Am I the only one that's bothered by Fresno being slightly bigger? (San Jose: houses, neighborhood)

[marland]

Originally Posted by CeJeH

Anybody that has spent any time in Sacramento and Fresno knows unquestionably that Sacramento is the bigger city. Our metropolitan population is 2.5 times bigger than Fresno. We have more big city amenities and more of a big city feel. Even our fledgling under-developed downtown blows downtown Fresno out of the water. But for the last 2 decades or so, Fresno city limits has been just slightly larger than Sacramento's, and it bugs me.

The most recent Census Data from 2010 shows Sacramento as having a population of around 467k people in an area of just over 100 sq miles. Fresno is listed at around 495k people in about 112 sq miles. This gives Fresno the edge as being the largest inland city in California and the largest city in the Central Valley. Fresno overtook Sacramento in population in the 2000 census and has maintained a lead of about 30,000 people since then.

I know that this is a dubious honor and is relatively meaningless, but it annoys me that Fresno of all places has this distinction over Sacramento, which is in my opinion the superior city. Can't we just annex Arden/Arcade and South Sac and get this over with?

When Joe Serna was Mayor of Sacramento there was a serious effort to combine both the City and County governments. At the time there was no city of Rancho Cordova, no City of Citrus Heights, no City of Elk Grove. Policy wise there were some strong arguments one unified combined political entity, specifically you could use the tax revenue from new developments to help pay for redeveloping older neighborhoods. Second you could potentially have much better regional planning. If there was one local government, in theory you wouldn't have each local government over zoning retail in an effort to land sales tax receipts in their jurisdiction. Its was for reasons like this San Antonio combined its county and city governments.

Serna tanked the effort because he was afraid that if you added the suburban conservative white voters to voter rolls, that the Mayor of the combined entity would no longer be a Democrat and the ethnic minority politicians such as himself would not have a substantial enough part of the voting pool to have much influence at likely wouldn't be able to elect one of there own Mayor of the combined City and County of Sacramento.

But the other problem with big local governments is that as a local government gets too big it becomes less responsive to individual citizens because in order to run for office to challenge incumbents you need to raise a lot of money to make your voice heard and that means getting money from developers, unions and other special interests to run for office. Right now the County of Sacramento is too big. One of the reasons that hookers are on Watt Avenue and Auburn Blvd is that local government isn't responding well enough. But I am not sure that the solution is to combine these neighborhoods with the City of Sacramento either. I mean right now the City of Sacramento is also neglecting areas like Hagginwood, Ben Ali, Swantson estates. I doubt that annexing more neighborhoods into the City of Sacramento is going to make local government function better in Arden Arcade, in South Sac or for that matter in any of the current parts of the City of Sacramento. Instead of being areas neglected by the County of Sacramento I think they would become additional areas of the City of Sacramento that were neglected by the City of Sacramento.

http://www.cityofsacramento.org/gis/...borhoods_E.pdf

What I think might work is making more local governments. I think Arden Arcade probably should incorporate, Carmichael and Fair Oaks probably should incorporate. South Sac probably should incorporate. But with the exception of Arden Arcade the reason these areas won't incorporate is that what these neighborhoods collect in taxes doesn't cover the cost of the government services provided to these areas. This is also the reason that I doubt no other current municipalities are going to annex these communities. I also think getting rid of prop 13 makes a lot of sense, but that is probably an argument for another day. But in this context I am arguing mostly that if there was no prop 13, then places like Carmichael, Fair Oaks, North Highlands and South Sac probably could afford to set up there own local governments.

I also think the annexation of North Sacramento by the City of Sacramento probably didn't benefit North Sacramento much, but that again is probably an argument for another day and there are some strong arguments for actually breaking up the City of Sacramento into several smaller more responsive local governments. More generally I think if we capped local governments at maybe 80k or 100K, we might see fewer instant towns like Elk Groves/Lincolns in the future.

[NorCalChick]

I was born in Sac, parents moved to L.A. when I was a baby, then I moved to Fresno at 25 and lived there for 20 years. I moved back to Sac this year and glad I did, the weather is better and there is so much more to do here, not to mention your chances of finding a job here are better.

Like the saying goes "it's not the size that matters" lol

[bleakzero]

If you are annoyed by that comparison, lets take a minute to compare to the pretentious Charlotte metro area which does its best blow fish impression when it comes to population. The "City" reached 800K people this past month while the metro area is just slightly smaller then Sacramento. Outside of the surrounding counties there is literally nothing for several hours in any direction. The city occupies 297 square miles... thats nearly triple the area of Sacramento city limits because the city has aggressively annexed every surrounding suburb in the area.

While I am sure the annexation brings some local issues, in seeing the big picture, it has allowed Charlotte to go on a job buying campaign where the larger city tax base is able to support large incentives to relocate to center city, recovered through long term city tax revenues. The wider your city, the more likely you are to recover your investment through tax revenues and grow your city further.

[Malloric]

Serna tanked the effort because he was afraid that if you added the suburban conservative white voters to voter rolls, that the Mayor of the combined entity would no longer be a Democrat and the ethnic minority politicians such as himself would not have a substantial enough part of the voting pool to have much influence at likely wouldn't be able to elect one of there own Mayor of the combined City and County of Sacramento.

Whew. Close one. I guess we could all go live in Yolo since they couldn't cross the county lines though. And I'm more Democrat than Republican, I just don't want Sacramento's inept brand of management

I also think the annexation of North Sacramento by the City of Sacramento probably didn't benefit North Sacramento much, but that again is probably an argument for another day and there are some strong arguments for actually breaking up the City of Sacramento into several smaller more responsive local governments. More generally I think if we capped local governments at maybe 80k or 100K, we might see fewer instant towns like Elk Groves/Lincolns in the future.

Logistical nightmare. How would you divvy up LA?

[BeauCharles]

I'm sure if Fresno had been designated the state capitol it would have benefited nicely from all those state dollars pumped into it over many decades. Sacramento would be about the size of Yuba City and filled with canneries. Given where it is and the type of economy surrounding it I think Fresno has done O.K..

[wburg]

Sacramento was filled with canneries, we had the two biggest canneries in the country (and a dozen or so others) and the biggest factory that did nothing but make cans for the canneries to fill. Plus the main railroad shops for two transcontinental railroads. Even then, we were bigger than Yuba City after about 1910. There weren't a lot of "state dollars" as California was a much lower population state (about 3-4 million) and state government still fit basically in one building. After WWII it was more federal dollars, our two Air Force bases and Army base, federal highways and military contractors like Aerojet, and federal water projects and dams. In terms of state redevelopment dollars, we didn't get that much compared to other cities. Fresno's pedestrian mall was just such a project.

[NickB1967]

Originally Posted by bleakzero

If you are annoyed by that comparison, lets take a minute to compare to the pretentious Charlotte metro area which does its best blow fish impression when it comes to population. The "City" reached 800K people this past month while the metro area is just slightly smaller then Sacramento. Outside of the surrounding counties there is literally nothing for several hours in any direction. The city occupies 297 square miles... thats nearly triple the area of Sacramento city limits because the city has aggressively annexed every surrounding suburb in the area.

While I am sure the annexation brings some local issues, in seeing the big picture, it has allowed Charlotte to go on a job buying campaign where the larger city tax base is able to support large incentives to relocate to center city, recovered through long term city tax revenues. The wider your city, the more likely you are to recover your investment through tax revenues and grow your city further.

In other words, Charlotte became a "San Jose East", for the same reasons I suspect.

[BayAreaDave]

South Sac and AA are apart Sacramento, as is West Sac. Just not on paper. Add the 100k from AA, the 100k from AA and SS and you have a city with a population of about 650,000. Just cut the metro from 2.6-2.4 million. Happy now? lol.

[CeJeH]

Originally Posted by BayAreaDave

South Sac and AA are apart Sacramento, as is West Sac. Just not on paper. Add the 100k from AA, the 100k from AA and SS and you have a city with a population of about 650,000. Just cut the metro from 2.6-2.4 million. Happy now? lol.

Well if you include other areas that have Sac addresses like Rosemont and La Riviera it would actually be closer to 750k

[BayAreaDave]

Originally Posted by CeJeH

Well if you include other areas that have Sac addresses like Rosemont and La Riviera it would actually be closer to 750k

Well there you go. 475k is definitely misleading.