And it is that point which buttresses our call for a Joint Powers Authority to oversee the American River Parkway and contract with a nonprofit organization to provide daily management for it.
With the growth of the region over the past couple of decades, the governing (and naming) arrangements that once worked admirably, no longer do so.
The region's other downtowns
Re "Caltrans vs. downtown / Does battle loom over busy Insterstate 5?" editorial, March 5: The Bee is correct -- Caltrans and Sacramento need to figure out how to live side by side. Growth is inevitable. Planning for it is imperative.
But The Bee's editors need to shed their parochialism. This editorial suggests that the only alternatives for this region are more housing in downtown Sacramento or "housing in Yuba and Placer counties, and have all those folks drive to downtown."
Been to Roseville/Rocklin lately? Seen Folsom/El Dorado Hills/Rancho Cordova in the past few years? Each is developing into its own high quality urban core, with its own emerging jobs/housing balance, each served by budding mass transit systems, regional governance, local health care and shopping.
To suggest that the only place for job growth in the region is downtown is to fall into the same "Sactocentric" rhetorical trap as the questions that boxed in the Valley Vision plan. Worse, it wreaks havoc with regional transportation planning.
Sacramento is no more important (or proximate) to Roseville or Folsom than San Francisco is to Walnut Creek. As the phrase goes, "We're just not that into you."
The Bee needs to catch on that the "Sacramento" in its name now refers to the Valley, not the city.
- Douglas Wiele, Latrobe
