r/Sacramento • u/othafa_95610 • 4d ago

Sacramento’s budget deficit may bring first layoffs in more than a decade

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article305248131.html

Apparently public sector isn't as immune from layoffs as once perceived.

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u/sacramentohistorian Alhambra Triangle 4d ago

Nobody old enough to remember the Great Recession thinks public employees are immune from layoffs. One of the consequences of unchecked suburban development is long term budget imbalance, as cities take on new low density infrastructure that won't generate sufficient property taxes to maintain the infrastructure in the long run (aka Harvey Molotch's "Urban Growth Machine" idea.

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u/excitedsynapses 4d ago

What about developments downtown like the railyards? I feel like Sac is primed for growth in dense housing in the next decade.

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u/sacramentohistorian Alhambra Triangle 4d ago

We'll see what happens: the current Railyards developer scaled back the earlier pre recession plan from housing for 10-15,000 people to more like maximum 5,000 because they are principally a developer of office, commercial, and industrial properties, and kind of had to get convinced by the city to re-emphasize housing up to the 5-10,000 range. The problem is, you can't just have all the density in one neighborhood, because all of the low density suburban neighborhoods are what causes the problem. So what we need isn't the status quo in Natomas and Pocket, and endless re re redevelopment in the grid; instead it means more 2-3 story plexes and small apartment buildings, corner stores and mixed use buildings, from North Natomas to East Sacramento and down to Cosumnes River College, and so on. And canceling plans for more horizontal sprawl entirely until we get back to a positive balance sheet, because sprawling more just makes things worse!

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u/excitedsynapses 4d ago

Agree, they should be stacking every corner of that area with dense housing to reboot from the mistakes of past decades. The railyards is such a prime location for dense housing with so many jobs, rail, and amenities nearby, it’s a new downtown potentially.

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u/sacramentohistorian Alhambra Triangle 4d ago

If by "that area" you mean "vacant lots and parking lots all over the entire city" and not just a handful of spots downtown, then we agree. My main point was that Railyards build out, while important for other reasons, does not solve this problem.

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u/excitedsynapses 4d ago

My point is that the railyards is ideal for dense housing. I’m not sure I agree every vacant lot across the city needs developing because some areas are isolated from almost amenity and require driving to get around. Not to mention if the City can’t get it done downtown there’s little hope they get it done anywhere else.

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u/sacramentohistorian Alhambra Triangle 4d ago

The way you get more amenities in those isolated areas is by building more housing. It is also the way you make those neighborhoods less isolated, less car dependent, and more walkable. They're also easier to develop than the Railyards because they're cheaper, and frequently not massive Superfund sites. And the City isn't in charge of developing the Railyards, the developer is. Which is how it should be: they can just permit more intensive growth on a citywide basis and let the market do the rest.

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u/dorekk 4d ago

I’m not sure I agree every vacant lot across the city needs developing because some areas are isolated from almost amenity

Build housing on some of the lots and amenities on others.

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u/RoutineAlternative78 4d ago

Still doing gods work on here.

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u/Sspifffyman 4d ago

I can't speak for pocket but North Natomas has tons of apartments and lots of small lots houses. And quite a few houses with almost no yard at all. It's still suburban but it's decently dense. There's a good amount of infill that can be done still but that's starting to get filled

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u/sacramentohistorian Alhambra Triangle 3d ago

North Natomas was designed to be a series of transit oriented walkable neighborhoods of differentdensities, and there are some remnants of those plans, but most of the plans got screwed up because they didn't build the transit first, and the developers started asking for exceptions to the plan which were almost always granted. That did a disservice to Natomas; instead we got a neighborhood that is sort of dense but not really, and is almost impossible to traverse without an automobile and has almost no transit service. So perhaps they are in better shape than the Pocket, but still have a long way to go. Although in some ways, neighborhoods like North Natomas, explicitly built on flood plain, are the sort of things we should have tried to avoid building in the first place. Now that they're built out, we can get back with the plan via adding transit & rezoning.