City Council Holds Special Session to Show Vision of Eureka

The Eureka City Council met bright and early this morning for a special session to discuss their visions for the future of the city.
Newschannel 3’s Cameron Cramer was at the meeting and brings us the details…
"Keep families here, that section, I just love it, this is great, really a good focus I think." Said Councilwoman Melinda Ciarabellini.
The Eureka City Council is singing the praises for a future vision of the town, including a potential community forest, a revitalized waterfront and economic development. However there were disagreements among the council, involving a proposal to put an emphasis on local labor:
"We have to continue to support our businesses here, get them stronger, keep things going." Said Councilman Mike Newman.
"Cal-trans apparently hires people from Redding all the time, and we've got the people that could be doing work and it'd be nice to have something that could funnel people to that." Said Councilwoman Marian Brady.
"I don't think that this type of focus is going to benefit us in an economicalstandpoint especially if I was a contractor trying to get the best bid for my project, now I gotto use local folks that are going to cost me 3, 5, times more." Said Ciarabellini.
The meeting touched on the problems of homelessness, and updating the cities website to streamline the permitting processes by following the lead from other cities in the area...
"Well they were talking about getting permits in five days, and it doesn't seem like eureka does that." Said Brady.
In the end, the early morning meeting of the minds provided a clearer vision for the future of eureka. Mayor Frank Jager said the special session was a necessity.
"A lot of times these issues kind of sit there and we don't really have means to move them forward and that's what this is. We have all the staff, all the council and we can have a free exchange of information.” Said Jager