Will Sacramento challenge the county on sprawling northward? It’s time | Opinion
A massive and ill-advised development proposal by Sacramento County to create a 25,000-person community that is surrounded on three sides by the city is threatening to create a bigger and broader rift between county supervisors and city council members.
The Sacramento City Council on Tuesday is scheduled to decide whether it will formally oppose the development known as the Upper Westside project north of Interstate 80 near the Sacramento River in the Natomas Basin.
This would be the rarest of intrusions by city leaders into a land use proposal being considered by the county Board of Supervisors. These are sacred powers by local elected officials who normally don’t take kindly to meddling by neighboring governments.
But in this case, it’s the county that is doing the meddling. If supervisors approve this project, they would be reversing their own 2002 agreement, which allowed the city to decide the future of this and all undeveloped county farmland in the 60,000-acre Natomas area.
The City Council may be late to getting engaged in this project, given how supervisors are scheduled to consider it at a special meeting on Aug. 20. But the county’s irresponsible actions are too big to ignore.
A political indictment of Phil Serna
The city has every reason to feel sandbagged by the county, and the district supervisor, Phil Serna, in particular. The recommendation to oppose this project comes from a city staff that is saying that just about every major Sacramento concern has gone unaddressed for years.
“This project is moving forward without a seat at the table for the city, our community, or the school district,” said Karina Talamantes, the city councilmember whose district is to the immediate east of this project.
Serna’s name is nowhere to be found in the proposed motion to be considered by the council Tuesday afternoon. But make no mistake. This is a political indictment of Serna and how he has been disrespecting Sacramento by stripping it of its rightful role as shaping this land’s future. That the city objects to what the county is doing falls squarely on him.
This feels like a legacy-making moment for a four-term supervisor who has had ample time to learn how to work collaboratively with his own city on important issues and has preferred his insular ways.
The city’s staff’s 57-page report for Tuesday’s meeting details reasons why this project merits opposition. There are questions about funding freeway interchange improvements and impacts to existing city parks, as examples. But a core concern rises above all others: The city years ago agreed to not develop in places like this.
All that stunning growth that has been happening between downtown and the Sacramento International Airport over the last two decades isn’t by accident. It’s because the city agreed to grow there in exchange for preserving lands elsewhere for half a century.
With Sacramento County refusing to participate at the time, Sacramento and Sutter County (home of the northern third of Natomas) wisely agreed in 2003 to work with state and federal wildlife officials to develop that comprehensive growth/preservation strategy, known as a habitat conservation plan. The wildlife agencies approved development in roughly a third of the basin. In exchange, they required Sacramento and Sutter to purchase lands for preservation and to preclude growth within a mile of the Sacramento River, creating a seamless corridor for wildlife.
Bordered by Garden Highway to the west, Upper Westside’s footprint is roughly 70% within this one-mile wildlife corridor. The city’s staff report says Upper Westside “severely compromises” the habitat conservation plan while the county “did not adequately evaluate” the project’s impact on that plan.
And city staff is reminding its council of how county supervisors agreed to never consider a project like this back in 2002.: “The city, rather than the county, is the appropriate agent for planning new growth in Natomas and can better provide a full range of municipal services. The county is the appropriate agent for preserving open space, agricultural and rural land uses.”
This landmark agreement is known as the Natomas Joint Vision. And now, the county’s memory of its own commitment is getting a little blurry.
“The Natomas Joint Vision project has been withdrawn and individual landowners have moved forward with their own projects,” the county says on its website. Yet county supervisors never rescinded this agreement. Neither did any city council. What did happen is that Serna, who came from the development community, began caring more about those landowners’ aspirations than those of his city. Serna years ago led to charge to begin studying this project and other Natomas development projects that have led to today’s conflict.
A revealing council vote
“This isn’t just about jurisdiction,” Talamantes said. “It’s about honoring the Natomas Joint Vision and protecting decades of planning, conservation and collaboration.”
She’s right.
This will be one of the most revealing votes by these council members in a very long time, particularly for Mayor Kevin McCarty, who is among those who has received campaign contributions from Upper Westside interests.
This is an unvarnished choice between bending to the powers of Sacramento development interests or sticking to Sacramento’s own agreements and its legacy of sound Natomas planning.
More to come.