Farewell turns into good-natured roast

Photo by Pamela Britton-Baer

South County Profile: Dana Shigley

An Open House held Tuesday, Dec. 20, at Anderson City Hall to say farewell to Anderson City Manager Dana Shigley turned into a roast when Assistant City Manager Jeff Kiser began handing out gag gifts from various staff members.

“Many of you know of Dana’s long list of contributions to the City of Anderson, but I’ll bet you didn’t know that one of her first jobs as a teenager was operating a drive-through window at Carl’s Jr.,” Kiser said at the start of festivities.

“It just goes to show that if you can operate a drive-through window, you too might become a city manager,” quipped Kiser, who added later that Shigley also had some peculiar food quirks.

“God forbid you serve anything but genuine maple syrup at any pancake breakfast, and you must always have organic catsup on hand for hamburgers and hot dogs,” Kiser said.

Kiser played stand-up comedian to an audience of nearly 80 people including top administrators past and present from Shasta County and the cities of Anderson, Shasta Lake and Redding.

They joined Shigley and her parents to enjoy meatballs, breadsticks and pizza catered by Mary’s Pizza Shack in Anderson as well as fresh fruits, home-made cookies and candies prepared by Anderson city staffers, said Deputy City Clerk Brenda Hicken, who helped organize the open house.

Among the many gifts of Diet Coca-Cola and dark chocolate presented to Shigley “to relieve her stress,” Kiser noted, were sprinkled a few surprises, including a 10-pound bar of dark chocolate from Interim Police Chief Shawn Watts.

“When I first came to work as a consultant, I quickly learned that Dana likes dark chocolate,” Watts said.

Kiser, who also is in charge of the city’s public works department, presented Shigley with two large, black-plastic trash bags, one containing a juniper bush and the other a boxwood hedge bush complete with a 10-page manual on how to plant and care for it.

When asked to comment on various landscaping projects, Shigley invariably would comment that “junipers are blight” and express her utter disregard for boxwood hedges, Kiser explained.

The gifts prompted Shigley to ask her mother, “Do you want to plant these in your yard?”

Anderson City Council member Debe Hopkins, who doubles as executive director of the Anderson Chamber of Commerce, helped select some of the more memorable items Shigley received including a pair of inscribed goblets left over from a 1976 wine tasting event, a yard gnome and a blue work shirt with the Chamber logo and a rainbow-hued tie-dyed shirt emblazoned with the slogan, “Where the heck is Anderson?”

“Well, that’s lovely!” responded Shigley, who said afterwards that the shirt will make a nice car wash rag.

Shigley completed her last day on the job with a 40-minute Anderson City Council meeting. After 11 years in Anderson, she and husband Paul Shigley are moving to Napa County where she will start work Jan. 3 as American Canyon’s city manager.