Nehmer Thumbnail photo by Amanda Dockter Linda Sutter urged Gerard Weber to call the police on Tuesday, refusing to leave the Crescent City Harbor District’s special meeting until she had her three minutes to speak. Stepping to the rostrum after Weber, the CCHD’s chairman, told the public to stick to items that weren’t on the agenda, Sutter addressed the potential censure of one of his colleagues when he stopped her. “We should not talk about items that are on the agenda,” he said. When Sutter protested, pointing out that she is speaking about Harbor District business and accusing Weber of disrupting her right to free speech, Weber called a halt to the meeting. “She’s argumentative, talking back and forth and disrupting the meeting on top of it,” Weber told his colleague Dan Schmidt when he pointed out that the item Sutter wanted to discuss was, in fact, not on the agenda. “Just talking back and arguing… Do we have to call somebody now? Because she needs to be removed.” Up until Monday evening, Schmidt, Weber and other CCHD Board members were expected to consider whether one of their colleagues had violated their bylaws and if they should be censured. The Board was also expected to consider removing them from a leadership position. At about 9:05 p.m., an amended agenda was posted that had those two issues removed. It was Del Norte Triplicate editor Roger Gitlin who said Tuesday that CCHD Vice Chair Annie Nehmer was the Board member in question. According to Gitlin, Nehmer, acting as an individual commissioner, had contacted one of the agencies the Harbor District works with. Nehmer confirmed that she had reached out to the U.S. Department of Agriculture about the Harbor District’s efforts to repay loans that allowed it to rebuild the marina following tsunamis in 2006 and 2011. Nehmer, who is the Harbor District Board’s vice chair, argued that she was doing her fiduciary duty as a commissioner. Sandy Moreno, the Crescent City Harbor District’s financial advisor, said that Nehmer’s actions undermined negotiation efforts between the district and the USDA. “I don’t have the final bylaws, and we’ll get there, but I think that’s against the bylaws, to reach out to these people and do that,” Moreno said, adding that Nehmer had contacted the USDA on July 2 asking about the harbor’s insurance requirements. “Instead of reaching out as a fiscal officer, I have a commissioner reaching out. Does she have Board approval to do that? No, no Board approval.” Nehmer said news from Moreno at the Board’s Aug. 27 meeting that it didn’t have the funding to make its $260,000 annual USDA loan payment, which is due Sept. 1, was alarming. Nehmer said she had also asked Harbor District staff for profit and loss records only to find out that staff has been directed to not give those documents to commissioners. “How are commissioners supposed to make informed decisions about the budget or the USDA loan?” Nehmer asked. “How do I know what you’re saying is true? I don’t have any data in front of me to verify that.” On Aug. 27, Moreno told commissioners that while there was money in the Harbor District’s reserves, they were restricted and there wasn’t enough to cover the $260,000 USDA loan payment. She said she had spoken with Del Norte County Auditor-Controller Clinton Schaad who said that the Harbor District had to make its payment Sept. 1, submit a copy of the paid receipt to the county by Oct. 15 in order to be reimbursed the funding through local transient occupancy tax revenues on Nov. 1. Moreno said she and Harbormaster Mike Rademaker had initiated discussions with the USDA to try to restructure the loan or have the loan forgiven. On Tuesday, before she told the Harbor District Board that the agency had a deficit of $340,839, Moreno talked about commissioners’ decision in June to forego a commercial insurance policy for the inner boat basin. That insurance policy would have protected the inner boat basin against fire and collision, but not wind, wave and storm damage, after the agency paid a $250,000 deductible. On Tuesday, Moreno said it was a risk, but the $181,000 CCHD would have paid as an insurance premium plus $260,000 if the USDA allows it to skip a loan payment could “solve our negative deficit for the year.” Moreno asked the Board to consider creating an ad-hoc committee. She said she and Rademaker, not the Board of Commissioners, would try to renegotiate the loan payments with the USDA and report back to the ad-hoc committee, which would report back to the full Board. Commissioner Rick Shepherd said that being able to negotiate a forbearance on the CCHD’s loan payment for this year with the USDA might be possible given the damage the harbor took following July 30 Kamchatka tsunami. “With the recent disaster we had, the USDA will usually defer that payment to the end of that payment period, but you pay interest for the year,” Shepherd said. In response to Nehmer’s concerns regarding access to CCHD profit and loss information, Moreno said her financial statements come to the Board of Commissioners during its second meeting of the month. She urged Nehmer to look at the Aug. 27 meeting if she wanted to find out what the most recent data was. Moreno also accused Nehmer of refusing to work with her, which makes her job harder because instead of being proactive, she’s reacting to “bombshells” being lobbed at her. “Last week I came to the realization that by the time we’re at the end of this meeting, I don’t know that you cannot go into insolvency because of interference that is happening,” Moreno said. “There have been a number of things that have happened to make it very hard to be able to handle this. I think between this meeting and tomorrow, hopefully that’s addressed and we’re able to do our job.” Del Norte County District 2 Supervisor Valerie Starkey, however, said Nehmer was doing her job when she reached out to the USDA. She also took issue with Moreno’s comments to Nehmer. “We have to double check this information because we’re the ones on the line when we get it wrong. The buck stops with us,” she said. “I cannot believe these other commissioners are allowing an employee to talk to commissioners like that. That is just appalling to me. I want to say that Annie Nehmer is spot on doing the work behind the scenes and asking for that [information].” Gitlin, who was a two-term Del Norte County supervisor until 2020, argued that sanctioning Nehmer’s actions means that any sitting Harbor District commissioner could act on their own while representing the agency. He accused Nehmer and her attorney, Davis lawyer Paul Boylan, of “waging warfare on the Board” by threatening to sue the Harbor District “if you don’t do this.” “You cannot allow any one individual who has no individual power whatsoever to do anything without the consult of at least two of the other commissioners, which is a majority of three,” Gitlin said. “Nothing else matters, what any one individual says. He cannot act alone, or she cannot act alone, and say I represent the harbor.” Back at the start of the meeting, after a recess that took about 15 minutes, CCHD legal counsel Ryan Plotz said that since the potential censure of Nehmer wasn’t on the agenda, Sutter could speak. Plotz, relying on a conversation he had with Weber, had initially asked Sutter to comply with the CCHD rules since, according to Weber, she wanted to talk about the budget, which was on the agenda. When Schmidt noted that Sutter wanted to talk about an item not on the agenda, Plotz said she could “use all or a portion of [her] three minutes” to discuss that item. Sutter, who said she wasn’t notified that the agenda had changed, stood by Nehmer. “It looks like retaliation from the harbormaster against the only one on the Board that has integrity, Annie Nehmer,” she said. The Crescent City Harbor District will hold its regular meeting at 2 p.m. Wednesday in its office at 101 Citizens Dock Road. Agenda packets are available here.