Local control means just that and the continued efforts by communities to incorporate are a natural response to not being able to really control their own community.
Power struggles persist
New councils get clout, but county still has last word
By Ed Fletcher - Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, September 16, 2007
If you ask folks around Rio Linda whether the county should close their local dirt racetrack, the answer is a pretty resounding "no."
It's no stretch to say that most people around this largely rural community in northwest Sacramento County wouldn't have a problem letting boys and girls race quarter midget cars around the 1/20-mile dirt track for generations to come.
"I can't find a single person out here who wants that track closed," said Erwin Hayer, a community activist whose father once owned the land now in dispute.
But that's not the landowner's position. Led by Sacramento County Supervisor Roger Dickinson, county officials bought the track land and nearby acreage to add to the riparian habitat of Dry Creek Parkway, they say, not to continue the racetrack operation.
The dispute exemplifies the struggle the county faces in trying to balance the desires of neighborhoods in unincorporated areas with big-picture planning and governance.
Ironically, it is the county that has amplified the voices of those unincorporated communities.
In 2006, the county created four pilot community councils, handing those appointed bodies the roles that various county-wide planning agencies hold in other unincorporated areas.
Community council decisions can, for a fee, be appealed to the Board of Supervisors, but the locals have the final say in most cases.
But in the case of the dirt racetrack, the Rio Linda/Elverta Community Council does not have the authority to overturn the county's land purchase.
The four areas with community councils are Rio Linda/ Elverta, Carmichael/Old Foothill Farms, Arden Arcade and Fair Oaks.
Ten older-version advisory councils represent the remainder of the unincorporated county and continue to make recommendations to planning bodies.
Residents living in areas served by the community councils are more likely to watch or attend county meetings, more satisfied with their quality of life and happier with the county's delivery of service than other county residents, according to a county-commissioned survey of area voters presented last month to the Board of Supervisors.
Dickinson said community councils are part of a larger effort to "decentralize our government and encourage civic engagement."
Given the relatively recent incorporations of Citrus Heights, Elk Grove and Rancho Cordova -- and ongoing efforts seeking cityhood for Fair Oaks, Rio Linda and Arden Arcade -- some suggest the pilot project has a bigger purpose.
"They are really to stem the tide of fleeing cities," said Barbara O'Connor, a local political observer and communications professor at California State University, Sacramento.
