Taking Stock of the County

If you took Orange County’s pulse, what would be its general health? According to pollsters at the three leading local universities who routinely try to reconcile reality and perception, the community generally is in good shape. But as can happen with checkups, the surveys found some conditions that need attending to, and symptoms of others that could cause problems.

In the annual Orange County Executive Survey by UC Irvine’s Graduate School of Management, executives surveyed--as they did last year--cited high housing costs as the top barrier to doing business in the county. Increasingly high energy costs, a new problem that showed up this year, was the next-most-listed barrier, followed by high labor costs.

Most executives still expect business to be better this year. But they are not as optimistic as they were in 2000. About one in five see some downsizing in the future, and almost one out of every four said they plan to relocate some or all of their operations over the next five years. The number of firms indicating such plans has increased for the last two years.

The county’s high housing costs lead to longer and more costly commutes for employees who must live out of the county to find affordable homes. For employers that means more lateness, absenteeism, job turnover and labor costs--and for everyone growing traffic congestion. Facing those facts, the county can ill afford to keep ignoring affordable housing needs.

Other states, sensing vulnerability, are trying to lure businesses away. Nearly half of the manufacturers surveyed reported being recruited.

A survey done by Chapman University zeroed in on the most controversial issue facing the county: what to do with the vacant 4,700 acres at the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. It found that nearly two-thirds of the county’s residents will support a measure on the March 2002 ballot to convert it into a park rather than the plan being pushed by the majority of the Board of Supervisors for a new airport.

Oddly enough, despite the overwhelming preference voiced for a park, half of the residents polled said they still thought an airport would be built there within the next 10 years.

A clue to the public mind set may have been supplied by yet another survey, this one done at Cal State Fullerton, on public confidence in government.

In it, Orange County residents, while generally holding their elected officials in higher esteem than did other residents throughout the state, had considerably less confidence in their county supervisors than did residents elsewhere.

Statewide, 30.5% expressed “a great deal” or “quite a lot of” confidence in their supervisors. In Orange County, it was 21%. The attitudes of airport opponents only partly explains the lower rating. Even among supporters of the board’s airport plan, their confidence rating of 25% was less than statewide numbers. And overall it was far less than the 44% vote of confidence Orange County residents gave their city government representatives.

The county board’s conflicts with prevailing resident sentiment on other issues, such as the allocation of tobacco settlement funds, could also be reflected in its poorer showing.

The universities’ polls are helpful in focusing on vital community concerns.

In the supervisors’ case, there’s a message there.

Residents, as they should, are making it plain that the board’s brand of representative government has some room to be more representative.