Editor:

A big no to establishing a Betty Chinn Village on our Hikshari' Trail ("Transitional Housing Project Moves Forward, Grand Jury Report Underscores Need," July 4, 2019). One day, this trail will be one of the advertised tourist draws to our beautiful city. Not if we ugly it up with those hideous trailers, which have been an eyesore for two years.

This proposed homeless village is at a critical bottleneck in the trail. How many of you have walked or biked that trail in the past 30 days? Not only is that particular spot already overcrowded, but it lays in a world class critical migrating bird habitat. Plus, the trailer site is on a filled in tidal marsh. That whole parcel should be used for establishing a wider Hikshari' trail. That land should be a park, not an ugly trailer park.

I and many in this city want the Hikshari' Waterfront trails to be the beginning of a extended waterfront greenbelt, from the Riverwalk in Fortuna to Trinidad. Look at the bad decisions made already to put fences on both sides of the trail as it goes past our fabled Marina Center. Put Betty Chinn land on the Marina Center, if we have to use those dumpy old white trailers. To eyesore our community further at that critical junction on the Hikshari' Trail is wrong. No to the city council's rushed process and no to that homeless camp on our Waterfront Trail.

Jack Kinnear, Eureka

Editor:

The Coastal Commission's decision on the Chinn housing site on will take months, up to a year. Think about that.

The Coastal Commission was founded to preserve undeveloped coast. Shortly after I moved here in the early 1970s, the commission shot down a proposed hotel that would have loomed over Little River and I applauded that, and I still would.

Since then, the commission has expanded its mandate to include anything and everything even remotely concerned with the coast. A few years back, I read a critique of the commission claiming that it had the final say on the U.S. Highway 101 freeway concrete center median leading up to the Loleta bluffs. I couldn't believe it, I thought this was some anti-government nut job making stuff up, so I went to the commission's website and there it was, plain as day. Just one example of this type of thing.

So the latest manifestation of the commission's power grab is to rule on the particular use of a piece of property that was developed many, many decades ago, long before the existence of the commission. Hilfiker Lane is not a pristine area, it is a long-standing commercial/industrial area. Somebody tell me why the Coastal Commission has jurisdiction here.

This naked power grab by the commission has been going on for far too long — wait a minute, I can hear the true believers already: "Oh no, he's against the (holy) Coastal Commission!" No I am not. I am against excess and extremism.

David Callow, Glendale