Final content of the web site, www.edhca.net will remain in place until its prepaid accounts for web hosting and domain registration expire.

These comments are by past-president Paul Raveling. If it seems appropriate in the future I may post some additional notes on my personal web site, www.sierrafoot.org.

Here is the short summary of why we dissolved:

• A citizens alliance needs more citizens than we had as active participants.
• It is very difficult to influence public policy from the grass roots level.
• Group action has more limited maneuverability than individual action.
• EDHCA maintained a strict policy of avoiding partisan advocacy.
  We have a current situation which is appropriate for advocacy in a partisan election, and our board members should be totally free to participate in advocacy as private citizens tthis being perceived as a Citizens Alliance position.

We thank those who have supported us and worked with us. We achieved a few modest successes for the benefit of our community, with future history likely to show these as the top two:

• Supporting County staff with local knowledge from an in-community perspective, leading to redefinition of the El Dorado Hills Census Designated Place.
   
  The 2010 Census will reflect the actual current scope of the EDH community area, which we estimate to include 42,000 to 43,000 residents. This will replace the prior smaller area that contained only 18,016 people in the 2000 Census, and will provide realistic demographic statistics for future use. The expected results will be improved information for public policy planning and for the private sector. This should encourage economic development in balance with our population, which will be about 70,000 at buildout under current County land use planning.
   
• Supporting the Capital Southeast Connector Joint Powers Authority at the staff level, to initiate requirements analysis and conceptual design for possible Connector alignments in the El Dorado Hills area.
   
  The Connector began as a SACOG planning project in 2002. We became aware of it in 2005, and noted that its designation of White Rock Road as a regional through route is very problematic for El Dorado Hills traffic in the areas of Town Center, the Business Park, and the neighboring residential areas. With additional support from the Four Seasons Civic League, we appealed without success to the Connector JPA board of directors. We finally established established communication at the JPA staff level, and JPA staff has now begun examning the El Dorado Hills issues. This has coupled into the beginnings of improved attention from public agencies in Sacramento County and the City of Folsom. Those agencies are essential as partners with El Dorado County not only for considering Connector design, but also for other potential arterial routes to serve our Business Park and south-side residential areas. This process has ultimate potential to reduce future traffic congestion in central El Dorado Hills.

The Connector example also illustrates difficulty in functioning as a grass roots organization. We moved from personal comments to a SACOG committee in July, 2005 to Citizens Alliance and Four Seasons appeals to the JPA board in subsequent years. We failed to have any impact at all at the JPA board level. Some of us still have concerns about whether some of the board's members from Sacramento County understand El Dorado Hills-specific circumsances, as well as the functional requirements of processes to manage large engineering projects. A specific risk is confusing CEQA environmental analysis with the totality of engineering processes.

El Dorado Hills has many additional challenges to face, including some very old ones that are still unresolved. This is very difficult when our local government is resident in Placerville, and it is additionally difficult because that local government is responsible to others in the County as well as to El Dorado Hills. Political situations often are even more confounding due to the historic focus of power and influence being mainly Placerville-based.

So where do we go from here?

Past Citizens Alliance directors and members of our loosely defined core group will undoubtedly continue public advocacy, variously as individuals or as members of organizations such as the Four Seasons Civic League and the Bass Lake Action Committee. Much of this is issue-by-issue action.

El Dorado Hills probably will see action on the framework for local governance again in this new decade, and law provides only one such framework for better local governance: Incorporation as a city. The largest lesson of Citizens Alliance experience is that the current county-based system of governance is not well-suited to our needs as an increasingly urbanizing community. Some of us may contribute to such a new incorporation movement, but any such effort probably will be guided by a completely new set of community leaders.