By admin 
As Sacramento County’s overall budget is shrinking, one department’s spending is growing. It’s the one that processes the plans for new developments, including some the county has no business entertaining.
Read more Trump lawsuit threatens sharp tuition hikes for undocumented California students
Developers seeking approvals of their projects are the largest source of revenue for the Planning and Environmental Review Division of the Sacramento County Department of Community Development. This pay-to-play scheme is the norm in California planning by local governments. It works when the end result is a project that is consistent with the vision of the community, which sometimes may mean no project at all.
Something’s gone dangerously astray inside Sacramento County planning. It recommended, and supervisors approved, a huge new development in Natomas that the city, in an unprecedented step, is now trying to stop in court.
While the litigation is about relatively narrow issues of whether the county adequately analyzed the impacts of the so-called Upper Westside project (it did not), Sacramento City Councilmember Roger Dickinson is hoping the conflict leads to a much broader conversation with the county about planning. At issue is one basic question: Why in heaven’s name is the county still in the development business when growth more logically belongs inside cities?
Councilmembers like Dickinson and the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors need to “take a deep breath for a moment and say, what are we doing here?” Dickinson said.
There was once a time when supervisors envisioned a lot less work for their planning and environmental review division. They unanimously believed that in Natomas, land under its jurisdiction should remain in agriculture, with matters of growth and expansion best left to the city. This belief by the supervisors was so strong that they signed an agreement to that effect with the city.
It was known as the Natomas Joint Vision. And it was Roger Dickinson, then representing Natomas on the Board of Supervisors, who was a key architect of this approach to planning.
He was right then. And he is right now.
Supervisors like Dickinson nearly a quarter century ago wanted to get out of the growth business in Natomas for all the reasons. Sacramento is the logical provider of municipal services like water and police. The city could take the lead on environmental issues with wildlife agencies to settle on which lands could be urbanized. And the county could continue to manage the lands zoned for agriculture.
Read more Other CSUs have mandated on-campus living. How does Sac State’s rollout compare?
But in 2010, Dickinson was replaced on the board by urban planner Phil Serna. Over time, he began to pretend as if the Natomas Joint Vision didn’t exist.
Today, the county’s Planning and Environmental Review Division says it is working on three large master plans for new growth in the unincorporated county. They are all in Natomas. If these master plans weren’t on the drawing boards, this division’s workload, and revenues, would decrease dramatically.
Overall, the 2026-27 county budget is down by 2.9%. Revenues from prospective builders at the Planning and Environmental Review Division, meanwhile, are this year and a whopping 34% over two years.
Charges for services, such as facilitating growth in Natomas, account for 53% of the revenues of the division’s entire budget. Serna, by championing these projects, has turned this planning division into a wholly owned subsidiary of the Natomas development interests.
The city’s lawsuit, and Serna’s departure from the board, create some much-needed openings for the county to revisit its entire planning approach in Natomas. “I don’t think it’s too late to unring that bell at all,” Dickinson said. Hopefully he is right. “We need to focus on using the land that we have available within the urban footprint to provide the housing and other elements of the urban landscape that we want to have,” he said.
There was a time when the county was the primary growth manager for the region when housing construction was booming and cities like Citrus Heights, Rancho Cordova and Elk Grove didn’t yet exist. Most of this period, however, existed during the previous century.
The best thing for Natomas is to revert to the Dickinson approach of designating the city as the one and only planner for any expansions. The county never rescinded its participation in the Natomas Joint Vision. All the county needs to do is honor that forward-thinking commitment. It’s the pretty obvious way to settle the city’s lawsuit against Upper Westside.
Read more California must make child marriage unlawful once and for all | Opinion