Releases

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE  Friday, March 7, 2003

Contact:  Phyllis Miller   916-733-3224

Blueprint Workshops Planned
for Sacramento Region

City of Citrus Heights to Host First Workshop

During the next 30 years, the Sacramento region will add another one million people. Where will they live, what type of housing will they need, how will they travel and how do we ensure that we preserve the region's high quality of life in the face of this growth?

The Sacramento Region Blueprint: Transportation/Land Use Study is addressing those questions with a two-year-long examination of the region's growth. The first phase of the study was the "base case future." Released in October 2002, it showed that by 2050 the region's population would reach nearly 3.7 million.

The study is the first-ever comprehensive examination of growth patterns in the six-county Sacramento Region, which encompasses El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties.

On Tuesday, March 18, the project kicks off the second phase of the study, a series of dozens of high-tech workshops, with a first workshop in Citrus Heights. It will be preceded by a reception for local elected officials at 5:30 p.m. hosted by Citrus Heights Mayor and Sacramento Area Council of Governments Chair Bill Hughes. The workshop is intended primarily for residents of Citrus Heights, who must RSVP by contacting Valley Vision, at 916-925-0130, or by e-mail at mail@valleyvision.org. The RSVP form is also available at the Blueprint Web site: http://www.sacregionblueprint.org.

The series of neighborhood workshops will give local residents the opportunity to sit down with elected officials, business representatives and civic and community leaders to envision how they'd like their communities to grow. They are being planned for virtually all of the region's cities and counties throughout spring and summer 2003. The region includes El Dorado County, Placer County, Sacramento County, Sutter County, Yolo County and Yuba County.

Blueprint is a collaboration of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, Valley Vision and numerous other partners (listed below). The first phase was the "base case future scenario" unveiled at the October 18, 2002 TALL Order Regional Forum. It gave a projection of what the region's future might be like if current development trends, government policies, and transportation investment priorities were to continue through 2050.

The base case shows that the region will grow at faster than national averages because it will remain an attractive place to live. It also suggests that it would be difficult to maintain the quality of life that residents want and the region can offer unless we plan now. Otherwise, traffic congestion created by pressure on our roads and transit, for example, will mean longer commutes and poorer air quality.

Working collaboratively with elected and planning officials from throughout the region, the project will eventually hold approximately 50 workshops where participants will use state-of- the-art, real-time, and interactive geographic information systems (GIS) technology to envision potential future "scenarios" for specific neighborhoods. At the workshops, a group of eight to 10 participants will sit together at tables with maps, menus of land use and transportation choices, and a laptop computer linked to the Internet. Metrics within the software will instantly show participants how their choices would affect their communities.

"These workshops will build knowledge with local government staff, officials and other stakeholders of the linkages between land use patterns and transportation behavior and the linkages between local, county and regional planning actions as well as the impacts that transportation and land use choices have on other community objectives, such as affordable housing and resource protection," said SACOG Board Chair and Citrus Heights Mayor Bill Hughes.

The Blueprint project grew out of the SACOG Board of Directors decision in 2001 to pursue resources to prepare a land use alternative for the next (2005) Metropolitan Transportation Plan (MTP), which is the transportation infrastructure plan for the region for the next 20 years. The purpose is to determine if there are land use choices local governments could make that would benefit the region's transportation system as well as local communities and ultimately the quality of life for the region as a whole.

The Blueprint project is made possible by funding and support the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG), Valley Vision, the Sacramento Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), the California State Treasurer's Office, Caltrans, Bringing Regional Issues for Discussion and Group Effort (BRIDGE), the Urban Land Institute (ULI), the Great Valley Center, the James Irvine Foundation and KVIE6, among others.

For further information, please contact Phyllis Miller, Communications Manager, Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG), at 733-3224 or pmiller@sacog.org.