New Redding Council Members Take Their Seats as Focus on Homelessness Continues
Paul Dhanuka, Erin Resner, and Mike Littau were sworn in. Council member Jack Munns was unanimously approved as the City’s new Mayor.
When Mayor Tenessa Audette called the December 3 Redding City Council meeting to order, the apprehension in the air was palpable. A large crowd sat anxiously in their seats, waiting for Council candidates elected on November 5 to be sworn in. But, as first City Manager Barry Tippin and then Audette explained, the County had not yet submitted final certified results, leaving the Council, and the crowd, hanging.
“We spoke to the ROV, and they’re hoping at any moment the results will come in,” Audette clarified around fifteen minutes after the expected start time, explaining that the Elections Office was still waiting for the final step of the process to be digitally tabulated. The Council meeting began with the outgoing Council members still holding their seats and conducting business for the City.
Within an hour, final certified election results were received, allowing physician Paul Dhanuka, businesswoman Erin Resner, and insurance broker Mike Littau to be sworn in as new Council members. After a break for photos, the new Council reassembled. Dhanuka and Littau will be serving on the council for the next four years, and Resner the next two. Their first action was to hold a vote together with ongoing Council members Audette and Jack Munns, on who would become the Council’s next Mayor, Vice Mayor and Mayor Pro Tempore.
Audette’s nomination was for Munns to become Mayor, Dhanuka Vice Mayor and Littau Mayor Pro Tempore. Dhanuka had a different idea, agreeing that Munns should be Mayor but removing himself from the mix and suggesting Littau should become Vice Mayor followed by Resner as Mayor Pro Tem. Dhanuka’s alternative motion passed after a brief discussion.
Newly-appointed Mayor Munns then led a brief farewell ceremony for outgoing Council members Mark Mezzano, Joshua Johnson, and Julie Winter, who each made brief farewell speeches after descending from the dais. Winter’s speech focused on the progress she’s seen over her last eight years on the Council including the implementation of a budgetary process focused on specific goals and objectives. Winter also expressed pride in how Council policies have changed the use of public land, particularly Nur Pon Open Space, which was formerly inhabited by a number of unsheltered people, who she stigmatized as “vagrants.”
Mezzano also used his farewell speech to reflect on his time in office, recalling his 2020 candidacy when he was asked by some community members to “do something about public safety and do something about the homeless.” He followed this anecdote by praising the counsel’s effort to expand the Redding Police Department and construct new facilities for the Good News Rescue Mission.
As the former Council discussed at the beginning of Tuesday’s meeting, in recent years, the City’s approach to “doing something” about the growing homelessness crisis has had its bumps. Last month, the City terminated its contract with the nonprofit No Boundaries, after concerns of financial mismanagement were revealed. After allocating more than $2 million dollars toward that now-defunct contract, the City is now pivoting, putting out an RFP for other service agencies to pick up a similar role moving forward.
The RPF process, which was approved by the Council Tuesday, will facilitate spending of $1.5 million dollars via at least three vendors to rehouse people cleared from encampments. Unlike the former contract with No Boundaries, Tippin said, this new proposal “would require vendors to provide better information in terms of how they’re going to make sure there’s access to care… you know, how are they actually going to operate.” Audette followed up, saying that the proposal to involve multiple vendors is to avoid putting “all our eggs in one basket,” seemingly a lesson learned from the No Boundaries’ contract dissolution.
Unhoused residents were a major campaign topic of every City Council forum this fall. Political newcomers Littau and Dhanuka both addressed the future of the City’s unsheltered community in their runs for office, with Littau focusing on working with neighborhood groups and Dhanuka expressing his interest in helping to build a new drug and mental health treatment facility that could help serve the needs of Shasta County’s unhoused population, more than half of which have physical or mental disabilities according to data recently shared by the Shasta Advisory Board of the NorCal Continuum of Care.
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I appreciate Dr. Danuka’s willingness to put the community ahead of personal recognition. We have serious issues here with the homeless and the shortage of Doctors. I hope the community will put partisan issues aside and work with the council to solve these problems. I love living here in Redding. It is a great little city. We don’t need to be a copycat of big cities to attract good doctors here. We need the best version of Redding to be the shining star in northern California. Northern California is the best place in the state to raise a family. This is the best place in the state to breathe fresh air and explore beautiful mountains, lakes, rivers, and streams. Our schools are better than those in the inner cities of LA and SF any day of the week. The ideal would be for our council and work as a team to help lower crime and shelter the homeless.
Recently, two different councilpersons were passed over and denied the position of Mayor. We need to set a better example for the future of our city. That is why, I declined the position as Vice-Mayor and nominated other three for these positions. This will allow us to build bridges and unite our community around the local, “bread & butter issue” like mental health, doctors’ shortage, cost of living, homelessness, and public safety.
I am thankful to council for nominating me as Vice-Mayor because of the highest number of votes. However, I would rather wait and focus on making our city an inspiration for the next generation and a destination for the nation.
Thank you Dr. Dhanuka for being more concerned about pressing City issues than having a particular title.
Yes, the terrible 3 bethel cult members pulled their usual dirty play to make Tennesa mayor. Separation of cult and state absolutely must be adhered to! No more dirty cult illegal taxpayer owned properties sales either! Thankfully, the courts found Julie Winters guilty of attempting to sell off taxpayer owned land to block Win Rivers expansion!
Mr. Dhanuka. Congratulations on your win. You most likely are right (far right) at home here in Redding.
As you are an anti-vaccine, anti-masker, and a BIG LIE election denier who would not state when asked if Biden won in 2020, who joined with a local neo-confederate militia to storm Shasta County, attack and remove Dr. Karen Ramstrom, a well-respected and loved practitioner, for following the law, you could possibly be labeled by some as a violator of the hypnotic oath, rejecting COVID-19 pandemic standards and recommendations for vaccination and masking by the American Medical Association, “the largest professional association of physicians in the United States.” I wonder if you felt adjacent to the prevailing winds of anti-science and Trump, who talked about injecting bleach and inserting a” very powerful light” into the body to fight Covid and decided to put evidence-based medical practices aside and join “let it rip” MAGA. This is a dangerous way to practice medicine and politics.
That all said, I hope you understand that the majority of our population is a few paychecks from homelessness and or economic catastrophe from medical problems. Please consider evidence-based practices that are working to house people without homes, the majority of whom also have health challenges, including substance abuse and chronic physical and coexisting clinical mental health diagnosed affections. Please do not use malpractice in working with this challenging and at-risk pollution that affects every family in Shasta County, as we can expect MAGA to continue to use the preverbal and rather Anti-Christian MAGA BIG STICK, to cut funds and treatment for all people with medical issues without homes or not.
Gardinier: Can you provide any evidence that Dr. Dhanuka “joined with” a militia “to storm Shasta County”? Many thanks.
Dr. Dhanuka enthusiastically spoke out against Covid mitigation measures on the local hard-right MAGA neo-conservative militia R.W.B. Podcast – Broadcast, brought to us by the same folks who in a SCBOS meeting, declared that mosquitoes are Flying Jewish Covid Vaccine Syringes giving Dhanuka supporters Supervisors Jones, Crye, and Kelstorm what they needed to appoint a R.W.B. militia member to a county Mosquito Abatement program rejecting Donnell Ewert, a well-known and very respected P.H.D. Virologist with over 28 years of dedication to Shasta County, whom, like Dr. Karen Ramstrom, Jones, Crye, and Kelstorm, and their never-ending Cartel of supporters despise.
Coincidently, the Mosquito Abatement militia member above was also at the W.D.C. Trump 06 Insertion supporting the overthrow of the 2020 vote, and again, coincidently, 06 was the day I met Dr. Dhanuka at Jones Cartel’s illegal storming of the SCBOS Chambers. Dhanuka was in scrubs with no mask. I asked him if he was a medical professional, and he said yes. As many of us were wearing masks in public (the medical standard for that time) I then asked as a medical professional why he didn’t have a mask on, and he just laughed.
The point is, as reported in the New York Times, at least 1 in 261 residents of Shasta County died of Covid-19, a total of 690 reported deaths, and God only knows how many got very sick from it. Dr. Dhanuka, like his buddy Dr. James Mu, a still unqualified anti-vaxer who we are paying to educate, the Jones, Crye Kelstorm Cartel replaced Dr. Karen Ramstrom with as Public Health Officer.
Like the militia, Jones, Crye, and Kelstorm, in service to MAGA, both Dhanuka, and Mu politized COVID-19, arguably at the risk of the health and welfare of Shasta County. I hope they don’t do the same with the at-risk population of folks in need of substance–mental health treatment and homes.
Annelise, I apologize for the syntax and grammar errors. ADHD and Dyslexia always get the best of me…
Gardinier: My question wasn’t about grammar errors, it was about providing documentation of your claims.
I am looking forward to seeing a dual diagnosis treatment facility in our area, it is so needed 🙏