Neighbors organize in opposition to proposed three-part Shasta correctional facility 

Earlier in September, officials from the city of Redding and the county of Shasta resolved a temporary dispute over the site of a proposed correctional facility. The project, if built, could serve, among other things, as a day center for people with certain nonserious convictions. 

Months later, the facility’s geographic location on Eastside, close to Haven Humane, has once again become the cause of controversy. Neighbors in the vicinity of the planned construction are voicing their worries about the project moving forward. Among other concerns, they say they were blindsided about the facility’s potential scope. 

They’re not the only ones in the dark. At the moment, the project’s possible scope remains uncharted, but that didn’t stop supervisors from voting unanimously to approve a draft contract for facility design this week. The board agreed to work with the architectural firm Nichols-Melburg & Rossetto to create a design for a campus that could, as briefly mentioned in the contract, include not only the day center but also two other correctional programs.

The architectural firm will be drafting the facility design as one part of an Environmental Impact Report for the site, a state-required document which gauges how a construction project will adversely affect the environment. The facility is slated to be built on land that abuts the Sacramento River.

The board’s agreement with the architecture firm briefly describes what correctional programs could be housed on site using the acronyms “MRCP” and “ACP,” as well as the word “Jail.” The acronym MRCP appears to stand for a proposed Men’s Reentry Community Project, or a transitional program for men freshly released from jail and prison that’s been discussed as a possible county project over recent months. The ACP refers to the previously mentioned day center, an expansion of the Alternative Custody Program envisioned by Sheriff Michael Johnson.

No mention is made in associated county documents of the number of clients that might be served at these facilities or how many of those clients would be residential — elements that could be fundamental to estimating the scope of construction and thus the project’s potential environmental impact. 

In August, when the lease for the land was first introduced as a county agenda item, staff said the site would house what was broadly referred to a “correctional facility,” described as a center for “qualified offenders, who have time to serve, to live at home, and report to a work facility.” At the time it sounded similar to Sheriff Johnson’s proposed ACP.

In October, as required by law, residents within 300 feet of the land on Eastside Road were mailed a notification informing them that city staff intended to rezone the area from its current designation as “heavy industry” to “public facility.” The notice shared with Shasta Scout by a resident does not mention what the facility might be used for. For some, this was the first wind that a project was coming to their neighborhood, and soon, residents started to research, then organize. 

An initial Redding Planning Commission agenda item scheduled for late October to discuss whether to recommend the proposed rezoning to the Redding council was deferred due to issues with legal noticing of residents. The noticing process gives residents a chance to speak out on the proposed zoning change. The topic has been rescheduled to Jan. 13. 

Meanwhile, about 10 residents showed up to this week’s board meeting to express their concerns about how they believe the project will affect both safety and ecology in their sequestered rural neighborhood. Some warned that their groundwater access could be impacted, as many of the nearby residents said they rely on their private wells.  

Attempting to alleviate some of their anxieties, the board called upon Troy Bartolomei, the public works director, to explain the county’s perspective on how the process unfolded.   

“It’s a chicken and egg scenario,” Bartolomei said of the decision to contract for design services without having defined facilities in mind. He said the county’s hope is to wrap all the possible correctional projects that could be built at the site into one EIR, avoiding the need for more environmental impact studies in future. Bartolomei added that as a part of the EIR process, the county will organize listening sessions with the public, but said that doing so “can’t happen until this contract [for facility design] is executed.”   

Adam Sigurdson, a resident of the adjacent neighborhood and father of three, told Shasta Scout that he believes staff failed to do their due diligence in directly notifying residents who live near the tract of land, which straddles the border between Anderson and Redding. ”It’s so easy to say, ‘Oh, it’s just this,’ or ‘Oh, it’s just that,’ when it’s not in your backyard, when you’re not the one who’s gonna have to face it.”

Sigurdson lives on the Anderson side and said he doesn’t typically pay attention to what’s happening at Redding City Council meetings, where discussions occurred about leasing the land to the county over recent months. “They had an open forum,” he said, referring to Redding’s public meetings, “and it would have been great to hear our concerns two months ago when they approved the lease … but I had no idea what was going on.” 

Sigurdson added that he’s not opposed to the facility in theory — acknowledging the value of rehabilitation — but said it should not be built within what he’s timed as a six-minute, 33-second walk from his neighborhood.

After the meeting, Sheriff Johnson, who has been pushing the idea of a correctional facility that could expand the county’s current alternative custody facility since January, told reporters he’s not proud that neighbors to the proposed project site lack information, but pushed back on the idea that the county has been secretive.

“It’s all been public, everything we’ve done, from the negotiations with the city to get the land, to what the vision was,” Johnson said. “Other than going directly to them when we initially started, and saying, ‘Hey, this is what we’re trying to do eventually,’ I don’t know how else I could have reached them.”

Supervisor Matt Plummer, who has taken a significant role in the county’s negotiations with Redding and the state and in talks with the Amity Foundation — which could operate the proposed male reentry program — said after the meeting that he felt residents were assuming “that we’re further along in this process than we actually are.” 

While many of the questions posed by residents were valid, Plummer said, some of the possible projects they’re worried about at the site — like the jail — might be decades away. Of the three types of facilities briefly named in the contract — the day reporting center, the men’s reentry program and the new jail — Plummer predicted that the first two could be operational within the next five years.  

As for the use of the location for a correctional facility, he said he’s seeking to find a balance between accessibility and impact on residents. “If we were to, for example, move this out to some kind of remote location, you would add significant law enforcement time to the [necessary law enforcement] drop offs,” he explained, also noting the issue of the need to transport inmates to and from the facility to the downtown Redding courthouse for trial. 

“​​Wherever we put this, people who are near it will be likely to be concerned about that, and or it would be in such an inconvenient location that it has some kind of drawbacks.”

---

Do you have information or a correction to share? Email us: editor@shastascout.org.