City of Sacramento General Plan Update 2040
The City of Sacramento has started its process to update the city's General Plan - not ours, theirs. They are asking for public input. Here's what they say about it:
"Sacramento 2040 is the City’s blueprint for how and where our City will grow over the next 20 years. The Draft Plan contains policies that guide everything from Environmental Justice to transportation, to the type of homes available, to jobs, entertainment, public safety, and much more. We need your feedback to make sure the Draft Plan is responsive to the challenges of the coming years."
The problem is, as you might expect from the last time they played this game, they are acting like they own our community. In a clever twist, the city has posted all of its draft documents online for public comment as a "self-guided" workshop. Why is this clever? Consider:
- Not everyone has the same online functionality. Some have no real ability to patiently read, digest, and formulate responses to the city's drafts
- Only people who know about the drafts and what it means to them will comment
- People will not know about other people's comments. In a group setting (in-person meeting or Zoom) you get to see and hear other people's comments as well as the audience's reaction (applause? groans?). and that might inspire you to want to speak up to either chime in or rebut. You can't do that in a "send us your comments" meeting and you won't know what gets left on the cutting room floor once the comments are responded to by the city.
In other words, it's an insider's game. That would be OK if the City of Sacramento would mind its own business. But it is NOT OK when the City of Sacramento is deciding what's best for our unincorporated community.
What can you do about this? You can send them an overall comment along the lines of "keep your nose out of our business". And you can (we hope) make a similar comment at one of their 3 webinars wherein the City of Sacramento intends to explain its process for getting feedback on the draft plan (more info here). Here are the dates for the webinars:
