To introduce his strong mayor proposal to voters, Darrell Steinberg needed to answer a simple question: Why?
Voters rejected strong mayor in 2014. There was no call to resurrect the idea in 2020 amid a pandemic and social unrest. Changing the city charter is complex. The process demands comprehensive public debate and a vote of the people. Steinberg had time for just two City Council meetings before the door closed on Nov. 3 ballot initiatives.
For years, levee lovers have known the offensive fences that block people from walking on the Sacramento River levee would disappear during the major levee repairs now underway.
State and city authorities told me (and anyone else who asked) the fences would be removed by construction crews and not replaced. The construction removal was strategic. It was designed to avoid arguments with a few people who live along the river and insist they need fences stretched across the levee for security and privacy.
Dirty cops always lie. They know lying is an automatic way to get fired, but they lie anyway. This is where retired Sacramento Police Capt. Kevin Johnson comes in.
Johnson, who runs a business called Command Strategies Consulting, works for police departments across California. He breaks down the blue wall of silence and catches lying cops.
Running should be among the safest of pandemic sports. Open trails. Space for social distancing. Virus loads diluted by fresh air. Fit and healthy runners. If two sturdy legs and a decent pair of running shoes don’t guarantee immunity, they help the odds.
But what happens when 800 or 1,000 runners congregate for a Sunday race? Or when 29,000 show up for the Thanksgiving Run to Feed the Hungry? Health officials don’t want to think about that. In mid-March they banned organized races until further notice—a prohibition that wiped out the running calendar and threatens to linger into next year.
Katie Valenzuela won’t join the City Council until December. But she is already learning how she won’t fit in. Steve Hansen, the two-term councilmember Valenzuela defeated in March, won’t speak to her. Other members smile and offer congratulations, but the words carry little weight.
At first, this bothered Valenzuela. “I was pretty depressed when the pandemic started,” she says. Sheltered in her Boulevard Park home with her two rescue terriers, socially distanced from work and friends, months from being sworn into office, Valenzuela felt disconnected from the motivations that propelled her run for office.
Inside Sacramento is looking for a few good community journalists. But not just from any community. We are interested in writers from neighborhoods that historically don’t get much attention from traditional media—unless the news is bad.
We want to see Sacramento’s underserved communities from a different, deeper, more personal perspective. This means we want stories by and about people who really know the neighborhoods.
