Can we please have an EL DORADO COUNTY forum? (Riverside: sales, rental homes)

[SFBayBoomer]

Originally Posted by NinaN

I have no idea what it would take to convert El Dorado Hills into a city or in what ways it would help/hurt us. But when something should happen and doesn't, it usually comes down to money. I know there are plenty of people that would like us to be a city so we could remove some of the county dabbling from our planning.

Could you be more specific? How does the county dabble in EDH's planning?

[SFBayBoomer]

I will be looking at several towns and cities, but for the moment I am considering El Dorado Hills for the purpose of high speed internet service. Since it is "city-like", lowest elevation and is closest to Sacramento, I would guess it might have the best DSL service.

I just checked service for some house rentals, since I might like to rent a house before buying, and I got the address of an EDH rental and put that into the att.com website. I was not happy to see "Highest available Internet speed: 3Mbps Pro". (95762 zip code).

I really need faster speed, minimum 6Mbps Pro, and ideally would like faster than that. (Not necessarily for the rental, but I have to have minimum 6Mbps at a home to purchase.)

Does anyone who lives in El Dorado Hills or Placerville or Shingle Springs or similar get DSL service?
If so, is it possible to get reliable, higher speeds than 3Mbps Pro? Where would that be?

Other than DSL, what are the most reliable and fastest Internet speeds in EDC, what companies provide them, and where in the county are they?

[SFBayBoomer]

Here in the SF Bay Area we get FREE fantastic High Definition television reception by standard antenna (yes, it's generally a flatter area and near transmitters, so I don't expect quite this multitude up in them thar hills) and more free channels from which to choose than most TV packages people elsewhere pay money to get. At last count there was around 70-100 channels; that's before, I delete all the home shopping, advertising channels, all the Chinese, Vietnamese, Spanish, Tagalog, etc. channels, but do enjoy getting European news delivered by the home countries' affiliates, even if I have to listen to them all in English nowadays. Oh, we do watch Spanish TV every two to four years if they have a World Cup Soccer (football) match we want to see. We receive all major broadcasters and many minor ones.

We have a DVR (digital video recorder) that records antenna TV, so we pay no subscription fees whatsoever to get nearly all the channels we care to get. (I would have enjoyed John Stewart and some others, but not enough to pay for it. Anyway, he just retired.)

Over the years we have saved enough not having TV subscription fees to buy a lot of other stuff that is important to us.

We would prefer not to have to pay for television, and yet to have a variety of shows, especially multiple news shows and PBS, so we get a variety of viewpoints.

Is subscription TV something we may have to accept if we move up to El Dorado County?

Will we be able to get any SF Bay Area channels if we do subscribe?

[SFBayBoomer]

Originally Posted by wburg

El Dorado County is more than 85% white, so the sea of white faces you saw is pretty much representative of the people you'll see there. Compared to Sacramento, a highly integrated, highly diverse majority-minority city, it's a very different social environment. But for many who move there, it's just the sort of thing they're looking for.

The statistics I am seeing for "White alone, not Hispanic or Latino, percent, 2014" show the following for the 10 counties that accept Proposition 90 tax transfer:


32.8% Alameda
78.7% El Dorado
26.8% Los Angeles
42.0% Orange
37.4% Riverside
33.3% Santa Clara
46.7% San Diego
40.4% San Mateo
30.6% San Bernardino
46.6% Ventura

Sacramento County shows the same stats as Ventura County with 46.6%, nearly the same as San Diego.

So yes, El Dorado County is the whitest of the group, but it's not more than 85% per quickfacts.census.gov.

Of course, there are subsets and it's just people self-reporting and as you know, there is also the "Lies, damned lies, and statistics" going on.

I was annoyed for two decades in a row to be singled out for the census long form, which I would never return, so they would come a'knocking at my door and ask me straight to my lily white, DAR-eligible face, well, what is your ethnicity (or race or origin) and I would answer "Asian" and "what language do you speak at home?", and I would answer "Japanese", which is partly true, because I speak sushi very well.

After many years of living in a white minority city and being burglarized (is it an accidental home invasion if they did not realize anyone was home?) by a couple of non-whites, I would welcome seeing more folks who look like me, just not so many that we'd all appear to be related to one another, and I would rather not have to argue with them because they may want simple majority rules to pass parcel taxes or HOA rules and I would not like that. I really love a beautiful neighborhood, but would prefer no HOA, if possible, else a very low cost HOA that does not require me to pay a bundle for a golf course I'll never use and which requires too much irrigation.

[wburg]

I just went off Wikipedia for the racial breakdown--86% white, Hispanic/Latino or not, with 12% of population reporting Hispanic/Latino. That's still about 4 out of 5 folks white, so if you considered the lack of diversity on the county info page surprising, it gets less surprising when you see the lack of diversity that's actually there. Still, maybe El Dorado County will meet your needs.

[NinaN]

Originally Posted by SFBayBoomer

Could you be more specific? How does the county dabble in EDH's planning?

The county supervisors make the decisions on planning. Right now they are discussing many proposals that include rezoning what is designated as free space and turning it into housing developments. The supervisors also created an uproar last year when they approved rezoning a 250 acre parcel designated as 5-acre residential and allowed a proposal for adding more than 500 houses on lots as small as 1/6 acres.

Most of us here know that growth is inevitable and beneficial, but we don't agree that it needs to be thousands of homes on little bitty lots. Frankly, many people move here because we have homes with larger lots and more trees. But the developers only care about profit so the more homes they can squeeze in, the more money they make. The county supervisors only see the financial benefit to the county since most the growth is in EDH (and most don't live here). They could care less what our residents want, unless we make a strong front and it threatens their chances of being re-elected.

[bryan85]

No, it's not allowed!!

[wburg]

Originally Posted by SFBayBoomer

Is subscription TV something we may have to accept if we move up to El Dorado County?

Will we be able to get any SF Bay Area channels if we do subscribe?

Most of El Dorado County is rural, undeveloped country. EDH is a relatively small housing development even by the standards of the Sacramento region, on the far end of the urban services boundary. So you may end up paying for satellite or cable, and you probably won't get a lot of Bay Area channels.

[NinaN]

Most people in EDH use Comcast or AT&T for phone/internet/TV, but there are certainly those that prefer Dish or DirectTV. Though I don't love Comcast, I find they have the best service.

[SFBayBoomer]

Originally Posted by wburg

Most of El Dorado County is rural, undeveloped country. EDH is a relatively small housing development even by the standards of the Sacramento region, on the far end of the urban services boundary. So you may end up paying for satellite or cable, and you probably won't get a lot of Bay Area channels.

Originally Posted by NinaN

Most people in EDH use Comcast or AT&T for phone/internet/TV, but there are certainly those that prefer Dish or DirectTV. Though I don't love Comcast, I find they have the best service.

Thanks to both of you.

What about PBS? We watch a lot of PBS shows. Which PBS channels do you get?
I see that Sacramento's PBS station is KVIE. Is that available on all providers throughout El Dorado County?

I love Masterpiece and Great British Baking Show and lots of other shows. I would miss them like crazy if they were not available. (We get about 9 different PBS stations here, six affiliated with KQED and three with KCSM, all at no charge due to our antenna coverage.) KQED programming is much more important to us than KCSM, which is more local programming.

I have a personal reason now to also enjoy tuning in to the beginning and end of Masterpiece, as I knew one of the major donors very well from school and plays and social events, and it makes me smile to see her face, especially knowing her philanthropy extends well beyond theater productions to funding important medical issues and institutions.