Barry Tippin 2022 Update_mixdown.mp3

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Katie:
City manager Barry Tippin returns in this episode to give us a look into what he hopes to accomplish in twenty twenty two and reflect back on a few of the challenges and successes from Twenty Twenty One. He'll cover topics on Stillwater Business Park, homelessness, COVID 19, the city budget, fully staffed fire engines and much more.

Steve:
While the last few years have been challenging for everyone, Barry is optimistic about the future of Redding and the successes the city has been able to accomplish. It sounds like twenty twenty two has more good things in store.

Barry:
Hi, I'm Barry Tippin i'm the city manager for the city of Redding.

Katie:
Thank you Barry, very much for being with us today. We wanted to talk about City of Redding goals for 2020 to kind of on a big picture and then maybe dive into some some individual projects and get some updates there. Just to start, big picture what are your main goals for the city of Redding in twenty twenty two?

Barry:
Yeah, so I probably should start with we. We in the city don't often operate within your traditional calendar year. Twenty twenty two. We typically work in a fiscal year, which is how many municipals work. So our budget year starts July 1st of every year. So we always think of things bifurcated in a twenty one, twenty two year kind of thing. So if I slip this, forgive me because we work in a different calendar half the time. But generally speaking, in twenty twenty two, I think that there's some really good things on the horizon. We have a budget workshop coming up that is for the council to discuss what we can do with some additional funds that have been identified ongoing because of the robust return of the economy. So a really big goal for us would be to have a conversation with the council to have the council make some really good decisions about what to do with some of that funding and then to put that funding to work to benefit the community. So that is a very, very large goal of ours. We also have a desire to continue the momentum that that Stillwater business park. We have a desire to increase our public safety offerings, of course, and always, and we have a goal to continue to work on the housing issue and the homelessness issue, at least as it relates to city jurisdiction and city roles and responsibility.

Steve:
Barry, maybe on that note, with regard to Stillwater, can you update us on what is happening at the Stillwater Business Park? I know there's quite a bit of development happening and some excitement around prospective new tenants and things being built. Can you just give us a general update on Stillwater?

Barry:
Yeah. So this this is not going to be precisely correct, but it's close enough. We have about 16 lots at Stillwater Business Park, ranging from size five acres up to one hundred acres, and we have roughly 12 of them in escrow or have sold. We have our first tenant at Stillwater Business Park that was pace engineering. They relocated there in October. We are looking to close escrow on a few other properties in the next two or three months and have expectations that construction could start working on those projects in the summer. So we have a lot of high hopes for Stillwater Business Park and its continued momentum and actually seeing some buildings coming up out of the ground in addition to what we have there now, what some people don't know is that we also sold a piece of property to Cal Fire. We actually exchanged for the property right next to City Hall. And so our hope is that Cal Fire will also start some of their work in terms of design and be able to start building their facility out there, maybe by twenty twenty four time frame. So there's a lot going on out there. With that also comes responsibility. We have some additional construction work we have to do. We have to complete the infrastructure, the road down to fig tree and back out to Airport Road and some other improvements that we have to do. So there's a great balancing act that we have to do in terms of the sale of property and the identification of increased property tax and how we use that money to do the necessary infrastructure that needs to get done. So there's there's a lot going on, lots of excitement, and we're very, very happy with the progress out there.

Katie:
And Barry, what would you attribute some of that success to? I mean, why? Why has Stillwater started to see movement in the last couple of years when it hadn't previously?

Barry:
Yeah, it's mainly because of the returning economy. More than anything, I think most people know that Stillwater Business Park actually became open for business right around 2010 at the height of the Great Recession, and no businesses were really looking to relocate or to open up new shops at that point in time. And so most of what we're seeing out there seems to be a result of the improving economy, and I would like to say that we've done something very specific, but I don't think that's the case. I think the only thing that we've done is work really hard to make sure that people know we're out there to work with the Economic Development Corporation in Advertising Stillwater business. And what it is and what it can be for companies as they decide to relocate and or expand, and by keeping that focus out there for the last 10 years, we're starting to see some benefits from that.

Steve:
And Barry do you also think that some of the development with airlines increased air travel helps with that as well?

Barry:
You know, I think that's that's sort of this chicken and egg. Obviously, having increased air service is a wonderful thing, and it definitely is something to put on our responses to companies who are looking for properties to to use. But the flip side is true as well. The more companies we can get to expand or grow or relocate to Redding, the more we have to offer airlines for future air service. And so that's always something that kind of goes back and forth with Stillwater in the airport. They are definitely a symbiotic relationship.

Katie:
And Barry, you mentioned that housing and homelessness is something that's going to be a focus in twenty twenty two, and it's been a focus for the last couple of years. But can you give us an update on some of the exciting things that are on the horizon there? We've got some micro shelters. The city has applied for some grants that can help with some housing initiatives. And then can you just kind of give us an overview on what's going on there?

Barry:
Yeah, what people may not know is that we are what's called an entitlement city for the housing and urban development from the federal government. So we get direct allocation and we use that funding for rent vouchers to help for low income individuals pay for their rent. We also have money that comes across for construction of new housing, and we've been in the business of trying to build affordable housing or income eligible housing for for many, many, many years. And what's changed over the last year is really available funding sources that have availed themselves. So for instance, you mentioned micro shelters, and that's a new law that went into place that would allow us to declare a shelter crisis. And then we can have emergency shelters or these sleeping cabins to call them. And they're small. They don't have to meet all the building code requirements, just some of the building code requirements, and they allow for a transitional period of time. So somebody who's experiencing homelessness can have, in our case, up to 10 months to actually get back on their feet, have a place to store their goods and their belongings to have a locked door to sleep behind at night, which hopefully will allow them to get out access services and to become homed. So that's something we're working on with a number of nonprofits out there to try to get some of these cabins built.

Barry:
We're also working with the state. There's some additional grant funding that we're trying to get, which one of them that we just applied for would be to assist a an owner of a mobile home park off of Lake Boulevard to really enhance that site with some additional paving and landscaping and really dress the place up, but also bring in some FEMA trailers that need to be put back to use and to have additional transitional housing opportunities there. And then just from a public safety perspective, we've hired a few officers to serve as a critical incident response team, and that's different in the sense that they don't wear your traditional police uniform. They don't have marked cars, they are fully licensed law enforcement officers, but they have a different role and their role is to help out there and deal with and respond to individuals and mental health crisis and to work with Hill Country Mobile Medical Unit and try to get those people help and try to get them into some transitional housing. So we have a lot of efforts going on in the affordable housing, construction and provision, as well as trying to help with getting homeless individuals off the street and into transitional systems that can help them achieve a permanency in terms of their shelters.

Steve:
With that said, would you say you're optimistic about the future of helping, assisting and bettering the homeless situation here in Redding?

Barry:
Yeah, I'm optimistic in the sense that we are continually working to help the situation, and I think the funding that's starting to become available and the sort of regional cooperation that is increasing out there, it should help. If there was a way to solve homelessness, it would have been done already and we would have would be able to point to the city and say, that's what you need to do. Obviously, it's a very complex situation, and so I'm hopeful that we're going to continue to work on. It will continue to improve opportunities to resolve homelessness. I wouldn't necessarily say I'm optimistic that we can solve it, but I'm optimistic that that there's a lot of effort being put towards it in. Individuals that are experiencing homelessness really do deserve our attention because it is a serious issue and we should all care about that and we should care about it from both the human side. You know, it's it's just really sad that that is happening to individuals, but we also should be concerned about it from a community perspective and the quality of life for everybody.

Katie:
And this is slightly off topic, but it does kind of tie into the affordable housing piece. If you could just update us on the land discussion, the Redding Civic Auditorium and Rodeo Grounds, where are we with that today? I know it's tied up with the Housing and Urban Development Agency. What's what's going on there and what can we expect on that coming up?

Barry:
Yeah. So first, first, I'll qualify or clarify really that property down there in the discussion that's going to occur down there at the end of the day has nothing to do with affordable housing. It's simply that we have to work through a state law, which is housing and community development, and it's a state law. And what the state law says is that when you have property that from a government perspective, you can declare surplus, first and foremost, you have to make it available to somebody who may want to purchase it for the building affordable housing. So that's simply a process. The reality is that that property down there has many, many encumbrances that will make it virtually impossible to build affordable housing on. So we don't really see that as a likely outcome in any way, shape or form. However, we do have to go through the process it does takes a while. We are working with the state of California right now on resolutions and notices of availability and making sure that they're right. But at the end of the day, my expectation is that if the council chooses to declare the property surplus, we will move through the process. And then at the end of that, the council can choose to begin to imagine what that property can be down there. Whether it's working with a group that provided the unsolicited offer or whether they want to go in a different direction really doesn't matter. Either way, we have to go through this declaration of surplus process, and I expect that we will be able to be back to the council. Right now, my best guess would be the first meeting in March for a number of reasons, but I don't think we'll make the 15th. But I think we can make the March meeting, particularly if the state gets back to us on their review,

Steve:
Jumping around a little bit with regard to the ongoing pandemic. How do you feel the city has handled the pandemic in general?

Barry:
I think we've done a good job, frankly. One of the things I'll say is that we we're not public health, so we don't have some of that burden that the county does. And in fact, the county since the fifties, has been the city's health officer by contract. And so the county really has that that large burden of being the health department and having to deal with it from that perspective. So, you know, really our approach to dealing with the pandemic was always about how do we protect our employees, how do we protect the public while also providing the services to the best level we can? If you use that as a metric, I think we've done a really good job. Do we have continue to issue permits? We've continued to respond from a public safety perspective. We've continued to have open public meetings where people can come and comment to the City Council. So we we've worked and endeavoured to blend the safety of our employees, the safety of the public and the delivery of quality services. And I think we've done a pretty good job on achieving that.

Katie:
And I mean, I think it's fair to say that the pandemic has been a huge challenge for every city to navigate. What are some other challenges that you can see on the horizon for twenty twenty two

Barry:
One of our biggest challenges in our community is that we are a large city. Sixty two square miles. Believe it or not, we're still a pretty low cost housing city, despite the fact that locally we are struggling like everybody else. But what that means is that we have higher responsibility per capita across the entire city than we have revenues coming in. So that's always going to be a challenge for us because we are a large, relatively sparsely populated area. So that means public safety as police fire, that means roads, I mean, storm drain management. So that's just a huge challenge. Every year in twenty twenty two is going to be no different. The other challenges that we're going to be facing is we've already talked about we've we're seeing homelessness continue and it's really not abating. And so we really need to continue to work on that. We have a lot of residents, particularly those who are up against open space, who really are encouraging us to continue to work on that and try to find a solution. And along with that large amount of open space that we have, we continue to have some of the fire hazard issues and we've identified a lot of opportunities to help with that, like our wildfire mitigation plan that R-U has done and we've done. A fair amount of vegetation thinning and fire fuels reduction, amongst other things, but those are those are three challenges that are looming large, but I think we've got a pretty good handle on most of it, and I'm looking forward to increasing our ability to resolve some of the other issues over the year.

Steve:
And Barry, with regard to City employment in general. Do you feel that the city has the right people in place and additionally, what things can be done to attract them, if not?

Barry:
Yeah, I would say we have really good employees and I think everybody has heard probably by now, that last Tuesday, the council approved some salary increases for what we refer to as the unrepresented classification of employees. That's really managers and directors and a fair amount of staff over an electric utility. That's that's one of the things that we need to do. We also need to continue to work on alternatives to employment, such as remote or alternative work schedules to match our environment at our our workplace to what people want to talk about generational. We're talking, we need to be working between boomers all the way down to Gen Z and else buys it. So there's a little challenges there. But we have to be focused on becoming once again an employer of choice. And I think that's a combination of workplace environment. It's opportunities for flexible work protocols, if you will, having a salary that is sufficient enough to recruit and retain good quality employees. And then we need to continue to tout the fact that we are a an agency that provides high quality services to the to the community and know a lot of the people that work here are very proud of the fact that we represent our city, we represent our community and we deliver services that benefit everybody. And so I think if we if we can continue to focus on those things, I think we can continue to be a good employer and become even more of an employer of choice.

Katie:
This kind of factors into employees and just in the in terms of the technology that employees have access to. I know technology is changing rapidly and the whole world is changing along with technological needs. But how does the city stay on top of new solutions that are coming out and new technology to make sure that the city is leveraging tech solutions to make the work more efficient for employees?

Barry:
Yeah, I think there's a couple of things embedded into that question. First is my my thought process is always that when you're considering new technology or solutions, you also have to make sure that it's not just the latest and greatest shiny new lure. Sometimes it's better to be a fast follower than it is to be a leader when it comes to those types of things. Now, the flip side of that is that we're now working towards replacing our legacy financial system, which dates back to the eighties. That may be a little too long. Let's let's let's refocus our thoughts on technology to make sure that we're not waiting 40 plus years before we replace the system. And so there's a really good balancing point there that I think we need to focus on because we're not in the tech industry, we are not in the private sector where perhaps the technology solution would make the difference in terms of our competitiveness. So we have to blend what we're providing and the services that we do for the community against those technological solutions and the cost of those solutions.

Barry:
And what I'm really pleased with right now is that a few years back, about five years ago, we actually made the information technology department a department of its own. It used to be embedded in others, so that's helped a bunch. And then I think also focusing on technology as a part of our government of the 21st century goal has helped, and I think that we are moving in a much better place in terms of investing in technology. And then lastly, we have a focus on some innovation. I have appointed a manager of all things, which is economic development, innovation and equity, and that innovation piece is an important part to think about where we go from here, how do we be innovative, but how do we do it in a smart way? And it also focuses on what referred to as smart city deployment, which has a whole that's probably whole podcast in and of itself. So we're focused on that, but we're also trying to make sure we're doing it in a manner that is fiscally prudent.

Steve:
Barry, what are some accomplishments by the city and twenty twenty one that you're most proud of?

Barry:
I lose track of my years. You know, sometimes it takes a long time for us to get initiatives done. So these may be things that maybe they happen in twenty twenty, but I'll just mention them anyway, because I think one of the things that we should all be really, really proud of is the fact that for the first time in history, we're at three firefighters per engine. And of course, it's not just firefighters and firefighter, engineer and captain that's never happened in the city of Redding, and that largely was made capable because of the wildfire mitigation plan that you had to put together. But that's just a huge deal, and it got a little press off right off the bat and everything else. But I think it's good to bring back to the table and just acknowledge that that was a big deal. I think the other thing that was awesome is that we started twenty seventeen because of changes in CalPERS pension stuff, which is very complicated, but essentially because of the changes that happen to CalPERS. We were in a deficit over a ten year period of time of $30 million through a lot of hard work, both with our budget, with our labor partners, we were able to clear that off the decks and even through a car fire and a snowmageddon and a pandemic, we have come out the back in a strong fiscal position. We have a budget surplus at the moment ongoing. And that's I mentioned that earlier that we're going to have a workshop with the council on February 17th is the current plan to talk about what we should do with that? That's a big deal, and I think we shouldn't really downplay the importance of what that means in terms of our community.

Barry:
So that's a huge deal. We're also got so many good news items happening out there, like with our Parks and Recreation, we have a total re imagining, if you will, of South City Park going on. Right now, we have a large grant, six million plus that's going into Caldwell Park to re do the skate park and to build a big brought up person by Park. And so this new skate park, a bike park and repave the parking lot or some other amenities out there. We just received an $8 million grant to build a new field house and park up on Lake Boulevard near Panorama, and we continue to work on our trail systems and improve those as well as rebuild after the Carr Fire. That's that's pretty much wrapped up. So there's just so much going on that I think we should all recognize as really positive, positive things for the community. And I guess I'll put the pitch in for me is that when you look at the city, we're at the cusp of doing some really good things as a community and as a municipal government, whether it's the airport and what's happening out there or some of the other things that are happening. Stillwater Business Park But you know, we're we're at a cusp of things, and I like to say that we can either sit on our hands and hope it goes well or we can actually get active and proactive and make sure that we get over that hump and we continue the good forward momentum we have today.

Katie:
And I will wrap up our questions with what I hope is going to be kind of a fun question. But you know, you mentioned that sometimes initiatives take a really long time to make it through the rounds of city government and actually be implemented if you had a magic wand and could wave it and make something happen immediately. What's one thing that you would do in twenty twenty two?

Barry:
That's an excellent question. You know, I think that I would if I could wave a magic wand, I would want to find a way to either lower costs or increase revenues such that we can do with this community deserves. I like to think of this community as one that should vision itself as something more as we're special up here, and I think we forget that. Yeah, it's hot. Yeah. Got this and got that. But it is a special location and we are the only city of our size up here, anywhere close. I mean, Chico's an hour and a half away, almost, you know, so we're really a special place. And I think we should all be trying to envision what what we should aspire to be and then figure out how we can be that how we can get there. So that would be something that I would really wish for, not anything. That's not something tangible. It's really an attitude. It's a behavior that we as a community recognize really what a special place this is. And then we would all come together and pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, if you will. And we would make sure that we become that city that we aspire to be good.

Katie:
Yeah, I love it.

Steve:
Barry, any final thoughts or comments for the community, things we haven't touched on yet today?

Barry:
You know, the other thing I would say is that for for those of you who are really, as they say, geek out on municipal government and like the idea of talk about goals and objectives and that sort of thing in our budget document, there there's a complete several page. Page document called the city of Redding goals and objectives for twenty twenty one to twenty twenty three, and there's five basic categories that we have. We have budget and financial management, public safety, communication and transparency, government of 21st century and economic development. Under each of those, we have some general goals and we also have some departmental goals that we're trying to achieve over this next year and a half. And so open up that document, it's on our web page under the finance department, under budget. And if you're interested, you can dig through there and see some of the minutia that we're working on, as well as some bigger things, but a lot of minutia in there to make sure that we're doing the best we can for the community.

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