Bloom Is Off the Boom

Three decades ago Californians welcomed each new population report with awe and wonder. The boom was on. The more the merrier. Today the growth continues, but the bloom is off the boom.

California’s population increased by 2.4% during the fiscal year that ended last June 30, the state Finance Department reported recently. That does not seem spectacular. But consider that the 2.4% works out to a gain of 623,000 people, or the equivalent of a new city almost the size of San Jose, or two Sacramentos. Put another way, California added more people last year than there are in all of Wyoming or Alaska or Delaware.

Numerically, the increase was the largest since World War II. Southern California, as might be expected, absorbed the biggest gains. Riverside and San Bernardino counties had the largest percentage increases--5.6% and 5.1%, respectively. But on a regional basis the fastest-growing area was the western Sierra foothills, ranging from Sierra County to Mariposa County. Nationally, the 1970s trend toward rural regions has been reversed, and now is flowing back to the cities. In California, however, both rural and metropolitan areas grew by about the same rate last year.

In general, boosters hail population growth as a sign of economic vitality. This is certainly true in some isolated areas. And the diversity that is brought to a region by new residents with fresh ideas and energy is a benefit. But the new wave of population growth has its ominous side that must be considered.

When California underwent the population boom of the 1950s and 1960s, the state was preparing for it. Freeways, public schools and universities, libraries, airports, water projects, prisons, sewage systems, parks and other facilities were built to accommodate future needs. Today most of those facilities are decaying and strained beyond capacity. Not only has California to a large extent failed to replace or improve them, it also has not been able to expand those facilities and build new ones to absorb the inevitable future growth.

Not long ago a Los Angeles area official talked of the new freeways needed in his area, then added, “Of course, we can’t build anything else until the Century Freeway is done.” That will be in the early 1990s.

Local services have suffered ever since the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978. Now local and state governments and school districts are bumping up against the arbitrary and impractical spending limits set by Proposition 4, the Gann initiative. Federal aid has been cut back. Increasingly the burden for building public facilities has been shifted to private developers, thus driving up the cost of housing. Air, water and land pollution are getting worse in many areas when they should be improved. Rural areas often have even greater difficulty than their urban counterparts in handling the growth because of inadequate tax bases and county budgets that are squeezed to the breaking point.

The general failure of California government to guide growth with rational planning has resulted for more than a decade in sporadic local initiatives that tend to tell outsiders: “We like our area the way it is. Go someplace else.” But California ultimately will not be served by the creation of these enclaves of privilege. Only through more aggressive regional planning and governance, with strong state participation, can California welcome more millions of residents and still maintain an attractive and affordable environment and economy, or even a place where it is possible to get from here to there.