Dan Schmidt | ccharbor.com Three months after the Del Norte Triplicate accused Dan Schmidt of “introducing nepotism” to the Crescent City harbormaster, his fellow commissioners met the man Schmidt says could help right the Harbor District’s ship. Dennis Schmidt, Dan’s “better-looking, nicer, funnier brother,” came to the podium Wednesday with 32 years’ experience working in the utilities, human resources and city manager’s departments for Anaheim. He’s got a Master’s degree in public administration, a Bachelor’s degree in organizational development and says he’s the guy top administrators bring in to help fix damaged systems. Now that he’s retired, Dennis Schmidt, whose home alternates between Crescent City and the Mojave Desert community of Apple Valley, says he wants to help the Harbor District. But after a tepid reception from his brother’s colleagues, he said he thinks the Board of Commissioners was “looking for a reason to say no.” Dennis Schmidt said the discussion of whether he should work for the Harbor District — which included a suggestion to let a part-time security guard go to afford Schmidt’s salary, though he offered to work for $1 an hour — should not have been held in an open session meeting. “It’s embarrassing to everybody involved,” he told Redwood Voice Community News on Friday. “What does the lowest-ranking security guard think?” The Crescent City Harbor District Board of Commissioners asked Dan Schmidt to give a presentation on the “legal and ethical considerations of hiring relatives of commissioners.” Dan Schmidt is an attorney, though his license to practice law in the State of California has lapsed. He, along with his wife Phyllis and Dennis Schmidt, are the new co-owners of the Triplicate. During his presentation Wednesday, Dan Schmidt referred his colleagues to California’s laws regarding nepotism. He argued that those laws exist to prevent the promotion or hiring of someone who was unqualified over those who have a “stronger meritorious position.” Without actually defining those terms, Dan Schmidt said nepotism, cronyism and favoritism were the “three sins of hiring.” Discrimination was equally as bad, he argued. “To turn down a qualified applicant because you don’t like his brother or you don’t like his last name or you don’t like that he’s from Orange County or some other place… don’t discriminate against him,” Dan Schmidt said. Dan Schmidt argued that while Sandy Moreno, the Harbor District’s fiscal officer, was doing a great job so far, he doubted she had the capacity to “do all that needs to be done.” Dan Schmidt also claimed that Crescent City Harbormaster Mike Rademaker is “already in over his head and can’t do everything that needs to be done.” “The bottomline is, Mike and Sandy, you’re overworked and we’re financially broke,” said Dan Schmidt, who had voted against both Rademaker and Moreno’s contracts with the district. “We can’t afford to pay $75-an-hour to do clerical work that should only cost $10- or $15- or $20-an-hour.” Schmidt’s “$75-an-hour to do clerical work” statement is in reference to a discussion from earlier in Wednesday’s meeting about Moreno potentially being tasked with handling California Public Records Act requests. Moreno said public records act requests to the district have become so voluminous a full-time employee is needed to process them. She said she spends about four to eight hours a week responding to requests. Commissioner Annie Nehmer argued that responding to public records act requests should be a core function of the district and could be handled by one of the district’s employees. Rademaker argued that other agencies contract administrative, human resources, accounting and legal tasks to third-party providers and that this is similar. Moreno’s hourly billable rate is $75 per-hour, not to exceed $64,775 for the duration of her contract which expires June 30, 2026. Dennis Schmidt has offered his services to the Harbor District for $1 an hour. He said he doesn’t need the money — he’s got full retirement benefits — he just “hates seeing things go sideways.” On Wednesday, Nehmer said instead of paying Schmidt $1 an hour, he would probably have to earn at least minimum wage of $16.50. She also proposed altering one of the part-time harbor patrol positions should the district decide to hire Dennis Schmidt and said that if the hiring was done based on merit, nepotism wouldn’t be at play. Dennis Schmidt’s interest in Crescent City began about five years ago. He said he purchased a house in the community and began fixing it up about the same time that his brother was hired as the Triplicate’s editor. It was through Dan Schmidt that Dennis Schmidt became immersed in local politics, especially the Crescent City Harbor. At the time, Tim Petrick was still the harbormaster and, according to Dennis Schmidt, Board of Commissioner meetings were a mess. When Petrick resigned and Rademaker became interim harbormaster, Dennis Schmidt’s meeting attendance became a regular occurrence. “He had a lot of room for improvement,” Dennis Schmidt said of Rademaker. “There were a lot of different things he could do differently and better.” Dennis Schmidt continued going to meetings while his brother ran for one of the open commissioner seats, even speaking with Rademaker and giving him advice. “He wanted to bring me on board to help him in a more formal way, and this is going back to December and January of this year,” Dennis Schmidt said. “Over time it became clear to me that Mike wasn’t as interested in me — in arranging to have me help him. He’d say he wanted the help, but I would say to him, ‘I’m going to be here for two weeks, let me know when and if…’ and I would never hear from him.” This lasted about 13 months, Dennis Schmidt said. On July 10, about two weeks after Dan Schmidt and Nehmer voted against Rademaker’s permanent contract, the Triplicate’s then-editor Roger Gitlin ran an article stating that Dan Schmidt had stepped away from an open session meeting and asked Rademaker to hire his brother. On Sept. 24, after his affiliation with the Triplicate ended, Gitlin announced his intention to recall Dan Schmidt due to his urging his colleagues to hire his brother. On Monday, Gitlin told Redwood Voice that he has put his recall effort against both Dan Schmidt and Nehmer on pause so it would coincide with the Nov. 1, 2026 mid-term election cycle. He said he didn’t want the recall effort to result in a standalone election that could cost the Harbor District $130,000. Waiting until the November 2026 mid-term election would only cost the district between $9,000 and $13,000, Gitlin said. On Wednesday, both Board Chair Gerhard Weber and Vice Chair John Evans told Dennis Schmidt that they felt his brother had done him a disservice by being his champion. “Had you come to the harbormaster himself and say, ‘hey, I have this skillset, is there a position available for me’ and he had come to the Board and said, ‘hey, we have an individual I believe would be a great fit for this team,’ that would be one thing,” Evans said, adding that the Board has given the harbormaster “leeway” to hire his management team. “But Webster’s dictionary does define nepotism as favoritism for a particular job hire based on kinship.” Schmidt told Evans that it’s Rademaker’s job to hire members of his team, not the Board of Commissioners. He also argued that if “left to the creative energies of your chosen executive manager,” there are options when it comes to bringing him on that doesn’t include letting another employee go. “If my last name is Jones or Smith, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Dennis Schmidt told Evans. On Friday, Dennis Schmidt told Redwood Voice that the solution he had in mind was working with the Crescent City Harbor District as a contractor. Rademaker could bring him on to help write the district’s disaster plan, for example, or conduct a safety assessment for $500, which, according to Schmidt, is a fraction of what that work would normally cost. Rademaker is charged with operating the Harbor District with the Board providing policy direction and guidance as well as oversight “to make sure he’s doing the right things in the right way,” Dennis Schmidt said. “In a perfect world, Mike would present to the Board (and say), ‘I would like to hire this guy to do contract work — here’s the rate, here’s what he’s going to do.’” Dennis Schmidt said. “But what happened is Mike just took this thing and dropped it in the Board’s lap with no input and they want my brother to talk about the legal and ethical hazards of hiring family members. That was either accidental or intentional.” Dennis Schmidt says he wants to help. In that respect, he echoes his brother, Dan Schmidt, who used a giant wrench as part of his campaign for Harbor commissioner. But, Dennis Schmidt, also says that sometimes organizations are so dysfunctional, his help likely won’t have a positive effect. “I’m pretty much at that point right now unless I get a phone call from Gerhardt (Weber),” he said. “They’re going to have to convince me that they really want me.”