Rendering of Redding Rancheria’s proposed casino expansion at Strawberry Fields.
Two high stakes civil lawsuits against the Shasta County Board of Supervisors are moving forward in Shasta County Superior Court.
Anderson/Millville Residents versus Shasta County, the Shasta County Board of Supervisors and Real Party in Interest Shasta County District 4 Supervisor Patrick Jones, is scheduled to go to trial on Dec. 5. The plaintiffs hope to force Jones to conduct a full environmental impact report on the High Plains Shooting Sports Center, a 151-acre state-of-the-art gun range Jones wants to build in the middle of their rural residential neighborhood on the Millville Plains eight miles east of Anderson.
Meanwhile, California Land Stewardship Council LLC versus Shasta County and its Board of Supervisors is scheduled to go to trial January 28 next year. At issue is the 30-year sweetheart deal for county services the board struck with the Redding Rancheria for the Tribes’ proposed casino relocation project last July. The plaintiffs allege the deal was illegal and will cost Shasta County taxpayers tens of millions of dollars over three decades. They seek to have the deal rescinded.
The two cases are similar in that both have been brought by local citizens opposed to the impact major projects approved by Shasta County’s MAGA board majority will have on their respective neighborhoods. The cases differ in scope and magnitude.
The Anderson/Millville residents are a smaller, more tight-knit group whose rural way of life is threatened by the gun range. A handful of members dutifully show up each for each court hearing. They’ve created a website to state their case and raise money to fuel their legal battle. They’re represented by environmental attorney Don Mooney from Davis.
The California Land Stewardship Council LLC is potentially a much larger group of litigants but more amorphous, since the LLC was formed last February to shield individual identities. Legally, the lawsuit was filed on behalf of everyone in Shasta County who will be affected by the sweetheart casino deal’s impact on public services such as police, firefighters and other emergency responders. They are represented by the formidable San Francisco law firm Paul Hastings LLP.
A News Café has been following both cases and attended hearings for each earlier this month. Here’s a glimpse of what to expect as these cases come to trial.
Millville Plains residents Matt Dial, Elizabeth Dial, Kim Wilkes and Ed Wilkes. Photo by R.V. Scheide.
Gun Range Opponents Suit Up and Show Up
It was no surprise to find a handful of Millville Plains residents waiting outside Department 63 on the sixth floor of the new courthouse early in the morning on July 1. They’ve attended more hearings than this reporter and they’ve been generous with their notes. Brother and sister Matt and Elizabeth Dial and husband and wife Ed and Kim Wilkes sat patiently on a bench waiting for the 9 a.m. hearing to begin.
They’ve been featured in A News Café’s coverage of the gun range saga since it began last year, after Jones’ project was unanimously granted a mitigated negative declaration by the Shasta County Planning Commission. That’s a considerably lower bar to clear than a full-fledged environmental impact report.
Jones was also present outside the courtroom, chatting with Shasta County Counsel Joe Larmour. There’s not a lot of love lost between Jones and the Millville Plains residents sitting 50 feet away from him. According to them, Jones is the neighbor from hell. As recently as 2022, he was holding wild pig hunts on his 151-acre property, a quasi-legal practice known as canned hunting. Many of the wild pigs he imported escaped and terrorized the neighbors, rooting up pastures, knocking over beehives and breeding like mad.
Shasta County Supervisor Patrick Jones talks to County Counsel Joe Larmour talk in
background as Dolores Lucero checks paperwork. Photo by R.V. Scheide.
Now, Jones’ proposed gun range project threatens the tranquility of their rural lifestyle yet again.
The size and scope of the gun range, which includes 160 shooting positions for shotguns, pistols and rifles, blindsided most of the Millville Plains residents. Ed Wilkes, a Navy veteran, engineer and gun enthusiast with extensive shooting range experience, was astonished when he discovered scant reference to errant shot fall in the plans for the gun range.
Errant shot fall refers to bullets and shotgun pellets that go off target evading protective backstops, berms and barriers and exiting the gun range, possibly injuring or even killing passersby and damaging property. The area outside the range where the errant shot falls is known as the surface danger zone.
Since no study on errant shot fall has been conducted by Jones, Wilkes prepared his own report, using source material such as the National Rifle Association’s 2023 “Range Source Book” and his engineering background. He quickly discovered that the NRA cautions against developing gun ranges on flat open terrain such as the Millville Plains.
Wilkes calculated that 97 homes and businesses and a 5-mile stretch of Highway 44 north of the proposed gun range are within the range’s surface danger zone, determined by the maximum range of high-powered rifle bullets, which can travel as far as 7000 yards.
“Since any large-caliber rifle bullet that travels outside the proposed shooting complex will have sufficient velocity to penetrate the human skull when it falls to earth, this would put thousands of people at risk of being injured or killed by a falling bullet every day if the proposed shooting complex is operating,” Wilkes wrote in his report.
Illustration by Ed Wilkes shows the proposed gun range’s surface danger zone.
The hearing got off to a false start when Judge Benjamin Hanna called it to order before he realized Jones’ attorney, Shon Northam, was not present. Northam arrived five minutes later, and the status conference that had been derailed twice by Jones’ failed attempts to disqualify Judge Hanna finally began.
The short session that followed was routine. County Counsel Larmour reiterated that the county doesn’t want to participate in the case, since Jones is the Real Party in Interest. Judge Hanna acknowledged his request. The rest of the hearing was spent on scheduling.
The administrative record for the case will be completed by July 26. It includes Wilkes’ shot fall study as well as expert testimony that refutes environmental and acoustics studies completed by Jones. Jones has until August 23 to respond to it; the Millville/Anderson residents have until September 20 to reply to Jones’ response.
If the case stays on schedule, Judge Hanna may issue a ruling as early as December 5.
The residents contend that the mitigated negative declaration violates the California Environmental Quality Act. They seek a writ of mandate from the court vacating that declaration and halting any work on the gun range project until a full environmental impact report is conducted by Jones.
Shasta County Supervisors Patrick Jones, chair Kevin Crye, Chris Kelstrom and Tim Garman (not shown) voted for the casino sweetheart deal.
Shasta County Board of Supervisors Clam Up on Casino Deal
It’s been a year since the Shasta County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 to approve a deal to provide public safety services to the Redding Rancheria’s proposed casino expansion. Only Shasta County District 3 Supervisor Mary Rickert voted against the 30-year contract, which sees the Redding Rancheria paying millions less for public services compared to similarly sized casinos in northern California.
Why did the MAGA board grant the Tribe such a sweetheart deal despite robust public objections from staff, the county sheriff, fire chief and district attorney, all of whom argued the contract did not adequately mitigate the project’s impacts on public safety, fire protection, emergency services and the courts?
We may be about to find out as California Land Stewardship Council LLC versus Shasta County Board of Supervisors heads to trial on Jan. 28 of next year.
The project proposal relocates the Tribe’s Win-River Resort and Casino at the intersection of Highway 273 and Canyon Road to a 232-acre parcel on Strawberry Fields near the South Bonnyview exit on I-5. The proposed casino and hotel will have a total floor space of 1,123,272 square feet with 1200 gaming machines and 250 rooms. Its nine-story hotel will be the tallest building between Portland and Sacramento.
On July 1, the Department of the Interior transferred the Strawberry Fields property to federal trust status for the purpose of gaming, placing the Tribe one step closer to realizing its expansionist dreams.
District 3 Supervisor Mary Rickert was the only supervisor to vote against Jones’ gun range and the casino sweetheart deal.
But the fight over the proposed casino is far from over as can be seen in the briefs filed by the opposing sides in the California Land Stewardship case.
Shasta County has contracted an outside law firm for the case, Greene & Roberts from San Diego. When the Land Stewardship Council requested public records documenting negotiations between the county and the Tribe going back to 2019, attorneys Maria Roberts and Nicolas Echevestre repeatedly claimed, “Except as expressly admitted, each and every remaining allegation … states only legal theories and arguments of counsel to which an answer is not required.”
The county so far has only yielded 50 documents, according to a response from the Land Stewardship Council’s attorney.
“This is insufficient,” stated Navi Singh Dhillon, of Paul Hasting’s law firm, in his reply.
“None of the allegations above constitute ‘legal theories’ or ‘argument of counsel.’ They are statements of fact. And Respondent—as the agency that negotiated and executed the Intergovernmental agreement and responded to the PRA request—has personal knowledge as to each of these allegations.”
Whether Shasta County has furnished all the requested documents to the Land Stewardship Council was not clear at the status conference held July 8 at the Shasta County Superior Court. Judge Stephen Baker presided over the near-empty courtroom; the attorneys from both sides called in from out of town.
The parties seemed amiable enough, considering the case is headed to a potential jury trial on Jan. 28, 2025. The California Land Stewardship Council seeks a declaration that the board’s agreement with the Tribe is illegal, a writ rescinding the agreement, a permanent injunction prohibiting the county from spending public funds on furthering the agreement and reasonable reimbursement for attorney fees and expenses.
“In effect, the board gifted tens of millions of dollars of public funds to the Tribe,” the council said in its request for a writ of mandate. “The board claimed the goal of the payment under the agreement was to mitigate the negative impacts of the casino but the evidence at trial will show the payments would not come close to achieving that goal.”
Whichever way the California Land Stewardship Council case goes, it will most likely not be the last one. Speak Up Shasta, the organization that formed in opposition to the proposed casino expansion five years ago, now claims 6000 members. The federal decision to grant the Tribe trust status for the purpose of gaming will almost certainly be challenged.
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