Citizen apathy means developers shape our future

In retrospect, moving to Lodi in January 2006 to challenge an incumbent congressman of my own party looks like a foolish venture indeed, perhaps more like the last hurrah protest of an aging Ford / Goldwater / Reagan Republican against horrendous deficits and environmental disaster than a noble cause to change ethics in Washington.

I got my tail kicked, but good.

The best part of the five month, 14-hour-per-day effort, however, was getting reacquainted with the problems and circumstances of people in the San Joaquin Valley, the home for three former generations of McCloskeys, dating back to l859.

Towns like Lodi, Lockeford, Woodbridge and Clements retain an enormous sense of community pride and involvement, but to a carpetbagging farmer and former lawyer in Yolo County and the San Francisco Peninsula, the same pressures for ever-greater housing development and sprawling suburbs and shopping malls, all dependent on the consumption of gasoline, provide a formula for future disaster.

Here, in the rapidly growing residential suburbs, there is the danger of rapid loss of a once-prosperous agricultural community, without its replacement by an industrial or science-oriented employment base like Silicon Valley to employ the huge new numbers of people commuting to Sacramento or the Bay Area.

There is no underlying university and graduate school base to furnish the new levels of educational achievement to attract industry, and it was surprising to find the problems of education, health and poverty as bad in the county seat of Stockton as in some of the nation's poorest areas such as the hills of West Virginia and Kentucky.

The clear need in San Joaquin County is to scale back residential growth until there are jobs here and a transportation network which can support good education and less commuting.

Compounding the problem, of course, is the unhappy reality that most candidates for public office draw most of their campaign funds from the industries most interested in more, not less, housing construction and consumption of gasoline.

Lodi, in particular, still retains a peculiarly privileged status, by scenic and productive farmlands, with a tradition of agricultural excellence. But can Lodi protect its rural environs when the county and politically controlled agencies such as LAFCO hold the power to make land use decisions which doom the farms to residential development? Unless there is a community citizen interest in political involvement, I fear not.

It was my privilege, or perhaps sad experience, to grow up in Southern California when Los Angeles County was the greatest agricultural county in the nation, with a host of small and medium-sized towns set among orange groves and truck farms. My law practice, for over 50 years, was centered on the San Francisco Peninsula, where the coast range and bay put natural limits on sprawling growth. In the early days, then as now, developer money provided the source of most city and county officials' campaign money, but in due course, citizen rebellions arose which imposed limits on growth.

Will such a rebellion occur in San Joaquin County?

I saw no evidence of it as the open space agricultural lands narrow between Stockton and Lodi, and it appears that the entire highway corridor between Tracy and Ripon is rapidly developing into a vast sweep of housing tracts and shopping centers, much like occurred in Southern California, and now in the Santa Clara Valley between San Jose and Hollister.

But here there are no mountain or hill barriers like those that have protected Livermore and the towns along 680 in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, and 101 in Santa Clara County. Luckily there is the Delta, but the passion for residential development threatens future disaster if the already obsolete levee system fails, as will most certainly occur sooner or later.

There is much merit in local government having control of its land use planning and decisions, but when local politicians, like their federal and state counterparts, are funded primarily by developers, oil companies and those who insist bigger is better, there is need for strong local citizens' groups to call a halt.

Whole city councils have been recalled in fast-growing towns such as Half Moon Bay and in Sonoma County when citizen leadership came to the fore. But again, I could find no evidence of this in Lodi, Manteca, Escalon or Ripon. City and county government officials, honest and well-intentioned, all wanted federal money earmarked for projects which would make development easier and less painful to their constituencies.

The annual "tour to Washington" of city and county officials was for the purpose of obtaining federal earmarks to promote development, rather than funds for education, community health of reducing automobile emissions.

Wherever I campaigned throughout the county this past winter and spring, I found little interest in the electoral procedure. The voter turnout in San Joaquin County was less than 20 percent, less than the voter turnout in Iraq, where participation could be life-threatening. As an outsider, wishing well to the descendants of the hardy pioneers who brought the San Joaquin Valley into flower, and to the new arrivals who have traded cheaper housing for the frustrations of long commutes, I can only express the hope for a revival in participation in community government as well as in long-treasured community help to the elderly, infirm and poor.

Citizen apathy remains our greatest failure in our own privileged government of the people, for the people, and by the people.

Pete McCloskey is a former Bay Area congressman who unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, in the June primary election. He is also a lawyer and rancher based in Rumsey, Yolo County.

First published: Saturday, July 29, 2006