May 12, 2026 4:00 PM - Redding Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

>> Good afternoon. Russ Wenham, chairman of the Planning Commission. Welcome to the City Redding Planning Commission meeting. Let's go and open with a roll call. >> Chair, if I could interject us for one second. >> Yes, you may. >> We have our contract city attorney on my speakerphone due to technical difficulties, so just want to remind the commissioners and staff, speak clearly and loudly into your microphone so our city attorney can hear what's going on. Thank you. >> Very good. Thank you, sir. >> It's me. >> Yeah. You're falling behind. >> [CALLING ROLL] >> Thank you. >> We'll jump right into item number two, approval of the minutes. I will advise that I diligently watch the YouTube minutes for at least one of the meetings where I was not here and I will be voting as if I was here. So with that, we have two items. I will be happy to entertain a motion if someone feels comfortable approving minutes of both. >> Mr. Chairman, I'll move that we approve the minutes of April. Excuse me. March 24, 2026, and April 14, 2026. >> We have a first. >> I will second. >> We have a second. Is there any discussion or any other input that anybody has? >> Mr. Chairman, I was not or I don't know my buttons here. I was not on the commission for the earlier meeting. I did review the video, but it's probably not appropriate that I vote on that. So I'll abstain from that meeting and I will vote on the second meeting. >> Very good. I think we can still keep it as one motion with that noted because our clerks are on their game. I wonder if anyone else wanted to take a position on that. >> I will take. I will double that position and not vote on either of the two issues. I will abstain from both. >> Very good, Commissioner Johnson. Thank you. And Commissioner Manuel. So I think we're squared away. Clerk understands what's about to happen. So I'm going to say I think I will not hear an aye or naye. And I may hear an aye or a naye over here, but only represents one of the meeting minutes. All in favor? >> Aye. >> All opposed? No one opposed. Very good. Thank you. With that, I'll move on to announcements. And I wanna start by welcoming Commissioner Joshua Johnson. What a pleasure to have you here. I say back, even though I was not on the commission when you were here, I had the pleasure of being around on the other side of the lectern when you served on the commission. And I think that it's excellent to have you here. Look forward to what you bring to it and look forward to the challenge that the new chairman will have. No, I'm just teasing. It's just good to have you here. I wanted to say thank you. You're very welcome. With that, we'll move on to election of officers. And I have served a year term and Leslie Williem has served a year term as the vice chair. And under this item, I want to jump right out there and make a motion just as we begin this item. And I'm gonna move that we have Leslie Williem as a chair and Kent Manuel as the vice chair. Is there a second? >> I'll second the motion. >> And we have a second from Greg Balkovek. Is there any discussion. I'll throw in just discussion. Saying I really value their input. I really value. I've known them both a long time. Anybody here could have done these positions, but I just personally thought I would take that motion, put it out there because of their strength and their experience and their ability to be on top of these meetings. >> Since you invited a discussion. Typically, if a planning commissioner to ask me when I was on the other side of the podium here, I would suggest four things before voting on someone for a planning commissioner. One, that they show that they're prepared at all times. You have not witnessed me being necessarily prepared or unprepared. Haven't been here much. Do they work well with the rest of the commissioners? When you have your discussion, that's entirely important. How well they work with the audience. Sometimes your meetings are pretty contentious. Do they disregard entirely what the community has to say? Do they frown or whatever else? You have not witnessed that in me because we haven't had that option either. So, you know, it's a lot about demeanor and communication. So I will just say that I. I can't necessarily say that. You've seen everything that I would expect in a commission from me. Thank you. >> Yeah, I appreciate that. Fortunately, I've known you for a lot of years, and so those are excellent items, and I concur completely with that. I'd like to call for a vote. All in favor? >> Aye. >> Anyone opposed? Very good. And so before we move on to the next item, I think there's two of us that are going to trade chairs. Well, we can certainly. >> I love how you did that because I was just going to ask, are you guys willing to serve in these roles? And then you just went to a vote and we're like, we don't care. Kent, you're in. >> So I would not have been my first choice, but we all value your leadership, so thank you for doing that. If you are. >> That's great. >> Very good. I'm happy to trade chairs right now. >> Do we need to trade chairs? Just name tag. >> Sorry about that. Could have been worse. >> Okay, well, thank you, Russ. I think I've already chaired more meetings than you have throughout your year, so. Okay. So we will move on to planning commission items. And tonight we just have one item, which is we have public hearings, but there is none tonight. So item six for commissioner consideration is the capital improvement plan 2025 update for the fiscal year 2025-2026. And will Jeremy be talking on this tonight? >> Yes. I'll give you a brief update here and then Assistant Director Anthony can chime in too. Off the top, though, I just do want to also extend my welcome to Commissioner Johnson. Good to have you here. Looking forward to working with you. We've worked a bunch over the years and looking forward to working with you in this capacity again. So some of you may be discouraged to hear this or others may not. But. But staff is actually going to recommend we continue this item for a couple reasons. One is we're working with some departments on some sort of later last minute changes, both in prioritization of projects and the projects themselves that we'd like to include in the CIP as well as working on a few editorial changes that we're working on with one of your fellow commissioners. And so we staff got together this morning and just don't feel like we have a complete work product to present to the commission today. And so our recommendation would be to continue this item. I think we're prepared to come in a couple of weeks. Is that correct? So we'd recommend a continuance. I don't think we have to do a date certain or a date not certain because this is not a public hearing. But you can have it on authority here that we're comfortable, you know, coming back here in a couple of weeks to the planning commission with a complete work product. So I'll leave it at that. Do I leave anything out from where you're at? Okay. And so that would be staff's recommendation, Certainly. If there's any public comments you'd like to entertain on the items or have some discussion amongst yourselves. But at this point, we'd recommend a continuance, please. >> Thank you, Jeremy. So he has recommended continuance. Do any of the commissioners have any comments or questions they would like to direct towards staff? >> I do. Well, I'll certainly not. Hold your feet to the fire and be fine to continue the item. I did have just a question in our review. I know we have a new city manager and how just this is more of a curiosity question, but how much is the has the new city manager been able to see slash be a part of this plan? I know that it's many departments, you know, pulling together and usually Public works kind of does the presentation, but I don't know if you could comment on that. And I'm sure he's very, you know, he's been very, very busy since he got into the role, but just wondering if there's any comment on that. >> Sure. >> I'll take a stab at it then. Assistant Director Anthony, I'm sure can speak to his process, but our public works director is now sitting in the City Manager's office as the assistant CM. So he's certainly been involved and been discussing his home with the CM's office. And this has been under development now for a number of weeks or months. So do you want to speak a little bit to that? >> Yeah, we started this process well about when we finished it in December and we're right back at it again because we took the last one late in the in December. So Michael has been very aware, obviously been board briefing, I believe will during this process over the last six months, five months or so. So as far as I know that's about the level he's at. But I've gotten new direction and I won't spoil it yet, but he'll be very involved in the next one. So I'll leave you with that cliffhanger. >> Appreciate it. Understood. >> Commissioner Josh, thank you. >> Just a couple of questions that since we're here and this is more structurally about the CIP and how this body interacts with it. One could you tell me kind of where we play a role? It's in reviewing against the general plan and because we just updated the general plan, I imagine that and this and you know, Director Webb, now Assistant City Manager Webb was here during the overlap of that period for a little bit, I believe was he or some of the general plan. >> . Right around when we adopted it is when he started. Maybe a little bit overlap. Yeah. >> But obviously you as well, Director Pagan, and we're pretty fresh on that. So I imagine this CIP doesn't come in conflict, likely come in conflict with it. But I would imagine The CIP is not super detailed on where there might be some issues with the community. So if we were to say, hey, we've reviewed and it's like in general compliance, it feels like kind of a stab of the dark a little bit because it's pretty high level. So I would be like leaning in asking where you guys see where there might be some potential things that would come up where the community might find issues with some of these projects in the future or if they're even worth bringing up right now. But maybe some things that might be a little stickier. The other is it seems like some of the dates are a bit off and maybe that's what you're updating. Like for instance, Panorama Park is in there kind of completing this year as some of the dates. And I know Buenaventura Bridge is in there as like we were, you know, I actually discussed a little bit with Commissioner Minor about this particular issue and was, you know, it's like, hey, that project probably will never get funded. So is this like a mixture of things that are kind of pie in the sky like we hope that could be funded down the road kind of mixed in with things that actually will be funded? >> Yeah, absolutely. So we added, we expanded upon our section D, which is our future section. So really looking at some of those efforts that either are aspirational and wanting that or driven by community. Right. The Buenaventura Bridge, for example, is something that has had more, I think community outcry, something that this body has talked about when we went with the peak subdivision and we heard a lot of people about that. So, projects like that are getting incorporated. Some projects that are living out in future years are also driven by development as it occurs. Right. We're not going to go build said 16 inch water line on Twin View to the old Costco site until a new shopping center, right? Starts to come before this body. So there is a lot of that and yes, tweaking of years for projects that we noticed as we went through our final review. Yeah, you're saying you're going to spend $15 million in 25-26. Well, there's about six weeks left of that. Yes, you're hitting on all the right points that as we went through and reviewed, we felt continuing the item, giving ourselves two more weeks to incorporate changes, some requests from departments as well of things that they would just like added so they can utilize their funds for those are all the reasons why. Yes, we're taking a couple more weeks to massage the document. >> Anybody else? >> I have a comment. It's more of just a recommendation that in the past when we've spent a lot of time going through these packets, it would be helpful to. Sometimes you just red line out and don't necessarily tell us what you've changed, but it would be helpful just because we spent so much time on this that if you could highlight to us what was updated in our new packets. >> Yep, absolutely. We can give you more red line. >> Yeah, red line. And then also some. We'll update the staff report to indicate where the changes are. >> Yeah, we can do that as well. Yeah. >> Okay. Anything else? Okay, I'm going to open then for public comment. And if we have anybody who'd like to talk, I don't see any cards. So seeing none, I'm going to close the public comment. And then before we go back to any kind of recommendation, if there's any other comments from the commissioners before a motion. No. Do we have a motion? >> Move staff's current recommendation. >> Second. >> Okay, we have a first and a second. All in favor? >> Aye. >> Any opposed? Okay, thank you. So now we're moving on to item seven, public comment for non agendaized matters within the city's jurisdiction. Do we have any public comment for that? No. Do we have to open and close it if there's nothing. Okay, so we will open the public comment. There are no cards, so we will close the public comment. Okay. Item eight, commissioner's comments. Do we have any commissioner comments? Yes. Commissioner Miner? >> I didn't. >> I don't think I got a chance to say it, but Mr. Manuel is great to have you on the commission. And I know a couple weeks ago was your first, and then I think it was an excellent choice for the next Vice Chair. So thank you for being willing or maybe toed along. And then also great to have Joshua Johnson back. We served together for a couple times. A couple different planning Commission meetings on your last term. So appreciate and look forward to working together with you. Always appreciate your thoughts and insight on things. So with that, I am done. >> Okay. Any other comments? >> I was gonna say the meetings are going better already. That's my only comment. >> I was actually going to thank Russ for leading us for this last year. So you were very easy to work with. So thank you and welcome Josh Johnson to the Planning Commission. Again, we did serve together prior. Okay. With that, are there any comments from staff before? >> None from staff? Nope. >> Okay, then we will be adjourned.