News

March 31, 2021: The Sacramento region’s goal of becoming a ”global leader for entrepreneurs, firms, and workforce in future mobility” got an electric boost on March 11 with the opening of the California Mobility Center (CMC). The center’s goal is to accelerate the commercialization of innovative mobility technology. 

Developing a cluster of innovative mobility businesses is one of the six key planks of the region’s Prosperity Strategy. That may sound like a lofty goal given that many regions are chasing such companies. But California and the Sacramento region have some big competitive advantages, as the CMC’s Chief Operating Officer Mark Rawson explained. California is the largest market for electric vehicles in the Western Hemisphere; the “Big Seven” automakers and more than 40 percent of mobility start-ups have a presence in California; and the state has favorable policies and regulations. The Sacramento region is the plum location in the state because of its concentration of industry expertise (boosted by world-class research at UC Davis’ Institute of Transportation Studies), access to policymakers and regulators, and its proximity to Silicon Valley, where costs have made hardware development prohibitively expensive. The region also has a diverse and growing workforce and a diversity of communities that serve as market models for the mobility industry.

March 31, 2021: Despite the pandemic, Loomis’ downtown is thriving. Last April, a month into the Covid-19 lockdown, new bistro Reds’ opened in a space on Taylor Road that had been vacant for eight years and it is now a hot ticket. In the fall, a pair of 1988 grads from the local Del Oro High School opened an Ace Hardware in a former fitness studio that is now booming and bringing more foot traffic to Taylor Road. Loomis town manager Sean Rabé said that Ace’s corporate headquarters had predicted December revenue would be $45,000 but that actual revenue had been five times that at about $220,000. March is on track to beat even that number, Rabé said. 

February 26, 2021: Citrus Heights is one of the most land-locked cities in the SACOG region. The city of 83,000 residents is surrounded by other developed communities, including Roseville to the north, Orangevale, Fair Oaks, and Antelope. But just like the rest of the region, it is facing a housing crisis. How to expand when you can’t go out?  

February 26, 2021: The Sacramento region is home to some of the most productive farmland in the world. About 40 percent of the six-county SACOG region is farmland, and it supports approximately $2 billion worth of agriculture. From almonds to rice to peaches, the Sacramento region is the cradle of some of California’s most valuable crops. Yet the region also faces an extreme housing shortage. The SACOG region needs to build more than twice as much housing as it has averaged since 2009 to keep up with population growth, let alone make up for prior shortfalls in housing production. This leads to pressure to convert valuable farmland to housing. 

Of course, it is possible to both house more people and preserve the backbone of the regional economy: by implementing a more compact development pattern. Historically in the Sacramento region, 242 acres of farmland have been developed for every 1,000 new residents but SACOG’s long-range transportation and land-use plan for the region, the MTP/SCS, lays out a plan that would see just 18 acres of farmland developed for every 1,000 new residents.

January 27, 2021: Last Tuesday the Sacramento City Council took a bold step toward becoming one of the few cities in the country — and the first in California — to eliminate traditional single-family zoning. 

January 21, 2021: The SACOG Board of Directors has elected Placer County Supervisor Bonnie Gore as the 2021 board chair and City of Sacramento Councilmember Rick Jennings as board vice chair. 

Chair Gore joined the SACOG board in 2019 and served as chair of the Policy and Innovation subcommittee in 2020. She has served on the Placer County Board of Supervisors since 2019. Prior to serving on the Board of Supervisors, she served on the Roseville City Council from 2012 to 2018, including time as vice mayor and mayor. Gore has more than two decades of local public policy and business experience. She is active in the Roseville business community, having managed government and community relations for a healthcare system in the Greater Sacramento area for 17 years. 

November 29, 2020: The recent publicity surrounding the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors’ passing of a resolution declaring racism a public health crisis overshadowed the reality at the heart of the resolution. Ten years ago the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Social Determinants of Health Framework recognized that racial health disparities are a result of inequalities in education, employment, health care, housing, and law enforcement. Data shows that your ZIP code is a better predictor of health than your genetic code, and as urban planners, we know that where you live is often determined by your race. 

November 29, 2020: Sacramento may hang its hat on being America’s Farm to Fork Capital but how much of the food we eat in the region is local? Of the almost 1.9 million tons of food consumed within the region, only 2 percent comes from local sources, according to a 2014 SACOG report on the feasibility of food hubs. 

One person well-positioned to boost that number is Jacob Weiss, whose plan to set up the Sacramento Valley Food Hub recently won him and his team $25,000 at Tufts University’s Friedman School’s Food and Nutrition Entrepreneurship Competition, winning both first place and the audience prize for their pitch to launch the food hub. 

October 28, 2020: This was to have been the year for Measure A, Sacramento County’s half-cent sales tax to fund transportation. Over its 40-year life, the sales tax was projected to raise $8 billion for transportation projects in the county, including a good chunk for transit. Instead the Covid-19 pandemic dimmed its chances of success, the measure was pulled in July, and the title “Measure A” now refers to the strong mayor proposal on the ballot for City of Sacramento voters.