An excellent article from the Wall Street Journal reminding us that while it is crucial to think about and plan for the future, it is foolish to allow those plans to interfere with the importance of the present, especially when disaster strikes that has not been prepared for.
The New York Times has a great article about sand bags, that primitive form of fighting floods that still works; just people, shovels, bags and sand, often from the same river the people shoveling are trying to stop from destroying their communities.
An article in the May/June issue of Via Magazine extols midtown and, in the July/August issue, a letter from a visitor from Utah comments on our Parkway bike trail:
“A trail from the capital
“Your Sacramento story (“Capital Gains”) missed one of the area’s greatest hits—and the best urban trail in the West. The Jedediah Smith Memorial Trail starts in Old Sacramento and runs 35 miles along the American River, through parks, over bridges, and past deer, rabbits, and many bird species.
“Richard Miles: Toole, Utah”
Unfortunately, as an article in today's Sacramento Bee reveals, the county has agreed with the city and voted to allow a large complex of housing for the chronic homeless, who are, as the article notes: “defined as people with mental or physical disabilities who have been on the street for a year or who have been homeless at least four times in the past three years.”
A 74 unit motel on Stockton Blvd will be converted to homeless housing, construction to start in 2009, finished in 2010, and will almost certainly degrade the surrounding area, which is too bad.
Scattered site housing is a much better way to handle this issue rather than concentrating it in one area, and we wrote a commentary on concentrating services for the chronic homeless, published in the Bee and posted to our website.
