The Fireman's Ball, Fort Bragg's annual Labor Day Weekend shindig and fundraiser, is on for 2021, after being COVID-cancelled last year. “We're going ahead with it until somebody tells us to stop,” Fort Bragg Fire Chief Steve Orsi said this week. Word is that Paul Bunyan Days is set to return as well.…
Fire at Noyo
A plume of yellow-white smoke rose over Fort Bragg last Tuesday afternoon, May 11, spreading quickly above the houses of the Noyo Indian Community on the northern bluffs of Noyo Bay.
The bluff face behind Noyo Beach was on fire. Overgrown and steep, with a thick brush cover — pampas grass prominent — windswept flames spread quickly across a half acre, not 200 yards from the homes on the blufftop, before firefighters stopped it.
Fort Bragg Fire Chief Steve Orsi said this week that containing the fire went pretty quickly, but getting it totally out in the thick, steep brush took a long time.
The mix of vegetation there, he said, is a real problem, especially the pampas grass, a tall, oily plant that can launch flaming bits long distances on a windy day, as it did last Tuesday.
Orsi said efforts in past years to get rid of the brush there, especially the pampas grass, haven't always worked out well. The last attempt a few years ago ended in a controlled burn that got out of control; the fire department had to put that one out, too.
The bluff face is part of the Noyo Harbor District's domain, bordering the Noyo Indian Community and the Georgia-Pacific millsite/Fort Bragg Coastal Trail to the north, and the North Cliff Hotel to the east. It includes the harbor's dredge spoils site — a giant open pit — and is among the district's many long-term, thorny problems, from adjudicating between obstreperous boat owners to keeping a jetty and a working harbor intact in the age of climate change and covid. Discussions about fire prevention on the bluff are reportedly underway again, as they have been, off and on, for generations.
Lee Rupert, 45, of Fort Bragg, described as a transient, was taken into custody for setting a number of fires that led to the bigger blaze on the Noyo bluffs May 11, after several other homeless people told police he had done it, according to a Fort Bragg Police Department press release.
It was the second time in a little over a month that a local homeless man was accused of arson. On March 26, Robert Fielden, 47, was arrested for allegedly setting fires on the same day on N. Harbor Dr, Perkins St. and N. Harold St.
Fielden was also alleged to possess methamphetamine and the gear for smoking it.
Another apparently addled man was at the scene of a car fire at Ocean's Edge Mobile Estates in Cleone Monday morning. The Fort Bragg Fire Department was alerted that two cars were reporredly burning there in the pre-dawn hours. When firefighters arrived, they found one car that had been on fire, apparently put out by the reporting party. Said reporting party had a hard time explaining exactly what had happened. Firefighters called it a morning and left, followed by grateful Facebook posts from Ocean's Edge residents a few hours later, none of whom, apparently, were awakened by the excitement.
Budget Picture Looking Better
Fort Bragg's City Council looked over a proposed 2021-22 budget at a special meeting Monday.
The city's projected finances look a lot better than they did a year ago, when City Hall couldn't even tell how far revenues were falling during the first months of the COVID lockdown.
Dire estimates for those initial months were accurate: bed tax revenue, Fort Bragg's biggest single local source of funds, “dropped 47% in March 2020, 89% in April 2020 and 84% in May 2020, from the same month in 2019. For the year ending June 30, 2020, TOT revenue was down 21% from the prior year,” says the city's staff report.
But even before the lockdown ended, tourism came roaring back, according to city figures, with record-setting bed tax revenues from July through September last year. The comeback — along with $1.3 million in state-issued COVID relief funds — leaves the city with a projected $90,000 surplus for the coming year.
No staff or program cuts are recommended, and funding for the Noyo Center for Marine Science and tourism promotion, cut last year, is recommended to be restored. City council members will hash out the details over the next couple of weeks.
Financial challenges include keeping the city's water system in the black with severe conservation measures expected later this summer. A water and sewer rate study is underway, with rate hikes possible after it is done.
The C.V. Starr Rec Center is still expected to reopen in July, but at a lower capacity — hiring staff has proved to be a problem, and it's uncertain how quickly people will return to the swimming pools and workout rooms. After a year off, revenues are non-existent, and much maintenance was already deferred there, so the future of the center will be on the table for both the city council and the recreation district in coming months.
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