You know it is a holiday when journalists recycle their old stuff.  Two summers ago Sacramento Bee journalist Tom Philp expressed dismay about the bad roads in unincorporated Sacramento County.  On New Year's Eve 2025 Mr. Philp once again opined (Behind a paywall: "'Tis not the season for higher sales tax on roads in Sacramento County", Sacramento Bee 12/31/25) that the unincorporated area of Sacramento County has bad roads and not enough money to fix them. In other news, it is dark at night and water is wet.

The editorial left our newsroom elves scratching their heads. On one hand, they totally agree with Mr. Philp - the County does a horrible job of maintaining our roads. Year, after year, after year the Board of Supervisors has looked away from its responsibility to care for the infrastructure of the unincorporated area. Former Supervisors who represented our community  (Smoley, Johnson and Peters) did not preach about the need to fix the roads, they just told the public everything was ducky. To their credit, current Supervisor Desmond and Ron Vicari (the County's Head Transportation guy), have consistently told the public about the problem. The other Supervisors, however, have barely acknowleged it. Of course, talking is one thing and acting is another. What the Board of Supervisors has done, now and then, is sprinkle some budget dust on top of a deferred maintenance road pricetag that now exceeds a billion dollars.

The unincorporated Uncity is the largest political subset within Sacramento County - much bigger than the City of Sacramento, bigger even than the STATE of Wyoming. So the elves were also pleased to see that Mr. Philp acknowledged the scale of the problem by mentioning the hundreds of thousands of UnCity residents who have to live with those bad roads. They noted, though, his estimate of the number of UnCity residents was low by some 20% (by more than 100,000 people). That's like failing to mention that the City of Citrus Heights exists within the county, but let's move on.

Still, the elves were left wondering whether or not it had occurred to The Bee that it was part of the problem. You see, The Bee has for years been the mouthpiece for the Downtown Sacramento Power Elite, tooting the horn for the City of Sacramento and the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and how wonderful those big-hearted movers and shakers have made everything. Back in 2010, when local control for our community (Measure D) was on the ballot, The Bee joined the chorus of the opposition, effectively asking, "How dare those people try to upset the existing power structure?".  In the run-up to the Measure D vote, The Bee simply did not print stories about how badly the County had bungled things, opting instead to extol the virtues of the City of Sacramento. Influencing the news as it did then, The Bee propped up the County and helped defeat our community's cityhood try. Most voters were convinced to let the County continue to run things.

In his editorial, Mr. Philp DID mention Supervisor Rosario Rodriguez's support for a higher tax on sales in the UnCity.  Big surprise there - she is a Folsom resident and a former City Council member of the City of Folsom. Such a tax could benefit sales in her city, which currently has the same 7.75% sales tax rate as the County. Such an arrangement would raise the cost of goods (a car, say) sold in the UnCity above the price of the same goods sold in Folsom. What Mr. Philp did NOT mention, though, was that last summer Supervisor Rodriguez arranged for Scott Road to be repaved ($2.9M) so residents of Rancho Murieta (in her district) would have a smoother trip to to Folsom for shopping, services and work. Having driven Scott Road, our elves assured us that the work was needed, but they questioned Scott Road's priority over other, much more heavily traveled roads in the UnCity - for example, Arden Way or Marconi in our community, one that is 17 times bigger than Rancho Murieta. Mr. Philp was also silent as to how much road wear is caused by heavy-duty vehicles, such as County garbage transfer trucks, on roads like Watt and Hazel. Road wear from vehicles like that is not isolated to the UnCity and thus provides arguable justification for a countywide sales tax hike instead of one limited to sales withiin the UnCity.

What would Watt Avenue (or Arden, El Camino, Marconi, Fair Oaks or, for that matter, any local street) be like today if Arden Arcade had been in charge of municipal revenues over the last 15 plus years? What if there had been an Arden Arcade City Council owning and operating our local streets? Would our local roads have deteriorated so badly that even the Local Media could accurately inform about the situation? Or would the streets here have begun to be maintained like the City of Citrus Heights - where neighborhood voices are heard - has been doing? What if, during that time, a City of Arden Arcade had had a direct voice on SACOG, the regional body that distributes money for transportation projects? What if SACOG transportation dollars had flowed directly into Arden Arcade the way they do for SACOG's other cities? (Mr. Philp did not mention SACOG, by the way. Supervisor Desmond and Mr. Vicari always do.)

Over the years we have heard less and less people tell us the County does a swell job. At the same time, more and more people are interested in cityhood. They see the Board of Supervisors' track record as less than stellar - some even to the point of just walking away from it all. Oh, sure, there are still some people who tell us that nothing has changed since 2010 and therefore nothing ever will change. They want us to back away from the local control talk and just say nice things. But what if you had read Mr. Philp's editorial in October 2010? What if you had known in October 2010 what you know now? Would you have voted differently on cityhood then? Ah, but many of you out there in Readerland are new to the area. Do you think our roads are in good shape? Your opinions matter, people, please let us know your thoughts.