Mayor Kevin McCarty took a bold step at his first full City Council meeting in December. He voted with five colleagues to fire City Manager Howard Chan.

We don’t know if McCarty led the revolt, or if the list of failures under Chan and former Mayor Darrell Steinberg prompted the council to remove the city’s chief operating officer. Councilmembers offered no explanations other than vague remarks about fresh starts.

There was only the final vote—6–3 against extending Chan’s contract for a ninth year. Rick Jennings, Lisa Kaplan and council newcomer Phil Pluckebaum voted to keep Chan. It would be nice to know the motives of all nine members. Their reasons would be instructive. But we got nothing.

A good way to measure the city’s health is whether smart people invest money here.

By that gage, the recent purchase of the Wells Fargo Tower at 400 Capitol Mall is encouraging news for Downtown.

A partnership affiliated with late local developer Buzz Oates recently paid $117 million for the elegant building. That’s a big drop from 2019, when the tower sold for almost $200 million.

But if Downtown were dead or dying, as some suggested after the pandemic, remote work for state employees and civil disobedience in 2020, these savvy investors would not have made the deal, even for a discount.

You wouldn’t expect fantastic pizza at an old hardware store on the banks of the Sacramento River, but Matt Brown knows better. His restaurant, Husick’s by Forester, is a gem.

Just a few minutes off Interstate 5, Husick’s is from another place and time. Opened more than a century ago as a hardware store in Clarksburg, the site is now a dining destination for wine tasters, boaters and Delta locals. In easy traffic, it’s about a 20-minute drive from Downtown.

Chef Brown worked in several local kitchens, and each stop brought more praise than the last. He cooked at Hook & Ladder, created the food program at The Jungle Bird tiki lounge and drove the exceptional kitchen at The Golden Bear. Plaudits followed.

Revolution Winery & Kitchen embodies vine to bottle and farm to fork. The menu celebrates local fruit, breads, produce and wine grapes, all from within 100 miles of Midtown.

Chef-owner Gina Genshlea was raised on a sustainable farm in South Sacramento. She says her family “grew everything” they ate.

Childhood was filled with chestnuts, pecans, walnuts, olives, stone fruits, chickens, cows, pigs, goats, house-cured prosciutto and coppa, plus grapes and wine production.

With winemakers Colleen Clothier and Samuel Wharton, Revolution pulls the best local wine grapes. The crew crushes, ferments, ages and sells its wines in the heart of town.

The company uses some off-site storage, but most wine is produced and bottled on S Street.

For LuTisha McGregor, principal at Umoja International Academy in East Sacramento, it’s all about love.

“I lead with love,” says McGregor. “I tell my students and staff I love them every day and the parents every week. That’s the type of leader I am. I want to come on campus and feel and see the love.”

Leading with love led to the school’s name change. Long known as Kit Carson, the combination middle and high school was one of three Sacramento City Unified School District campuses renamed in what Sac City officials call a “commitment to address school facility names that do not support the district’s values.”

Matt King knows how to get creative. He was named 2024 Volunteer of the Year by the city’s Department of Youth, Parks, & Community Enrichment, thanks to his creative efforts to revitalize William Chorley Park in South Sacramento.

“Even the parks department didn’t want to go there,” King says. “It had been ignored for about 10 years. The grass was 7-feet high. There was graffiti all over the bathroom. There were feces and needles all over the playground, drug and gang activity. It was bad and just got worse.”

A longtime South Sac resident, King took matters into his own hands after he saw a post on Nextdoor lamenting the state of the park. He realized uplifting this asset in his neighborhood would align with his own “journey to uplift.”