Keep an eye out
Bites on public and political websites, repurposing closed schools and anti-signature-gathering thuggery
By Cosmo Garvin
cosmog@newsreview.com
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This week, it’s city council websites.
Councilwoman Angelique Ashby’s official city council website is a spare and dull blue-gray page with a few links in small type. It doesn’t have to look good, because it’s designed to funnel visitors to her campaign page,www.angeliqueashby.com.
The latter site was created in 2010 as part of Ashby’s campaign for city council. It’s easy to tell. The main page is full of links to official District 1 press releases and photos. But with one click, you’re deep into the electioneering stuff, reading the candidate’s “campaign
“Charter school organizations?” Bites asked, not too subtly. No, he said, but wouldn’t reveal more, other than to say it “wouldn’t upset anybody in the education community.”
Maybe so. But the thing is, it’s not really Schenirer’s, or any politician’s, job to decide what happens with those schools.
The school board was supposed to form a citizen committee to make recommendations on what schools, if any, ought to be closed. It refused to do that. But it was forced by state law to appoint a citizen “repurposing committee” to decide what to do with the schools once the decision to close them had been made. That way, in theory at least, the reuse of these important public properties can be decided in public, by members of the public, with public input.
But now we’ve got Schenirer and probably other politicians running around trying to cut deals. Before the citizen committee has even held its first meeting. Which is exactly the sort of thing that got us into the school-closure mess to begin with.
Mmm,mmm good?
On the rise and fall (and rise and fall, again) of an original Sacramento suburb
By Cosmo Garvin
cosmog@newsreview.com
Scott’s Burger Shack is a long walk from both light-rail stations near Franklin Boulevard, but business is up. Owner Scott Hackett says he just wishes there were fewer empty lots in the neighborhood.
PHOTO BY ANDREW NIXON
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This feature's author lives about a mile from Franklin Boulevard, and has eaten many mushroom burgers at Scott's Burger Shack.
Photos for this feature story were taken by Andrew Nixon, a photographer for Capital Public Radio.
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Passengers get off the train and are greeted by a high fence and an idled Campbell Soup Company plant. Across the parking lot and street are industrial buildings and truck fleets. Kitty-corner from those, another warehouse and a big, empty lot. Not the kind of land use you want if you’re going to take take full advantage of a high-end piece of transit infrastructure like light rail.
Leaving the station, travelers have a long walk before they get to anywhere in particular. Some nearby stretches of Franklin Boulevard don’t even have sidewalks. The one bus line that used to feed the 47th Avenue station was eliminated, due to budget cuts, in 2010. The bus stop is stenciled over with the words “No bus.”
“You’re kind of stuck,” says Tong Thao, a government-studies student who attends Sacramento State University. Thao grew up not far from here, in the south Sacramento neighborhood of Parkway. North of the station and the