Community Corner

Elk Grove Patch Turns One Year Old

We review the year, ask for your feedback, and learn what a Grange is.

Last week I attended an Old Town Elk Grove Foundation board meeting, and found myself talking to board member Howard Sihner, also known around town as “The Grange Master.”

I screwed up my courage and asked him a question I’d been wondering about for weeks: “So, um, what exactly is a grange, anyway?”

The roomful of longtime Elk Grovians broke into laughter, and I was reminded that even after a year of reporting on Elk Grove, for this Bay Area native, there’s always more to learn.

Find out what's happening in Elk Grovewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Elk Grove Patch marks one year of existence today, and it’s been a banner year for the small town that grew into a city.

We’ve seen tragedies—like —and triumphs, like the successful campaign to . The Elk Grove Unified School District over how to deal with some of the biggest budget problems it’s ever faced, and the city started for the first time.

Find out what's happening in Elk Grovewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

National trends like the , the and even washed up on our shores. Elk Grovians reached into their hearts and pockets repeatedly to help those in need, from to the children of —and of course, .

Through it all, Elk Grove Patch has blossomed from a mere idea into a thriving website that many Elk Grovians visit daily to connect with their neighbors and find out what’s happening in their community. That growth is due as much to the contributions of local residents as to the work of our paid staff.

Over a dozen of you are now blogging on the site, with hundreds more sharing your thoughts in our comments section, posting and and .

Here are a few of the comments I’ve gotten from readers recently about what Elk Grove Patch means to them: “Thank you for your professional reporting and willingness to go the extra mile”…”Very informative and just easy to read”…”It’s something in my inbox that I actually open”…”I would never have known about that event if I hadn’t read about it on Patch.” And my favorite, from a blogger: “I am so glad so many people got the chance to see what I had to say.”

Of course, there’s plenty of room for improvement. In January, we’ll begin a conversation about how we can make Elk Grove Patch better. (You can help kick it off now by adding your ideas in the comments section below.) We’ll also be checking in with some of the stories we covered during our first weeks here, and throwing a little birthday party for the site (details coming soon!).

One final note: I’ve been struck this year by how some of the stories we’ve covered in Elk Grove have also garnered national and even global headlines. News outlets from the Associated Press to international Sikh websites covered the killings of Gurmej Atwal and Surinder Singh, the British magazine The Economist picked up our story about the closing of Elk Grove’s Borders store, and The New York Times wrote about the city’s plans for a new civic center.

Perhaps that’s because Elk Grove is in many ways quintessentially American— politically and culturally diverse, solidly middle-class, focused on education and beset with many of the challenges facing the larger United States. Those challenges include a growing population, changing demographics and figuring out how to ensure prosperity for all.

Which means that the issues we’re covering here on the site, and that you all blog about and comment on every day, are critical not only to the future of Elk Grove but to that of the country as well. If there’s one thing I’m acutely aware of as Elk Grove Patch winds up its first year of life, it’s this: What happens in Elk Grove matters. Your stories matter. Each and every one.

Oh, and for those of you who are as clueless as I was, the Grange is a national farmers’ society started after the Civil War to fight for things like better roads and postal service in rural areas, along with lower rates to ship their goods. Membership in the Elk Grove chapter swelled when the Grange introduced low-cost insurance plans available to all, but has shrunk in recent years with the decline of family farms.

So now you know. Tell your friends. And tell them you read about it on Patch.


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