Both Orange Counties Are Heard in Poll

Orange County is slowly but surely splitting into two halves: the older, urban, more minority northern half and the wealthier, whiter southern half, each with different views of which are the important issues as the 21st century approaches.

Those differences became especially apparent in the 18th edition of UC Irvine’s Orange County Annual Survey, a snapshot of how the county’s 2.7 million residents feel about the issues.

The poll showed important splits in the way people think about crime, schools, housing, traffic and the planned El Toro airport.

“Orange County is on a path of having a very divided county in which there is tremendous wealth in the South County and job growth and population growth are coming to that area, and communities with social and economic disadvantages are clustered in the north,” said Mark Baldassare, the UCI professor of urban and regional planning who conducted the survey.

“It’s definitely the most significant issue Orange County has to deal with in the 21st century,” he added, “and we don’t have a blueprint.”

He said the differences are economic and ethnic. “They’ve really become intertwined,” he said.

Joel Kotkin, a senior fellow with the Pepperdine Institute for Public Policy, said Santa Ana, Anaheim and Garden Grove are classic examples of what he calls “midopolises”--older suburbs that have many of the problems of the inner cities.

But the survey also found great optimism in the county: Consumer confidence reached an all-time high and is higher than in the country as a whole. Cheryl Katz, co-director of the survey, credited not only skyrocketing stocks but the white-hot housing market. Latinos showed the most confidence, with 61% expecting to make more money next year, as compared with 51% of all county residents.

In addition, quality-of-life ratings have jumped 32 percentage points since 1993. Ninety-two percent of those polled said things are going “very” or “somewhat” well. But the north/south split showed up here, as well. In the south, 50% of the people said things were going very well, while only 31% in the north said so.

The poll also found that, regardless of what the adage says, money can buy happiness. Among those earning at least $80,000 a year, 48% said things were going very well, compared with 29% earning less than $36,000.

The poll also provided some surprising details of the lives of Orange County residents. For example, despite the number of churches and the presence of such well-known religious figures as Robert Schuller, Jan and Paul Crouch and the Trinity Broadcast Network, fewer people in Orange County say they are very involved in religious activities than in the U.S. as a whole, 23% to 33%.

The survey also found that Latinos are less interested in politics than whites. Three years ago, many people said Loretta Sanchez’s defeat of Robert Dornan for Congress showed the emergence of Latino political power in the county.

“[But] while Latinos have been registering to vote in greater numbers, many are still not participating in elections,” the survey writers said.

The two issues that most divide the county are crime and the proposed El Toro airport. In the north, 31% said crime was the most important problem, while 19% in the south felt that way.

Forty-seven percent of Latinos listed crime as the most important problem, compared with 21% of whites.

“The strong focus on crime in the North County, I think, is an indication of social and economic inequalities that exist between north and south,” Baldassare said.

In the north, people said they don’t care much about an airport being built many miles away. Only 4% called the airport the most important issue in the county. In the south, with concerns over noise and traffic, the airport statistically tied with crime as the major concern, at 20%.

The focus on crime continues even though the number of serious crimes in the county plunged for the seventh straight year, falling to its lowest rate since the 1970s.

Katz attributed some of the fixation to the media’s--especially TV’s--overplaying of crime stories. The survey showed that the local story that most interested people was about the man who drove onto a Costa Mesa preschool playground and killed two children.

“Those kind of shocking, random, horrible crimes really catch people’s attention and feed into their perceptions of just how bad a problem crime is,” she said.

The poll also showed that South County residents gave their schools passing grades, with 69% calling them excellent or good; in North County, the number was 48%. Among those with children in public schools, 72% in the south had a lot or some confidence in the schools, while 60% in the north felt the same way.

The economic differences showed up most obviously in questions about housing. More South County residents own their homes, 71% to 58%, and pay more than $750 a month for mortgages, 69% to 59%.

The survey also found whites countywide are twice as likely to own a home as Latinos, 72% to 36%.

Not surprisingly, workers in the northern part of the county were more likely than those in the south to complain about commuter traffic, 24% to 18%. Similarly, those in South County were more satisfied with the freeways, 30% to 23%.

South County residents also felt better about their local government than do those in the north. In the south, 59% feel their city government is doing an excellent or good job of solving problems, compared with 46% in the north. Only 40% of Latinos gave their local government a positive grade, compared with 55% of whites.

The survey also found that Orange County residents are more distrustful of the federal government than are people in the rest of the country. In Orange County, 28% say the government can be trusted always or most of the time, compared with 39% in the country as a whole.

The UCI telephone survey was conducted among 1,000 residents from Sept. 1 to 13 and has a margin of error of 3 percentage points. For this survey, South County was defined as Irvine and the cities and communities to its south, and Newport Beach was considered part of North County.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Good Times Keep Rolling

Orange County residents are basking in the good life -- experiencing near record-breaking levels of satisfaction in the economy, quality of life and the future, according to UCI’s annual survey. A look at the results: Rating the O.C. Economy

Q: “How would you rate the economy in Orange County today?”

Excellent/Good

19% (‘92)

20% (‘93)

28% (‘94)

19% (‘95)

44% (‘96)

63% (‘97)

76% (‘98)

78% (‘99)

Fair

52% (‘92)

49% (‘93)

54% (‘94)

50% (‘95)

45% (‘96)

32% (‘97)

20% (‘98)

19% (‘99)

Poor 28% (‘92)

30% (‘93)

17% (‘94)

30% (‘95)

10% (‘96)

4% (‘97)

3% (‘98)

2% (‘99)

The Future in O.C.

Q: In the fuutre, doyou think Orange County will be a better place to live than it is now, a worse place, or there will be no change?”

Better -- 39%

Worse -- 24%

Same -- 37%

O.C.’s Most Pressing Problems

Q: “Considering all the public policy issues in Orange County, what do you think is the most important problem today?”

*--*

OC North South Latinos Whites Crime 27% 31% 19% 47% 21% Schools 18% 19% 15% 12% 20% El Toro 9% 4% 20% 3% 11% Airport

*--*

Rating O.C. Schools

Q: “How would you rate your local public schools?”

*--*

OC North South Excellent 54% 48% 69% /Good Fair 26% 30% 17% Poor 11% 15% 3% Don’t Know 9% 7% 11%

*--*

O.C.’s Freeway Needs

Q: “As for the transporation system, which of the following best describes how you feel about the freeways in Orange County?”

Satisfied 25%

Add lanes 51%

More freeways 24%

Trust in Local Government

Percent who consider local government excellent/good at solving county problems:

Excellent/Good at solving problems

24% (‘96)

26% (‘97)

38% (‘98)

40% (‘99)

The poll conducted between Sept. 1 and Sept. 13 surveyed 1,000 Orange County residents. Margin of error is +/-3%. For this survey, South County is defined as Irvine and the cities and communities to the south of its borders, and Newport Beach is considered part of North county.

Source: UCI 1999 Orange County Annual Survey