Courthouse site is today's hot topic

Duane K. Miller, Civil Engineer, Inc.

SHASTA COUNTY COURTS FACILITY -- An artist's rendering of a four-story, 14-courtroom facility along Interstate 5 at the Sacramento River in north Anderson. The design is one that could easily lend itself to green building practices with passive and active solar energy collectors and cold irrigation water used for summer cooling.

No fooling. In spite of this being April 1, the hot topic of public opinion is whether Anderson should be the future site of Shasta County's proposed $211 million courthouse complex.

It is a topic that split our city council 3-2, and it is providing lively breakfast conversation for Les and Susie Baugh, who sit on opposite sides of the issue. She represents the Anderson Planning Commission while he serves District 5 on Shasta County's Board of Supervisors. You can read each of their arguments in the "Related Stories" link adjacent to this column.

Since the topic of the state building Shasta County a new courthouse was first broached, dollar signs have swirled about the heads of many of those with properties adjacent to the existing courthouse in Redding.

The potential for hosting the county's courts facility with its multitude of high-paying jobs, gobs of potential jury panelists, dozens of citizens making court appearances, loads of attorneys on expense accounts and others has prompted Anderson officials to want a piece of the pie as well.

At least one Redding City Council member, Dick Dickerson, even went so far - some might say it was an act of desperation - to personally lobby members of the Economic Development Corporation of Shasta County, a group that is supposed to remain neutral in such decisions since they assist the entire county and solicit funding from the county as well as Anderson, the City of Shasta Lake and Redding.

"The EDC did not endorse this action," wisely stated Greg O'Sullivan, EDC's president and chief executive.