I am looking for an (email-) adres of one of the children of Rudi and Louise Becking. My mother (also called Louise/Wies) was family of Louise Becking-Scheltema and spent holidays with Louise and family as they were both still young girls, when Louise’s family came on leave from Indonesie. My mother died last year and I found pictures of Louise, her parents and her brother and lots of letters of Louise’s grandparents (from mothers side), from the 1930′s! Very nice family letters,with lots of information about the family, there daughter Nettie in Indonesie with children: Louise and brother Hein.
My mother had still contact with Rudi and Louise till into the 90′s. I was sad to learn that both had passed away.
Maybe you can pass this mail onto the children if you can’t give there mailadress directly to me?

With many thanks,
Louise Weltevrede- Schierbeek,
daughter of Louise (Wiesje) Huges from Wageningen, Holland.

After all these years and two marriages and nine children, Joyce still owns a big chunk of my heart.

You better hire her for your staff.

Ain’t no better woman on this planet.

Sincerely, James A. Canfield, MD

What Eric Kirk (SHCP Director) said on his SoHum Parlance II blog. How the Park Board views the Community, Neighbors and their own greater good, on Dec 22, 2010:

First @ December 22, 2010 at 11:17 am -”We listened anonymous. To the whole community. You got 400 signatures. We hear you. We don’t agree with you. But we will do our best to mitigate your concerns while meeting the needs of the community as a whole. Unfortunately, for a few of you, it’s your way or the highway. Or I should say, your way AND the highway. And the airport and gravel operation.”

Second @ December 22, 2010 at 10:23 pm – even setting aside your hysteria around the alleged destruction of your “peace and quiet” in a valley filled with the sounds of the freeway, airport, and gravel operation, the fact is that the response to our fund raising for the zoning change has been overwhelming. There is only so much we can do about your “peace of mind” when you view what we are proposing as “large loud concerts.” We have made the effort, and we will do what we can, but the park is happening. You’re right that certain voices have not spoken. They are about to.”

Park Director Kirk; to ignor 450 plus people in this Community that oppose amplified Concerts&Festivals; at the Parks is unthinkable, after all they do make up the Community and are not just a small group of NIMBY Nay Sayers and Park Detractors as you and other Park Directors have publicly stated.

You better check your “Noise Assessment Report” again. You will notice how Highway 101 and the County Airport are not included as factors in the Noise Assessment and stated in the Report for the Park. But Randall is a factor, a big factor, and the Park Board has a business partnership with Randall and the noise they produce.

You disagree with the Community? These Parks are only about the public benefit it brings to this Community, not just about the Park Board and their slanted vision and only what the Park Board think’s is good for the Community. Everything said by this Community in the beginning (2001) at the first public meeting has come full circle again. What does go around come’s back around.

FYI, your best is not good enough to mitigate noise, you are only ramming a Park Board vision down the Community’s throat, with no remorse or accountability, behind the closed doors of County Planning. That is why over 450 business owners, neighboring property owners, home owners and people in this Community say NO to amplified Concerts&Festivals at both Tooby Memorial Park and SHCP! These people have gone out of their way to step up and tell the Park Board, NO! That alone should stand the test on time and not be ignored. This was said by this Community in the beginning and is being said again right now, nothing has changed with this Community, only the Park Board needs to listen.

PS, there are now well over 500 signed petitions and growing every day.

I wanted a chance to comment on one letter and article in last week’s papers. One is “End in Sight for Community Park Rezone” and Doug Ingold’s thoughts about the Community Park.

First, I would like to thank Mr. Ingold for being there in the beginning, making sure all parties received their fair share of the Tooby Flat first, while at the same time protecting stakeholders and private lenders from the constraints of a membership non-profit organization. And I thank him for also pointing out in his letter to the editor how lucky we all are he lives in Arcata, close to publicly owned and protected land like the Arcata Community Forest and Arcata Marsh, which have public and community oversight for protection of the impacts and effects of amplified commercial concerts and festivals, campgrounds, traffic, parking lots, sports tournaments and housing development, which our community parks are lacking, with only limited private oversight by a self appointed board. Thank you Doug, point well taken.

However, you said: “What the Park board is doing through its extensive planning process is to leave as many options open to future generations as possible.” Well Doug, if that is true, why is the Park board rezoning and changing the Community Park landscape, and leaving a legacy of deeper debt for future generations? The real problem is when you say “Park Board,” not “Community.” Why doesn’t the Park board leave the Parks alone until they have a documented plan in place, not a vision, but a plan, down on paper, that has the overwhelming support of this community, not just the private vision of a few Dazey appointed Directors?

Second, my comments to Kathryn Lobato from: “End in Sight for Community Park Rezone.” Executive Director Lobato justifies the rezone and land use designations changes, claiming in her article, “We want to change from the possibility of turning the property into a residential area.” Well, Executive Director Lobato, you are so wrong on so many levels.

a) The Park Board is entrusted by state and IRS law with the safekeeping and protection of the Community Park as a public benefit asset. So how could the Park Board just somehow allow the Park to turn into a “residential area?” The only possibility of that happening would be a Park Board decision, not the community’s.

b) Does this Community need to worry about the Park Board becoming the fox guarding the hen house?

c) The PF (Public Facilities) zoning and PR (Public Recreation) land use designation you keep referring to is not yet drafted for use on private property like SHCP and Tooby Memorial Park. Asking for support of this unwritten zoning and land use designations is ludicrous. Both PF and PR need to be written and approved before implementation by Humboldt County for the SHCP GPA. So, until the Park Board can show this community a draft of either PF zoning and PR land use for use on “private property,” please do not tell us what the Park Board feels it is saving us from.

Does the Park Board think that if they get Public Facilities and Public Recreation zoning and land use changed on both Tooby Memorial and Community Parks privately held property, concealed nicely behind the corporate veil of a 501c3 public benefit asset, that this will somehow change our Parks into publicly owned and operated property?

You know Park Board, for all the newspaper articles and letters to the editors, it’s too bad you can’t face your community in public meetings and have a two-way conversation in the same room. Back in October 2008, you admitted the Park Board had lost touch with the community and that they wanted that to change. So, when can this community expect that change?

Which brings up another fair question. When will the SHCP become a “community” membership non-profit organization with an elected board of directors? Starting in March 2011, there will be three vacancies on the Park Board, which will leave the County and community dealing with an unknown entity during the GPA process. Lobato, Metz and Ryce must step down after serving three consecutive, three-year terms since their Dazey appointments as Park Board Directors. What’s needed is an elected Community Park Board of Directors, not a private one for another 10 years.

Thank you, Happy New Year and International Year of the Forest 2011

Ed Voice and Voice Family

End in Sight For Community Park Rezone – Supervisors Expected to Make Decision in 2011

By Keith Easthouse – Independent Contributing Writer

The effort to rezone the Southern Humboldt Community Park (SHCP) so that it can once again be used for a variety of purposes – including recreation and as a concert venue – is likely to be resolved once and for all in the coming year.

“A lot of work is being done,” Kathryn Lobato, the park board’s executive director, said this week, referring in particular to an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) that is being prepared by the Humboldt County Planning Department.

“The next big thing will be when that document is released. It could be done in late winter or early spring,” Lobato said.

Once the report is out the matter will go before the Planning Commission, which will make a recommendation one way or the other to the ultimate determiner of park’s fate, the Board of Supervisors.

“They’ll decide if we can have a park or not,” Lobato said, adding that the park’s board is “optimistic” the answer will be yes.

For nearly a decade, the 431-acre park was used for hiking, biking, community farming and public events including concerts. But after a concert in August 2008 generated complaints from neighbors about noise, a fact that hadn’t generated a lot of attention suddenly became more relevant: The park was zoned “agricultural exclusive” – a designation that did not allow for recreational use, much less public events such as loud concerts.

“That’s the biggest obstacle we’re facing,” Lobato said. “It’s the strictest zoning on the books. You can only farm or ranch it. That means it’s not a park.”

To change that reality, Lobato and her fellow board members went to the county seeking three things: A General Plan amendment, a zoning change and a conditional use permit. That led to the EIR now nearing completion.

If the board gets what it wants, more than 300 acres of the park will still have an agricultural zoning designation. But it will be a designation with an important difference – the residential development of the property that is currently allowed would be off limits.

“We want to change that,” Lobato said, noting that under present rules, parcels five to 20 acres in size are permissible. “We want to change from the possibility of turning the property into a residential area.”

Noting that 50 acres of the community park are already certified for organic agricultural production, including crops and hay, Lobato said the goal is to keep those uses. “The purpose will be to continue agricultural production,” she explained, adding that hiking and biking would also take place on this portion of the park.

As for public events like concerts, not to mention planned sports field and recreation centers, they would be limited to 96 acres. The fields would be located in what are now meadows, while the concert site would be in a more secluded area – “tucked into the trees,” Lobato said.

While the county is doing the EIR, the park’s board is paying for it. The cost so far, according to Lobato, is $120,000. The work has included a study of the park’s geology; a report on what kinds of hazardous materials might be on site or might get created; a report by a wildlife biologist on animal and plant species living on the site; and a report on traffic impacts.

A noise impact study has also been done, although it’s not yet completed. The portion that is done involved first determining the amount of noise that’s presently in and around the park. This work was done by a Napa area firm, which set up sound level meters at seven or eight locations and left them on for hours at a time.

The result was a 24-hour sound chart at each location and a series of proposed mitigations aimed at reducing the impact of noise generated from the site during events like concerts. “Rather than having big speakers, they suggested small speakers focused on the crowd,” Lobato explained. Such speakers would be angled in such a way that the ground or surrounding trees would also absorb much of the noise, Lobato added.

Another suggestion was to have park staff members armed with “decibel meters” patrolling the crowd during concerts. “The idea is to make sure the decibels don’t get beyond a certain level,” Lobato said, explaining that in the event that an acceptable level is exceeded, the staff member would contact the sound engineer behind stage to have the sound turned down.

To help pay for additional work on the sound issue, and the possibility that members of the Napa firm may be called on to make presentations to the Planning commission and the Board of Supervisors, the park’s board in October applied for a $10,000 grant from the county’s Headwaters Fund. But the grant was recently withdrawn over concerns that it presented a conflict of interest for the county.

The Headwaters board makes recommendations about which projects to fund to the Board of Supervisors, which makes the final decision,” Lobato said. Since it will be up to the supervisors to decide on whether to approve the EIR, Lobato said it was communicated to the park’s board that their grant application presented a problem.

“For the board to approve a portion of a project before the project itself came before them was perceived as a potential conflict of interest,” Lobato explained. “We thought about it for about an hour and decided to withdraw the application.”

“We felt it was best for everybody if we didn’t push the issue,” she added.

The board recently received some bad news on another grant application – this one for $700,000 from the State Parks and Recreation Department for restoration and upgrade work along the South Fork of the Eel River, which runs through the park.

“It was incredibly competitive,” Lobato said, explaining that it was a single-elimination competition with 475 applicants.

First of all, the Park doesn’t need an expensive Public Recreation rezone in order to remain open or to be a park. There is another option. It’s called a Recreational Combining Zone overlay. It was suggested over two years ago by a senior County Planner. Under this designation, hiking, biking, picnicking, birding, disk-golf, farming, and acoustic music would continue as usual. Any amplified event would require a Conditional Use Permit. This type of overlay would not require a $120,000 EIR. The money saved with this option could go towards paying down the Park’s current debt of approximately one-quarter million. I strongly encourage the Park board to adopt the Recreation overlay. It is a sane and ecological option that I believe our grandchildren will approve.

Second, I hope the Park board doesn’t need a controversial Public Recreation rezone to prevent ITSELF from turning the Park property into a private residential area. If the Park board decided to do that, it would be a betrayal of the public trust, since the community was motivated to donate to purchase the Tooby Flat to SAVE it from becoming a housing subdivision. Real estate development is outside of the Park’s exempt purpose. The Park is supposed: “To own, operate and maintain one or more parks for the benefit of the Southern Humboldt community, its visitors and guests.”

And thirdly, there are two big obstacles to turning the Park into an amplified event site. One, there are over 450 signed petitions that oppose amplified events in the Parks. The Park board’s most recent noise assessment stated that after mitigation, “noise levels during these events may be audible in many of the surrounding residential areas.” And two, a major state agency, the California Highway Patrol, is against the rezone project because Sprowel Creek Road is not adequate for event traffic into or out of the Park. Several other objectionable traffic and parking problems are raised in the CHP comments.

Having reached these barriers to the project plan, I don’t see how the Planning Commission or the Board of Supervisors can approve the Park board’s current General Plan Amendment rezone. Why would the County take the risk of approving a project over the objections of the Highway Patrol, the Sheriff and emergency responders? Health and safety issues carry serious liability implications.

My question to the Park board is: Why keep pushing the community to donate $75,000-$120,000 to a project in serious jeopardy of failing?

I’d like the Park board to consider these requests: Please respect the community need for peace and quiet. Please withdraw the rezone before it puts the Community Park into deeper debt. I think continuing the GPA rezone, from this point on, is a gamble and probable waste of our money. Please open up the SHCP organization to the public. What happens in the Park affects the whole community and therefore we need the SHCP to be a publicly open and accountable organization. And please have elected, instead of appointed, board members join the SHCP board this January, when three of the present six Park board members will leave because of term limits. The Park needs to have a real, written Management Plan that is crafted with full community participation. It should be available online and at the library for everyone to read.

Kristin Vogel

Garberville

The Park neighbors have a good proposal. Add a recreation combining zone to the 300-plus acres of not farmable land leaving just the agriculture exclusive zoning on the 100 acres of prime farmland.

This would be much simpler and far less expensive than the proposed (GPA) general plan amendment.

The GPA is really about housing development and two large concert venues.

Needed athletic fields must be on open land, at the Park or one of several other possible sites in the Garberville-Redway area. A soccer field requires about one acre and a regulation baseball diamond about two-and-a-half acres.

A combining zone would allow for most of the recreational uses. The 100 acres of prime farmland would be preserved. Concerts and events would still require conditional use permits, as they would with the (GPA) general plan amendment and as is required on any other property in the County.

John LaBoyteaux

Redway

Ric Springer

Proposed Funding for a “Sound Study”

Dear Humboldt County Headwaters Funding Board of Directors,

Morning,

As of Monday morning November 29, 2010, the general public, neighboring property owners and community was never made a where of this grant application for funding to Headwaters for any project submitted by the SHCP Board of Directors. In fact I heard about this request on a KMUD Community Radio talk show “Monday Morning Magazine” (Nov 29, 2010) hosted by Dennis Huber, himself a SHCP Board Director. He had stated early in the program that he had got word the Park Board got the funding from the Headwaters Fund Grant to pay for their “Sound Study”.

Here is the link to Monday Morning Magazine from KMUD. It’s from the 7am-8am. Dennis starts talking about the Funding from Headwaters 17:49 into the program on the counter http://archive.kmud.org/m3u.php?mp3fil=27089

After hearing this information I contacted some friends and neighbors to ask if they had heard about this or knew about this grant application or did anyone go to any Park meetings since Aug 25 2010 (last SHCP meeting open to the public) and hear about this Headwaters Grant application? No one I talked with knew about it.

Now that we know about it, we are writing you, the Headwaters Grant Board to ask you not to Fund this project for the SHCP Board. We as neighboring property owners to the Park have been against amplified music events at the Park since 2000, along with many other in our own neighborhood and beyond.

After contacting the Headwaters Fund office, we are now finding out this proposed Grant application is still on the table with your Board, that nothing has been decided or approved for funding.

And to also let you know this “Sound Study” or what is called an “Environmental Noise Assessment Report” has been completed as of November 2, 2010 and reported on by KMUD Community Radio News Staff, with an on-air interview with Kathryn Lobato and nothing said about this Grant Funding with Headwaters.

One thing this noise assessment did establish, that the ambient noise in the Park and surrounding neighborhoods is very low (something we knew and had expressed during illegal and un-permitted commercial concert events in 2006, 2007 and 2008 at the Park) and that the Park property leased to Randall Sand & Gravel does make more noise than any other noise generated in the area tested; more than Highway 101, Garberville Airport and more than anything located on the Park property. So what the SHCP Board has proposed; is put up with the noise generated by Randall all during the day, all week long, then on the weekends put up with even greater noise generated by amplified music, traffic and crowds of people all day and night until midnight and beyond, with no idea how that many people are going to get to the events?

I still don’t understand why you would go forward with any Grant Funding for a noise assessment report knowing the local California Highway Patrol and Humboldt County Sheriffs office will not support any part of events on any scale at the Parks current location. Public safety trumps “Boogie Parties” any day of the week. My suggestion or alterative would be to keep all of these commercial amplified music events, concert and festivals at: Benbow State Park & Recreation Area, Cooks Valley , Beginnings and Mateel Community Center where they have been very successful and welcomed for decades.

This issue about the SHCP Board of Directors wanting to have staged commercial music concerts and festivals has been well documented with the enforcement issues and controversy concerning 3 years of illegal and un-permitted events, neighborhood and community complaints, degradation to prime Agriculture land & soils and wildlife habitat eco-systems on the SHCP property and river with the Humboldt County Panning Department and its current Director Kirk Girard.

This Headwaters Grant Funding is a waste of money that could used for a project that a Community and its neighboring property owners benefit from. Not just another Concert & Festival venue site.

Please vote NO to funding the Southern Humboldt Community Parks proposed Grant Funding for this “Sound Study” and related project.

Virginia Graziani
Redwood Times

Twenty-one community members and six agencies responded to the Southern Humboldt Community Park’s proposed General Plan Amendment application and environmental checklist as of the close of the comment period on October 27, 2010, according to files at the Humboldt County Planning Division.

Although this phase of the GPA process is completed, there will still be plenty of time to take further public comment, said senior planner Michael Richardson, who is the county’s point person on this project.

Next, SHCP will have to provide professional studies, including a noise study, a traffic impact analysis, and delineation of wetlands, as well as answering questions raised by several agencies.

Comments from community members focused on the most controversial aspects of SHCP’s proposal. Seventeen people expressed opposition to large events and several also were opposed to including housing and the athletic “field house,” preferring to see more of the land dedicated to agriculture, wildlife habitat, and low-impact recreation.

Three commenters wholeheartedly supported SHCP’s complete proposal. An absentee owner wrote a brief letter concerned about the impact to property owned by his family but otherwise thought that, “Overall… the project will be an improvement to the community.”

Ten of the citizen comments came from persons who had not written comments to the Planning Department previously.

Once SHCP completes the required studies and addresses questions raised, Richardson will begin writing the draft environmental impact report.

Richardson said he hoped to receive approval to hold a further scoping meeting in Southern Humboldt when the draft is complete. In any case, during this process, he will continue to take written or emailed public comment.

The completed DEIR, along with SHCP’s application and studies, will be presented to the county planning commission for review.

The commission will then recommend approval or denial of the GPA to the Board of Supervisors, or it will ask for further revisions. The Board of Supervisors will make the final decision.

Time for written and oral public comment will be made available during public hearings before both the planning commission and the supervisors.

Because much of Richardson’s time is currently tied up with writing ordinances and zoning changes to implement the county’s Housing Element as required by the state, he estimates SHCP’s GPA application and DEIR will come before the Planning Commission in February 2011 at the earliest.

For more information, contact Michael Richardson by phone at 268-3723 and by e-mail at mrichardson@co.humboldt.ca.gov. Written comments should be addressed to Michael Richardson, Senior Planner; Humboldt County Planning Division; 3015 H Street, Eureka, CA 95501.

I had to share with you today something new I learned about the Park Board and why it is the Park Board thinks this Community needs to rezone prime ag land into an amplified concert&festival; venue site (96 acres) at the Southern Humboldt Community Park&Tooby Memorial Park.

On November 24 2010, Eric Kirk on his So Hum Parlance II blog was asked about the recent noise assessment report the Park Board had completed for the SHCP GPA DEIR. Here is what Eric Kirk said:

“Yes, it’s been submitted to the county and KMUD has already covered it. I don’t know about the papers. Hopefully we can get it online soon. It’s a good study.”

Eric was then asked: “it’s a good study as in…………….?”

Eric’s response: “It provides us with the information we need to meet the community’s event needs while maintaining lawful sound levels”.

As we all know, Eric Kirk is the newest Director on the SHCP Board. Is this how the rest of the Park Board feels; that the “Community’s needs” are for large Boogie Parties, that out weigh all other “needs” in this Community? What about the environment and established wildlife habitat? Does this noise assessment touch on that “need” or just the “needs” of the community’s to maintain “lawful sound levels” during pay-to-play Boogie Parties at both the Community and Tooby Parks?

I had thought one of the most important “Community’s needs” was for a better quality of life, not only for ourselves, but for our wildlife habitat and eco-systems we share in our day to day existence. Like our river and only source of clean safe drinking water. Please ask the rest of the Park Board if this is something they too believe.

The plan to use the river bar for parking reveals the board’s alleged environmental sensitivity as another batch of fish emulsion. There’s no way to stop cars parked on the river bar from polluting the river. This plan invites disaster.

The idea that large events at the Community Park will make cash registers ring at legitimate businesses in town is another load of reeking manure. Where will these people park? We have a severe parking shortage in Garberville, and town is always packed with people. Thousands of us, from Blocksburg to Shelter Cove have nowhere else to shop. Garberville traffic and crowds are stressful enough without adding thousands of out-of-towners to the mix. Garberville merchants are already up in arms about all the people hanging around in town. Without any public restrooms, and the only park where people can hang out for more than an hour closed, a large festival will only exacerbate the problems that business owners have been so vocal about lately.

Do you really think the Community Park Board is pushing this project for the benefit of hotel and restaurant owners? Do you really think that the big music festival they’re planning, with billowing clouds of marijuana smoke, paid for by crafters no less, will really serve the interests of anyone but the marijuana industry?

The Park Board has made it clear that they intend to hold the park hostage for this use. In fact, they wouldn’t need the scoping session at all, were they not so hell-bent on using the Community Park as an amplified music venue. So call it what it is. The Community Park will function as a public subsidy for the marijuana industry. An industry now going through dramatic changes not anticipated when this project was conceived.

I say, vote yes on Prop. 19, and we can all smoke pot at Benbow Lake next year, and if we want to subsidize the marijuana industry, we can subsidize an honest marijuana industry, honestly.

John Hardin

Redway

We run the very serious risk of losing all of that and much more if the proposed rezoning of the piece of land now called Southern Humboldt Community Park is approved by Humboldt County. The close neighbors of the park will be just a tiny segment of the population, human and otherwise, that will be forever affected. Let’s all call upon the planning department and county supervisors to reject this bad idea.

At the September 9 scoping session held to launch the necessary environmental impact review process, we heard about a real estate housing development element, a public recreation element, an agricultural element, and a mining element. Among the members of the public who spoke in response were proponents of the change. Many of them mixed a sort of mullet environmentalism that seems to claim that we can have it all without harming a fly with a Reaganomics-inspired spirit of entitlement that claims that, damn it, we bought it and so we can do whatever we want with it.

Behind all of the rhetoric from the proponents there seemed to be a knee jerk, fundamental reaction against anything that might stand in the way of the desire to use this space for amplified music events attended by anywhere from 500 to 5,000 persons, including the Summer Arts Fair, which has been held for the past couple of decades in Benbow. While the stated purpose for holding these events at SHCP is the raising of funds, there are better ways to do that, and I suspect that the cart is before the horse. People just like to boogie, which is fine, but isn’t that why the Mateel Community Center was built? Whether or not it makes money or is just a need to perpetuate the myth that Woodstock was actually fun, this is the wrong place to hold such gatherings. The noise created would certainly have an awful effect on neighbors and wildlife, but that is actually one of the smaller problems with this proposal.

Our forests and grasslands have almost entirely disappeared already. Our river is practically dead. For a quarter of every year now, our nearly dead river becomes a death trap for dogs and a health hazard for all because of the toxic algae growth. There is little depth, and no real flow. How can anyone imagine adding housing (an unspecified quantity is proposed), camping, and large gatherings of people and their vehicles to the Sprowel Creek and Kimtu area without regard to the plant and animal life that is threatened? To the nesting birds and countless other forms of life, it won’t make any difference whether you are parking a flatbed Ford or a Prius.

Traffic and safety problems alone should be enough to cause the rejection of this rezoning. Can you imagine having a medical emergency out there in the middle of the Summer Arts Fair? The California Highway Patrol and Humboldt County Sheriff cannot be okay with this idea.

As for camping, who will police it? The strain on existing resources will be enormous and security would be a nightmare. I don’t think our local volunteer fire departments would be thrilled with the additional workload and potential for real trouble.

Proponents of the rezoning proposal at the scoping session spoke well of their faith and trust in the good people who serve on the board for the community park. I agree that they are all upstanding citizens who have the best of intentions. However, this is not personal; this is serious business and no one lives forever. The proposed rezoning would live on beyond us all, however, and for the sake of us all, it needs to be rejected.

Jerry Latsko

Garberville