City Council Update 2.7.23

City Council Update 2.7.23: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

City Council Update 2.7.23: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Katie:
I'm Katie.

Steve:
And I'm Steve, and this is the City of Reading podcast. Welcome to a Redding City Council update. For full details on each of the items covered or to watch a meeting online, visit cityofredding.org or find the links in the episode. Show notes for any questions, suggestions or comments, please Email [email protected].

Jeremy Pagan, Director of Development Services:
Hello everyone. This is Jeremy Pagan, the director of Development Services for the City of Redding, providing you with a recap of our February seven, 2023 City Council meeting. So the council meeting was a bit of a long one. Last night I ran about 4 hours. The main item of the evening was our riverfront specific plan update item for Council's consideration. I'll get into more detail on that in just a minute, but we'll give you a brief overview of some of the other items that were considered at the meeting. We started off the meeting with a couple of presentations. First, honoring Alan Clark, who is our outgoing city Treasurer and Finance director. Vice Mayor Marzano presented Ms. Clark with a commemorative clock for her retirement, and city staff certainly wishes her well. We're going to miss her being around here at City Hall. Corollary to that was later on at our regular calendar the appointment of her replacement, Mr. Gregg Robinette. So Greg is taking over as finance director and also as our city's Treasurer for the remainder of Ms.. Clark's term, I believe, running until 2024. So certainly congratulations. In order for Alan and for Gregg, who will be coming in to replace her. So some good things there. Also, a presentation presentation at the top of the meeting was with Youth Options. Shasta, some of our local youth and some high school students came and gave a presentation and what they're up to and doing on the Youth Action Council.

Jeremy Pagan, Director of Development Services:
So it's good to hear from some young people in our community on how they're getting involved in local government and learning the political realm of things. And so good to hear from them during our public comment period, we had a healthy amount of public comment. We heard some good, good news from No boundaries Transitional Housing, which is a nonprofit that the city partners with to provide housing for our unsheltered community. And so we had some folks get up and provide success stories about how no boundaries has helped them overcome addiction, other issues and struggles, and helping them to to find housing get back on their feet. So that was some good things shared. Of course, citizens got up and shared some of their concerns regarding the unsheltered and the homeless homelessness around town. And then we also heard from staff from the Good News Rescue Mission, who provided some updates about some of the good things going on there. The consent calendar was adopted without issue. One highlight I'll provide for us in this recap is that representatives from the Pacheco Union School District spoke in support of the item on the consent calendar item 4.6 A for approving parcel A of Shasta and or ranch. So this is a 7.88 acre property at the Shasta and Ranch development. That will be the the future schools, parks and recreation facilities. And so city is entering into an agreement where we'll have the first right of refusal to use those recreation facilities for the city any time that future school is not.

Jeremy Pagan, Director of Development Services:
So a good agreement between the city and Pacheco Union School District. And again, there was representatives from the school district voicing their support for that item. And so that was a good item to share and it's going to be good for our city to have some additional parks and recreation facilities to use for our community. Moving on to the regular calendar I already spoke of, the first item was, as I previously mentioned, the appointment of Mr. Robinette to finance director and City Treasurer. A couple of other smaller items on the regular calendar before I get into the riverfront. Specific plan Update Are you provided their quarterly financial update? Council adopted a resolution for creating a policy to name city parks facilities moving on into the future. And then we had a couple of routine personnel items at the very end of the meeting. And so with that being said, I want to get to the the bulk of the meeting last night, perhaps a couple hours or more of the discussion revolved around the riverfront specific plan update. And so I'm going to spend a few minutes providing a little background and then just provide you with a couple of minutes of recap of what happened last night. So the riverfront specific plan update, that effort really began back in August of 2021. The city received an unsolicited proposal from two development companies, McConnell Foundation and Turtle Bay and.

Jeremy Pagan, Director of Development Services:
In partnership with a design and architectural firm populous, and that we received the city received a letter of intent from that group to develop the northern riverfront property. So that kicked off a lot of public engagement. Council in September of 2021 decided to hold a series of workshops with the public to talk about this and to hear the public's thoughts and concerns on this proposed offer to buy up this land and develop it. So we had workshops in October and November of 2021, and then in April of 2022, Council decided to not sell the land, not declare it surplus. Instead, they directed staff to hire a consultant to update the riverfront specific plan instead. So the riverfront specific plan exists. Now. It's a 30 plus year old document. And so instead of declaring land surplus and engaging in this development offer instead staff was directed to revisit our specific plan for this area to shape and determine what the future of the northern and southern riverfront might look like. So in September of 2022, then staff put together a request for proposal and council authorized release. That request for a proposal to planning and Urban Design consultants. The city received three bidders and in December 22, just a few months ago, staff conducted interviews with these consultants and arrived at a ranking of selecting the top consultant. And we brought that before council on this meeting February 7th. So that's just by way of background how we got here.

Jeremy Pagan, Director of Development Services:
So at this council meeting on February 7th, what was before council was consideration of awarding the contract to the preferred consultant to help the city update the riverfront specific plan. So we received bids from Kimberly Horn Place Works and Kimberly Horn is a large multidisciplinary engineering firm, placed works as a California based planning and design firm, and MRG is a planning and design firm located with offices throughout the country. The interview process consisted of staff from numerous departments throughout the city, and we that that panel interviewed the consultants on a basis of certain criteria. So whether or not the consultant understood the objectives of the update, how they were going to meet these objectives, how well did they present, how complete was it, what was the firm's experience, their qualifications, and what relevant projects have they worked on? So staff after conducting interviews and reviewing proposals brought before council, the recommendation to have in coordination with their team, populace, FD and Amar Design, Talwar and Borough happened so the team collectively of them and those sub consultants, that was City staff's recommendation for the consultant that should be awarded the contract to help us embark on this effort to update the riverfront specific plan. A few distinguishing characteristic characteristics of MRG. They had an excellent interview in presentation. They have a heavy focus on community engagement outreach, which is, I think, very important for this item. We've seen the community really engaged on this topic. Everyone really cares about what's going on in our riverfront, as they should, and my proposal has a real huge focus on how they are going to reach out to the community and engage them through this planning process.

Jeremy Pagan, Director of Development Services:
They also have a Native Nation studio and a specialist on board to help with engaging our win to nation and our indigenous peoples here locally. And so that's incredibly important for any planning process, certainly so one that involves the riverfront and riparian areas here at the center of town, they have world class vision and expertise and great, really unique, relevant project experience. And so staff is was impressed by Meg's proposal and their their interview. And so I closed out the presentation essentially showing how we ranked the highest of the three based on scores provided by the interview panel, as well as in my being the low bidder of the three with a proposed price of around 1.23 million to do this riverfront specific plan update, which and also includes Environmental Impact report per a California Environmental Quality Act. And it's a two year long process, so it might seem like a rather steep price tag, but it's a two year long process involving me and a team of consultants and quite literally thousands of hours of work to go into this. And so staff's recommendation, we landed on that and there was after our recommendation for MiG and we proposed that to council. So there was quite a bit of public comment and quite a bit of discussion amongst city council before they took action on the item.

Jeremy Pagan, Director of Development Services:
So we had about an 45 minutes to an hour of public comment. There was one common theme Many people felt there was a conflict of interest with the selection of MiG, specifically with their sub consultant populace. So city staff attempted to explain to the public and to council that populous architecture was never listed as a potential equity partner or landowner, and that that unsolicited offer, they've always been a part of the equation in terms of their design expertise and their architectural and urban design practice. And so while it's perhaps a perceived conflict of interest as city manager, Tipene discussed at the council meeting, what city staff tried to do at that meeting and in our responses was to address those concerns of the public that in fact populace is not a developer, they're an architect and designer, and they have really no stake in the future of the riverfront in terms of development. They plan to just act as a consultant and and furthermore as a sub consultant to MiG. The public has and continues to say that they want to have a voice and our community should have a voice. And staff certainly agrees with that. And so many people came up to address council that they were concerned that they weren't being heard and that they wanted to be engaged. Staff's response to that was that the whole point of this contract that's being awarded is to hire a consultant to help us develop the plan in a big, big part of that is going to be their outreach efforts and the community engagement strategies that they'll that they will embark upon.

Jeremy Pagan, Director of Development Services:
And last summary of public comment I would mention is environmental concerns, riparian habitat, Habitat and California Environmental Quality Act concerns. So the consultant that's being considered and awarding this contract is an expert. They have our experts on their team as well. And so a large part of that contract, I think even perhaps a third of the hours and money will be devoted to environmental review, to scoping, to sequa, and to preparation of a programmatic air to cover our riverfront area. So after public comment was heard, council had questions for staff, and the staff provided some responses and some clarifications. Ultimately, Council member Munz Debt and Winter spoke in favor of approving the award of contract to Ms. G. Meanwhile, Marzano, while he agreed it was a good plan and a good consultant, it wasn't in favor of speaking of spending the money on the contract at this time, and Da Questo was still concerned that there was at the very least a perceived conflict of interest with Populus, and also agreed with Councilman Marzano that it might not be a good time to spend the money and therefore was not in favor. He offered an alternative motion to not approve the contract and instead put the money back into the general fund.

Jeremy Pagan, Director of Development Services:
That motion from Mayor de Cousteau ultimately did not pass. And so the original motion, which was made by council member Odette, which was to approve staff's recommendation. That motion ultimately passed 3 to 2. And so that item concluded with council approving staff's recommendation to negotiate a contract with me for preparation of the riverfront specific plan update and associated Environmental Impact report. And so with that, staff will now work on that contract, will prepare it for the mayor's signature and in the coming weeks and months here, probably in March, April timeframe of this year, our consultant Midge will begin the heavy work of community engagement, starting to outreach to the community and starting to get this process rolling. And as I mentioned, it's going to be about a two year long process. So I think this is ultimately a great thing for the community. It's going to be a great, much needed update to a plan that's, as I mentioned, pushing 30 plus years old. A lot has changed in our community in that time frame. A lot has changed along the riverfront during that time frame as well. So this is an exciting opportunity for our city to work with an expert consultant to help us develop a great plan for what the riverfront might look like, what it might be for the next 15, 20 years into the future. So that's it for this recap of the February 7th Council meeting. Until next time.

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