You’ve lived in Citrus Heights since
1984 — what are some of the ma-
jor changes you’ve seen in the past
35 years?
When I moved here, Citrus Heights was
not considered a desirable place to move
and stay. It was a move-in and move-out
type of community. It was a starter-home
community. The quality of life has dra-
matically improved. The infrastructure
has dramatically improved. We’ve just re-
ceived the designation of Tree City USA [by
the Arbor Day Foundation]. We’re proud
of our trees. Even though Sacramento is
called the City of Trees, we actually have
more trees per capita. Our focus of being
just a suburban community developed to
provide homes to people who commute to
Sacramento has changed. We have some
major employment in Citrus Heights,
which has been tricky because we don’t
have land. But we’re very proud of the
fact we have a [Small Business Adminis-
tration] building here that does disaster
response for the entire western United
States — Guam, Hawaii and Alaska in-
cluded. Right now, they’re swelled with
federal workers responding to the Camp
Fire. We [also] are shifting from being a
purely retail city to services and actively
seeking out businesses that will provide
employment to people who want to live
here and work here.
Citrus Heights has been incorporated
for 22 years. What important lessons
have been learned along the way?
I compare it to David and Goliath and “The
Mouse that Roared.” The little guy won.
We had so much working against us, and
it was such a long effort, and we prevailed.
So the lesson I’ve learned is that this com-
munity is very special. In the early days,
I used to think it was a disadvantage that
we were built-out — we didn’t have lots of
land to develop. … My opinion shifted as
I realized that our city is succeeding be-
cause we know who we are. We know what
we can do, we know what our strengths
are, we know what our limitations are,
We tried so hard to become a city
for so long that the old-timers, like
myself, really appreciate what we
have, because we remember what we had
before. One of our challenges is to keep that
alive with our newer employees, our newer
citizens, so they have appreciation for what
it took for us to get on the map.”
and we are working within the confines
of that successfully. We tried so hard to
become a city for so long that the old-tim-
ers, like myself, really appreciate what we
have, because we remember what we had
before. One of our challenges is to keep
that alive with our newer employees, our
newer citizens, so they have appreciation
for what it took for us to get on the map.
… We [also] have a tremendous amount
of volunteerism. When you quantify what
they do for our city in dollars and cents,
our volunteers save us about half a million
dollars a year in payroll. So the value of
volunteerism and community connection
is another lesson that’s very important. our solid roots, but we have a vision and a
focus on new growth. Our policies address
this and make it favorable and even easy for
businesses to come to Citrus Heights. We
have a good employment base here because
we have over 6,400 people per square mile.
We have a lot of people in Citrus Heights.
We have a good, solid and growing employ-
able group of people. … We have a lot of new
families and young professionals who are
moving to Citrus Heights or live in close
proximity.
You’ve said you’d like to see Citrus
Heights become more of a thriving
jobs center with good-paying jobs.
What steps are needed to make that
happen? We have one-stop shopping, if you will, so
if a business comes to Citrus Heights, they
come to our front counter, and all the nec-
essary staff comes to them. They don’t have
to go bouncing around from department
to department. From a staff standpoint, we
are pretty flat. We don’t have many layers of
management they have to tread through.
We have made a conscious decision to look
at some of our older policies that worked
for us when we were a new city or were
grandfathered in from the county … that
we thought were the right way to go, and
today, not so much so. An example would
be our design standards. There was a time
when beige was the color of municipalities;
One of the steps we’ve already taken is we
have hired a new community development
director, Meghan Huber, who we stole from
Rancho Cordova. She’s very well-connected
in the community. She knows brokers, she
knows businesses. That’s the first step. The
second thing is to make it a city that busi-
nesses want to come to. We started our new
branding campaign last year; “Solid roots.
New growth” is our tagline. So we celebrate
Tell me more about policies that make
it easy or desirable for a business to
move to Citrus Heights.
June 2019 | comstocksmag.com
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