A Vision For The Blue Lake Police Department

By Nancy C. Woodward

Blue Lake's Police Department has engendered controversy, no doubt of that. It is time for citizens to come together and discuss openly what we have learned and now, what our goals are for the future.

I think Ryan's most valuable quality is his friendliness, particularly towards our young people, who are fond of him. He is helping us to raise children who have faith in his good will towards them, and who, we may hope, will grow up with positive and constructive attitudes towards law enforcement.

We have two other young officers who share his spirit of community service and affection for the people of Blue Lake, Mark Peterson and Greg Perry.

We are in danger of losing our officers due to uncompetitive wages and their need to see the community's support and appreciation.

We need to work together to keep our police officers, and we can, if we put an end to partisanship and unite towards the goals we share with our officers.

I support paying officers who have proven themselves to be the kind of people we know we need to keep, competitive wages so that we CAN keep them--hopefully, for their entire careers. It is better to reward quality public service than to pay the costs of finding new officers and training them to be part of the team. That makes budgetary sense, as well as rewarding true excellence.

Once we know how much the Barkley law suit is going to cost the taxpayers of Blue Lake, we should consider the possibility and the desirability of creating a reserve fund in our budget for the police department, so that emergency needs and equipment costs are planned for and can be met responsibly.

That said, constituents may wonder why Blue Lake's Chief of Police, Floyd Stokes (no relationship to former City Attorney John Stokes, sr.) is so actively campaigning against my candidacy, claiming that I do not support the police department--even that I bear deep hatred towards it!

Obviously, that's not the case. What is so is that this particular chief and I have not always seen eye to eye on budgetary and other issues. I have carried complaints to City Hall--but never, let me hasten to add, without giving full credit where I think it is due, to officers who are doing a wonderful job, including praise for our chief for those times when his wisdom and assistance have been vital to me personally; as well for as his highly successful fundraising efforts. It should be pointed out that Floyd is who selected and has trained the fine officers in our BLPD today, the ones we citizens are trying to keep. I believe I have been fair in these matters. Floyd Stokes disagrees.

People interested in discussing these issues further are invited to call me at (707) 668-5075, or e-mail ncw@humboldt1.com

Common sense, and an open ear to the people, are, as always, the best places to begin to create, as a community working together, the most effective solutions for the problems we share.

Blue Lake, known as 'the peaceable hamlet,' is a truly special place to live, to raise children, and grow old. People here have friendly ways and lots of opinions, leading to a highly competitive council election this year. It's kind of old fashioned, but it works!