02-24-1997 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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HoAr It Happened Subsidizing Sprawl With More Sprawl American cities form m a blink, and that is panicularly true in the West California had the first big wave of auto-driven urban cen ters in the West. They promised the best of all worlds: orderly city life just down the road from orange blossoms or walnut groves. It changed almost overnight. In the 1930‘s. California's population was at four million — not far from where Colorado is today r- and Los Angeles County was still one of the country’s leading agricultural producers. By 1994, California's population hit 32 mil lion, and more than 500.000 jobs. net. disap peared from the state in the 1990’s. The ironic highlight, perhaps, was a 1994 report issued by the Bank of America on the dan gers of Califomia-siylc growth. Titled "Beyond Sprawl," the document stunned some people with its blunt conclu sions. “Unchecked sprawl has shifted from an engme of California's growth to a force that now threatens to inhibit growth and degrade the quality of life.” the report said. “We can no longer afford the luxury of sprawl." The report had all the more power, coming from a bank that had financed mucn of the sprawl. But just as California was having second thoughts, the newly robust Western cities were going down a path taken by the Golden State. Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Phoenix and some Denver suburbs went on road-building binges and offered cheap land, low taxes and minimal government interference for devel opers. Water, always a problem in the arid West, was offered with few restncttons. At a cost of more than $4 billion, most of it fi nanced by Federal tax dollars, water from the Colorado River was brought to Phoenix and Tucson, through the Central Arizona Project. Phoenix completed the Supersution Free way. going east: bulldozers followed. It is sometimes called the "Cul de Sac Freeway," because a nearly SO-mile stretch of develop ments has built up on both sides of the road. The huge new developments that are tak ing root here lure buyers with a promise of a secluded desert life style. And indeed, coy otes and javeluias dash across fresh pave- iiient Herons swoop for prey on golf course lakes. But there is less seclusion and less desert with every passing hour. The Arizona Republic has been runnuig a senes on sprawl titled, "An Acre an Hour." In the nearly three years that the senes has been running, 25.000 acres of Sonoran Desen have disappeared to pavement. "Nobody in this town has ever said no to a developer,” said Don Steuier. an air<ondi- tioner repairman and avid hiker who has been fighting the new developments on the northern edge of Phoenix. "We spend tax dollars to encourage sprawl, and then it comes back to us as air pollution." Seattle, using Federal dollars, completed Interstate 90. the most costly seven-mile stretch of road ever built at the time, with a pnce tag of $1 5 billion Finished in 1991. it cleared an eight-lane path through the lorest east of Lake Washington and encouraged development in the Cascade foothills certain tax structures did to create budget crises. Utah passed a law that stipulated that as propeny values rise, the overall tax rate of a given area must fall. It also limited what any local government could charge develop ers for new services like roads and sewers. The result, some officials say. is that each new home in suburban Salt Lake City puts local government further in debt. And there have been plenty of new homes — 200.000 people, enough to create a city bigger than Salt Lake, have moved to the greater metro politan area in tlK last five years. "What happens as we build new subdivi sions IS that there has been a crisis m local government," said Michael Christensen, di rector of the Utah Foundation, a Salt Lake think tank. Colorado’s tax structure indirectly encour ages smaller cities on the edge of expanding urban areas to build malls or other commer cial structures, killing their mam street busi nesses. Unable to raise property taxes be yond a certain ceiling, local governments are forced to get most of their money from as many retail outlets as they can attract "We were losmg all our sales tax dollars to these big regional malls." said Mr. Boand of Castle Rock. "To compensate, we were forced to let a big outlet mall come in here. We were roundly criticized for that but our town was teetering on the verge of bankrupt cy." Castle Rock is in Douglas County, the fastest growing county in America, by per centage, over the last five years. It grew 65 percent, to a population of 100,000. The fact that It could nearly go broke in the midst of an unprecedented boom says something about how the new urban West is developing. The biggest development in Douglas Coun ty is Highlands Ranch, an unincorporated community of more than 10,000 new homes on broad streets in the wind-swept, treeless prairie Just south of Denver. Some of the homes look as if they were just dropped from the sky, on streets named for endangered species like the spotted owl. The school distnet in the area is building nine new schools, but it still cannot keep up. Many children are taught in modular class rooms. Because Colorado's tax structure limits the percentage of money a district can get from property taxes, a booming county like Douglas sees hardly any new money from a huge surge In population. As a result. Douglas County is not only the fastest-growing school district in the state, but It has nearly the lowest per-student spending rauo. said Jill Fox. a spokeswoman for the Douglas County schools. New but malnounshed schools, subsidized sprawl, tax structures that ultimately bank rupt growing communities — these problems were never part of the master plan of the new Western cities. The Coming Crises New Roads Lead To More Trouble Major floods used to be quarter-century events in the Puget Sound region. Now. al most every winter, the river valleys east of Seattle swell with coffee-colored water and overwhelm roads and farms. The fastest-growing suburbs like Issaquah and Redmond used to be sponges that soaked up winter rains. But now the horror of winter storms in Southern California is a Seattle occurrence: water runs down fresh-paved cul-de-sacs and crushes everything below. "The sponge is full." said Tom Koney, a policy analyst with King County, which gov erns the Seattle metropolitan area. In effect, nature is forcing a crisis. In the arid West, the absence of water is forcing the cities to confront the consequences of their new popularity: In Seattle, the presence of water ts doing the same. "It was only when the latest rating came out, showing that our air is the second worst in the country, that the business community here in Phoenix finally freaked oul" said Mr. Melnick. of the Arizona think tank. The new proposals by the Environmental Protection Agency to tighten the standards for unhealthy levels of soot and smog, an nounced this month, have raised alarms throughout the West The cities that fall to comply could face a loss of Federal road money or other sanctions that could stifle their ambitions. Denver, following the lead of Seattle and Portland, is likely to vote on a mass transit proposal next year. Salt Lake City is plan ning a small light rail system. But m the next 5 to 10 years, there will be a severe crunch, city officials throughout the West say. Utah is $3 billion short of the money it needs just to keep up with basic toad repair and improvements in the new suburban areas. Colorado is S8 billion short. SttU. pouring more pavemem ts the option of choice "We're going to build roads, and lots of them.” Gov. Michael 0. LeavltL Re publican of Utah, said after playing host to a statewide growth summit last year. But if past patterns are an indication, every mile of new road brings with it an increase in some of the worst urban ills these cities say they are trying to avoid. California's population grew by 50 percent from 1970 to 1990, but the number of miles traveled by cars and trucks in the state increased 100 percent In the decade from 1980 to 1990, the population around Seattle rose 22 percent while the number of miles driven by cars in the region quadrupled. Similarly, traffic in Denver has increased at twice the rate of local population growth. So. even though the city has made big strides in gettmg nd of Its brown cloud, with cleaner cars bumuig cleaner fuels, the huge uicrease in traffic brought by sprawl threatens to undermine all the gains, city officials say. “What are we doing here?'* Governor Romer said. "Nothing brings this whole issue home more clearly than when you fly over the Front Range and look down and see this . gigantic city taking shape, sprawling more than a hundred miles. Is this what we want?" Trying to cope, edges of the new cities are taking somewhat panicky, small measures. Redmond, where Microsoft is based, is' plan ning to implement a head tax — charging businesses S65 annually for every employee who worKS in the city Gilbert, a Phoenix suburb that is adding 10.000 people a year, just enacted a moratori um on the building of new homes. The city grew by 412 peicent in the 1980's. and it may surpass that in the 1990’s. It charges develop ers up to S1.800 per home for services, but that does not begin to pay for all the other problems that come with building a sudden citv out of nowhere, town officials sav