How the city’s role in butterfly philanthropy inspired a maverick activist to run for council.

An aneurysm of the heart on Tax Day nearly took Helen Johnson to the other side. But she was conscious enough to consider one question, and her answer concerned butterflies.


“When they asked me if I wanted to be resuscitated, I thought, I’ve got some unfinished business at the sanctuary,” she says.


After a 77-day hospital stay – during which she amassed a collection of butterfly-themed get-well cards – Johnson, who turns 89 next month, is back home at the Canterbury Woods senior community in Pacific Grove. And she’s looking to fund an improvement to P.G.’s Monarch Grove Sanctuary, a critical overwintering site for the orange-and-black butterflies.


Johnson says she recently ended an annual five-figure donation, which had supported monarch-related research for about a decade, to California Polytechnic State University; she also stopped contributing to the Community Foundation for Monterey County. Neither recipient, she says, handled her butterfly funds the way she’d wanted them to. (Neither Cal Poly nor the Community Foundation could offer a response by the Weekly’s deadline.)


Now, Johnson’s working directly with the city of P.G. to find a suitable use for her monarch money. She won’t name the sum, but calls it a “significant amount.”


Together with her financial advisor, City Manager Tom Frutchey and Public Works Superintendent Mike Zimmer, Johnson commissioned a concept plan from Monterey firm Bellinger Foster Steinmetz. The map, produced in April, shows five modular decks, a new boardwalk, a visitor center and a permanent restroom at the sanctuary. 


“The plans make it accessible for disabled people, wheelchairs and walkers and all of that,” Johnson says. “It’s the place where the monarchs really hang out.” 


But when Johnson invited fellow butterfly enthusiast Bob Pacelli to see the decking plans, he was shocked they even existed. He views the plans as the result of secret meetings and a violation of a 1992 conservation easement with the California Department of Fish & Game. Now, Pacelli says, “I’m running for City Council on the wings of monarchs.”


Frutchey says the meetings were private because Johnson preferred to remain anonymous until they’d agreed on a project. The decking designs were only preliminary, he adds, and would have eventually proceeded through a public process. 


“Some people pushed it a little faster than was necessary,” he says. “That series of efforts got out in the public, and there were considerable questions.”


Mayor Carmelita Garcia forwarded the plans to the DFG’s Wildlife Conservation Board, which funds the property. WCB Assistant Executive Director Dave Means responded on May 22, stating that no new structures are allowed within the easement unless they replace pre-existing structures. Only DFG can make the final call on whether the city’s sanctuary plans are compliant with the easement, he added.


Garcia then sent a memo to Frutchey and Zimmer, instructing them to “stop any and all activity except for standard maintenance” in the sanctuary until the DFG responds.


Now that Johnson’s back on her feet, Frutchey is considering other channels for her philanthropy. The P.G. Museum of Natural History provides docents for the sanctuary, so the museum’s foundation could potentially host her funds, he says.


But Pacelli, a freelance filmmaker and an eccentric character in P.G.’s never-ending butterfly saga, is wary of city-led efforts involving the sanctuary. 


After Public Works heavily pruned the sanctuary’s trees in fall 2009, the local monarch population plummeted and then-Public Works Director Celia Perez Martinez was fired. Pacelli spearheaded a city-sanctioned effort to fill the wind gaps with boxed eucalyptus and oak trees, and monarch numbers rebounded over the winter of 2010-11.


The following spring, Pacelli pushed to add flowering plants to the site of the sanctuary’s recently demolished Brokaw Hall. Cal Poly’s monarch experts made a science experiment of it, hoping to learn which plants best attract and sustain the butterflies. 


But some plants were reportedly stolen, deer munched additional variables and Pacelli planted more flowering plants than the scientists had counted on – further straining relations between Pacelli’s grassroots crew, city officials and Cal Poly.


Pacelli is now anxious to transplant the boxed trees into the ground, but officials are urging him to follow the proper bureaucracy. In May, Zimmer sent Pacelli an informal cease-and-desist notice, warning him to stop planting and weeding in the sanctuary without Public Works approval.


“If you fail to comply,” Zimmer wrote, “the city will not hesitate to take an enforcement action.” 


Frutchey says he’s looking to the city’s scientific advisor, Stuart Weiss, for direction on when to plant the trees. “I’m reticent to do anything in that regard without Stuart’s approval,” he says. “As far as I know, there is not a full resolution.”


Pacelli’s incensed by the suggestion he could be shut out of the sanctuary. “I’m trying not to make a scene. I’m trying to make monarchs,” he says. “[City officials] still want to put a deck in one way or another, and they’re not letting me put the trees in. They’re gonna destroy the sanctuary if they haven’t already.”


So he’s taking the fight to the November ballot. But he’ll likely have some competition: Council incumbents Dan Miller and Robert Huitt, and residents Casey Lucius and Mary Norton have picked up candidate forms, according to Interim City Clerk Ann Camel. The filing deadline is Aug. 10.


Lucius, a 36-year-old Naval Postgraduate School professor, confirms her intent to run; Norton, who owned P.G. game store I’m Puzzled until her retirement last December, says she’s considering it. Garcia and Councilman Bill Kampe are facing off for mayor. 


Johnson, for her part, says she hopes to stick around until a butterfly project moves forward, and to attend a Native American blessing ceremony at the sanctuary with Pacelli this fall – right around election time.