Managing Growth

One important lesson in the defeat of the slow-growth initiative, Measure A, last June is the need to manage growth on a regional basis.

Growth cannot be limited by ordinance to an unincorporated county area or to cities on a hit-or-miss basis. That fragmented approach only creates more confusion, and it simply does not work. An encouraging sign is that local government in Orange County is finally aware of the need for a cooperative effort. This is evident in the actions that were taken last week by the Orange County Board of Supervisors and a joint city-county committee.

Last Wednesday the county board approved a proposed Growth Management Plan drafted by a citizens’ advisory committee. The plan, which applies only to the unincorporated county areas,is intended to tie development to traffic capacity and to the county’s ability to provide adequate public safety and other services, and to protect the county’s environment.

The adopted plan, good as it may be, is merely a starting point. Now the county needs specific ordinances to implement growth controls.

What is even more important, however, is for the county’s 27 cities to take the same approach and to adopt similar controls.

The prospect of that kind of coordination emerged last Thursday, when the cities said that they would consider a plan like the one that the supervisors approved. The cities’ plan was developed by the staff of a City-County Coordination Committee that was created to consider issues having a countywide effect. The city growth-control draft will be processed through the Orange County division of the League of California Cities and then sent to each city for its action.

Realistically, all cities will probably not adopt all provisions. Conditions are not the same in every city, and any plan must recognize those needs. But the coordinated city-countywide approach does get all jurisdictions involved in looking at overall land use and transportation conditions. That is the kind of overview that has been missing thus far in fragmented efforts like last June’s Measure A.

Continued growth is healthy and inevitable. And it will be acceptable if it stays within environmental bounds and does not outrun the overall county’s ability to provide the roads and public services that are needed to support it.