LAKEPORT — The Lake County Board of Supervisors decided Tuesday to revise a drafted letter to the U.S. Department of the Interior that will comment on the Big Valley Band of Pomo Indians’ applications for bringing a total of 21 parcels into land trust.
The board’s decision came after Big Valley Pomo Tribal Administrator Ben Ray III explained that the tribe’s plans for the parcels it is looking to acquire through the DOI’s fee-to-trust program are unrelated to nearby planned commercial development and legal cannabis operations, and gave the board more accurate information about the value of the 21 parcels concerned.
The county’s drafted letter will ask the DOI for an extension to give the county more time to prepare its comments on the tribe’s fee-to-trust application. County Administrative Officer Carol Huchingson said that the extension would allow the county to “dig in a little further and make sure any comments forthcoming from the county are accurate.”
There was some confusion about how long the county had had access to the tribe’s application packets, which Ray said should have been in the county’s hands for over a year. The application packets, Ray said, contains a complete catalogue of the tribe’s “exhaustive” applications, which include archaeological and environmental studies as well as information about the tribe’s planned use for the parcels.
Ray said he was “disappointed” that the county had not already formulated its comments on the proposed land acquisition.
“The county has had the documents—the entire package—well over a year,” Ray said. “I’m disappointed that they’ve waited until the end of the comment period.”
According to Huchingson, however, the Bureau of Indian Affairs had not sent digital or hard copies of the tribe’s application packet. “I haven’t heard anything about this project since I saw you a couple years ago,” Huchingson noted, referring to Ray.
“We were told that they (the application packets) were sent out from BIA,” Ray said. “We’ve spent a tremendous amount of money and effort and time putting the entire thing together. So I’m disappointed to hear that.” Ray said he would let the BIA know about their failure to send the packet.
During his comments to the board, Ray stressed that a planned commercial development that would include a casino, as well as a legal cannabis operation—both of which are located near the 21 parcels being sought for land trust—are unrelated to the tribe’s plans for those 21 parcels.
Those parcels, Ray said, “are not part of a commercial center, are not part of a cannabis operation and are not part of a casino.” Ray noted that the parcels proposed for land trust will “have absolutely no change in land use.” The parcels are currently zoned for agricultural and residential use.
Should the DOI approve land trusts for the proposed parcels, the county would stand to lose some annual tax revenue. Huchingson noted that at the currently assessed values, that tax revenue is “very minimal,” but also said during the meeting that some of the parcels have been improved without permits since their last assessment, which would bring up their tax value by an unknown amount. As it stands, the total tax value of the 21 parcels is less than $11,500 annually.
The board moved to revise the county’s drafted letter asking for a time extension from the DOI, and to bring the new draft back to the board at its next meeting on Tuesday, April 16.
In an interview after the board meeting Tuesday, Ray maintained that he was surprised the county was “just now asking for more information” on the tribe’s land trust applications, noting that he had delivered flash drives with the complete application packets directly to the county in June 2017, but had heard no reply until a few weeks ago.
Ray said the Big Valley Pomo’s applications to bring the 21 parcels into land trust are the last major component of the tribe’s efforts to restore its rightful land base.
After the federal California Rancheria Termination Act of 1958 distributed the land of nearly 40 California tribes to individual property owners, the Big Valley Pomo tribe was left with no home. In 1983 the tribe’s sovereign status, along with that of 16 other small California rancherias, was restored in a U.S. District Court decision in the case of Tillie Hardwick v. United States. Since that time the Big Valley Pomo tribe has been working to reacquire the land it originally held as a sovereign government.
“This is probably the easiest of no-brainers,” Ray said of the tribe’s current application to restore the 21 parcels to the tribe’s possession. “This is original land that was already part of the rancheria” prior to 1958, he said.
The 21 parcels currently being applied for land trust, Ray explained, represent the last piece of the tribe’s efforts since Tillie Hardwick v. United States to restore its original land base. Though some parcels have been lost to private ownership, the majority of the tribe’s rancheria would be restored should the current batch of parcels be approved for land trust, Ray said.
“We are in a way trying to right a wrong,” Ray added.
