The County and most residents of the County of Lake are broke, but we keep buying more property to spend more money. I have been to many Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors meetings where serpentine shale rock was not a good thing by county thinking.
There were many things negative said, like causes health hazards, etc. This has been an issue for a long time when it comes to a development of any size. The new courthouse would be built on serpentine shale where it is being proposed. So if they don”t build on the east side they are considering building on the west side.
Many years ago when the existing courthouse was built, 1977 to 1978, Wright and Orenski out of Santa Rosa was the prime building contractor and Pacific Excavators out of Albany was the sub-contractor on the excavation. At that time I was working with and for Pacific Excavator with my crawler/loader.
That is the first time in my life that I had ever seen anyone make a hill taller. Other employees and myself, and the County of Lake taxpayers paid to make the hill higher and did compact it for the building to have the proper view. What Supervisor Anthony Farrington is saying is 100-percent right.
I do not feel that location is the place for the new courthouse in the first place. I have been in Lake County for more than 50 years and there was a constant thing about expanding the airport, which the county owns, along with quite a bit of property. The old saying back then and still is “we don”t have any sewer and we don”t have any water, so therefore we can”t expand.”
Instead of buying more land how about putting the new court facility on property we already own? I do not have any idea of the purchase price on the piece in town, but I am sure that for the price being paid for the land and the curb, gutter and sidewalk, along with the expenses for the sewer and water hook-up, would go along ways in paying for our new courthouse. I am sure we could get some kind of State or Federal grant to get the sewer and water out to the airport. There is plenty of properties on the way that could be used to hook up to and help other people to develop their property in the near by community. Everyone says that the airport runway is too small for bigger airplanes.
We could put a tube like they have going to the jail, and the County could buy some property from the vineyard, then go ahead and have an instant flat extended runway at a minimum cost. This would be a win-win situation for the County and the people in the neighborhood. We have the old Workright Products building out their and a lot of property beings used for leach lines and a lot of property being reserved for leach line expansion, because the soil does not drain very well for leach lines.
I believe this is something that the County should look at and consider because also as the County grows many lawyers from out of the area could fly in to the court take care of their cases and then fly out. I believe this would be a major investment for the County of Lake in their own backyard.
The airport expansion talk has been going on for at least 45 years that I know of, but nothing has been pursued that makes good sense. So at this time I think we should take a look at all options, especially using land that the Lake County taxpayers already own. This is just a thought. Hopefully someone else thinks like I do.
Ron Rose
Lakeport
