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January 26, 2005

~sacbee: Arden Arcade man cooks up cityhood plan

News - Arden Arcade man cooks up cityhood plan - sacbee.com

Bill Davis says the county has neglected his community, and incorporation may be the answer.
By Cameron Jahn -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PST Saturday, January 8, 2005

Reading the newspaper at his favorite waffle shop last year, Bill Davis decided he had waited long enough for change to come to Arden Arcade.

While the county descended into a second year of budget cuts and
supervisors discussed cutting 84 positions from the Sheriff's
Department, the newest cities in the region - Citrus Heights, Elk Grove
and Rancho Cordova - were adding police officers and socking money away
in reserves.

All around Arden Arcade, Davis sees signs of dwindling county funds: sparse sheriff's patrols, potholed streets, acres of graying commercial centers and a community with no identity.

Davis wants what the new cities tout, and while finishing his coffee that morning in November 2003, he began laying plans to transform his unincorporated neighborhood into a city. He folded his paper, walked out of the restaurant and began punching numbers into his cell phone.

"We have to do something - are you in?" he asked a few of his closest friends in the community.

Davis rounded up interest from a handful of fellow activists to form the Arden Arcade Cityhood Study Team. A few weeks later, the movement to create Sacramento County's eighth city was born.

"As a community we're teetering, we're getting older, and we can ignore it, or we can take control and do something about it," Davis said recently.

The cityhood group - including a reverend, a stay-at-home mom, a police dispatcher and a few retirees - has little experience in municipal politics, but they have hired a consultant to examine whether the tax-rich community of 86,000 could stand on its own at the city of Sacramento's eastern edge.

Cityhood for Arden Arcade is a long way off - and has been made harder by a new state law that gives emerging cities fewer tax dollars - but county officials have begun to worry. The new city would take control of the county's most important sales tax engines: the Fulton Avenue auto dealers, two shopping malls, upscale boutiques on Fair Oaks Boulevard and strip centers dotting Howe Avenue, Auburn Boulevard, Watt Avenue and Arden Way.

Sales tax receipts in the area topped $11 million in 2000. Citrus Heights brought in $12 million last year from sales taxes.

"What the financial and service impacts will be, we're still trying to figure that out," said Paul Hahn, the county's economic development director. The county will have to assess what services it could provide to the unincorporated area if Arden Arcade cityhood siphons tax dollars, he said, adding that the county may have to recruit new retailers to generate sales taxes.

County officials are unlikely to sit by as another cityhood effort further erodes their political clout. Muriel Johnson, who represented Arden Arcade for 12 years on the Board of Supervisors before retiring earlier this month, said the county plans to fix Arden Arcade's small problems - what she calls the "low-hanging fruit" - such as planting trees to spruce up streets and supporting new neighborhood associations.

"This board is not going to carve up the empire," Johnson said, predicting that Arden Arcade residents would see no reason to incorporate when the county's efforts bear fruit in three to five years. "Can we do things better? Sure, but I wish they'd give us a chance to try."

Minor fixes to Arden Arcade, however, will not appease Davis, a soft-spoken former bureaucrat who fielded his share of angry calls from residents like himself while he worked as a waste water-treatment official in Long Beach.

Now, he's a silver-haired retiree convinced the county is not set up to serve suburbs such as Arden Arcade.

Atop Davis' list of grievances is representation. Each of the five supervisors serves 250,000 people, but Davis wants to create a five-member city council in Arden Arcade, with each member representing 17,000 residents.

"Maybe we can do it better," he said. "The City of Arden Arcade has a nice ring to it."

It would be at least 2006 before voters see an incorporation question before them at the ballot box, where cityhood drives ultimately sink or swim. Davis hopes to ramp up a publicity campaign next year, and he has been making the rounds to neighborhood associations and park boards with his favorite story about the waffle shop and reading the newspaper.

County officials have spent the past four years refining a plan to be more responsive to the suburbs, giving communities more control over land use and limited decision-making power.

The plan includes promises to be more responsive and to beef up code enforcement. Creating a city in Arden Arcade was never discussed as an option.

"This is not intended to win over anybody on the incorporation question," said Paul Lake, interim neighborhood services director.

"It's intended to provide the best service for people; that's what this is all about."

Sacramento County has 550,000 residents living in urbanized areas outside of city boundaries. That leaves the county to pay for expensive services such as planning, animal control and law enforcement - services often provided by cities that amounted to $21 million from county finances last year.

If incorporation takes off, Arden Arcade would rely heavily on sales tax dollars to pay for services. Millions that the new city would have received from vehicle license fees was cut by two-thirds by a new state law that keeps most of the money with the state.

County officials have not calculated how much they spend to serve Arden Arcade, but part of the area's tax base supports poorer areas such as Rio Linda and Foothill Farms, both aging bedroom communities with few commercial areas.

Foothill Farms activist Lisbeth Gray said cityhood in Arden Arcade would rob her neighborhood of a shot at revitalization.

"Essentially, what they will do is strangle the county's ability to do much of anything for us, so we will never become self-sustaining," she said. "So what's happening is this corner of the county will dwindle into a severely blighted, sadder and sadder community."

Davis shrugs off those concerns as the county's problem.

"I can understand what the county's problem is, but it reinforces my view that the elected (officials) haven't done anything to change the way they do business in last few years," Davis said.

"I would think this would be an opportunity for the elected officials to get rid of some big headaches like us and say, 'If you want it, let them have it.' "

County supervisors have dismissed Davis' effort to create a new city as an small effort by a fringe group with no backing.

The Arden Arcade Cityhood Study Team, however, has an advantage over suburban residents frustrated with the county - advice and financial support from officials in Citrus Heights, Elk Grove and Rancho Cordova.

Political events also may be on Davis' side. Supervisors Johnson and Roger Niello, two of the most outspoken critics of cityhood, are no longer on the board. Incoming Supervisor Susan Peters has taken no position on cityhood for Arden Arcade, which falls in her district. Supervisor Roberta MacGlashan helped shepherd Citrus Heights to cityhood and got her start in politics on the first City Council there.

"I'd rather look at how we can make it happen, rather than standing in their way," she said during the campaign.

As a city, Arden Arcade would model itself after Citrus Heights, which is also largely built out with an older population and a large retail base.

Since becoming a city, Citrus Heights has stashed $30 million in reserves, doubled the number of police officers on the street, revitalized the city center, and will repave every street in the city in a few years, City Manager Henry Tingle said.

"The will of the people always wins out," he said. "If Arden Arcade is dead set to move ahead to incorporation, there's nothing the county can do to stop it."

About the writer:

* The Bee's Cameron Jahn can be reached at (916) 321-1038 or cjahn@sacbee.com.