No wi-fi for you!

That's right, time to re-up your own wireless contract, the City will not be helping you out. The City Council voted last night to cancel the contract with Sacramento Metro Connect. Although we reported here in January that wi-fi plans had returned, it appears that SMC was unable to put together the funding for the project.

It's no surprise that in today's economy, many of the technology giants pulled out of the deal. SMC estimated needing $15 million to get started plus ongoing costs to run the network. These costs were supposed to be supported by ads on the free network and supplemented by fees from the faster, ad-free network.

So now what? We'll have a good tally on our trees, a lost pile of water meters and no wi-fi. It seems that the City could have been far more proactive on this project and made a major difference. How much are we currently paying for network services for City and County buildings? Why not make a joint powers agreement with the state and blanket the entire downtown/midtown area? Many of these buildings are already using wireless repeaters so the startup cost of opening the network and adding a few firewalls would not be extensive.

Or we can keep on being almost but not quite as cool as San Francisco.

In the quest for information...

I was hunting for the official news release of the community meeting tonight at Inderkum High School to address an ongoing rash of home invasion robberies in North Natomas. I never did find the flier I was looking for but I did find something interesting...

Ray Tretheway (your city council member for Natomas!) has not updated his press release pages since 2006. That's right, an entire year and a half have gone by without any updates. Has he sent out press releases that haven't been added or is there really just nothing to report? I started a tour of Ray's links and realized he has not updates his calendar of events either. Or his online newsletters.

Now you may be saying to yourself: This isn't Ray's fault of course... the City is likely responsible for the information on that page and they haven't gotten around to it. That's all fine and dandy until you get to this disclaimer:

In order to further the effective electronic exchange of information and views between the City's residents and their elected representatives, the City of Sacramento provides each individual member of the Mayor and City Council with a page on the City's Website. The contents of this page have been chosen by the individual councilmember, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the City of Sacramento, its Mayor and Council, or other individual councilmembers.

So Ray has actually chosen to not update his pages?

Aren't we supposed to be a technology friendly city? And our own city council can't provide remotely timely information on their websites?

In case you missed the big announcement that I was looking for:

PUBLIC SAFETY IN NATOMAS MEETING

Tonight!

6:30pm, Inderkum High School Theatre

What is going on in North Natomas and where are the police???

Joe Sacramento has posted it best so I will not try to outdo his writing. North Natomas is currently plagued by a rash of home invasion and armed robberies. Please be careful, look out for your neighbors and be suspicious of anyone who looks out of place. I have personally seen two suspicious older teens behaving oddly this week (I know odd, I taught high school) and I did nothing because I didn't want to appear intolerant or perhaps racist. I'm kicking myself now for not making a simple phone call.

If you're in Natomas Park, call Paladin Security immediately if you see anything out of the ordinary. Do not hesitate, do not wait and do not intervene yourself. They have a much, much faster response time than the police in Natomas. Pathetic, disgusting and yet totally true.

Email Heather Fargo, anyone and everyone at the city and try the Sac Bee while you're at it. Then go outside and sit on your porch tonight. Knock on your neighbors' doors and get to know them. Share a cup of iced tea and chat about how smoky the air is. You need to know who stays home during the day, who is available in an emergency and who is watching your stuff when you're gone!

When you're done freaking out that your own garage is not safe and would like to stick your head back in the clouds, check out Rick Kushman's new column "The Good Life" all about life in Sacramento. While I appreciate his bubbly enthusiasm, I'm busy checking my backyard for armed robbers.

Whatever they're on, I wish I had some.

Seriously, the city council must have a really good supplier of some amazing drugs. Does it make any logical sense to anyone else that they annexed the Greenbriar area last night to allow more building in Natomas?

They must have missed the memo from FEMA about the state of the flood protection in Natomas. No wait, we know they got it because Fargo promised to go head to head with Matsui, who said safety is the primary concern. From Breton's Bee article dated 1/20/2008 "On Friday, Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento, easily rebuffed Fargo's argument. "If I thought that was the right way to go, I would. But this is a different time," Matsui said. "We need to move forward on flood protection."

At least she's reading the FEMA memos.

What the heck is the city council thinking? We're in a serious housing crunch. Pardee Homes all but abandoned a huge chunk of land and left me with an ugly wall to look at. Yet somehow, despite the major flood risk, the economy and ongoing debate about the safety of building more homes in Natomas, the city council thought this was a good plan?

Kevin Johnson for mayor, anyone? At least he has his own money and won't be beholden to AKT and their shady land deals. Natomas has seen this before. We're done.

Railyard Project gets the green light

Speaking of eyesores, the Railyard project got a green light from the City Council on Tuesday. Over the next 20 years, in theory, the project will begin to develop downtown into a "real" city. We'll see jobs, stores, mixed use housing projects, a cultural center and a major infill project take form.

I'm in support of the idea of the railyard project, I really am. But is this the city council to do it? So far we've seen the arena fall through, the completely botched development of North Natomas, the big hole known as The Towers and the troubled Aura Condo project. Sure, it's a down market but it wasn't in the 90's when they approved the debacle of North Natomas. The city surely has had an economist or two studying the market and preparing for fluctuations, right?

As a longtime resident of Sacramento, I'm ready for an all new council full of young, entrepreneurial talent with bold ideas, creative plans and a environmentally friendly way to make Sacramento really shine. This council is none of those... We can only keep our fingers crossed that the next election cycle will bring out some new blood.