Thumbnail photo: Del Norte Triplicate owner Dan Schmidt addresses Crescent City's proposed policy for creating an alternative process for publishing public notices at the Council's Oct. 20 meeting. | Screenshot Despite Dan Schmidt’s assurance that Del Norte has a newspaper of general circulation, county supervisors followed the city’s footsteps Tuesday to create a plan B for posting public notices. Schmidt pointed out that the Del Norte Triplicate has served Crescent City and Del Norte County for since 1879. Though he recently purchased the newspaper from previous owners Country Media Inc., Schmidt said he is in the process of putting his sixth publication out. “The adjudication status as a newspaper of general circulation is the most valuable and perhaps the only asset a newspaper has. It’s the asset that I drained my 401k to acquire,” he said, handing a copy of that adjudication to the clerk of the Board on Tuesday. “We know the circumstances of why it was shut down. I could have stopped for three or four weeks and taken time to get my act together. I decided to keep on going. Keep on publishing and just today we’re putting together our sixth issue.” Schmidt said the primary reason he continued to publish without taking a break is so public notices could continue to be circulated among the community. County Counsel Jacqueline Roberts, however, said the ordinance that identifies an alternative process for publishing public notices as well as its resolution establishing those locations is about cleaning up the county code. She said the Crescent City Council’s action at its Oct. 20 meeting is what prompted her to bring a similar action to the Board of Supervisors. “Ordinances that were passed in the 50s didn’t include this alternative language and so there are sections of our code that don’t mention an alternative or a just in case,” she said. “It’s in case something happens and it’s better to be prepared than to not be prepared.” According to Roberts’ staff report, California state law requires public notices to be published in a “newspaper of general circulation” within the county. A newspaper is defined as having a “bonafide subscription list of paying subscribers.” The county’s resolution establishes the Flynn Center, the Del Norte County Library and the Del Norte County Courthouse as the Board of Supervisor’s three designated public locations for posting public notice. On Tuesday, Roberts said that public notices could still be published in the Triplicate as well as posted at one of the three locations designated for such notices. “Some other things require that you do actually post in a public place like, for example, a street vacation,” she said. “Some code sections require you to publish on the county website. For instance, tax sales stuff. I get a lot of questions from various departments about, ‘Where should I Post if I need to post in a public spot?’ ‘What’s the designated public spot?’ We don’t have them at this point so I think it’s better for the Board to authorize these spots.” To supervisors Darrin Short and Valerie Starkey creating a policy for publishing public notices should the Triplicate no longer be an option is putting in a necessary safeguard. “Part of the definition for the general circulation is a bonafide subscription list of paying subscribers, I don’t know that that is in existence yet, Dan, and I hope it will be and I think it will be in the future,” Starkey said. “But I think this is a precaution this Board should take so that we have done what we need to do for legal reasons.”