COMMENTARY: It’s a never-ending game and we are losing

This commentary was contributed by Dom Zanger, San Benito County District 1 Supervisor. The opinions expressed do not necessarily represent BenitoLink or other affiliated contributors. BenitoLink invites all community members to share their ideas and opinions. By registering as a BenitoLink user in the top right corner of our home page and agreeing to follow our Terms of Use, you can write counter opinions or share your insights on current issues.

A football game has a start and end. It will go for as long as there is time left on the clock. The players obviously know this and act accordingly. They know that in the fourth quarter they are nearing the end so they are free to use up everything in the tank. They can reveal all surprises and they can exert all the energy they have because they know that pretty soon the game ends.

Counties do not work this way. There is no set time limit where at the end we can throw our hands up and say “ok good game. We’re done now.” No. Rather, counties are a never-ending game. Ideally they will simply continue existing for as long as the state they inhabit exists; and that state will continue existing for as long as the country which it inhabits exists. This is an extremely important understanding that we as a county need to come to terms with if we are to live in a prosperous place.

The take away from this never-ending game axiom is that if our planning decisions are insolvent in the long term, then necessarily they will bankrupt us regardless of how they perform initially. This is the root financial problem of excessive suburban sprawl. For instance, if a housing development were to be built in the county somewhere far outside of the city limits, that development must be able to indefinitely pay for not just itself but also the tangential cost effects it produces. It must be able to pay for all of the infrastructure involved in said development (i.e. roads, pipes, power, trash, water, etc), as well as the additional strain on general county infrastructure that result from the increased number of cars and residents brought about by the new development. In this imaginary scenario, even if the developer agreed to pay for all of these infrastructure costs up front (which doesn’t happen) it still leaves the county with the recurring bill that never goes away. Upfront it may look like a good deal, but when you are playing a never-ending game you need to think years and decades into the future.

So can suburban sprawl pay for itself indefinitely? No. Unfortunately it almost always cannot. San Benito County gets only 11% of the local property tax that is collected from a residence; the rest goes to schools, special districts, cities, etc. That 11% just simply isn’t enough to pay for eternal longevity of the project and its consequences. This is why we are losing the never-ending game. Poorly planned housing developments in the county will almost always inevitably end up costing the county money. In other words, if San Benito County was in the business of putting up houses, we would lose money every time a customer walks through the
door simply because our expenses are greater than our revenues. This style of planning is not sustainable.

I know this is not comforting information. I hate to be the boogieman who brings this up, but if we want to live in a nice place we need to acknowledge these facts. If we want to have roads that don’t feel like 4-wheel drive tracks out of Hollister Hills, we need to start making decisions that are financially solvent long term.

Proponents of this type of residential growth will bring up the fact that we need more housing so our residents can continue to live in this community. While this is of course true, suburban sprawl does little to address this need. The majority of houses that have been built in recent years price out our residents. Classic supply & demand theory doesn’t function the way people intuitively think it would when it comes to houses in San Benito County and that is because there is a seemingly unlimited demand from out of county. Effectually, housing prices are largely regulated by regional housing trends regardless of how many tract homes we put up. Thus, while suburban sprawl sends our county further into insolvency the often cited benefit is nowhere to be seen.

The solution is to plan better. Putting aside all the other consequences of this type of growth like increased traffic, loss of community, forfeiture of traditions and customs, it is just financially reckless. It’s long-past time to adopt a new game plan. We need a new strategy. We need to stop creating new purely residential neighborhoods in the county. The county needs to start prioritizing things like mixed used development- that refers to commercial combined with residential. Additionally we need to stop building new roads and instead construct along already existing and trafficked streets. There are steps like this that need to be taken if we want things to change.

And if we refuse and insist on the status quo, we will continue to lose the never-ending game.

District 1 County Supervisor
Dom Zanger