Tag Archives: City of Sacramento

Upper Westside Vote

The Board of Supervisors (BOS) has scheduled a vote on the Upper Westside project for Tuesday, June 16 at 2 pm. Plan to attend at 700 H St, Sacramento.

To confirm that the vote will be held, the morning of the 16th, check our webpage or social media pages.

Places where you can get updates include:

You can also check the agenda on Board of Supervisors meeting webpage.

Background

The vote is to approve or deny this project which will rezone over 2,000 acres of farmland to enable residential and commercial development.

The fundamental reason to oppose this project is that the County should not build an unincorporated city, the size of Galt, in a flood zone, next to the Sacramento River. It will destroy valuable farmland and wildlife habitat. The project will add over 20,000 people to Natomas and will not improve main transportation arteries, resulting in increased traffic and congestion. This project also flouts long-standing agreements between the City and the County.

The City and the Natomas Basin Conservancy have retained counsel and sent strongly worded letters to the County explaining how proposed rezoning will destroy the Natomas Basin Habitat Conservation Plan. You should help us to oppose this project.

Submit a Comment to the Supervisors

Email a comment to BoardClerk[at]saccounty[dot]gov. Include “Upper Westside Specific Plan” Item #58, in the subject. Providing your contact information is optional. Or, you can mail a comment to the County Board of Supervisors at 700 H Street, Suite 2450, Sacramento, CA 95814

Ideas for your comments could include the following. You don’t need to use them all – use ones that reflect your reasons for opposition.

  • The City’s opposition – The City Council passed a resolution against UWSP. The City’s excellent letter is here. 
  • Habitat – There will be irreversible and fatal impacts to the Natomas Basin Conservancy, the Swainson’s Hawk and the Swainson’s Hawk Zone. Two excellent letters from NBC are here. There is total disregard for 3 decades of planning for habitat preservation. There are conflicts with the Urban Services Boundary (County’s ultimate boundary for growth) and the Natomas Basin Conservancy.  
  • Traffic impacts – I-5 and I-80, West El Camino, and Garden Highway will be severely impacted by the addition of 20,000 residents.
  • Water – There is no viable source of water. The urban water rights do not exist for these parcels and water reliability is diminishing with climate change. ECOS wrote a letter in response to the project’s recent proposal to use agricultural water.
  • Fire & Police – Concern with the ability of the county to provide adequate protection for urban scale services typically handled by the city, not the county.
  • Negative business impact – Millions of square feet of new commercial space will pull business from existing businesses in Natomas and downtown.
  • Evacuation Risk – Increased congestion creates dangerous evacuation conditions in case of flooding or other emergencies.
  • Air Quality Damage – Excessive and unhealthy air quality emissions are not sufficiently addressed. The EIR identifies significant air quality impacts that can’t be mitigated.
  • Lack of Affordable Housing – This project does not address the region’s affordable housing need. Our housing need is for low and moderate income housing which is a minor part of this project. More importantly, plenty of land is already zoned for housing.

Please join us in opposing this project.  Attend the meeting, give a 2 minute spoken comment and/or, submit a written comment.

Thank you for taking action to demonstrate your opposition to this project.

Upper Westside County Vote June 16, N Magazine

Upper Westside – County Vote June 16

Can you even imagine approving a town the size of Galt in just one meeting?? With little to no public input? Well, that’s what the County Board of Supervisors is poised to do, on June 16, 2026.

The Board has not held a public hearing to address community concerns since 2020. Long, contentious public meetings were held before the Natomas Community Planning Advisory Council and the Planning Commission. The public has plenty to say but the supervisors don’t appear to want to hear it.

To get a feel for the project, go to the intersection of El Centro and W. El Camino and look west to the Garden Highway. All of it, 2000 acres of prime farmland, would be replaced with over 9000 homes and 3 million square feet of commercial uses – larger than the Roseville Galleria and as many people as Galt or El Cerrito.

The traffic congestion alone will be appalling and will lead to worsened air quality for all of us in the region.

Opposition includes the City of Sacramento, Sutter County, the Natomas Basin Conservancy, ECOS, and residents. Also opposed are developers who built Natomas, and who were required to finance the Natomas Basin Habitat Conservation Plan to mitigate for the loss of farmland and habitat. Over $140,000,000 has been invested to purchase and manage land for permanent habitat to save endangered and threatened species. If the Upper Westside Project is allowed to proceed, it will destroy the Natomas Basin Habitat Conservation Plan.

There is no real plan for water for the project. It would use agricultural water from the Natomas Central Mutual Water Company, which has water rights and approval to supply water for farmland. They would need multiple permissions to provide water for municipal use and to build a water treatment facility.

Finally, there is the myth that this project addresses Sacramento’s housing crisis. Records show that 140,000 housing units have been approved in Sacramento County but not yet built. Construction is the solution, not permission for more projects. We need to BUILD affordable housing, not approve another upscale project that adds to the glut of unbuilt units approved.

Please contact your county supervisors and tell them to say NO to this poorly conceived and destructive mega development. If you want to learn more about the effects of the development on our Natomas community, visit the ECOS webpage for Natomas.

Environmental Council of Sacramento
https://www.ecosacramento.net/what-we-do/committees/climate-change-committee/land-use-natomas-team/
County Board of Supervisors
www.bos.saccounty.gov/
Phone: 916.874.5411

Source: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1684528993233750&set=pcb.1684529963233653

Upper Westside Vote – Scheduled Again

The vote on the Upper Westside project by the Board of Supervisors (BOS) has been scheduled for Tuesday, June 16 at 2 pm.
Please put June 16, 2 pm on your calendar and plan to attend at 700 H St, Sacramento.

The BOS vote has been cancelled (with about 18 hours notice) twice. So, on June 16, plan to check whether or not the vote is on the agenda. The County only needs to post the agenda for a public meeting 72 hours prior to the meeting.

Places where you can get updates include:

If you have submitted written comments for either of the previously scheduled votes, they will be included with the materials for the BOS on the new date.

Sacramento’s Housing Crisis

One of the arguments used in favor of developing Upper Westside and other green spaces in Sacramento, is the housing crisis. Sacramento does have a housing crisis, however, the solution isn’t to approve more farmland for development, but to actually construct more homes.

Securing an entitlement, or an approval by a jurisdiction such as Sacramento County to develop land, does not build more homes. Sacramento County has already entitled far more land for residential development than the market will bear, as demonstrated by how slowly the housing units are being built out.

Since 1995, eleven land developments designed for 70,000 housing units have been entitled by Sacramento County. In these developments, only 5,000 housing units were constructed by 2020, and it is projected that only 17,000 housing units will be built by 2050. One reason for the slow pace of construction is the builders’ fear of saturating the market. If many houses are under construction at the same time, sale prices fall, negatively affecting builders’ profits.

Approving the Upper Westside Project will not help to solve the Sacramento housing crisis, but it will add to the excess of entitlements, further disincentivizing builders from building.

The jurisdictions in our region must incentivize construction, not entitlements.

In Natomas, large parcels of land entitled by the City of Sacramento over 20 years ago for residential development, are still sitting there as open space with no construction. The clip of the aerial photo below shows these large areas on both sides of I-5, north of Del Paso Road.

ECOS recognizes the gravity of Sacramento’s housing crisis and its impact on home buyers. We support infill and higher-density building as solutions to the supply and affordability problems. Because of the increasing impacts of climate change and the rising risk of flooding in Sacramento, we believe it is important to protect open land. We also believe strongly in Sacramento as the Farm to Fork Capital and that we must protect our agricultural land. We do not need more development projects entitled on agricultural land.

To read more about ECOS perspective on the housing crisis, see this position paper.

CANCELLED – Vote on Upper Westside

CANCELLED – Vote on Upper Westside

On April 27, 2026, Sacramento County postponed the hearing without setting a new date.

The vote on Upper Westside was cancelled due to the absence of one of the Supervisors.  Staff is recommending that the Board of Supervisors drop the item from the April 28 agenda and reschedule it to a date when all five Supervisors are in attendance.

The vote has not been rescheduled yet and the Agenda may not have been modified yet (3:45 pm April 27, 2026).

Upper Westside – Help Us Oppose!

Vote is Confirmed!

The Board of Supervisors has scheduled their vote on the Upper Westside Project for Tuesday, April 28 at 2 pm.  The agenda and the staff report are here, they were published April 22, 2026 well after 6 pm.

The Supervisors will meet in Board Chambers at 700 H Street, Sacramento.  The vote will be on the EIR and the Project. 

Take Action

  1. Send a Comment to BoardClerk[at]saccounty[dot]gov
    The vote is Agenda item # 66 “The Upper Westside Specific Plan”.  Put this information at the top of your comment.
  2. Attend the meeting.  You can make a two minute verbal comment. For written or verbal comment ideas, see Comment Ideas, below
  3. Sign our Upper Westside Petition
  4. Contribute. Your donation helps us oppose this project
  5. Share this information and ask others to join our mailing list.
  6. Share this Video of people who live on Garden Hwy speaking out against the project.
  7. We will be at Sacramento Earth Day at Southside Park on Sunday April 26 from 11-4.  Stop by our booth #R2, and say hi!

Background

The County Board of Supervisors has scheduled the vote to approve or deny this project which will rezone over 2,000 acres of farmland to enable residential and commercial development, thus destroying the Natomas Basin Habitat Conservation Plan.

The fundamental reason to oppose this project is that the County should not build an unincorporated city, the size of Galt, on land next to the Sacramento River. It will destroy valuable farmland and wildlife habitat, and, without improving main transportation arteries, increase traffic and congestion by adding over 20,000 people to Natomas. This project also flouts long-standing agreements between the City and the County. The City and the Natomas Basin Conservancy have retained counsel and sent strongly worded letters to the County explaining how proposed rezoning will destroy the Natomas Basin Habitat Conservation Plan. You should help us to oppose this project.

Comment Ideas

Email a comment to BoardClerk[at]saccounty[dot]gov. Include “Upper Westside Specific Plan” in the subject. Providing your contact information is optional. Or, you can mail a comment to the County Board of Supervisors at 700 H Street, Suite 2450, Sacramento, CA 95814

Points for your comments could include the following. You don’t need to use them all – use ones that reflect your reasons for opposition.

  • The City’s opposition – The City Council passed a resolution against UWSP.  The City’s excellent letter is here.
  • There will be irreversible and fatal impacts to the Natomas Basin Conservancy, the Swainson’s Hawk and the Swainson’s Hawk Zone.  Two excellent letters from NBC are here.
  • Traffic impacts to I-5 and I-80, West El Camino, and Garden Highway.
  • There is no viable source of water. The urban water rights do not exist for these parcels and water reliability is diminishing with climate change.
  • Total disregard for 3 decades of planning for flood/fire prevention and habitat preservation — conflicts with the Urban Services Boundary (County’s ultimate boundary for growth) and the Natomas Basin Conservancy  
  • Millions of square feet of new commercial space will pull business from existing businesses in Natomas and downtown.
  • Increased congestion creates dangerous evacuation conditions in case of flooding or other emergencies.
  • Excessive and unhealthy air quality emissions are not sufficiently addressed. The EIR identifies significant air quality impacts that can’t be mitigated: there are conflicts with the air quality plan during project operation, emissions of key air pollutants and precursors during project operation, and exposure of sensitive receptors to toxic air contaminants during project operation. It also did not assess the ultrafine particulate emission health impacts of the project.
  • This project does not address the region’s affordable housing need and includes very few affordable housing units. Our housing need is for low and moderate income housing which also is a minor part of this project.  More importantly, plenty of land is already zoned for housing.  The housing crisis is now – construction on this project will not begin for many years and our housing needs will be completely different then.

Join Us!

• April 26 – Come to Sacramento Earth Day at Southside Park, 11- 4. Come by to say hi and talk about protecting open space in the Sacramento Region.
• April 28 – Come to the Board of Supervisors meeting and possible vote on Upper Westside. Voice your opposition. 2 pm at 700 H St, Sacramento.