Devolution

Reduce Eureka into Functional Towns

This is AM with your CC (Radio Read Available Here this Tuesday!)

Here to report that it is not working out for the City of Eureka. From poor financials reflecting steep deficits to a world-wide acknowledged high level of criminal drug addicts on the streets, the Eureka City Council has completely lost the plot and is unable to lead.

Regular people are not heard at meetings. For many years nothing has improved.

That’s why it’s time to seriously look at a new approach that could bring more energetic engagement, better representation and a more sound vision for the communities that make up Eureka.

We need to devolve Eureka, I mean to say, we need to break it up, reduce it into three townships. The southern part of Eureka can once again be called Bucks Port.

The coastal western chunk should keep its namesake, and continue to be called Eureka, or maybe just Old Town Eureka, and it would include Downtown and the traditional city center as well.

Now the third portion, the eastern part of the map, the rest of what was Eureka needs to be relabelled “Greater Cutten.”

When you and I understand the truth, that each of these areas has very different goals and needs, we accept that the only way to deliver results is an engaged leadership that is held accountable to those aims.

Eureka as it is now is a jumble, and the specific important goals of each region will only happen haphazardly because there is no one in position to get them done.

People that lean toward the left tend to like growing government and centralizing power, yet some of the best results come from detangling and decentralizing so that you can get back to fundamentals.

There are downsides of course, and one of the immediate ones are that bigger cities have more impressive population numbers which help wrangle grants from Sacramento. But as we have witnessed with the destruction of H and I streets, the nonsense on C street and the planned buffoonery for 4th and 5th streets, a city that lives for the next grant twists itself up into a pretzel instead of following an actual plan that people can get excited about.

Without a plan, with no vision, I don’t see the point in keeping Eureka together as a City. We are suffering from big city problems, but we are not benefiting from any big city joys. For example, San Francisco has big city problems, but they are unified on having a great bridge, excellent university hospital and several other obvious benefits that for many make the big city downsides worth the life.

I would sing a much different tune if Eureka had a vision that we were genuinely working toward. The reason we don’t isn’t entirely political either. I think it’s gone unnoticed, but a big problem Eureka has it’s an umbrella of way too many neighborhoods that have little in common. People in Cutten have a history that differs greatly from the portside part of town. As Eureka is so mismanaged, maybe turning part of the city over to the Cutten folks will improve how those resources are handled. A devolution from one city to multiple towns will invigorate locals to get involved in their government, where all of a sudden their voices can be heard and the goals become valuable to all.

When considering Humboldt County, the city that deserves to be the biggest is Arcata. They have the massive financial investment of Calpoly. They have a unified vision for what they want, a sprawling college town with it’s own unique culture. They genuinely want to expand housing up there, and not just because the state says so.

That’s another great point about Devolving Eureka, it would gradually take a lot of the pressure off of us from Sacramento. The Governor isn’t going to drive ridiculous low income housing quotas on us if we are a collection of small towns with low populations. The housing mandates will be way easier to handle and im sure the grant monies will still find there way into the new towns as we finally have genuine representation for Bucks Port, Eureka and Greater Cutten.

Note: Devolving Cities into towns or unincorporated regions is a real possibility and it has legal merits and history. For more info, check out this link.