As Elk Grove develops its fiscal year 2025 fiscal plan, can Kevin connect it? Does he even care?
Is Kevin Spease just another potted plant on the city council dais?
Right now, the city of Elk Grove’s budget manager, innovations czar, and other department heads are putting together budgets for fiscal year 2025. The next fiscal year starts July 1 and is generally blessed by Mayor Bobbie Singh-Allen at one of the June regular city council meetings.
As part of the fiscal year plan, Jeff Werner and his public works department, guided by the city’s innovations czar, Christopher Jordan, put together a five-year capital improvement program (CIP). Jointly, Werner and Jordan plan projects to improve the quality of life, or so they say, for the benefit of taxpayers.
As reported last November, no projects were included in the five-year plan to fill a gap of less than a half mile of the sidewalk just south of the new housing development called Hamilton Park on Elk Grove-Florin Road, just south of Sheldon Road, to where it resumes just north of West Camden Drive. Along with this gap, there is a short gap without a sidewalk on Elk Grove-Florin Road, where the new Oak Rose supportive housing project is planned.
Given the sidewalk gap in front of the new Oak Rose project will be filled, the only gap along the westside sidewalk between Calvine Road (the city’s northern border) and the southern extremities of Elk Grove Regional Park at Castle Park Drive is the segment between Sheldon Road and West Camden Drive.
The city bureaucrats and Councilmember Spease will undoubtedly say the sidewalks will be built once the empty parcels between Hamilton Park and West Camden Drive, which are zoned RD-10 (10 housing units per acre), are developed. Since both parcels are in the Whitehouse Creek flood zone, it could be some time before development.
In the meantime, can the city not build at least a hard-pack trail with, say, decomposed granite or some other intermediate solution to make all of Elk Grove-Florin Road safely accessible for pedestrians now and not 20 years from today? Is this too much to ask?
So, as the city bureaucrats develop the fiscal year 2025 budget and adjustments to the CIP, it would be noteworthy to see if District 3 Councilmember Kevin Spease can fulfill campaign promises and build the sidewalk. Nothing short of advocating and pushing hard for his district, which in theory is his job, to improve pedestrian safety and access will reveal Spease as nothing more than one of five uncaring Elk Grove City Council potted plants.
