Here’s what I would do
- Put an auto mall in the area North of North Natomas or on the way to the airport.
- Bring a huge centerpiece family venue to North Natomas residents. A regional championship bowling alley? A Sun Splash Mini Golf? A tournament style softball park? Aren’t N Natomas residents sick of having to go across town to have some fun?
- Have a community city site like oregonlive.com in Portland, OR. Include full blown community forums and live police scanner feeds for ALL law enforcement agencies 24/7- 365. If not live scanner feed, implement post de facto RSS feeds whereby calls are posted to the web site and available for viewing or text message subscription within 5 minutes of call closure.
- Start a city or county lotto game. Proceeds fund anti crime initiatives and education. Period.
- Extend the “city guide” program (or something similar) to Natomas so volunteers on bikes cruise N Natomas and S Natomas and report probs to police, help enforce curfews and truancy. Ask for volunteers. You will get them. Guardian Angels might be interested, too. Stop treating those guys like they are vermin.
- Start a CITY WIDE, high visibility youth program with the express goal of keeping kids in school. Create a logo, make t-shirts, and make it a big deal like the NBA’s “Read to Achieve” or “It’s cool to stay in school” programs. Enlist the services of parole and probation officers, athletes, millionaire pro sports team owners, rap artists, and diamond-studded real estate developers and landlords living in Costa Mesa, La Jolla, Calabasas, Santa Barbara (yeah, you know who you are) etc and getting rich off Sacramento residents. “It takes a village.” Let’s start living up to that credo. Most of these kids don’t even have fathers. Let’s get real and help them. We need to start showing some humility and asking people to submit their creative ideas on how to address the dropout rate and break these gangs up. Dickinson and Fargo are bureaucratic dinosaurs who think TAXES are the answer to everything. Tax now and we’ll figure it out later. NO WAY. NO NEW TAXES!
- Start a program that creates an incentive to shop locally and patronize area businesses instead of buying online, via eBay, etc. Why send tax dollars to other states?? Maybe we start with electronics. Every time you buy a new electronics item (big screen, DVD, etc etc) you get a certain number of points. When you hit a certain goal you get an award of some type. I need to work out the details of this, but the point is that we need to keep our sales tax dollars HERE in Sacramento, and stop sending them to other states for online orders whenever possible.
- Create incentive program that rewards consumers for buying locally rather than sending tax dollars to other states via online purchases.
- ENFORCE the curfew in the City of Sac. Same as Elk Grove: “anyone younger than 18 is subject to a 10 p.m.-to-daybreak curfew when not accompanied by parents or a guardian.” If these young kids want to play hard ball, let’s play hard ball with them.
- Provide INCENTIVES for businesses to create work-from-home positions for their employees. Work with county to give tax incentives to businesses who allow telecommuting. Will clean the air and ease the congestion, NO BRAINER. (co-authored by Terry)
- Criminalize drunk driving, reckless driving, and street racing within city limits. Fines for any of these offenses should be a minimum of $10,000 per occurrence and force a minimum 3 year suspension of one’s driver’s license. The terrorism on our roads will not cease until we begin prosecuting these people like the criminals they are. What is it going to take? How many more innocent people are going to have to die?
- Get crime under control. Hold town hall meetings. Talk to San Jose about how they are able to have less crime than Sacramento, but TWICE the size
- FIX OUR ANTIQUATED STOPLIGHTS THAT MAKE CARS STOP WHEN NO TRAFFIC IS COMING! I thought this city wanted to reduce emissions? LA has way better carbon footprint than Sac!
- Get the deficit under control. Talk to cities who don’t have shortfalls. Also, grab a handful of successful business leaders from Sac and get their input. Give them full reign to investigate and audit just as they would if they owned the place. Then, put emergency orders in place to get rid of the “red tape” and silly regulations that created the problem to start with! (co authored by Terry)
- Reenact the North Natomas Master Plan and the NNFF and get N Natomas the police, substation, rec center, etc they are PAYING for
- Remove all city council members from the Downtown Sacramento Partnership. Conflict of interest, Lawsuit against DSP for Brown Act violations in the books. HUGE conflict of interest
- Introduce legislation to ban city council members from having the same political consultant. One consultant represents 5 of our 9 council members now. Smacks of cronyism. Gotta go gotta go
- Open the city web site up to be way more interactive and inviting for people to express their concerns, make sure the mayor’s site truly reflects the mayor’s agenda. Current site shows GREEN CHALLENGE as only eye-catching graphic on site, yet mayor says public safety is #1. Emergency preparedness at bottom of page in tiny print.
- GET THE ONLINE COMMUNITY FORUM OFF THE SACRAMENTO BEE’S WEB SITE AND OVER TO THE CITY’S WEB SITE WHERE IT BELONGS. Try being innovators for a change. We are the capitol of CA, the biggest tech hub in the world! Internet forums are second nature for people to use now. We need a city forum and district forums on the city’s web site. Enlist qualified residents to moderate the forums. MAKE the council members read and participate in the forums. Make sure to use a board where topics can be ranked whereby the the most important topics are always on top and the most visible to everyone.
- Have dedicated time in council meetings to discuss HOT topics in the community forums on the city’s web site.
- Mail ALL disaster preparedness documentation to ALL residents living in the AE flood zone footprint. Communicate how you intend to inform people if the levee breaks. What is the plan besides screaming and calling 911 ?
- Get the city logo on the city web site main page. We have a beautiful logo and don’t even use it
- Hold the state of the city address in Cesar Chavez Park with the community and do not charge people to come. Have local businesses set up booths and make it a business expo, too. BBQ!
- Get rid of State of Downtown address, downtown is only one neighborhood in a huge city.
- Establish metrics to ensure ALL neighborhoods in Sacramento are getting fair treatment
- Ban all private city meetings such as the ones that took place with the Maloofs during arena negotiations. It’s OUR city government, and we have a right to hear who is saying what on our behalves
- More to follow
