“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” Alexander Graham Bell There are always more opportunities in life, somewhere over the rainbow; another opportunity is coming for both Councilmember Sandy Sheedy and Councilmember Rob Fong. Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high There's a land that I've heard of once in a lullaby. Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue And the dreams that you dare to dream, Really do come true. Someday I'll wish upon a star And wake up where the clouds are far behind me. Where troubles melt like lemon drops, High above the chimney tops, That'

The latest tally for District 4 has Steve Hansen topping Joe Yee by a mere 135 votes,11,132 votes to 10,997, while Allen Warren has taken a commanding 198 vote lead in Distict 2, with 6,103 votes compared with 5,905 for Rob Kerth.  The offical handout from the Sacramento Country Department of Voter Registration and Elections: Latest vote tally for Sacramento While Hansen is leading Yee in total votes, he's being careful not to make any assumptions before every vote is counted.  "I'm very happy that our lead is stable, and i'm anxious to see the count finished," Hansen said Tuesday evening. "And we'll look forward to knowing the final result very soon."  Officials say more than 16,000

Allen Warren jumped slightly ahead of opponent Rob Kerth in the race for the District 2 seat on the Sacramento City Council, according to Wednesday's update from the Sacramento County Department of Voter Registrations and Elections. Only 35 votes separate the two, with Warren claiming 5,818 votes, and Kerth totaling 5,783. In another hot race, Steve Hansen leads Joe Yee by 139 votes in the race for the District 4 seat on the council. Hansen now has 10,869 votes to Yee’s 10,730, according to the updated results released at 11:18 a.m. The race has been competitive to say the least. The two candidates have been taking turns grabbing the lead with nearly each update from the elections offi

Steve Hansen leads Joe Yee by 151 votes in the battle for the District 4 seat on the Sacramento City Council, according to the latest update Monday from the Sacramento County Department of Voter Registrations and Elections.  According to Sacramento County Campaign Services Manager Brad Buyse, Hansen now claims 10,842 votes to Yee's 10,691. Buyse said there will not be another update until next week. There are still 31,000 provisional ballots yet to be added to the tally. In this video, Sacramento Current blogger Devin Lavelle shares his analysis of the vote in the race for the District 4: "We definitely learned that the grid can turn out and vote and hold its own with Land Park, and in

The race for the District 4 seat on the Sacramento City Council was at times billed as the Land Park (Joe Yee) candidate versus the central city candidate (Steve Hansen), but it turns out the district's redheaded stepchild – River Oaks – was more important than many people realized. That's the conclusion Sacramento Current blogger Devin Lavelle reached in his smart post breaking down the vote. With Land Park and the central city essentially canceling each other out, River Oaks served as the tie breaker, or as Lavelle calls it, the "Ohio of District 4," and it tilted slightly in Hansen's favor. While it made up 10 percent of the total vote, Hansen's 4 percent advantage in River Oaks added

District 4 City Council candidates Steve Hansen and Joe Yee will hold their final debate Tuesday night after as the year-long campaign comes to a close. The debate, which is hosted by The Sacramento Press, will occur at 6:30 p.m. in the Cosmopolitan Cabaret theater, 1000 K St. Access Sacramento will broadcast the event live on cable channel 17 and on AccessSacramento.org.   The Sacramento Press is hosting – if you plan to attend and would like to ask a question, RSVP here. The candidates have contrasting styles and messages, as shown in this video of their closing statements during the Local Elections Candidates Forums hosted by the League of Women Voters on Oct. 6. Yee emphasizes his

The race between Joe Yee and Steve Hansen for the District 4 seat on the Sacramento City Council is reaching its hurried climax, as the candidates go from one forum to the next, with two this week alone. We decided to take a slightly different approach for the debate we're hosting on Oct. 30, and we'll need your help. The format is based off of two common observations that seem to hold true in most races. First, candidates tend to answer questions more candidly and completely when they come from voters as opposed to journalists. Secondly, followup questions are key to getting candidates to move beyond prepared stock answers and into the real substance of the issues. Here's how the forum

The Sacramento Press will host a debate on Oct. 30 with the candidates seeking to represent the central city and Land Park on the City Council next year: Steve Hansen and Joe Yee. The debate will occur at 6:30 p.m. in the Cosmopolitan Cabaret theater, 1000 K St. Access Sacramento will film the event, with broadcast times to be announced soon. If you plan to attend, please RSVP via our Eventbrite page. Questions will come from the live audience, community organizations, Sac Press readers and staff. If you have a question that you'd like to see included, please let us know in the conversation below this article or email us at hub[at]SacramentoPress.com. We will follow up via email with an

Sacramento is more than a place my family and I call home; it is a community to which I have dedicated my career and my public service. As a lifelong Sacramentan, a small business owner, and the former Chair of the City’s Planning Commission, I haven’t spent my career tweeting about how to grow a more walkable, bikeable, liveable city, I made it happen. My childhood was spent in a modest home in the Newton Booth neighborhood of Midtown. My high school sweetheart Daphne and I both graduated from C.K. McClatchy High School. We’ve been married for almost 40 years and raised our two children in District 4. As an architect for over two decades, my small business helped shape Sacramento to bec

City Council candidate Steve Hansen is this week's Sac Press Live guest, which will be streamed live on SacramentoPress.com Wednesday at noon. Hansen is taking on architect Joe Yee for the District 4 seat, which represents the central city and Land Park. The live stream starts here at noon:  Got a question for Hansen about what he would do on the council? Ask it in the comments section below this article. We'll cover all the on-point reader questions we can during the interview.       One issue we're sure to ask about: Hansen's stance on Measure U, which came up during our chat with Yee on Sept. 12. Yee said that while he supported the temporary half-cent sales tax proposed to f

One of Sacramento's hotly contested City Council races will be the subject of a forum Wednesday, as Joe Yee and Steve Hansen vie to represent downtown, Midtown and Land Park in November's election. Yee is a longtime Sacramento resident who currently lives in Land Park, while Hansen lives downtown. The two areas are decidedly different, and the challenge for each candidate will be how to represent both. Each candidate has been supported by city unions. The Sacramento Press recently chatted with Yee, and Hansen was endorsed by local firefighters last week. Hansen and Yee will square off from 7 - 8:30 p.m. Wednesday at Pioneer Congregational United Church of Christ, 2700 L St., in a forum

The influential Sacramento area firefighters union has endorsed City Council District 4 candidate Steve Hansen in his race against Joe Yee. In a statement released Thursday, the union said it made the endorsement because of Hansen's "vision for enhancing Sacramento communities and public safety from the ground up." Hansen said that he believed that the union endorsed him because of his ability to bring people together to solve problems, and his proposals for good government and diversifying the city’s economy. “The fire department is dependent on city revenues and the city’s economy has been badly stewarded over the last decade, and my approach is that you have to have a safe city to ha

Sacramento City Council District 4 candidate Joseph Yee is our guest this week on Sac Press Live, our weekly live streaming talk show that takes place every Wednesday at noon. The live stream will be available here:   Ask questions by joining the conversation below this article.   Update: Steve Hansen issued the following statement in response to the chat: "Contrary to the comments earlier of my competitor, I do support Measure U, the temporary sales tax, which has become a necessity in the face of increased crime and deteriorated parks. Further budget cuts will undermine basic services. The City must be cautious in maintaining a higher sales tax than the region for any longer th

Our next Sac Press Live chat will feature a discussion with architect and District 4 City Council candidate Joe Yee about the upcoming election and some of the issues the district faces. We'll be asking Yee where he stands on neighborhood issues such as waste collection, utility rates and traffic and parking problems, and we’ll dive into questions about public policy, development and what he thinks is the best way forward for Sacramento. Yee, principal architect with the Anova Nexus Architects firm, and his wife, Daphne, have lived in Land Park since 1976. He has worked for more than 30 years as an architect – he designed the West Sacramento Library and numerous educational facilities in

Updated June election results from the Sacramento City Council races show that both the District 4 and District 2 races are still very tight, making every vote more valuable to the candidates as November nears. Although the primary occurred June 5, the county has still been processing and certifying precinct reports. Here is the break down for District 4: STEVE HANSEN . . . . . . . . .    3,454      28.39 % JOSEPH YEE . . . . . . . . . .       3,379      27.77 % PHYLLIS A. NEWTON. . . . . . . 2,758      22.67 % TERRY SCHANZ . . . . . . . . .    1,782     14.65 % MICHAEL DANIEL REHM . . . . .  294       2.42 % DAVID A. TURTURICI . . . . . . .    254       2.09 % NEIL DAVIDSON . . . . . .

It wasn’t a victory speech that let Sacramento know Steve Hansen was the top vote-getter in the race for City Council District 4, it was a victory tweet – but what would you expect from a candidate whose campaign was propelled to success on a digital platform in a new-media world? "We're done...for now. thank you," he tweeted. Hansen finished the primary election Tuesday with 2,317 votes – 28.5 percent of the total. He will have his work cut out for him in the runoff however, as he finished just 86 votes ahead of architect and political veteran Joe Yee who had 2,231 votes (27.5 percent).  Phyllis Newton, meanwhile, received 1,798 (22.19 percent) and Terry Schanz  finished with 1,213 vot

On election day in Sacramento, candidates in the running for City Council seats are staying focused on the polls and counting votes. After months of campaigning, interviews, candidate forums and meet-and-greets, where do the candidates for District 4 stand now as voters start lining up to the polls? David Turturici – The estate planning attorney from South Land Park said early in the race that he was running because he opposed – vehemently – Mayor Kevin Johnson’s arena plan. When the arena deal flatlined, Turturici’s campaign lost its basis, and Turturici lost steam. He didn’t lose his humor about it, however. When asked if he was going to suspend his campaign in May after blowing off a c

A new kind of tension may be ahead for Sacramento politics as two strong neighborhoods with vibrant histories are finally united into a single City Council district and, when the election dust settles, one council member will represent them both. In Land Park, the streets are wide and quiet, the zoo and lush William Land Park have welcomed families for generations, and residents want a bridge to West Sacramento built farther up the river to keep the traffic out and preserve the peace and quiet of their neighborhood. In Midtown, an eclectic mix of trendy restaurants and bars, art galleries, coffee houses and other small mom-and-pop businesses have helped attract a growing population of yo

A city plan to extend parking restrictions during Second Saturday has split opinion between Midtown residents who see the plan as a solution to some of their parking problems – and those who believe it will only create more. The proposal is to create a pilot program that extends the hours of “residential only” permit parking areas from 6 p.m. to 12 a.m. on Second Saturdays, which have been a boon for Midtown businesses but an annoyance for some residents who have to share limited parking spaces with visitors. The pilot program wuold cover 16th Street to 29th Street, and the south side of G Street to the south side of I Street. If the response seems positive, the city would initiate a th

The candidates from all of the City Council district races, the mayoral race and two Board of Supervisors races will face off Saturday at a forum hosted by the League of Women Voters. One notable exception: Mayor Kevin Johnson is not scheduled to appear. According to Johnson’s campaign manager, Steve Maviglio, Johnson has “no need” to attend. “Given the large number of events the mayor has attended over the past year, and since none of his opponents are waging a real campaign against him, he chose not to participate in this event,” Maviglio said Friday. The news of Johnson’s planned absence came as no surprise to mayoral candidate Jonathan Rewers. “He’s not even campaigning,” Rewers s