City Council Update 6.21.22_mixdown.mp3

City Council Update 6.21.22_mixdown.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

City Council Update 6.21.22_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 meeting online. Visit the city of Redding dot 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.

Kim Niemer:
Good morning. This is Kim Niemer. You're a community services director with the City of Redding. And this morning I have a recap of last night's Redding City Council meeting. It was a lengthy meeting, about four and a half hours. All five council members were present. It started off with our annual presentation from the Shasta Mosquito and Vector Control District. Peter Barker, the district manager, came and this reminded us all about the importance of not having standing water, as well as a good overview of the work that they do to eliminate mosquito eggs and adults, as well as the information about the diseases that can be associated with that. So the Mosquito District sometimes goes unappreciated, but they are really doing good work in our community and helping us all avoid disease. Our consent agenda was lengthy but included many interesting topics. These the consent agenda is approved as a whole document and not taken individually. But let me highlight a few of the items for you. First was approving some emergency housing site for the St James Lutheran Church. So the city has been working with the church to locate some emergency shelter housing there. And is that work continues. They have an agreement with conditions and the council approved that moving forward. They also approved a new contract with the Shasta Economic Development Corporation. That is the organization that works on behalf of the whole county, but especially the city trying to recruit businesses. They've been instrumental in getting more air flights to Redding and other things to promote Shasta County as a place to do business.

Kim Niemer:
We also heard from the electric utility that due to the drought and other conditions that the cost of buying power has gone up for them. So they requested two and one half million increase to their power supply budget. That was also approved. We bought a new asphalt paver. So we know that road street maintenance is important in that requires fairly expensive equipment. So that was about $200,000 for that equipment and that was approved as well. We are working with the Centerville Community Services District to sell them 500 acre feet of water. There is a small portion of the west side of the city that has Centerville Water, and this is an agreement that we have done before, during drought seasons, where we have some additional water that we can make available to our neighboring water districts. And also for me, exciting. The Caldwell Park Skate Park Project was approved and finalized with final payment going to the contractor and that's been a great success at Caldwell Park and some of the other items that we have you can find on the consent agenda. But I'm going to move now to the public hearings. So it was the date for our annual review of fees and fee schedule and the city council looks at that every year and those fees have to tie out to the cost of service. And this year we had many of them are tied also to inflationary numbers. And so the inflation CCI construction cost index and the CPI cost price index, both of them are higher than normal.

Kim Niemer:
So both of them were in excess of 8%. So the Finance Department alerted the city council to that as well as other minor adjustments to the fee schedule. I would say that the fire department did eliminate a number of fees relative to hazard mitigation review and really an effort to take down any barriers to residents reaching out to the fire department with help on helping plan or prepare for vegetation fires. We also went into the regular agenda with a presentation from the Finance Department on a very large and comprehensive project that will overhaul the computer system that we use here at the city for all of our finance personnel purchasing our internal accounting. It's a very large project, two and one half million dollar contract to the consultant and another half million to Oracle for the first year. So this will be a major effort for the city and internal staff for the next couple of years. Also add that we're working on a new website, so you're definitely going to see from a software perspective a lot of new look at the city of Redding in the next year or two. The new services department. I brought forward a recommendation to continue with. Project for Public Spaces, a consulting firm helping us with the reactivation renovation of South City Park. There was a fair amount of discussion on that and a proposal from the Colt 40 five's for an additional baseball field.

Kim Niemer:
After a lot of discussion and really a significant public engagement process with over 1300 residents responding to online survey and focus groups and onsite open houses. The council agreed to move forward with phase two of the planning for that project. We heard a very interesting presentation, a series of presentations actually from the airport manager. And if you're interested in the airport, I'd really encourage you to watch the video. They were showing some very impressive details about the increased passenger emplacements and really a really positive, good news story about the reading airport and the increased traffic and really now needing to plan for the physical plant to accommodate the greater number of passengers and flights. And so we've got a consulting firm on board to help with that planning. They also introduced the idea of a new name for the airport. So the name of the airport is Reading Municipal Airport. And the recommendation was to go to Reading Regional Airport as really the service area for the Reading Airport is much larger than the city and municipal has kind of a limiting connotation. And so the city council did agree and will be working to officially change the name of the Reading Airport to the Reading Regional Airport. It should be noted that the three letter abbreviation that you use when you make your reservations read that will stay as it is. So when you're booking your flights out of reading, it is read when you look up city locations. The other big item was a consideration to move the city clerk and city treasurer elected positions to appointed positions, and that requires a vote of the people.

Kim Niemer:
And so the city attorney presented that process to the city council. And this really has been going on in many cities for some time where the duties of the city clerk and the city treasurer have become a lot more technical and complex. And so really having a professional in that position is necessary. And so this way it would also enable us to recruit qualified candidates who don't live in the city, who may not want to run for election, but have all the skills necessary and maybe more to hold the position would be eligible as an appointed position similar to the other department directors at the City of Reading. So as I mentioned, that does require an election. And so with this action approving this that it will go to the county with a request that the election be held on November 8th of this year. So there'll be a lot more we'll be putting out about that because it is a switch to our historical practice, but one that is being done really across the state. There was a few other cleanup items with the retirement programs, but really the meat of the agenda had a lot to do with the airport, South City Park and converting the election to appointments of the City Clerk and city Treasurer. So interesting meeting. Encourage you to watch the videos if you want to learn more. Have a great day.

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