This is like a world class critter out there.
And so it's got a lot of allure.
And that's, you know, a lot of people travel halfway
around the world to catch a fish that big.
And they're that way, not too far.
Pete.
How do you market your operation
and how do you review how you book trips to fill your,
I mean, you have agents, people acting as agents.
And you also said that you need more opportunity.
What did you mean by that?
Okay, I'll take the last one first.
What I meant by more opportunity would be
possibly longer seasons.
If we could stretch the seasons out, you know,
like I said, we have a four month rockfish season.
If we had six months or seven months,
I think we could pick up a little bit more business
during those periods of time.
Or even Oregon has a year round rockfish season
with a six fish limit as opposed to our 10 fish limit.
There's mixed opinions on that,
but I think it would be nice to have a longer season.
And the thing is, is that if we get a little better data,
Pete, which is kind of what we're trying to do
with the MPA oversight committee,
then we can probably extend this window and not over exploit.
And I was just reading historical documents
and a typical salmon season in 1970
was February through November, wide open.
And I don't think they shut the rockfish season
in those years.
And so I think we are overly restrictive
and it's on the principle of precaution.
And that is if you don't have any data,
then you better shut it.
And it's our counter that it's better for us to have data
so that we can shepherd these fish
and partake in the extraordinary richness of the oceans.
So that's kind of an underlying thing
in the prosperity report.
It said if you wanna have stable fisheries,
if you don't wanna have this uncertainty,
if you wanna get investment in infrastructure,
then make the seasons more certain
by getting better data on fish.
And while the government's reluctant,
we are just absolutely adamant that we wanna get that data
so that we can get the surety and the more extended
opportunity and at the same time achieve
conservation principles brandy.
What's your target customer?
Is it a retired or Bay area business, Sacramento business?
You know what kind of incomes they have?
Actually, it varies quite a bit.
It's usually probably I would say middle class and up.
Our trips are $150 per person.
And a daily trip is $700 for the boat.
So, you know, three or four guys want to get together
and have the whole boat to themselves, they can do that.
So it's not real inexpensive.
A lot of guys have their own boats,
which of course is very expensive.
But yeah, I would say that most of the people we get,
there's a large group of people that, you know,
they live to go fishing and they like to experience
different areas and stuff and they don't mind
spending the money to do it.
What do they tend to do when you're,
because I know how it is out there,
you never know sometimes when you're going.
What do they tend to do in town?
Or are they RVs, are they motel stairs?
I would say mostly motel stairs,
although a fair number of RVers.
Occasionally we get a guy that tries to sleep
in the parking lot here in his car, you know, the night before.
So, but I would say mostly motels for out of the area.
I'd say the bar business is probably pretty good
with the rope.
That's my impression of fishermen.
And I wanted to answer Pete's other question.
It was on marketing.
Of course I'm a member of the, you know,
Chamber of Commerce and stuff.
But I also have a website and I do a daily fish report.
So people, even if they don't intend to come
and fish with me, they can look and see how we did yesterday
or the day before or last week.
And so they kind of get a pulse of what's going on.
And when things are going real good,
they get kind of jacked up and they want to, you know,
come in and join in on that.
So, but I think our biggest, that's been our biggest
attraction has been our website.
And I've been featured in a couple magazine articles
and stuff on our fishing here, you know,
that brings in some business.
And then other than that word of mouth, you know,
through tap the shot.
He also has a phenomenally capable partner
and that is his wife who looks most of these people
and sweet talks him on the phone when he's out there
slaying the big ones.
Let's take one more.
Just you mentioned the crab fishery November.
How much of your business is that?
So far, none for me.
Just last year, we got the season fishing game
to open the season earlier for recreational angling up here.
It used to open the last Saturday before December 1st.
And so frequently the commercial preset occurred
before recreational could go set pots.
So now we have about three weeks before the, you know,
commercial season starts, three to four weeks.
And so in that period now, people that want to get crab
can go on one of our boats.
They can go out there and actually get a limited crab
at a pretty reasonable price and a two hour boat ride
and get crab before they could buy it in the stores here.
So, you know, that's been a big deal for us really.
I'm afraid we're gonna have to break off
even though I'd love to explore this topic further.
Having a personal prejudice with regard to catching this.
I'm gonna escape. Thank you, Pat.
Thanks, Tim. Thanks very much.
The Harbor District's own David Hall,
our executive director will talk about how we support
recreation in Humboldt Bay and it's Woodley Island and more.
And it overlaps somewhat with our later speakers,
with water trails and stuff like that.
But David, take it away.
It kind of overlaps everybody.
And I appreciate the opportunity for this.
This is kind of the unsung mission that we have in recreation.
A lot of people don't realize all the things
that we do in that.
So I'm gonna go through a little bit
and describe what the district does.
Maybe some things that you are all pretty much aware of,
but try to string them all together for you.
Tonight, I'm just gonna go through our authority
in recreation and I'll tell you why in just a minute.
Describe the facilities generally in Humboldt Bay
that are available for marine recreation
and then give you the status of some of the district's
projects that we have.
So our authority here.
I wanted to kind of remind you guys of this,
just to kind of kick this off.
The Harbor District's territory is all Humboldt County.
The regulatory jurisdiction is only up to
mean high or high water.
You remember when Larry gave a talk a couple of shows ago,
he noted that something that I want to bring back up to you,
again, which is that the district,
if it's within the bay,
we have the authority to do whatever project there is.
The other place we have authority to do a project
or to work on some facility or something
is if we actually own the property
or have some lease or some other kind of business
relationship that allows us the authority to have that.
Otherwise, even though we can do things
throughout the county,
we can only really do them if we have some hook to the land.
Otherwise, we just end up supporting things.
So you see us in a supportive role a lot for things
that are outside of our jurisdiction,
but still within the county here.
Just to refresh your memory,
so that jurisdiction in the mean high or high water
is basically just the shoreline.
It's the blue line that's up here.
The pink one, this is from our Humboldt Bay manager plan
that is really what we call the sphere of influence.
Still, it's outside of our authority,
but it was something when we were doing some planning,
we wanted to make sure that we looked at those uses
that were there.
The guidance documents, of course,
the district uses to get there.
The harbor's navigation code,
appendix two, that's where we come from.
That was the act that created the harbor district back in 1970.
Humboldt Bay manager plan,
a lot of you were involved with that.
Some of you still are involved with the implementation
of the manager plan now that it's been approved
and our five-year strategic plan.
So that's really the core of the documents
that tell us what we're supposed to do in all our missions,
how we're supposed to balance harbor recreation
and conservation.
We're going to focus on recreation here.
So in recreation in the main management plan,
there's 39 different policies.
You can see what the goal of that was.
They're focused on maintaining
and or increasing recreational opportunities
and coastal access in Humboldt Bay
because it's the Humboldt Bay manager plan.
Remember, we can do projects other places.
This is just the Humboldt Bay plan,
one of our guidance documents.
In the Humboldt Bay manager plan,
those of you familiar with it,
you know, there is this land use, kind of water use
designation thing that the board adopted.
Basically the blue area here,
there's two principal uses of the bay.
This is harbor.
The kind of the purple area here is bay conservation.
There are two combining designations that we use.
The marine recreation being one of them.
And you can't barely see it,
but it's little red pieces that are all around,
kind of around the perimeters here.
That doesn't mean that those are the only places
the district has anything to do with marine recreation.
It's just that in those areas, when the plan was written,
those were areas that had more or less exclusive use
of marine recreation in those areas.
Marine recreation, of course, is something that can go
throughout the entire bay.
The 2007 to 11 strategic plan objectives,
I won't read them all, except maybe the last one there,
because it makes two points for me.
Respond to emerging issues,
which may have a significant impact on the environment,
environmental protection, recreation,
economic opportunity, or safety concerns.
Again, this is in our 2007, 2011 strategic plan.
So this changes every five years where the district
and the public and meetings just similar to this,
come up with ideas of where the district
should put its focus for the next five years.
This is for the five year period we're in right now.
The other point I wanted to make about this piece
is that the district has had a tradition
of being reactive to the community.
Groups just like this one throughout its history
have come up with ideas that then the district pursues.
The district has never really been in a place
where it sits in some dark room somewhere
and comes up with how it's gonna be
and then tries to sell it to the public.
It's always the other way around.
And that's what this one really is.
These emerging issues are things that actually come out
of what you guys are working on through this committee.
Those will be emerging issues
that the district will react to.
Okay, so the maritime marine recreational facilities
around Humboldt Bay here.
As you know, and Tim mentioned and you know,
there's two public marinas here.
Woodley Island Marina has 234 slips.
The City's has 134 slips.
Little smaller but still critically important
on one of only two.
There's only two private marinas in Humboldt Bay here.
And they're both down in King Salmon,
Easy Landing and Johnny's Marina down there.
And as you can see down there,
there's approximately 6,400 recreational vessels
that are registered in Humboldt County.
And remember that doesn't count kayaks and stuff.
So that's just things that get state stickers.
There's four boat launch facilities.
This is for all boats.
So this could be paddle craft,
but mostly this category is for the trailable boats
like Tim was talking about.
All these folks that are coming up for the salmon season.
They're gonna heavily use these areas.
There's the one under the Samoa Bridge Tim mentioned.
There's one at Eureka Marina, Fields Landing.
And then there's, we call it Fairhaven,
the Samoa one, whatever the old blimp base out there
is the other one.
This is actually a picture of Fields Landing.
There's six official paddle craft launch areas.
And I call it like that
because there's a lot of unofficial paddle craft here.
It's pretty much anywhere you can get to the water
comfortably or not.
You can put a paddle craft in.
But these are kind of the ones that in a lot of cases,
the public owns them.
And we do something to try to keep them together.
So there's one here at Woodley Island Marina.
Hooked in Slough way down in South Bay.
The Refuge runs one.
Arcada Marsh, of course.
Target up here in Eureka Slough.
Just barely up Eureka Slough there.
The Adorne Center and the Hummel Bay rowing dock,
which is what this dock is here.
We got a couple of guest docks.
These are docks that visiting yachts can use.
Museum ships, we do special events there,
things like this.
The Bonnie Gould guest dock is the biggest one.
It's the one that's just right straight across
from Woodley Island Marina over here.
The other one is at F Street,
which is on Eureka's boardwalk.
It's not so big.
It's really not an overnight kind of place,
but it serves a guest dock function.
Wildlife areas and connections to those.
Jim's gonna talk about these kind of things.
These are areas that we maintain access to.
Bays or sloughs or something that are around here.
You can see there's quite a list of these around the bay.
This is actually a picture of our Park Street
restoration project.
I'm gonna talk a little bit more about the districts
and wildlife areas and their recreational component
when we get to the districts projects, which is right now.
So we really have kind of three areas
that I wanted to talk about
for that the Harbor District works in recreational areas
as far as facilities go.
Woodley Island Marina, of course,
kind of the flagship of the districts infrastructure
has a number of different things here.
I'll describe a little bit of that.
Our wildlife areas and the Shelter Cove launching facility.
We also work in support and cooperative programs
and projects with other agencies.
And I'm gonna describe those a little bit too,
but just some of those are other launch ramps,
water trails program that I know Jennifer's gonna talk about,
signage, expo, things like that.
So we'll cover those real quickly here.
Woodley Island Marina again has that number of slips.
They go 30 to 70 feet.
We can accommodate vessels up to 130 feet.
Not very many of them,
but a few of them on the end ties out there.
We have a lot of things going here.
If you've ever listened to our hold message,
the whole hold message, which hopefully you haven't,
but if you ever have,
we kind of go through all the neat stuff that's out here.
We have the docks, of course, the floating breakwater,
the restaurant, the office complex,
which surrounds us here, the Coast Guard,
the Corps of Engineers, the ship shop is right here.
Next to us, of course, we've got parking.
We've got hoists that are for tenants and non-tenant use.
We've got storage areas that are out
on the kind of the Northwest end of the island out here.
Canoe kayak launch, I mentioned.
We have educational signage along the boardwalk
out here at the Embark and Arrow,
mostly related to fishing infrastructure
and boating and mariculture and things like that.
Little dated, but still pretty appropriate.
We have three recycling stations that are out here
for basically everything.
We have two waste oil recycling stations.
People change their oil and things.
We have an oily bilge water recovery system out here
that's pretty important.
That's available.
There's one of those available to every slip
that's out here, so it's pretty handy.
And then we have a bunch of historic displays out here.
You're all aware of the lighthouse.
We have an old anchor that if you were here
at the Maritime Expo last year,
that's down there next to the lighthouse,
the Whistle Buoy, the Fisherman's Memorial,
all those kind of things out here.
Lots of stuff for people to do and see
as well as just do their boating.
It really is kind of a park-like atmosphere.
You know, you see a lot of people coming out for lunch,
you know, just taking walks, things like that.
Seems to be a night plate.
There's the lighthouse, of course, Fisherman's Memorial.
That's actually the Fisherman's Statue.
The memorial is actually just on shore,
kind of right behind where this picture was taken from.
It's a little obelisk down there.
The fleet mix that we have changes over the year.
And these are kind of generalities
because it changes with seasons and things like that.
But generally, this is kind of what it looks like.
In the summertime, it's about 60% recreational vessels
and 40% commercial.
In the wintertime, it switches the other way around
with crab season coming up,
where we have about 40% recreation and 60% commercial.
Our tenants generally fall into these categories here.
We have, of course, recreational vessels, sailboats,
power boats, all these different kinds of things out there.
Commercial vessels, we have a bunch
of different categories of those.
Commercial fishing vessels, of course.
The mariculture support fleet's there, most of it.
Charter fishing, it's what Tim does.
Tug, our pilot boat lives here.
We have boat rentals, that's what Hawk does.
Instruction, things like that.
So that's all here at Woodley Island.
In addition to that, we have quite a hub
of government vessels that are out here.
You see some of them,
but you don't see a lot of those out there.
Of course, the Coast Guard's out here.
This is the home port for the Barracuda
and the 87-foot patrol boat
that lives out the end of FDOC here.
HSU's Coral Sea, their research vessel,
of course, is down on our floating breakwater.
Let's see, what else?
The sheriff is here.
We keep our vessels here.
Fish and Wildlife Service throughout the year
has vessels in and out of here.
We've got Tribe also.
The Corps of Engineers does.
When they're doing survey work,
they'll have a vessel in here.
And NOAA.
We also have a category of liveabords.
As part of our deal with boating and waterways
and U.S. Department of Commerce,
we were required to have 10% of the slips available
for people to live on their boats.
And so we have a whole bunch of different fee categories
and rules and everything.
So that would mean we could have 24 people out here
living on their boats.
Right now we have about six.
Mortgage rates.
Some of the people have had questions about this.
We just finished our budget process here not too long ago.
Just kind of a comparison of where we are
versus some of the other marinas that are around here.
This one's down in Bodega, you know where Noyo is.
There's the city's marina.
Crescent City has a couple of them.
And Brookings has a couple of different fee structures too.
This is monthly rates and yearly rates.
Most places give a break for the yearly attendance.
You can kind of see that.
But you can see that we're the outside of Noyo,
which has really limited facilities there in Fort Bragg.
We're the lowest in this probably couple hundred mile
stretch of coast right there.
And that's after two fee increases over the last two years.
District wildlife areas.
Park Street, Elk River Wildlife Area,
Woodley Island Wildlife Area,
and the King Salmon Beach or Booner Point.
King Salmon Beach is probably the one
that gets the most use.
You've been out there, I'm sure you go down the industry
as soon as you start seeing houses.
The beach that's on the other side there
is all Harbor District property.
It's kind of technically a wildlife area
because it was a dune restoration project
early in its life.
But then when the dune plants got to a certain place
and we got the okay from the agencies,
we opened that up to be pretty major public access down there.
It's a pretty popular area.
We spend quite a bit of time maintaining that.
We've got some fire rings down there.
There's trails, nice protected beach access,
skim board, or just hang around down there.
Works out pretty good.
Park Street has some limited trails.
On it, Woodley Island Wildlife Area,
the Gerald Hansen Wildlife Area,
it's kind of north of the Starter E Drive here,
is really not accessible to the public.
Part of our operating agreement with Fish and Game
when that got set up was that we only let in folks
for management purposes or for educational purposes.
So it is accessible, but only with somebody from staff
to go out there to set it up with you.
The Elk River Wildlife Area,
the district has kind of a unique situation.
City of Eureka owns most of Elk River Spit,
but it runs out of city limits about,
I don't know, a few hundred yards
before it actually goes back into shoreline.
So that is actually Harbor District down there.
So we manage that in conjunction with the city's
Elk River Wildlife Area down there.
Shelter Cove Boat Launch Facility.
Just real quickly, this includes the launch ramp down there,
access road, breakwater, and a fish cleaning station.
We've recently acquired a fairly sizable grant.
You can see there $1.7 million from Boating and Waterways
to rebuild that breakwater that you see right here.
Here's the breakwater.
The launch ramp area, of course, is in here.
This is essentially a high tide shot,
and you can see why the breakwater needs to be redone.
This is, I mean, there's not even hardly a swell out there.
It's going right through the breakwater.
So this will be a project that we're hoping
will be in construction this year.
This pipe that runs down here is actually the end
of the fish cleaning station that's a part of it.
This road is access road that's owned by the district.
You can barely see a little bit of something
that doesn't look too natural right here,
although it's brown, and it kind of sort of looks natural.
They tried to make it look natural.
That's some bank stabilization, bluff stabilization,
that the district with Boating and Waterways money
actually did 15, 17 years ago, something like that.
So it's kind of a whole package project.
This is one of these that, of course, is out of Humboldt Bay.
So how do we do that?
Well, like I said, the district owns the road
and this area that's up here and up to the top.
This area out here in the bay is actually a tideland lease
that the district has with State Lands Commission.
So we're in our second 25-year tideland lease
with State Lands Commission for the management
of that facility, too.
This one, if you've been down there familiar with it,
this is an extremely popular place.
This is a lot of people that are in Shelter Cove
because they have access to the ocean.
And this is a lot of their economy.
Exactly, and I think it still is the only open ocean launch
ramp that is in the state.
Cooperative district projects, we've got a few here.
I just want to touch on some other recreational things
that we do that we work with other agencies on.
You heard last time, the Timber Heritage folks,
we work with them on the Roundhouse project out here
that's working toward being a museum complex.
I put it in here for recreation because just at, I think,
our last meeting, wasn't it?
You guys approved an amendment to the agreement
with Timber Heritage so they can actually take folks out there
to actually look at this.
It's not exclusively for storage anymore.
They can actually let the public come out there now.
So that fits recreation.
A bunch of these festivals and educational sort of things, too,
to get people out here.
In 2001, we started what we call the Humble Bay Maritime Expo.
This is the only year that we're not doing it, I hope.
But up till then, we've had it every year in September.
It's really grown in popularity.
We'll get 3,000, 4,000 people out here on a Saturday.
We mix it with Paddlefest
and with the Coast Guard City Celebration.
It turns into a nice, you know, kind of weekend day on the bay,
kind of a celebration.
Works out really good.
A lot of people get out, get to see a whole variety of things
that I don't think they're aware of and turn them
on to some recreational opportunities.
Another thing that we've worked on is Fields Landing launch ramp.
The district actually owns a small piece of property that's just north
of the launch ramp down at Fields Landing.
We've co-sponsored a project with the county of Humble
to do some upgrades to that,
which will actually include paving our little piece.
It'll include paving the whole thing over again.
But right now, ours is unpaved.
Fixing up that whole area down there so that it'll be even better.
The county was ready to go to work on that right,
probably right about now, but they decided to hold off on it
until the salmon season's over, because this is going
to be one popular ramp.
Right now, they didn't want to have a bunch of cones
and things out there.
So the county's got it all spruced up.
It's ready to go for the salmon season.
The other thing that I don't want to touch on too much,
because I know Jen's going to do it,
but our water trail access signage thing.
This is something that the districts worked with,
worked with HSU actually and RCAA mostly for several years
with funding from the California Coastal Conservancy
to put together water trail network signage,
go through some of the design features
that I'm sure Jen's going to mention.
So that's kind of a smattering of what the district,
what we oversee and what we do.
Dave, for Dave.
Regarding the map that you showed
with the water usage designations that have been
adopted by the Harbor District, the biggest portions
were harbor and conservation.
Small portions actually designated for recreation.
Is there recreation restrictions on those designated portions
of the bay?
And is it fair to say that the entire bay is
available for recreation?
The entire bay is.
Yeah, it's a little confusing the way that graphic turned out.
But the whole bay is available for recreation.
The pieces that are highlighted as recreation,
those little thin red things you can barely see,
are only the areas that are almost exclusively
already in recreation.
There are launch ramps and there are
things like this that are already
in some recreational use that probably won't change.
But yeah, recreation is something
that happens across the entire bay.
Depends on the tide.
Yeah.
How long you want to be out there?
Do you see a need or have you had a request
to expand those red areas in the last couple of years
for recreational purposes?
I'm going to go back to a statement I made about us
being a reactive sort of a group.
I think that's part of exactly what we're doing here
through this series of these workshops,
is to get the information that we can then go back to the well
and decide if there's some things we need to do.
Clearly, the things that Tim mentioned
about the launch ramp improvements
are something that's necessary.
I know the city of Eureka is looking
at adding an additional ramp on one of their piece of property.
So we're kind of doing those as they float up to the top.
But I guess the short answer is we don't really
have a recreational plan right now.
In the back here?
Tim.
In the day you mentioned on Talk Shop
that you had a multi-agency meeting regarding the same season.
Jim, I mean, Tim brought up something
that has given heat to the district
before the locked toilet facilities at the ramps.
Some really nasty letters he added.
During your meeting with the other agencies,
did the city of Eureka come forward and volunteer
to have additional portable toilets and things
like that to protect water quality?
They're working on it.
They didn't say they were going to do it.
But they certainly heard from the group that that was a need.
As Tim mentioned, and as you know, a lot of you know,
they can turn out to be just an incredible mess
and in some cases kind of a safety issue.
So we discussed things about maybe the volunteer police
doing some stints down there overnight just
to make sure those things stayed open.
Because like Tim said, if they were open at 4 in the morning,
it'd be nice.
8 in the morning is way too late.
So if there was somebody that could watch over these things,
if they could temporarily do something to staff them up
and keep them clean during the 10 day season,
the whole group really encouraged the city of Eureka
to do that.
So they took that message back.
So I got to think they're aware of it
and they're going to try to work it out.
Thank you.
All righty.
Thank you, Dave.
That was informative.
OK, Mike, go ahead.
Quick question just to clarify.
Actually, two of them slipped a second one.
First one is your slip rentals, what percentage on a year
basis are they occupied?
Are you at limit or do you have facilities?
Well, that's an interesting question.
We spent a lot of time at that this question.
We have 12,400 linear feet of mooring space out here.
Probably a little more than 1,000 of it
is something that's really you'd characterize as not rentable
or not really supposed to be rentable.
We have always, for budget purposes,
we've looked at an 80% occupancy just so we don't,
I mean, we could plan on 100% occupancy,
but then we'd be disappointed some years.
So we did right toward the end of our budget session,
we went back and did a full analysis of it
and we were at about, what was it again, 92%?
It was over dining.
Yeah.
So that's, and I think that's probably pretty typical.
Even though we budgeted 80%, that doesn't mean we're keeping
20% of the slips open.
It doesn't mean we're not renting 20% of the slips.
That just means that's a conservative figure for us
to work on financial stuff.
And sorry, but it's important to me.
Just to build clarity on those recreation areas
on the Eureka side, the logic facility for the HSU rowing
team, the panel associations, floating dock.
Are those constructed by the Harbor District
or are they maintained by, or is it just
that they're in your inflow?
They're just in our inflow.
Yeah, in that section of my talk,
I was just kind of doing an inventory of everything
that's out there.
They're actually city facilities.
OK, great.
Thank you very much.
Those two.
Thank you, Mike.
Thank you, Dave.
Jim Clark is a longtime member of the Audubon Society.
And there are millions of birdwatchers in the nation.
And I'm very pleased to introduce Jim.
Interestingly, the Audubon birdwatchers
are such astute observers and take such clear notes
that they actually have databases that
indicate bird migrations and their changes
over the last 50 years based just on Audubon volunteers.
And there's thousands of records that are trustable.
They give trustable trend data over time.
And it's getting better.
And they spend money.
More later.
Stay tuned.
You just might find that elusive species
in an unexpected place.
Here are some of the best and least known birding sites
around.
That's an introduction to an article called Birding
in a Wasteland in Audubon Magazine in April, March, 2007.
And in that article are several places
where there are solutions.
And among them, and probably the biggest article,
is one by Sharon Levy of Arcata on the Arcata Marsh and Wildlife
Sanctuary.
So folks, we're on the map for birders.
Big time.
This is a place to come.
Arcata has Godwood days.
Usually brings in 150 to 200 people from out of the area.
And we've got about 251 species, give or take a few,
in and around Humboldt Bay, depending
on where you draw the line.
Birding is big business.
I ran across this Florida site.
And a 2006 report says that the 1993,
1994 study found that birding in the Corpus
Cruz Swamp Sanctuary.
Anybody been there?
Come on.
This is the big woodpecker, isn't it?
No, not quite.
It's the Everglades kite that eats snails,
is an endangered species that lives there.
It's not a huge refuge.
It's quite popular.
It's an Audubon refuge.
But at that time, it contributed 9.4 million
to the local communities.
That's significant.
I've been there.
I didn't realize it was a place.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you for that.
The name of it was.
It's a great place.
You look at alligators, it's just as much fun as the birds.
It's an easy access, too.
Other birders might disagree with me.
So in Florida, it's the second in the nation
of states that have money for birding.
Number one is California.
So we're a state that's on the map as well.
I ran across some figures that slightly conflicted
with the figures on fishing.
But I think it's because of different ways
to look at income generated.
This is money spent.
And this is done by US Fish and Wildlife Service
in conjunction with the Census Bureau.
And it's for 2006.
And it says here, let's go for non-residents.
Because even though the Bay is going
to attract people birding from within the state,
as far as we're concerned, they're non-residents.
So a person coming from San Francisco, LA, the Valley,
even though they're in the state,
they spend here like a non-resident.
That is my assumption.
So compared to hunting, hunting is not even on the chart.
There's so little income spent that it doesn't matter.
For total expenditures on fishing,
it's $166,205,000.
Wildlife watching is total expenditures of $585,000,000.
And the average expenditure for a day is $140,000,
which when I think of Godwood days
and coming here paying the registration
and staying somewhere for two or three days,
that seems kind of low to me.
But I'm trying to give you an idea of the market here.
Godwood days is essentially a three-day event.
It draws birders from all of the United States
and foreign countries.
The rest of the time, you don't have anything.
And the best time for bird watching here
is in the dead of winter, when the other terrorists have gone.
Only the crazy birders are out there looking for,
in a flock of 500,000 shorebirds,
they're looking for that one shorebird that
stands out as a rarity.
And they're hugely connected by the internet.
So when a rarity occurs, people just show up.
I don't know how they get flight reservations that fast.
We had a green shank, and people were bonkers over that,
up at the mouth of the Madden River a few years ago.
So it's a big deal.
But you need some things, definitely.
And that's access and habitat.
And right now, we're increasing our habitat.
You all heard about the Eureka Slough Freshwater Creek
restoration.
We're making a refugia, basically, for fish.
There's going to be birds there, too, folks.
It's going to be a refugia for shorebirds.
It's going to be a feeding site for osprey and bald eagle,
as well.
We have bald eagles cruising along the bay right now.
It's an impressive sight.
Hardened birders sometimes not think of bald eagles
as trash birds.
But the new birder, people from the city that
are coming up to look at wildlife,
are going to be blown away.
I'm still blown away.
When I see a bald eagle cruising over 50 feet over my head,
it's fairly impressive.
I've seen birds out in that wildlife area that usually only
show up in the valley.
So there are rarities here.
There's big attraction.
So we're getting more habitat around the bay
for a wider variety of birds.
We also have associations.
We've got our local Audubon Society.
We probably, I calculated at one time,
well over 1,000 person hours a year in guided field trips,
just on the bay, not including the ones that go off
to the desert or up in the mountains.
Which brings me to the other segment of birding
is that the bay is one basic coastal habitat.
And the other part of it is the surrounding area,
the Clamaciscio bioregion, which is also hot.
It's a hot birding area generally.
And linking with those, and I'm right now
doing a project, an independent study for ecotourism
certificate, talking to people in the area.
And everybody's charged up about ecotourism.
They have their websites and they have their ideas.
But there doesn't seem to be a lot of connecting of the dots.
And I think the harbor is a very important dot that
needs to go maybe a little bit beyond its jurisdiction here
into its areas of influence and connect with those other dots.
And I think there's going to be more
in the line of ecotourism here.
People being aware of what can happen.
And I think it's not just coming to look at birds,
but birders I think are tending to be less of collectors,
meaning writing them down on a list
and then saying, I got that one.
But more interested in citizen science.
As Patrick said, we've been doing bird counts for actually
100 years.
Recently there's a thing called eBird.
It's out of Cornell and there is a Clamac area eBird
that we use that anybody can sign up, go out birding,
and put them on a national list, a database.
This contributes hugely to science.
You can actually put in GPS coordinates.
It's getting very high tech.
So you can go out and bird, say where you found the bird,
locate it on the map, and it shows up.
It goes back.
It gets vetted.
If you saw a Mexican whipper whale out on the mud flats,
you can call that in.
Someone will look at that and go, right.
When you go in to look at the database,
it'll still be there, but no one else will see it.
So it's a controlled database that's vetted by experts.
And it helps to build that veracity.
People can go online, which they do now to bird,
and they can see what's out there.
So I would say that you need to consider birders very seriously
because largely they're boomers, but we have younger groups
coming up that are very interested.
They're usually fairly affluent, and they need a place to stay.
They need a way to get to the birds
and need habitats for the birds.
So that's my spiel.
Are a great many of the folks who come, or at least some of them,
European or from around the world, or is this really,
it's the word watching phenomenon, more kind
of a domestic product?
It's domestic, and I say it probably starts local,
and it tapers off worldwide.
We have people from Japan all over the world, but not a lot.
They're not as passionate.
This is something that's a phenomenon in our culture.
No, they are as passionate.
In fact, the person that invented
digiscoping for birding is from Malaysia.
So there are bird watchers all over the world.
It's not just a local phenomenon.
It's just that we've got to draw them in from further away.
That's the way I see it.
We've got to strut our stuff.
And we have a lot of stuff.
And the other aspect of this is the seasonality here.
I think I mentioned this before.
We think of summer as our tourist season,
when in fact summer on the Bay, as far as birds goes, why bother?
You can go anywhere around away from the Bay
and see songbirds, upland birds, but you're not
going to see much of them as shorebirds.
But when you have birds here in the fall, winter, and spring,
it seems like that's a good potential offset
to keep that tourist industry going.
Hawk?
I just want to tie into a little bit.
I have Humboldt's Kayak Adventures.
And I'd say $20,000 to $30,000 of our annual income
is birders coming to the area.
There's really no better way to go and see birds quietly
than by a kayak.
And I'd have to disagree that the summertime is a great time
to go and see birds, because I mentioned
Bald Eagle on the phone at the Egret Rookery signed me up.
And they come see it.
They're not the sophisticated birders, but we do e-birding.
Everybody that comes to Humboldt's,
they get the e-bird list.
You can check it off.
And a lot of people are new to it.
If you've never birded before, we still
expose them to e-birding.
And people really get a kick out of that.
And they want to come back the next year just to see
if that same bird is there.
We've had two, three time participants on our tours
coming just to check on the birds they've seen.
Little kids to older folks.
And having access sites so that they can get out and see
all of these really makes it possible
until the Hoekton Slough.
We do have a lot of shorebirds throughout the year.
We do a lot of tours into Trinidad Bay
to see the birds that are out on the rocks that you can really
only get to if you get out there and see them.
Of course, birders have high power scopes.
But there's really nothing better
than just kicking back in your kayak
and watching the bird walking along the shore.
And oh, that's a long-billed curlew.
Oh, that's a godwit.
Oh, that's a belted kingfisher.
And really, people get a kick out of it.
And they fall in love with this area because of our birds.
So true.
And I did.
I'm jaded.
I am jaded about saying how.
Go ahead.
Just short of Larry.
Great.
Marketing.
What are you doing?
Sounds fabulous.
No impact on the environment.
They've got money to spend.
How are we getting them here?
And what can we do to get more?
I'm working on that.
I'm looking at ecotourism in the whole region.
And like I said, I've seen people so interested
that they haven't really got off the dime.
I had one operator of a biodynamic winery
after giving me a complete tour and talking about ecotourism.
And he said, so when are you going to start?
So people are eager to start, but there
doesn't seem to be that impetus.
And I've looked at our own visitor's bureau,
and we've had conferences and discussions.
And it needs to go to the next phase of doing it.
Oh, when we're trying to get there in our closing meetings,
we'll call you back.
Larry.
I have two hard little things here.
The first place is that I was following up
with a little bit with David said.
Tony Smithers was here from the Humboldt County Conventures
and Visitors Bureau, and was really
talking about how we market ourselves
to the outside world of why people come in here.
And I look at this, and the bay wasn't one of the things
that we even market.
As far as this goes, and there's the birding, and the kayaks,
and the fishing, and all this other stuff.
That looks big.
Yeah.
But it doesn't seem like we market
these secondary things as much.
I mean, the redwoods, that's where they come.
That's what it is.
But there's also all these secondary things,
and it seems like we need to do a better job regionally
at marketing some of these secondary tourism features.
But then what you were saying is you have to get access
to these areas.
If you get the birders here, you have to have the access.
And one of the trends that I am seeing a little bit,
and Dave had touched on this, but the wildlife area here,
that you can't go in.
And so you acquire some of these properties,
and some of the agencies, and they put restrictions that
basically say nobody can go in there.
This is for the birds, and you can't go in.
And so then, which is good, but I mean,
there's some kinds of access areas
that you may have to get into.
What's your thought process on that,
and how can we kind of encourage with guided walks
or other kinds of things to be able to get people access
into some of these areas?
So as we're restoring them, we're not just closing them
off.
We've already got it.
And it's free with the nonprofits.
Native Plant Society, Sierra Club, Audubon Society.
We've got the connections, and we go on those tours.
We get the permission from Calafission Game or whoever
it takes to do a special tour.
And that's a hookup there that's great.
And we publish our schedule of field trips.
And we like to report back to national.
We're doing a whole lot of good stuff.
We are, but we're amazing compared
to other chapters with major cities.
We compare with Bay Area chapters
as far as our field trips go.
Well, you know, remember Tony Smithers Maxim?
He goes, give me something else, and I can promote it.
So we've got to call this the Tony's attention,
because I think, yeah, this is a lot of bodies.
It's a lot of people that are passionate.
Mike, you wanted to contribute something?
No, I'm fine.
All right.
Mike Wilson was able to join us.
Pete, you've got the last question here.
I need to correct that statement on the tourist
bureau.
As the chair of the marketing committee,
I can say we have tried marketing,
birding, and tried marketing, whale watching,
a number of ways to do it.
We link to other websites, cross-link.
And we've used keywords on Google type things.
No matter what we do, there's one king, the redwoods.
It is by far the biggest hit.
And we market for our members.
And if there's members that want to run with something, too,
we'll work with them.
So it isn't that we haven't tried.
We haven't had all sides of the equation come to the table,
the people that want to harvest that clientele
and the cohesive wherewithal to do that.
But we will do that.
And we have tried it.
It just has not been very effective.
Well, and it's kind of reciprocal, too.
And Chip's talking about the fact that the wildlife
refuges have expanded.
And certainly, hubboats and the infrastructure
that we're adding and additional boat ramps, now the water
trail.
So it's increasingly there to promote,
because we've essentially gotten the infrastructure
to where it's mature.
And if you just send somebody out to the mud,
that's a different deal.
So I think we're moving in the right direction.
And there is a synergy.
The more you develop it, then the more legitimate
it is to promote it.
And the people get the good experience.
They come back.
And I'm going to relet and give one more last question.
Thanks, Pat.
Jim, doesn't the wildlife refuge in South Bay
serve as a huge draw to the area?
It does.
And as a connectivity to other people, other destinations,
couldn't they serve a more important role,
or are they pretty much doing what they can?
They're fairly focused in their mission.
So they're part of the picture as I see it, part of the draw.
And I'm thinking of a nature tourism website that has at least
endorsed things to do.
There's a lot of greenwashing going on
that needs to be avoided.
Stuff is ECO-This and Green That that is just a tour.
But there are also some legitimate things.
And obviously, National Wildlife Refuge is on the list.
The state wildlife management areas, when they're open
and what you can see are on the list.
Redwood Region Audubon Society field trips,
that type of thing.
So I see it as they can't really market other things.
I'll tell you what I've thought of.
And that is, if you had a kiosk there,
they have these things in British Columbia.
When you get off a ferry boat in Vancouver or Victoria,
you can book a boat or a bike or a bed and breakfast
anywhere around Vancouver Island from a kiosk
with beautiful little magic pictures
that takes your charge card.
We should have those at the Collier Rest Area on I-5,
to harvest some of those people and get them going west.
We should have them at the Chamber of Commerce's.
And we should have them at high tourist draw up places
where, gosh, honey, we could see the boats better
if we rented a kayak.
And they put that charge card in there.
He's got a sail.
And they just show up and get in the boat.
And I think for us to really get the tourist business
and maximize it, we could take this
as far as expanding bed and breakfasts
and all kinds of things.
Because if you want to do a bed and breakfast
and you sit out on Highway 96, you
could start waiting for customers.
So we've got to figure out how to feed.
And I think you're onto something here.
I mean, there's a lot of traffic.
But we're not harvesting at these various points.
But this is kind of not exactly bay related.
But I think it's got some potential.
We work with five bed and breakfasts that will say,
hey, you want to go see birds in the Houghton Slough,
call Humboldt's.
And we set up package tours of them very easy.
We pick them up at their bed and breakfast
and take them to the Houghton Slough.
Because really, that's the best way to get in there
and see the birds.
It's really the only way to get in there and see the birds
is by kayak.
And Tony Smithers must be smiling,
because Mike informs me that Sunset Magazine on the news
stands today is about Humboldt Bay.
No, no, no.
It's featured.
Humboldt Bay is featured in Sunset Magazine.
Yeah, we're in there.
Yep.
Well, we'll say wrong.
OK.
It wasn't the cover.
It was not on the cover.
Oh, that's the cover.
Oh, well.
Hyperbole, if you understand.
And I'm tempted.
Jennifer Savage.
We have two Jennifers in a row.
And Jennifer is the head of local surf rider.
She works for the Ocean Conservancy now, too.
She's also been a distinguished reporter on our local papers.
And this evening, despite the fact
that it says windsurfing, she's not going to talk about that.
She's going to talk about surfing, surfing and tourism,
and surfing needs for infrastructure.
Did I get that right?
Yes.
Great.
Thanks.
And I would have loved to have talked about windsurfing,
but that, as I was working on this,
was just turning into such a big topic in and of itself.
And there's not as much overlap geographically,
as a person might think.
But I will mention, Cape Mendocino
is known for as a world class windsurfing spot.
I don't know, though, how much attention people would want,
which is sort of the weird thing about surfing, too,
is even when I mentioned to some people
that I would be here talking about it,
they were like, well, what are you going to say?
They get very worried about this.
But judging by the support that we've
received as the humble chapter of the Surf Rider Foundation
since we got it going again last year,
I would say people are definitely
behind Surf Rider trying to improve things in many ways.
And we've had a lot of support, and so it's
exciting to be here and talk about some further
collaboration and things like that.
This is my very first PowerPoint presentation ever,
so I'm a little nervous.
Congratulations.
Thanks.
It's beautiful.
Good start.
I couldn't surf today, because I did this instead.
So despite this area being cold and sharky
and all of that sort of thing, and despite people's desire
to pretend that things are secret
since the advent of the internet,
things really are not at this point.
And this map over here on the left
actually appeared in National Geographic a couple of years
ago.
Surf Line has the California Surf Guide.
Surfer Magazine has that guide to the northern and central
California surf spots.
You can read about Arcadia's GIS guy, Brian King,
hit by a great white shark a couple of years ago,
mentioned in there.
And Surf Line and wanttosurf.com,
those are two of the very popular websites
that people research when they're
making surf travel plans.
And they do say it's cold, it's sharky,
the locals can be kind of scary.
But they also have a lot of positive reinforcement
there, too.
So there's definitely a lot of information out there
that encourages people to come here and surf.
And wilderness surfing in itself is really
appealing to people who live, say, in southern California, who
are used to huge crowds and polluted water
and the whole city thing.
They love coming up here into this relatively pristine water
and the tree.
It's just the whole thing.
So it's very appealing.
HSU, the bane of our existence for surfers up here,
nonetheless, they highlight surfing.
It's a big draw for HSU students.
Like many things, outdoors, people come to HSU
because not only do they want a degree,
but often are interested in hiking, surfing,
all the different things like that.
For years, they have been offering these surf classes.
They're only getting more popular.
There's two surf camps that run during the summer.
At Moonstone Beach, there's Humboldt Ocean Adventures,
which is actually just finishing up its 10th year, I believe.
Moonstone Beach Surf Campus has been going on for several years
as well.
Surf for Peace Contest, it will be celebrating its sixth year,
October 10.
That happens at Trinidad State Beach.
And people come from all over the coast for the surf contest.
Even though it's low-keep, it's very fun,
and people come down from Oregon and Washington,
they come up from the Bay Area.
It's a really good time.
California Business Minute said that surfing is still
very much entwined.
It's matured into a sophisticated subset
sector of the sports industry that continues
to see significant growth.
I've been surfing here for about 10 years.
When I first started surfing, if there were 15 or 20 people
out at the same time, that seemed like a big crowd.
Now at Camel Rock, it's not unusual to see
60 people in the water.
You can't even park anymore.
It's really horrible with the parking situation.
But it's sort of a relief now if there's only
15 or 20 people out there.
Surfing draws all kinds of people.
People of all ages, people from all over,
people with vastly different backgrounds.
It's definitely not a one-size-fits-all crowd.
I mean, there's such a diversity among people
that surf around here.
And a lot of the people that surf also
do these other sports and different things,
like I was saying.
People bike and surf a lot.
People come up to do climbing.
All of these magazines featured Humble in some way
in conjunction with these other activities.
So Surf Rider has been around in Humboldt since 89.
And so it's been about 20 years.
But the chapter went defunct for a while due to inactivity.
And I wasn't part of it then.
So I can't really speak exactly to why that happened.
But last year, myself and some other people
who were interested got it going again.
And it's been really successful.
It continually amazes me how much support
there is out in the community.
Every time we have an event, people turn out.
We've had events at Arcata Theater.
Hundreds of people have come out, too.
It's just been really great.
So that has enabled us to start a number of projects.
So these areas, I decided to narrow our focus for this
tonight.
Even though there are surf spots all over the place,
but the most popular ones are between the Harbor Entrance
and Trinidad, generally.
And so those are the ones that we
are looking at as far as infrastructure needs.
Things that we're already working on up at Camel Rock.
Who to Point, you guys all know where that is?
Working on trail maintenance and signage.
In fact, I'm going to have individual slides.
I will just talk about that.
So Camel Rock, up there, it's one of the area's most popular
spots, as I was saying.
There's really heavy impact around that whole Who to Point
area.
When the surf is good, people will
be parked from that lookout spot where that house is,
all the way down to Luffenholz.
So the parking is just really crazy.
The trail's heavily used.
It gets regularly washed out in the winter.
It gets overgrown in the summer.
Humboldt North Coast Land Trust does a really good job
of maintaining it overall.
But the more dedicated help, the better for that.
And a lot of people in the community like to go there,
go tide pooling, or have a picnic.
It's a little less crowded than Moonstone on the beach
and a little more dramatic.
So it's very popular, with just people not surfing as well.
We are currently working with the Land Trust
to install some etiquette signage,
because that's been a really big problem as it's
become more crowded.
There's been a lot of problems with people not following
etiquette, which is a really big deal in the surf world.
And then threats are exchanged, and people
look meanly at each other.
It's terrible.
So with regards to things that the district could do,
trail support, of course, is always a benefit.
And there's a lot of people that live near that area,
from McKinleyville to Trinidad, that use it.
And a lot of people would walk or bike if they could.
And that would really help alleviate
with a lot of the parking issue, which is also
a big problem at Moonstone Beach.
Moonstone is an extremely popular beginner spot,
hence the camps that happen there.
The center activities classes happen there as well.
One of the big projects that we're working on
is a shower project.
Do you guys know Glenn Stockwell at all?
Did any of you ever?
Yeah, he just passed away.
Yeah, Glenn, he was on the National Board of Surf Rider
for a long time, and is probably best
known for being a polysci professor at College
of the Redwoods for many, many years.
He is great if you've ever hung out with him
or had him for a class.
And he was a fantastic guy.
And he passed away about a year and a half ago.
And we have some funds that have been donated in his memory
with the hopes of getting a shower going there again.
There is a shower there, but it's
been turned off for a number of years
due to some conflicts with Sam Merriman, who
owns the property.
Although he's supportive of the idea of a shower,
he got tired, understandably, of paying the bill,
especially because there were a lot of people that would come
and use the showers at all times.
And this is a transient problem.
It seems to be an inherent issue.
So what we want to do, and we're working with Sam
and with the Land Trust, is put in a shower again
with a couple different shower heads and foot washes,
have a place where people could put their boards up on a rack
so they could really just set them aside,
not have to put them on the rocks or anything, rinse off,
have a couple benches there.
And it would be great not just for surfers,
but also there's so many families that use the beach
and people that like to swim in the river.
And I think it'd be great for the whole community.
So that's why we really want to do it at Moonstone,
because then it would benefit everyone, not just us.
I think parents could wash their kids' feet off
before they get in the car.
There's just so many things.
It would be, when the shower was running,
people used it all the time.
Oh, sorry.
And also we are, if you've been to Moonstone,
you may have noticed there's like a million different signs
all over the place.
So we're working with the Land Trust
to put in one big new sign.
It's etched on redwood.
It's really nice.
It will look a lot better.
It will be a lot more visible.
It will hopefully alleviate some of the problems there.
We're also putting in two new doggy pots.
It's very exciting.
It was a huge problem with parking there as well.
So again, the shower project,
any support that is offered for that, we would love.
And bike trails, again, useful because of the parking.
On the Samoa Peninsula,
if you've ever been out that back road by the foghorns,
you may have noticed there's a shower there.
It hasn't worked for a couple of years,
but I'm happy to say that we have purchased a new shower
and it should be installed and running by November 1st.
Very excited about that.
But we have a fund to maintain that, but it's limited.
It worked good for a number of years
and it's a serious heavy duty shower.
However, any support there would be fine.
A shower at Samoa Beach would also be good
for the same reasons one would be good at Moonstone.
It's very popular for surfing and for beach going.
The entire peninsula would benefit from improved bike access.
There's a lot of people that would opt not to drive
if they could bike out there safely,
but right now you can't do that.
Oh, and that's it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Shoot.
Good job, Jennifer.
Good problem.
We'd have never known it was your first one up yet.
What was your last one just because?
No, I mean, nothing against you.
It's just hard to judge.
Once you go down this road, there's nothing.
All right.
We're gonna ask that.
Anybody had a question for Jennifer?
Mike.
I knew.
I was just kind of wondering,
I have all those magazines and there's a lot of focus
on recreation being good for us as locals.
And then there's the focus on the economic impact
and that generally happens to be associated
with out of towners coming to town.
Is there any assessment of the out of towners
coming for that particular activity at all
or is it all anecdotal?
I don't know about numbers.
There's probably not studies done.
I mean, the best way, like if you went to the surf shops,
you could find that out,
except that people don't like to talk about it.
But it's, I mean.
Sounds like some other economies we have there.
Yeah, but people, I mean, people come through.
When I go down to San Francisco,
I mean, the surf shop's down there.
There's always people who have just come back
from doing tours down the coast.
But yeah, I don't have hard and fast numbers.
But you get a sense that there's quite a few surfers
that come here to vacation or on surf trips.
They stop here for a while.
Oh yeah, and it is a really big draw.
Like I was saying, especially people in Southern California
or from the East Coast, because it's so unique here.
It's so different and they love it
despite the cold and everything.
And it's bigger here, it's burly.
So it's like that appeal of, you know,
if you can't go to Hawaii and surf the warm big waves,
you can go to Humboldt and earn your cred that way.
I left it, I left it up.
One more from the day about.
Just a question, a comment.
I guess some of the more insane
and entertaining surfing I've seen around
is the entrance to the Bay.
And I'm wondering if that's a draw to hardcore surfers
to come and earn their creds that way.
We've actually, there's been pro surfers
that have come up here and practiced their tow-ins
in the Bay entrance.
So yeah, it's definitely.
That's when you get seriously big waves
after towing in the way you can't just paddle.
It's very entertaining.
Yeah, so you see the guys out there on their jet skis.
Yeah, definitely, because there's not that many big waves
like that on the California coast.
And it's extremely accessible because it's right there.
Larry?
You're not from the surfers themselves,
but sort of like you said, on the North Jetty is,
I like to go out just to surf.
I'm not stupid enough to go out myself
or smart enough to go out myself.
Especially when the big waves come in,
I mean, it's a great place to watch
and just a sort of dream for the average person.
Oh, if I was only so courageous and adventurous,
I might be out there myself.
But it's another one of those features that we have
of just recreational watching other people
do sporting activities.
That's, it's very entertaining.
It's actually, and it's because the waves
break in the entrance, it's a great place
to have a vantage point that you can rarely have.
I mean, if you go look at Mavericks
or the other big wave places,
they're breaking way out there.
You can't see them, but at the harbor entrance,
you can be there right on the side
and watch this mountain of water coming through.
And I've been out there where there's hundreds of people
on the dunes, you know, with their lawn chairs,
like in that day in the movies or something.
Yeah, absolutely.
I've seen it break in like the Bazaar pipeline.
It was like 12, 15 feet.
It was just extraordinary.
You guys were running along the jetty
and then throwing their boards in and jumping.
Jennifer Rice.
Jenna's been with Redwood Community Action Agency
for quite some time.
She's the Natural Resources Director or Co-Director.
She is a specialist in many things,
but particularly recreational development and planning.
And she's done a lot on trails and water trails.
And I'm very glad that you could juggle us in
to your busy schedule and enlighten,
and I'm guessing, enthuse us.
Hopefully so.
And I'm gonna be co-presenting with Mike Bittner,
who you probably all know as the president
of the Trails Trust Humboldt Bay.
And I think he passed out some information
about the Trails Trust.
And I'm gonna start around,
I only have 11 copies of this,
but it's called The Economic Benefits
of Walkable Communities.
The kind of premise that, for the most part,
you gotta get people on their feet
to pull out their pocketbook.
And how to do that by the Local Government Commission.
And with that, so we're gonna talk about land trails,
water trails, not just about recreation,
but active transportation
and how that plays into this whole picture.
And I'll give you a little brief overview,
and Mike and I will tag team on current status
of planning and laying the groundwork for systems,
to have trail systems, water trail systems.
And then talk a little bit about economic development
relationship to those efforts.
So I'm gonna start out with the water trail aspect.
And there's a water trail movement around the country,
and probably around the world,
and I'm sure Hawk knows more about that.
But what Humboldt Bay has is world-class
paddling environment.
And I've heard many, many paddlers say
they go to lots of other places,
and they come back here,
and they feel so lucky to have the sluice
and the open bay, and even Trinidad Bay, Ocean,
all these opportunities, estuaries,
here that we have in Humboldt County,
and Humboldt Bay in particular.
And so water trail concept is really improving access
to bay put-ins, take-outs, and potentially routes,
or other forms of supporting
kayaking, canoeing activities.
And so that includes dock,
and other sorts of paddling access improvements,
signage, helping people be informed
about where and how they're accessing the water,
other things like restrooms,
because you're probably hopping on one leg
when you get out of your boat.
And of course, parking, like we've just heard from Jen,
for popular places, that's really important.
The information is really critical part
of facilitating kayaking and canoeing.
And I don't know if you've noticed,
but Walmart, Costco, a lot of these places
sell kayaks of some form nowadays,
and you see them on a lot of recreational vehicles
going by, along with the bikes on the back,
and the kayaks on the top.
So there's a huge public now
that is interested, wants that access,
and when people get out there on the bay,
and they realize, holy moly, this is a wild place,
and it's literally stone throw from where they live.
And it's a completely different perspective
when you get out on the bay,
for probably most of you who have been out there.
And when you can do it easily,
there's just, I think there's an incredibly big market
that could be tapped for facilitating
people's access to the information
about how to get out on the bay and do it safely.
I think there's a huge latent potential
with a much lower investment required
than say big multi-use trail systems
that are like small roads to build.
So we did an assessment of all the places
that people use around the bay
to access the bay in 2001 in my stack of studies here,
and the Humboldt Bay Trails Feasibility Study,
it's a whole appendix in here.
And then in last year, Noel Malchesedek,
with the big binder of the water trails implementation study,
did this implementation study project
that we'll go into a little bit more detail in a minute here.
So in the current situation is that most docks and sites
they aren't designed for paddlers.
So like for canoe, you can kind of get in and out
on a dock here, but if you're on a kayak,
you got to do a chin up to get out of your boat onto a dock.
And then other spots around the bay,
you kind of have to know where they are
because a lot of them look like that.
Do you know that you can put your boat in there?
And most people don't.
Oops, but the study that was completed last year
by Noel and our coworker, Chris Lohaffner,
in partnership with the district,
looked at some key priority sites around the bay
for improving access.
And so this is the Arcata Martian Wildlife Sanctuary spot
where there's a proposal for an improved dock,
not where it used to be at the existing boat ramp,
but on the other end of the parking lot.
Thank you, Dave, my handy helper over there.
I just don't want to interrupt,
but I don't want to confuse people,
but the district is working with the city
to replace what is the existing dock
where Dave's got the thing there, that'll happen soon.
So this is beyond that.
So don't get confused when you see them installing adopt,
it's not that one.
So for larger craft access to the bay there.
And then, so it looked at a number of different sites
around the bay, that was one of them, and fields landing.
Then I included this one because this is a simple
modification that we have designs for that can be added
to a lot of docks around the bay if you find a spot
that's gonna be out of the way of the motorcraft
to be able to add a step down facility
to improve other dock and access sites.
Then behind you here, you'll see on the wall
some printouts that, thank you for printing those,
of aspects of a map and guide,
and an interpretive sign on the far right
that is kind of the manifestation of that map and guide
that would be posted on site to provide lots of safety
information and paddling tips and access information.
And when we developed this implementation strategy,
we put a lot of stock in habitat analysis.
We overlaid all kinds of threatened endangered species
information to really check where we were talking about
pointing people to and where was really appropriate
and not appropriate to aim people toward
because we have a significant concern about maintaining
what is gold to us here, which is our amazing habitat
in Humboldt Bay.
So that I should say is in draft form
and the district and Hawk and others are motivated
in working toward having this produced.
We had produced it with the idea that when it was time,
when you had however many of these newer facilities
you wanted to be able to indicate them on the map,
this would be ready to print.
And the district and everybody's going,
well, let's just get the thing out there
because it's, people could use it even if all these things
aren't quite built or improved yet.
So that's exciting that that's getting ready
to hit the streets here.
I'm not sure exactly the timeline,
but probably in the next year.
No, easy.
Yeah, okay.
And then just some, this is stuff that Hawk lives and breathes
that how do people spend money when they go paddling
and it's all fairly obvious.
It's not a cheap, you can pick up a basic sit on top
for a couple hundred bucks, $300.
And then there's packs out there
that are worth more than my truck.
So there's the full range of investment
that you can make in this sport.
And there's, I know most people I know have,
that they're into boating, they've got a lot of them
for all the different conditions they're interested in
and areas to boat in.
So, it's very similar to recreational fishing
and what Hawk was talking about is capturing that demand
and that interest that's driving by on 101.
And also for local folks, it never ceases to amaze me
how many people haven't been out on the bay
or in a paddle craft who live here
and with an easy reach of it and all kinds of folks.
It's really available to anybody
and we've even literally looked at making it accessible
for folks with ADA needs as well.
So this is some information that Noel found
an economic impact study in the Northeast
of what average expenditures by paddlers.
And there were lots of different factors
but it's just interesting to see that people might spend
if they're renting or they're going on a guided trip,
they're spending, getting close to a thousand dollars.
And then if they're local day users, obviously,
they're spending a lot less per trip.
And then just, I threw this on the bottom too
that Noel found that San Francisco Bay Area
water trail system is in their government code
that all these trail systems have a positive regional
economic benefit and therefore they want to put emphasis
into building, maintaining them.
So let's talk about land trails.
And I have these pictures up.
I'm just going.
If you-
No, you keep going because I have-
Yeah, this is where Michael, yeah, so.
Bring it to the next slide.
Just stop me and slap me and add on.
So I have these pictures here because if you travel
outside Humboldt County, you've been somewhere
where there is a regional trail system
that's long distance, multi-use trails.
There's not a lot of clear stats out there
about how many miles of trails,
but there is if they've been converted from railroads
and in places like Missouri, Michigan,
lots of places back East where there were zillions
of miles of railroads and lots of them were abandoned,
they've turned thousands of miles of them into trails.
So those are some numbers that I know.
Like I think it's Wisconsin has 1,500 miles
of just rail trails.
And all these places, I'm having my beer
and eating my seafood in British Columbia
next to their coastal trail.
They're renting, they've got the amazing bridge over there
that is an attraction in itself.
And I would love to see the Hammond Bridge have,
you can get that replaced,
how it'd be like a fish jumping over the river
or a cow or something, our own really cool bridge.
But then in Monterey, you can ride between communities
right next to the highway there on the multi-use trail.
And then Portland, of course, is Mecca
for trail systems and biking.
So this is kind of a rough vision
of a Humboldt Bay Trail system
that would be part of what the state is working toward,
a California coastal trail that's connected
from one end of the state to the other.
And this is just the backbone of it.
The vision is that there are connections
down to the peninsula and around Table Bluff.
But there are pieces of this system
and you can barely see it,
but there's some websites listed there
that have been planned that there are,
for the Arcata Eureka Trail,
there's a big $75,000 feasibility study document,
just on that piece, the Annie and Mary Rail Trail.
There's $160,000 engineering and feasibility study for that.
I mean, this is just some of the feasibility studies.
I didn't try to bring them all,
but there's a lot of research and feasibility
and engineering planning been done
around this regional trail system.
And I'd just like to, if I could hear that interject about,
because not only, I'm on the board of the Trails Trust,
but that all started out of the Eureka City Trails Committee
that I was on.
And in 2005, we finished the Waterfront Trail
and Promenade recommendation document
that really covers all of the waterfront in Eureka proper.
I've got a slide about that.
Okay, about here, I know.
But I just wanted to give, so out of the,
when the document was finished,
the Eureka City Trails Committee was,
that was our prime project, was dissolved
and we started the Trails Trust,
but at the same time, the city opened a seat
on the Parks and Rec and Open Space Commission
for a trail seat was the first time.
And that was in 2004 or six, I can't remember.
And since then, we have another trail seat
because the focus for the Eureka City Parks and Rec
and Open Space Commission has sort of changed.
I mean, they're doing really good in recreation.
They provide a lot for a lot of kids
and a lot of day camps and stuff.
But in addition, they're realizing the,
because of the public participation
in the Parks and Rec Commission,
people wanted more access to the waterfront, to the bay,
and they wanted more trails.
And we'd get that over and over.
And so we're changing our focus slightly
to include that goal.
And it's been an education process for everybody,
including the people on the city staff,
like Mike and Tom Coyle, of being able to go,
well, you know, we've never thought about this.
We've never thought about the waterfront in the same way.
I mean, we have the boardwalk, but beyond that,
what are the rest of the pieces that connect it all together
and generally get into some more of that in a minute.
But it's just been a great focus.
And since that time, developed the plan
and in processes, a new multi-use trail
from the foot of Truesdale to Herrick,
Palm Road, basically,
running through the Elk River Wildlife Area.
You can read from Wildlife Area.
And that will be a multi-use solid surface trail
with facilities on both ends and parking,
including the trailhead at the foot of Truesdale,
which is right next to the mall.
There will be, hopefully,
watercraft launching facility at that spot also.
So there will be a connection between the two.
And eventually, that trail will be able
to be a recreation facility
and also a transportation corridor for the community.
Yeah, and I think that, you know,
what this also is showing in this regional vision is that,
and all these feasibility studies,
what we're doing is getting ready to leverage,
you know, construction dollars here.
And some of the things that we're trying to get through
to be able to do that is just kind of
jurisdictional no-man's land,
getting all the agencies to start to work together.
And there's some projects that are just now
starting to be able to do that.
We've got all the plans in place.
We just need that kind of administrative mechanism, really,
to be able to get the final environmental, you know,
compliance done and then attract the construction dollars.
Like, you know, the fire hose that got turned on
with the stimulus,
if we'd have had some of those pieces in place,
a lot of this whole system could have been up for,
you know, getting stimulus dollars in place to build them.
So this is really that, you know,
getting burgers around the Bay.
You know, this is that kind of system.
We have funding from the Coastal Conservancy
to master plan the coastal trail
from one end of Humboldt County to the other,
but it's been frozen since last December
because of the bond freeze.
So, and we're looking at maybe in the next month,
you know, being able to restart that process.
And just so you can see the bigger picture,
we're looking at seven regional trail systems
around Humboldt County.
And Tiffany, sitting behind you,
is leading a county regional trail master plan
for Humboldt County Association of Governments right now
that is looking at these regional trail systems.
And I just want to point out that a lot of,
most of my emphasis is actually not recreation,
it's transportation.
It's making sure that we have basic access
for everyone of every means.
And that means being able to walk or bike, basically.
So if we have a system,
an active transportation system that works,
it also works for recreation.
And it's very attractive system for recreation.
But our main streets are highways,
and these are places where we also have a lot of commerce
and we have people on their feet.
And that thing that I passed around is really about that,
about how do you get people on their feet?
How do you attract them out of their cars
instead of just driving through downtown Eureka
and keep them and help them spend more money
in your community?
And this is, these types of things
also meet many, many objectives
that you'll hear next from Anne Lindsey
about this every dollar spent on active transportation
and recreation facility is also spent on public health,
economic development, greenhouse gas emissions reductions,
shifting our modes of travel.
Here's some examples.
A lot of you are probably familiar with the Hammond Trail.
I should have brought our little maps
that we have on our website.
But up in the top corner right,
we have a whole system of beautiful interpretive signs
and kiosks and directional signs
from roads and highways to be able to point people
to the trail and then intrigue them onto
and along the trail.
And they've been sitting because of the bond freeze.
We haven't been able to install them yet.
So hopefully pretty soon,
the Hammond Trail will leap out at you
instead of having to know where to go find it.
I see those poor bicyclists on the freeway.
Oh yeah, you want to tell them it's just.
I know, I know, all the time.
Pretty soon they'll know.
And I have this construction photo here
because these are big construction projects.
These are roads.
And it takes just about what it takes to build a road.
So there's a whole, and I'll get into that in a minute,
the economics of that.
Humboldt Bay Trail is really the trail everybody wants.
I mean, I go do meetings in Garberville and Willow Creek
and they all talk about how they want a trail around the bay
as a big trail priority.
So that's really, that's the gem of the system.
And Arcata is moving forward with their piece of it.
They just awarded a contract
that's funded by the Coastal Conservancy
to the Winsor and Kelly team,
who's going to be looking at design alternatives
between the skate park and Brokhead Marsh.
They're going to be finishing that in December.
So that's really the pioneering effort to figure out
how the heck to fit this trail in,
shoe-horned it in between wetlands, highways, railroads.
You name it, it's got challenges,
but they're going to figure it out.
I have every faith.
What Mike was talking about a minute ago
is Eureka's waterfront trail in Promenade,
and it's up on the internet.
You can go look at it.
It's a six mile waterfront trail,
and here's one of the planning maps in that document
that if you've wondered why the heck
there's a trail behind Target,
it's because there's a vision for connecting
that entire trail system around the six mile waterfront.
And just to interject, we were just a couple weeks ago,
the Parks and Rec Commission took a tour out
with the city staff and looked at all these sites
one more time just to get everybody again familiar.
And there is a lot of movement to finish this,
get the stretch from Target underneath 101
because that's a big important thing to get people
a way to get to the waterfront
without having to cross 4th and 5th Street.
And eventually the trail,
as it's going off the page in the bottom here,
heading south, will come out behind the Beret Center,
up there, go down behind the,
can't think of the name of the...
It's Marsh Road.
The RV park.
No, the RV park.
The old F-5.
Shoreline or whatever it's called.
Shoreline, yeah.
And so really people coming from that part of Eureka
near Myrtle Avenue, S Street,
will be able to get down and pass underneath the freeway
eventually at one point and go all the way down
to the waterfront.
It'll be a nice, wonderful connecting trail
that will provide not only recreation,
access to that Puerto Rican Marsh area
that is pretty inaccessible now,
other than the water and also around to the waterfront.
And so pieces, this is just like the Hammond Trail.
A lot of these things have to happen in segments.
And so the Target piece is a good example
of if you have your plan in place,
when those developments happen along the waterfront,
it's just part of the development.
And I've talked a lot with Security National over the years
about their piece of property up there,
by the blocks, and about their vision for,
they have a strong trail vision with all their projects.
And then pieces of it are public,
underneath the Caltrans Bridge, funded by public dollars.
So it's a network and it has to have
a dedicated jurisdiction who's gonna go after these pieces
and make them happen when those opportunities
come proactively.
And that's one thing we do on the,
again, go back to parts of our commission,
but we do try to get notice when something's coming up
that's in proximity to where there might be a trail.
So at least we can have that dialogue
with whoever the developer property owner is at that time
and see if they can create the interest
in using the same information that Jen provides here.
This is a really exciting project.
We've been working on for a long time.
Dave worked on aspects of this,
I think even before he, when you were at the city.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, and this is an Elk River Wildlife area in the city.
It's right behind Pearsons.
It's one of the, I hear one of the best places
to do a lot of birding in the Bay.
It used to be a little stinkier than it is now.
I think there's a few less stinky things going on
in the Bay that hit this spot.
But it's an incredible public access.
It's paddling in the estuary.
And what's proposed here is there's an existing trail
that's not paved, it's difficult to get a bike on
because of a maze.
But what's proposed is extending that
and making it a multi-use trail from Pound Road
at the bottom there up to Truesdale basically,
and adding VISTA points and improved visitor access points.
PG&E just gave $230,000 to the project.
And the city have a $1.4 million River Parkways proposal in.
It's bond funded, so it's probably gonna get shelved
until the state has some more bond money
to throw out projects like this.
But it's ranking high so far.
So that's a block off 101.
That's right behind the mall.
And it's an easy spot to drive a lot of folks to
and manage their access.
And there are other parts around the Bay
where you don't want a lot of people visiting
more sensitive places, but this is a place
where we can really manage folks' access.
And there are a number of motels along there
that West Western is a great example.
It's gonna be right across the train tracks from it
and be great access for visitors
to be able to hit that trail.
It'd be wonderful one day when they'd be able
to hit that trail and go all the way up to the boardwalk.
So getting into the economic benefits,
I like this picture because it just for me
is all about why families love living within the reach
of, you know, there's affordable houses
within the reach of the hammond trail
and look what you got on the hammond trail.
It's pretty amazing.
And this is just started the little steps
down to the beach down there.
So, you know, making sure that we can retain
and invite families and businesses to this area
to me is a big part of regional trail system,
water trail systems.
You know, when Oracle is looking here
like they did however many years ago
and they're looking at what is it that this place has
for my employees, what are they, you know,
this is one of the things that could speak to them.
I'll go over some data about construction jobs
associated with these projects in a minute.
Incredible opportunities for visitors
and we have so much here and they just fly by
because they really don't know what's here
but there's also way more that we could offer.
There's just incredible potential
if we have a connected network.
Hammond trail is five and a half miles long.
But if you think of, if you can go from Moonstone beach
to Table Bluff or out to go swimming in Blue Lake,
you know, on a trail, that's a pretty powerful package
to offer folks.
And then, you know, one thing I want to mention
is that there's lots of studies out there
that say that these types of facilities
cover or exceed any maintenance and operations costs
that are associated with them.
So there's lots of different types of income
that are generated from these facilities.
There's direct types of income of people buying things
that are associated with trail going
but there's also lots of studies that show
that as people go buy businesses on these trails,
those businesses experience lots of increase,
you know, significant increased revenue.
It's like a form of advertisement,
just being next to a trail.
Lots of communities, the businesses near trails
have turned to face them, like in Monterey
and San Los Obispo.
And, but, what County Public Works Director Tom Matson says
is like, that's lovely.
But all that tax revenue is in the city.
And most of the trail is in the county.
Like, you know, where if you look at this map,
most of it falls in county jurisdictions.
So those are some issues we have to deal with.
He's like, well, they're gonna get all this additional
sales tax revenue, I gotta maintain the trail.
That's a problem.
So that's one thing.
We're starting to get all these agencies together
to talk about an MOU for collectively managing
these trail systems and that's one thing
we're gonna have to deal with.
And then we're just, you know,
you can see how much money we're leveraging.
We're leveraging a lot of money in studies
and there's a hell of a lot more money to be leveraged
if we can get these things built.
And I'll come back to that one, actually.
I'm gonna just go to this construction jobs,
the Hammond trail example.
For half of the year in 2007,
we hired 15 different contractor firms.
About 50 of their staff were working on this project.
We had 35 CCC members out there.
They were so inspiring.
They all learned a new trade
and were super fired up about it.
The contractors were so funny.
They didn't wanna leave.
They said this was our favorite project.
It was so fun to work on.
Whoven and Miller Farms and all these guys.
They loved going out and working on a trail project.
We had five staff at RCAA for longer than,
you know, for a year or more.
People still working on this project,
like the signage elements of it.
Half an FTE in County Public Works Department,
at least $500,000 in materials purchases
and mostly those are local purchases.
So that's some real tangible economic input
into the economy that if we can leverage these grants,
these are real jobs that we're talking about
for these types of trail systems.
There's lots of studies out there
that show that trails have a positive effect
on property values, bringing new money to local economy,
increased real estate sales significantly near trails,
and that businesses expand
or experience increased sales near trails.
And then just lots of data
about how much people actually spend.
And then one thing I would add about that,
that I didn't put on that slide,
is that for every dollar of investment in bike ped trails,
you get $2.94 in direct medical benefit.
And that's a study that was done
by a whole host of PhDs, MDs,
and masters in public health.
So yeah, no, that's in a segment.
But yeah, I just wanna say
that that's part of the economic benefits of these facilities
and they're totally in demand.
I took this picture in BC
and all the cool new condos and housing units
are all going in right next to their trail systems.
They have these amazing trail systems.
It's really a lot like riding around here
because it's a very similar vegetation.
And it just got me really wistful.
I was like, oh my gosh, so amazing.
It's like riding down the Annie and Mary under the alders
and the maples and over these big old trestles.
But you're up in Victoria, BC,
but that's where the developers wanna build.
And in Vancouver, BC, the waterfront developers
are battling each other by trying to style
and trick out their part of the waterfront trail the best
so that you wanna invest in their project.
It's pretty amazing.
And so this is born out locally in Arcata,
a study that the city did.
Trails for recreation and transportation
were residents number one priority.
So, and that's how the city's really putting
a lot of energy into that effort.
So again, this back, this is just winding up.
I don't know if I have any other.
There's some resources.
If you guys want some of these websites,
there's the water trail study that Noelle and Chris finished
last year and worked with people like Hawk
and the district on.
That's available on our website.
I don't think the draft map is there,
but there's a huge tome of trails
and economic development information available
at the americantrails.org site,
which that organization is based in Reading.
And then there's lots of trail feasibility studies.
Oh, you know, one actually last thing I wanna mention
about bringing money into the county is that
we and pretty much all the cities, the county,
and most of the tribes in Caltrans are working on
bringing $50 million in active transportation investments
to Humboldt County.
And this is available on the trails trust.org slash HP3
website.
It's called Humboldt People Powered Pathways.
And it's part of the federal transportation bill
reauthorization.
We are very focused on making sure that Humboldt County
is included in that transportation bill reauthorization
and getting $50 million to invest
in an active transportation system,
not pieces built here and there,
but actual system investment.
So that's probably gonna be an ongoing kind of
longer term process.
Because what I'm watching happen in DC is that
they're pushing off this transportation bill
reauthorization to really focus on things like
healthcare reform and stuff like that.
So, but, you know,
that's definitely a golden egg
if we can bring that to this community.
If $1 million at the Hammond Trail got us that list of jobs,
we can imagine what $50 million would be able to bring.
And the New York Times just featured Portland
and they said they spent about $10 million
on trail infrastructure
and they're reaping many, many fold of benefits.
And you can actually get off an airplane
at the Portland Airport
and get on a style trail system right there.
And that's, so I mean, it really is, it's a...
You can do that at the Arcadia Airport too.
There we go.
Let's entertain a couple of questions and you guys,
Mike and Jennifer can handle them the way they like.
Pete?
What code or tax conflicts do you see existing
or what modifications of code or tax issues
might be necessary to consider?
For investment in the infrastructure,
like the city of Arcadia increased their sales tax
so that they can have money available
for investing in projects like this.
Is that what you're asking?
Well, no, sometimes code conflicts with music
or it's necessary to create a tax,
either considerations or modifications
so that you're not penalizing people for doing it
or you incentivize.
And that same thing could be said of code
because if you get the code in general updated
to allow consideration, then it's not a piecemeal thing
you talked about for other projects.
So do you see any issues there?
Now, this really doesn't apply to the district here,
to the Harbor district, because we're talking
in a different footprint for most of them.
Well, that's one thing I think
that the County Trails Master Plan is gonna be looking at.
I think not so much code, it's actual functional ability
for multi-jurisdictional relationships
is really the one thing that's been hanging up
a lot of this effort for many years.
And I know that that project is gonna look at that.
One thing that hung up the hole in the Hammond for 10 years
was that their trails weren't allowed
and county ordinances weren't allowed in riparian zones,
but roads were.
Precisely.
So we had to deal with that,
and then we could go forward with that piece of the trail.
But I can't say that, I know there's a lot
of conflicting regulatory issues,
like say if you build a rail with trail
and the railroad wants a big fence,
or Caltrans wants a big fence between the trail
and the highway and it's on the coastal zone,
the Coastal Commission says,
you ain't building a fence on the coastal zone?
That kind of stuff.
That actually killed a $600,000 bridge
across the Little River that state parks had funding for,
getting building trail to Moonstone
from the Hammond Trail basically,
and it was the Coastal Commission decided
that the visual impacts were too much.
Even signage falls in the back.
Yeah, so those are I think more of the hangups,
is the kind of regulatory.
Realizing that you're gonna get very in depth answers,
I'll pick up more quick questions.
We'll go to Larry and then Dave.
Great presentation, there's a lot of stuff
I'm already beginning, but I'm a believer,
but I guess the difference between the resident trail user
and then the tourist trail user,
and then sort of the way that I've always looked at it
in Arcata in particular is that
if the person stayed in their hotel
and they got to hop in their car and drive to the trail,
well, they're gonna go to Trinidad.
Once they're in the car, they're gone.
They're just going wherever.
You don't have them in your local
and you wanna get out of the hotel room and walk.
Go to a restaurant, go to a walk, get on a trail,
take your dog, do your bike, whatever you wanna do.
And so the trick is with these trails
is to have the linkage to the services
that the tourists need, direct linkage.
That's what people want is that direct linkage.
And it's the combination, you build them for the residents,
but we have to make it simple for the tourists to get on
so they don't have to drive.
Hubert's simple.
Yeah, it's gotta be easy and inviting to the visitor.
It's gotta be just no brainer for them to figure it out
and rent that bike and make it down to the marsh
and then continue on the bay trail.
And knowing where they're gonna go
and where they're gonna end up
and how to plan their trip is key part of that, you're right.
And so is I think just the education of folks.
It's unfortunate that as you travel,
and we look for trails and we travel a lot on our trips,
the clerk at the desk of the hotel can say,
it's only behind the hotel,
whereas you may not have a clue that there is one around.
So I think that whole kind of education
of the community over those things too.
People always say, oh, we're not gonna know
because we're gonna see some etiquettes right down here
on the up street, they can point you to that.
Can they point you to the trail?
Dave?
Yeah, I was educated by something you said,
really tickled my ears and I never considered it before
was that you seemed to say that a functional
regional trail system is really a magnet
for industry and maybe corporations.
And I gotta admit that I'd never put those two together.
And is that a desirable effect necessarily?
And-
It's kind of like the surfing issue,
a little bit of like, do we wanna tell them?
Do we go up here, how much do we wanna tell?
That might generate more support for more varied interest
if that is really part of a trail vision.
I had a guy, the head of a large engineering firm
here locally said, the 30 somethings are not impressed
with lots of green spaces between the houses and the towns.
They want recreational infrastructure.
And so I think, like Portland,
that whole I-5 quarter in Oregon,
they said after the Northwest Forest Plan and the Spotted Owl
that it was all gonna go south
and they built up this recreational infrastructure,
their population has swelled,
they got lots of these self cone valley type jobs
and a very educated and upscale workforce.
And the same thing is true with transfer of wealth
with retirees, they come in here for recreational amenities
and quality of life.
And it doesn't, it's kind of frustrating
because that's not necessarily direct jobs.
Sometimes it is they buy an existing small business
and make the choice to bring their capital here
in that regard, but otherwise they might be,
living on the hill in a nice house
and have most of their money in a bank.
But there's still lots of wealth that comes to us
in different forms because of this
in terms of the people that move here.
And it's reflecting the demographics by the way.
Randy.
Well, as a developer, I think Dan will second this.
Everything you're saying about trails is true.
It'll increase your rents,
it'll make your development more appealing.
It's 100% true, that's what we planned for.
The issue though that I see here locally,
I think Dan will second this is,
when you mentioned Vancouver, I've been to Vancouver,
actually one of the architects
that designed the project on the waterfront,
their senator went to Vancouver,
looked at their trail systems and all that.
Is they want to invest up there?
I mean, are Eureka's waterfronts a waste land?
I mean, you look at various areas,
you've got huge blocks of city owned property.
How are you going to encourage development
on the waterfront with all the regulatory hurdles?
I mean, that's your key.
You could build this thing without public money,
private developers will build it for you.
I mean, how does your group reach out to us?
I mean, you've reached out to us,
obviously, because we've got about a mile of it,
and we're on board.
But how are we going to get these things in time?
It's true, and I think the key is,
one thing I mentioned earlier is to make sure
that each local jurisdiction is pursuing this
of their own accord.
I mean, I can pursue it.
Me, me, me, me.
From a non-profit standpoint,
oh, triangles.
But when you have your public works
and your planning staff keyed into looking
for these opportunities and moving them forward
and promoting what they've got as a part of a package,
this is one piece of the full basket that they offer.
I think that makes a big difference, personally.
And the other, I've led workshops
on trying to streamline regulatory stuff
for the restoration community.
So that is a big part of it.
And I know it's, and I don't know if I can touch that,
because you've got 10 different regulators
and they all want something different
and they're not coordinated.
That's a big challenging task
that lives in front of all of us.
The other guys, they say that the Hartford District
should break trail on the permitting
and help them with it so that we have a staffer
that's acquainted, can provide the science side.
And then of course, they'd still participate
with consultants, but that we'd have kind of a cohesive
approach to the regulatory so that we try
to make some progress.
And also have kind of familiar faces,
so it isn't like new people all the time
and we know their book.
I mean, so would that be desirable
if there was a governmental entity?
Yeah, if this vision here
for the waterfront trail in Eureka had CEQA behind it,
it had engineering designs and it was done.
This is the vision and the kind of scratch on the paper.
But if all those pieces were in place,
the city could have pulled down a ton of stimulus money
for this project to get it built.
But those are the pieces,
and that's some of the multi-jurisdictional kind of work
that we need to do and to help.
I think a lot of the local jurisdictions
feel like they don't have the funding.
It's a little bit of a chicken and egg issue.
They feel like they need investment,
big chunk to invest in these things,
but then the return on the investment is huge.
But getting that initial investment
and getting the CEQA in place
and your final engineering designs and stuff,
that's the piece that's been missing.
Okay.
You know, of all the things we've been talking about
since we've been meeting,
the single biggest problem is the one
we're talking about at this instance.
This is the single biggest issue to economic development
that we are going to have, that we are going to face,
that we're going to have to figure out a way around.
Because without facing that issue,
without figuring out how to get permits,
you're not going to move anything forward,
be it residential, be it commercial,
or be it recreational.
Well, and it's classic that one state agency wants to fund
and the other state agency thinks it's a blight.
I mean, that's...
They're connected.
Let's not dwell.
But I think it's a recognized impediment,
and it's one of the challenges of this committee
to recognize those and see if there are solutions
that we can craft.
And so that was very enlightening
and very encouraging in some regards.
And Anne Lindsay is going to bat last before the panel.
She is our Humboldt County Public Health Director.
She is going to talk about the financial benefits
of improved health associated
with recreational infrastructure.
So public health isn't not about individual patient care,
but we're concerned about the community as a whole.
And one of our jobs is to get data together
about the health status and health issues
and to in order to inform policy.
So in that spirit, I'm here tonight.
There's ample evidence about the impact
of a way a community is laid out on health.
And people are more likely to be physically active
if it's easy to do it.
And that's, there's certainly in the existing activities
of the Harbor District, a lot of opportunities
or promotion of physical activity,
but certainly when you look at the broader vision
and linking it to multi-use trails,
you really see that even more.
Just the Center for the Public Health Advocacy
released a report recently that showed economic impact
in county by county for physical inactivity and obesity.
And the total cost to Humboldt County,
according to this study is $112 million per year.
And if you narrow it down to physical inactivity,
it's $51 million, about half of which
is direct healthcare costs and $25 million
in lost productivity in the workforce.
And that accounts for, is accounted for by absences.
People are just not coming to work, they're sick,
short-term disability, and then presenteeism,
which means you're on the job,
but the lights, nobody's home.
And that adds up to approximately 3% of work time
that is lost, is not productive
because of physical inactivity.
And that totals 57 hours per person per year.
And you multiply that out times the population
of Humboldt County, it's 7.4 million hours
of productivity lost, which is always impressive.
I've always loved multiplying times 127,000.
But.
So if we were to decrease physical inactivity
in Humboldt by 5%, it would improve the local economy
productivity $5.6 million a year.
So I think that's a good goal.
And actually, Humpal, the Partnership for Active Living,
HumCAN, which is a community for activity and nutrition,
and our Department of Health and Human Services
have worked on a series of community goals.
And one of them, we wanted that right now,
there are 63% of the adult population
do not meet physical activity goals.
It's 30 minutes of physical activity five times a week.
So if we could, our goal is to increase it to 50%.
But if, anyway, if we just got the,
we're aiming for a 5% increase in physically active adults,
that would be 6,500 more adults physically active.
So how do you do it?
You make, increase the quality and quantity
and accessibility of parks, school grounds,
multi-use trails, make connections and open spaces.
That, so behind the healthcare savings
are reducing the risk of early death, heart disease,
type two diabetes, high blood pressure and depression
in order to, and preventing weight gain,
which improves your heart and lung and muscular fitness
and your thinking processes.
And that's behind the presenteeism,
that people are spaced out rather than working.
And so our national goal is to get 50% of adults
engaged in physical activity.
You know, for children, same kind of argument,
although it just increases their well-being,
encourages positive health behavior,
and reduces their chances of developing chronic disease.
And a child born today has a one in four chance
of developing type two diabetes,
just because obesity and physical activity are climbing
and diabetes follows that.
So, oops, didn't want to show that slide.
That's the one that's a subliminal message.
I guess so.
Just to show that there,
this is about healthy weights of humble students.
Just, we actually have a problem.
It feels like everybody should have access
to good food and physical activity,
but relative to urban areas, we have a higher obesity rate.
And you can see also that the blue markers
are from 2003, 2004 measurements
that we, public health took in schools.
And the red lines are from 2006 and 2007 measurements
that we took in school.
And the number of children, or the percentage of children
that are at healthy weight is decreasing across the board
and all the age groups, so the K through two,
fifth grade, and eighth and tenth grade.
So, we have to work as a community.
That seems very rapid within about three or four years.
What's that?
That was very rapid for a sequence of like four years.
Yeah, well we're gonna, hopefully we're gonna finish
repeating it again this year or next year,
and see if it's a trend or a statistical change.
But we want our children to be happy
and learn better and become productive citizens.
And this isn't directly related to the Bay Trail,
but if kids are able to get to school
or get to where they need to go by active transportation,
it's much better off.
And this just shows you some of the percentages.
Mostly kids get shepherded around by car, which-
It could if they lived in Fields Landing
and there was a Bay Trail to King Salmon.
Uh-huh.
It could.
I mean, I-
Yeah, no, you could.
Yeah, that Bay Trail could help those.
It's part of having a connected system.
And not just, there's all too many neighborhoods
where you get like three or four blocks of a bike trail
or a sidewalk, and then they poop out.
And that's partly why kids are tethered to cars,
which tether their parents to cars
and get all of us driving around a lot.
I mean, when I had little kids,
I was the only one kind of domestic help
I would have really appreciated was a chauffeur.
But-
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
So, and it basically,
less, more people in cars, more traffic you have,
and makes it harder for people who want to not be in cars.
And walking and biking reduces the traffic, air pollution,
and there's some specific issues about schools,
which I won't get into now.
But one of the goals also that our organizations
have adopted, and we're actually making plans
to get the whole community to sign onto this,
is to reduce automobile travel.
That there's been a steady increase in vehicle,
or vehicle miles traveled,
and there has a direct relationship.
The more vehicle miles traveled,
the less physical activity there is.
There's an inverse relationship.
And one thing, we talk a lot about encouraging
high income people to come move in the neighborhood
and come spend their money and tourism,
but 27% of the median income in Humboldt County
is spent on transportation.
And these are people who work
and raise their children here.
And if they have option, that they don't have to,
cars are expensive, but bicycles and foot traffic
is a lot cheaper.
So it really meets all the needs of people in community
if we can develop an effective trail system.
And air pollution in itself,
which it doesn't feel like a big problem here,
but that is an issue.
Automobiles do contribute to air pollution.
And greenhouse gases affect climate change,
which have a whole host of health problems,
including extreme weather events, water pollution,
diseases by born in food and water,
and by mosquitoes, and you know,
malaria will probably come back to the United States
as it gets warmer.
But some of the activities that we propose
to support the goal of reducing vehicle miles traveled
is basically creating land use patterns
and incentivize development that accommodates
and encourages active transportation.
So every body, a policy making body,
such as this group here, and every planning commission,
actually practitioners of public health.
And you probably have more impact than I do,
even though I do that as my job.
But we can make significant positive health impact.
And there, whoops.
And just pulling out of the health impact assessment
that public health participated in,
the county general plan, some data about
that the amount of the bike facilities
that are existing here in Humboldt County.
We-
This is including class three, I think,
which is just signed bike routes.
Yes. Yes.
So it's not specifically, you know-
A bike lane or a bike path.
Yeah, it might be a bike lane, you know,
which, so it's a broad definition of a bike facility.
But this is the baseline.
And that, but the ratio of class one bike facilities
to roads is 0.02.
And the ratio of class two bike facilities,
which is, you know, a mark lane on the street is 0.01,
which is, I think we can do better than that.
And certainly this $50 million trail development
will get us a significant way along that.
And that really is the gist of my talk.
Awesome.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Awesome.
Thank you.
Questions for Ram before we can see the panel.
David, and then we'll go to Hawk.
Quantified under lost productivity,
you quantified $57 per year per person.
And then you multiplied that by a number
to get to a million dollar number.
No, it was 57 hours per person.
Yeah.
You were, then you quantified it
and went, got to a million dollar figure
that it was costing lost productivity.
Right.
But you multiply it by 127,000.
And that's every man, woman, and child in Humboldt County.
Is it fair to say that every one of those is a worker
that is losing productivity?
Well, the statistics are per person.
So I assume that, right, just not all that many,
not everybody works, but it's interesting.
Probably inflated my figure,
but as I interpreted the study,
it was per person and not per productively employed person.
Right.
But it still couldn't be significant.
That was a good point to do.
So it might be half of that, or it might be that.
But if they did the, it depends on how,
and I didn't have access to the full mathematics
behind the study.
Because there are other externalities.
If you have an inactive person in your household
may increase your lack of, or decrease your productivity
because if you're taking care of that person,
you don't know all that.
All right.
Tom.
I just wanted to, a lot of the talks seem to be focused on
land-based uses for recreation and activity,
but certainly, you know, kayaking, my thing,
you weigh much less on the water than you do on the land.
So I get a lot of very heavy people come to Humboldt's
to go kayaking, and people come out,
I was, really, you wanna go kayaking?
But I've got kayaks that can hold 600 pounds, so why not?
Get them on the water, they get it exercised,
and they really feel like they're doing something,
and then they come back and do it again and again.
Because it's a low-impact exercise.
And if we had the infrastructure,
if we had the trail system on the water,
then there'd be more ability for them to do that.
It wouldn't be such a scary proposition
to go kayaking in the bay.
I think that's a really good point.
I mean, I have a medical practice as well,
and that's always a challenge.
If brainstorming with people,
well, you're not physically active,
what do you like to do, and what can you do?
And if you're overweight, to start with,
the land-based things are often too much impact.
And so swimming and kayaking are very good sports.
Yeah?
For all the water we have here,
we have a very poor aquatics
directed at school-aged children.
We have almost no sewing program, no small craft program.
It's all directed at high school and above.
Are you seeing any programs in place that we could use
to get children involved in aquatics
to expand their horizons?
We do Eureka High School,
Cotton Elementary, Ridgewood, Trinidad School.
That's a big part of our business,
is taking the little kids out.
It's more come see the biology, the ecology of the area.
It's not so much fitness, but it's, we do,
that's a big part of our business,
is getting the little ones out there.
And it's the teachers seek us out to do that
rather than us looking for that business.
And then I think, yeah, I'd like to point out too,
on that subject, I was trying to get John Bradley here
tonight from sailing from the yacht club,
and either or John Ash,
because both of them are actually tonight,
they're doing a youth sailing program on Humboldt Bay.
And so that we couldn't have them here on the panel
this evening, but there is some activities
associated with that for the youth.
But there needs to be more definitely.
And you know, and I went to a conference
that the district here hosted last year for the marinas.
What was that one?
The CMAC meeting?
Yeah, was it CMOS for the marinas one,
for it was a marina maintenance type.
Oh, the Pacific Coast Congress or whatever.
Yeah, whatever, anyway.
It was a West Coast marinas conference,
and they talked a lot about the need for expanding
into youth programs for water sports,
and especially boating, because, you know,
they're seeing a kind of a decrease
in some of those activities.
And the ownerships of sailboats and larger boats
is actually shifting more into the paddleboat arena
due to economics and just sort of the trends
of what society.
And they were talking about how more marinas
are now having programs directly related to,
you know, getting folks on the water
in those different craft outside just private ownership.
So it's something we're looking at.
I think that's a great idea because a lot of activity,
physical activity at high schools anyway,
is around team sports.
And a very small percentage of students can participate.
And a lot of kids are either not physically able
or not inclined, and the more options we can find
that sports like kayaking that they can bring
into their adulthood and keep doing,
you know, that we're just gonna help create,
keep health habits in that generation.
Right, crew, there's a lot of kids out participating
in crew, the high school teams.
Yeah.
I wanna transition into the panel discussion
if that's okay so we can, oh, I'm sorry, Pete.
We're really almost getting close to done.
Seriously.
It was stretched a while ago.
You want five, Pete?
I know. Really?
I was gonna say five to get hold of these chairs.
Well, I mean, I like, so we're supposed to end pretty soon.
I mean, if you wanna, you know, hop out to do
what you need to do, Pete, that's okay.
But I think we do need to kind of keep moving
to get people out of here and not to lose the momentum.
We're gonna go into the panel discussion.
I just wanted to say that, you know, this, you know,
we started this economic development committee
to look at different aspects of economic development
around Humboldt Bay and this is one of the ones
that obviously is popular and important.
And it's not just because it's good for us,
it's because it actually has value to the economy
and sort of, you know, to answer Dave's thing about,
you know, a lot of chamber of commerce,
including Reading and other places, you know,
they highlight when they are advertising
to businesses and entrepreneurs and those types of people
that want to move to a place and workers to retain.
These are the types of infrastructures and, you know,
facilities that they highlight very strongly,
amongst other things, you know, transportation
and other issues that they, you know,
and culture and those sorts of things.
But these are among the highest,
and especially in California and the types of workers,
technology workers and even labor workers,
they like these facilities, they use them for their families.
So it is important.
One of the things, and I'm just gonna,
I don't want to make more work for David,
although I do all the time, is, you know,
there has always been this question of,
and it doesn't need to be answered here
at this particular event, but, you know,
one of the things that has been bandied about
and talked about is a district, a recreation district, right?
And we are a recreation district.
We haven't really necessarily defined the bounds
of what that is necessarily geographically.
It's been discussed a little bit,
but there hasn't been a line,
we have a jurisdiction from a permitting perspective,
but even from a harbor perspective,
it extends to roads and airports and railroads
and those sorts of things.
And from a recreation perspective,
it definitely extends down to a shelter cove,
as far as, you know, as far as what we've taken on.
We've never actually talked about where that,
where the boundaries of that potential is,
and so it's not, again, we're not gonna get into it here,
but it is something that we could talk about in the future.
We're also a conservation district
that also hasn't seen necessarily
or hasn't defined its boundaries.
And so I just want to throw that out there
for future discussion and then break into the panel.
And with that, we'll just go right into questions.
For panel.
One thing I would just like to maybe tag onto that
is that through the county trail planning process
and the Annie and Mary Rail Trail rail banking process
that HCOG is going through right now,
there's an effort to talk about, you know,
how do we link up our jurisdictions
and deal with these regional systems
in a way that makes sense.
And there's lots of models out there,
because there's obviously lots of 100 mile,
200 mile trail systems out there that deal with this.
But, you know, it would just,
I would put out there that, you know,
we could involve the district in those discussions
to the extent you're interested or not.
And they'll happen with the county trail plan,
master plan process.
The Annie and Mary is a little further afield,
but it's the same concept of, you know,
for the Annie and Mary, it's ranch area, two cities,
Caltrans, water district, you know,
and the county.
And how do you, how does that facility work
with all those, you know, between Arcadia and Eureka,
it's all the same, plus the railroad authority,
you know, and Fish and Wildlife Service
and private landowners.
So having some sort of catalyzing mechanism
or some sort of umbrella or function
that can help that process,
obviously it's gotta be funded if it's a task, you know,
but that is, that's one of the big hurdles of this.
Right, and I don't mean to open a big can of worms on that,
it's one of the road out there for future reference.
Jennifer?
I had a question for Jen,
or I don't know if even Randy or Dan can even answer.
Are there any cases where, like,
the trail has come first and the trail itself has sparked,
like a, what's the word, like a rebirth reinvigoration
of an area, or is it always a, like,
we want to throw a bunch of money into an area
and we'll also include a trail in there?
You know, is a trail itself, like, inherently something
that propels better development?
I have two responses to that,
and then if you guys have others, please add.
One is that the trail is an engine in itself
if it's connected up.
So pieces, like, I'd even say, you know,
the boardwalk is a really tremendous asset,
and if it was more connected,
it would be many, many more times so.
The hammond trail, each piece that gets added on
or connected makes the whole thing way more attractive
to neighboring real estate.
And we did watch neighbors fight that
and then wall it off and then turn around and face it
and plant and caretake it.
But in other areas, there are tons of examples
of what you're talking about.
Is the trail comes first, and I think the front page
of this little pamphlet I passed out says that.
You build it, and if it's built in its entirety,
if it's built in a functional way that's well planned,
it does attract additional investment and attract business.
But if it's just pieces, I don't think it does so well,
personally.
And sometimes those are a problem.
Yeah.
Pieces that go to bushes, kids always find them.
Well, you gotta remember too that the waterfront
in this area, for example, or most areas,
where the people have had it, is controlled by literally,
you know, hundreds of private owners.
Right.
And for a public entity going to get them all to buy in,
you know, there's a severe distrust
between private property rights and public interest.
But when you get private developers,
or a block of private developers, filling in the pieces,
it doesn't take long for it to spread to the other guys.
They say, well, you know, how come he's getting $25 a foot
for his real estate, which is a lot of times,
is just a vacant, like Canary Row was a good thing.
Yeah, Canary Row.
In Monterey.
And he's like, wow, he's embraced this trail,
you know, he planned for it in his refurb or new development.
And it catches on, it spreads.
And, you know, I mean, right now, I mean,
you're getting three, $4 a foot down in the, you know,
lower sections of old town, you know, in the industrial area.
A lot of those things can be pretty cool buildings.
You know, if the owners had an incentive in traffic
down there, right now, it's just, like I said,
it's a wasteland.
And so you gotta, you gotta embrace the private sector,
decide to get them to sell the buy-in, and they will.
I mean, it works.
But part of like selling the idea to private business owners,
private property owners, it would be true to say
that once the trail is complete,
that it does assist in renovation and better development.
Yes, or am I understanding correctly?
You can sell the vision,
but until you see the developers,
the adjacent landowners don't usually buy in.
I mean, that's something that happens time to time, yeah.
I looked into Vancouver's trails,
which I saw a couple years ago,
and asked my in-laws about that.
And that city just bought a lot of land or bought frontage.
But when they bought the frontage on the waterfront,
it increased the value of the back property so much
that they were willing, the owners were willing to say,
yeah, you could buy that at a pretty good price,
because there's some really nice places right behind
that trail on what used to be essentially a cesspool,
in that, I think it's a hidden creek, false creek area
that used to be highly polluted.
Are we talking Washington or BC?
BC.
On the, yeah, within the trail in Arcata,
we did a joint study session with the Planning Commission
and the City Council of Montego and said to them,
is look, we need to be looking at selectively rezoning
properties along this rail corridor,
which is gonna become the rail trail.
Downzoning some of these from heavy industrial,
making them other uses, and then modifying our land use
pattern patterns, because people are gonna wanna develop
on this thing when we do this, and they're gonna wanna build
towards the trail, not building out the other direction,
but have the backend towards the trail network,
and then encouraging certain types of developments
within that, and changing land use patterns,
and making incentives for developers,
because I don't wanna get grant money.
I want the developers to pay for it.
I want to encourage them, open up the land that we want
to develop for certain types of uses,
and then let them pay for the improvements
in order to do certain types of developments
that are along their frontage,
and that's pay for what we can pay,
but the portions that are gonna benefit them,
open up the land and let them pay for those portions.
Good.
For Dave, and maybe Mike and Pat,
from the Harbor District's point of view,
the regional trail boundaries,
and given that you're basically, under your purview,
is the high water line, how do you see
the Harbor District's role in promoting
and collaborating on this trail issue?
I'll jump in just for a second, if I can,
and that is that the high water mark
is a jurisdictional line for permitting.
We actually have trails already.
We have a trail right out front of here,
goes along the waterfront here.
We have a trail in, it's not King Salmon,
yeah, King Salmon, we have a trail there,
and a beachfront, so we have upland recreational facilities
with trails already.
So that was kind of what I was talking about before,
is we've never really actually defined
the outside geographic boundary, necessarily,
of what that is, to a certain extent,
and Dave can speak to it a little bit more,
I'm sure, knowledgeably than I can,
but what I'm saying is that the jurisdiction
for those things isn't quite as defined as high water mark.
When you're talking about our influence,
even the properties that we operate
and the jurisdiction of any one of these
harbor recreation or conservation,
they're not quite as delineated as a high water mark,
but I'll let Dave kind of...
Cut, take a swing, David.
Just to build on what Mike said,
I think we're still looking like we talked
in the beginning of the talk here,
that we absolutely can work on things
where we have the authority,
and that's either the authority through the tight land grants
or through legislation or something,
or it's the authority that we have
because we own the property.
The two examples that Mike had,
Woodley Island and down at King Salmon,
we own the property, so that's easy for us
to develop those kind of things.
When we're talking about things,
even as close to the bay as the proposed bay trail,
it's not in our authority.
It's above me and higher high water
on the other side of the railroad or whatever,
and we don't own it.
So we get into that same thing
that Jen was talking about a little while ago.
While it's all these different agencies
that are involved just in this seven miles here,
we would be just another one.
And for the time being, unless the district owned it,
or unless all those six or seven agencies said,
okay, district, we're gonna hand the keys
to this trail over to you, we really are,
which could happen.
We kind of remain in the support role, which is the yay.
Now, if I could just tailor off your question
just for a second and get back to Jen,
it strikes me that HCOG is really kind of set up
to be that kind of umbrella agency
for those kind of things.
It represents, well, it represents all the cities anyway.
We don't have a seat on it, but we could.
And the county, exactly.
So it seems like it's kind of naturally set up to do that.
You've had more experience with them than I have.
So is that-
Yeah, where they see their limit
is that they don't actually,
they've never acted as a manager.
They just act as a convener and decider kind of role.
Do they have the authority though to be a manager?
I think there are COGs and other sources
of that realm of transportation, JPA,
that go further, that go get into some of those realms,
but I'm not that familiar with them.
I'm certain some of the counties in like Marin,
some of those are, well, they're affluent,
so they're taking charge and they're just,
they're filling that void.
And I think our county's more reluctant.
And of course, if we were gonna pick this one up, Dave,
we'd have to figure out what revenue stream,
who would be able to kind of, to foster, to offset it.
I think a big part of our county's issue too,
is that I think Humboldt County has way more
of a burden of road mileage maintenance
and unstable road mileage maintenance
than places like Marin County and stuff.
So I think they feel like they're overtaxed
and maybe under, maybe there's maybe not as much
of a tax base in a lot of where,
places where there's a lot of road mileage
they have to maintain, maybe there's not as much taxes
contributed that maybe should be
toward that maintenance.
Now you're scratching the deep.
Yeah, so anyway, I think that that's the challenge.
County feels challenged to meet their, what they've got now
and they feel concerned about adding more.
Yeah, but this is something certainly that, you know,
there's a lot of desire for the trails around the Bay
and it's, and it could be something that we could grow into.
And that's one of the reasons we're here convened
trying to figure out, you know, kind of,
cause things are changing and our role may change.
Let's go with Steve.
I think Hawk had a question.
Okay, Hawk and then Steve's paper has an answer.
I just wanted to, since this kind of ties
into Dave's question, we're talking a lot about land trail
but I want to refocus on water trail.
Right now what we've got behind us is water access,
not water trail.
The Harbor District can say yes,
we're going to have a water trail in the Bay
where our kayaker can kayak from Woodley Island
to Arcata and not get stuck in the mud at low tide
if there was a sign trail system.
I always hear from the Harbor District,
like, oh, it's a liability.
You know, we can't do that.
And there's all these reasons why we can't have a trail
like everybody else who has water trails marked
with signs from point A to point B to point C.
And I'd like to know from the committee,
if you guys think that's a good idea
to actually have a trail system marked,
not just you can get into the Bay here,
you can get into the Bay there, but here's a sign
you can look so you don't get lost in the mud.
The Harbor District can do that, can't they?
Yeah.
We can do whatever they want us to do.
And I think that that plan is the beginning to get us there.
You know, it does, you're absolutely right.
It is an access plan, the way it's set up.
And you're absolutely right, there is a hesitancy
with regards to the perceived liability
of laying out where trails are in the water.
But that doesn't mean we won't get there one day.
The point of that is to get it started
and then see where that goes.
Because we're taking on the parts that aren't controversial,
which is the access parts.
And quite honestly, I do see us moving forward
with a water trail program eventually,
but right now we're glad to get this far
and to get then also to move forward with the facilities.
So I mean, you're right.
Your criticism is well taken.
I think he makes a good point.
But Jen, you've been researching this for years.
So you...
Well, I think what we started talking about
in like 99 or 2000 was buoys.
Was like a buoy marker system
on the deep water channels in the bay.
And then it came to maintenance and some liability issues.
And I think the Coastal Conservancy,
I don't remember what they said,
but they recently kind of chimed in on liability issues.
Yeah, they were looking for other examples
of water trails on the bay too
and safety issues regarding work recommending trails.
And it's kind of, it would be a little bit of a new model.
Like for instance, San Francisco has their government code
that they really support water trails
and they want to do them,
but they've actually shelved making actual routes
on the bay right now,
because it's requires so much input,
not only from other paddlers,
but in Humboldt Bay's case would be the oyster farmers,
sensitive habitat specialists,
and all those of where to direct people
on what kind of trails to have.
And then they were also said,
well, it makes sense for people who have GPS
or other coordinates, but for novice voters,
a dotted line on the bay might not make much sense
of where to go unless you have channel markers
to start that process would take more
than what this effort can support at this time.
So they also recognize that as well.
Cuget Sound is a great example though.
California is very litigious state,
very always worried, nenehenehenehene,
what's so worried, but all the other states,
North Carolina, Maine, Virginia, Washington, Oregon,
they've all got signed water trails in bays and salt water.
It's done, the data's out there,
everything is very easy to do.
Just California just seems to have a problem with it.
Maybe we can try that with the Coastal Commission.
Go ahead, Stephen Pepper.
Well, I was just gonna try to bring it back a little bit
because I'm very much in support of trails
and I definitely see it's kind of a photo-able scenario
where it supports public benefit
and private developer benefit and all those reasons.
But at the same time, the first half of the meeting
was sort of geared towards recreational fishing
and kayaking and paddling.
And I'm missing one, what was the other one?
Birding. Birding, exactly, sorry.
From the water trip.
Or if they're anywhere, right?
And so to me, it kind of seems like
when I'm thinking about I'm gonna go on vacation
and I'm gonna pick a destination
or what constitutes a destination that I wanna go to,
for here, obviously, it's the Redwoods
or if you're a birder, you're the birder
and you've seen the Redwood once
and you wanna come back and see the different birds
because maybe that's more unique
or the paddling experience.
So it's not just people coming to the Redwoods
that wanna come here.
What supports them making that decision
that they wanna come here rather than something else?
Well, it's the inherent attributes about it
like the bay, for example.
But you can take that one step further
and say ancillary benefits or services provided
or IE, other types of businesses,
help provide that because it makes their experience better.
So if you are coming to Humboldt Bay to fish,
you're not gonna be able to go recreational fishing
if there isn't recreational sport fish people
to take you there.
If you were gonna launch your boat,
say for example in fields landing
because that's the closest boat ramps to the bay
and you go down there,
well, there's not much down there
other than the boat ramp in the parking lot.
There's not a shop where you could gear up
or buy that extra this or that that you need, for example.
So I think one of the,
I was trying to brainstorm some different ideas
while I was sitting here.
I didn't really come up with very many
other than the fact that perhaps,
this is very small potatoes,
but perhaps there could be an actual structure
on the Harbor District property
somewhere that could be leased out on a daily basis almost.
Where the shop like, where you could set up
or tear down or store some boats there
or some sort of mechanism that would support businesses,
whether it was the birders or the kayakers
or the recreational sport fishers,
if they feel like that's gonna be a big fishing weekend
for whatever reason,
then they could just quickly lease this facility,
set up shop, provide some ancillary services
beyond their core competency of their business.
And then after that weekend was over,
close it up, it's not a lot of,
maybe designed in a low maintenance fashion.
And therefore that's one mechanism
what's absolutely within the scope because it's property.
And, I'm kind of thinking out loud here now,
but you kind of get the idea I think.
Well, synergies, it was interesting that,
Tom's doing birds and Hawk's doing boats
and there's a crossover.
And I think there's a lot of,
as we're talking about tourism,
the more you diversify
and have those additional things and reasons
and they're all well promoted and they're all well founded.
And then we develop the infrastructure associated with them.
That's, I think that's a path to plus business
that's fairly solid.
And, Larry brought up the infrastructure right next to the
tourist based businesses is optimal.
Mike.
Yeah.
Yeah, I just wanted to kind of wrap in a way
because wrap up the thought that's happened here.
We did get off on trails for a long time,
but everything in this discussion tonight
is all tied together.
I mean, it certainly was by your intent
and the way you agendize what was going to happen
and get the speakers.
But even more so,
and this has happened in every single one of these meetings
where you see the relationship between everybody
that sits on the panel
in ways that maybe not all of them had
totally appreciated before
or anyone has totally capitalized on.
And perhaps that comes back to Dave's earlier comment,
what the Harbor District sees in all of this,
especially the trails.
We're all talking about what happens around the Bay.
I mean, it is your jurisdiction.
It doesn't matter if it's tourism
or we're being healthier
because we're getting people to be active.
It's more about the fact we're turning our attention
to what is the Bay.
We've said this and it's come up other times
in other forums for the Harbor District,
but really it is a mindset that has changed
where a lot more of our community,
not just the tourists,
but the people that live here and work here
and have businesses or recreate here
are looking at the Bay as something more
than it was before.
And that is a leadership role
that the Harbor District could really take
and capitalize on of being a feature asset
beyond what they have been traditionally.
They're actually a cheerleader
for what is all these things put together.
Well, and I think, of course, things like paddle fest
where we join with the boaters and they celebrate.
And then people look off the bridge
and there's a thousand brightly colored boats
floating out there.
They're going, I wanna do that.
So we are kind of promoting it to ourselves.
And I think that the community more and more
is identifying with the Bay.
I mean, I remember before,
I used to, you know, it's just like,
it smells like sulfur.
I don't think when I first came to Humboldt Bay.
I mean, it just, and now I'm much more struck
with its beauty and I catch its halibut
and I've got all kinds of relationships.
And really it is true because you hear people
just like Leroy Zerling, you know,
someone who lives on the Bay pretty much
and what he does and how he works.
But his broader vision of all these other things
to me was remarkable because you'd see him
as being a pretty hardworking guy
who was out there doing a thing,
but not having the same appreciation
for a lot of the stuff we're talking about tonight.
And he was speaking at a totally another part of this forum.
Well, and our Bay is iconic.
I mean, it's one of the cleanest on the West Coast.
It has a, it's a huge food resource.
It's got the habitat for wildlife and fish.
And so it's kind of been under promoted.
We've heard it all night tonight,
world-class from a number of people, you know,
and we never go around, you know,
we can say world-class birding
and world-class for kayaking or whatever,
all the other issues, but it's world-class.
You know, I mean, it's a world-class Bay
for a lot of people.
So one topic that we didn't really talk about,
you know, because we're talking about
the recreation infrastructure
and the more recreation we do,
there's a lot of sort of industrial underutilized parcel
that's in particular in the small peninsula.
And that eventually when that gets built back up,
you know, what about the conflicts between,
you know, industrial development,
recreational kinds of uses,
and what kind of uses do we want to see in the long term,
you know, as we're developing these and, you know,
this conflicts and the inherent, you know,
there's conflicts when you get to some of these kinds of uses
and that, you know, the more recreational activities,
the more pressure there's going to be,
oh, you don't want to develop some of these pieces,
you know, even though there's own that,
they've historically been used.
These are, I don't want to get into this,
but I mean, this is something that I think
that we have to address at some point in time.
Because what we're neglecting here, as we usually do,
we're sticking kind of what are we going to do
for culmination and towards the end of our meeting schedule
and putting it into kind of overtime here.
But I work with Mike and talk to some of the other
committee members, and one of the things we're looking at
is what about having a geographically based section
or forum kind of like what you're talking about,
where we start to look at the Samoa Peninsula
versus development on the Eureka at Tefeel's landing site.
Because what's interesting is as we broach things like,
oh, the museum, the Timber Heritage Museum,
some people come up to me and they go,
that should be in Eureka.
That should be right next to Old Town.
So in other words, people have pretty strong opinions
about where these things should go together.
And I was just wondering whether or not,
I'm going to send out this tentative ending schedule
and it would have that one meeting
that would be geographic specific,
and that is Samoa Peninsula, Eureka Waterfront,
Tefeel's Landing, King Salmon,
considering development geographically.
Then I had suggested that, in our meetings,
that will be fisheries and aquaculture is next,
restoration of Humboldt Bay would be our sixth in October.
Then we would have one that would be geographic specific
and we'd move to the middle of November the 18th,
and then have a synthesis.
Have, sit around and say, what did we find?
And then it would be our responsibility
to put that in writing,
and then we would bring that back to the committee
in the last Wednesday of January, 2010,
and that would be our final report
that we would then present back to the Harbor District
to our fellow commissioners,
and others could use it as they wish.
That's just, you know, it seems to me that we're,
each of these is so jam-packed,
we're really not doing the synthesis.
We're not doing the synergy.
We're not doing the, how does it all fit together?
So I think we need a couple more meetings.
I'll submit this to you for your consideration
as an attached file and email.
And next time we'll have some quality time to discuss this
because I think it's important.
These meetings are so much fun, though,
and you know, so we always, we always fill them up.
But we'll put a little planning time on the next agenda.
Any other thing to call to our attention before we close?
Thanks so much.
Great panel.
Thank you.