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Katie:
Welcome to a City of Reading podcast. I'm Katie.

Steve:
And I'm.Steve. And today we're hoping you stick with us through an update on the general plan. Now, before we lose anyone. The general plan is a 20 year planning document that has a massive impact on the future of our city and community involvement plays a key role on how the plan is put together.

Katie:
Steve and I joke all the time that our podcast topics aren't always super interesting to most people, but believe me, you'll want to understand what this document does and doesn't do. So you have a better understanding of how the city makes decisions.

Steve:
In today's episode, we talk with Kent Manuel and Jeremy Pagan about what might change in this general plan and why you should care. After all, 20 years is a long time, and while nothing is set in stone, the general plan is a guiding document that will be referenced long into the future.

Katie:
Fun fact. Kent oversaw the general plan development for Redding 20 years ago. So this isn't his first rodeo. Folks, If you can compare general plan to a rodeo, I don't know. We don't expect you to take notes, but you should know what the general plan is and how to get involved if you feel so inclined. Hi, my.

Jeremy:
Name is Jeremy Pagan and I'm the director of Development services for the City of Redding.

Kent:
And I'm Kent Manuel. I'm the former planning manager for the City of Redding and actually was the lead staff on the general plan that was adopted in the year 2000. After about a four year efforts, the city decided to bring me on to see if I could help out with this particular project.

Katie:
Well, thank you so much, both of you, for being with us here today. And I'm just going to dive right into it because the general plan has a lot of details and it's a really important planning document for the city of Redding, So I'm not even going to attempt to summarize it. So I'm just going to jump right in. What is the general plan?

Kent:
You know, in a basic sense, it is the Constitution for development of the city. Every city and county in California has to have a general plan. Typically, they are 20 year documents to provide a long term basis for planning as well as for conservation. We can talk a little bit about the various elements, but the takeaway is it is the constitution of how things will develop over the next 20 years or so and ready.

Steve:
Ken, to that point, if you're forecasting out 20 years and trying to envision what the city looks like 20 years from now, how do you ensure accuracy? How do you accurately do that? And how do you plan for change during that time span as well?

Kent:
You know, there's nothing magical about the 20 year time frame just in recognition that should be a long term plan. Most jurisdictions, including Redding, do regular updates of their general plan, typically in a 5 to 8 year time period. So you can check whether your development assumptions were correct. Your growth assumptions are correct because, you know, with the Great Recession, everything changed. Growth rates were much higher previous to 2007 2008 than their projected now. The sentiments the community change too, as new people move in, as the economy and everything else just changes the way they perceive their. You need to check in to make sure your policies are heading the correct direction. So yeah, while it's a 20 year document, ideally it's really five 5 to 8 year increments.

Katie:
We've heard lots of information about specific plans and master plans and now the general plan. Maybe you can walk us through what each of those planning documents are and how they're different.

Kent:
The general plan covers about 85mi². The city of Redding City limits currently is about 60mi². So we plan what's known as a planning area. It goes out beyond the current city limits. It gives us room for growth in the future should we need it. It also gives the opportunity to plan for utilities outside the city of Redding to determine perhaps where they should go, what size they should be in those sorts of things. So we're talking about a really large geographic area where we're dealing with land use issues, we're dealing with conservation issues, we're dealing with utilities, we're dealing with myriad topics that I'm sure we'll get into here in a bit. A specific plan typically is taking a smaller portion of the city. We have some examples here already, like the downtown Redding specific plan. It deals with its own unique nature of Redding's downtown. What types of policies, what type of growth scenarios, what should development look like in the downtown, which is different than it will look like in the in the suburban areas of the rest of the city? Of course, we also have the Redding riverfront specific plan that will be updating over the course of the next two years that again, has its own unique characteristics. So it's different than the general plan. There was much talk about master plans at one time when we were looking at the issue of the riverfront specific plan. Master plans typically are dealing with even a smaller area than a specific plan. Maybe it's only a building, maybe it's a two acre project. It really gets typically into architectural details how the parking and everything works much more detailed than a general plan would be. Specific plans. Typically, though, they don't have to have their own zoning associated with it. A general plan does not. A general plan has broad policies. The zoning ordinance and subdivision ordinance and other documents implement the general plan. A specific plan typically is implemented with its own zoning ordinance unique to the circumstances within that plan area.

Katie:
So then do you have to make sure that all of those planning documents play well together, like when you're making the general plan? Do you need to look at your specific plans and your master plans to make sure that the new things that you're looking at aren't overriding current zoning issues or current plans that are in place?

Kent:
You know, with respect to specific plans and general plans, yes, the California state law requires that specific plans be consistent with the general plan. So if you're going through the general plan, you want to change some things. Well, that doesn't quite fit in well with the way the existing specific plan is or vice versa. You'll need a policy that says, okay, we need to make those amendments because internal consistency is required between the documents as well as within the general plan itself. And sometimes that's quite a feat to do because there's a competing interests. Master plans are kind of their own. They're not really treated in the government code like specific plans are. Ideally, you'd be having consistency with them as well.

Steve:
And Ken, I like how you referred to the general plan as the Constitution for development in the city. I think that's a great analogy. I'm trying to think when I think development, I think residential development, commercial maybe schools and parks and streets, utilities, I guess. Are those all included in this general plan and what else falls in that category as well?

Kent:
You know, they are all it's interesting, over the 30 plus years I've been doing this for the city, most people, they think of a general plan are thinking what's known as a general plan diagram or the map with all the colors on it that says, okay, this area is commercial, this area is residential, this area is multiple family, residential and such. They really never delve down into the various policy bases. A lot of people never bother looking at, for instance, the public facilities element talks about how we're going to provide water and sewer and police and fire services to the community. So yes, they're all covered. They're all covered under various elements. There are nine required elements of the general plan from land use to transportation to housing to noise, to air quality and environmental justice on and on. And the government code for the state has certain requirements that each element must address. It doesn't really tell a jurisdiction how they have to put their general plan together. For instance, you could just have a general plan that's not divided into any of those elements. For instance, the city of Redding, instead of having a land use element, we've chosen to call it the community development and design. Instead of a separate open space and a separate conservation element. We have a natural resources element, so local jurisdictions are free to make sense of how these various regulations require us play within their own community.

Katie:
Well, then now might be a good time to actually dive into some of these elements and have you go through which elements are currently being considered for this general plan and what does each one of them do in our community?

Kent:
There's nine mandatory elements, and we also have what's known as optional elements. That's a lot to go through. I think most folks would think from day to day that the land use element or we call it community development design element is probably the main element of the general plan because it addresses not only things of what kinds of growth rates we should anticipate, what kind of policies should be in place for future Annexations should we establish growth areas? For instance, the general plan that was adopted in 2000 has what's called a primary and secondary growth areas. So when land gets in short supply within the city limits, where should be the next area? We can think about annexing and providing services. So that's all big stuff. But it also talks about the relationship of the city to its river, which is incredibly important. The Sacramento River to the city and its nine tributary streams. How should development interplay with our stream corridors? You know, a very interesting probably a organizing foundation of reading, particularly on the west side, goes all the way back to the 1970 general plan, when the decision was made to have a policy in place to preserve slopes over 20%. That's why you see on the west side of town, particularly the open hillsides with the creeks down below. Yes, you do have ridgetop development. A lot of communities would preserve their ridgetops develop on the side canyons. We've taken the the opposite ways, but great benefits as far as accommodating wildlife. You don't have as much erosion if you're not developing on the side slopes and those sorts of things. We also have set aside over 8000 acres in our general plan for open space. So that relates to floodplains. We have in California one of the most rigorous, if you will, floodplain ordinances. We do not allow our floodplains to be developed. A lot of communities do. And of course, we don't allow the slopes to be developed. To give you a sense, I think Shasta County allows development up to 30% slopes. Again, the city is 20% slopes.

Katie:
Okay, so that's the land use element. Maybe pull out one other element that you think is of particular importance or could be particularly interesting to people. Let's talk a.

Kent:
Little bit about the transportation element, because, you know, a lot of people obviously have moved up here from other areas of California or other jurisdictions, and they always say they love they're not stuck in traffic and they don't want to see Redding developed such that they're stuck in intersections or gridlock on their way home. I think he's done a great job over the years. Yes, Cypress gets to be a bit of an issue at certain times of the day around Interstate five and Pacelli, but for the most part, it's a free flowing condition. Approximately ten years ago, maybe a little bit longer, the state required cities to consider the concept of complete streets, that streets should be designed more than just for vehicular traffic. It should be designed so that you can accommodate buses which can accommodate pedestrians, that you can accommodate bicycles safely. The next step in the transportation element is really to look at how the pedestrian realm and the bicycle realm can better interface with our street infrastructure. So there is you will find as you go through it quite a bit of information regarding connecting nodes how we can get pedestrians and bicycles to various locations safely. You know, the other thing that that is different about the transportation element now is that the state of California has changed its California Environmental Quality Act requirements relative to transportation. No more do we look what is used to be called well, still called level of service. That is how many cars you can move through an intersection before the traffic light changes, those sorts of things. It's now on vehicle miles travel. So this kind of goes back to land use because the state is telling cities that you need to design your city and provide for options for transportation so that new development does not increase the vehicle. Miles traveled in your personal automobile.

Steve:
Yeah, that's interesting. And I wonder, too, Ken, I mean, kind of on that same topic, how different is the process and elements of the general plan this time around than they were 20 years ago? I mean, I imagine with things like the growth of population and increased wildfire danger and as you mentioned, new state regulations that maybe weren't the same 20 years ago. I mean, how different is the process every 20 years?

Kent:
Well, you know, when we did the 2000 general plan, that was a four year effort. We had over 30 person task force appointed by the city council. As I recall, we had something like 76 meetings just of that task force over the course of the four year endeavor. But we were starting almost from scratch. It was the first comprehensive general plan the city had ever had. We had various policies and various sort of disparate elements here and there, but this put it all together. So it took a long time to do. Most of those policies have served us well. When we begin to undertake this effort, we really did spend a lot of time looking at what things were working, what policies and goals were not, what kind of changes to state law can happen since then. You had mentioned fire. That has been a big issue. Now our safety element has to go much further than previous ones. In addressing the wildland urban interface issues, previous safety element had to really focus on flooding. That's sort of now taken a back seat to wildfire. So we were really trying to, you know, update all the requirements that are new from state law. Check in with the community and say, has the sentiments changed? You know, what's not working for you is we're working with these various focus groups.

Kent:
And Jeremy can perhaps talk about that process of it later. But we are asking them to look at your existing general plan element that you're working on and tell us. What's working and what isn't. How about we're giving them ideas? Would you like to see, for instance, in the develop design element, people like mixed use in this too. They seem to embrace it downtown. Should we be doing things differently in other areas of the community? So you'll see in the draft general plan document, we talk about opportunity areas and focus areas that we have, policies that hopefully we can generate new types of land use over time as properties who may have developed 50 years ago have an opportunity to develop. Can we incentivize redevelopment? So we are asking all those questions of these various groups as we go through the document, you know, given limitations on funding and frankly, timeline for the grants that we have received from the state to do this project, we really couldn't do another four year process. And while some may prefer to have a larger, you know, community group, and again, we'll talk about all the efforts, it was determined early on that we'll just focus with subject matter experts where we could and figure out if the policy bases need to be adjusted.

Steve:
And with regard to the 20 year window, is it a requirement that cities do it every 20 years or is it more a best practice that they encourage you to do it every 20 years?

Kent:
That's best practice, as is the update process.

Katie:
I wonder if you could pull out just a couple notable items, maybe one, the biggest change that you're seeing in this general plan than one you've seen in the past. And then maybe one thing that's a really exciting future growth piece for Redding that hasn't been included in a general plan in the past.

Kent:
The first let's talk about the environmental justice. One of the new requirements of state law is that each jurisdiction looked at certain data and modeling that the state has provided to determine if there are disadvantaged communities within their jurisdiction and promulgate policies to help address the needs of those communities. So we went through that exercise and we found four census tracks that met the requirements of state law. Unfortunately, the data is not fine tuned enough at census tracks to really let us know if there are individual pockets or neighborhoods that are disproportionately affected. Given that we have crafted the environmental justice component to be more of a community health resiliency and an environmental justice, because what's good for the community is also good for those who are less advantaged than some of us. So we do spend a lot of time talking about how do we craft policies to ensure that there is reasonable access to health care, there's reasonable access to healthy food. How do we craft policies? And as we move into the future, to make sure that we don't forget some of our older neighborhoods that may have a lack of trees or may have issues with storm drainage and other things that they are continually left out. How do we work them into the public works planning process to bring them more up to current standards? So that that is definitely the biggest change.

Kent:
If you're talking about a sea change, that sort of thinking. We have always focused on infill development before. But I will say, you know, as a second spot or as a second item is that we are going further with incentivizing infill development and we're still proposing growth boundaries, primary and secondary growth boundaries, as I indicated before, but with identification of areas where we could actually do the mixed use, as I discussed, where we could increase densities or we can have that kind of development occur on our transit corridors, near services and sorts of things. We're really hoping to satisfy a lot of our housing needs over the next 20 years within our existing development footprint and not continue to build out further and further and further. That said, realize that a lot of folks come to Redding to live the single family dream. But, you know, in all likelihood, the costs of construction, the cost of land, whatever else is going to happen over time, we have to be prepared to have a different model to accommodate the growing population. That's what we're hoping to do with this plan.

Katie:
And then is there somewhere where Redding maybe went wrong in the past that was either corrected in the last general plan or would be corrected in this general plan, like a fine tuning of where our growth should be. And maybe it's the housing element that you just mentioned.

Kent:
Probably with the last planning effort that were falling through this one. The previous planning area was something in the magnitude of 116mi², and it went way beyond Shasta College, way out to the east of Stillwater Creek. It went way past City Lake along Keswick. There was that was really ratcheted down with with the last general plan. And I think that that was a sea change because under the previous Redding is going to be growing, growing, growing forever. We need to have that land to accommodate more and more people. Well, it became obvious that we could not afford the infrastructure and the maintenance of that infrastructure to keep growing out and out and out. So by having a restricted planning area, which also the local agency formation commission changed what's called our sphere of influence, we can only go out to our sphere of influence that was shrunk a lot because of our policies. You know, we think we're going to have in the long term, a more economically viable community. And this general plan continues that mode. What we are looking at in our growth areas, for instance, is, you know, at some point there around Shasta, college would likely be a good spot for annexation. You have the the new Bethel campus that will be built there. There could be some need for some housing there, some other things. So we made sure that that is in what's called the primary growth area. And we're planning utilities there now with our process, our sewer master plan to make sure we can accommodate growth in that area so that so it all kind of plays together.

Steve:
Well and can you just touched on what my guess my next question how do departments you mentioned the sewer master plan. I'm also thinking with our recent conversation with director Nick Zettl and their planning for the electrification of the grid and things of that nature. How much do City of Redding departments use the the general plan when planning out their own forecasting or their own growth within their subset specialty?

Kent:
You know, very much so. When I've worked with the folks doing versus the Sewer Wastewater master plan or the water master plans in the past, they utilize the city's what we call the general plan diagram earlier, figure out, okay, how many people can be accommodated. But then we need to go through that exercise because you cannot build the entire master plan out at one time, but you can at least know ultimately how big your lines have to be. So those show up in the plan, but then we have to go into the next step and say, Well, where do we think development will occur first? Should we utilize our limited resources, for instance, to provide additional capacity in the Churn Creek intercept, for instance, because we think more housing will be developed or more commercial developed in, you know, tributary to that line. They had some other line. So it's kind of a iterative process, but they certainly utilize the general plan as a guide.

Katie:
And I'm wondering if you can give a, for instance, just to like put this in context for people. Let's say a general contractor comes to the city and wants to build a house, how does the general plan factor into those? Do they have to review the general plan? Do they have to know what's in that? Or is it city planners that kind of say you can do this, this or this based on the general plan, but this you can't do.

Kent:
You know, for for day to day folks coming into the counter? The general plan doesn't play a big factor. Really what they'll be looking at is what is my property zoned? I think as we talked earlier, the zoning ordinance implements the general plan. So the general plan may say this area of town is residential, 2 to 3 and a half units per acre. The zoning may say, well, it's three three units per acre and here are the setbacks and here's the building heights and here are all the other requirements. So most folks on a day to day basis really don't have to deal with the general plan. But if you're looking at something larger, you want to do a subdivision develop, for instance, you're going to want to look at the general plan as well as the zoning, because you're going to want to know, well, gee, does the general plan I'm out here, let's say Oasis Road somewhere, what does it say about the width of Oasis Road? Does it say that I may need to widen Oasis? Or are there other arterial streets like Shasta View Drive that will come into Oasis Road that I should take into consideration given the location of my property? So for bigger projects, the the general plan becomes more important to look at. Well, and on.

Steve:
That note, too, I imagine a completed general plan is not necessarily light reading. It sounds like the general plan is mainly for use for city departments and developers. I mean, does your average community member, should they pay attention to the general plan? Should they plan to read it cover to cover and adopt the policies in there and really pay attention? I mean, what what's the impetus for a for I guess, for lack of a better term, for a general community member to pay attention to the general plan?

Kent:
You know, I think it's important that they do to the extent that they can. I know everyone's busy. It's it is not an exciting document. It's probably 300 or so odd pages, maybe more. We're hoping it will be a little more presentable with graphics and things. So it at least will be interesting to look at this go around compared to what was done 23 years ago. But for those folks who may care, for instance, about it's a hot topic now about trees, what should the general plan have policy base of tree protection that may be important to some people, not to others? How does the general plan talk about the interface between single family residential perhaps, and multiple family? Should there be policy? Oh, we need to have a buffer between the two, for instance. So there are depending on the things that interest you in a community, I think there's something for everyone there to look through. You may need a little guidance from staff of where to look because again, there are nine mandatory elements and we've got three optional elements. Where can I find what I'm interested and we can help?

Steve:
That's great. Thank you. Ken, I'm curious, too, how much does a general plan process like the development of the general plan play into current issues that a city might be facing? For example, two that come to mind that I know the city of Redding is facing currently are housing shortage and obviously an unsheltered crisis. I don't know necessarily that the city was facing those same issues 20 years ago. They may have, but maybe not to the same extent. How much do current issues that are facing the city come into play when developing this plan now and also forecasting that out another 20 years?

Kent:
You know, I think the job of the general plan was just take for housing is to ensure that we have enough sites. Available that are vacant with utilities, infrastructure with with streets to allow development to occur. We don't have a lot of control of when they develop. We can only make sure the land and infrastructure is there to allow it to happen. We have looked at some language from policies, hopefully that would allow us to easier to provide incentives for certain properties to develop, whether those are housing incentives for affordable housing, whether that's providing through our capital improvement program utilities closer to certain properties to allow them to develop at higher densities. We are doing that as far as the unsheltered population that is really covered in the housing element. I will say the housing element has to be updated every eight years. This one was just updated, I believe, two years ago, three years ago, so it's not due to be updated until 2028. Given the length, the review time for the State Housing Department of Community Development, we are not updating that at this point in time, but it does address the shelter needs. The point in time estimates of unsheltered folks two years ago or three years ago was adopted, but we have not moved forward with that.

Katie:
Perfect. Thank you. Maybe it's a good time to shift gears and talk about community involvement. What has been done for community involvement so far with the general plan?

Jeremy:
Sure. Yeah. And I just want to take a second to thank Kent. I think as your listeners probably know at this point, just a wealth of knowledge been here within the city for 30 plus years. And so as the new guy, I'm thankful to have his help in this process. And and also our senior planner, Vishnu Krishnan, and Lily Toye, our planning manager, definitely a team effort. So thankful to Kent for all his knowledge. But yeah, so in terms of community involvement in this process, up to this point, we have had a several different ways the community has been involved. I guess the very first way you might think of it as our notice of preparation when this got started and we were noticing the community that we were going to be preparing an environmental doc, an EIR, for this general plan. That's sort of a first touch point for the community to know that this is happening, this is getting kicked off, and here's your opportunity to be aware that it's happening it's way in. We also did a Polco survey with the help of Katie, your team, to do a survey of our community. So that went out to 2700 residents, I think by direct mailing and we didn't get a great amount of responses. It looks like about 400 or so completed surveys, but still that provided us with some good valuable input from the community just to get a sense, and that's a national survey that sort of compares benchmarks across the nation of how do people answer these survey questions and writing differently from other communities across the nation. And so that was another way the community could weigh in. Kent mentioned earlier these focus groups, focus groups, began meeting Boy before I was sitting in this chair probably a year and a half ago or so, and senior planner Vishnu Krishnan and Kent, along with some of our planning commissioners, sat on those focus groups that were comprised of community members, members of various governmental agencies, nonprofits and general community members.

Jeremy:
And they sat in focus groups for the development of each draft element. So Kent mentioned earlier, we have nine elements, nine minute elements. So we had. I think as many focus groups are close to that many focus groups who met three, 4 or 5 different times to provide their input, to craft language, to look at goals and policies. And we went through many iterations of the draft elements and process. So that was another way the community has been involved. And then of course the parks and Rec element, the recreation element went through our Community Services Advisory Commission and those were publicly held meetings and that's the csac. They were actually the sort of the subcommittee or the focus group for the development of that element. We also have a web page, we have a general email inbox that have gone live here in the last month or two. And so in the last couple of weeks, Vishnu Krishnan, also our senior planner, did youth engagement with some high schools. So he and another focus group member went out to Enterprise High School and Shasta High School and engaged the youth and jotted down their ideas, took their feedback and their input. And so it's been an effort to really solicit a lot of feedback and input from all walks of life throughout our community, really to help inform these goals and policies that are a part of the draft elements.

Steve:
Jeremy I'm curious, how were the focus groups selected to ensure an accurate reflection of the Redding community?

Jeremy:
So the selection of those groups was led by the previous director about two years ago, and so those were selected by city staff in an effort to get a good cross-section of the community, you know, representing people from, like I mentioned before, there's various government agencies involved. So we're looking for subject matter experts think is what how Kent phrased it earlier in terms of the natural resources element, Who do we want on there? We want certainly representation from the tribes. We want representation from other folks in land use or working for environmental agencies or so on and so forth. So each element has its own obviously expertise or subject matter knowledge that we need to tap into. And so that was part of it. And then sprinkled throughout those focus groups too, I believe our general community members within the community that perhaps might not have any sort of particular subject matter expertise, but that are involved in the community and involved in these kind of efforts. So it was like I said, that's probably about as much detail as I could give since I wasn't a part of that selection process myself. But that was the idea behind it.

Katie:
And then how can the community get involved now? So we've been talking about past outreach efforts and past ways that we've engaged with communities and stakeholder groups. What about right now, the community get involved now?

Jeremy:
Definitely. I think what I want to really emphasize to the listeners is that it's not too late. We are just getting through drafting of more or less the first round drafts of these elements. And our consultant is working on preparation of the administrative Draft environmental impact report. And so there's a public comment period that comes here pretty soon once the draft General Plan and EIR go on the street, there'll be 45 day public comment period. We intend to have at least one planning commission hearing during that public comment period. We'll get the word out to the community and invite them to come and provide their input and feedback. And that's one way. Another way is through a new city survey that's out online. So on the general plan update web page, there's a link to a survey to solicit feedback from the community, and we plan to have that open through the month of April. We're working on podcasts like these to get the word out to the community and we'll probably do more of them. Like I mentioned at Planning Commission the other night, I think best case, we're probably six months away from this going to planning Commission and City Council for public hearing process.

Jeremy:
So plenty of time to get involved and involved. And the last thing I might mention is the urban rooms, the plan there is to host to quote unquote urban rooms. And the idea is that's a week long public engagement where staff will set up perhaps at Old City Hall, maybe here at the community room, other places with a presentation on draft, general plan element, language goals and policies. Maybe we'll have some figures and photos to share to give the public a general sense of what these elements mean to them and try to have multiple staff there to answer questions and engage the community in that manner. So that will happen over the summer, likely a couple of events and maybe even 1 or 2 workshops here at City Hall. So there'll be lots of opportunity to provide input and we're going to work to try to push the message out as best we can so that folks know about it and can take part in these public outreaches.

Katie:
Awesome. And Jeremy, you touched on it a little bit, but just to circle back, what's next in the process? When does this go back to the planning commission? When does it go back to the city council? When can the community expect a general plan to be 100% adopted?

Jeremy:
Sure. Yeah. I think we're, like I said, probably about six months out. So right now, in the next month or two, staff will take all the input thus far and generate a draft general plan along with a draft environmental impact report. That will go out for public comment for about a month and a half, 45 days. Then we have to respond to all the public comment, both on the general plan draft and the EIR and then respond to comment, take more public input, and then we come back to Planning Commission with our sort of final draft environmental impact report and general plan. Then it goes through public hearing process at planning commission and at City council. Given the nature of this document and how big it is, I would anticipate multiple public hearings. So we might go through two Planning Commission hearings and two city council hearings. That's another opportunity for the public to come provide comment, provide input, provide their thoughts, questions and concerns. And then if planning, once we get through planning commission, they will then make a recommendation to city council and ultimately the buck stops with city council and they're the approving authority for this general plan and environmental impact report. So finally, at City Council, we'll get through those public hearings. And city council is the final approval body for both the environmental impact report and the general plan itself. And I guess in terms of timing, I'm hoping that's done by the end of this calendar year. I'm thinking fall winter is of 2023 is when this will hopefully get through city council.

Steve:
I'm curious, as experts in the planning world, what gets you both most excited about the general plan? Is it the because obviously it's a massive undertaking. It's a huge document. Obviously many moving parts, as we've discussed here today. Is it the actual kind of process of putting the general plan together that gets you most excited or is it seeing things come to fruition in the community based on the general plan during those subsequent 20 years?

Jeremy:
I'll go first. Then I'll hand it off to Kent. I get excited about a couple of things. One, I do enjoy when the community knows about it and comes out and provides us with their input and feedback. I really am energized by that and I find it fun to go and talk with community members and hear different sides of the issue, different interests and different concerns and try to wrap that into some sort of policy document. I find that pretty rewarding. The second thing I would say is Kent talked about the opportunity areas and focus areas. I'm excited about those. There's a couple that come to mind. One is Victor between Hartnell and Cyprus. That area there has some old, some commercially zoned properties there that there's an active transportation project that's going to happen there in the next couple of years with, you know, street and bike lanes and that those opportunity areas excite me of what they could be. I know South Market I think is another one where we have an old Montgomery Watson floodplain study that's 30 plus years old and the potential to relook at that floodplain study and potentially open up development on south market and make that thrive again. And so those are the kind of things that excite me is there's there's little nuggets in the general plan, I think, for everybody and for me, there's some very neat things that could come of this general plan to potentially help our city grow and do some really great things for development. So that's what I'm excited about.

Kent:
You know, I guess from my perspective, having been born and raised in Redding, it's it's a great thrill to be part of two general plans. Most staff planners don't even get to work on one. So help guiding the development of the city and see how the community reacts to the way we're growing and the way we're preserving our resources, where we can be said for slopes and floodplains, how we're providing recreational facilities. You know, it feels great to be part of that. I am certainly glad the community has embraced most of what has been in these plans to date and hopefully we'll continue to get support as this plan moves forward.

Katie:
As a reminder, we are really looking for community feedback for this podcast. If you have questions, comments or suggestions for episodes, please email us at podcast at City of redding.org. We'd love to hear from you and incorporate those questions into future episodes.

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