Thumbnail photo by Paul Critz Despite appearing on a portion of the agenda dedicated to routine items, the approval of minutes from seven Crescent City Harbor District meetings on Wednesday drew debate from a handful of public commenters. One member of the public, Del Norte Triplicate Editor Roger Gitlin, a former Del Norte County supervisor, cited Rosenberg’s Rules of Order and said that even if a commissioner was absent from a meeting, if they had read the minutes and could attest to reading them, they could approve the minutes. Another member of the public, Stephanie Abrams, argued that the minutes should be read aloud at a following meeting so those who weren’t able to attend could get up to speed on what was discussed. A third commenter, Joe “Hank” Akin, president of the Big Rock Community Services District, pointed out that one set of minutes was from Jan. 22. “They’re up to seven months old, who knows if they’re accurate?” Akin said. “And you’re going to vote on them. That in itself is troubling to me.” Commissioners approved the Jan. 22 meeting minutes with Dan Schmidt and Rick Shepherd abstaining due to their absence. The Board of Commissioners on Wednesday also voted 3-2 to approve minutes from special meetings on May 13, May 14, June 9 and June 24 — all of which were held in closed session — as well as minutes from regular meetings held May 14 and June 25. Schmidt and Board Vice Chair Annie Nehmer dissented. Approval of the minutes appeared on the consent calendar. According to Harbormaster Mike Rademaker, there was only one item on the Jan. 22 meeting agenda: Approval of the bylaws. The meeting was also held at 5:30 p.m., which is a departure from the district's regular meeting time of 2 p.m., Rademaker said. It followed a tour of the port's facilities with architects Moffatt & Nichol and Mike Bahr, CEO of Community System Solutions, which manages the Harbor District's grant-funded projects. "There was just one single item and we already had a lot of discussion on the bylaws and this was one additional change that was requested by the public," Rademaker told commissioners on Wednesday. "When we came back [from the tour] to meet, there were only three commissioners there. It was an unusual meeting." The discussion came after the Del Norte County Civil Grand Jury released a report stating that the Harbor District had violated the Ralph M. Brown Act, California’s open meeting law, by not posting agendas or announcing canceled minutes correctly. The Grand Jury, in its 2024-25 report released July 11, also stated that the Harbor District didn’t adhere to “best practices” outlined in the Brown Act regarding posting meeting minutes. According to the report, there was one missing Harbor District agenda out of 32 meetings during fiscal year 2022. And out of 36 total meetings during fiscal year 2024, there were 10 missing agendas, the report stated. The Grand Jury reported that out of 35 meetings during fiscal year 2021, there were no minutes for 30 of them. In fiscal year 2022, there were missing minutes for 11 out of 32 agendas posted to the Harbor District’s website. In fiscal year 2023, there were no minutes for 17 out of 31 listed meetings. And in fiscal year 2024, 18 meeting minutes were missing out of a total of 36. “The Harbor’s inconsistency with posting information required by the Brown Act presents questionable Board oversight and general management of the Crescent City Harbor District,” the Grand Jury stated in its report. “Not only is infrequent information provided, but the format and manner of consistent comparable data is absent.” Rademaker acknowledged that for parts of December 2023 and the first few months of 2024, agendas weren’t posted to the Harbor District’s website. He also acknowledged that there were minutes that have been missing from the agenda as well. It was during that period of time that Community System Solutions was spearheading a redesign of the district’s website, according to Rademaker. “They took a snapshot of the website, downloaded it and were working on it for a few months,” Rademaker told Redwood Voice Community News on Wednesday. “And then when they uploaded it it was missing information. They uploaded it during the three to four month period when they were redesigning it. We have some time to go through and look at what the Grand Jury found was missing and we’ll upload all of those agendas and minutes.” The Crescent City Harbor District has 60 days to respond to the Grand Jury’s report. Rademaker said he and the district’s financial advisor, Sandy Moreno, will go through the report, which also faulted the district’s financial controls, reporting and bank reconciliation practices. On Wednesday, Moreno said that when she was hired in April, “one of the first things we talked about” was reviewing the minutes to make sure they were properly approved. She said she was also tasked with making sure the Harbor District’s financial records were consistent. “I firmly believe we have addressed those things with this meeting — I believe we’ve brought everything up to date,” she said. “You’re seeing the same financial reports every month and all the minutes are up to date and we’re in the process of having those done every month, so I believe we’ve addressed this in the Grand Jury report.” Moreno said she would bring an update to the Board of Commissioners on the allegations outlined in the Grand Jury report when she presents her audit on Aug. 23. Nehmer, however, pointed out that minutes from the Harbor District’s May 28 meeting still needed approval. Though she cast a no vote, Nehmer called for the Harbor to return to using summary meeting minutes instead of minutes that just record the actions she and her colleagues take. She acknowledged harbor staff’s recent practice of recording the meetings and having those recordings available on the website, but, she said, they’re only required to be available for 30 days. “In this meeting [on] Jan. 22, and at the time being a new commissioner, I believe it was one of my errors that I definitely made in the learning curve, we changed the meeting from summary minutes and put the action minutes in there,” she said. “I didn’t understand the implications of that and I would like to ask the Board that we go back to using summary minutes, which is what the precedent had been for years.” According to Nehmer, the public had been requesting summary minutes instead of action minutes. “[They] are what I also rely on to refresh my memory, so while I know we have these minutes here and they reflect what is currently in the bylaws, I’m asking that after today we return to summary minutes for our benefit and the benefit of the public,” she said. Rademaker said that he sympathized with Nehmer, noting that having a summary of the discussion in the minutes plus the actions taken were helpful. But having to put those together is burdensome on the Harbor District’s already limited staff, he said. “It’s almost like you’re a reporter you’ve got to capture, in some cases, very heated moments in the meeting and try to be impartial to public speakers and impartial to commissioners, it is quite burdensome,” he said. “It could take six hours to really put that level of detail into the minutes on a regular basis, especially when the meetings go three hours or longer.” When public commenter Linda Sutter pointed out that the recordings from the district’s May 13 and 14 meetings weren’t posted to the website, Rademaker acknowledged the error. He said that there were three occasions when Harbor staff thought they had set Zoom to record automatically and it didn’t record. During those meetings — which had to do with hiring Mitchell Law Firm attorney Ryan Plotz as the CCHD’s legal advisor — the only thing that would have been recorded were the actions the Board took following a discussion in closed session, Rademaker said. To Akin, the confusion surrounding missing recordings and meeting minutes that have yet to be approved is enough for him to question their accuracy. According to him, the Crescent City Harbor District discussed several employment contracts behind closed doors during those meetings. This included the agreement with Moreno as the Harbor District’s financial advisor, the outcome of which was never reported out of closed session, Akin said. “None of that’s reflected in these minutes,” he said. “All they say is ‘closed session.’ A lot was done this year in closed session so there is stuff to report, but they all say nothing, so good luck with that.” CCHD 2025.07.23 PowerPoint v2Download