The Bee’s endorsement for Placer County’s 1st Board of Supervisors District | Opinion

Residents of Placer County expect a certain kind of lifestyle: Safe and secure neighborhoods, good schools, outdoor recreation, open spaces and a balance of rural and suburban attributes. Over the past decade, the county — especially the cities of Roseville and Rocklin — have seen tremendous growth and transformation, but not always in that direction.

Residents have had a grounded, responsible leader in Placer County 1st District Supervisor Bonnie Gore to help weather any changes.

Elected to the Placer County Board of Supervisors in 2018, Gore previously served on the Roseville City Council from 2012-2018. She also currently serves on multiple committees, including the Western Placer Waste Management Authority and the California State Association of Counties.

“When you are a county supervisor, it doesn’t matter if you’re red or blue, we’re all addressing the same issues,” Gore said of her position representing Placer on the California State Association of Counties.

The 1st District encompasses parts of West Roseville and Dry Creek, and Gore is running unopposed in her bid for re-election. The last time she faced a challenger was when she first ran for the board of supervisors in 2018, when she unseated the incumbent, Jack Duran.

Gore has a razor-sharp focus on fiscal responsibility. When it comes to building housing, for example, she pointed to the city of Elk Grove’s self-inflicted problems around building affordable housing, and how it turned into a costly nightmare for taxpayers. (The city settled with the state in 2024 for $150,000, and reached a multi-million dollar settlement with developers.)

“That’s not a good use of taxpayer dollars,” Gore said. “We are mandated to zone … let’s do it thoughtfully.”

Recently, the Placer County Board of Supervisors approved, but did not allocate, funding to a 240-apartment development in Penryn. Gore said she was “disappointed” that the board ultimately did not fund the project.

“We had lots of residents who didn’t like the idea of having a large apartment complex right near them,” she said. “At the same time, I reminded people that we all lived in an apartment complex once, and we all need apartments to live in.”

Locally, the county has approximately 72,000 residents who receive MediCal benefits. House Resolution 1 is expected to result in a cost to the county of between $8 million to $9 million, according to numbers provided by Gore. The task at hand for the county is figuring out how to address those costs, she said.

We believe Gore, who previously worked in healthcare at Kaiser Permanente and has worked on a number of county and city budgets, is one of the best local officials equipped to take on this new challenge.

Meanwhile, the county is a little over a year into work on the Placer 2050 General Plan Update, which will take an estimated three to five years to complete. Gore said officials are currently working with local groups on community plans and holding smaller focus groups.

“We want to make sure we preserve our (agricultural) and our open space,” she said.

The county supervisor also serves on the Greater Sacramento Economic Council, and says Sacramento’s success is important to Placer — not only because Placer residents commute to the state capital (and vice versa), but because “we prosper as a region.”

Gore has an encyclopedic knowledge of county inner-workings, but she is also able to remain focused on the big picture: Keeping her residents safe, employed, happy and thriving.