Business View Civil and Municipal | June 2022

37 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 3, ISSUE 6 and primarily to Lincoln because they don’t need to go into an office anymore, they can work from anywhere. They’re moving out of very busy urban centers, and are really looking for a more rural, beautiful area of the state to live in.” The city is also home to the Lincoln Regional Airport, a general aviation airport with a 6001- foot runway. “We have the ability to expand it to 7001, which is a really long runway,” Joiner asserts. “It is a reliever runway for Sacramento Metro Airport, and an emergency runway for Beale Air Force Base, which makes it pretty important in the region, but it’s also a great asset to our community. It’s something we have that our surrounding communities do not.” Attracting new economic development opportunities near this airport will be a focus of Mayor Andreatta, who adds, “Our airport has so much potential. We are at the place now where we’re ready to bring forward plans to improve and expand it, as well as bring in more commercial opportunities. It will be a true gem of the whole region and a real asset for Lincoln.” On the sustainability side, Lincoln is committed to their 40% open space requirement for all development. Scully acknowledges, “For a town of 50,000, if you look at our footprint, it could be double or triple that population, but because we require this open space component, it has a L INCOLN, CAL I FORNI A much more rural feel. On the environmental side, that allows the city to really do what we can to protect our surrounding natural habitat.” This preservation is deliberate, focused on protecting wildlife corridors and greenbelts within neighborhood developments. “It is not at all uncommon for fox, deer, raccoons, and possums to be coming down through those corridors very comfortably, knowing that they’re safe throughout the community,” says Joiner. In order to maintain these thriving natural areas, the city works with a local goat farmer, bringing in 7,000 goats every year. Joiner adds, “They spend a few months eating down the space so it doesn’t get so out of control. You could drive through town and see hundreds of goat herds all over the place!” The arrival of the goats is an exciting time for residents of Lincoln, which is also home to a large number of peacocks. These magnificent birds are another source of beauty and entertainment in the community, inspiring the name of the local collegiate baseball league, the ‘Peacocks’. “We’re excited about development, but once you lose some of that flora and fauna you lose the character of what makes Lincoln, Lincoln. So, everything that we do is based around making sure that the growth that occurs here retains what the landscape looked like