Growth and Development

I am sick and tired of the backward-thinking attitude, “If we stop building, they won’t come.”

This has been disproved over and over again. We have not built a significant power plant or any significant highways for the past two decades. To put it simply, California has done a poor job of providing and updating needed infrastructure--and people are still coming! People will continue to move to California and they will continue to have babies.

Rather than having to pay higher electricity rates, sit in more traffic away from my family and be unable to afford a home, I wish we were building the necessary accommodations to improve my quality of life as a Californian and Ventura County resident.

Most importantly, we need to accommodate for the natural increase in population due to births to those who already live here. It’s as if some people want to limit the number of births so they can blindly ignore the fact that growth is inevitable and necessary.

Guess what, folks: Some “wicked builder” built that place that you call a home. Some “evil developer” allowed you to provide shelter for your family and raise them in the beautiful town you call home. And now that you have yours, you want to stop me from having mine.

Well, I deserve the right to afford a place to live, to be able to pay my electricity bills and to drive to and from work in a reasonable amount of time.

The tactics of halting growth have not worked and only exacerbate the problems of overcrowded schools, traffic, electricity and affordable housing. We can choose to turn a blind eye to the fact that we need more power plants, we need more roads, we need more schools and we need more housing to offer this quality of life that we all talk about or we can hold on to the selfish thinking that people like me don’t deserve a place to live.

TRACY HOCUTT

Ventura