Meet Joshua Johnson for City Council – Shasta Scout (2024)

This story is part of Shasta Scout’s citizen-powered election coverage. For the November 8, 2022 general election, we’re focusing on three races: the Redding City Council, the Shasta County Board of Supervisors and the Shasta County Board of Education. View all of the Meet the Candidate interviews.

Ten candidates, including one incumbent, are running for three open seats on the Redding City Council this fall. Our elections reporting flips the script by asking candidates to answer questions from the community. We’re conducting long-form, in-person interviews that last about an hour each and utilize questions drawn from you, via our Scout reader survey. Candidate responses have been curated and paraphrased for this format.

What should we know about you?

I’ve lived here for about eight years and I own a small real estate development business, Shiloh Capitol. We’re building twenty-one single family homes in south Redding and we helped develop House of Roses, across from Woody’s. I’m also a real estate agent working mostly on the commercial side, helping entrepreneurs and small business owners, like me. I really love working with people that are taking risks and trying to bring something new to our city. I understand what it takes to be able to take that risk and how much community support it requires.

I’m also a father of four so I spend a lot of time driving my kids around town during the week. On the weekends in the summer we go to Shasta Lake and spend time on my mom and dad’s houseboat. I’m also a sand volleyball player which is one of the reasons I got involved in the public private partnership at Lake Redding to build the new sand volleyball courts.

Why did you decide to run for city council?

I think that momentum is the key word for me. Since moving here, I helped found the Startup Redding community and I’ve been a part of a lot of the community side of local economic development. I’m always cheering on my friends and people I know who are starting things. I love what local entrepreneurs are doing.

I started to see recently that this is an important time of once-in-a-generation growth in Redding, where we’re seeing a lot of dollars come into the city for public park projects, affordable housing projects and the courthouse. We’re also seeing a lot of people trying to figure out how to do market rate projects, whether it be commercial or residential. And I’m seeing how critical it is that there are people in government, elected officials, that understand economic development on this side of the table, and that can be thoughtful about growth, and come alongside those risk takers.

The government provides infrastructure and public safety, those are the two most important things. I’ve had experience working with the city day in and day out, working through red tape, and collaborating with them trying to figure out ways to build really great things in our city. So I can be an asset with the big conversations that are happening about how our city need to grow thoughtfully, along the building blocks of our history but also moving into the future of what the best version of our city is and where we’re going next. I don’t want to take our foot off the gas pedal but I don’t want us to grow for growth’s sake, either. I think our city and our council members need to live in that tension.

Do you think the city needs to be more open and transparent? If so, how would you work towards that?

Yes. I think that it is a problem nationwide. Nowadays we are so used to having access to all kinds of information and that means the government has to catch up with the information age. We need to increase the perception of transparency as well as actually becoming more transparent when possible. Things like the Brown Act can add to the perception of deals being made behind closed doors and things feeling hidden and in the shadows, but we need to push up against that.

We have room to grow in this area but I don’t think we need to demonize anyone. Government moves slowly but we need to take some first steps, including public engagement that is more carefully designed. Public comment at city council meetings can help people let off steam but I would love to be having more conversations with the public that help us craft and prioritize vision together. And I’d like to be having those conversations proactively instead of always reacting. Anger and frustration come up when we’re reacting and I think those are important emotions. But what we’re missing most in government is vision and ideas. Where do we want to go? Let’s figure that out as a community and let’s go there.

I’d also like to look at getting the council’s agenda out to the public more quickly so that people aren’t scrambling three days before the vote to understand what’s happening and respond. It would be great to have a city government scheduler of our priorities for the year, the big votes coming up ahead, with pre-scheduled blocks where the community can engage and how they will be able to engage, through public comment or workshops.

I also think we’re missing an opportunity to help our young families feel connected with the time of day of our meetings because council meetings happen right during dinner time. Maybe there’s a way we can better use technology to get more people involved.

If you are affiliated with a religious community how would that affect your role on the City Council?

We’ve attended a mid-sized local church for the last eight years.

My faith impacts how I make decisions. For me, the way my faith will show up in government is in how I conduct myself. I value people. I value their backgrounds and their opinions and their skill sets and what they bring to the table. I’m willing to sit at tables when people disagree with me. I’m going to have courage and I’m going to stand up for things that I really value. And I’m going to be willing to have my mind changed, especially when the details are missing. With city council votes you can start off with one perspective but as your understanding deepens through staff reports and other information, you learn more. Which is why it’s so important to stay open-minded.

I think valuing people is what can make the government work really well and I want to see us collaborate more with each other as a community in the city.

What is the Redding Police Department doing well and what can they do better?

They’re pretty much proverbially handcuffed by state laws and the lack of services but they’re doing a really great job with no arms, to still provide public safety. I like that RPD is thinking about the future of policing and the integration of social work through the Community Intervention Response Team (CIRT.) I’ve been able to hang out with that team a bit and seeing how they interact and engage with the homeless community has been so impressive to me. There’s so much kindness and respect they give. I’ve been to family reunions where people don’t talk as nicely as those guys do.

What we’re missing in public safety is not an RPD issue, it’s a larger community issue. We need a stronger correctional campus to help RPD do its job. The state has put a ton of stress and pressure on our county jails to operate like state prisons, holding people for up to 10 years instead of one or two years. And that changes the game for how we need to look ahead for the next 50 years for building a correctional campus that has the right pod layout and design and has wraparound services integrated into it so that we can actually get people to help. We’re missing some key pillars for police to be able to reduce crime. Not everyone who is homeless is a criminal but some are addicted to drugs and commit property crimes to continue that addiction and RPD can only do so much without the right correctional facility. Our goal is to reduce recidivism, not just lock people up and throw away the key. The goal is actually to get them to health. And I see that in what Chief Schueller and RPD are trying to do and I think that’s why they’re actively engaged with Sheriff Michael Johnson on the design of this new correctional facility.

What do you see as the most important issue or issues facing Redding right now?

To use a sports metaphor, we have offense and defense and I think we need to be doing both at the same time for the community to thrive. You can’t always be on the defensive, trying to protect yourself from risks, you also need to be moving forward and trying to think about the future.

For me, being on the offense in Redding is about vision for economic development. I think the next step forward is for our whole community to catch the vision of what it looks like to have a thriving riverfront that all types of people in our community enjoy every week. Look what we’ve done to revitalize downtown. When I moved here, downtown Redding was nearly dead, and to see what is happening now . . . I would love to see that revitalization spill over into the riverfront within the next ten years. We don’t have to copy what anyone else is doing but we can be inspired and learn from other cities that have done things like this well. And we can get diverse community feedback on what Redding wants.

The defense side is about recognizing fire as our greatest risk. We need to continue to be vigilant to defend our city against fire. The goats are helping with eradicating brush. But there’s also an issue of fires starting in homeless encampments. That’s where another aspect of defense, the correctional facility, will come in. I also think for those who truly do need housing and want help I’d love to see us have more transitional housing but housing that is tied to programming that will help people get to independence and health. Having the correctional campus backbone alongside that will encourage people to go into programs to get the help they need.

We’re doing well with resourcing the police. Right now we’re up at staffing levels up at or above where we were in 2006, which I think was the last high marker for us as a community. So I think that we’re moving in the right direction. I would love to see the CIRT team, the crisis intervention team, grow, because I think that’s providing one of the biggest benefits to our community and lowering costs to the city while providing a human aspect to policing for repeat offenders.

I would also like to invest more in the Redding airport, find funding to add another terminal. Our airport needs to be more than a side hobby, it needs to be an economic driver for the whole region. It’s a tool that we can really lean into. I would love to see this become a focal part of our city with its own department and department head. We need to make the Redding airport a true regional hub.

How would you address the significant number of people living without housing in our community?

I would love to see us have more resources, especially resources with strings attached to help move people towards health. There are a lot of interesting narratives that I hear on both sides of the political spectrum about what is happening on our streets and none of them quite make sense to me. But the book San Fransicko makes some really good points. The author advocates for some of the same things that Sheriff Michael Johnson wants to build into his correctional campus. It’s a data-backed approach that you see in Europe and in some American cities where wraparound services are central.

People may become homeless because of economic hardship but then move into becoming drug addicted and having mental health issues. So first and foremost we need to make sure that we have the resources to move those in economic hardship back to independence quickly before they get sucked into what’s happening in the streets.

Then for those already engaging in those behaviors we need the correctional campus. I spent time at Nur Pon during the clean up and I saw how a person would say they wanted help and services and then a resource person would come along and the individual would vanish. I think deep down many of these people do want help but they’re not walking themselves in, by and large, to these drug rehab facilities or into these programs. That might be because they have a prejudice against any program that kind of requires anything of them. They may feel like they have barriers to services like needing their boyfriend or their dog to be with them. It’s a really, really challenging thing. It’s multifaceted.

How would you address concerns about our community’s access to water during a historic drought?

The city of Redding actually has some of the best water rights in California and we’ll never give those up so we can educate people on that. Redding could probably double in size, and we’d still have enough water from what I hear. We need to be responsible with that but our water, like our public utility, is one of the things that makes our city such an attractive place to live and one of the reasons why we are so poised for economic growth and job opportunities in the future.

How would you address how we use and develop land in our community?

I am for developing the riverfront, but in a thoughtful way. It’s an underutilized asset that could become the heart and identity of our city, but the government doesn’t drive that decision, the community does. And I think a lot of people were concerned about the riverfront because it came out of nowhere and started in closed session. While I’m on the council if there are projects that come up I would absolutely love to be a bridge or a liaison between the people and the project to be able to work it out and and see it through in the best possible way.

I don’t really love the specific plan update that the council voted to spend $1.25 million on for the riverfront area. I think it’s punting the problem down the field.

How would you address the need for housing in our community?

There are issues with housing up and down the state. We need more supply to decrease demand and bring housing prices down. But it’s very expensive to build right now, largely because of state regulations to make homes more energy efficient. But government does have some tools in its tool belt to incentivize supply of market rate housing.

In Redding we’re already doing a lot when it comes to affordable housing, we’re actually probably setting the bar for a small community like ours in the affordable housing category. And we’re building really high quality affordable homes. But we need more projects that aren’t tax-subsidized, that are market-rate. Otherwise we’re never going to see supply and demand balance things out, we’re only going to see government-based housing. And I’m definitely not a fan of that because in the long run its not going to make housing cheaper, it’s going to make it more expensive.

How would you address climate concern as a Redding leader?

People are moving here and staying here because of the natural resources. We love what we have here, we don’t want to see that change drastically. And we have 60 square miles of city so there’s a lot of room for us to grow without impacting our environment negatively.

We need to be looking at the future of how we’re using and producing energy. We’re constantly up against how to be good stewards of our climate without making policies that make it harder and more costly to build and creating more housing problems. So we have to balance that out Sometimes climate policies can have unintended consequences.

I think you’ve already answered how you would help our community prepare for and reduce the risk of wildfire?

Yes.

Thank you for your time! How can people learn more about your campaign?

People can find me at JoshforRedding. I’ve shared a lot of information on my background as well as articles I’ve written on issues that have come up since the campaign started. I’m also on Facebook and Instagram where I use videos to help people understand how I think about various issues.

Additional Resources:

• Here are Joshua Johnson’s form 460s, documenting donations to his campaign: 2021, January through June 2022, June through September 2022
• Here is his official candidate statement.
• Here is his form 700, documenting any potential conflicts of interest.

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