Wilton Action Group Calls Cosumnes River SOI Vote ‘Forward Thinking’
During last Wednesday’s Elk Grove City Council meeting, three council members voted to remove the Cosumnes River floodplain from the city’s...
https://www.elkgrovenews.net/2010/04/wilton-action-group-calls-cosumnes.html
During last Wednesday’s Elk Grove City Council meeting, three council members voted to remove the Cosumnes River floodplain from the city’s sphere of influence application.
In perhaps the most contentious issue to face the city since the proposal to build a Super Wal-Mart on Sheldon Road, the inclusion of the 100-year floodplain drew together a large coalition of community based organizations who mobilized their respective groups to oppose this portion of the SOI. One of the several group who mobilized a strong and vocal resistance to the move was the Wilton Action Group (WAG).
Organized in 2008, WAG’s sprang up after several members of the southeastern Sacramento County community came together upon learning that Elk Grove’s original SOI came across the Cosumnes River and included portions of Wilton.
In a press release issued earlier today, WAG took the opportunity to thank city council members Jim Cooper, Gary Davis and Vice Mayor Steve Detrick for their votes to exclude the 100-year Cosumnes River floodplain from the city’s SOI application.
The thank you acknowledgment also noted that “their forward-looking decision at the City Council meeting on April 14, 2010 will positively benefit not only the citizens of Elk Grove but also citizens in the immediate region including the City of Galt, the City of Sacramento and the rural communities of Wilton, Sloughhouse, Herald and Franklin.”
WAG also commented on one of the problems created by the city’s original SOI that even floodplain annexation proponent council member Pat Hume publicly acknowledged during Wednesday’s meeting and that was trust of the city intentions.
“In particular the rural community of Wilton sees the action taken by the City Council as a demonstration of good faith in considering the needs of the City’s neighbors and in joining with others toward being good stewards of agriculture and open space,” the WAG statement read.
The council member who was at the forefront of opposing the inclusion of the floodplain was council member Gary Davis who called the vote a “game changer” and said the annexing the area would have a “distraction” for the city.
"Wednesday’s vote was a game changer. Annexing flood land would have been a waste of time and a distraction. We can now get back to our focus of growing good, local, jobs and keeping our neighborhoods strong and safe,” Davis said. “Thank you to everyone who was part of making Wednesday’s vote a reality.”
Posts
2 comments
The Wednesday night EG City Council meeting was a well executed political drama directed by the members of the City Council. I believe the council has obtained the exact expansion of the sphere of influence they really wanted from the beginning. They never wanted the flood plain. Who would. They really wanted the center tier of land; from grant line up to the flood plain east and west of Hwy 99. I knew the fix was in the minute that Taro Echiburu told all in attendance that the City/City Council had allocated some federal funds to pay for the unfinished SOI feasibility study. These funds were allocated the morning of the same day the City Council was to discuss the future of the SOI. Supposedly the whole SOI could have been scrapped at the meeting. The council had already decided the SOI would go forward before they heard the citizens at the meeting. I believe the Council had included the flood plain from the beginning to keep the people focused upon it while they continued to focus upon the center tier. I feel for all the people of Wilton and the farmers that were used as pawns by the council. Keeping everyone focused upon the flood plain was important for them to get what they really wanted. In the end, they pulled it off masterfully. Now, if the citizens that live within Elk Grove city and the center tier would get together, they could really stop this insane expansion of the city. Expect a real fight from the council and don't be fooled by their good cop/bad cop approach to manipulating people.
The one that deserves an oscar is Steve Detrick. He professed his lack of knowledge and information about the SOI before the meeting in front of news cameras and after the public comment portion of the council meeting. Did he have an epiphany from the times he made those statements and cast the deciding vote? Don't get me wrong, I am glad he voted down the flood plain. I just think it was all a well choreographed play from the beginning. A play that used people's emotions, time and energy to make it appeared they were really listening to the people. When all the time they were keeping their eyes on what they really wanted. The center tier for expansion. Where did anyone get the idea that Elk Grove must have further expansion? Do the people want an expanded EG? Do we want the center tier to grow to look more like Elk Grove city? Do you want city and its problems moved out further? I would think the council would want to protect people outside of EG's present SOI from suffering the same blight the city has become. What do others think?
"...now to get back to our focus of growing good, local jobs..."
Very curious to know the council's plans to grow jobs, presuming they'll actually land all that new SOI land. Somewhere in the EGNews archive it was stated [by Davis] that having a new large swath of land is essential to job creation, meaning we've already committed what's left of the existing city to strip malls, power centers and residential housing pods.
I have zero hope, zero really, that the city would somehow right itself and actually manage to create local jobs, worthwhile jobs. Our city's only success has been the building of suburban sprawl along with home centers, muffler shops and foot massage parlors, and I can't possibly imagine that 1) businesses outside the accessorizing of said sprawl would be attracted here and 2) we'd actually create a physical environment conducive to job creation and 3) that our future council(s) will somehow demur at more residential development and the concomitant property tax revenues.
We are simply waiting out this recession until the next round of suburban building resumes. With a 5-8 year gap between the last construction and the new, we'll have a very definite demarcation between the old suburban ring and the new ring around Sacramento, where we'll find well-to-do Laguna Vista and Camden Passage residents move off to the new "Franklin Springs" and "Quail Hollow" tracts in the new SOI, leaving the older suburban ring to follow the fate of every other earlier poorly built and poorly developed "community."
Without a local economy we can't truly have a community. There's nothing to anchor our residents, and with our only option when moving up is to also move out due to our inane zoning laws we are mandating that our older suburban rings become places not worth caring about. One only need to look at the relentless march of south Sacramento suburban squalor, moving at the rate of about three feet per day southward, to see where Elk Grove is headed when we fail to build communities worth caring about. It's only a matter of time until it reaches the northern boundary of the SOI...
Post a Comment