On Monday 6/17 the City of Sacramento held a meeting about updating the City’s General Plan. They hired a consultant, brought burritos and expected to have a warm/fuzzy chit chat with city residents in the neighborhoods that border unincorporated Arden Arcade. About 100 people showed up, but just two were actual city residents (from Midtown, even!) and only 6 people said they worked in the city. Most everyone was there to say “ixnay” to the City’s ongoing campaign to annex the revenue producing areas of unincorporated Arden Arcade - something that has been on the wish list of the City of Sacramento’s General Plan for at least 10 years. What was really odd was the City’s choice of meeting location: the Arcade Library on Marconi in our community. Wouldn’t you think if they wanted to hear from impacted neighborhood residents they would have held the meeting at a location convenient for residents - like, say, actually IN one of their impacted neighborhoods? What a concept.

People at the meeting did say a few things the City of Sacramento planners needed to hear, such as “take us out of your Sphere of Influence” (see map), “clean up the blight at the city limits along Marconi” and “the proposed homeless shelter at Cal Expo buffers the city from impacts by passing those impacts to nearby properties in unincorporated Arden Arcade across the street”. Overall, though, the meeting was something of a disaster for the city planners. They said there would be another meeting in the fall. Will they also hold that one outside their jurisdiction?

Many people in attendance would like to see Arden Arcade become its own city instead of being gobbled up by the City of Sacramento. Activists from the Advocates for Arden Arcade and the Country Cub Alliance of Neighborhoods offered to see about setting up a follow-up meeting next month to help clear the air about the processes involved with annexation and incorporation. According to discussions on Nextdoor, 100 people or so have asked to be notified about the follow-up meeting. Stay tuned, people…this might turn out to be a big deal.