Growing in the Wrong Direction

A consummate question for the country and Southern California in particular is how to accommodate growth. Urban sprawl, quality of life and who should pay for infrastructure expansions are the subject of initiatives, political campaigns and hot community debate.

Los Angeles County is often cited as the prime example of urban sprawl, an object lesson in planning errors to avoid. But Angelenos have worked hard to control sprawl and its costs and have put into place measures to allow them to say when enough is enough.

Government, in turn, has ignored them. Los Angeles County has repeatedly approved new developments that far outstrip the infrastructure available to service them. Traffic and overcrowded schools have become the norm in upscale “family-oriented” urban expansion areas, despite developer advertising to the contrary. So an object lesson of a different sort is in the making, one elected and appointed officials would do well to heed. The proposed Newhall Ranch project in the Santa Clarita Valley offers the perfect opportunity for a new direction.

Taxpayers began some time ago to refuse to foot the enormous bills for new roads and schools to support urban expansion projects. They overwhelmingly passed Proposition 13 to control burdensome infrastructure costs. They continue to vote down local school and road bonds that subsidize new development. Now they have passed Proposition 218, an effort to close any leftover loopholes.

Amid the building frenzy of the ‘80s, another local tool was established to control the costs of sprawl. A settlement was reached with the county in a suit brought to ensure that adequate infrastructure would accompany new development. This court-ordered settlement created the Development Monitoring System, or DMS, in 1987, its purpose to implement the Proposition 13 mandate to reduce the cost of government. According to the county General Plan, the DMS exists “to ensure that new development within urban expansion areas will occur in a manner consistent with stated Plan policies, has adequate infrastructure capacity and will pay for the expansion costs that it generates.” (Emphasis added.)

The DMS was implemented and, under pressure from developers, promptly ignored by the county. This continued until 1992, when a planning and conservation group, the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning the Environment, challenged Westridge, a 2,000-unit Newhall Land & Farming Co. project approved without classroom space for the students it would generate and despite inadequate library materials. SCOPE won the court case and the Westridge approval was set aside. It cannot be built until adequate schools and libraries are provided.

But still the county approved massive developments, in spite of the DMS. In 1995, it OKd another Newhall Land & Farming project despite school district complaints that classroom space was not available and protests from the county library department that there was no funding for books. Again, the project was challenged by SCOPE and set aside by the courts for failure to comply with the DMS.

This year, a 2,500-home project in San Francisquito Canyon is being considered for approval by the county without adequate school facilities or fire and library services. SCOPE members remain incredulous that the Planning Commission would risk yet another successful court challenge on the same issue.

Now the county is considering the massive 25,000-unit Newhall Ranch project in a rural area detached from urbanization. The developer claims it will be a moneymaker for county coffers. But who will pay for road expansions, especially extra lanes on the Golden State Freeway? Who will pay for sewer and water lines? Where will the water come from? Who will clean up the air pollution generated by commuters? The taxpayer, of course.

Growth is often framed as “inevitable,” something that must be accommodated. Yet even the developer will explain that a good portion of projected sales in the Newhall Ranch project will come from middle-class flight from existing housing in Los Angeles. The result of urban flight is degradation of the urban areas, loss of tax base and costly revitalization, all so taxpayers can pick up the tab for expensive service expansions into rural areas.

This is a pattern Angelenos can no longer afford. If growth must be accepted as inevitable, then we must accommodate it in a fiscally responsible, considered manner. Expensive urban sprawl projects such as Newhall Ranch are not the answer.

Whether to approve Newhall Ranch is not just a conservation issue, it is also a taxpayer issue, and taxpayers are tired of paying for new development. Development is a moneymaking business. No one helps small businesses, for example, pay for expansion, so why should we subsidize the big developers?

According to the L.A. County Development Monitoring System, we shouldn’t have to.