Voters Will OK Curb on Growth
Mark Baldassare and Cheryl Katz, writing in The Times (July 26), attempted to analyze Orange County residents’ views on key issues, (growth, traffic, air pollution and offshore drilling) presumably based on polls. Their preliminary findings seemed mostly correct. But we missed the conclusions. Like what does one plus one equal? Their main point though was the slow-growth initiative, proposed for the June, 1988 ballot.
“Backyard environmentalism”--their term for no-growth-in-my backyard--meant residents eyeing only obtrusions immediately impacting them while ignoring others, like beach cities fighting only offshore drilling. That’s incorrect. They fight other things. But the writers are certainly correct on close-to-home breadbasket needs. Jobs, food, insurance premiums, housing, and health are certainly more vital than congressional contra hearings. That’s a fact.
What Baldassare and Katz missed was that Orange County residents are going to have their cake and eat it, too. For if La Habra and other inland cities monitor air pollution and coastal cities monitor offshore drilling, a prognosis seems clear: backyards, together for different reasons, may accidentally craft a matrix, recreating the Orange County environmental quality of life we moved here for.
No matter how many millions the developer clique spends to defeat the slow-growth initiative, it will pass.
TOM ALEXANDER
Laguna Beach
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