County Population Growth Slowed to 1% in ’95

Despite a continuing economic recovery, Ventura County’s population grew at its slowest rate in decades in 1995 and was particularly stagnant in Santa Paula and Ojai, according to state figures released Friday.

The number of county residents increased to 716,100 by Jan. 1, up 1% over the previous 12 months, a rate about one-third that of the 1980s boom years, the state Department of Finance announced.

All of the net growth came from births in the county as opposed to immigration from other areas.

Even though local jobs and new housing rose steadily last year, analysts said Ventura County and California as a whole continued to lose thousands of residents to other states, slowing the rate of growth.

“They’re still moving out, typically to the surrounding states,” said Linda Gage, chief of the demographic research unit at the state Department of Finance. “That’s started to turn around, but it’s still happening.”

Ventura County’s population increased by a net of 7,000 residents last year. That figure comes from counting departed and newly arrived residents, legal immigrants from other countries and subtracting the difference between births and deaths.

That increase was scattered somewhat evenly among the county’s 10 cities--and between the east county and the west.

In the east, Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley each grew by about 1,200 residents, as did the west’s two largest cities, Oxnard and Ventura. Meanwhile, Ojai and Santa Paula grew by only 50 residents each and Fillmore by 150.

Camarillo, one of the county’s fastest-growing cities for 30 years, added only 700 residents last year, while Moorpark continued its rapid growth with the second-highest rate in the area at 2.4%, or 650 residents. Land-locked Port Hueneme led all local cities with a 3.7% growth rate, an estimated 800 new residents. That baffled city officials because no new dwelling has been built there in three years except for 350 constructed at the U.S. Naval base two years ago.

“It must be the base housing that was completed in 1993 and 1994,” city associate planner Greg Brown said. “Why it’s showing up now, I don’t know.”

The new numbers also showed a slowdown in the expansion of the city of Ventura, which accounted for one-third of all county growth in 1994 when it added 3,600 residents.

In 1995, the city population increased just 1,200.

“We just had a blip in 1994, and now we’re back down to a stable basis,” said Everett Millais, Ventura community development director. “Construction had been constrained due to the water shortage. And those building approvals came just as the economy was looking up.”

Ventura County’s 1% growth rate in 1995 was the same as California’s, where the overall population inched up just 321,000 to 32.2 million.

Still, the county’s pace of growth ranked it only 32nd among the state’s 58 counties.

Of the other five counties in Southern California, all grew faster than Ventura except for Los Angeles County, where the population rose only 0.5%.

“Primarily, people are still coming here from Los Angeles County,” Simi Valley City Manager Mike Sedell said. “There is also a group coming in from the East Coast with the new high-tech companies. And there is a generation of young people who grew up here and now want to buy houses.”

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The new state population figures baffle some local planners, because they reflect a recessionary period that has already passed.

“They do seem very low,” said Steve Wood, a demographic specialist for the Ventura County Planning Department. “I assumed the increase would be 10,000 or 11,000 persons, not 7,000. That’s a lot lower than I would have thought.”

State analysts say their numbers are lower than expected because estimates in recent years have been too high. But they have fine-tuned their methods for estimating population over the last 12 months.

Previously, a key element in determining population was the change of driver’s license registrations from one state to another.

But analysts found that other states were slow in reporting back to California or did not report at all. So the Department of Finance began last year to compare the driver’s license data to changes in addresses on federal tax returns.

The result is a truer measure of change, Gage said. “I know it’s confusing, but our numbers were too high before,” she said.

For example, a year ago, the state estimated Ventura County’s population at 720,500, but in the figures released Friday that January 1995 figure was reduced to 709,100.

The implications of the new lower figures may be felt in communities such as Santa Paula and Ventura.

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Arnold Dowdy, city administrator in Santa Paula, said he questioned the state’s estimated increase of just 50 residents.

“I can’t believe that number,” he said. “It’s true we have built only 10 houses in the past three years. But based on the number of homes that I see are overcrowded, it certainly has the appearance that we’re getting more people in town.”

That could mean that Santa Paula will be shortchanged in the distribution of some state and federal money that is based at least partly on population, Dowdy said. The state gas tax rebates are distributed on a per capita basis, for example, he said.

Ventura’s Millais said the state’s lower figures for his city--a reduction of 1,600 in the estimate for January 1995--gives the City Council a lot to think about as it sets its population for the year 2000 over the next year.

“It gives the council a little more room to approve projects, depending on what they set for their goal for the year 2000,” he said. The reduction of 1,600 means 640 more dwellings could be approved to make up that difference, given 2.5 people per dwelling.

“This will be of great interest to a number of folks,” Millais said. The county’s overall growth was so small because 1,225 more residents moved out of Ventura County than moved in from other states and foreign countries, the revised state figures show. For seven years more residents have moved away than have moved here from the other 49 states. But until 1993, enough foreign immigrants had settled in the county to more than offset the loss to other states.

The overall population increase last year occurred only because the county had 7,725 more births than deaths in 1994-95, analysts reported.

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1996 County Population Estimates *--*

Jan. 1, 1995 Jan. 1, 1996 % change Camarillo 57,500 58,200 1.2 Fillmore 12,650 12,800 1.2 Moorpark 27,100 27,750 2.4 Ojai 8,025 8,075 0.6 Oxnard 152,500 153,300 0.8 Port Hueneme 21,450 22,250 3.7 Santa Paula 26,650 26,700 0.2 Simi Valley 102,000 103,200 1.2 Thousand Oaks 110,800 112,000 1.1 Ventura 99,100 100,300 1.2 Unincorporated 91,700 91,500 -0.2 Countywide 709,100 716,100 1.0

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County Population Growth, 1987-96 *

Percentage change

Jan. 1, 1987: 2.4

Jan. 1, 1988: 2.8

Jan. 1, 1989: 2.8

Jan. 1, 1990: 2.3

Jan. 1, 1991: 1.6

Jan. 1, 1992: 1.2

Jan. 1, 1993: 1.3

Jan. 1, 1994: 1.3

Jan. 1, 1995: 1.0 **

Jan. 1, 1996: 1.0 **

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* The changes for 1992-96 were compiled using a new method that reduced estimated growth but is considered more accurate.

**The growth rate for the year ending this January was slightly lower than that of the year before, although both rounded off to 1%.

Source: State Department of Finance