Elk Grove News Podcasts

Darrell Doan, Elk Grove's economic development director, as well as other personnel at Elk Grove City Hall need to stop wasting taxpayers dollars on frivolous and expensive advertising. Instead, money should be used to fix things like Elk Grove's crumbling roads.  

Ever since it was unveiled last December, the California Northstate University's proposed for-profit hospital has been a source of controversy. Both CNU and Elk Grove city executive employees and council members would be well advised to heed to the words from South Bend Indiana mayor and presidential candidate Pete Buttiegieg. 

 In this edition, smart planning advocate Lynn Wheat discusses the recent traffic jam study and the conundrum for Elk Grove’s long sought expansion of city limits.  Wheat discusses how Elk Grove taxpayer could be on the hook for cost that in normal cities are paid by developers.  We start the conversation with Wheat providing an overview of the April 10 presentation by the Elk Grove...

 In this edition of Elk Grove News Podcast, Kathy Engle of Neighbors Ensuring Stonelake Transparency, NEST, discusses the use of taxpayer money to purchase advertisements for the benefit of California Nothstate University, a for-profit educational institution headquartered in Elk Grove, Calif. Also discussed are seemingly conflicting statements from the City of Elk Grove's economic developmen...

The Wednesday, April 10 Elk Grove City Council meeting was one to remember.   At the end of the meeting with hardly no one in attendance, the city council heard an honest assessment of the city’s growing traffic congestion.

In the last several weeks California Republican Congressman Devin Nunes has made quite a splash in social media - twitter specifically - and more recently in mainstream media for a couple of lawsuits he has filed. Perhaps its a riff on the song Dog and Butterfly by Heart,  except for Nunes its more like Cow and Bee. In the case of the cow, the Fresno-area congressman filed a $250 million laws...

This week casino watchdog group Stand Up For California filed another lawsuit challenging the Bureau of Indians Affairs over the proposed Wilton Rancheria casino in Elk Grove, California. The issues raised for the plaintiff comes from documents the B I A was forced to release. 

  The last several months for the proprietors of Elk Grove's Dreaming Dog Brewery have been two tails.  The first tale was of the successful launch and establishment by David and Elizabeth Brown of their popular brewery and tasting room located at the Stonelake Landing shopping center on the west side of Elk Grove. Their efforts to build a friendly, community-based gathering spot was rec...

  In this edition of Elk Grove News Podcast, we have a discussion with Kathy Engle of Neighbors Ensuring Stonelake Transparency - NEST. Led by Engle's public information requests, the citizens' group has started examining documents they have received from the city of Elk Grove. Engles discusses some of their initial findings showing the depth of the relationship between the city and the...

 While some view California's rapidly escalating housing costs as an impediment, one company from America's Natural State is taking a contrarian view and sees a golden opportunity in the Golden State.  Mountain Home, Arkansas-based Affordable Family Development (AFD) has announced its intent to pursue a manufactured housing site on a vacant parcel in Elk Grove. The parcel AFD purchased f...

 As widely reported, Elk Grove recently updated its general plan. The plan nibbles around the edges of one of California’s most pressing socio-economic problems – affordable housing. Elk Grove’s solution is predictable – cluster some rental units in a few areas and forget about it.

   Social media is part of our life, and for all its ills, at times it can be educational. Such was the case in a recent series of tweets.   The tweets were about city council’s brushing off constituents. — Kevin Dayton (@DaytonPubPolicy) March 22, 2019 I hear Los Angeles City Council is like this. In fact, I remembered an old newspaper article about it and found it, in @latimes fro...

 By Dan Schmitt |  I cannot begin to imagine how devastating it must be to discover that a loved one has been ruthlessly murdered. I cannot imagine the pain, the depression and the suffering family members and friends of murder victims go through as they wait for the execution of the person on death row who was found guilty of the heinous crimes. 

  Based in Monterey, California, Dayton is a policy and political consultant with 22 years of experience dealing with Issues related to construction and development. The discussion centers on the intersection of the California Environmental Quality Act, and project labor agreements as it relates to the $750 million hospital proposed in Elk Grove, Calif. by California Northstate University. Da...

   After weeks of bombardment from Elk Grove residents over the proposed 750 million dollar California Northstate university hospital, the Elk Grove city council had a respite this week.    Coming to their rescue was a host of big shot building trade union bosses, all of whom have contributed cash to the city council members. 

Be careful when doing online sales. 

 Although the economy is doing relatively well, residents of Elk Grove, California are taking on more high-cost credit card debt. Those were the findings of a recently released study by Wallethub.com . In this edition, we discuss the implications of this development with Wallethub.com's personal finance expert Jill Gonzales. Other findings from WalletHub's study can be viewed here. 

   This week Trump crony Paul Manafort received one of his two sentences from his corruption and tax evasion convictions. As it stands today, Manafort will be out in about three years having received nine months credit for time served. Even if he receives a few more years at his next sentencing, Manafort got what amounts to slap on the wrist when you compared it to the maximum sentence h...

  For years Pacific Gas and Electric – PG&E - have made thousands of dollars of campaign contributions to Elk Grove city council members. Their interest in Elk Grove politics has always been something of a puzzlement.

 In this edition we continue our discussion with Elk Grove, California resident and smart planning advocate Lynn Wheat. The discussion looks at the differences between the updates for the general plan and zoning code.  Wheat discusses how the zoning code might be more important the general plan, and how a significant change to the zoning code has implications for major project now under...

 Will elected officials on the Elk Grove City Council and Elk Grove Unified School District Board of Trustees continue their blatant violation of civil and voters rights, be more interested in their own parochial interests, or do the right thing?  

Cosumnes Community Services District Director Jaclyn Moreno discusses the reasons why the district should have by-district elections during the Wednesday, February 20, 2019 CCSD meeting.  

 Podcast by Dan Schmitt My best friend of forty-two years, Cal Robinson, died three years ago of complications caused by diabetes. No one, especially me, would have predicted that two such different young men would develop an endearing friendship that would last nearly a half-century, but it did. I first met Cal in 1973 at the Reubens Restaurant in La Mesa, California. I was a bartender, and...

 The Elk Grove city council has offered full-throated support for the California Northstate University's proposed $750 million teaching-hospital, but they have underestimated opposition to the project.  

A high-placed source in Elk Grove’s political underground related a plot to appoint another Elk Grove city council member. In this episode, we lay out how this scheme could happen.