Elk Grove News Podcasts

   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. 

  For hardcore NFL fans, tomorrow’s Super Bowl between the Pats and Rams is like Christmas morning. Football fanatics probably know there are only four teams who have never appeared in the Super Bowl. The cocktail recipe is here.   

In this edition of Elk Grove News Podcast, we discuss one of the most misunderstood - especially as practiced by members of the Elk Grove City Council - regular items on their meeting agendas. An item that was supposed to inform the public has evolved into a perversion of the original intent.  Elk Grove resident and longtime city council observer, Lynn Wheat joins the conversation. Wheat expl...

 By Dan Schmitt | The United States is one of the few developed nations on earth that does not provide some form of universal, single-payer health care.  For clarification purposes, when referring to health care, the term universal means that all people within a country have coverage. The term Single-payer usually means that the federal government pays for everyone’s health care, with fu...

 In the last several days, city hall tax collectors and mall mavens in Elk Grove received crushing news – the Outlet Collection at Elk Grove will never open. Not to worry though - help is on the way! 

   In less than one month, plans for the demolition of two shopping centers in Elk Grove have been announced. The first is the Stonelake Landings for the proposed $750 million for profit hospital on the city’s west side The second is the demolition of the unfinished Outlet Collection, also known as the Ghost Mall. With the Ghost Malls demise, questions from residents of the Stonelake nei...

   At the January  2019 Elk Grove City Council meeting, the city’s economic development director Darrell Doan made claims that make  Dr. Evil’s assertion that his father invented the question mark plausible.

By Dan Schmitt    Numerous polls, just before the 2018 midterm election, showed that the number 1 issue on voters’ minds was access to affordable, quality health care. Actually, for more than a half-century, access to good health care has been elusive for many Americans. One might say it’s been a case of the “Haves and the Have-Nots.”  The “Health Care Haves” are the wealthy who hav...

Is the Elk Grove City hall payroll getting fat? A casual examination of recent events and job listings would say yes. 

 As we enter 2019, there will be scads of stories that will develop during the year. However, there are a few stories that have developed this year and before, that will continue into 2019. The outcome of these ongoing stories will have the most influence in shaping the future of Elk Grove, California.  

 The Christmas holiday season is the favorite time of year for many people. After all, if we have learned only one thing from Christmas movies on Hallmark or Lifetime, it's that wishes do come true at this time of year.   From Elk Grove News . 

By Dan Schmitt No season is quite like Christmas for welling up memories. And no Christmas season is more indelibly locked into my memory than the one that occurred back in 1958. I grew up the third of seven kids in the small central Wisconsin town of Schofield. My parents were products of the Great Depression and World War II and disciplined differently. Six of the seven Schmitt kids were boys, a...

On Wednesday, December 12, at the request of public works director Bob Murdock, the Elk Grove City Council approved additional funding of $1.4 million to cover cost overruns on the civic center aquatics facility.

Latest episode of Elk Grove News

By Dan Schmitt I suppose my journey began one afternoon during Christmas break in 1964 when I was 16. One of the few activities my friends and I did indoors during the cold, snowy north-central Wisconsin winters was play basketball. We were at the YMCA in my hometown when “THEY” arrived and put a dent in my sheltered existence.