·        Every Other Week Recycling - all residential customers will either be on an A or B week schedule for recycling collection.   You can “Find Your Service Day” and download the free Sac311 App to get text alerts or email reminders for your recycle collection week at www.sacrecycle.org.

·        Service Day Changes – collection days in certain parts of the City will be changing.  A notice confirming your recycle week and service day was sent at the end of May. You can also use our “Find Your Service Day” tool at www.sacrecycle.org or call 311 to confirm your collection day.

·        Containerized Yard Waste – all residential customers will be required to use a container for weekly yard waste collection.  Containers are automatically being delivered in the month of June to those customers who do not currently have one yet and weekly service will begin the week of July 1. Your service day will be the same as your garbage day. The city will no longer collect loose yard waste piles in the street except during leaf season.  For former year-round loose-in-the-street customers the last week of street collection will be June 24, 2013.

·        Leaf Season - Citywide loose-in-the-street collection of yard waste piles will occur November through January. Customers will be able to use their yard waste container for weekly pickup as well as place extra material out in a loose pile on the street in front of their residence during leaf season only.

·        Appointment Based Neighborhood Clean-Up Returns - all residential customers will be able to make one free appointment a year for the pickup of any bulky items including excessive yard waste. Program details are available at sacrecycle.org. Residents can call 311 or visit www.sac311.org to request an appointment.

·        Free Dump Coupon – Starting in July, residents will be able to call 311 to request one free dump coupon to self-haul a load of waste to the Sacramento Recycling and Transfer Station.

More information on all these changes is available at www.sacrecycle.org or call 311 if you have questions.

Please take time out of your busy schedule to attend a community meeting that will help decide the future of Sutter’s Landing Park. “Future Planning and Development at Sutter’s Landing Park” will be held on Wednesday, June 19th, from 7-8:30 at the skateboard park at Sutter’s Landing (next to the parking lot at the very end of 28th St.). This is your chance to let Councilman Steve Cohn and the City know what the park means to you and your family, and to encourage further restoration and enhancement of the natural environment to create a world-class nature-centered park in the heart of Sacramento. Numbers of voices count at this meeting! Let’s not look back in years to come and bemoan what could have been because we did not take the time to speak out for a nature-centered park at Sutter’s Landing. Please attend and spread the word!

BACKGROUND

Friends of Sutter’s Landing (FOSL) and Friends of the River Banks (FORB) created a vision for Sutter’s Landing Park that focuses on protecting and enhancing the natural habitat values there. This could be an exciting nature-centered park, the Gateway to the American River, with gathering places, trails for hiking and biking, canoe/kayak launch, amphitheater, nature center,the Two Rivers Trail and much more. We have the creative vision and we need the City to see that this is possible and desired by residents. See the vision map .

We are at an important crossroads for Sutter’s Landing Park. The current master plan for the area is outdated and largely obsolete. The City can’t afford a new master plan so this community meeting will help set the direction for future park development. If we are to create the spectacular “Gateway to the American River” that this area can become, we need to protect what is there and work toward a larger vision. Active recreation such as soccer fields, basketball courts and BMX tracks can be sited in any park, but this special riparian habitat along the American River, home to all manner of wildlife, cannot be re-created. It is a unique treasure in our community..With Sutter’s Landing located on a former landfill, we know the park presents unique challenges, but they can be overcome, as we have found several examples of successfully converted landfills. Let’s have our voices be heard and encourage the City to respect and enhance the wild area in our urban midst. Do it for yourself and future generations, as well as for the benefit of the land and wildlife.

Please come to the meeting on Wednesday, June 19, at 7 pm and add your voice to those who value Sutter’s Landing for its fabulous potential as an oasis of nature in our urban environment. Bring the whole family and encourage others to attend. It is critical that we have a large and vocal presence at this meeting. Other interests will be represented, as well. We are encouraging everyone who shares our vision to wear green shirts. Spread the news! Thank you and I hope to see you there.

by Pat Lynch

The term NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) has become a common pejorative, used most often to depict people who oppose development that they believe degrades the quality of neighborhood life. NIMBYS live in a variety of older houses on generally quiet streets. DIMBYS, (Development In My Back Yard) on the other hand, scorn NIMBYS, and yearn for new, spacious dwellings with warehouse-sized garages to park their Land Rovers. They long to buy into new developments containing expansive houses with much ballyhooed “modern amenities.”

The proposed McKinley Village project has fired up both groups. NIMBYS in East Sac and Midtown dread the traffic assault that will overwhelm them if developers blast through the levee to funnel thousands more cars daily into their streets. Developers say they’re not blasting through the levee, they’re blasting through the “embankment.” But blasting through is blasting through, the NIMBYS say, no matter what you call the target. Some of the kindlier, more humane NIMBYS fear that DIMBYS might be flooded or otherwise injured if they live in a bowl with a railroad and freeway spewing toxins from the rim. But DIMBYS appear to be fearless. Some of them say NIMBYS are old and don’t want to see a newer generation enjoy the good life. (You can find some of these unmannerly DIMBYS assertions on the East Sacramento Preservation Neighborhood Association Facebook page). One developer advocate told several NIMBYS who protested traffic explosion, “You live in an urban world. Deal with it.”

The developer, the DIMBYS and the City all reverently refer to the McKinley project as “infill,” and “smart growth.” But NIMBYS ask, how smart is infill that spills out into neighboring communities, thus creating traffic hazards and lowering property values? How smart is infill that creates outspill? While we ponder these matters pro-development lawyers try to change CEQA laws so that ‘obstructionist’ NIMBYS can’t sue “on aesthetic grounds” (that is, when oversized, overbuilt structures are wedged into small infill vacancies. The infamous twenty pounds of potatoes in a ten-pound sack comes to mind.

In this controversy I come down on the side of the NIMBYS. Old? No. I don’t consider myself old until I live in a group home with people whose names I can’t remember. Obstructionist? Sure, if I’m obstructing something I perceive as harmful. But to be certain about these matters, I researched the principles of smart growth and urban infill. One of the requirements is “compact building design.” I live in a compact house. Several McKinley Village houses will have three car garages. Another smart infill requirement is that it “provide a variety of transportation choices.” I live around the corner from the bus stop. The Prius sits in the driveway. The bike is in the den. We don’t know yet what shuttle service or bus line service the developers will present.

Megan Norris, Vice President of Riverview Capital Investment which funds the proposed McKinley Village, said there was “strong demand from residents in existing city neighborhoods for homes with modern… amenities.” Modern amenities? In my compact house I was able to plug in an electric car in a regular outdoor outlet. Central heat and air conditioning work efficiently in this bungalow built in 1920. So does every other modern amenity—desktop, laptop, iPad, iPhones,–you name it, I plug it in. I realized as I read that this house meets infill standards. My neighbors and I are what it’s all about. We can walk to Starbucks or the drug store. We can walk or bike to Corti Brothers or McKinley Park. And we do. Many take the J Street bus to downtown jobs.

We’re good NIMBYS. We work. We vote. We attend civic meetings. We support charities. We have Neighborhood Watch. We cherish the trees and flowers and recognize that ours is a classic, fragile environment. We care for one another. On my block alone seven people have Environmental Respiratory Disease, so we worry about auto exhaust and traffic increase that threatens the safety of our kids and the health of our lungs. We don’t like being told we’re anti-progress simply because we try to define the term.

The developers stay on message, say the same thing over and over in the expectation that it will somehow morph into accepted doctrine. But this doesn’t work with us. We don’t like being told that the fix in and things are “done deals.” We don’t like being told that we’d better accept this proposal because it’s the best we’ll get. It’s not. And this is what we say to the person who said, “You live in an urban world. Deal with it.” Here’s how we deal with it. We calm traffic and oppose its increase. And we resist perilous infill projects that turn stable neighboring areas into collateral traffic damage.

It’s sane and progressive to fight to preserve Midtown and East Sacramento. It’s right to resist car-centric projects that will foul our air and engulf us in traffic. Ad hominem Dimby attacks won’t deter us. We have, as they note, been around the block. Right now McKinley Village doesn’t seem to us like smart growth at all. It seems more like Phoenix.

Don’t miss The John Skinner Band on Saturday, June 15, 6 p.m. at Bertha Henschel Park.  Edie Lambert and Lloyd Levine will emcee and the ESIA Orchid & Onion Awards will be announced.

Food will be available for purchase from Hoppy Brewing Company, Burr’s Fountain and the Kiwanis Club.  Beer from Hoppy Brewing Company and wine from Bogle Vineyards will also be available for purchase.

FREE bicycle parking by SABA!

And mark your calendar for Saturday, June 22 – Mick Martin & the Blues Rockers at McKinley Park.

Membership in East Sacramento Preservation includes a free Drive Like Your Kids Live Here sign if you join in June.

The City of Sacramento Project Manager for the J Street and Folsom Boulevard Lane Conversion Project reports the road construction will occur in East Sacramento this summer.

The purpose of the project is to enhance neighborhood livability by reducing traffic speeds and volumes, improve safety, and to encourage walking and biking.  Following are the changes taking place:

J Street between 42^nd Street and 56^th Street is currently a four lane facility (two through lanes in each direction), with no left turn lanes, limited parking and no bike lanes.  This project is planning to convert this segment of J Street from two lanes in each direction to one lane in each direction, with a center two-way left-turn lane.

Folsom Boulevard between 34^th Street and 47^th Street is currently a four-lane facility (two through lanes in each direction), with no left turn lanes and partial bike lanes.  This project is planning to convert this segment of Folsom Boulevard from two lanes in each direction to one lane in each direction, with a center two-way left-turn lane.

The streets will first receive a slurry seal to cover up previous striping and to extend the life of the existing asphalt roadway.  After the seal, the streets will then receive the proposed striping layout.  Note that the Folsom plans also  include the segment of Alhambra Boulevard to 34^th Street.  This portion of roadway is already one lane in each direction but will be receiving a slurry seal and refreshed striping with some alterations.  All work is currently scheduled to begin in August of 2013 and complete in September of 2013.

Questions Contact:

Gregory J. Smith, P.E.

City of Sacramento

Department of Public Works

915 I Street, Room 2000

Sacramento, CA 95814-2604

(916) 808-8364

Too hot for Pops–never. Glenn Hall will rock on Saturday. The sundown will make it shady, shady and the river breeze will kick up. Don’t miss the fun with the band Mercy Me!

6:00pm Glenn Hall Park

Sandburg & Carlson Drive

Second Saturday art showing by 2013 Pops artist Brooke Walker-Knoblich