Northside Redlands residents discuss priorities with councilman By Sandra Emerson, Redlands Daily Facts POSTED: 01/17/14 REDLANDS >> As the city continues to work on its three-year strategic plan, a group of northside residents want to ensure issues in their own 26-page plan are addressed. Members of the North Redlands Visioning Committee met with Councilman Bob Gardner this week at the Redlands Senior Center to discuss some of those issues. Since 2005, communication between City Hall and north Redlands residents has strengthened, leading to frequent meetings in the community and with city officials. In 2005, a group of residents formed the North Redlands Visioning Committee with the goal of bringing the community together to identify desired improvements on the city’s northside. A year of community workshops and city presentations led to the drafting of a 26-page vision plan outlining needs in the community. The plan was accepted by the City Council. Since then, several of the identified projects have been addressed by the city. During the meeting Wednesday, Mario Saucedo, chairman of the North Redlands Visioning Committee, agreed to provide a list to Gardner of projects identified in the plan that have yet to be addressed. “I think that would help validate to the community that the city is working on it,” said Saucedo, who believes components of the North Redlands vision plan are now being applied to the rest of the city through the three-year strategic plan. Gardner updated the group on a proposed plan to fund several infrastructure improvements, such as flood control, that would ask voters to approve new taxes. City staff has been meeting with community groups to present the plan and are expected to meet with the north Redlands group. “The good news is we have a plan. The bad news is we need to take it to the electorate and the soonest we can do that is this fall,” Gardner said. The group discussed the city’s Pavement Accelerated Repair Implementation Strategy, which aims to repave two-thirds of the city’s streets in three to five years. Several northside streets are slated to be repaved during the 2014 phase of the program, including parts of Brockton Avenue, Judson Street, The Terrace, Western Avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue and Clay Street. Street lighting, attracting new business to the area, progress on the proposed Walmart supercenter near San Bernardino Avenue and Tennessee Street and having a full-time program coordinator and more youth programming at the Community Center also came up. The city in 2009 cut the community center’s hours, programs and personnel because of budget woes. “As the budget got tight there were some casualties. Maybe we should build some of that back,” Gardner said. He said he will return with some answers in a few weeks. redlandsdailyfacts/government-and-politics/20140117/northside-redlands-residents-discuss-priorities-with-councilman
Posted on: Sat, 18 Jan 2014 22:38:23 +0000
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