SHASTA COUNTY'S BIGWIG SYNDROME

They say you can't fight city hall, but I beg to differ. 

The Intermountain Community is justifiably concerned about the problem of transients and homeless persons, as well as the associated crime that comes along with it... drugs, alcohol abuse, petty theft, property damage, general vandalism, littering... and in some cases violent crime such as rape, battery and even murder.  There was a day when these issues were dealt with everywhere by making a simple call to law enforcement, which sent officers to the scene and rousted out the trouble-makes or even carted them off to jail.  So, although the problem existed, it was a minor thing. 

Things have gotten so bad in the Intermountain area that citizens and newspapers recently forced Shasta County bigwigs to show up for a community meeting.  It was a major disappointment: the bigwigs wrung their hands, shifted their eyes, shrugged their shoulders and came up with the same old excuse that every agency in the country comes up with when things fall apart... they need more money. 

You would have thought that someone among the gathering of elitist bigwigs would have suggested forming a community commission to investigate the underlying causes of transients and homeless people in the area and to identify some possible courses of action that we can undertake to get our State Legislature to come to grips with what has to be done.  Maybe we need more agencies targeting the issue of homelessness.  Maybe we need some community vocational training and assistance in finding jobs for some of these people.  Maybe we need to pressure our schools, churches and other institutions to step up to the plate.

The point is, we don't know where to start to mitigate the social ills that are causing these problems until we investigate the underlying causes and determine positive and proactive courses of action.  Simply throwing money at it won't make it go away.  

A hopeless shrug of the shoulders, a rolling of the eyes and a plea of agency poverty won't get the job done and is totally irresponsible.  If these tactics are their only answers, this festering problem is only going to get worse; citizens will ghat more angry and somebody is bound to get hurt.    

The country seems to be full of politicians who pay mere lip service when it comes to doing their jobs; obviously, Shasta County is no exception.   Hopefully, the bigwigs in Redding will read this and understand that even without money, they can get a better grip on these problems and come up with a few potential solutions which they can pass along to the State Legislature. 

Come the next election, our duty will be to replace those who have abdicated their responsibilities to us with candidates who have some degree of intelligence and dedication toward resolving the many issues facing Intermountain citizens in this day and age.