Dan Schmidt Thumbnail photo by Paul Critz One of the four commissioners who approved Mike Rademaker’s contract as Crescent City harbormaster late last month is walking back on his decision, saying he questions Rademaker’s judgment on at least two issues. Dan Schmidt, who was elected to the Crescent City Harbor District Board in November, says his suggestion to negotiate with Rademaker over his contract during a May 28 closed session meeting violated the Ralph M. Brown Act, California’s open meetings law. Though he was one of four who agreed to approve the contract, Schmidt says the Harbor District Board will again be soliciting applicants for the harbormaster position. “Mike Rademaker has on too many occasions exhibited what I consider to be poor judgment in two distinct hemispheres,” Schmidt told Redwood Voice Community News on Friday. However Rademaker pointed out that on April 23 the Harbor District Board approved appointing him as harbormaster for five years “independent of the contract negotiation.” Subsequent discussions with the Board of Commissioners were to formalize specific terms of the agreement, such as severance pay, he said. “Even if the contract were to be ratified a second time, simply to address minor technical concerns of the May 28th meeting, that would not invalidate the original appointment made on April 23rd, which remains in effect,” Rademaker said via text message on Thursday. According to Schmidt, the first “hemisphere” Rademaker has shown poor judgment in concerns legal action taken against the Harbor District by former Board of Commissioners candidate Linda Sutter and current commissioner Annie Nehmer. Rademaker is also not accomplishing the tasks the Board set for him when he was hired as interim harbormaster quickly enough, Schmidt said. Noting that Rademaker’s contract expires on June 30, Schmidt said he wanted to give the harbormaster an additional year to complete some of the projects he started. “If we can get the ice plant on track, we can get the CREDE and the grants and all that — the sea wall and the dock [projects] underway — Mike, that’ll give you a chance to show progress” Schmidt said, referring to a master plan project from Community Real Estate Development Enterprises as well as efforts to rebuild Citizens Dock and an adjacent seawall. “We can then evaluate your fitness to be harbormaster based on an objective criteria, performance objectives, rather than this very vague uncertain unspecified feeling we all had that we like the guy, he’s been around a long time and he’s gone through turmoil with us.” Schmidt proposed returning Rademaker to the interim harbormaster position while the Board searches for a suitable candidate to fill the permanent role on Wednesday. He said his suggestion that the Board negotiate directly with Rademaker instead of a counselor acting on the harbormaster’s behalf is what violated the Brown Act. It’s also, according to Schmidt, what led Nehmer to take further legal action against the Harbor District in addition to her petitions for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to prevent the release of an investigation into alleged misconduct on Rademaker’s part. Nehmer was the sole opposing vote against Rademaker’s contract on May 28. On Wednesday, Schmidt said that any lawsuit concerning a Brown Act violation should be focused on him rather than the Harbor Commission as a whole. According to Rademaker, however, a majority of the Board of Commissioners would need to concur with Schmidt’s assessment for the Harbor District to resume its search for a permanent harbormaster. On Thursday, Rademaker told Redwood Voice that Schmidt’s suggestion to negotiate with him about his contract wasn’t a violation of the Brown Act “let alone one serious enough to warrant judicial nullification of the contract.” Rademaker cited a September 2021 California Appeals Court decision in Sierra Watch v. Placer County. In that case, the Appeals Court ruled that though Placer County violated the Brown Act by making a last minute change to an item under consideration by its Board of Supervisors, it wasn’t substantive enough for the Board to nullify its decision in that matter. “Minor technical mistakes do not lead to nullification of agency actions,” Rademaker told Redwood Voice. “In any case, the easiest thing to do would be to simply revote and avoid any controversy.” Rademaker’s five-year contract with the Crescent City Harbor District included an annual salary of $114,000, which was about $20,000 more than his pay as interim harbormaster. The Harbor Board also agreed to allow Rademaker to continue living at the port. On May 28, Board President Gerhard Weber said Rademaker would receive housing in lieu of health insurance. On Wednesday, Nehmer said that members of the public had asked to see an advertisement for the harbormaster position be placed on the agenda. She said she herself had requested that issue come up for discussion, along with several other items, and “none of that was done.” After the May 28 meeting, Nehmer said, she filed a petition for an injunction against her colleagues because their decision to approve Rademaker’s contract did violate the Brown Act. She said the public wasn’t able to weigh in on the harbormaster’s contract on May 28 and didn’t know that the Board would be voting on it. “I’m doing this not to cause more financial harm against the harbor or undue stress,” Nehmer said. “I’m merely looking out for our community for it to be done correctly and for us to follow the Brown Act and have due process and public involvement in this process.” Nehmer’s statement echoes concerns members of the public raised, including a representative for Ocean Gold Seafoods, a Westport, Washington-based seafood buyer who had promised to reopen the ice plant on Citizens Dock. Eric Neff, general manager for Ocean Gold’s California operations, said that even though the ice plant is undergoing inspections, including a pre-inspection from the fire marshal, the company wouldn’t “do any more construction or spend money” until its lease with the Harbor District is finalized. “We need that lease completed ASAP so that we can continue to get the ice house open,” he said. “Because we’ve been waiting, I think it’s like six months.” Ocean Gold’s proposal to reopen the ice plant was part of a discussion the company had with the Harbor District Board in February, about five months after Pacific Seafood shuttered the facility. That promise coincided with lease agreements between Ocean Gold and the Harbor District to operate hoists on Citizens Dock. On Wednesday, Rademaker said the district’s former legal counsel, Best Best & Krieger, had been working on the ice plant lease agreement with Ocean Gold. Their new attorney, Ryan Plotz, of Mitchell Law Firm in Eureka has now taken that on, Rademaker said. The harbormaster said the proposal to operate the ice plant had been an addendum to the hoist leases Ocean Gold signed with the Harbor District in February. Plotz is working to update that agreement to include operation of the ice plant and bring a final version to the Board of Commissioners, Rademaker said. Other projects Rademaker is overseeing as harbormaster includes working with CREDE to create a master plan as well as assess market interest in its properties and analyze financial performance for potential development at the harbor. Rademaker said Wednesday that he’s also expecting potential investors to give a presentation concerning their plans for Redwood Harbor Village and Bayside RV parks at the Board’s June 25 meeting. “I’ve been working with five different investment groups [over] the past nine months and this is definitely the most passionate and seems to have the best resources that they could bring to bear,” he told the Board. “Talking to some of the people that are making inquiries, there’s a general trend where we don’t have the amenities they expect that some of the other competing parks have. For instance, the city put over $1 million into rehabilitating their park and they’re able to offer amenities we don’t have. And so it’s I think a comparable investment on our side to really be competitive with the marketplace to get that park filled up and to have the community be able to enjoy that.” On Friday, Schmidt said the still-outstanding lease agreement with Ocean Gold is one of the concerns he has with Rademaker’s performance. He said he’s also opposed to the five-year contract him and his colleagues voted on at the May 28 meeting. Schmidt said one of the reasons he urged his fellow commissioners to reopen negotiations with Rademaker directly is because he felt he hadn’t had the opportunity to discuss some of his concerns. When asked why he went along with the rest of the Board on May 28 to approve the contract, Schmidt said he made a commitment to go along with the majority’s decision in exchange for their agreement to renegotiate. “I had basically got what I wanted, a negotiation,” Schmidt said. “I didn’t get an agreement on everything I wanted, but I had the opportunity to present my concerns and based on that, I agreed to hold up my end of the bargain.” Still, Schmidt said, if the Harbor District Board of Commissioners does decide to reopen its search for a harbormaster, he urged Rademaker to “be darn certain” he applies.