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Vol. I
No. 9 Corporations Committee Reformulates
Retail Ordinance Primary Colors '06 ARCATA – Still stinging from the unanimous rebuke from Councilmembers who voiced opposition to their plan to force an election every time a new retail outlet moves to town, members of Arcata’s Committee on Democracy and Corporations (ACDC) redrafted their formula retail ordinance along more familiar lines.
ACDC member Jay Wright outlined the legal problems discovered by City staff and the public with their ordinance, including its circumvention of the Land Use Code, which might have enabled a company to use their own election process to duck out of the normal chain of approvals through the Design Review and Planning commissions. “There were concerns about voter fatigue,” he said. “There’s nothing to say a big box couldn’t come in and spend a ton of advertising dollars.” Cienfuegos lamented the fact that another Napa Auto Parts outlet would fall under the definition of formula retail, even though the chain is administered as a national cooperative of small business owners who pool their resources. “It made us think we should do some more research,” he said. Chair Ryan Enemaker warned fellow ACDC members that the definition of formula retail would have to walk a fine line to avoid legal trouble. “We have to do this based on community vitality, not based on whether your ownership is democratic or not,” he said. Basing their new draft on their previous ordinance to cap the number of chain restaurants in Arcata at eight, ACDC members were still expecting an uphill battle with a critical Council. “We didn’t do our homework, we should have met with each Councilmember,” ACDC member Michael Twombly said. “Two members will vote against us no matter what and just want us to go away.” Before Councilmembers get a crack at the new law, ACDC members have to follow their mandate to submit their revised draft to the Economic Development Committee for review. Attendees also expressed interest in lowering the cap on formula restaurants from nine to seven, as two of the eateries have moved out of town since the ordinance was adopted in 2002. “If you want to get to zero, if that’s our goad, we’re not doing that,” Twombly said. “We’ve got the votes.” Senior Planner Mike Mullen, who acts as Secretary for the ACDC, warned that a moving cap may trigger a legal showdown under Constitutional protections for interstate commerce. “If you start considering going closer and closer to a ban by reducing the number, you might be opening yourself to a challenge,” he said. City-sponsored political campaign? Contrary to the tradition observed by every other organ of every other local government, the Committee on Democracy and Corporations is determined to hold a city-sponsored forum on Measure T, a proposal formulated at the behest of a campaign committee spun-off from Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County (DUHC), a group to which a majority of ACDC members have belonged since the formation of the government committee in 2001. “I would really like the citizens of Arcata to have a forum like this,” Enemaker said. Enemaker, a member of the DUHC Steering Committee who has acted as a spokesperson for Measure T, also provided many insider details about the campaign during his official ACDC report and said he was looking forward to using City resources to recruit from local schools and other institutions on behalf of the Measure T campaign. “There’s going to be a reshaping of the core group…there’s going to be another group involved in the campaign,” Twombly said. “You can be a part of the campaign.” While the Council has not yet taken a position on Measure T and despite the prohibition in state law against using public funds to support or oppose the passage of any ballot initiative, ACDC members were determined to use the resources of their committee to support Measure T. “We should all be at the press conference [for Measure T],” ACDC member Judith Maxey said. In addition As the committee convened for their regular meeting on the third Monday of the month, members were apparently surprised to see a journalist from the Humboldt Sentinel, the only member of the public present for any ACDC meetings in several months. “Do we have to have him here?” asked Twombly, to which Enemaker replied, “I guess this is a public meeting.” Twombly proceeded to give a report on the status of Humboldt Area Access (HAA), an organization which is set to take over the operations of local public access television stations despite the fact that it has never held a public meeting. Twombly, who was hand-picked by the Humboldt Area Foundation to sit on the HAA Board of Directors, never mentioned any enhanced ability for members of the public to access the stations when he described his goals on the board. “I’m [there] for Free Speech TV, don’t fuck with it,” he said. FSTV, a Boulder-based channel available from local satellite providers and present as its own dedicated channel on cable television services provided to Southern Humboldt, is rebroadcast on public access Channel 12 for several hours a day, often with repeated programming, to the exclusion of locally-based programs generated by independent producers. Committee members also tabled approval of their minutes for Dec. 13 and still have no accounting for their meeting of Aug. 16, although Twombly said he still has the relevant audio tapes in his possession. Charles Douglas is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the Humboldt Sentinel. He can be reached at editor@humboldtsentinel.com. |
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Copyright © 2005-06, Humboldt Sentinel. All rights reserved. |
“It
really started to bum me out,” ACDC member Paul Cienfuegos said
in reference to the reaction received by ACDC representatives at the Jan.
4 City Council confab. “It was just an exhaustive process.”