This week’s letters to the editor discuss the Sunrise Tomorrow Plan, Christmas lights, and beautification.
Citrus Heights holiday lights annual shame
We just concluded another holiday season with a terrible display of palm tree lighting along the Birdcage Marketplace corridor. Only a few of the palms are lighted as intended, while most have only sporadic light displays working. The original concept is to light the lower tree in all white and then alternate the tops in red and green along the entire corridor during the holidays.
Three years ago it was quite pretty but since then it appears no one at City Hall is concerned about doing the maintenance to keep them in working order. To make it worse, they don’t even bother to turn off the festive red/green lights at the tops after Christmas so we’re left with a broken hodgepodge of Christmas colors on display all year. We hear about community pride and beautifying projects all the time but this has gone on for years.
Personally I find it embarrassing and degrading to holiday spirit to drive past the trees and note that this community could do a much better job if only City Hall would make it their sense of pride and beautification too. We need an administer of holiday lighting in someone’s job description at City Hall.
–Carolyn Pease, Citrus Heights
The Sunrise Tomorrow Plan is under attack
The City of Citrus Heights is facing one of its most crucial issues since becoming a City on January 1, 1997. A local real estate developer is proposing changes to the Sunrise Tomorrow plan that would fundamentally change the course of our city for years to come.
As the chair of the Citrus Heights Incorporation Project for six of the twelve years it took to get incorporation on the ballot, and as co-chair with Jeannie Bruins of the “Yes on Measure R” cityhood initiative, I am deeply dismayed at the proposed changes in the Sunrise Tomorrow plan. Eight drive-through restaurants, a self-storage facility, a Home Depot, etc. while proposing no improvements to the core, is not the “highest and best use” of this site.
I hear people saying “why doesn’t the City do something about Sunrise Mall?” The City doesn’t own the mall. What the City has done is create a visionary plan based on wide community input and has removed roadblocks to innovative development. The proposed hotel may be the first step in the revitalization process.
When I personally sued the County of Sacramento on December 23, 1987, to force the County to follow state law and set an election date for the cityhood vote, I had no idea that it would be another nine years before Citrus Heights could vote on its future. (The court battles went all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court).
I urge the residents of Citrus Heights to attend (upcoming public meetings) and express opposition to the “quick bucks” scheme that is being proposed. It took us 12 years to become a city, and the Sunrise Tomorrow plan may take a few years to accomplish. Patience and perseverance have paid off in the past. We need to be confident that our City leadership will continue their efforts to fulfill the vision of Sunrise Tomorrow.
The residents of Citrus Heights take great pride in our city. I hope we hold out for the highest and best use of the Sunrise Mall property rather than capitulate to the quick-bucks greed of a developer.
–Bill Van Duker, Citrus Heights
This week's letters to the editor discuss the Sunrise Tomorrow Plan, Christmas lights, and beautification...
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