Insular View Could Drain Vitality of North County

A recent Times Poll found that North County is developing into sort of a county within a county--a subregion with a different personality from the rest of the county.

It’s more affluent, though North Countians aren’t likely to think of themselves that way. They also don’t see themselves as materialistic, but others in the county tend to.

Maybe that’s just a way to rationalize a neighbor’s wealth. But the relative affluence has some troubling byproducts.

As Ken Lounsbery, a former city manager in Escondido who is vice president of San Marcos-based Lusardi Construction, points out, North County is “becoming the home of the wealthy retirees and the playground of the rich and famous. . . . We have already begun to take pride in the idea that we are sort of better than the rest of the county. A lot of North County folks are very much imbued with the idea of, ‘Look at us--we have Rancho Santa Fe, we are Pauma Valley, we are La Costa, we are Fairbanks.’ Pretty soon we start believing all that rhetoric. But we are a lot more than that.”

Another observer, UC San Diego Prof. Robyn S. Phillips, thinks that, as people who can afford to escape urban ills move to North County, there will be a widening disparity between the north and the rest of the county. She worries that those who move out of the city will no longer feel responsibility toward the urban communities.

It’s not difficult to imagine the polarization that concerns Phillips, Lounsbery and others. It mirrors the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots throughout San Diego County and elsewhere in the United States.

Perhaps that helps explain the different ranking of community problems by North County residents and those elsewhere in the county. The poll found that North Countians see drugs as the chief problem facing the county as a whole, but, in their own back yard, they rate traffic and growth as the biggest problems.

Traffic may be easier to focus on if crime and drugs are someone else’s problem.

Certainly traffic and growth are major considerations in North County, a region that has grown very rapidly in the last decade. But it is important that affluent San Diegans, who are more likely to vote, not ignore crime and drugs and other social problems.

A sales tax for jails, for instance, passed by a smaller majority than did a similar one for transportation a few years ago. As local government budgets get tighter, all San Diegans are likely to be called upon to approve expenditures for a wide range of needs. It’s important that the affluent look beyond their own community’s problems and consider how countywide problems, such as drugs, crime and inadequate social services, affect us all.

It also is important for North County to look down the road at such issues as low-income housing, which some communities have strongly resisted. Otherwise, the next generation will not be able to afford to live where their parents live. And neither will the workers for the many jobs that are expected there in the next 10 years.

As Lounsbery put it, “I dread the thought that we would lose the vitality and the variety that young people and the retention of our young people assures North County.”