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January 10, 2007
Nothing To Sphere But Sphere Itself
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| You'll often hear about Chico's "sphere of influence"
when following City-County discussions. But where is it? In the diagram above (see original pdf here) you'll see a dotted line that surrounds both shaded areas and some areas that are white. The shaded areas are incorporated "City of Chico", while the white areas both inside and outside of the sphere of influence are unincorporated areas of Butte County. An interesting aspect of the sphere of influence is that it also represents the eventual expansion of Chico through annexations from the County. This is our expected "build-out". We've spent the last several years filling in islands of county property and will continue doing so. As you can see from the diagram, there is not a lot of property left for the City to incorporate. There are a couple of points worth making in relation to our sphere of influence. The first is that it does not extend much beyond Bidwell Park. It would be a good idea to bring the area north of the park within our sphere of influence. The area south of the park and north of highway 32 would also be an area we could look at. Since the County is updating its Master Plan now might be a good time to discuss this. The second point is that the other cities in Butte County have much less incorporated "city" areas within their spheres of influence (as a percentage of total area). Oroville in particular has quite a bit of room to grow. Oroville is close enough to Chico to provide lower cost housing for our low paid retail employees. Traffic planners should expect increases in commuter traffic from Oroville, Orland, and even Gridley, due to our lack of affordable housing and their room to grow. |
Posted by Lon at January 10, 2007 12:00 AM