Like many in Folsom, I moved my young family to the area over thirty years ago, after growing up in the Bay Area. I am a retired correctional officer, and I worked at multiple prisons in the state including old and new Folsom Prisons. For most of my lifetime, Folsom was considered among the best communities of the greater Sacramento area, and it likely still is. The Sacramento suburbs strongly appealed to me for their more conservative culture than my upbringing in Contra Costa County, public safety, strong performing public schools, rising real estate values, and other positive trends.
While Folsom still has some great qualities today, these increasingly feel overshadowed by so many more recent, negative developments- the rise in crime and especially violent crime since the pandemic, nearly pervasive homelessness in town (despite being nearly non-existent even a few years ago), heavy traffic/ over-congestion, and ugly high rise apartment complexes that drown out the countryside.
Folsom is not the safe oasis it once was, and part of the problem is its efforts to overdevelop too quickly! The fast growth has been accompanied by a sharp rise in petty theft. Consider how collective mailbox theft and porch piracy was not a phenomenon until only a few years ago!
I have said for years, Folsom needs to slow development down and not become Roseville!
Something else worth articulating is that public safety is the foundation of a desirable community! The people in support of Folsom’s Measure G permanent sales tax increase try to justify it on the basis of having fewer beat cops today than during the recession in 2008. Ask yourself, is the real problem insufficient funding for police- or the recruitment and retention crisis of the mass media’s relentless demonization of law enforcement? I am confident it is the latter.
Any tax increase should designate much more to police and fire than 20% each. I stand behind my formal endorsement against Measure G!
Eric Norberg, Retired Correctional Officer & Folsom Resident
The above commentary was authored by local resident Eric Norberg and submitted to Folsom Times. The views and opinions expressed in community commentary submissions are that of the authors and do not reflect the views and opinions of Folsom Times, its management, staff, stakeholders or advertisers.
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