The Eureka City Schools Board of Trustees directed staff on Aug. 29 to reach out to the California Highway Patrol about resuming negotiations for a potential purchase of the former Jacobs Middle School campus following the recent disintegration of an agreement with a mystery developer that had halted previous talks with the agency.
The option was one of five presented to trustees during the board's first meeting since that deal fell through last month after several delays in closing escrow. Much of the evening's discussion centered on the path that led to the current situation and how to move forward, including trustees' and school officials' most extensive comments to date about the controversial approval process and the ensuing public fallout.
No action was reported from a closed session item with Superintendent Gary Storts, the district's negotiator, regarding the price and terms of payment of a potential deal with CHP, which previously offered $4 million for the property with the intention of relocating its Northern Humboldt headquarters to the site that's sat vacant for more than a decade.
But what had seemed like an almost sure sale to CHP was abruptly taken off the table in December, when trustees voted to instead go with an 11th hour offer from an entity known only as AMG Communities-Jacobs, LLC, whose principals remain unknown, in a now defunct property exchange that would have seen the district trade the Allard Avenue property for a small home on I Street and $5.35 million in cash.
The board's decision to accept the AMG proposal at the same meeting where it was first presented to trustees and the public was the focus of a pointed Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury report that found trustees neglected to conduct sufficient due diligence before entering into the agreement and denied the public enough time and details to be informed about or question the decision, saying it violated the spirit of California's open meeting laws, known as the Brown Act.
In one of the three Jacobs' related items on the Aug. 29 meeting agenda, Storts, who stepped into the role of superintendent days after the initial AMG deal was approved, walked the board through the district's proposed answers to the grand jury report's six findings, often paraphrasing from the official written response he prepared, which largely disagrees with the grand jury's assessments and maintains the board's actions were appropriate.
During his presentation, Storts said the "theme" to the document was, "We want to be open. We want to be transparent," mentioning several times that the district was committed to improvement on those fronts moving forward.
"If we could have a do-over, we likely would," he said in reference to the finding that states the board "acted hastily without sufficient prudence and due diligence" in both introducing and accepting the AMG agreement at the Dec. 14 meeting.
In addition, the response maintains the district has implemented or is in the process of implementing three of the five recommendations outlined in the report, including making details of the Jacobs property negotiations and the ongoing status of negotiations "known to the public." The response says the district has already done that through open session discussions and responses to public records act requests, and it is working to ensure its compliance with the "spirit and intent" of the state's open meeting laws.
The district's response also states it is working on a recommendation to create audio and video recordings of all open session meetings but that it will not be implementing the recommendation to keep minutes of closed session meetings and another recommendation to have experts not connected with Eureka City School and the California School Boards Association conduct Brown Act training for staff and the board.
Wrapping up, Storts told the board that while the district "doesn't agree with everything" in the civil grand jury report, "we do agree to the spirit of openness and transparency."
"We look forward to getting back to what we do best, which is educating our students," he said.
During public comment, the district's response received a scathing rebuke from Richard Bergstresser, who emphasized he was speaking not in his former role as the civil grand jury's foreperson but as a "member of this community, a taxpayer in this school district who has supported past bond issues and someone who cares deeply about the future of our community and our children."
The document before the board, he said, was doing "precisely what the (civil grand jury) report describes" by using "every means possible to justify your actions without taking any responsibility."
"Secretive last-minute dealings are not what you were elected to conduct," Bergstresser said. "Finding arcane legal justifications to deny your duty to be responsive to the people you allegedly service is antithetical to the spirit, if not the letter, of the law and paints you in a very difficult light."
He pointed to the fast-tracked nature of the decision and lack of details provided prior to the approval, saying that "by design, the general public had less than two and a half hours to review one of the most significant financial deals involving their city schools in memory."
And, on the issue of a lack of due diligence, he told the board that "the point is you entered into a risky deal" without knowing the principals behind AMG or whether they would be able to follow through on their offer of $2 million more than the CHP's price point, noting that "here we are nine months later with no deal."
In response, Trustee Susan Johnson said she would "never, ever decide to make a decision that quickly again," but said it didn't seem that way to her at the time, as the potential sale of the Jacobs site had been on "every agenda for five years."
"It was definitely not my intention that night to deny the public the ability to be part of the process," Johnson said, adding she did not realize it was "going to turn into what it turned into." She added that she had not received any phone calls or emails on the issue from her constituents, and that no member of the public had come to speak about it at other meetings.
"It has, not to me, seemed like a hot topic for the public like it has for the media," she said, describing the media as "aggrandizing" the situation surrounding the deal with AMG.
In addition to the highly critical civil grand jury report, the nonpartisan League of Women Voters of Humboldt County issued a statement earlier this summer saying it was "shocked and concerned" by the board's actions.
Along similar lines to Johnson, fellow Trustee Jessica Rebholz said, "I apologize the decision was made very quickly" but also responded to Bergstresser directly by saying, "I apologize that you feel the way you feel."
For her part, Trustee Lisa Ollivier said the board believed the deal was "going to be over and done" and she didn't realize that it was going to "drag" on.
"We're trying to do the best for our students and to help the neighborhood in terms of having an answer," Ollivier said, adding that "vetting" the AMG deal was not the board's job and trustees "take what staff presents to us and what we thought was the best proposal."
She also made a comparison of the district's sale of 8.3 acres of public property to that of a homeowner selling their private house, asking rhetorically how many times sellers meet potential buyers and "look at the bank account of the person buying the property."
In the end, the board voted 3-0, with Trustees Mike Duncan and Rebecca Pardoe absent, to approve the district's response as written.
On the issue of what happens next with the Jacobs property, Assistant Superintendent of Business Services Paul Ziegler gave a presentation on five potential options, including retaining the property for now, selling or leasing the property, developing workforce housing on the site, looking at other "creative solutions," such as public -private partnership, and the one the board ultimately directed staff to pursue, resuming negotiations with CHP.
Ziegler said the additional $2 million in the AMG offer was the "overarching reason" why the district moved forward with that deal over CHP, although "some have taken issue with the process," adding that he didn't think another proposal like AMG's was going to come along.
On the CHP option, he said the agency has "expressed an ongoing interest" in the site but may be "looking at other properties in the area" and, if the board waits too long, "CHP may not be available to us."
During public comment, two speakers urged the board to consider the workforce housing option, with one who described herself as a former Jacobs teacher whose children attended local schools saying she didn't believe "CHP was a good match" for the neighborhood.
Developing workforce housing could aid in attracting and retaining teachers, the speaker said, adding that a lack of housing is the No. 1 contributor to the "homeless problem we have."
City Councilmember Kati Moulton, who said she was speaking as a "mother and a neighbor," said she didn't see a CHP complex as "good fit" for the location and was also in favor of pursuing workforce housing at the site, "even if it takes years."
Moulton asked the board to conduct a "robust and proactive survey" in the neighborhood, saying that the district has a responsibility to "the community that the school sits in."
A third speaker also said they were hoping the district would "get some neighborhood input" and that they thought "housing would be a good option." They added, "I feel like AMG might have played you guys."
When the matter came back to the board, the general consensus was for staff to move forward with a survey and talks with CHP — with Rebholz and Ollivier both saying the feedback they've received was favorable toward the agency — while also acknowledging the pull the housing option had for some people.
Rebholz said one of the issues that, as a person of color, she has not really seen raised is concern about having a large law enforcement presence centered in one of the city's more diverse neighborhoods. She said if the district moves forward with CHP, she wanted to see a conversation started with the agency about how it would work to "build bridges with our students."
Getting emotional at one point, Rebholz said she is a "firm believer" that one of ways to help people of color not "fear police agencies is to see police agencies that look like us." Having CHP officers in the local schools as mentors rather than law enforcers is a way to move forward in that direction for the future, she said.
Johnson said a survey would "be great" but didn't want to see the process take too long or "we could end up not even having an offer" from CHP, saying that at the end of the day "our constituents are the students of the district."
"The reality is we need the money," Johnson said. "We need the money on the table here."
In an email to the Journal, CHP Capt. Larry Depee said the agency's July 11, 2023, offer for the site "has not been withdrawn and we reserve all rights associated therewith."
"The CHP is considering all available options, including identification of other suitable locations for its Humboldt Area office replacement project," Depee wrote. "It's important to note that CHP believes its proposed development at the Jacobs campus would provide for a facility and program delivery that is extremely beneficial to the community."
Ziegler told trustees the district would reach out to CHP about a potential purchase agreement and other issues raised during the board discussion and report back at a future meeting.
Kimberly Wear (she/her) is the Journal's digital editor. Reach her at (707) 442-1400, extension 323, or kim@northcoastjournal.com.