Why are Sacramento County Supervisors pursuing a lame idea that’s bad for the region? Opinion
It was more than 16 years ago when the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors approved a “town center” development of 4,500 homes north of Rio Linda, in Elverta. Not a single home has been built as part of this plan ever since.
This is because the county estimates that it would cost developers more than $228 million to build the road system to convert what is now the boondocks of the northern county into suburban sprawl. Unsurprisingly, given the price tag, nothing has happened.
Opinion
As supervisors revisit the Elverta Specific Plan on Tuesday afternoon, the question is whether they will acknowledge that this is no longer 2007? Regional population growth is now moving at a fraction of what it was 16 years ago. In fact, the Sacramento region has already approved more suburban projects (like Elverta) than the region will need for the next generation. This is according to the Sacramento Council Area of Governments, the transportation planner for the region.
It is time for supervisors to think far more strategically about growth.
They must acknowledge that there can only be so much growth and what growth is approved must happen in a way that minimizes congestion and maximizes affordable housing and transit opportunities. Otherwise, it simply doesn’t make sense for the Sacramento County of today.
Sadly, it appears as if the county’s transportation staff is going about Elverta in precisely the wrong way, avoiding tough conversations about financial realities and pretending there is a way to make projects like this magically cost less.
County staff acknowledged in its report that the road improvements to make the Elverta Specifiic Plan a reality would cost more than $75,000 per unit. There isn’t an area in the region with housing prices that could support a fee burden that big.
So what did the county staff do then? They went to developers for guidance, and the developers said fees of less than $30,000 per unit could work.
How can the county bridge the shortfall between what this project would truly cost and what the regional housing market could afford? With terrible ideas based on unrealistic growth projections.
According to the latest SACOG population projections, the entire six-county region is expected to grow by approximately 278,000 between now and 2050. But Sacramento County’s transportation staff is suggesting that nearly half of the region’s entire growth is about to happen in Supervisor Phil Serna’s district. The county is floating the idea that the Elverta project only pay 14 percent of one needed interchange improvement because all this other nearby growth can pay the rest.
That is bananas. But it is the only way the county transportation staff can appease the development community and lower the transportation costs of this one project.
Setting aside projects like Elverta that have been approved but not built, SACOG estimates that all the expected population growth through 2050 could be accommodated by repurposing properties already inside communities for housing.
Infill projects have their own infrastructure challenges; but it makes so much more sense to maximize the value of retail and office sites that could be revitalized into new residential communities. And so many of these are in the unincorporated areas of the county that supervisors control. Every time they choose more sprawl rather than focusing inward, their communities suffer.
Supervisors and staff need to accept that some big approved projects still on the drawing may very well stay there. Nobody wants to pay for all those new roads. Advancing climate-friendly, infill growth is a far better use of the supervisors’ valuable time.
