Waters, Waters everywhere

Last week was the first meeting of the new 2011-2012 Sacramento County grand jury.

It’s not the kind of thing I’d normally notice, but one name on the roster jumps out: Former Sacramento City Councilman Robbie Waters will be serving on the jury for the coming year.

The man is enjoying a truly renaissance semi-retirement. In fact, I think he’s probably the first sheriff-cum-city-councilman-cum-pot-lobbyist-cum-grand-juror that I’ve ever met.

I’ve heard a couple people grumble about how Robbie could use the gig to go after political enemies. And he’s got a few. And the grand jury is often accused of playing politics—though that’s typically by whatever agency or institution is getting slammed in that particular grand jury report.

It’s a bit hard for me to imagine one juror steering the grand jury in the direction of a personal grudge. (The Twin Rivers Unified School District folks may disagree.)

On the other hand, I would think it would be useful for the grand jury to have someone like Waters on board, someone who knows where the bodies are buried, figuratively speaking. Hell, Robbie probably put a few of them there himself.

Compiled from Snog.

Burning bridges

Don’t ever call them NIMBYs; your phone and email will be blowing up all week. But the political clout of Land Park was on full display last week, as one Sacramento City Council member after another lined up to oppose any “commuter bridge” that would connect that neighborhood to West Sacramento.

From here out, only “neighborhood friendly” bridges will be considered, though I suspect that mostly means “not in my neighborhood.”

Some council members were so eager to show how friendly they are to Land Park that they were downright unfriendly to West Sac.

Sandy Sheedy remarked that “It’s not our fault that West Sacramento didn’t think about transportation impacts. … I don’t know what West Sac was thinking, except they were building and building.” Councilman Kevin McCarty even dropped the word “sprawlapalooza” during the discussion. Ouch.

West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon was out there somewhere watching all this go down, and fired up his Twitter account to gripe: “couple of sac city council members publicly trashing west sac after our stalwart support for arena, intermodal & every sac project? no class.” Just don’t call them NIMBYs, Mayor Cabaldon—they hate that.

Compiled from Snog.