Nov 27, 2020
Sometimes I wish Inside Sacramento had an award called “Local Sports Person of the Year.” I know the guy I would nominate for 2020: Dusty Baker. He’s at the top of his game at age 71. And while the year was miserable and Baker did his best work in Houston rather than Sacramento, he will always belong to the city he calls home. He’s a paragon of leadership, integrity, pride, hard work and perseverance. He’s also pretty good at baseball.
As 2020 began, Baker was unemployed in Sacramento, his career finished. It was a bittersweet end. Baker has been involved in professional baseball since 1967, when he was a senior at Del Campo High School and drafted by the Atlanta Braves.
Nov 27, 2020
Like many people in Pocket, Little Pocket and Greenhaven, Cassandra Fong is eager to see public access finally come to the Sacramento River Parkway. When she learned Army Corps of Engineers contractors plan to tear down private levee fences that block public access to the parkway, she said, “Hallelujah.”
But Fong wasn’t completely ready to celebrate. She knows the fences have been an eyesore and insult to public accessibility for almost 50 years. And she knows the handful of property owners who control the fences may not accept the fact that the river parkway is finally open.
“Perhaps we need to set up a committee or group of people who will continue to ‘police’ the area so that these same people don’t start building new privately owned encroachments,” she wrote to me.
Nov 27, 2020
Leaving the City Council this month will mean blissful deliverance for Larry Carr. He will savor the sounds of silence.
Since replacing the late Bonnie Pannell in a 2014 special election, Carr has represented District 8, the city’s southeastern suburb that includes Meadowview, Parkway and North Laguna. The district is home to some of the city’s more challenged neighborhoods and underserved residents.
Carr led the City Council to adopt a progressive police use-of-force policy, banning chokeholds and no-knock warrants, and requiring officers to intervene if fellow cops use excessive force. “I’m really proud of what the city has accomplished,” Carr says.
Oct 27, 2020
Everybody makes mistakes, including local governments when they give names to parks, schools and streets. Sometimes those mistakes get fixed. Jedediah Smith Elementary School south of Broadway became Leataata Floyd Elementary in 2012. Smith, an early 19th century frontiersman and slave owner, was scrubbed for a neighborhood volunteer.
Sometimes they get it right the first time. Pocket is home to a 21-acre park called the Bill Conlin Youth Sports Complex, filled with soccer and baseball fields, picnic areas, the Lynn Robie dog park and a new playground that opened this summer. The sports complex is a fine tribute to a legend of Sacramento journalism.
Oct 27, 2020
People are finding many reasons to vote against Measure A, the strong mayor proposal devised by Mayor Darrell Steinberg. Accountability, neighborhood influence and transparency will dwindle under strong mayor. But there’s something less obvious that makes strong mayor a bad bet.
In August, Steinberg proposed strong mayor as a way to direct extra dollars into historically underserved communities, such as Meadowview, Oak Park and Del Paso Heights. But evidence indicates if Steinberg becomes strong mayor, those communities shouldn’t expect much.
Oct 27, 2020
The counter-intuitive correlation between money and homelessness continues to confuse Mayor Darrell Steinberg and city leaders. The correlation goes like this: The city raises money to house homeless people, yet the number of people living on the streets grows larger. More money equals more homelessness.
Steinberg recently said Sacramento would receive about $28 million in state funds to combat homelessness. The dollars would become part of a $62 million campaign to convert old motels, manufactured homes and other sites into supportive units for unsheltered people.
