Population Growth

It is electoral bird-watching season again in Ventura, and once more we are being serenaded by the shrill cry of the Slow Growth Cuckoo. We are being told that the Unspeakable Horde from the East is coming over the hill with its barbecues, BMWs and pink plastic flamingos and that we must raise the drawbridge and hide the womenfolk before the barbarians from Los Angeles penetrate the city gates.

There’s just one problem with this picture: It ain’t happening, folks. According to my calculations as publisher of the Ventura County Statistical Abstract 2000, the net migration to the city of Ventura in 1998 was 48 people. That’s all.

In fact, west of Camarillo (and including Santa Paula and Fillmore) there was a net out-migration in the county. According to the state Department of Finance’s 1998 E-6 report, the sum in-migration for all of Ventura County in 1990-1997 was a whopping 296 people. Since the county population grew by some 57,000 during that period, that means 99.48% of the county population increase during those seven years was due to natural increase--births over deaths--at a rate of 8,000 people or 3,000 housing units a year.

As for the insidious increase in population density supposedly lurking in the Seize the Future visioning project that the cuckoos, dodos and other birds in the slow-growth aviary are screeching about, guess what? Population density has been increasing for years; the natural increase in the population has been exceeding housing unit growth for some time. What’s more, passage of the Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources (SOAR) initiatives limiting urban sprawl guarantees that density increases will accelerate.

That leaves a question for the slow-growth birdies: Because virtually all of the population growth of this county is coming from families who already live here, if you are going to limit growth how do you plan to do it? Slaughter the first-born? Sterilize people? Deny housing to young people and force them out of the area? How?

You cannot morally maintain your own quality of life by dumping your excess population on some other community and trashing its quality of life.

STEVE CUMMINGS

Ventura