Year of Decision

Orange County needs another commercial jet airfield to meet the passenger demands at John Wayne Airport.

Orange County needs another jail to ease the dangerous and at times inhuman overcrowding at the main County Jail in downtown Santa Ana.

Orange County needs a dump site to handle toxic wastes to avoid such deadly hazards as those posed by last week’s illegal dumpings on Ortega Highway.

Orange County needs more freeway lanes and some form of transit to move more people and avoid gridlock on its traffic-choked freeways and surface streets.

Orange County needs more lower-cost housing so that young people born and raised here, and others needed to maintain the labor pool that keeps industry here and healthy, can afford to live and work in the county.

Public officials know how much Orange County needs these things. They have known it for many years. So do most thinking, concerned residents. Why, then, does Orange County still lack them?

One major reason is the NIMBY mentality--”Not In My Back Yard”--of some residents. They recognize the need and support the new facilities, just as long as they are not located in or near their neighborhoods. Another reason is the political reality that as long as people have the NIMBY attitude and strongly express it, elected officials, worried about staying elected officials, will keep passing the buck to future councils and boards.

The 1984-85 Orange County Grand Jury was so disturbed by that kind of thinking that in its final report last June it chided the county Board of Supervisors for commissioning so many studies and making so few major decisions on issues such as the airport and the jail.

In the search for a new county jail location, several possible sites have been identified, but each time community opposition backed the county board away from a decision and into ordering more studies.

Last week County Supervisors Harriett Wieder and Ralph Clark went on record as saying that finding a site for a new jail was a top-priority item. Past performance makes it difficult to take such declarations very seriously. But this is Clark’s last year on the board; he is not seeking reelection. And if Wieder has no opposition for reelection, it will give her four more years to dull any political repercussions from a jail-location decision.

If they really mean what they say, and can find at least one more supervisor willing to act, 1986 may just be the year the county board finally does make a major decision on a major issue. After all the past delays, protracted studies and political punting, that’s quite a prospect.