Three local ballot measures are poised to grab a share of the limelight in the 2020 election cycle. One is certain to appear on the March 3 primary ballot. Two others may work their way into the Nov. 3 general election. None should be overlooked.
The East Sacramento bungalow, built in 1949, had the original kitchen, original bathroom, original flooring and no insulation. There was even the old knob and tube wiring when Nar Bustamante purchased the home in 2018.
“As pretty and cute as the house was, it was just done,” says Bustamante, who looked at numerous homes before finding the two-bedroom, one-bath house on a quiet street off Elvas Avenue.
Mayor Kevin Johnson was not a soccer fan. He found the game foreign and silly, a bunch of people kicking a ball around and rarely scoring. Not like basketball. But Johnson was the first Sacramento politician to embrace the idea of bringing Major League Soccer to the Downtown railyards.
He saw the possibilities. Forget the game, he said. This is about economic development.
I spend a lot of time in Sin City.
I know Las Vegas isn’t the place where you’d think a chaplain should visit, but business and family often send me there.
In the past decade, news outlets across the country have been gutted and closed, reporters laid off, and publication schedules cut. In 2018, more than 200 news publications closed their doors. There are now huge swathes of our country without local news coverage. They are called “news deserts.”
Locally, we face the same trend. The Sacramento Bee, our largest local news organization, had 9,000 employees a decade ago. Today it’s down to 2,800. But even with a skeleton reporting staff, the Bee remains a primary source for local news. The paper’s work filters across to other media, including television and radio.
Trees are the first to go. About 3 acres of valley oak and slightly more than one-tenth an acre of Fremont cottonwoods are being cut down and chopped up as crews strengthen the Sacramento River levee from Pocket to Broadway. That means about 153 trees pulled out, with another 178 trimmed back.
“This represents a relatively small amount of vegetation in proportion to existing trees and shrubs,” says a report by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
