If all the facts presented are accurate, it seems to be a good idea to encourage development in this part of the County and will accomplish several very good things.
It will increase the tax base for a county struggling with funding issues soon to be deepened as the new city of Arden incorporates.
It will add open space cultivation, trails, and parks, in a rather empty and not too good current grazing area, improving it for human use and connecting it to the American River Parkway and the Deer Creek Hills Preserve per the Sacramento Valley Conservancy plan.
It will create a congruence between the two counties, El Dorado and Sacramento around the building of a series of communities creating jobs, homes, schools and business straddling the county line.
All very good things.
Collision nears on growth proposal
Supervisors to weigh Tsakopoulos bid to transform rural area.
By Mary Lynne Vellinga - Bee Staff Writer
Published 1:00 am PDT Sunday, March 11, 2007
Along White Rock Road in eastern Sacramento County, pastures abruptly give way to tiled rooftops at the El Dorado County line.
On the Sacramento County side, the scene has changed little in the past century. Cows graze in gently rolling, grass-covered pastures. On the El Dorado side, however, office buildings, houses and retail stores have replaced the cattle.
Developer Angelo K. Tsakopoulos and his partners have spent the past decade accumulating ranches on both sides of the boundary. They control a swath of ranch land that straddles the county line and stretches south from White Rock Road about eight miles, beyond any land contemplated for growth by El Dorado County.
Now, Tsakopoulos is arguing to the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors that it ought to take the first step toward urbanization of his property on the Sacramento side of the county line. The justification: the thousands of new homes and jobs in El Dorado and the planned expansion of Folsom into land north of White Rock Road.
Tsakopoulos' proposal to potentially include 3,400 acres of grazing land in the new Sacramento County plan is the most controversial issue facing the supervisors as they gather Wednesday for a workshop on the general plan, which will serve as a blueprint for growth until 2030.
His land is about four miles outside the urban growth boundary adopted by the board as part of its 1993 general plan. Environmental groups view this line as inviolate and are rallying their members to attend the workshop.
County planners also oppose moving the boundary, as does Supervisor Don Nottoli, whose district includes the land.
In a staff report, the Planning Department says 1.4 miles of Tsakopoulos' Sacramento County land abuts planned or existing development in El Dorado County. The remaining seven miles border farmland also owned by Tsakopoulos and his partners, which remains zoned for agriculture in the El Dorado general plan.
Tsakopoulos argues that there's no reason for the county not to include his land in the environmental review being conducted for the general plan. The actual decisions about which land will be opened for building won't be made until the environmental analysis is done more than a year from now.
"What we're saying is that it is prudent for the community to examine all of its options," he said. "If we don't examine them, we may miss them."
He calls the eastern edge of Sacramento County "an exceptional location for future growth."
"Often you hear that we should preserve prime agricultural land; this isn't agricultural land," Tsakopoulos said. "It's grazing land, and it's the poorest.
"We don't have any trees. Whatever trees we have will be preserved. We don't have endangered species. We don't have the vernal pools you find in other parts of the county. It does not flood," Tsakopoulos said. "This property is on the boundary of the El Dorado Hills Business Park and Folsom, which have an enormous amount of jobs."
He held out the possibility that he would set aside significant open space land to offset development. That could help the Sacramento Valley Conservancy accomplish its goal of creating a permanent belt of ranches and oak woodlands connecting its Deer Creek Hills preserve -- which abuts the Tsakopoulos land -- to the Cosumnes River and the American River Parkway.
