📝 Redding City Council – September 6, 2023

September 6, 2023

The Council received a report from the Shasta County Assessor-Recorder Leslie Morgan with a breakdown of how tax dollars are used for Shasta County and City of Redding residents. You can read the full annual report here.

Council members also unanimously voted to approve two grant applications for funding from the California Strategic Growth Council’s Community Resilience Centers Program, one for $500,000 to begin planning a resiliency center and the other for $10,000,000 to support ongoing development for Panorama Park and an associated Resiliency Center there.

The Council approved an appropriation of $200,000 from the General Fund to pay contracted instructors for community recreational programs. That appropriation was necessary to clean up an error in the city budget that left no funding available for instructors who had already been working under contract for the city.

An 18-month extension of a signing incentive for new Redding Police officers ($40,000) was also unanimously approved.

Council members Mezzano and Daquisto voted against accepting a staff proposal on how to amend downtown parking rules but it still passed 3/2. The recommendations included reducing the number of leased lots, increasing the number of employee parking permits, allowing Shasta College students to purchase employee parking permits, amending the traffic control map to add employee permit spaces, and amending parking near the post office from 12-minute to 30-minute free parking. Daquisto objected noting that he thinks paid parking downtown is already hurting businesses like the Vintage who do not have a lot of their own. He was not necessarily opposed to these recommendations, but to paid parking downtown altogether. Mark Mezzano voted no, preferring changes to the hours that parking enforcement is active among other requests.

Lastly, the council voted on several personnel recommendations including approving increasing the pay of unrepresented employees including the City Manager. The raises will cost the city approximately 2.8 million dollars annually although only  $400,000-$475,000 of that each year will come from the general fund. Mayor Daquisto voted in opposition.