A fellow community member sent a great email to members of a  neighborhood association list I subscribe to. In it she opined that more residents must get involved in their communities in order for change to occur. I responded to her with my theory as to why more people don’t get involved. Of course my theory  is only based on my own experience. I recognize your mileage may vary..

Dear Brenda,

In my opinion it all starts at the top. We [Sacramentans]…

“The question to ask is how many more tragedies before we get the fire station we need on the West side of I-5? Whose home will be next or will it be a school? Which brave firefighter will have to try to beat the odds because we don’t have enough help? And what price will that firefighter and his family pay?” - Angelique Ashby

Community leader Angelique Ashby, President of the Creekside Neighborhood Association, and Co-Founder of the Greater Natomas Crime…

Updated 8:30am - 7Oct08

Fargo was absolutely pathetic on every level last night. In 22 years as a business professional and voter, I have never witnessed such an egregious, vindictive public official so replete with resentment. One absolutely can not be an effective leader (let along consensus builder!) with that kind of emotion ruling one’s entire being. No way. Last night Fargo showed through her snarky grin, condescending sighs and defensive body language why there is so much division in this…

You didn’t think I was gone for good, did you? Hey, I have to work, too. My job is such that is fluctuates from semi-organized chaos to blissful tranquility (with nothing in between) and the past few weeks have been the former.

I recently got promoted, and with my promotion came a ton of new responsibilities. Sigh. But I’m happy blessed to have a job. Times are tough, and I empathize with those who aren’t as fortunate. I have been in their…

“When you have a community that is on track to get a level of flood protection, to cripple us economically in the process is absolutely dumb,” -Heather Fargo in January of 2008 to KCRA in response to the Federally mandated building moratorium in Natomas.

Ben Adler of Capital Public Radio did a fantastic spot this morning on the building moratorium in Natomas, and how Sacramento officials like City Manager Ray “Rainman” Kerridge (and Heather Fargo and the Council), are going absolutely bananas…

I read a somewhat somber article in Time Magazine today about the great sell-off of American companies to foreign interests. It really got me thinking about the most important things in life.

The impetus for the article was the sale of Anheuser-Busch (read: Budweiser) to a Belgian-based, Brazillian-controlled company called InBev. Price tag? $52 BILLION dollars. Anheuser-Busch isn’t alone according to the article. The weak dollar coupled with a weak economy is leading to what Time has dubbed “The Great American Yard…

WARNING: TURN DOWN YOUR COMPUTER SPEAKER VOLUME BEFORE YOU CLICK THE “READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE” LINK BELOW — YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.

I run a bit behind on this stuff (yes, I do have a family and a job!), so apologies if it’s old news. But Mayor Fargo and puppet Ray ‘TreeTheWay’ Tretheway recently grabbed another tree award at the 76th Annual Mayor’s conference. The award pulled in another $75,000 for the Sac Tree Foundation (Treetheway is its Director).…

Another day, another ‘kick in the teeth’ of Sacramento taxpayers. At this rate, we’re all going to need dentures pretty soon. Couple of things to cover here. Let’s start with Mayor Fargo’s number one priority: Trees.

Today the Sacramento City Council approved a $650,000 expenditure for “Urban Forest” rangers to COUNT TREES in the city (see the end of this article for a brochureware email from Sac Tree guru Ray Treetheway).

Countin’ trees ay? Hope they count them trees better than they counted…

Note: Please see the end of this article for Joe Sac’s first contest! Yes, there are prizes! Seriously!

From the City of Sacramento web site of Ray Tretheway:

“Welcome to my web page! It is an honor to serve as your Sacramento City Council representative for Alkali Flat, Downtown, Richards Boulevard, South Natomas, North Gate, and North Natomas. Ed note: Ironic that North Natomas is LAST? “..and North Natomas.” How utterly revealing.

“While serving on the Sacramento City Council I am concentrating…

Time to stop and smell the flowers with Sunshine Ray Tretheway and his staff! Here we have included a few of our favorite quotes from two Tretheway letters that appeared on the Natomas Buzz (http://www.natomasbuzz.com) web site recently.

The first set of bites are from Tretheway himself in response to a resident’s status update on the North Natomas Financial Plan, in which the resident pleads with community members to come to city council meetings to convince the regal council that North…