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Joey: Are we ready to rock and roll? I'm here with Vice Mayor Adam McElvain. Not Councilman McElvain, but vice mayor. That's pretty cool, man.

Adam: It's interesting, for sure. But yeah, that's what they call me now.

Joey: How do they do that? Is it like a rotation or a vote? Like, does everybody take turns?

Adam: Yeah. Traditionally, every year, it just rotates to a new council member based on your seniority on the council.

Joey: So, what is the state of the city of Redding right now? What's going on?

Adam: Right now, in Redding, the economy is doing exceptionally well despite the Carr Fire. And we'll get into that later, but it's doing exceptionally well. Our unemployment is at 4.8% in the city of Redding. And that's the lowest that it's been since they actually started the unemployment record-keeping in 1990.

Joey: Really?

Adam: Yeah. So we know it's the lowest unemployment that has been in 30 years. Probably much longer. So that's exciting because I mean, that's thousands of people, six or seven years ago, that weren't working that now have jobs. They're able to support a family in finding housing. It's a tremendously positive thing. On the other hand, we also have a lot of investment right now in Redding. Several projects are going on downtown close to here. Actually, I think the total is about $300 million of investment in the downtown.

Joey: We had Jake Mangas on. That's what he was saying.

Adam: Yeah. Over the next three to four years. Yep. And when you look at the city, city-wide, we have about $700 million of projects that have either been permitted or going through the permit process.

Joey: Wow.

Adam: So a lot of major projects, a lot of major things happening, a lot of investment. And that's exciting to see in the city, especially as a city councilperson to see growth like that and positive trends.

Joey: What are some of the driving factors for that?

Adam: Well, I think the unemployment, the city's done a great job at reducing fees, reducing regulation, things of that nature, that tend to spur economic activity. But I would say the majority of what's influencing our unemployment rate is from the national level. And local investment, I think it was just so dry there for so many years, where nobody was doing anything that it kind of maybe got that.

Joey: The post real estate bubble?

Adam: Well, yeah. Yeah, actually.

Joey: Because that slowed everything down.

Adam: Maybe there was some pent-up investment ready to go, but there's definitely a lot of big projects going on. You have the Costco project down there on Bonnyview, and then across the street, there are all kinds of things going on on the east side of that interchange, the SAV•MOR. You have. It sounds like the Rancheria is getting ready to put together their plans for the casino, which will be right there next to, just south of Costco, behind the Hilton Garden Inn. You have. The vets' clinic was approved off Knighton Road, which is a major project.

Joey: Yeah, that is.

Adam: You have Bethel Church is doing a new campus.

Joey: Like a $90 million.

Adam: It's a $96 or $98 million.

Joey: It's so big.

Adam: Yep. Right there, just to the west of Shasta College. Downtown, you have the new courthouse. The McConnell Foundation is partnering with K2 Development. Actually, just like right on the other side of that building over there. Then, of course, you have the K2 building going in right over here. And there are some other mid-rise projects going on downtown. We might have four construction cranes operating in the downtown at the same time.

Joey: Wow.

Adam: Which would be an amazing sight.

Joey: Redding's all grown up.

Adam: It's something.

Joey: It's all grown up.

Adam: Happening. Yeah. Something's happening. So it's exciting. There's a lot of energy and positivity, and it's definitely fun to be on the city council and see that happening and progress. Public safety is. We're continuing to keep public safety our top priority. And we just actually hired four more community service officers.

Joey: I saw that.

Adam: The other night. So we're doubling that part of the police force. We had four previously. Community service officers are, typically, to the taxpayer, a lot less expensive than a regular officer. Still, they do more administrative work so that our sworn officers can do more proactive work.

Joey: Oh, okay. I was about to ask what a community safety officer was. That's more something.

Adam: Yeah, the community service officer responds to cold calls. They do administrative work and crowd control. So they don't carry a side arm. So they're not a sworn officer, but what they can do is reduce our response times. If your home, car, or business is broken into or there's a burglary, they can respond. And we really need to reduce those response times and do a good job providing the public safety service that we need to the city.

Joey: Okay, I want to talk about public safety.

Adam: Okay.

Joey: Because this is something, and maybe I just, it's my frame of reference. But I hear the term crime, followed by, "Someone stole my gas can." I'm like, that doesn't. I realize that that is a crime, but we're not having the stabbings and the shootings. I mean, we have Redding, and in the area, we've got over 100,000 people. I mean, in the area.

Adam: I think it's 130,000 during the day.

Joey: Okay. So, our percentage, I don't have any numbers for this, but the national average or the state average of shootings, stabbings, or I guess what we call violent crime, do you have any numbers like that? We must be way below average, or else it's hidden from me.

Adam: Our violent crime is so low that it changes wildly every year. So, one year, we might have two homicides, and then the next year, we may have four. So then it's.

Adam: A 100% increase in homicides.

Joey: Yeah.

Adam: When you realize that it's really small. So, yeah. Violent crime is something.

Joey: There's lies, there's damn lies, and then there's statistics.

Adam: That's right.

Joey: So, yeah.

Adam: So in Redding, violent crime is not. It's not the biggest issue. It's still a serious thing that must be taken very seriously.

Joey: Of course.

Adam: But what we're affected by is the quality of life crimes.

Joey: Are we talking about theft?

Adam: Yep. Theft, burglaries, potentially domestic violence, assault, things of that nature, grand theft auto.

Joey: Outside of domestic violence or in the home, is there a lot of assault, or is this more of? You know what I mean? Are there fistfights in the streets, and I'm not hearing or seeing them? I'm staying on the right street, or what?

Adam: I'd have to look. I probably have to look at the new statistics. What I know from this year is that all of the categories of crime are down, except car theft and sexual crime, so there are two that are up. Yeah, the sexual crime has been spiking for about six months.

Joey: Really?

Adam: Unusual trend.

Joey: Cue the. That's a fire engine, but the sound effect is fantastic, right?

Adam: Yeah. So we're not. Our police department isn't 100% sure what's going on. But they're very focused on that right now, the sexual crime, that's gone up. So we'll see. I haven't gotten a full presentation on that. Because it's something that started, I want to say, June or July of last year, but all other crimes are down, car theft is still a big one that we see here.

Joey: Crime. Theft, none of it's good, but I'll take car theft over murder. Do you know what I mean? And so that's why, like, when I hear about public safety, and I hear about crime, I think that we've gotten. We're in such a comfortable place, and our crime is so low that, as you said, there were two murders one year, there were four the next year, and it was like, "Oh, murder has gone up 100%." It's like, okay. Then the next year, if it's. There were two murders, it's down by 50%. So those numbers get thrown around, and I don't think they paint a real picture of, like, "Hey, there's not a lot of crime here, and the kind of crime it is is personal property." Which is, it's not good, but it's better than. I don't know the national average per 100,000, like deaths per 100,000.

Joey: I think it'd be higher than two, though.

Adam: That's one of the issues that we have, at least from a. Sort of a public relations perspective on the city itself is if you do look at the national averages, we're pretty high per capita on the quality of life crimes. So it doesn't look good from the outside.

Joey: Which is pretty low on the violent.

Adam: Violent crime is not. Yeah, it's not a. We don't stand out from anyone, but we do. We definitely are on the wrong side of the spectrum or the percentile that we want to be regarding the quality of life per capita.

Joey: Well, I wonder if it's a. I wonder if it's a. I'm not a social scientist, so I don't know, but if you live in a neighborhood with a lot of violent crime, you're less likely to call the police because your gas can be stolen. Suppose you live in a neighborhood where. The Andy Griffith neighborhood, and you come out, and somebody took your fresh apple pie out of the window where it was cooling. You call the sheriff. So I wonder if that is the very nature of it. The volume of reports is a sign of how good things are. Right? Like, if you're getting shot at, you don't.

Adam: I understand, yeah.

Joey: You get where I'm going.

Adam: I understand what you're saying, but there's definitely a difference in trends, post real estate bubble since the Great Recession. So there's definitely. I mean, we can look at the trends we've had in Redding over those years. Our police department sends out a survey every year for the citizens to fill out to find out what their biggest concerns are. And for years, I want to say, till maybe 2007 or 2008, the number one concern by far was traffic in Redding, which, if you've lived in a big city, you know that traffic is not an issue.

Joey: I think you're making my point.

Adam: Yeah, right. So yeah, traffic. Yeah, it might be. Actually, that's a. That's a good point.

Joey: Go spend a couple of weeks in Los Angeles, then come back and tell me how horrible the Redding traffic is.

Adam: Yeah. In 2008, I think maybe traffic was 78% of people's number one concern in Redding. So yeah, I think. But I don't. It's not necessarily a bad thing that our citizens expect the best, and I think we want to do everything we can on the council to address those issues. Keep people safe and protect people's property; that's our number one role and responsibility as the city government. Absolutely, hands down. And I look at it like, on the federal level, as they do with the military.

Adam: I mean, the military is the number one thing that you want to make sure it's fully funded, you want to make sure they have all the right gear, that they have all the right resources they need to do to get the job done. And that's it. I mean, it's just black and white. And so, for me, that's our law enforcement and police department. We've got to make sure that they are adequately funded and that they have all the resources that they need to take care of the city—primary role, primary responsibility, so. And I think things are trending in the right direction. A lot of that, again, has to do with kind of the amalgamation of everything that I've been talking about, with unemployment going down, more people working, there's just. There are so many things trending in the right direction right now that six or seven years ago were not. None of them were.

Joey: One of the things that I don't see as much, and you see what you're looking for, but there was a time when it seemed like methamphetamines were really rampant. And it was just really affecting law enforcement, and it's still there, but it. You might have some numbers on this, it seems like it's gone way down, has it not? Am I just not looking for it, and so I don't see it?

Adam: You know, it's. I'm going to give.

Joey: Because that's a huge catalyst for crime, like violent crime, theft, right?

Adam: Yes. Oh, yeah. And they're absolutely tied together. The issue that we're having now is with heroin. And I think if you back up and you take where we are at the present day, the heroin epidemic sprang from the over-prescription of opioids for many years, maybe a decade or more. And then, when new regulations were put in place that made it much more difficult to prescribe opium, they put some higher standards in their opioids. That's when this cheap form of heroin sort of really became prevalent. And it's very pernicious. I mean, I can't remember when somebody first told me, but it was less expensive to get high off heroin than it was off of beer. It's cheaper to go out and buy heroin now than alcohol. And that's an unbelievable situation.

Joey: Yeah. It doesn't sound right, but I have only heard it like that. News reports the same thing. Nationally is. We changed people from opioids. They actually hit the street and went with heroin.

Adam: Right. When you look at the statistics of drug use, especially over the past 100 years, it really seems to hover around. There's just a certain percentage of people that are going to abuse drugs. And that percentage stays pretty true to the same number of people doing it. So, I see it more as a closed—sort of a closed loop. And so I would say, the use of methamphetamines in this area from 10 or 20 years ago is probably down, but the total percentage of people abusing illicit, controlled substances is probably the same or higher than it's always been.

Joey: Okay. So maybe.

Adam: It's just heroin's the drug of choice.

Joey: The methamphetamines, you seem to get the real violent. Right? And the heroin, it seemed like you got the more passive. So yes, theft is going to go up, but there's going to be fewer stabbings. And maybe that goes back to how we started this conversation where we've seen, so as you transition people from methamphetamines to heroin, they are stabbing fewer people, but they're stealing more of their stuff. So now you have a. I don't know.

Joey: That's a huge conjecture, but you know what I mean?

Adam: Yeah. You might have to get a police officer on here.

Joey: Yeah, anybody notices that? Like, they're less aggressive, I don't know. And that was about the same time that there was. I don't know.

Adam: Are you saying our panhandlers have a better demeanor than they used to?

Joey: This aggression will not stand, man. There's a level of aggression I can handle from panhandlers. And then there's a line that like, no.

Adam: You'd have to have a different expert in that area. So I'm not sure. And I've made some assumptions here, too, on some of these issues with drugs. Methamphetamine might be as high use as it was 10 or 20 years ago, but I don't believe it is. And I haven't seen anything that would lead me to believe that. But heroin is definitely at the top of the list. That cheap street heroin that appeared four or five years ago.

Joey: So, okay. After that, we have public safety; obviously, the economy's doing really well. I want to talk about the Carr Fire and the effect that had on Redding. But what's like the number three thing that the city, what's another big topic that you guys.

Adam: One of the biggest issues for me is affordable housing. And California's going through a transition right now. And it's harder and harder for people who are lower middle class or poor to find adequate housing. And it's getting more and more difficult in the state of California. And it's something that we have a shortage of now. And it's something that I see us really having to push to tackle this issue because it's such a big deal. Interestingly enough, when I got on the council, I had the issues that I wanted to tackle, and then I wanted to be proactive with some things that I thought could change the city and things that I'm still working on. But at the same time, you also have to look into the future and say, "Here's what our biggest problems are going to be in five to 10 years," and try to mitigate those problems. And so, one of those for me is affordable housing. And that's a big deal. And again, it's the number. I'd say when. If you poll people right now, the number one issues in Redding are public safety and homelessness. And the best way to have an impact on homelessness is to have more affordable housing.

Joey: Really?

Adam: It's absolutely hands down the best way, proven all over the country, that the availability of affordable housing.

Joey: I wouldn't have thought that.

Adam: Well, it's the bottom of the pyramid and people are slipping off, right? And they're falling.

Joey: I just wonder how many of them are slipping off because they couldn't actually afford rent versus how many of them are slipping off due to mental illness and drug and alcohol abuse. You know what I mean?

Adam: Oh, that's definitely a big factor. Yeah, absolutely. But so is. I think, yeah, you are talking about that one moment when somebody transitions maybe from having housing to not having housing, and there are several different factors that can cause that obviously the Great Recession had a tremendous impact on that, more so than mental health issues or substance abuse, but can contribute to that. You want people to be able to stay in a stable environment. You want people to have access to a stable environment because as soon as they lose that shelter, I mean, this is Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Shelter's the very bottom, physical safety in shelters. So as soon as you lose that shelter, everything else is up in the air. So access to affordable housing not only helps prevent people from slipping into homelessness, but makes it much easier to escape from homelessness.

Joey: How much of our affordable housing? I mean, when you talk about affordable housing and compare Redding to the state, I mean, we have some of the most affordable housing for the state of California. When you compare it to, say, the Midwest, it's. No, you guys are way higher than me. You could buy a castle in Nebraska for what you'd buy. But yet at the same time, you couldn't get a one-bedroom apartment in major cities for what you could buy a nice home for in Redding. So how much of it is just this? How much can you guys affect it? Or how much can the city truly affect it?

Adam: When you look at that lower middle class, low-income housing and that range, we don't see nearly as much being developed as we need. And so, what the city can do is remove barriers, reduce regulation, reduce fees, and encourage development in that specific area. And we've taken a lot of steps towards doing that. We reduced fees. We reduced fees even more on multifamily. So quadplexes, duplexes, apartment buildings, things of that nature, so that it is easier for investors to come in and build those. But nobody was building affordable housing for a long time. There was a stretch there, too, where there wasn't any low-income housing being built in Redding.

Joey: I remember there was a couple of projects. There was one behind the city hall back there, where they were building. I remember there. I went in, I toured them and I was like, wow, these are really nice. It was like the bamboo floors and it was communal areas and stuff like that. How have those projects.

Adam: But you're talking like 2005, right?

Joey: Yeah. That's the last time I heard of these types of projects. I don't know if you consider projects like K2.

Adam: No. So K2 isn't affordable. I mean, they're a large. And that's a good, that's a great project. So there's.

Joey: Are those going to be like condominiums or are those going to be apartments?

Adam: I'm pretty sure they're apartments.

Joey: Okay.

Adam: Yeah. Fairly certain they're apartments, but there are some affordable housing projects going on right now that are very positive and that are huge importance to the community. So it is gearing back up and we're seeing more of that.

Joey: When you use the term "affordable", do we have like actual metrics, like monthly price? What?

Adam: We have a lot of pressure on our rental market right now, and I don't know if. You used to be in real estate but rental rates for housing are very high in Redding right now.

Joey: Well, we did lose, what, 1100 homes in inventory. We probably have an influx from the Camp Fire in Paradise. I mean, so. I mean, that's a huge impact.

Adam: I think there's probably. Yeah, there's three factors. Obviously, Bethel Church has had a tremendous impact on our rental market. So there's definitely pressure there. One of the things, when we voted to regulate marijuana in Redding, we also eliminated the ability to grow outdoors. So, growing outdoors now is prohibited in the city.

Joey: Okay. Okay.

Adam: But we've pretty much agreed to the regulation on every other level of the industry. And so then, in other cities where that has happened, there has been pressure put on the rental market because people now buy rentals to grow marijuana in the rentals.

Joey: Okay, sure.

Adam: So there's that added pressure. And then of course, yeah, the Carr Fire's created a tremendous amount of pressure. So you have to think, who does that impact the most? And it's the people at the bottom. It's the people that are falling off at the bottom where those rents that maybe two, three years ago were $700 a month for a two-bedroom, maybe now are closer to $900 to a $1000. So there are some, there are some issues. And that's the thing. We've got, the people, the people really want us focused on public safety and homelessness and that biggest part of maintaining the ability to. The best way that we can prevent and help homelessness is to make sure that we have adequate, affordable housing as a city.

Joey: Really?

Adam: Yep.

Joey: I would've thought that, again, addressing mental health and.

Adam: Well, hold on a sec, wait.

Joey: And drugs.

Adam: So, look, I gotta split this up. So the city, the city isn't responsible for any social services.

Joey: Okay.

Adam: That's the county government.

Joey: Okay.

Adam: So the county government does mental health, a lot of those other support services, young mothers, welfare, that's all run through the county government. So the city doesn't do. We do provide some low income housing vouchers through the federal government. So we're basically just a conduit for the federal government into Redding. So we manage that. So we do have some affordable housing vouchers and we can do some different things with affordable housing. So, yeah. As far as those other social services, the city, that's not the city's role and that's not. The taxpayer money doesn't go to the city to work on those issues.

Joey: What about, you hear AB 109. Okay. So I'm not really well versed on it, meaning that equates I don't know what I'm talking about. So can you tell me about AB 109 and do we have an. Is this a place where the rest of the state gets to dump certain people?

Adam: Well, we're the regional hub for this area, so we're not getting people that were convicted, in say, Oakland or Los Angeles being dropped off in Redding. That's not happening. But we are the regional hub, so we're getting people from the North State that were, that may not be from Redding, but committed a crime somewhere in the North States.

Joey: How far south?

Adam: I don't know exactly.

Joey: Does Sacramento dump off here?

Adam: What the region is. I don't. No, I don't believe so. But the fact is, is that we're going through probably what would be considered the biggest prison experiment in the history of mankind. And I know that sounds pretty heavy.

Joey: No, it's. I know what you mean.

Adam: But there's been, there's nothing traceable.

Joey: The governor just getting rid of the death penalty for 737.

Adam: Right. And that was.

Joey: Or something like that.

Adam: Yeah. That was pretty significant. And, so it's a tough situation to be in. And California, obviously things are very expensive. We were mandated by the. The state was mandated by the federal government to reduce its prison population due to health and human safety issues. And I think probably there's a large amount of criminals that live in California. I mean, the state is huge. It's like 40 million people. So obviously, you're going to have a lot of people that commit crime, just because you have the sheer number of people. And so, I mean other, I think other states probably would've built more prisons to hold people, to keep people incarcerated. The state of California has gone through this prison release programme, and it's just it's sort of an unbelievable experience because of how taxing it is on our resources here, locally. I mean, our jail was. Our jail filled up. Our jail used to be an adequate supply of jail cells and beds but with the early release of all the prisoners, now we have. It's, I wanna say 300 or 350 people in the area commit 60% or 70% of the crime. So if we had. If we had 300 more jail beds, more than half of our crime would be eliminated.

Joey: Really?

Adam: Right. Because these are serious repeat offenders.

Joey: That's extreme example of Pareto's law there, the 20/80 rule. I mean, you had what, these 1%, less than 1% committing. 350 people. I mean, yeah. That's not even, yeah.

Adam: Oh yeah. Well, I mean, our officers arrest the same person 30, 40 times over a couple year period. And that's, it's just such a horrible situation to be in because not that our officers don't have enough to deal with, being a police officer in this day and age, but having to see the same person and keep arresting them for the same or similar offenses that they should be incarcerated for, has gotta be incredibly demoralizing.

Joey: But that's a county issue because it's a county jail, right?

Joey: The county has to.

Adam: And that was something when I first got on the council, I was very proud that the council talked about this publicly, but we did talk about the jail, the jail space being the bottleneck in our justice system here locally. And the county has found the resources to open 100 new beds in the jail. And they did that, I wanna say, in December or January of this year. So that's starting to fill up. And we're getting more repeat, serious repeat offenders off the street. So it's a big deal. When the new courthouse is built, they plan on, the court. There's two courtrooms currently housed inside of the jail. Those courtrooms will move into the new courthouse once it's constructed, and then they'll have an. They'll have room for an additional 128 jail beds in the current jail. So that'll be 238 beds more than we had a year ago. So that's going to have a significant impact. It's going to help our police department, it's going to help the sheriff's department, it's going to help everybody that's trying to get a handle on this crime issue. But again, we're just in the. We're just kind of bystanders in this big experiment of prison release that the world's really never seen before this, this massive amount of people being released.

Joey: This, and you're talking, this is the state level. This is the former governor and the current governor and their agenda of.

Adam: Yeah. It was the federal government that said, "Hey, you gotta fix this." It wasn't Governor Brown that just said, "Hey, I wanna release a bunch of prisoners." I mean, he had a mandate from the federal courts.

Joey: Really?

Adam: Something had to be done. Right. But I think, again, as I said, I think probably most states would've decided to build some more prisons to house the. To keep people incarcerated that had been convicted. We'll see where it goes. We're doing the best that we can here. We're working really hard. Everybody's doing their best and trying to make a safe city for Redding, but we're dealing with these external factors that we have no control over.

Joey: This can get. It gets overwhelming when you start to go down the rabbit hole and you start thinking, you know what I mean?

Adam: A little bit.

Joey: Because you're sitting here thinking about like, okay, now we could talk about the impact of incarcerating Americans off of nonviolent crimes. And at what point do you take a nonviolent criminal and then subjugate them to violent criminals, and they.

Adam: Incarceration, yeah.

Joey: And then they become violent criminal, like there's some kind of graduation process. It's, yeah. So, let's get off that topic. Because that's a big one. I know, I'd like to.

Adam: I don't have the answers either. I don't, I mean, I don't, yeah.

Joey: I don't think anybody does.

Adam: So somebody that would be really good to talk to about that stuff would be the chief of police, Chief Moore. He's got all that information. He understands it very well and knows all the programmes, he's involved with all that stuff. So he'd be really.

Joey: Well, maybe we can get him on here.

Adam: Yeah.

Joey: Yeah.

Adam: Yeah. He'd be a good guest.

Joey: We were talking about the Carr Fire and the impact it had on the city. What are some of the things the city council has been able to do or the city's been able to do to try to help rebuild? What are some projects going on?

Adam: So, the city, yeah. The city has been really on top of this. And the Carr Fire was, sort of this, once, we hope, that it's this once in a generation event and it was incredibly traumatic. There's still a lot of pain and grief and a lot of that will be around for generation. We'll never lose it completely. So we're very sad for everyone that lost their property. And if you look at it, the breakup of the property that was lost, I think there were 1100 homes in the county and then about 260 in the city limits. So within the city limits, we. You know the city's been working very hard. First of all, the response to the Carr Fire the day of, and the week after, and the month after, from the city, I would give the city probably an A or an A+. And that really goes to City Manager Barry Tippin and his leadership team. The response was unbelievable, how well the city responded to that. One of the things though that we had an advantage was we were able to look at other cities that experienced the same thing within the last year or two, and call on them.

Joey: Santa Rosa.

Adam: Correct. Yeah. Call on them, ask them the steps that they went through, what processes they took. So we did have that advantage, but the response was absolutely phenomenal. The city's taken a lot of steps to. If somebody lost their home, of those 260 homes and they wanna rebuild, they can. They don't have to pay any impact fees, which is a tremendous amount. We're talking $30,000 or $40,000 per home.

Joey: Nice.

Adam: They can build whatever they want. They can build whatever size they want when they come back. We also reduced the other one fee, which is a planning fee, maybe $3000 to $5000. And we reduced that, I wanna say 50%. So for people to rebuild, they're looking at maybe $1500 cost to the city. And that's even something where we're probably providing some subsidy there to do that because of the time it actually just takes the city to review those things. So we're working very hard doing what we can because we wanna see as much rebuilt as possible, because it does. It impacts the values of the other homes around in those neighbourhoods. We have, I wanna say out of the 260, we have, I think we have 65 or 70 permits pulled now.

Joey: Already?

Adam: Yes.

Joey: Wow.

Adam: And I think we're over 20 permitted..

Joey: In less than a year. That's moving really fast. Really fast.

Adam: Oh, yeah. That's. I mean, that's six months. That's. So that's 20%. My goal has been to get to 50% rebuild. Santa Rosa's not even close to anything like that.

Joey: That's what I was thinking when you said that. I was like, it was like a year later in Santa Rosa.

Adam: They had like eight.

Joey: Exactly.

Adam: Yeah.

Joey: Not even 1%. So to think that almost 30% or, no, probably 25% have pulled and no, that's huge.

Adam: Yep. So we're doing everything we can to encourage those to rebuild. And that stays with the lot. So if somebody wants to sell their lot and somebody else wants to come in and build on that lot, they're not going to have to pay any fees. So that'll stay with those lots indefinitely. So that's something that's always going to be an advantage from. Even going down the road is if you're, if you are. Say you wanna build a new house and there's still some of these Carr Fire lots in some of these neighbourhoods that haven't been built on, that may be the lot that you want because you're not going to pay impact fees to build there. Whereas in other places in the city, you would. So there'll always be that economic incentive to rebuild on those lots. So we're working really hard to make sure that everything goes smoothly. We created an express line at the permitting department for people that were victims of the Carr Fire.

Joey: Literally?

Adam: Literally. Created an express line. So yeah, we hired two retired annuitants that used to work in the planning department, and they just. That's all they handle. So people get sped through, if they're coming through to rebuild for the Carr Fire.

Joey: Very good. Very good.

Adam: Yeah. The other issue I wanna talk about is what, now what do we do? What's the next step? And it's. We wanna find the best path forward as far as what we can do to prevent another Carr Fire from happening. So the city has, about 20% of the city is open space. And that's, so we're 63 square miles, and 15% to 20% of the city is open space. So areas that are prone to fire, maybe not severe fire, but definitely areas that are prone to fire. So we're talking several square miles within the city proper that we need to pay attention to and that we need to make sure are mitigated for future fires. And Tuesday night, so just this last Tuesday night, the council approved. We were able to use cap and trade funds from the electric utility for fire mitigation. So we approved $2 million. To do the entire city, everything, the full scope of everything that we're looking at, we feel is somewhere between $3 and $5 million. So if we're going down and try and cut down every bush and every sapling and every place that we needed to clean up in the city, the cost that we're looking at is probably $3 to $5 million to clean that up.

Adam: The other thing that we're looking at right now is we're looking at potentially hiring 24 more firefighters. And that would work through the electric utility. So after the Carr Fire and then the Camp Fire, which obviously was much more severe in that area, there was a lot more damage. The state now is making requirements on all utilities. So electric utilities, public and private, that they need to mitigate for fire dangers around their properties, around their power lines. And that they need to be prepared to prevent fires from affecting that property or other people's properties, so.

Joey: Does that feel like, when you say that, that feels like a knee-jerk reaction almost in the wrong way. Like my thought is, what could the city of Redding really done to have stopped the. I mean, the fire that was coming in from the National Forest, right? It starts out in the National Forest, right? Okay. It comes in, I mean, by the time it was even close to City, because I remember, I remember going out and it was a few miles away, and it was surreal. Like this wall of fire. So I'm like, could the city of Redding really. Oh wow. You guys could've done so much to prevent it. I don't think, not from what I saw.

Adam: No, it's hard to tell because it was a steamroller.

Joey: It was.

Adam: It just rolled into town.

Joey: It feels more like the National Forest needs to. And like that's who. Unless like, oh, it's the city park wasn't cleaned up.

Adam: Well, so no, if you go through Sunset neighbourhood, over there on the northwest side of town, there's an area, I remember distinctly, because I had a tour of all the affected areas probably three days after the fire, and went around with the Fire Chief. And it was, obviously, a heartbreaking experience. But there was an area, I remember, where there was a group of homes out on, sort of out, exposed to the urban wildland interface. And the homes were still there. And I said, "Hey, why are those homes still there?" And they said, "Well, they cut a. They had a 200 foot break between them and the. And they maintained it."

Joey: Got it.

Adam: And so those homes were saved. And so it is really important. And so we're looking at.

Joey: I know what you're talking about because my wife's grandmother's house burned down and she was on the edge. And so you know, have the greenbelt, and there were some homes on another hill, the newer construction. And how did that come up here and not there? And it's like, if you look, it's just the vegetation was cleaned out more.

Adam: You wanna do everything that you can. Now. Right, the state's mandating that electric utilities do this fire prevention. What we're looking at is hiring probably 12 to 24 firefighters that would work as. We'd have a strike team, an actual strike team. And these firefighters are similar to firefighter apprentices, not full-fledged firefighters, they're more of the temporary crews and things like that. They're definitely less expensive than a full-fledged firefighter or engineer. And they go out and the strike team would go out when there's an actual fire happening within the city and then create lines and stuff to try and prevent. Instead of them going to fight the fire, they're going to try and make sure that the fire is contained immediately.

Adam: And then the other group would be potentially 12 more firefighters that are constantly going out and mitigating the fire areas. Basically, when we look at all these square miles that need to be maintained to prevent these fires from happening again, we have to do 20% of that per year. We have the five-year cycle, you know what I mean?

Adam: Before that stuff grows back.

Joey: Got it.

Adam: We gotta do 20% a year. We need to get to that level of what we're doing now.

Joey: That makes more sense now when you told me, hey 12 to 24 more firefighters, it's like okay, what you're really talking about is maintenance. What you're talking about is keeping the areas less. Versus if only 24 guys would've showed up in a couple of trucks, we would've been able.

Adam: Yeah, this is for maintenance purposes and then the strike team. We'll see where that's going. I think that'll come back to. We gave the city manager to move forward with that here a week or two ago, we'll find out within a month or two.

Joey: Is that a tax on REU that's going to pay for that? You said that's the.

Adam: REU would pay for it, correct.

Joey: Does that mean the rates are going to go up?

Adam: No, it doesn't look like it'll have any immediate impact on rates, but it's obviously something.

Joey: REU is just sitting on surplus of funds.

Adam: REU.

Joey: Because REU's a nonprofit. Right?

Adam: Right, it has to run as a nonprofit. And keep in mind this is using the electric utility, this is now a state requirement.

Joey: Got it.

Adam: This is something that now we have to figure out.

Joey: Got it.

Adam: And you may, maybe you disagree with the state policy, but this is something that now we're required to do.

Joey: No, I'm not anti. My knee-jerk reaction to these things is that the people that always think added tax is a solution, that they just, they tax and throw money and tax and throw money, if that were the solution, why is it that we're constantly revisiting it? So I kind of. My natural apprehension is, anytime there's, "Oh, you know what we need? We need to tax more and have a government entity handle the money," I always recoil from that. You know what I mean? I know that you need it sometimes, it needs to be a percentage of the overall solutions. A percentage is, hey, we need a tax, we need the communal funds, but I feel like we go through these cycles where we have monstrous taxation and then we have deregulation.

Joey: You know what I mean? We're going through the cycle over and over, and it feels like there's always an emotional trigger to the taxation. Right? So the Carr Fire is absolutely horrible, but can we have a moderate long-term solution that's sustainable versus this, like, "You know what we need? We just need to tax more and then do this." And it's like, okay, is this going to collapse in seven years? And then we're going to have a, "Oh, we can't fund it anymore," and then the reverse is that we deregulate too much. And then sure enough, 10 years later, there's bushes everywhere and the fire, and it's starting, the whole cycle starts over and over. So that's why I was asking.

Adam: Yeah, we're. Right. No, we're absolutely looking for a permanent solution of maintenance that we can do.

Joey: An affordable one.

Adam: Right. Exactly. Affordable and that will work for our city and again, protect people's lives and property.

Joey: Sure. Absolutely. That's number one.

Adam: So we're moving forward with that, we'll see how it turns out and what the final recommendation is and where the council stands on that. But I think it's really important that we do get a solution in place, not a knee-jerk solution, but the well-crafted and well-thought-out solution so that we don't run into this trouble again.

Joey: How many people are in the city council?

Adam: Five.

Joey: So is there? This is going to be a. Well, you may not like this question. Do you think there's a balance of opinions and views on the city council right now? Are we swayed one way or the other? Because this is a great social experiment that we're. Is it.

Adam: In respect to what, though, swayed?

Joey: Do we have? Are there people that are like, "Hey, you know what we need to do? We need more government spending, we need bigger government," and they're countered with people like, "No, what we need to do is empower more business and entrepreneurialism?" Is it balanced right now? Do you feel comfortable with that question?

Adam: I would say it's pretty. Yeah, I would say it's probably very centered in that respect.

Joey: Okay.

Adam: Yeah.

Joey: Because I'm an unabashed capitalist, so I always.

Adam: Isn't everyone?

Joey: No.

Joey: No, man.

Adam: Okay.

Joey: They're not.

Adam: Okay.

Joey: No, the downfall of America I put directly on the back of the soy latte industry.

Joey: No, there's just a lot of people who think that the government can always solve the problems, forgetting that the government is actually a collection of human beings and the very nature of taxation and corralling the money and then administrating the money is a tax on the tax. And so I kind of like, I'm not laissez-faire market, but I am. I kind of I lean towards, like what you said, "Hey, here's what we're going to do. To help with the Carr Fire: we're going to reduce the fees associated with rebuilding on those lots. We're going to have an express lane," that's not, we're going to. I guess you did say we're going to subsidize a little bit. But to me, I like that kind of incentive because what it does is it lets the marketplace come in, and people say, "You know what? Let's rebuild here. This is financially very feasible."

Adam: Well, I think. I honestly think, too, that coming up with those incentives so quickly after the fire is the reason that we're at 25% of the people rebuilding.

Joey: Versus Santa Rosa less than 1%, a year later.

Adam: Right. It's because we said, hey, we want you to rebuild. We're going to do everything we can to help you rebuild. We want you to rebuild whatever you want, and the city's going to be your partner in making this happen and be your advocate. So it's. We want people to know that we're on their side, and we want. We want to see the neighborhoods rebuilt.

Joey: Absolutely.

Adam: It's really important.

Joey: Yeah. No, that's especially true if you live in that neighborhood; I mean, that's a huge impact on the housing if the subdivision that you live in has been devastated.

Adam: Well, plus I can't imagine, I mean, my wife's folks lost their home, and they're rebuilding, they're in the county though.

Joey: I heard that. My wife told me that the other night.

Adam: Yeah. So they're actually to the point of framing right now. But when we would go out there and look at the lot, man, it's really depressing. And I can't imagine being in some of these neighborhoods, and you look out the window across the street or.

Joey: It looks like a bomb went off.

Adam: Burned out lots, which is.

Joey: We were just out the other day.

Adam: Oh, no, it does.

Joey: It looks like a bomb went off.

Adam: Courtney and I were here when the fire started at Whiskeytown, because remember it started a few days before?

Joey: Yes. I heard French Gulch had been evacuated and didn't think, well, it's coming, like, oh, we'll stop it.

Adam: Yeah, especially when they said French Gulch, it sounded like it's going north or something.

Joey: Yeah, they'll stop it way before. Yeah. Never thought.

Adam: So then, we left to go to a family reunion out of state, which had been planned for several years. And then that Thursday night or I think Thursday morning was when I got the first serious email from the city manager, and so we're out of state, and we're just glued to ours. We're watching our phones for 14 hours a day. Just watching everything unfold, which I'm sure a lot of people locally were doing, were also. I mean, not just seeing it here but paying attention to everything on social media and what everybody else was going through. But it's probably, for our first responders, our policemen and firefighters, it's probably the most traumatic event that they'll experience in their careers, the most intense event. And again, I can't help but look at it as like a military, from a military perspective, where we sort of had this enemy at the gates that was relentless, that had no. No tank or gun, or anything was going to stop this thing, it's random, it's bent on death and destruction, and what do you do? And so, I just couldn't be prouder that our guys went out and took it on and saved many homes.

Joey: Oh yeah.

Adam: They went out and worked really hard.

Joey: Saved a lot of lives.

Adam: Yeah. Saved a lot of homes and got people evacuated, but that's intense, man, to see your own city kind of under attack like that. And the strange part is like, again, with the military, is you go out and it looks like a war zone, it looks like, something like that. So pretty intense, man. I hope it never happens again.

Joey: Okay, so we talked about the Carr Fire, but there's a couple of topics that I want to talk about. The high-speed internet. And we talked about how the city of Redding could be its own internet service provider. I think it'd potentially have a huge financial impact on Redding, initially with the business but then housing. I think it's one of those big catalysts for very positive things going on in Redding. So, can you tell us where that project is and kind of like bring us up to speed on that? You know what I mean?

Adam: Yeah, I agree. So that was a proposal that I put together that I've been working on now for over a year. And what it's to bring high-speed internet, gigabit fiber, and symmetrical service to the businesses and residents that are in the downtown. And not just that it's available, but that it's very affordable. So basically, what we're talking about is providing an internet service that's a much higher level of service at a fraction of the cost of what people are currently paying. And I agree, I think it'll have just a tremendous economic impact. It will attract young people. It'll benefit our businesses. It'll draw other businesses to Redding. And it's really one of the things that I wanted to do to help ensure the longevity of our city and that our city remains relevant for the next century.

Adam: We were a timber. We were a mining city and then we were a timber city. And what can I do to help make sure that Redding stays strong and vibrant economically and a place where there's plenty of opportunity for everybody? So I think this will have a tremendous impact. In December of 2017 is when I got permission from the city council to move forward with this proposal. And I'd identified some partners that were going to work with us, completely pro bono. So this is no cost to the city. And I always knew that in order to be able to make this work, that I couldn't take any money from public safety, and I didn't want to take any money from public safety. I want to get as many dollars to our police and fire departments as I can.

Adam: So we're working with a group out of Chico State University, their economic development consortium. And then we're also working with a group called BroadbandUSA, which is part of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration under the Department of Commerce in Washington DC. So we're working with two very credible groups that have worked on multiple, numerous other municipally-owned fibre projects, both in the state of California and across the country. So those folks, we've been working in earnest since last January. The city manager and I met with a handful of consultants, January, February, March, people within the industry. And then we really started in earnest on the network design for our downtown last March. And then what was interesting is we did our final technical walkthrough of the downtown, with the network engineer that came up from Chico and then another one from San Francisco, where we actually physically walked around downtown to make sure that the network design, it's like, "Hey, this pole to this pole and we own these poles and everything's going to work," to make sure that the network design was fully legitimate.

Joey: And you got a green light on that.

Adam: Physical inspection.

Joey: A thumbs up on that one?

Adam: So this was July 17th. So the network engineer went back to Chico, and then the next week was the Carr Fire.

Adam: And so this group that we're working with also does the GIS work for Chico. So they were immediately tasked with creating maps for the Carr Fire for different agencies for different reasons. So things were delayed for a while and then we got back to it. And then, of course, the Camp Fire happened. So then things were delayed again. And we got together about mid-January to put the final touches on everything. So now we have the network design, and we have a cost engineering analysis for the network. Our market survey isn't quite what we wanted it to be. And this is something that I'm going to be presenting to the council here in the next meeting or two.

Adam: So I don't wanna go too far into the details because I haven't presented this information fully to the council, but I'm really excited with the results. Everything is. And surprisingly, everything is going as I predicted that it would, as far as costs and what we're capable of doing. What's most fascinating to me is that the options that we have far exceed what my original vision was for the downtown. So we have some really amazing options of what we can do to really benefit the city, really expand innovation, transform how we communicate in the city. Even intergovernmental agency communication and different private sector communication. So this is a big deal. And for me, this is kind of. I don't wanna get too far into it, I could come back on later after I've given the presentation to city council.

Joey: Absolutely.

Adam: But this, it really feels kind of like an internet 3.0, it's like we're onto sort of a new thing here and it's going to be. When you look at the electric utility and what it provides to our city, the biggest benefit is economic development because if you look at 2018 and what people paid in electric rates in the city of Redding in 2018, and then you compare that to the PG&E rate structure, which is what the county has which surrounds the city, REU saved ratepayers in Redding $50 million in 2018. So we paid $50 million less in electric bills than we would have if we'd been paying the other rate structure. So there's such a tremendous benefit. The other benefit is that we have local control over our electric utility and people. There are some. I understand people have different issues. The electric utility serves, I think 42,000 or 43,000 customers. So obviously there's going to be consternation once in a while. And then there's definitely when we do things wrong, we need to fix it. But the local control is a big deal. Having that local control is so huge and monumental because we. The city attempted to change the rate structure three or four years ago, and it was a pretty significant change.

Joey: I remember.

Adam: And a bunch of people went to the city council meeting and said, "This is crazy. We don't want it." And the city council didn't do it. If that had been PG&E, it would've.

Joey: Yeah. Powerless.

Adam: Completely fallen on deaf ears. Right. So local control to me is so critically important. I don't think people realize how much that's really going to mean to have local control of our network and internet systems in the future.

Joey: I've explained this to a few friends and they don't get it. They're like, "High speed, what does it do?" It's like it opens up a whole bunch of different opportunities that it's. Because it can, what it does is almost overwhelming. You say, "Well, you're going to have really high-speed internet, the kind of high-speed internet that some companies that work on the edge, that you wouldn't normally find in Redding that are in the bigger cities, they're definitely in the Bay Area, they could potentially move up here."

Adam: Yeah.

Joey: They're going to employ people that make really good incomes.

Adam: Oh, it's all the. Yeah, high-paying jobs.

Joey: And high paying jobs.

Adam: Yeah.

Joey: And you're going to. This is the key to some big telecommuting stuff, right?

Adam: Oh, yeah.

Joey: So that's just one layer.

Adam: Right.

Joey: One layer.

Adam: You're exactly right.

Joey: It's obviously going to bring income, the city's going to. It's going to help the city out. It's going to keep the money more local because right now, the money is leaving the area. There are a handful of people who are employed by the companies that provide the current internet connections here in the city. And when you think about it, they say, "Oh, but you're going to. These people are going to be unemployed." It's a fraction. It's a fraction of how many would be employed.

Adam: Well, the downtown is such a small part of the total city, though.

Joey: But it's the first phase.

Adam: That's not it. Right.

Joey: It's phase one.

Adam: Right. And then.

Joey: I mean, in the long-term, you have to think that this.

Adam: Oh, yeah. The goal is to.

Joey: Deploys throughout the city.

Adam: The goal is to offer the service citywide and see where it goes from there. The downtown is sort of proof of concept. But you're right, it's economy, it's high paying jobs, it's innovation, it's local control and independence, and privacy. And man, I don't think people realize how important privacy is, but I do think that privacy, some of these other things, will be a real hot commodity in five to 10 years, and I think it'll be something that people really want.

Joey: I think the average person just doesn't realize what's going on under the covers with privacy, and I think with.

Adam: Not until they get burned.

Joey: Yeah. And it's so politicized too. So that's where it starts to get murky. To me, this project, every now and then, comes along, where it's like a litmus test for someone's true intentions. You know what I mean? It's when someone's like, "Oh well, I'm against. " Because most things have a huge subjective sway. So, like I said, we could bring in two experts, and they could. You would listen to both of them, and both of them could sway you because the truth is somewhere in the middle. But there are certain projects where it's like this overwhelmingly benefits the masses, overwhelmingly, and can have far-reaching effects. And so people that are going to be opposed to it to me are like, "Thank you. I'm glad you let me know exactly where you stand."

Adam: There's definitely an argument to be made as private versus public, and I understand that argument. The thing is, when it comes to government and government services, what the government does best besides public safety is infrastructure, and this is infrastructure. And we just didn't look at it like infrastructure for the longest time, but now it's very obvious that it's infrastructure. So if we wanna. I mean, right now, we're behind the average, and we're definitely behind in California as far as bandwidth availability and what options we have in the city. We're way behind, but we could jump into a leadership position, a real leadership position. And right now, I think that's so critical. It's so important for that 21st-century economy, the gig economy. And that's the thing is we can control our destiny in this respect. The government sort of creates the. Fosters the healthy soil for the plants to grow and the businesses and the residents. I think this just creates a better foundation for things to grow on.

Joey: I agree because of it. Back when I was talking a little bit before about, I'm unabashed capitalist, but there is a role for government. It's not. That's why I don't like it's all or nothing, it's left, or it's right. It's like, no, the truth is somewhere in between, and right now, we don't have options. And they're stifled, expensive, and the quality's not there. If we lived in a place where there were ten different ISPs, that might be a little bit different, but that's actually going to. If the city takes over infrastructure, that's actually what ends up happening more people get to offer the service, right? That actually will bring the marketplace.

Adam: Yeah. It depends on which network style that. Which options would the city choose?

Joey: Oh, okay. So that's still up in the air.

Adam: That's definitely an option.

Joey: I imagine, though, that you're leaning towards the option that says, "Hey, let service providers come in and piggyback the infrastructure, and let the marketplace determine the best value," right?

Adam: Yeah. Well, here's the thing, I'll come back on at some point. I don't wanna. I mean I would go deep into what my thoughts are on this, but again, I wanna present that information to city council and see where it goes from there.

Joey: Sure.

Adam: And make sure that.

Joey: Well, you're the vice mayor.

Adam: Still just one of five.

Joey: You have to do certain things I don't have to.

Adam: Yeah, that's true.

Joey: I'm just Joe Public. I can say whatever I want. Devil-may-care.

Adam: Yeah.

Joey: But anyway, I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to when you come back and let us know. Next time you come on, I wanna talk about the solar project and where that is.

Adam: Oh yeah.

Joey: But I know that you have to go. And I really appreciate that you stopped by and brought us up to speed on stuff with the city, and I hope that you'll come back soon. Let us know how it went with the city council and just keep us abreast of what's going on in the state of the city and things like that. So thank you very much again.

Adam: No, it's great.

Joey: It was.

Adam: Yeah. Thank you.

Joey: Vice Mayor. Sun's out, guns out.

Adam: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Joey: Thank you, sir. Appreciate you coming on.

Adam: Okay.

Joey: Until next time. Bye.