Voice Your Opinions About the City of Redding

Monday, October 17, is the last day to fill out the Redding Community Survey.

The survey takes around fifteen minutes to complete in full and asks questions about residents’ experiences in the city including their perceived quality of life, feelings of safety, ease of accessing transportation, ability to afford housing and more. 

Data from the survey will be used to inform Redding’s General Plan update, a long-term planning document that guides city development and conservation and which is slated to be completed in 2023.

Redding Communications Manager Katie Hunter explained by email Thursday that Redding staff wanted to gather extensive community feedback to help create long-term goals and strategies that can guide future growth in Redding. “For instance,” she said, “if that data finds that, compared to other cities our size, our community is more focused on supporting alternative modes of transportation (bike, ped, scooters), that will be worked (more deeply) into the transportation section of the General Plan.”

To guide a document as important to the city’s future as the General Plan, she said, “we wanted data that was statistically significant for our community, built by survey experts.” Hunter added that while California recommends surveys and other forms of engagement as part of the General Plan Update process there is no state requirement to conduct a survey that will produce scientific results or benchmark Redding against other communities, as this one will.

The comprehensive survey is also important because it will provide information about what Redding is doing well and where it can improve, benefitting almost every city department in coming years, she explained, and helping government to make decisions that reflect the wants and needs of the community.

Ensuring that development decisions and processes clearly reflect a diverse community’s perspectives has been a challenge for Redding recently as proposed development at the Redding riverfront drew sustained criticism from the public for appearing to lack transparency and involve limited community engagement.

The survey can taken here. It’s anonymous but requires a valid email and zip code to complete and does not have to be filled out fully to be submitted.

The National Research Center at Polco designed the survey and will analyze the resulting data, Hunter said. Results will be shared with the public at an unknown future date.