Acorn Poll: Most important issues for Woodland in 2010
Yes.. the Acorn Poll has returned. Instead of throwing a straw up into the wind to see where it blows, let's toss an acorn up to see where it plops. This is an interactive poll that may be left untallied, but hopefully will guide The Woodland Journal to post the most interesting topics about our community. Here's the Acorn Poll question:
WHAT ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUES FOR WOODLAND IN 2010?
To get the acorn tumbling, here are some suggestions in no particular order:
• Downtown Woodland (multiplex, courthouse, Downtown Specific Plan)
• Sign ordinance interpretations and Art in Public Places ordinance
• School district policies (the continued Blue Shield Building saga)
• Manifest destiny of the ULL (annex/rezone for Gateway II)
• Water issues (flood zone, Sacramento River supply)
• City control of Fairgrounds property if vacated
• Medical marijuana "non ordinance"
• City government restructure
• City Council election
• The economy
• Gangs
Don't see what you had in mind? Please comment on what you think will be this year's most important issues facing us Woodlanders.
Posts
9 comments:
Ok here is my rant...
We spend astronomical amounts of money on flood protection every year in hopes of fixing our levies to protect us from flooding. The only thing we manage to do is make the insurance companies rich by purchasing flood insurance. At the same time, we are spending inordinate amounts of money on trying to solve our water shortage and yet we never seem to find solutions.
The City of Woodland’s creative way of solving our water problems is to install water meters in front of every residence and business. This project is being paid for with 14.8 million dollars in federal stimulus money (our tax money). Then the city will increase our water bills by 100%.
This isn’t going to solve our water problems. This is just simply a creative way of charging the taxpayer more money to solve the city’s money problems.
The cities of Woodland and Davis are in a joint effort to pump water from the Sacramento River uphill and then purify the water to meet our future water needs.
We need a Cost vs. Benefit feasibility study on every grandiose idea the City of Woodland comes up with.
After WE pay for the (COST) of a pumping station, purification facility and the overhead costs of personnel, and electricity to pump water uphill at least 6 miles or more to Woodland, there is absolutely NO(BENEFIT)to the citizens of Woodland .
Every city in California wants to stick a straw into that mud hole called the Sacramento River for their water needs. If we let our local governments get away with building this water system the price of our water per gallon will cost as much as gasoline.
The second half of my rant
As I see it from inside my fish bowl, we need to be spending our millions of tax dollars on watersheds and ways of storing water before it flows into the Sacramento River. Why not build small reservoirs to contain the runoff, which in turn would help us with our flooding problems and water needs? Since we are depleting our water table more and more every year, why not start drilling injection wells and start injecting the water runoff into the water table to create an aquifer storage and recovery system? We should be using the Yolo Bypass as a reservoir to not only help solve our flooding problems but it could also serve as a water reserve for cities down stream
4:30
Here is the problem with that as I see it. You make too much sense
Manifest Destiny was a racist philosophy.
Solving our water problem will fuel the engine that drives our local economy. Just think all of our so called important issues will become very minuscule.
7:27
Elitist, too.
Many interesting topics Dino. While water supply and quality is vitally important and worth more articles, blog posts and thoughtful Woodland Citizens applying to the Water Advisory committee (Applications available from Doug Baxter at Public Works Department), that issue is not the only topic I would like to see explored/examined/discussed for Woodland in 2010.
Some possible topics for provocation:
•Transitioning from brick-and-mortar to virtual marketplaces and the impact on local sales tax revenue. Should Woodland focus on attracting more
service providers and initiating some sort of service taxes rather than just retail taxes? Pros and cons could be explored.
• Bicycle ordinance and lack of implementation as well as impact on pedestrian, bicycle, skateboard mix vs. auto traffic in Downtown. We are supposed to have bike lanes and we do not--hence bicyclists on sidewalks which are supposed to be for pedestrians.
• Council/city staff communications and transparency, openness, accountability--at least 3 items in 2009 involving motions of adoption by the City Council were not clearly tagged on the Agenda in terms of the real subject (at least in my reading).
And I think that the Redevelopment Plan Implementation was not ever noticed for a Public Hearing on any posted agendas (seemingly to violate the Brown Act--at least in terms of 10 days notice). The other two items involved changes to the Zoning Ordinance. So do we as citizens want to re-examine the function of municipal zoning ordinances in general and then look at the purposes in particular to which the City Council seems to want to apply Woodland's zoning ordinance ? And are these applications really beneficial to us as residents and citizens?
Some possibilities for future topics.
Woodland and the County have not spent a dime fixing or upgrading Cache Creek in years. This is why we have the problem we have.
Thank you Gary Wagner (Former Woodland Pawn Employee & Rexroad Buddy). The gift that keeps on costing us. (He also is the reason for the increase in our water fees, as he spent the money instead of making upgrades to our water processing / pumping center)
My rant#2
How about some cheap pro active approaches toward shopping as well as crime in downtown Woodland?
Big box stores have piped in music to encourage shoppers to stay in their stores longer. By doing so shoppers are encouraged to buy more.
Classical music has been used successfully in England to combat crime. Why doesn’t Woodland follow suit??? I don’t think it would cost a lot of yuppie bucks.
Also, I find it quite interesting that I can park all day at Home Cheap-O or at Wally World and NEVER find a parking ticket on my windshield. On the other hand, it’s sure a problem in downtown Woodland. The parking Nazis hand out those tickets like candy!
Hosing all the parking Nazis in itself would be enough to revitalize downtown Woodland!!!
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