Mayor Schaefer touts Anderson opportunities

The City of Anderson’s Mayor, Butch Schaefer, took full opportunity of his State of the City Luncheon address Thursday noon to tout many of the community’s accomplishments during the past calendar year.

An estimated 300 people crowded the main ballroom at the Gaia Anderson Hotel, Spa and Restaurant for the 10th annual event, jointly sponsored by the Anderson Chamber of Commerce and the City of Anderson. Because the hotel’s own kitchens are still under construction, the event was catered by Mary’s Pizza Shack. Patrons in the buffet line were served by members of Anderson Union High School’s FFA.

Seen in the audience were at least two Shasta County Superior Court Judges, most of the county’s top administrators, at least three county supervisors, city council members and staffers from Redding and the City of Shasta Lake, tribal leaders from Redding Rancheria, business owners, non-profit administrators and service club members by the dozens.

From completion in early July of the 80-unit Blue Oak Court Apartments, with 2-, 3- and 4-bedroom rent-controlled housing intended for low income families to the more recent completion of professional offices on Ganyon Drive and Ventura St., Anderson is definitely on the move, Schaefer said.

The mayor’s speech was carefully coordinated with a multi-image PowerPoint show that illustrated many of the projects as Schaefer mentioned them.

Interspersed with hundreds of still photographs were video vignettes featuring some of Anderson’s newest business owners as well as the venerable mainstays who have seen the community through good times as well as bad.

“I think Anderson really is the city of opportunity. For 35 years, it has allowed me to raise and educate my children, make a comfortable dental practice and plan for my retirement,” said long-time Anderson dentist Steve Ahrens.

“It’s exciting to see Anderson grow as the years roll by. It’s not the sleepy little town it once was,” Ahrens continued.

Restaurateur Joe Martinez, who demolished his iconic Koffee Korner on July 25, hopes to open a new and larger full-service restaurant on the same site in late November or early January.

“We’ve made a lot of good friends throughout the years,” Martinez said after watching himself on the big screen. Martinez purchased the restaurant on the corner of Ventura and North St. in Anderson in 1982.

“The town and Koffee Korner have been just fabulous to me. Anderson has really benefitted me and my four children,” Martinez said on the video.

Schaefer briefly touched on the community’s “outstanding recreation programs” offered by the Anderson Parks and Recreation, then enumerated quite a long list of public works projects, several built or planned with Redevelopment Agency grants and state Community Development Block Grants.

“Even the soft economy has led to opportunities for the city,” noted Schaefer, who said city officials have been seeking “greater efficiencies and reorganization” with fewer employees, yet using the stalled residential construction market to bid a slew of public works projects.

“The result has been a series of well-priced bids on projects that have cost far less than the engineer’s estimates,” Schaefer noted.

Among those projects was a $964,000 upgrade of the city’s water service to an area along Highway 273 that was annexed in 2003. The city also extended Fairgrounds Drive to Third St. at the cost of $350,000 and installed three “Discover Anderson” welcome signs for $74,000.

In addition, the city used $384,000 in Proposition 1B funding for some city-wide street rehabilitation, a project that took just six months from project conception to final completion.

Next month, in a cooperative venture with Shasta County and Redding through the SHASTEC redevelopment project, Anderson will solicit bids on a $1.2 million project to widen North Street from Sharon to Ravenwood.

Anderson is also currently bidding a $200,000 water project to purchase an unused irrigation lateral from the Anderson Cottonwood Irrigation District and install a new water line connection under Interstate 5 without any new digging or tunneling.

“As our presentation here today demonstrates, Anderson truly is a “City of Opportunities,” Schaefer said in his concluding remarks.

“The past year has been a good one for our community, and the city looks forward to continuing to pursue new opportunities over the next year to help bring about further progress,” he said, to resounding applause.