Re: * Sr. Oracle POOPER SCOOPER Needed in Central Texas..

Chico, oh yes. One of the big drawing points being that the students there (most of whom are originally from LA and the Bay Area) drink themselves to death.

Seriously though, one of the local tv stations here (Sacramento) recently ran extensive reports on Austin, and how a buch of Sacramento's civic leaders went down there to look at what Austin is doing *wrong* in terms of rapid growth so that Sacramento can try to avoid some of those things, and not just be a repeat of LA or the Bay Area.

Sacramento has the advantage of recently having had an outstanding visionary mayor in Joe Serna (1st hispanic mayor in Sacramento's history, recently deceased) that was a govt. professor here at the state university. Joe did an excellent job of building a centrist coalition (he started out in the farm worker movement with Cesar Chavez), starting the movement to rebuild the urban core, reform public schools, invest in mass transit, support professional sports & the business community, etc.

Anyway, I've never heard of any *major* software stuff going on in Chico. It is a nice place for laid back ex-urbanite types, and is about 2 or 3 times as big as it was when I lived there in the mid- 70s. At that time it was about 50,000. Still, I would be surprised to hear that the local chico economy has attracted any major industry, especially high tech. It is just a bit too far from the Bay Area, and once you leave Chico, it get very rural, which might sound nice, but there are a lot of white supremacists and other bizarre folks (degenerate bikers, pot growers, etc.) around there, and the local culture has been in decline for at least a generation. On the other hand, there is a thriving small family/organic boutique farm culture centered near Davis (which has a sphere of influence that extends east/north to the Napa wine country). How much of that has developed further north, including in the Chico area, I don't know (the exceptions being the Lundberg rice business, and the huge concentration of highly successful Sikh farming communities). Basically, the rural counties north of Yuba city have largely been politically and economically isolated for quite a while due to the decline of traditional farming, timber, mining, railroad sectors (& "brain drain"). This leads to absentee ownership, where monied interests from urban centers invest in devalued local property with the assumption that the overall growth of the state will sooner or later catch up with the north state, and drive prices up. It is hardly a recipe for the development of a thriving, dynamic local culture, and the number of ex-urbanites that have moved there probably isn't yet large enought to counteract those tendencies to a significant extent. Recently there was a big controversy when a large Japanese gourmet beef ranching export concern dumped a lot of offal/manure into the Sacramento river (or tributary). They apparently thought that they didn't need to either understand, or follow, US environmental regulations.

As far as I know, most of the Bay Area economic "spill over" is happening in the Sacramento and Stockton/Tracy/Modesto areas. eg, Oracle opened a large "back office" facility in the Sacramento area several years years ago. With all the infrastucture advantages that Sacramento and Stockton have that are needed by industry, I can't see how the north state has as much to offer considering the extra distances, and attendant transportation issues. The exception being that real estate (housing) in Sacramento/Stockton, while still less than half the Bay area, is skyrocketing, while is is much more reasonable in the north state. The problem there (in terms of business development) is that high tech employees are probably much more interested in getting a "good deal" in Sacramento/Stockton right now since in 3-5 years thier properties are likely to double, or triple in value. While housing (and presumably office space, etc.) is still cheaper in the north state, the opportunities to "cash in" are not as great. Since they are famous for not liking outsiders, the Oregoneans are going to hate me for saying it, but if you want to live in the "boonies", Oregon is a beter deal than many of the north state areas of california. There is a story about how in the gold rush days, there was a sign out on the wagon trail out in the desert in Nevada (Utah?) pointing north to Oregon. All the people that were smart enough to read the sign went to Oregon, and the dumb/greedy ones went west to California. :)

If you look at most social science studies about growth problem &issues in the US, for better or worse, almost all the high tech and "service" economy) is centered in "edge cities" (suburban centers rapidly developing at the margins -within "commutable" distance- of the large urban cores). At this time, Chico doesn't qualify.

If you look at what is happening in Grass Valley, Ca., you might be able to see more of a similarity to the situation in College Station than is the case with Chico.

regards,
ep

On 25 Oct 2000, at 8:16, Tom Pall wrote:

Date sent:      	Wed, 25 Oct 2000 08:16:18 -0800
To:             	Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com>
Send reply to:  	ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com
From:           	"Tom Pall" <tom_at_cdproc.com>
Subject:        	Re: * Sr. Oracle DBA Needed in Central Texas..

> ... Was told the great opportunity
> was in College Station, TX. College Station is where everybody now wants to go,
> according to the voice on the other end of the phone. Reason? Austin has become
> so crowded.
>
> I wonder if people in Silicon Valley get a similar pitch on Chico, CA, also a college town.
Received on Wed Oct 25 2000 - 12:44:20 CDT