Prudent budgeting, cost cutting, reorganization mark Shigley's tenure as city manager

After 11 years working in Anderson’s City Hall and spending the final two years as its chief executive, City Manager Dana Shigley leaves the city with a strong financial footing, a remembrance book filled with happy moments and only a few regrets.

Beginning Jan. 2, Shigley, 48, will be City Manager for American Canyon, located just north of Vallejo at the foot of California’s Napa Valley.

“When I first came here in 1997, the city was in pretty tough shape financially,” Shigley remembered of her arrival in Anderson as a grants resource specialist.

“We’ve never rolled in dough here, but we’ve had some better years than Shasta County and some of the other cities our size and larger because we’ve always been pretty prudent. Our revenues here have not been as volatile as they are in some other places,” said Shigley, who was originally hired by then-City Manager Scott Morgan to oversee several federal housing grants that Morgan was cobbling together.

The Seasons at Los Robles, an apartment complex on Ventura Street, was falling down and so infested with drug dealers and users that the police had raided it. City officials had ordered the building vacated and boarded it up until a major renovation could take place, she recalled.

“Scott (Morgan) had just acquired the foreclosed property from the bank. I spent the better part of 18 months working on that project. By the time it was done, the City of Anderson had put $6 million to $7 million into renovating and upgrading it,” Shigley said.

“It was a bold move on Scott’s part to acquire that property. It set the stage for all our future development projects,” she said.

Most of the work was paid with federal housing improvement grants, she noted.

“The whole point of that exercise was to make it into a game-changer for the downtown area. I think the whole area benefitted from it,” Shigley said with more than a hint of pride showing.

“That project really put us on the map as to what we could do as a city. We got some attention in the trade journals. It also gave us the opportunity to market ourselves to other housing project developers. We were able to set a pretty high standard for what we could do to provide decent housing without settling for junk,” Shigley said.

Shortly after the Los Robles renovation celebrated its grand re-opening, Shigley and the Anderson City Council began a series of meetings to design the renovation of several demonstration blocks downtown. Several factors contributed to this turn of events, she noted.

“Redevelopment funding started to pick up and the city acquired the old Masonic Lodge building, that for many years had been used for a teen center” and other youth programs, she said.

“The building was dilapidated and in serious need of repair. We began our discussion on whether to remodel or demolish the building and then rebuild it,” Shigley noted.

At about that same time, Shasta County’s Health and Human Services decided to open a South County branch office in Anderson. Anderson and the county administrators ended up forming a partnership.

“I acted as project manager. The county paid 66 percent of the cost and we paid the remaining 34 percent. It was the best project, not only for the city and county, but for me personally. It helped me get out into the community and meet a lot of influential people,” said Shigley.

The Teen Center and Shasta County Health Building celebrated a grand opening in 2005.

“I’ve always strived to get well designed and fully functional buildings for the citizens so that our constituents don’t have to go to Redding all the time,” Shigley said.

Opening the county’s Health Center and city’s Teen Center also provided the perfect impetus to spruce up surrounding blocks downtown.

Redevelopment bonds were sold and repaid with increased tax revenues as property values in the immediate area rose, Shigley said.“We created a bunch of value down there and we created a lot of tax revenues downtown,” she noted.

On a less happy note, one issue that has particularly dogged Shigley throughout her two-year tenure as City Manager is the regulation and control of medical marijuana.

In 1996, a two-thirds majority of California voters put into effect the state’s Compassionate Use Act that allows patients with a doctor’s recommendation to legally possess a small amount of the federally-controlled substance for personal use.

Further interpretation of the state law by then-State Attorney General Jerry Brown allowed patients with medical recommendations to join together for purposes of cultivating and distributing marijuana as collectives, cooperatives or dispensaries, even though such a decision violated federal laws prohibiting the growing, trading or selling the controlled plant substance.

A few collectives operated quietly and mostly covertly in Northern California until a 2009 announcement from federal officials that they would no longer actively harass or prosecute medical marijuana cases in states that allowed for the legal possession of medical marijuana.

That ruling, more than anything, prompted Anderson resident Gina Munday to approach the Anderson Planning Commission and Council seeking permission to open the city’s first medical marijuana collective. Munday’s husband, Joe, an out-of-work building contractor due to the slow economy, would open an indoor garden center.

Although the Anderson City Council wanted to charge ahead and enact an outright ban on the cultivation and distribution of medical marijuana almost from the beginning, Shigley found herself in the unwelcome position of playing a waiting game to see how those issues would play out in the state’s courts and subsequent appellate rulings.

“The council did not want to wait until we could come up with a strong position that was legally defensible,” Shigley noted.

In 2009, Gina Munday opened her collective, The Green Heart, two days before the city council could enact an emergency ordinance prohibiting just such a business endeavor.

State budget cuts also forced Shigley and the council to shuffle several city departments when administrators retired or leave lower-level positions unfilled when vacated.

“We did replace a city attorney and a planning director, although we changed the position title to Development Services Director,” she said.

Left vacant was the Parks and Recreation Director position with oversight of those functions shifted to Public Works Director Jeff Kiser, who was also appointed Assistant City Manager to take over in Shigley’s absence. Retiring Saturday, Dec. 31, is John Hargrave, the city’s parks superintendentWhen Police Chief Dale Webb took an indefinite medical leave, the city appointed retired California Highway Patrol Captain Shawn Watts as an interim chief, but Watts’ contract expires in February.

“We’ve pretty much replaced everybody except for our Finance Office Manager. Thank God for Liz Cottrell,” Shigley commented of the city’s many personnel changes.

“It is very difficult to fill those positions, but we have done very well in filling them with very capable people,” she continued.

Shigley’s new job in American Canyon will have new challenges and new opportunities, along with some familiar problems such as tight budgets.

“It’s going to take some time for me to figure out all of the politics and see who is promoting this or that and who is against it,” she said.

As Shigley works diligently to wrap up as many projects as possible before her Dec. 20 departure, the City of American Canyon is also sending her briefing papers and electronic documents.

“My brain is really in two places. I am trying to complete things here and absorb all of this new data,” Shigley noted.

She also admits to a few regrets.

“I always hate to leave anywhere with things still on my plate,” Shigley said. “I would really like to settle the labor contracts.”

In fact, one of the agenda items for her final council meeting Dec. 20 is the ratification of an agreement with the Anderson Police Officers Association. That contract has been stalled for several years because the city has been asking employees to pay a portion of their Public Employee Retirement System and health insurance benefits.

Overall, however, Shigley said, “I have enjoyed this whole journey. I started out in the finance department and went into all of these projects for the community. It has been a fantastic ride. I just love this organization. We have a good group of people and I will miss them greatly.”

The legacy she hopes to leave behind is the ability to “rise above the personalities and look at the community and how much potential we have. We need to keep that big vision thing going and not settle for second best.”