Thumbnail photo by Amanda Dockter Despite statements made to the contrary at Tuesday’s Del Norte County Board of Supervisors meeting, Crescent City Harbor commissioners do have faithful performance bonds in place, the Harbor District’s legal counsel said Wednesday. Those bonds have been issued since 2012 and meet requirements set by the California Harbor and Navigations Code, according to Mitchell Law Firm attorney Ryan Plotz. The Board of Supervisors’ approval is the one missing puzzle piece, he said, but that approval doesn’t negate the bond’s coverage. “We are working with county staff in order to complete that final step,” Plotz told harbor commissioners. “The issue now is we need to provide the county (with) the bond in a format so that it can be recorded and that primarily means the original issued with compliant signatures.” Under the Harbor and Navigations Code, each harbor commissioner is required to submit a $5,000 faithful performance bond to the county Board of Supervisors for approval and file it with the county clerk-recorder’s office. According to a written report Plotz submitted to the Harbor Board on Wednesday, the Crescent City Harbor District has maintained a bond through Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company for its five commissioners since 2012. However, at the end of Wednesday’s Harbor District meeting, County Clerk-Recorder Alissia Northrup said that what she has at her office is an insurance policy not a bond. “What I have here before me is an insurance policy that speaks about bonding,” Northrup told harbor commissioners. “The Harbor District is the only agency that’s required to have insurance and individual bonds. Everybody else is covered under their insurance and public bonds, but from what I can see is Harbor District commissioners need insurance, but they also need an individual bond.” A faithful performance bond is a surety bond that provides protection against dishonest acts, Northrup said. She asked to meet with the Harbor Board and staff and to include County Counsel Jacqueline Roberts “I want to make sure we’re doing this correctly so it’s not an issue and we know what to do,” Northrup said. “Because bonds do expire and they need to be renewed. Insurance policies usually do not unless they get canceled, but bonds need to be renewed because things change.” Four Del Norte County supervisors on Tuesday approved an individual faithful performance bond for Crescent City Harbor Commissioner Annie Nehmer. Nehmer, who had been censured by her colleagues in September, had told the Board on Nov. 6 that the Harbor District had historically not obtained individual commissioner bonds. Instead, CCHD maintains a blanket bond that covers employees for dishonesty or theft, but does not satisfy the requirement for a performance bond. “After requesting a copy of the bond on file, I confirmed that the district’s blanket ‘O’ bond does not extend to commissioner performance obligations,” Nehmer told supervisors. “I contacted Nationwide Insurance, the provider for that existing policy, and was informed that a faithful performance endorsement could be added.” On Tuesday, Harbor District Fiscal Officer Sandy Moreno addressed the Board of Supervisors, reading an email from Nationwide stating that CCHD’s faithful performance bond applied to five harbor commissioners, the harbormaster, a bookkeeper and an office clerk effective March 2012. Moreno said she was responding to Nehmer’s assertion that the Harbor’s bond didn’t satisfy the Harbor and Navigations Code for individual faithful performance bonds for commissioners. “We’re kind of at an (impasse),” Moreno said. “This is going to need to continue to move forward because we have to have Board of Supervisors approval and according to our counsel and Nationwide, our insurer and our insurance agent, we feel like we have what we need and we just need to figure out how to get it through to the Board.” Roberts, however, took issue with Moreno’s statement saying that when she asked Moreno and Plotz for more information they didn’t respond. “When this was originally brought to our clerk of the Board, she brought it to my attention and I asked for more information — crickets,” Roberts told Moreno on Tuesday. “I’ve never received anything and then, here we are today, one of your commissioners brought this forward and, again, I’ve received nothing form Mr. Rademaker and nothing from you demonstrating that you had this other stream of emails. What was presented to our Board is a different set of emails and a different insurance policy that does not have the coverage for the commissioners.” According to Plotz’s timeline of events, included with his report to the Harbor Board, he had been in communication with Roberts reiterating that the Harbor District’s policy covers the faithful performance of all its officers, including its elected officials. On Wednesday, Plotz said the email communication Nehmer provided between Nationwide and the Harbor District in May wasn’t the full picture. Nehmer did not include a subsequent email Nationwide sent in September clarifying that CCHD had a faithful performance bond. Nehmer had also submitted an incomplete bond policy to the Board of Supervisors, Plotz said, omitting pages 10-16, which includes the endorsement establishing the faithful performance bond coverage. Plotz said he provided the full correct policy to county counsel on Monday. On Wednesday, public commenters Sam Strait and Roger Gitlin accused the county counsel of lying and the Board of Supervisors being misinformed. “I think that if the county doesn’t do something about it, this Board should make a lot of noise about that kind of behavior out of a paid employee of the county,” Strait said. “Particularly when the lies occurred in a public session of the Board of Supervisors.” For her part, Linda Sutter, another public commenter, said the people lying are Rademaker and Moreno and the Harbor Board are too lazy to do their due diligence. “You can blame the public and you can blame two commissioners all you want,” she said. “But you people right here are the problem.” Moreno, who had also represented the Harbor District on Tuesday during the Board of Supervisors’ consideration of its facilities plan, responded to how she said she was treated by county counsel after telling her that the faithful performance bond for the commissioners is valid. “It’s not good enough that I’ve said that, she needs to hear it from our attorney,” Moreno said. “I want to use that as the classic example because people at this Board and a commissioner has been able to label me as a liar. Everything I do and say is a lie because that’s what the outside perception is particularly at the Board.”