City Council Update 4.6.22.mp3

City Council Update 4.6.22.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

City Council Update 4.6.22.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 City of Redding org or find the links in the episode show notes for any questions, suggestions or comments. Please Email podcast at City of Redding dot org.

Katie:
Welcome back to another City of Redding podcast. This week Steve and I will be giving you the highlights from the Redding City Council meeting on April 5th, 2022. And if you want to see the full meeting yourself, check the show notes for a link to the meeting agenda and a video of all the action.

Steve:
Awesome. So for starters, both Mayor Kristen Schreder and Vice Mayor Michael Dacquisto were absent from the meeting. So there was an item 9.1 D that was removed for a full city council review. Essentially, item 9.1 D was a consideration as to whether or not the city treasurer and city clerk positions should be appointed rather than elected. That item will now come back when all five council members are present.

Katie:
The meeting had a few notable presentations from the community. The first Mayor Pro Tem Mark Mezzano, presented a presentation on behalf of Mayor Schrader to First 5 Shasta. They declared April 2nd through 9th 2022 as the week of the young child in the City of Redding.

Steve:
Also, Council Member Mezzano presented a proclamation to Pathways to Hope for Children on behalf of the Mayor, which declared the month of April as Child Abuse Prevention Awareness Month. Also, great news from Pathways to Hope, Redding will be getting its first Teen Center. The Teen Center will be located on Churn Creek Road by Enterprise High School and will officially open this Thursday, April 7th. If you're interested in becoming a mentor, please connect with Pathways to Hope.

Katie:
The last presentation recognized National Volunteer Appreciation Week in the City of Redding. So the City of Redding has volunteers that come in for nearly every department, and these volunteers contribute thousands of hours to our community. In 2021, volunteers for the City of Redding contributed 29,521 hours. So it's a big thank you to our volunteers and this week is meant to appreciate all of their hard work.

Steve:
Next up was the regular agenda and there were a couple of great items that came before the council.

Katie:
Redding Fire Marshal Craig Wittner came before the council to consider implementing vegetation management regulations and other wildfire mitigations across the entire City of Redding. And these are specifically for the WUI areas or what they call the wildland-urban interface areas. These are areas where structures and humans interact with wildfire zones, and these can be particularly dangerous in wildfire season. So it's important for people to actively manage that vegetation. So Craig Wittner gave a great presentation about defensible space and the home ignition zone and then was directed to move forward with a citywide plan for vegetation management. So basically this means that city staff is going to meet with residents and interested parties, they're going to conduct workshops, and they're going to receive input from the community on what types of vegetation management practices really should be implemented here. And then city staff will bring a package of recommendations through the Planning Commission for Review and then back to City Council for further discussion and consideration. These recommendations could include changes to the building code, fire code, subdivision code, and zoning codes to include wildfire resilience in the community. So look for more information coming soon on that. And if you're interested in getting involved in any one of these stakeholder groups, be sure to follow the City of Redding social media channels for more information.

Steve:
Next up, Public Works Director Chuck Aukland and transportation planner Zach Bonnin presented to the council a parking operational needs assessment report, which was completed by Dixon Resources Unlimited. Dixon Resources is a consulting group that has done a lot of parking consultation work around the state and the country and are experts on the subject matter. This report analyzed Redding's options for managing downtown parking and also it analyzed the cost to support an efficient and sustainable parking system. a presentation Zach covered the history of downtown parking, how the supply and demand has shifted over time, and also current downtown parking partnerships that will help bolster the downtown parking throughout the construction. The assessment recommended a system that maintains a parking utilization rate of 85%, but also one that modernizes the parking ordinance, upgrades parking technology to make it easier for users to pay for parking, and hires compliance personnel to enforce the new parking strategy.

Katie:
Julie Dixon from Dixon Resources was there as part of the presentation, and she gave a high-level overview on the methods of public outreach, the survey results, and all the research that went into developing this operational needs assessment report. So one of the things that came out of the report is that the current system is quite antiquated. It costs about 193,000 a year, but it's old, it's inadequate and it just isn't enforced. So a new proposed system would be much higher in cost. It'd be closer to $627,000 per year to manage. But this option would include modern parking stations, and safety features downtown. It also includes enforcement to make sure that people are actually following the rules for downtown parking. This option could result in up to $1 per hour for select downtown parking. In parking that's typically closest to the businesses that you want to go to. So one of the reasons that Julie highlighted that enforcement is so important is because it's important to turn over that parking in front of restaurants and businesses. The more people can quickly go in and shop, grab a bite to eat, grab a sandwich and then leave- the more parking is open for additional people to come in and do the same thing, which actually spurs economic development in the downtown area. The City Council accepted this parking assessment report by Dixon and directed city staff to bring back to council a plan for implementing a user-paid parking system.

Katie:
So they didn't actually approve the $1 per hour rate. But they are going to look at what it's going to cost to provide a user-paid parking system, and then they'll make some more decisions down the road. So more information coming on this topic. Enforcement and parking costs will be coming back to the city council before they are officially implemented.

Katie:
Last item of the night after a pretty, thorough parking assessment presentation, we encourage you to watch it. If you haven't, there's some good information in there. Personnel Interim director Kelley Martinez came to the council to ask for several new positions at Redding Electric Utility. So REU is looking at hiring some additional engineers as their infrastructure ages and there are more modern solutions. REU wants to ensure that they have the engineering skills needed to design, implement and maintain the electrical grid that's here in Redding both right now and in the future. So this would include six new engineering positions, as well as four new job classifications to help support the Redding Electric Power Plant. So after a great presentation from Kelley, the Council approved these positions and we expect REU to begin hiring these new engineers soon.

Steve:
And there you have it. There is your city council recap. Thank you so much for listening. See you next time.

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