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Members of a joint powers authority tasked with economic development in Del Norte County are facing its potential demise.

The Tri-Agency Economic Development Authority board on Thursday voted to return the $30,000 and $10,000 contributions Crescent City and the Crescent City Harbor District made for fiscal year 2023-24.

However the question of whether the JPA actually dissolves will be decided at a joint meeting of all three member agencies, which includes the Del Norte County Board of Supervisors, Crescent City Mayor Blake Inscore told the Wild Rivers Outpost on Friday.

“What if one says yes and one says no and one can’t decide,” said Inscore, who told the Outpost that he had called for a joint meeting of the Crescent City Council, the Harbor District Board of Commissioners and the Board of Supervisors to settle the issue. “Let’s all get in the same room and make this decision. That’s what’s going to happen.”

The big hang-up continues to be offshore wind energy development and the Board of Supervisors’ insistence that the Tri-Agency’s joint powers agreement bar it from supporting or pursuing activities involving its generation.

According to Inscore, the Del Norte County Board of Supervisors had asked for the return of its $70,000 contribution to the Tri-Agency. The JPA’s members will discuss continued costs if they vote to dissolve the Tri-Agency. The joint meeting has yet to be scheduled, Inscore said.

Created to help Del Norte County recover from the 1964 tsunami, Tri-Agency advocates have been working to resurrect the JPA for nearly two years despite its history of making bad business loans and defaulting on a debt with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

With that debt repaid, each member agency in July 2023 opted to continue the Tri-Agency, though the votes weren’t unanimous.
In November 2023, the Del Norte County Board of Supervisors approved an amended joint powers agreement for the Tri-Agency. That amended agreement addressed county staff’s concerns about co-mingling Tri-Agency dollars with the county’s funds in the treasury.

When the amended joint powers agreement returned to the Board of Supervisors in January it included an offshore wind energy exclusionary clause at the insistence of supervisors Joey Borges and Darrin Short.

The following month, the Crescent City Harbor District and Crescent City Council approved Tri-Agency agreements minus the offshore wind energy exclusionary clause, putting them at odds with county supervisors.

If it wasn’t for the offshore wind energy conversation, the Tri-Agency would have moved forward and would have included input from local tribes — something that is needed — Harbor Commissioner Wes White said.

White continues to argue that even if Del Norte County agencies and residents choose not to participate in discussions surrounding offshore wind energy, it’s going to happen. He said his personal goal is to see the Crescent City Harbor become an operations and maintenance port for any floating wind platforms off the California and Oregon coasts.

“If the Tri-Agency is not the agency of choice, the organization of choice, to communicate with respect to wind power, who then is?” White asked rhetorically. “And if it’s not going to be Tri-Agency, what are we going to do for economic development. What if there’s a project that’s too big for all three of us?”

District 3 Supervisor Chris Howard said he’s spent his “entire existence in the Tri-Agency” trying to pay off its debt with the USDA. Now that it has been repaid, it needs to resume being an economic driver even if that means the offshore wind energy conversation is put on ice.

Howard said one issue he and White, is pursuing has to do with ensuring Del Norte County’s electrical grid is more resilient. This involves working with the Bonneville Power Administration, Pacific Power and Coos Curry Electric.

Those discussions are something Howard said he and White have taken on as individuals, but a paid staff member should really be representing the community to the three utilities involved.

“That’s what we’re lacking,” he said. “And that’s what we’ve lacked literally since the debt that Tri-Agency accumulated prior to 2012 began to cause questions amongst the three member agencies.”

Howard said he’s also concerned about Del Norte County’s youth leaving the community to find a better future, but creating another entity to be that economic driver is an extremely heavy lift.

“It will be almost impossible, in my opinion, to form another JPA,” he said. “We need to start operating as an agency again for economic development.”

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