By Mike Hazlip—
The Sunrise Marketplace Property-based Business Improvement District (PBID) is spending almost a quarter of its budget this year on crime prevention and maintenance, up from zero percent prior to 2020.
Kathilynn Carpenter, the district’s executive director, said in an email Wednesday that the Sunrise MarketPlace budget is $1.3 million, with about $300,000 allocated toward security and maintenance alone. Money for the district’s budget comes largely comes from a property tax assessment that businesses in the Sunrise-Greenback commercial corridor have voted to impose on themselves.
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Carpenter said the marketplace has started working with Rancho Cordova-based City Wide Property Services to provide daily porter service in the district, including abandoned shopping carts, litter, graffiti and dumped items. The company has offices in Modesto, Fresno, Walnut Creek, and San Jose, and offers pressure washing, sweeping, porter services, tech services, and landscaping, according to their website.
The largest chunk of this year’s budget, $835,000, comes from the property tax assessment, with another $100,000 coming from American Rescue Plan Act funds that Carpenter said Supervisor Sue Frost advocated for. The remainder of the $1.3 million can vary and comes from other grants, event income and any funds carried over from the previous year, she said.
While Carpenter said the marketplace is a safe place for shoppers, the district has seen an uptick in vandalism and criminal activity since 2020 — prompting the district’s heightened focus on security and cleanup.
“We are fortunate that we do not have many vacant buildings in the District,” Carpenter said. “But we do have a few and those are high profile targets. These are not just homeless people; these are low level criminals.”
Statistics for March through June of 2022 obtained by The Sentinel show the marketplace has cleared 197 bags of trash, five mattresses, three furniture items, 393 shopping carts, five tires, eight hazardous items, and 96 incidents of graffiti in those four months.
Prior to 2020, all of the district’s budget went to marketing, events, signage and economic development, Carpenter said. Today, about 23 percent of those funds are being spent on security and maintenance.
In an effort to curb crime and vandalism, the marketplace paid full salary and benefits to have a dedicated Citrus Heights police officer patrol the district full-time in 2020. The marketplace also added an armed private security company this year to patrol the area when the officer is off-duty.
“Together, the patrols have been effective at keeping crime statistics down,” Carpenter said, although noting transient-related issues are “a challenge.”
While no city funds go into the marketplace’s budget, Carpenter said her district’s efforts are in cooperation with the city with the goal of reducing the burden to city resources while addressing immediate issues in the marketplace more quickly.
The city announced last month that a new city-wide “Beautification Crew” will launch later this year to expedite response to cleanup of debris and blight around the city and assist with “active enforcement of encampments and nuisance situations” that impede access in public areas, according to City Manager Ashley Feeney. The City Council has allocated $875,000 in federal COVID recovery funding to go towards the new cleanup program.
Feeney told the City Council previously that the crew will ideally “be there in some cases in 10 minutes or an hour, if they’re nearby, but at least that day.” Currently, he said police response to enforcement situations often results in officers just “tagging” an issue, with cleanup potentially occurring a week later.
By Mike Hazlip—
The Sunrise Marketplace Property-based Business Improvement District (PBID) is spending almost a quarter of its budget this year on crime prevention and maintenance, up from zero percent prior to 2020.
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