The following is the contents of an email sent the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors
boardclerk@saccounty.net
Public Comment 5-14-20 / Ordinance No. STA 20-001
(Please publicly read the following statement out loud into the record)
It's gratifying to read that the County is considering a half cent sales tax increase to improve roads and transit. I'd urge you to adopt this.
I know some oppose spending money on transit because it's so un-serviceable as currently configured in Sacramento County. Suburban sprawl densities are too low to provide enough riders within a walk of the stops, and the County's street design offers little or nothing in the way of pedestrian amenities. Sidewalks are often discontinuous, and adjacent to fast-flowing traffic. Given those circumstances, regional transit is designed-to-fail, and working as designed.
In the above photo of a transit stop at Kenneth & Greenback, no sidewalk connects the transit stop to any neighbors. Potential transit riders must stand on the gravel shoulder next to fast-flowing traffic without even the benefit of a curb to protect them from cars that might stray into the shoulder. I wish I could say this is uncommon, but unfortunately, it’s not.
It's unnecessary, too. About half a block away from the Kenneth and Greenback stop, there's an actual destination (a health club / medical office building) with a turnout where a bus could pull out of traffic, vertical curbs and wide sidewalks. Across the street from that health club is a retirement home and Winco supermarket that could provide riders and/or destinations for transit. But there's no transit stop at that location.
If Sacramento's transit were not designed to fail, like the above stop, it would likely be better used, and people would understand the need to fund it. In fact transit systems throughout the world, even in third world countries like Brazil and Bolivia, pay their own way and do not need subsidies like ours, when the design support exists. The low density and lack of pedestrian amenities makes failure the most likely option here, though.
Continued long commutes without the option of transit increase CO2 emissions. Fully used transit is cheaper too--about one eighth the cost per passenger mile of single-occupant autos. Add to that the fact that the fastest growing demographic in our population is adults older than 85. How eager are you to encounter them piloting their cars as you're driving down the road?
The consequences of the additional CO2 from those autos are not pretty, either:
There's nothing saying California couldn't have conflagrations like those pictured above in Australia. Heck we already burned Paradise, Calfornia to the ground thanks to the global-warming-fueled drought that made Australia's and our forests into tinder.
The County could remedy the above shortcomings of transit-unfriendly development by supporting more multi-family development in suburbs--like four- or eight-plexes instead of duplexes at the corners, even in low-density building, for example. The County could also encourage redeveloping commercial properties to include residences above or beside the stores. This could provide transit hubs if the pedestrian-friendly Complete Streets requirement for new development were included.
Redeveloping malls like this could revive failing commercial sites, and provide more affordable housing, while providing the transit customers that sprawl development so actively discourages with its low densities and poor pedestrian amenities. The owner of Arden Fair even mentioned such mixed use as a potential option for the future as he announced Nordstrom's closing in today's paper.
A reminder: the U.S. is "over-stored" with more commercial property than others, so is more vulnerable:
I'd also urge you to approve funding for a public bank. Roughly half of the cost of large infrastructure projects proposed with that sales tax increase goes for financing. There's no sense in sending all that money to Wall Street if we could recycle it locally.
There are many other uses for public financing, too. For example, Supervisor Frost has complained in her newsletter about how low Sacramento County's reserves are. A public bank could provide a line of credit that would enhance or supplant those reserves.
Finally, I'd urge the Supervisors to endorse the "split roll" proposal that will be on the November ballot. This would provide an additional $11 billion in annual tax revenue statewide by closing an egregious loophole in proposition 13.
The loophole says commercial property will only be reassessed if more than 50% of the property changes hands. So Michael Dell (of Dell Computers) can buy a Santa Monica hotel, split title between himself, his wife and a corporation he controls, and the sale does not update the property tax assessed to current values.
Throughout the state lots of properties have taken advantage of this loophole and are, in effect, still assessed at 1978 values, plus a modest inflation adjustment, even though price increases of real estate have far exceeded that adjustment.
This tax would not impair businesses either. If a new business wants to build its own facility, it would pay a higher property tax in the current setup. That setup is as likely to impair business as it is to support it.
I recently saw a political sign in my neighborhood that said it supported "Any Sensible Adult, 2020." I urge you to be those adults.
--Regards,
--Mark Dempsey
--Vice chair emeritus Rio Linda/Elverta Community Planning Advisory Council
boardclerk@saccounty.net
Public Comment 5-14-20 / Ordinance No. STA 20-001
(Please publicly read the following statement out loud into the record)
It's gratifying to read that the County is considering a half cent sales tax increase to improve roads and transit. I'd urge you to adopt this.
I know some oppose spending money on transit because it's so un-serviceable as currently configured in Sacramento County. Suburban sprawl densities are too low to provide enough riders within a walk of the stops, and the County's street design offers little or nothing in the way of pedestrian amenities. Sidewalks are often discontinuous, and adjacent to fast-flowing traffic. Given those circumstances, regional transit is designed-to-fail, and working as designed.
In the above photo of a transit stop at Kenneth & Greenback, no sidewalk connects the transit stop to any neighbors. Potential transit riders must stand on the gravel shoulder next to fast-flowing traffic without even the benefit of a curb to protect them from cars that might stray into the shoulder. I wish I could say this is uncommon, but unfortunately, it’s not.
It's unnecessary, too. About half a block away from the Kenneth and Greenback stop, there's an actual destination (a health club / medical office building) with a turnout where a bus could pull out of traffic, vertical curbs and wide sidewalks. Across the street from that health club is a retirement home and Winco supermarket that could provide riders and/or destinations for transit. But there's no transit stop at that location.
If Sacramento's transit were not designed to fail, like the above stop, it would likely be better used, and people would understand the need to fund it. In fact transit systems throughout the world, even in third world countries like Brazil and Bolivia, pay their own way and do not need subsidies like ours, when the design support exists. The low density and lack of pedestrian amenities makes failure the most likely option here, though.
Continued long commutes without the option of transit increase CO2 emissions. Fully used transit is cheaper too--about one eighth the cost per passenger mile of single-occupant autos. Add to that the fact that the fastest growing demographic in our population is adults older than 85. How eager are you to encounter them piloting their cars as you're driving down the road?
The consequences of the additional CO2 from those autos are not pretty, either:
There's nothing saying California couldn't have conflagrations like those pictured above in Australia. Heck we already burned Paradise, Calfornia to the ground thanks to the global-warming-fueled drought that made Australia's and our forests into tinder.
The County could remedy the above shortcomings of transit-unfriendly development by supporting more multi-family development in suburbs--like four- or eight-plexes instead of duplexes at the corners, even in low-density building, for example. The County could also encourage redeveloping commercial properties to include residences above or beside the stores. This could provide transit hubs if the pedestrian-friendly Complete Streets requirement for new development were included.
Redeveloping malls like this could revive failing commercial sites, and provide more affordable housing, while providing the transit customers that sprawl development so actively discourages with its low densities and poor pedestrian amenities. The owner of Arden Fair even mentioned such mixed use as a potential option for the future as he announced Nordstrom's closing in today's paper.
A reminder: the U.S. is "over-stored" with more commercial property than others, so is more vulnerable:
I'd also urge you to approve funding for a public bank. Roughly half of the cost of large infrastructure projects proposed with that sales tax increase goes for financing. There's no sense in sending all that money to Wall Street if we could recycle it locally.
There are many other uses for public financing, too. For example, Supervisor Frost has complained in her newsletter about how low Sacramento County's reserves are. A public bank could provide a line of credit that would enhance or supplant those reserves.
Finally, I'd urge the Supervisors to endorse the "split roll" proposal that will be on the November ballot. This would provide an additional $11 billion in annual tax revenue statewide by closing an egregious loophole in proposition 13.
The loophole says commercial property will only be reassessed if more than 50% of the property changes hands. So Michael Dell (of Dell Computers) can buy a Santa Monica hotel, split title between himself, his wife and a corporation he controls, and the sale does not update the property tax assessed to current values.
Throughout the state lots of properties have taken advantage of this loophole and are, in effect, still assessed at 1978 values, plus a modest inflation adjustment, even though price increases of real estate have far exceeded that adjustment.
This tax would not impair businesses either. If a new business wants to build its own facility, it would pay a higher property tax in the current setup. That setup is as likely to impair business as it is to support it.
I recently saw a political sign in my neighborhood that said it supported "Any Sensible Adult, 2020." I urge you to be those adults.
--Regards,
--Mark Dempsey
--Vice chair emeritus Rio Linda/Elverta Community Planning Advisory Council
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