Keeps rolling along, and if happens just another cut in County funding rendering it even less unable to take care of the Parkway that it is now.
An excerpt.
Whither Rio Linda?
Cityhood may not be ready for prime time
- Published 7:37 pm PDT Thursday, September 7, 2006
In rural Rio Linda, where life can seem like a step back in time and where the politics are always feisty, locals have been chattering about becoming a full-fledged municipality.
The Big City (Sacramento and its suburbs) is growing ever closer. The idea was to protect the community character by declaring its independence and becoming a full-service city. But independence, Rio Linda has learned, comes at a steep price. It is expensive to be a city.
Rio Linda and nearby Elverta have been jointly studying cityhood through a local park district.
The Rio Linda-Elverta Recreation Park District commissioned a $30,000 study to examine the economics of abandoning Sacramento County as the provider of services such as law enforcement and street maintenance and taking on these duties themselves.
Frankly, no rural community needs a consultant to answer this question. Without an auto mall or an Ikea that generates gobs of sales tax revenue, there just isn't enough of an economy to support a full-service city. The only way a city of Rio Linda/Elverta could survive, said the consultant, would be if it had one of the most bizarre borders imaginable. It would have to include an appendage known locally as The Panhandle, a 1,430-acre area that stretches south to Interstate 80 and is much coveted for its retail potential.
