Late Breaking News: County Counsel Joe Larmour has abandoned his legal effort to avoid writing a title and summary of a proposed election reform initiative the attorney announced at a special meeting of the Shasta County Board of Supervisors on Friday, March 21. The case will be dismissed and the title and summary have already been provided to the defendants in the now dead lawsuit, local election deniers Laura Hobbs, Deidre Holiday, Kari Chilson, Jim Burnett and Rich Gallardo. Chair Crye has invited the Shasta Five, as they’re calling themselves, to request reimbursement for their legal fees.
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Like the late great Joe Strummer I have a bullshit detector, in my case one honed covering NorCal politics and culture since 1988. I know it when I smell it, so when Shasta County District 1 Supervisor Kevin Crye attacked the Shasta County Office of Education at Tuesday’s board meeting, the room got real stinky fast.
As Chairman of the Board two years running, Crye has the privilege of reporting his activities since the previous board meeting last out of the five supervisors. He often uses the opportunity to attack his perceived political enemies, which includes SCOE.
Why would the Ninja Coalition gym owner and California Adventure Camps promoter attack a county office that supports public education?
Think Linda McMahon, the former professional wrestling promoter tapped by President Donald Trump to destroy the U.S. Department of Education. Privatization of public services is the plan, and Christo-fascist gym rat Crye thinks praying and bouncing around an obstacle course is superior to the professional mental health services provided to at risk students by SCOE’s Community Connect program.
As reported by A News Café last October, Crye met with SCOE officials after Crye, District 5 Supervisor Chris Kelstrom and former District 4 Supervisor Patrick Jones voted to not renew the Community Connect program. In an apparent quid pro quo attempt, Crye allegedly offered his Ninja services to the agency in exchange for renewing the contract.
The shakedown was so obvious, Shasta County Superintendent of Schools Mike Freeman was forced to go public to defend SCOE, making Crye an enemy for life. Given that, I reached out to SCOE for a response to Crye’s allegations at Tuesday’s meeting. Following are my questions based on Crye’s allegations and Superintendent Freeman’s responses, edited for length and clarity.
Shasta County Superintendent of Schools Mike Freeman.
1. Chair Crye alleged he asked SCOE for data on the Community Connect program last year but SCOE refused to provide the data. Did this happen, and if it did what was the reason for the refusal?
Mike Freeman: We collect and provide our schools with regular, informative, data-rich reports to show the impact of Community Connect, and many of these reports are also shared with the public. In addition, detailed reports are provided to HHSA on a monthly basis (excluding school site level data), which was also provided to Chairman Crye. The monthly reports contain all the data that was required in the contract with HHSA and SCOE, with additional data points that were not part of the contract.
Our Community Schools leadership has spent hours with Chairman Crye in person, on the phone, and through email, answering the many questions that he had about the program, and providing him with numerous reports and documents, many of which were created specifically for him.
Unfortunately, we are unable to provide district-level data that Chairman Crye has requested, out of concern for family privacy. I asked Shasta County school district superintendents on December 12, 2024, if their student referral level data could be shared with the Board of Supervisors, to ensure that we were leaving no stone unturned in our attempt to get Chairman Crye the information he wanted. That request was unanimously denied by district superintendents.
2. Crye claims that county funds were used to match the Community Connect grant without transparency, i.e. without the public being able to know. Is this correct?
Freeman: That is not correct. The county became involved in Community Connect through a contract between Shasta County and the Shasta County Office of Education that was funded by the state Mental Health Services Act. The contract was executed through the county’s regular contracting process, signed by the CEO and the chair of the Shasta County Board of Supervisors. In addition, Mental Health Services Act activities, including the budget, are included in annual updates that are approved by the Mental Health, Alcohol and Drug Advisory Board (appointed by the Board of Supervisors) and presented to the Shasta County Board of Supervisors. Here is one annual update that mentions Community Connect, as an example.
3. Crye claims that Community Connect funds do not directly benefit children and families because funds are “siphoned into administrative costs at SCOE.” Can you explain how Community Connect funds are distributed?
Freeman: 88 percent of Community Connect funds are spent on direct services, Community Connect staff who are working to turn the schools’ referrals into action by meeting with the families and connecting them with the resources that the families have said they need and want. Certainly, like any organization, those staff require supervisors, computer equipment, and other costs of doing business, which are also part of the budget.
4. Can you estimate the number of the students/families who are no longer being served due to the rejection of the Community Connect program? Is it only the Anderson Union High School District that has been affected?
Freeman: It is only the AUHSD that has been affected. To protect family confidentiality, we don’t share numbers by district, but here is a link to the countywide data from July 2024 through February 2025.
5. This is a complex topic. Can you explain for our readers what is happening here?
Freeman: Community Connect is a countywide service that has been funded by the County of Shasta since its inception. The Shasta County Board of Supervisors has voted to not renew that contract, which expired on Dec. 31, 2024. This service is well-used and very important to families, so when the contract with the county ended, the Shasta County Office of Education decided to use Community Schools grant funding to pay for Community Connect.
Because all Community Connect programs are now funded through the Community Schools grant in absence of a contract with the County of Shasta, AUHSD’s 4-1 vote to remove itself from the Community Schools grant meant the district no longer had access to the Community Connect program.
Shasta County schools that do not have Community Schools funding use Community Connect services that are provided by the equivalent of 2.6 staff. When a district that has Community Schools funds leaves the grant, adding them to the caseload served by those 2.6 staff would be unfair to the families being served, as well as the support staff.
SCOE wants to continue supporting access to services while respecting the AUHSD Board’s decision to withdraw from Community Schools. If AUHSD needs support, they have been advised that their homeless/foster youth liaison can reach out to our Youth Support Services team or to SCOE’s School Counseling Coordinator, who can help advise district personnel on how to connect their families with local resources and services.
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Redding Rancheria Donates to Veterans
Once again the Redding Rancheria rises to the occasion.
As a veteran I’m eternally grateful that the Redding Rancheria donated $408,000 to replace the roof of the Redding Veterans Hall, located at 1605 Yuba St., and an additional $100,000 for renovations at the new Veterans Services Office, located at 1880 Shasta St. in Redding. Here’s Tribal Council member Leon Benner explaining why the Rancheria made the donation.
“We have an agreement with the county, and this is just the first part of it here,” Benner said. “When we saw your wish list, the first thing I saw was for the veterans, and it didn’t take me very much to talk to our council members because we honor our veterans, and we were happy to provide that for the Veterans Hall and for the Veterans Service Office. We just wanted to say it’s going for a great cause.”
Thanks, Redding Rancheria.
Crime Doesn’t Pay for Prosecutors and Public Defenders
Deputy DA Ian Frazer is not a happy camper.
The numerous citizens who lobbied to move open public comment to the beginning of board meetings probably didn’t figure on local prosecutors and defense attorneys lining up early to argue for better wages and working conditions but that’s exactly what happened at Tuesday’s meeting. Deputy DA Nolan Weber kicked the whole thing off.
“I’m a deputy DA with Shasta County DA’s office. I’ve taken a vacation day so I can speak to you about an issue pressing upon this county, and it demands a response,” Weber began.
“It’s the crisis in criminal justice staffing and resources. This crisis is so dire that others are joining me in a call to action. Over the next several weeks, deputy DAs and public defenders alike are going to give their testimony to you.
“To summarize this crisis, there’s far more work than there are attorneys and staff. DA and public defender pay is low. The hours are brutal. And in the wake of Ferguson and George Floyd, working in criminal justice is widely panned by anyone under 30,” Weber ended.
Deputy DA Ian Frazer urged local citizens to include the entire legal system when they claim to “back the blue.”
“We want to see criminals held accountable,” Frazer told the supervisors. “We want to have honest and fair prosecutions. And we want to see that law enforcement’s work is valued and held up in the courts, which is our job. We are part of law enforcement. The back the blue need to back our work too. It’s very important what we do.”
Shasta County public defender Brittney Warner.
Believe it or not, public defender Brittney Warner is on the same side as the prosecutors: She wants to get paid, too.
“As a public defender, my job is not just a title,” Warner said. “It’s a constitutional mandate. I represent individuals who are facing the full force of the criminal system, many whom are among the most vulnerable and members of our community.”
“Being an attorney is not just a 9-to-5 job. It’s a profession that demands everything from us. We work long hours, far beyond the standard of 40 hours, without additional compensation,” Warner finished.
Need harder numbers? Here’s Deputy DA Noah Kinkaid.
“We have six DA vacancies,” Kinkaid said. “There’s currently 20 line deputy DA’s. We cannot recruit and we cannot retain. The reason why we can’t recruit and we can’t retain, yes, we have a hard job, but we don’t pay a competitive salary.”
“We have to go to seven years of school to become a lawyer. People can graduate from law school and have $120,000 worth of debt. The median salary for a new attorney is $127,000. You can work at Sacramento as a deputy DA, and the starting salary is $136,000.
“The starting salary here is $89,000. Of the 13 attorneys that I’ve seen leave, half have gone to go work at other DA’s offices. They’re making almost about double what they’re getting paid here. There’s been zero people from other DA’s offices that have come to work up here because we’re not competitive.
“DA’s that I work with, they can’t afford to buy a home. They can’t afford to buy a car. If you’re a DA in Shasta County, you should be able to afford to buy a car,” Kinkaid concluded.
Shasta County’s working class agrees! We should all be able to afford to buy a new home and a new car. The fact that our local DAs and public defenders can’t is not very encouraging.
CORE Plans to Prevent Teenage Drug Use
Parent Amanda Faith, Jennifer Coulter from Shasta Youth Options, Jenna Berry from Raising Shasta, and Columbia School District Superintendent Clay Ross.
What’s the best way for Shasta County to spend $4 million in opioid settlement money over the next four years? If you guessed form yet another alphabet agency in the veritable soup of acronyms providing services to victims and potential victims of the fentanyl crisis, give yourself a gold star.
R3 on Tuesday’s agenda introduced Shasta County to CORE, which stands for Community Opioid Response and Education. CORE’s leadership is comprised Amanda Faith, a parent who lost her son to fentanyl, Jennifer Coulter from Shasta Youth Options, Jenna Berry from Raising Shasta, and Columbia School District Superintendent Clay Ross.
Together, they’ve been charged with preventing substance abuse by our local youth, which is a lot more complicated than it sounds.
“Stronger Together for a Substance-Free Shasta is more than a tagline for CORE,” Faith told the supervisors. “Recent efforts, including a comprehensive needs assessment conducted by CORE, in partnership with Shasta Substance Use Prevention, have revealed significant barriers in our current substance prevention and response strategies.”
Faith said the assessment included “26 unique participants representing 16 separate agencies, demonstrating a strong community interest.” CORE has established an MOU for participating agencies to support substance prevention and education initiatives, participate in regular meetings, and share relevant data to inform decisions, contribute resources, and engage in public outreach.
Herding all these cats isn’t easy. Ross likened the effort to the five local breweries that came together to brew Shasta Strong to raise money for Carr Fire victims.
“So I challenged these 26 participants to come up with a big, hairy, audacious goal,” Ross said. “A goal that we couldn’t solve individually. We couldn’t solve just the four of us. A goal that required all of us to come together and work together. And that goal is simple. We want to eradicate substance use in Shasta County.”
The bulk of the $4 million will be spent on a public awareness campaign and mentoring services provided by Raising Shasta. Ross pushed back when Crye threatened to slash CORE’s proposed administrative costs, a Crye specialty. CORE administration costs are an estimated 10 percent of its $1 million annual budget.
“So, you know, the board asked a group of people to come together and make a proposal,” Ross said.
“And then the proposal includes doing a lot of work that’s not being done right now. And so we all have full-time jobs or full-time responsibilities advocating on this issue. And we need people to start either removing work from our plate or doing the work that we’re going to direct them to do. And we spent a lot of time considering the cost for those positions. And we can do our best to minimize those, but to have it slashed or trimmed. Yeah. You know kind of feels … we’ll do whatever the board decides to do.”
District 3 Supervisor Harmon bailed Crye out by making a motion to pass R3 as-is. After District 4 Supervisor Plummer added in reporting requirements for CORE, the motion passed 5-0.
Cyre Moves Meeting Start Time to 8:30
District 1 Supervisor Kevin Crye
I am no early bird, so when Chair Crye proposed moving the start time of board meetings from 9 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. I did a double-take on the agenda. Yep, it says it right there in R4, (1) Discuss the start time of regular meetings. I had conflated it with (2): Discuss public comment period—open time. My bad.
For the past two meetings, the board has experimented with placing open comment near the beginning of meetings with good results. For example, deputy DAs and public defenders were able to coordinate their efforts to get the board’s attention. It’s hard to see how starting the meeting at 8:30 serves this purpose. Quite the opposite, actually.
I thought District 3 Supervisor Harmon was on my side when he asked Deputy Clerk of the Board Stefany Blankenship what she thought about the time change proposal.
“The only thing that I will say in regards to the start time is it would make it very difficult for staff to be able to be ready and it could result in a delay of the meeting getting started,” Blankenship stated.
In other words, she hates the time change proposal, because she’s sane.
“See how important that was?” Harmon said to Crye.
“You wanna hear what I told her when we talked about that last week?” Crye replied. “I said, she’s an overcomer and she’s done nothing but excel at her job and I believe she’s gonna come through.”
“The one thing for me is, it’s gonna blow for Stefany,” Crye said shortly before the board voted unanimously to move the meeting time to 8:30 a.m. beginning in June.
I guess what Blankenship said wasn’t that important to Harmon after all.
“My dad always said, if you’re not a half hour early, you’re a half hour late,” Harmon said.
“Well Vince Lombardi said that too,” Crye snarked.
“I don’t know where he got it,” Harmon conceded.
United Airlines Contract Sparks Feud with Redding
District 5 Supervisor Chris Kelstrom is point man on airport issues.
Chair Crye infamously modifies county contracts on the fly, as he did in January when he stipulated that the second $100,000 the county contributed to secure an agreement with United Airlines to provide roundtrip flights to Denver be spent last, in case the city of Redding and other parties involved failed to raise the necessary $2 million.
This apparently didn’t go over well at the last Redding City Council meeting, where the council basically told the county to shove its $100K. As county point man on airport issues, District 5 Supervisor Kelstrom attended the meeting and provided a recap.
“Yeah so City Manager (Barry) Tippen has a valid argument, I’ll grant him that,” Kelstrom said. “He said he wanted to take the strings away.”
Kelstrom noted that the county donated its first $100,000 to the fund last year with no strings attached. Apparently the strings attached to the second $100,000 drew the ire of some of Redding City Councilmembers.
“So, it went to the council for discussion and, um, two of them were rather hostile in my opinion,” Kelstrom said. “One accused this board of blackmail or strong-arming them into a joint port authority agreement.”
“So I did go up there and speak and, you know, I assured them we weren’t blackmailing them,” Kelstrom concluded.
District 4 Supervisor Plummer pointed out that it was reasonable for Redding to object to the stipulation, since it would invite further such stipulations in contracts between the city and county going forward. The board voted 4-1 to maintain the stipulation and hold a meeting with Redding officials, with Plummer dissenting.
Social Service Caseloads Rise, Old Courthouse Coming Down, COVID Grant Phased Out
HHSA Administrative Branch Director Erinn Watts.
R6 on the agenda, Health and Human Services Agency Administrative Branch Director Erinn Watts’ request to use General Fund cash to temporarily cover negative cash within the Social Services Fund through June 30, 2025, in an amount not to exceed $10.5 million, is a standard budgeting maneuver. However, her presentation included data that indicates that the use of socials services such as CalWORKs, CalFresh, and Medi-Cal is on the rise.
“Between fiscal years 2023 and 2024, the CalWORKs caseload increased by about 7.9%, CalFresh increased by 9.6%, Medi-Cal decreased slightly by 1.2%, and general assistance increased by 61%,” Watts said. “In foster care, there has been an 11.8% increase between this year and last year. When caseload sizes increase, we see our costs increase, not only as it relates to the direct costs of these programs, but on the administrative side as well, in the form of higher caseloads, more time spent working cases, overtime, etc.”
Expect those numbers to go up when the Trump recession hits as predicted by many economists.
The board voted 5-0 to approve R6.
Say goodbye to the old courthouse while you can. The board voted 4-1 to demolish the building and direct staff to return at a later date with potential development opportunities, one of five options presented by Public Works Director Troy Bartolomei.
“I’m sorry, I can’t vote to tear the building down, no,” said Kelstrom, the lone dissenter who has an attachment to the 1950s building.
Supervisor Harmon does not share that sentiment. The quarry owner and contractor is no stranger to explosives and became quite animated as he considered how the old courthouse might be demolished as cheaply as possible.
District 3 Supervisor Corkey Harmon.
“It’s not feasible to think about turning that into something else,” Harmon said. “We’d probably spend $20-plus million trying to turn that into something. But my other question is why would we not just, if we decide today we’re going to demo, why wouldn’t we just cut the power? Why would we keep the maintenance inside the building going?”
“Just to maintain the environment, to keep the mold out, to do inspections, to if, you know, we do some walkthroughs daily and to keep the grounds up and going,” Bartolomei said. “I mean, definitely we could reduce the cost considerably. We probably would forego that $45,000 to fix the boilers. We wouldn’t worry about the HVAC on the roof. But we do need to maintain the temperature and make it, keep it dry. But other than that, that’s about it.”
“Open the windows, in about three or four weeks, it’ll stay dry in there,” Harmon said. When Bartolomei noted that might allow vagrants to occupy the building, Harmon advised opening the upstairs windows only.
“No, I’m letting people move in. I’m wanting to stop that, do the upstairs,” Harmon said. “I’m wanting to stop that cost, the $20,000 a month cost to keep that building up while you’re doing the study.”
Shasta County Public Works Troy Bartolomei
The conversation turned to crushing the building debris at the site.
“As you probably know, a lot of demo contractors like to hold their cards close,” Bartolomei said, clearly enjoying Harmon’s rapt attention. “So we would have, they have the option, you know, if they wanted to crush it and meet some specifications for the filling and the fill in the bottom, that’s something they could do.”
“Is it 7,500 yards?” Harmon asked. “Is that the hole that’s got to get filled?”
“7,500 yard hole,” the public works director said.
Crye pledged to put Harmon on an ad hoc committee to demolish the old courthouse should the need arise.
HSSA Economic Mobility Branch Director Dwayne Green.
HSSA Economic Mobility Branch Director Dwayne Green closed Tuesday’s meeting by officially closing out the COVID-19 Relief Business Assistance grant program, a federal community development block grant. According to Green, the grant provided $876,000 of which roughly half was disbursed, $476,143. That went to 10 separate grantees, retaining 62 jobs and creating two new positions.
Asked if it was common for COVID funds to go unused Green acknowledged that it is.
“I actually reached out to our state representative and they also stated that other counties were granting extensions as well,” Green said. “However, they faced a similar situation as us. They were not able to expend those funds. The only assumption I can make is it had that toxic word COVID attached to it. So people didn’t want to entertain it.”
“I think what it is, is people that run businesses that try and do it in the black don’t think to look for government handouts,” Crye said. “That’s just me. Just an opinion.”
Yeah, right, we all know about opinions. Everybody has one.
Pretty rich coming from a guy who has raked in millions in federal COVID funding via the states Extended Learning Opportunity Program and his California Adventure Camps.
SCOREBOARD
R1 Receive an update from the County Executive Officer on County issues and consider action on specific legislation related to Shasta County’s legislative platform and receive Supervisors’ reports on countywide issues.
Score: No Vote
R2 Accept a donation from Redding Rancheria in the amount of $508,000 to replace the roof of the Redding Veterans Hall and make additional improvements to the new Veterans Services Office.
Score: 5-0.
R3 Receive a presentation from CORE: Community Opioid Response & Education regarding a proposal for youth prevention programs using Opioid Litigation Settlement funds and consider providing direction to staff (Sponsored by Supervisor Crye).
Score: 5-0.
R4 Supervisors Take the following actions regarding regular meetings of the Board of Supervisors: (1) Discuss the start time of regular meetings; (2) discuss public comment period – open time; and (3) provide direction to staff.
Score: 5-0.
R5 Discuss the request from the City of Redding to reconsider the County’s terms for an additional $100,000 for a minimum revenue guarantee with United Airlines to secure round trip flights to Denver and provide direction to staff.
Score: 4-1, Plummer dissenting.
R6 Approve the use of General Fund cash to temporarily cover negative cash within the Social Services Fund (00140) through June 30, 2025, in an amount not to exceed $10,500,000.
Score: 5-0.
R7 Take the following actions regarding the Old Shasta County Courthouse (Building): (1) Receive a presentation from the County Administrative Office and the Department of Public Works; (2) select one of the following options for the future of the Building, along with the method of funding for the option selected: (a) demolish the Building and construct a parking lot; (b) demolish the Annex and Old Jail portions of the Building and repurpose the remainder for County use and the vacant land for a parking lot; (c) demolish the Building and direct staff to return at a later date with potential development opportunities; (d) leave the Building as is and revisit the project after the Fiscal Year 2025-26 Budget is adopted; or (e) provide other direction to staff; (3) approve budget amendments which increase appropriations and revenue by $250,000 in the Land Building and Improvements Budget (BU 166) and the Miscellaneous General Budget (BU 173); (4) approve a budget amendment which increases appropriations by $250,000 in the Accumulated Capital Outlay Budget (BU 161) offset by use of the Public Safety Infrastructure Committed Fund Balance; and (5) authorize the Auditor-Controller to make any technical adjustments needed to properly account for the project selected by the Board.
Score: 4-1 for option C, with Plummer dissenting.
R8 Conduct a public hearing and adopt a resolution which acknowledges the completion and closeout of the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) COVID-19 Relief Business Assistance Round 2 and Round 3 grants and designate authority to the Health and Human Services Agency Director, or their designee, to sign amendments and all other documents related to the closeout.
Score: 5-0.
Closed Session
R9 CONFERENCE WITH LEGAL COUNSEL – EXISTING LITIGATION
(Government Code Section 54956.9(d)(1)):
Name of Case: Robinson v. County of Shasta et al., Shasta County Court (Case No. CVC20-0195757)
Score: No reportable action.
R10 CONFERENCE WITH LEGAL COUNSEL – ANTICIPATED LITIGATION
(Government Code Section 54956.9(d)(4)):
Initiation of Litigation: Two potential cases
Score: Board voted 5-0 to instigate litigation in both cases.
Consent Calendar
Score: Board voted 5-0 to accept all 8 items on the consent calendar.
C1Take the following actions: (1) Waive competitive procurement requirements in Administrative Policy 6-101, Shasta County Contracts Manual, and Shasta County Code Section 3.04.020 on the basis of limited manufacturer of specialized equipment; (2) approve the purchase of a fire rescue boat from Munson; (3) designate authority to the Shasta County Fire Warden to purchase the fire rescue boat in an amount not to exceed $384,379.71; and (4) approve a budget amendment which increases appropriations by $184,380 in the CSA 1, County Fire Budget (BU 00391) offset by the use of Measure B fund balance.
4/5 Vote
C2 Take the following actions: (1) Waive competitive procurement requirements in Administrative Policy 6-101, Shasta County Contracts Manual, and Shasta County Code section 3.04.020 on the basis of limited availability and long delivery time; (2) approve the purchase of a 2025 Ford F-550 chassis from Crown Motors of Redding; and (3) designate authority to the Shasta County Fire Warden to purchase the chassis.
Simple Majority
C3 Approve the purchase of personal protective equipment turnout coats and pants from LN Curtis & Sons, Inc., through NPP Gov Contract PS20060.
Simple Majority
C4 Approve the purchase of a Verticus high-pressure breathing air compressor system from Bauer Compressors through a California Department of General Services contract.
Simple Majority
C5 Approve a retroactive agreement with Rite of Passage Adolescent Treatment Centers and Schools, Inc., for youth residential specialty mental health services.
Simple Majority
C6 Appoint Stacy Watson to the Shasta County Mental Health, Alcohol and Drug Advisory Board (MHADAB) to serve a three-year term to December 31, 2027.
Simple Majority
C7 Accept a retroactive funding allocation from the California Department of Health Care Services for the California Children’s Services Program and designate authority to the County Executive Officer, or their designee, to sign amendments and other required documents, including retroactive, necessary to accept the funding.
Simple Majority
C8 Approve an amendment to the agreement with Victor Community Support Services, Inc., for training and therapy services which increases services for youth at the Juvenile Rehabilitation Facility and compensation.
Simple Majority
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