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Thank you, Sac County......but why does it have to be this way?

The other day on Nextdoor there was a post about a cars being stripped on Wyda Way on the Dollar Tree side of the street between Howe and Ethan. The post said there were cars on jacks and chopped and mentioned a truck double parked on the street while guys took parts out of the cars. Comments on the post included pleas to report the matter to the County. Among the other comments:

  • Laws aren't enforced
  • Dollar Tree parking lot filthy with trash all over the place and dumped furniture and other junk
  • People work on cars in the street, play loud music til 2-3am, and dump trash elsewhere, too, and our favorite:
  • Sacramento County leaders should be embarrassed and ashamed
May contain: car, automobile, transportation, vehicle, person, human, tree, plant, tire, spoke, machine, wheel, fir, abies, parking lot, parking, and alloy wheel
The County is finally doing something about the stolen cars on Wyda Way

However, there is good news after all. Whether it was because of the Nextdoor conversation, citizens' complaints, or some other reason, it turns out that law enforcement people (CHP or County) determined there were stolen cars there and have begun to take action to deal with the problem. We are most definitely grateful to the Sheriff's Deputies and other county staff for that.

An unanswered question, though, is why did the situation get like that in the first place? Who let it get so bad? Can you imagine similar circumstances ever reaching that level of neglect in one of our "well-off" neighborhoods? Of course not. But Wyda near the Dollar Tree isn't exactly the neighborhood that came to mind when you read the words "well-off", is it? It wasn't always that way there, though. Here's what a former resident said on the Nextdoor thread:

{It was different} back when {the Dollar Tree} was a gym and then the restaurant. The duplexes were very well kept and the manager of the storage place worked very hard at keeping that section clean. We worked very closely with the POP cops from CHP and Sheriffs. Unfortunately everything has been sold over there and the people there now just don't seem to care. I don't even drive through there anymore as it makes me so sad and mad. Last time I went through there there were mattresses in the street and people laying and sitting on them!
a former Wyda Way resident

In other words, careless property owners (maybe absentee owners?) let the area slide. And the County wasn't engaged with code enforcement and probably didn't listen when residents complained. Eventually the residents were trained that complaining was pointless. This is precisely the kind of situation that inspired us to set forth on a mission to try and reverse the downward spiral of our community; to have it rise up again. Since we can't do that alone, it was comforting to see the Nextdoor post and to read the comments that pretty much resonate with our organizational goal. We encourage others to do likewise: if you see something has gone sour in the community, please report it. Please don't take "yeah, yeah, we hear that all the time" for an answer. Squeaky wheels get the grease. Please squeak. We would love to be able to advise you to speak up at an Arden Arcade City Council meeting. Based on the examples of the City of Citrus Heights and Rancho Cordova, that would get a prompt response, maybe even a pro-active one. Alas, Arden Arcade lacks local control, doesn't have a Mayor and there is no City Council. So our only hope is to try and get our Supervisor to pay attention to our community. Might as well contact his office, right? When you do, please keep us in the loop -- don't hesitate to let the inquiring minds of our newsroom elves know, too, by emailing us at advocatesforardenarcade@gmail.com.

May contain: car, transportation, vehicle, automobile, spoke, machine, tire, wheel, alloy wheel, and car wheel
Graffiti on fence in City of Sacramento, plainly visible from Wyda Way in Arden Arcade

One last point - Ethan Way is a boundary between Arden Arcade and the City of Sacramento. And that could be part of why that segment of Wyda has been so neglected. Municipal entities tend to pay more attention to their cores than their edges. Besides the problems on Wyda, there's neglect on the other side of Ethan, too - the City of Sacramento side. You see, when the City of Sacramento annexed the Swanston Estates area west of Ethan, it was laser-focused on Arden Fair Mall and the money it would bring in for the city coffers. Lay eyeballs on the rest of the area there and its pretty clear the care and feeding of the residential part of that annexed area didn't ever matter much to the City of Sacramento. Would that explain why there is graffiti on the fence facing Wyda? Any guesses how long it will take Sac P.D. to deal with it? Or how long it will take our Sheriff to lean on Sac P.D. for that? Wouldn't it make sense to clean up that graffiti along with abating the stolen cars, trash and junk on our side of the dotted line?

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