The only Shasta County clinic that provides women with access to surgical abortions was used as a training ground to equip anti-abortion activists for more aggressive interventions to dissuade women from accessing abortions. Local women organizing under the newly-formed Shasta Abortion Coalition say they are prepared to defend women’s right to abortion as clinic defenders, advocates, and escorts.
Redding’s riverfront development was last planned decades ago before the Sundial Bridge, Turtle Bay Museum or the Redding Arboretum existed. Funding an update to the 30 year-old plan would be the city’s first step in deciding how to utilize riverfront land after the council voted against declaring the land surplus last month. The city could take advantage of $1 million or more in federal COVID relief money to fund the planning process.
Redding's City Council voted to utilize funds to begin a city-led planning process instead of declaring prime riverfront properties “surplus." The vote followed months of discussion, public workshops, and community surveys about public land close to the Sundial Bridge. The land issue has provoked significant community conversations about who represents a city stakeholder and how local government engages the community in planning and decisions.
The land we now know as Redding has been a part of Wintu people’s vast homelands for thousands of years. Today, after surviving state-sponsored massacres, violent removals, and discriminatory legal doctrines, Wintu tribes remain almost entirely landless. For some Wintu people, the proposed sale of riverfront land is inseparable from the need to reckon with this often-suppressed history.
The Council is scheduled to vote Tuesday on whether to "surplus" approximately 45 acres of land including the Redding Rodeo grounds and Redding Civic Auditorium grounds in preparation for a potential sale. Legal Counsel for three local environmental groups say doing so would violate the California Environmental Quality Act and be inconsistent with the city’s own General Plan.
After a break of several months, Redding council members will again discuss whether several key parcels at the Redding riverfront should be declared surplus, paving the way for the land to be sold to a consortium of developers and non-profits. If the properties are declared surplus, the city must first make them available to affordable housing developers and a list of public entities that includes ten local tribes, before they could be sold to the consortium.
A focus group of 12 stakeholders has met biweekly over the last four months to provide advice on how the Community Development and Design subsection of Redding’s General Plan will be updated. The plan broadly addresses land use in the city, including how the Sacramento River and the riverfront can best be utilized by the community. Half of the city's chosen community stakeholders are architects, builders or developers.
As the county votes on whether to recall a local supervisor, Redding's Chamber announced a decision to end all endorsements and donations to political candidates. They've faced scrutiny for funding a group opposing the supervisor recall after being chosen by the county to distribute $4 million in federal COVID-relief funding to local county businesses.
A third public hearing on updates that would streamline continued growth downtown included discussions of residential impacts and environmental concerns. Some say these updates should be considered alongside other proposed development including a possible riverfront land sale and planned changes to Park Marina Drive.
After a proposal to develop key riverfront land was brought to the city council in September, staff solicited public input. Shasta Scout collected and analyzed data from emails, survey responses, and public workshop comments to provide a summary of what the public has said so far. Here’s what we found.
