Shasta County BOS approves ROV budget request, propose Charlie Kirk-inspired proclamation, honor local civil rights legend Isaac Lowe

Shasta County ROV Clint Curtis and Deputy CEO Erin Bertain discuss budget matters, yet again.

The third time proved to be the charm for freshly minted Shasta County Clerk/ROV Clint Curtis as the Shasta County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 to approve his whittled down budget request at Tuesday’s meeting.

District 2 Supervisor Allen Long was the lone dissenting vote.

The $135,961 request will be offset by use of the General Fund for the lease and purchase of equipment and services to implement Curtis’s prototype elections process that will purportedly film and livestream the vote-counting process on election night with enough transparency to satisfy even the most skeptical election denier.

Crucially, the funds will pay for three additional Hart tabulators and the servers and software required to run them, bringing the total to six, plus one more used only for adjudicating ballots. The six tabulators will be placed upstairs in the Market Street office, with cameras set around them. Observers will watch the process through 18 43-inch Vizio flatscreens set up in the designated observation area downstairs. Curtis plans to count mail-in ballots as they come in and predicts he’ll be able to announce nearly complete elections results by 10 p.m., two hours after polls close on Nov. 4.

Diagram of the proposed elections prototype’s layout in the ROV’s Market Street office.

Can Curtis pull it off with just six weeks to Election Day? Perhaps. It is a special election with just two issues on the ballot, Prop. 50, Newsom’s bid to gerrymander California’s Republican districts to counter Republican gerrymandering in Texas and other red states, and Measure A, Redding’s proposed 1-percent public-safety sales tax.

More than 90,000 Shasta County voters turned out for last November’s presidential election, but turnout could be lower than 70,000 voters this November. For Curtis and his Assistant ROV Brent Turner, both of whom have never run an election, or even worked in an elections office, the lower the turnout, the better.

Permanently tanned and bleached blond by the Florida sun, Curtis radiates confidence in his boxy azure suits. But his presentations often fall short. On his first appearance before the board in August, a totally unprepared Curtis waltzed up to the podium and proclaimed, “I’m here to beg for money!” The Board rejected his $2.6 million budget request, which Curtis planned to use converting the dormant Joann fabric store into a state-of-the-art elections facility. He returned the next week still unprepared, seeking half that amount. The board rejected him again.

Curtis came no more prepared on Tuesday. He was fresh off the open house held Saturday at the ROV’s Market Street office, where, as A News Café reported, Curtis announced he had no plans to conduct logic and accuracy tests on the prototype system. He also reduced services provided by Agilis for its election mail sorting hardware and software, cutting the cost of the contract from $250,000 to $30,000. Previously elections workers had access to features such as envelope duplication detection that turned out to be crucial during the Runbeck ballot overspray fiasco last November.

Curtis pledged to bring ballot printing inhouse as part of his prototype, to no avail. Runbeck will once again be printing the ballots that will be sent to voters in early October, and elections workers will have one hand tied behind their backs if anything goes wrong. Speaking of election workers, Curtis continues to malign staff for allegedly fearing the public even as he recruits election deniers who are the source of that fear due to previous misbehavior to volunteer on election night for tasks that don’t involve “touching the ballots.”

District 4 Supervisor Matt Plummer.

The Board’s 4-1 decision was by no means a rubber stamp for Curtis. Always one to quickly do the math, District 4 Supervisor Matt Plummer noted that the $230,000 Curtis saved by cutting the services provided by Agilis more than covered the $135,961 he was now requesting from the Board.

“What I’m curious about is, if we’re canceling a contract and then saving money on that, can those funds be used for this?” Plummer asked.

“Well, I’m not sure,” Curtis said. “We canceled the contract, so I’m not sure where that money goes.”

He then went off on a tangent on the state and local money coming in to fund the special election.

“We’ll come back additionally, because the state has given us $1.4 million to process the election, plus Redding has to pay their share,” Curtis said. “So this is could actually be a profitable election if, you know, we could keep all the money.”

Plummer asked Deputy County Executive Officer Erin Bertain if she could explain where the money saved from cutting the Agilis contract goes.

“So it really largely depends on how the elections budget was built,” Bertain said. “I haven’t had a chance to look directly at the contract, but if they have that additional, if they’ve built that in, which I assume they have, then that will still be in their budget and could be spent on something else.”

“So theoretically, the $220,000 that we’re saving from the cancellation of this contract could be reallocated to the expenses in this ask?” Plummer asked.

“That is correct, provided that they did include that in their budget. I’d have to take a look at their budget to see if it was in there.”

It seemed like Curtis’ prototype was once again on the ropes. But after checking budget figures, Bertain returned and said it wasn’t so simple to separate the money saved from cutting the Algisis contract. She then issued Curtis a veiled warning.

“So I want to clarify a couple of things,” Bertain said. “We’re not making a profit. We’re a government agency. We can’t make a profit. So I just want to make sure we say that loud and clear.”

District 2 Supervisor Allen Long.

Curtis’ last hurdle was his biggest adversary on the board, Supervisor Long. The former Redding detective approaches the claims of the local election deniers who’ve adopted Curtis through a cop’s lens.

“I come from a law enforcement background,” Long said. “Everybody’s familiar, and in order to arrest somebody, we have to have a probable cause. In order for the DA to charge, they have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt in order to charge. They have to believe that they are going to prove that to every juror and that unanimous vote. So I come from the perspective of we have never introduced any hard evidence that shows me that there is fraud in our elections.”

Long has no patience for Curtis’ lack of preparation, and immediately tripped him up during questioning.

“You’re familiar with AV Capture All?” Long asked. That’s the company that provides livestreaming services for county board meetings and other functions. Presumably, if Curtis is going to livestream election night, he’ll be using AV Capture All. Problem is, he’d never heard of it.

“No,” Curtis answered, he wasn’t familiar with it. “Is that the program that allows you to capture videos? Is that what you’re talking about?”

“Correct,” Long said. “That’s the software program that that allows for the streaming of everything you’re talking about.”

“Okay. Is that … what is that?” Curtis said, sounding lost.

Curtis’ interrogation by Long went downhill from there after further prodding revealed the new ROV hasn’t planned how he’s going to save terabytes of video data from the election, which by law have to be preserved for one year.

Sounding genuinely concerned about whether Curtis had the tools and wherewithal to conduct an election just six weeks away, District 5 Supervisor Chris Kelstrom zeroed in on the number of optical tabulators required for the job.

“So with the three that would count the ballots now, assuming everybody would stay working 24 hours, 48 hours or whatever, how long would it take you to count the ballots with three?” Kelstrom asked.

“With three, probably six hours,” Curtis answered assuredly.

“With six hours, with the three you have now?” Kelstrom responded incredulously.

“Six hours on election night,” Curtis insisted.

“With the three you have now?” Kelstrom disbelievingly repeated.

There’s a catch, of course. Last November, 72,421 Shasta County voters voted by mail; 85 percent of the county’s 90,162 voters. Only 12,498 voted on election day, 15 percent, and that amount will almost undoubtedly be smaller for this November’s special election. Ballots will be mailed out beginning Oct. 6 and Curtis plans on counting votes as soon as the ballots are mailed in.

“We have to count the early vote early because we don’t have enough tabulators,” Curtis said. “We wanted to actually have it where we counted all the ballots on election night … but we don’t have the tabulators for that. That would take like, you know, days and days and days. So instead we have to count them just like you did before where we open them early, count them, have that number, and then just the ones that come in on election night are the ones we will count with the three or six. With six, we’ll be done in two hours.”

The tension in the room seemed to dissipate as the Board members realized the inexperienced ROV has nearly a month to count the majority of the ballots. District 1 Supervisor and Board Chair Kevin Crye encouraged Curtis to lean in.

“Assuming these questions don’t go into Thursday or Friday with everybody else, I’m going to support this,” Crye said, speaking to Curtis. “Again, I would ask you to continue to work with staff, be much more proactive in getting things to them earlier. But I get it coming from the private sector, government, it’s different. And I want to also thank the CEO’s staff on the third floor with the help they’ve lent in this process.”

With that the Board voted 4-1 to approve Curtis’ budget request.

Charlie Kirk death inspires free-speech, anti-violence proclamation

New California State secessionists Ron and Patty Plumb, ROV Clint Curtis and Dist. 3 Supervisor District 3 Supervisor Corkey Harmon, far right, attended a livestream viewing of Charlie Kirk memorial service at Shasta Bible College last Sunday.

Charlie Kirk, controversial Christian Nationalist provocateur, was just 31 when assassinated at Utah Valley State University on Sept. 10.

Kirk was a key figure in the MAGA movement, credited with bringing young Christian college students into the Trump fold during the past decade through his recruiting organization Turning Point USA, co-founded by Kirk in 2012.

The late Charlie Kirk.

District 3 Supervisor Corkey Harmon said he’d attended a livestream of Kirk’s Arizona memorial at Shasta Bible College this past Sunday. During Tuesday’s board of supervisors meeting, Harmon referred to the Sunday event a “a turning point”.

District 3 Supervisor Corkey Harmon

“It’s hard for me not to talk about the happenings in the last two weeks with Charlie Kirk,” Harmon said.

“What a phenomenal name that he picked for that organization, Turning Point, because I believe it really was a turning point, and it is a turning point for this country, that that, if you didn’t get a chance to watch, you should go back and watch that celebration of life, all, not all, but majority of the heads, President of the United States, Vice President of the United States, and you can name a list, go down from there, that attended that and spoke at it, and it was very impactful to me. I spent, I couldn’t walk away from it, listening to it.”

District 5 Supervisor Chris Kelstrom.

Supervisor Kelstrom said he attended the Charlie Kirk vigil at Caldwell Park on Sept. 12, and later watched a recorded replay of Sunday’s memorial.

“And with that, I would like to make a motion on the next agenda that we bring, for October 14th, bring a proclamation that protects free speech and condemns political violence,” Kelstrom said. “So I would like to make that motion now.”

The motion passed 5-0. President Donald Trump has already declared a national day of remembrance for Kirk on Oct. 14, Kirk’s birthday.

In praise of local civil rights icon Isaac J. Lowe

Russel Lowe accepts certificate of recognition honoring his late grandmother, local civil rights pioneer Isaac J. Lowe.

Activist and community organizer Eddie McAllister recently approached Chair Crye about officially recognizing pioneering civil rights activist Isaac J. Lowe, who will be honored with a new monument at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Center on Sept. 27.

Lowe passed away in 2015, but her positive impact on the community remains, reminding us that not too long ago, we all tried to get along a little more earnestly. Crye read Lowe’s extensive bio of firsts:

“I want to tell you a little bit about Isaac Lowe. She was born September 15, 1921, in Wharton, Texas.

“And in the 40s, she traveled to California, met and married her husband Vernon Lowe, and started a family here in Redding. Despite her college degrees, Isaac was initially unable to find a job, quite possibly because of her race. Instead, she started a catering business and eventually secured a job at a doctor’s office and later worked as a Shasta County social worker for 17 years.

Isaac J. Lowe.

“After her retirement, she continued to advocate for equal rights and justice until her death in 2015. She co-founded the Redding chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, also known as the NAACP.

“She founded that with her husband in the 1950s, Vernon. She was the first black woman employed by Shasta County, was the first black woman to serve on Shasta County’s grand jury, was a founding member and first president of Shasta County Citizens Against Racism, also known as SCCAR. She was the 1992 Redding Citizen of the Year.

“She worked very, very tirelessly with the Martin Luther King Center, and it was said that of all the accolades, she was most proud of getting the Redding City Council to recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a holiday, several years after it was declared a federal holiday.

“So again, this was brought forth to me by Eddie, and it was a very easy no-brainer for me to recognize somebody that had done so much for the county and for a group of individuals that can’t always be easy in a rural county,” Crye concluded.

Russell Lowe, one of Isaac’s seven grandchildren, humbly accepted the recognition from Crye.

“First of all, I accept this for my father, Robert Lowe,” Russell said. “He wanted to show his appreciation to Kevin for letting this happen. My grandmother … she’s more worthy than I am. I’m just trying to figure this out. She was very appreciative of everybody that helped her out to get this stuff done that she needed to do. She just never quit trying.”

It was one heartwarming moment in what has been an otherwise dismal two weeks.

SCOREBOARD

REGULAR CALENDAR

Board Matters

R1 Receive an update from the County Executive Officer on County issues and consider action on specific legislation related to Shasta County’s legislative platform and receive Supervisors’ reports on countywide issues.

No Additional General Fund Impact

No Vote

R2 Present a Certificate of Recognition honoring Isaac J. Lowe’s lifelong work and accomplishments to her grandson, Russell Lowe (Sponsored by Supervisor Crye).

No Additional General Fund Impact

Simple Majority Vote

Score: 5-0.

County Clerk-Elections

R3 Approve a budget amendment which increases appropriations by $135,961 in the Election Admin & Registration Budget (BU 140) offset by use of General Fund.

General Fund Impact
4/5 Vote
Score: 4-1, Long dissenting.

CLOSED SESSION

The Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 to appeal Mathew Mello v. Public Employment Relations Board.

R4 CONFERENCE WITH LEGAL COUNSEL – EXISTING LITIGATION

(Government Code section 54956.9 subdivision (d), paragraph (1)):

Case Name: Mathew Mello v. Public Employment Relations Board, Shasta County Superior Court Case No. 25CV-0207275

R5 CONFERENCE WITH LABOR NEGOTIATORS

(Government Code Section 54957.6):

Agency Negotiators:
County Executive Officer David Rickert
Personnel Director Monica Fugitt
Chief Labor Negotiator Gage Dungy, Liebert Cassidy Whitmore

Employee Organizations:
Deputy Sheriffs Association – Deputy Sheriff, Sergeant and District Attorney Investigator Unit
Sheriff’s Administrative Association

CONSENT CALENDAR

Item C4 was pulled to be presented at a later date. Item C12 was pulled so Supervisor Harmon could recuse himself due to a conflict of interest. The Board voted 4-0 to approve C12 in Harmon’s absence. Harmon returned and the Board voted unanimously to approve the remainder of the Consent Calendar.

County Administrative Office

C1 Approve a retroactive amendment to the agreement with Nichols-Melburg & Rossetto, AIA & Associates, Inc., for architectural services required for the Emergency Operation Center Expansion at 6550 Lockheed Drive, Redding which modifies the Consultant’s responsibilities and increases maximum compensation.