Will Cities Like Stockton Fall Back Into Boom and Bust Growth?

Though the City Council and city planners embraced the imperative for a more sustainable, less sprawl-filled future during the city’s time in bankruptcy, there seems to be little urgency now that we’re on the other side.

A revision of the 2007 general plan mandated by a 2009 legal settlement with the state attorney general’s office and Sierra Club remains unfinished. Stockton’s to-be-updated blueprint for growth is languishing somewhere in City Hall’s bureaucracy.

In 2004, Stocktonians passed two different measures purporting to protect agricultural land from residential development. But one of the two was actually a Trojan horse put forward by development interests. While both initiatives were approved, the one drafted on behalf of developers won significantly more votes, and a clause in pro-developer law’s language torpedoed the more meaningful measure backed by local smart growth activists.

Despite that, the sentiment of the voters was clear: There should be limits on the city’s growth, and residents should direct what type of growth occurs and where. That was forgotten by the city leaders who engineered the 2007 general plan, in part because those with skin in the game had the most input regarding the rules, and most residents sat on the sidelines. It led to a document that would have continued a valley-wide plague of paving over productive agricultural land in favor of single-family houses — the same single-minded growth strategy that fostered the housing boom and bust that devastated Stockton.

Thanks to the Sierra Club and then-Attorney General Jerry Brown, Stockton was forced to take another look at its growth priorities. With bankruptcy in the rearview mirror, now is the perfect chance for city leadership, including members of the City Council, to take up the mantle and champion smarter growth. The alternative is a return to business as usual, and letting those with the loudest voices set policy for the rest of the city’s residents.