City Council Update 4.19.22_mixdown.mp3

City Council Update 4.19.22_mixdown.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

City Council Update 4.19.22_mixdown.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Steve:
Welcome to a Redding City Council. Update for full details on each of the items covered or to watch the meeting online. Visit the cityofredding.org or find the links in the episode show notes. For any questions, suggestions or comments, please email [email protected].

Barry Tippin:
Good morning Barry Tipping City Manager, City of Redding. And we're here to discuss last night's council meeting. That would be the council meeting of April 19th, 2022. It was a long council meeting. We wrapped up around 1030 at night. It was really good discussion. Really, the main topic was surplus property and the Civic Auditorium Rodeo Grounds. And I'll get to that in a moment. But first, I think we should talk about some of the other items, the consent calendar, which is items that are routine and that they've already been well scrutinized by the city council. And there's really no need for a presentation or other deliberation. And we didn't have a lot on the consent calendar, but there was a few important elements. One was the approval of purchasing some additional water from the McConnel Foundation. I think everybody knows and we'll talk in a moment about our drought contingency plan and the fact that we're in a drought. And so the city has worked with the McConnel Foundation to purchase some additional water to make sure that the City of Redding Water Utility customers have adequate supply for the rest of the summer, even though it's rainy now, we expect to be in a drought for the balance of this year, so that's a good thing. We also had a stimulus package update and a status of projects for those who don't know what that is. At the beginning of the pandemic, the council approved a large construction stimulus package largely related to energy efficiencies in City Hall and other general city facilities.

Barry Tippin:
And we've been working on that. We've tried to break these projects up into small projects that are more likely to be awarded to local contractors and local suppliers of materials for really the sole purpose of keeping small business engine running in the city of Redding. That's been very successful. And we had a status report on on the consent calendar. And if you're interested in those projects, I'd encourage you to take a look at those. We also had an adoption of a master employee pay schedule. That is a requirement by the state of California, and we have to have that updated periodically to make sure that we are fully transparent in what the salaries are for city employees. And so that was approved by the council, really no new salaries, just already approved salaries put onto a single schedule so that you can review that at your leisure. On the regular calendar, we had a number of topics. One was the water shortage contingency plan that I spoke of earlier. Essentially, the council declared the city to be in stage two of our drought contingency plan. That's all within our Redding Municipal Code. So if you wanted to read about it in detail, you can do so by our municipal code. Or you could just review the staff report that is attached at our City of Redding website. Essentially what this means is that we're going to go back to the restricted watering of three days per week, depending on whether you have an order, even address, that you can't have your landscape sprinklers running off into your sidewalk and driveways and essentially wasting water.

Barry Tippin:
You can't wash your car without having a shut off nozzle. You have to have recirculating systems if you have a fountain. So those commonsense types of things to save water, I think we all agree that saving water is a good thing, especially when we are in a drought. So I encourage you to take good care with the city's water supply. We also had an item that was considering some information relative to a bond that the city council wants to issue. This is a bond is a municipal financing mechanism. We have several fire stations. We have eight to be exact, many of which need to be re modified, renovated in some pretty major ways. We also have a need for a ninth fire station. The city council has agreed to move forward with not only fixing our existing fire stations, but to construct a new fire station on the east side of Redding to do a better job at having response times reduced. And so we are working towards that. We don't have that kind of money sitting around, so we have to go out and borrow it. It's much like getting a home mortgage. We're looking to borrow somewhere between 20 and $25 million. So last night was actually a step in that process. Hopefully we'll be issuing those bonds and actually getting that money as what they call as proceeds from that issuance this summer so that we can begin in earnest to not only improve our existing fire facilities, but to build a new one to help better protect the citizens of Redding.

Barry Tippin:
We also had a required element by the state of California. It's called a police policy for military equipment is one of those things that the state has decided what is military equipment by state legislation? And we have no new equipment that we haven't always had in the Redding Police Department and what the police department deems as absolutely necessary to maintain a safe community. It's just that now because the state has dubbed it as military equipment and that we have to have a specific policy listing all of these things and how they'll be used and that we have to actually create an ordinance and get it passed by the city council that we're doing so. So item 99a has a staff report, the draft ordinance and the draft RPD policy for that equipment. A lot of it is used by our SWAT team, but if you're interested in that topic, I'd encourage you to go look at that staff report and or watch the presentation by Captain Brian Barner, who described it quite well last night. And then lastly, we had the topic du jour, which was the declaration of surplus for the rodeo grounds and the Civic Auditorium properties. The topic really was should the council declare this property surplus and move down the path of trying to figure out what it is we can do to rehabilitate, renovate or replace the Civic Auditorium and the rodeo grounds? And the term surplus is an important one to talk about.

Barry Tippin:
That's again, a state term. That's nothing that the city came up with. In fact, the city council, I think, would tell you that in their opinion. That property down there is in fact not surplus. It is highly valuable public property. We just have an interest in making the best use of it. However, because the state has laws that we have to follow, we would have to declare it surplus because we have no ability to negotiate, discuss or otherwise meet with potential funders of sort of an improvement like that or developers before we declare it surplus. And so that is really what was at that consideration. And this was started because we had these unsolicited offer back in September that you may have heard about, and that was the catalyst to start this conversation. The Council, after much, much public input, has decided to go a slightly different route. And what they decided last night was we are not going to declare this property surplus. Instead, they are going to redirect some funding and do a planning effort under the city's purview directly. And at the end of that process, which will likely take 18 to 24 months, the Council can reconsider whether or not to move forward with a surplus property process. So what you're can expect over the next few months to years is the city staff will develop what's called a request for proposals that will go out and ask for consultants to come and help us develop a plan.

Barry Tippin:
And what the council wants to do is revamp the existing riverfront specific plan. And so that's a plan that covers Park Marina Drive and on into the Civic Auditorium, Rodeo Grounds properties. It was done and adopted, I believe, in 1992. So it's definitely in need of a refresh. So the council wants the staff to develop a request for proposals, hire consultants and begin that process with a robust public input and determine what it is this property should be. We can do everything from changing zoning in the PARC Marina Drive area to consideration of conservation easements in key riparian areas and defining entertainment zones for re vamped renovated entertainment centers. So all of that will be out for public discussion in the next few months, two years. And we look very much towards having that conversation with the public and the community at large because it is a incredible piece of property. And I think we all are very interested in making sure that it is an incredible place for us and our grandchildren and our grandchildren's grandchildren to visit and appreciate. So that's what happened last night. So stay tuned for many, many opportunities to provide your input on that specific plan. Update And that is the conclusion of my summary of the meeting of April 19, 2022.

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