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Stress Test Raises Pomona’s Pulse : Study Amuses Some, but Mayor Says It Hurts City’s Image

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Times Staff Writer

A study that labeled image-conscious Pomona the nation’s second most stressful city has angered some civic leaders and distressed the mayor so much that his first reaction was to threaten to sue the Washington-based group responsible.

“I thought we were doing a great job,” Pomona Mayor G. Stanton Selby said. “Then I hear from our friends in Washington that we’re not. I’d like to jar them a bit.”

Called the “Urban Stress Test,” the study is based on government statistics in 11 social and economic areas, including crime, crowding, sudden jumps or declines in population, birth rates among teen-agers and air pollution. Researchers forZero Population Growth Inc., a nonprofit group devoted to reducing population through public awareness, used the data to rate 184 American cities on a 5-point scale.

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Miami was ranked as the most stressful, with a 4.6 rating, followed by Pomona with a 4.5. Fargo, N.D., with a 1.8 rating, was ranked as the least stressful.

The study has enraged some in Pomona and amused others. Mayor Selby, for example, was disturbed enough by the study to engage in a terse exchange of letters with Zero Population Growth a few days after results of the “stress test” were released.

Selby wrote that he could not believe the result, and chided Zero Population Growth for relying on aging government data--some of it six years old--instead of talking to residents about their city.

The organization’s executive director, Susan Weber, said such random interviews would have no validity in a truly scientific assessment of urban problems.

“What we were trying to find out wasn’t what people think about their town, but to find out if it’s doing OK,” said Weber, whose group advocates a voluntary limit of two children per family.

One city employee found humor--and profit--in Pomona’s lofty stress rating. Frank Homstad, of the city’s community relations bureau has designed a T-shirt that says “Urban Stress Survivor” on the front and sports a large “2” on the back.

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Homstad said he has had nearly 70 requests from city employees for the shirts, which he is selling for $7.50 each.

But Weber said such reactions suggest that the stress study results were largely misinterpreted.

“We were talking about population stress on the community as a whole, not individual stress levels,” she said. “It’s like going to the doctor. Like checking the body of a city, reading its vital signs.”

She said the study was the group’s most ambitious statistical survey, requiring three researchers to sift through piles of federal statistics for several months. The three examined many areas that they believed placed strains on urban populations, but several were ultimately rejected because data was sketchy or incomplete, Weber said.

After the 11 categories were selected, cities were assigned points in each area. The point scale, Weber said, was designed to make it easier for the public to understand the study. Such factors as sudden jumps or drops in population, high teen-age birth rates or widespread unemployment pushed cities higher on the scale.

Reactions from officials in other California cities that received high stress ratings--among them Los Angeles, Long Beach and Santa Ana--ranged from the verbal equivalent of a yawn to outright chuckles.

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“I was born about 200 miles west of the place considered the least stressful,” said Long Beach Mayor Ernie Kell, whose city received a 4.0 rating.

Kell said he used to travel to low-rated Fargo from his hometown of Minot. “And I can tell you they have far more stress than we have here,” he said. “Just getting through a winter there is stressful enough.”

In Los Angeles, labeled the fourth most stressful city in the nation, Mayor Tom Bradley was unavailable for comment. An aide, Tom Houston, said Bradley was much too busy to answer questions from reporters about the stress test. “He’s been out of town and I’ve got 15 people waiting outside his office and he has appointments scheduled all day,” Houston said.

Houston added that he doubted that Angelenos would begin a mass migration to Fargo because of the study.

In Santa Ana, there was little stress evident in the official reaction to the study.

“Should I take my Valium now?” Santa Ana Mayor Daniel E. Griset replied when asked about the survey. He then dismissed the study, which gave his city a 4.0 rating, as “a superficial effort to describe urban living as less attractive than rural living.”

Attack on Urban Blight

But in Pomona, the study seems to have been taken more seriously. For the past year, the city has been engaged in a large-scale public relations effort to dispel the image of urban blight Pomona that has acquired over the last two decades. Ten major redevelopment projects have been outlined by the city. One, a shopping center, has been completed, and two of the projects are under construction.

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Private developments, both large and small, are so numerous that it is difficult to drive along major city streets without happening across one or more of them.

Some civic leaders speculated that population trends, covered in 3 of the 11 categories, weighed heavily in the stress study’s overall results. In Pomona, according to city and county population estimates collected by Zero Population Growth, the population increased by 7,723 between 1980 and 1982, for a 1982 total of 100,465.

“In effect what they’re saying is that Pomona is a growing city,” said Albert A. Correia, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce. “They are basically anti-growth. As a matter of fact, we are growing. And we’re going to continue doing what we’re doing.”

Ronald Smothers, the city’s economic development manager, said the study is “just one more thing we have to explain” to businessmen and developers who might want to invest in the city. But Smothers said he did not expect any need to spend more on public relations because of the stress study. The city spent about $125,000 on public relations this year, Smothers said.

Initial reactions notwithstanding, Mayor Selby said he did not take the study too seriously. But he said Zero Population Growth should be held accountable for its claims.

Like Calling Names

“What really bothers me is the potential damage it could do,” Selby said. “It’s just the kind of thing that we don’t need. You can’t call people names and keep getting away with it. That’s really what they’ve done to Pomona--called us a bad name--and that hurts anybody’s image. I would love to jolt them with a potential lawsuit.”

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City Atty. Patrick Sampson said research would be necessary to determine what, if any, legal basis the city might have for a lawsuit against Zero Population Growth.

Kate Sprau, legal counsel for the League of California Cities, said she knew of no cities that have filed suit over the publication of unfavorable material about them. She did say, however, that such a lawsuit would be more likely to succeed on grounds of economic loss to the city than libel or slander.

Anger about the stress rating seems to be confined to the upper levels of the city administration. The humorous reaction of some city employees found expression in the T-shirt.

The logo on the shirt bears a striking resemblance to the official seal of the city--a circle enclosing the ancient Roman goddess of fruit, Pomona, who is depicted standing beside a horn of plenty.

Rambo Replaces Goddess

But standing in the goddess’s place on the T-shirt is a figure of more recent mythology, Rambo, complete with a machine gun poised for action and a Doberman pinscher that appears to be guarding the cornucopia.

Homstad, the community relations director, said he and Pomona policeman Joe Romero came up with the idea shortly after learning of the stress survey. He said they got together to draft the wording and then Romero drew the caricature.

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“Why not just make a joke out of it?” Homstad said. “We thought we would mail some down to Florida since they (Miami) came out No. 1.”

Homstad added that the shirt is not officially sanctioned by the city and that any profits will be used to hold a “stress seminar,” or party, for city employees. “It will help their stress level,” he explained.

The study has bred at least one other commercial enterprise. A two-man disc jockey team in Fargo held a drawing for a “no-stress special” vacation to Miami, and a Fargo couple won the trip.

Returned to a Blizzard

The couple and the two disc jockeys flew to Miami free of charge, wined and dined with city officials there and took a tour of the city. When they returned after three days of city lights and sunny beaches, said disc jockey Orly M. Knutson, they were greeted by a fierce blizzard at the Fargo airport.

“It was really shocking,” said Karen Horan, who took the tour with her husband, Mike. “It was very stressful.”

She said that while she, her husband and their 6-year-old daughter were happy in Fargo, she could not easily forget the temptations of Miami. “As I look out at the snowbanks in my backyard, I think that with the right house and the right job Miami would have three new residents,” she said.

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Newly elected Miami Mayor Xavier Suarez, who lunched with the Fargo folks during their visit, expressed some doubts about the study’s validity in a recent telephone interview.

He acknowledged that Miami is crowded and that some areas are plagued with crime, as the study contends. He also said he knew of laboratory studies in which rats developed neuroses and anxieties in crowded environments.

“But human beings are not like rats at all,” Suarez said. “They like proximity; they like being close to each other.”

URBAN STRESS RANKINGS

CALIFORNIA CITIES

Overall Violent ranking Pop. change Crowding Education crime 1. Pomona 4.5 4 5 4 5 2. Los Angeles 4.3 5 5 3 5 3. Long Beach 4.0 4 5 3 4 4. Santa Ana 4.0 5 5 4 3 5. San Bernardino 3.9 4 4 3 5 6. Pasadena 3.8 4 5 2 4 7. Oxnard 3.7 3 5 4 3 8. Stockton 3.7 4 5 3 3 9. Fresno 3.6 4 4 3 3 10. Garden Grove 3.6 4 5 2 3 11. Sacramento 3.6 4 3 3 4

Community Individual Hazardous economy economy Births Air waste Water Sewage 1. Pomona 4 4 5 5 5 4 4 2. Los Angeles 3 4 4 5 5 4 4 3. Long Beach 3 3 4 5 5 4 4 4. Santa Ana * 4 4 5 2 4 4 5. San Bernardino 4 4 5 5 4 2 3 6. Pasadena 2 3 4 5 5 4 4 7. Oxnard 4 4 4 3 1 5 5 8. Stockton 4 4 5 4 4 4 1 9. Fresno 4 4 4 4 4 5 1 10. Garden Grove * 3 4 5 2 4 4 11. Sacramento 3 3 4 4 4 5 3

U.S. CITIES

Overall Violent ranking Pop. change Crowding Education crime 1. Miami 4.6 5 5 5 5 2. Pomona 4.5 4 5 4 5 3. Newark 4.4 3 5 5 5 4. Los Angeles 4.3 5 5 3 5 5. Gary, Ind. 4.2 3 5 4 4 6. Jersey City 4.2 2 5 5 4 7. Hialeah, Fl. 4.1 5 5 5 3 8. Paterson, N.J. 4.1 2 5 5 5 9. Cleveland, Ohio 4.1 5 2 5 5 10. Long Beach, Ca. 4.0 4 5 3 4 11. Santa Ana, Ca. 4.0 5 5 4 3 12. Baltimore, Md. 4.0 4 3 5 5 13. Philadelphia 4.0 4 3 5 4

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Community Individual Hazardous economy economy Births Air waste Water Sewage 1. Miami 4 5 5 2 5 5 4 2. Pomona 4 4 5 5 5 4 4 3. Newark 5 5 5 4 4 4 3 4. Los Angeles 3 4 4 5 5 4 4 5. Gary, Ind. * 5 5 5 5 5 1 6. Jersey City 5 5 4 4 3 4 5 7. Hialeah, Fl. * 4 3 2 5 5 4 8. Paterson, N.J. 5 5 5 3 3 4 3 9. Cleveland, Ohio 5 5 4 5 1 4 * 10. Long Beach, Ca. 3 3 4 5 5 4 4 11. Santa Ana, Ca. * 4 4 5 2 4 4 12. Baltimore, Md. 4 5 3 5 4 4 2 13. Philadelphia 4 4 3 4 4 5 4

Based on Zero Population Growth’s 1985 “Urban Stress Test.” Ratings: (1)--best (2)--good (3)--warning (4)--danger (5)--red zone (*) insufficient information

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