Despite rejection, Anderson can be proud of its effort

Some critics will likely say that Anderson lost the $211 million Shasta County Courthouse race.

In my book, however, one cannot lose something that it never had. After, all, the cards were stacked against Anderson from the very beginning.

Our own Supervisor from District 5, Les Baugh, was against the idea of Anderson hosting the new courthouse because of the additional costs to the county in transporting jail inmates from Redding for court appearances. But doesn't that same argument negate consideration of the 3650 Ranch Road site along Airport Road that has been identified as still under consideration for the new courthouse complex?

A more clear indicator of which way the breeze was blowing on the courthouse site selection issue was the very telling name of the site selection committee itself, labeled as the Shasta New Redding Courthouse Project Advisory Group, that was appointed Sept. 30.

The handwriting was clearly also on the wall back in early March when Anderson's then-City Manager Scott Morgan first began making enquiries regarding state requirements for a new Shasta courts facility.

Burt Hirschfeld, assistant division director for the Judicial Council of California's Administration Office of the Courts, clearly indicated in a March 3 letter to Morgan that "the geographic boundaries for the site can be assumed to be those of the incorporated city limits," meaning within Redding.

That didn't stop Morgan and the Anderson City Council from creating what has arguably been one of the best proposals submitted to date.

Anderson Mayor Butch Schaefer, who works within the county courthouse on a daily basis as a Shasta County Marshal's deputy, is justifiably proud of the long hours of hard work that city staff members and the council put in on preparing Anderson's proposal, a 17-page document complete with a site map, color photographs, an artist's rendering and 19 pages of supplemental studies, endorsements and attachments.

"We have done something that we can be proud of, to be as proactive as we have been on this matter," Schaefer said Friday in reacting to the site selection committee's move to dismiss the south county site.

Council member Melissa Hunt agrees with Schaefer.

"We did do one heck of a job putting this proposal together. I still think we have the best proposal out there," Hunt commented.

Anderson residents should take pride as well that their elected officials are no longer willing to simply sit back and take whatever crumbs the state or county wish to throw this way.

Now in its mid-50s as a city, Anderson has the infrastructure as well as senior staffers with adequate experience to put together viable and impeccably-researched project proposals for even the most sophisticated end user.

Northern California has been put on notice that Anderson will seek to guide its own destiny, working with its neighbors when mutually advantageous, but always looking out for its own best self interests in the long run.

As any city worthy of that title should do.