Dam now up to City of Humboldt

By APRIL KELLEY
The Humboldt County Con-servation Board met on Wednesday, Dec. 11 at noon to tackle the Reasoner Dam issue once again.

After an hour-long discus-sion, it was decided to allow the City of Humboldt to purchase the dam in the same way that the City of Rutland has commit-ted to doing.

Much of the arguments on both sides stemmed from a mis-understanding at the last con-servation meeting. At that meet-ing the board voted to allow the River Development Group (RDG) more time to work with the City of Humboldt to pur-chase land to be able to obtain insurance.

At the beginning of the meeting, it was revealed that much of the funding the Conservation Department would be seeking to lower or tear out Reasoner Dam would no longer be available.

Humboldt City Administrator Cole Bockelmann attended the meeting to answer questions concerning the City of Humboldt’s interest in purchasing the dam or in working with the River Development Group to purchase land adjacent to the dam.

Bockelmann admitted that they were in the very early stag-es of talking about it and that he did not have any concrete answers yet.

“The giver group approached the council, and I got the directive from the council shortly after that time to look at what a possible sale (of land) would look like,” Bockelmann said.

Bockelmann then worked with the county attorney to look at what the process would be to sell or lease land to the River Development Group so they could insure the dam.

Bockelmann told the board they have not had a chance to discuss it at the council level yet, however the process is quite complicated, depending on how they would do it.

To sell city property or have an extended lease, the city would need to sell it for fair market value, hold a public hearing on the sale and offer it for auction to the highest bid-der.

Before all of that can happen, however, the city must prove there is no public purpose or value in the land being offered for sale.

“To justify selling it (the land), we need to know from them what the improvements would be, what the costs would be, the funding stream and all that,” Bockelmann said.

Bockelmann then stated that four of the conservation board members had reached out to him and stated that they did not want to sell the dam.

To read the full story check out this week's issue of the Humboldt Independent!