Prescott Arizona News and Events - Read It News Magazine

Arizona nosed out Nevada again last year as the fastest-growing state. In December the US Census Bureau issued its latest estimate of Arizona’s increase in human population, from July 2005 to July 2006. Their number was 213,311—the equivalent of adding an entire city the size of Scottsdale.

However, Dr. Ron Gunderson, an economist at Northern Arizona University, recently forecast that the rate would ratchet back to 170,000 or so new Arizonans annually, with that figure holding steady “as far as the eye can see.”

So, OK, only a new Tempe or Gilbert every year.

How does your county grow?

Though many a new-minted Arizonan falls into the Valley of the Sun, goodly numbers vector straight for Yavapai County, making it the second fastest growing county in the state. Among planning experts, a moderate or sustainable annual growth rate would be the dainty 2.2–2.5 percent targeted in the City of Prescott’s General Plan—not the honkin’ over-5.5 percent of Yavapai County’s recent decades. Chino Valley officially estimates its growth at 7 percent per year, Prescott Valley at 8 percent. There’s a reason city planners and managers get jittery at such influxes. Prescott City Manager Steve Norwood estimates, regarding residential newcomers, that “for every dollar they pay in taxes, we probably give them a buck fifty or more in services,” a net drain on a town’s general fund.

Counting heads is pretty blurry science. Every ten years the US Census gives us the full Monty, but in between it’s down to educated guesstimation; that’s why you see various numbers, depending on the source. Some skeptics don’t believe Prescott has been keeping to the General Plan’s ideal of 2.2–2.5 percent anyway. Jack Wilson, who retired here from corporate Chicago in 2000 and is launching a campaign for mayor, pegs Prescott’s growth at 4–5 percent, commenting, “With overheated growth in the 4 to 5 percent range, we can expect to see city services strained.” That upper rate could double Prescott’s population in about 16 years, and Wilson asks, Will there be a commensurate doubling of open space, parks, trails? Will there be double the parking available downtown? Will Rt. 69 and other major arterials be able to handle double the traffic? Will all those people leave any water for the Verde River?

I've been living here in my trailer for 25 years now, and I have my little flower garden, and they want me to stop watering it - so more people can come live here and use the water?

In the end, the contested figures are just evidence of the future’s inscrutability. So many unpredictables could happen—recession, a renewed boom as more snowbirds retire, climate change, Flagstaff’s extinct volcano chooses to blow again—speculation remains only that. And water: Just as we can’t really know how much groundwater lies down there, waiting for us to pump it (supply), we can’t see into the future to know exactly how many thirsty souls will be slurping it up (demand).

But then, people can’t resist speculation. If water availability does turn out to be a limiting factor, what’s the upper limit of Arizonans the state water resources can support? Estimates vary wildly. Yavapai County Supervisor Carol Springer, who holds a real estate license and has ties to the development community, told a “Town Hall” meeting in May that the figure is 66 million, with the county’s water supply supporting 950,000 people by 2030 (about 5.6 times the 2000 population). Arizona Water Resources Department (ADWR) head Herb Guenther, in his numerous statewide presentations during the past year, has pegged that maximum, based on current resources, at 40 million people—but they’d take all the water for human use, with nothing left for free-flowing streams and wildlife habitat. (For reference, California’s 2006 estimate was 36.5 million.) Guenther adds that all the cheap water is already identified, and that development often happens far from supply sources, necessitating costly transportation. Responding to a question about possible alternative sources, such as leasing water rights from tribes or importing through a northern Arizona pipeline, Guenther replied, “You’re going to have to decide what you’re willing to pay for it… and whether the growth is worth the cost.”

Hot growth, hot tempers

We can’t know the ultimate numbers. What we do know is what we see around us, and it evokes mixed feelings. A recent poll made it clear that a majority of Prescott-area residents feel some concern about growth. I hear people talking about it everywhere I go—on the airport shuttle, at Basha’s… You hear everything from the gray funk of a Prescott native watching instant neighborhoods sprout on grassy Prescott Heights, where she used to run free as a tyke, to Prescott councilman Steve Blair on the radio, celebrating that while “Jackass Flats used to be nothing but dirt and antelopes,” now what you see in Prescott Valley is “people—people who mean a lot.” You hear, “Oh, boy, maybe we’ll finally get a Trader Joe’s!” (Wait—that was me! And I know it won’t happen until we have enough customers up here to make it worth their loading up a truck.) You hear local Sierra Club chair Tom Slaback, who moved to Prescott some 30 years ago after watching his hometown of Santa Ana, Calif., rip out orange trees and grow strip malls and freeways. He loved 1970s Prescott because it wasn’t L.A.

So the influx of newcomers forges chains of irony. People come here because they love the ways it’s unlike the place they left. They come here, never questioning their right to come, and then they say, “Hey, wait a minute, this place is growing too fast!” And the folks already here, toiling in the Vineyards of Growth, say, “So, you move here and then you want to slam the gate and not let anyone else in?”

For perspective, 60-year Prescott resident Sasha Legendre wrote last fall to the Daily Courier about early seasons of change, “People thought even widening Grove Street… sidewalks and curbs, etc., was terrible, and would make our little Western town into a city,” and welcomed those who oppose current change to depart: “If you want to avoid progress, you should move out in the middle of nowhere, and Arizona still has plenty of those places… Roads lead out just as they lead in.” But the newcomers say, “OK, you wanted growth. Well, that’s me. I’m here. And you’re telling me I have no voice in how the place grows? Just ‘Pay your taxes and shut up’?”

And then, the irony cuts another way. One Verde Valley old-timer said to me, “What’s up with these people who come here to get away from the crowding and hustle, but then they can’t live without their big-box store? Don’t they get it?” When enough of them make their move, she indicated, it will be just like the place they left.

It’s a quarrel taking place around the world, but nowhere more than here. And in the dry Southwest, there’s an added edge to the dispute, that limited but indispensable resource. Water. With ever more people wanting to use a finite resource, the obvious answer is conservation—largely through the reduction of individual use. Again you hear voices raised against the ironies. In a meeting last fall, a water manager channeled this voice: “I’ve been living here in my trailer for 25 years now, and I have my little flower garden, and they want me to stop watering it—so more people can come live here and use the water?”

Dreamers and deciders

But even while various factions eye each other warily, people dream of the future, and some move us toward it. One mover is long-time Prescott resident Nick Malouff, who founded Malouff Development in 1988. He sets the antidote-example to the cynical view of developers’ motivations. His dream for Prescott some 30 years out would resemble Madison, Wis., a town that (like Prescott) regularly turns up on lists of the best US places to live, and that “managed to grow and diversify their economy yet [retain] a charming character,” Malouff says. He appreciates their educational institutions and hopes to see Prescott’s advance similarly, along with population growth.

Malouff’s take on the area’s water problem casts the Big Chino pipeline as a short-term, not an ultimate, solution to growth-fueled demand. “We probably need to join forces with other communities in northern Arizona and come up with a plan to import water from other sources,” he concludes, noting that he and other Central Arizona Partnership members have recently discussed such options with legislators. All agreed that “the long-term solution will be complex and costly, but we need to begin to look at alternatives today,” reports Malouff. His belief is that that “the market ensures that developers don't overbuild, and the market decides how much growth is appropriate.”

He knows, though, that the market has lately proved disinclined to create enough homes within reach of many local service professionals—nurses, teachers, police, firefighters. “The days of anyone being able to actually build a house which can meet the definition of ‘affordable’ based on median income are over,” Malouff asserts, and as a founding member of Affordable Housing Resources, Inc., he tackles this shortcoming. The local nonprofit’s goal, he explains, is to provide leadership in promoting “mechanisms in the planning process that will ensure a more affordable component to our residential development process.” One affordability strategy is “encouraging city planners and educating our public about allowing for pockets of higher density combined with open space, to allow for a more affordable housing formula. [But] currently in Prescott,” Malouff says, “higher density is considered an undesirable outcome.” And yet, clustered population can ease other problems as well as affordability (see box).

Greater density is one answer offered to the question, “So what is the best way to grow?” If, as so many of our decision-makers say, “People are coming, whether we like it or not,” does that mean we ought to just lie down and let the tide of growth wash over us? What about that limited water supply? Communities do have options for some degree of control, in the form of planning and zoning committees, general plans, guidelines and regulations. A city like Prescott, as an ADWR-designated water provider in the Prescott Active Management Area (AMA), pledges to hold to a water budget and limit the amount of water it allocates. In its water management policy, Prescott declares, “Recognizing the heavy demand of golf course irrigation,” the City will not allocate any treated wastewater for golf courses beyond existing agreements, and it doesn’t allow potable (fit for drinking) water for irrigation of new golf courses—only for municipal golf courses “under temporary, emergency circumstances.” Chino Valley is working hard to get as many homes on its water and sewer system as possible and has obtained a low-cost state loan to achieve this. [And since this story went to press, the town has signed a deal with a private developer, securing rights to Big Chino water and its own pipeline. – Ed.]

Statewide, though, many decision-makers lack access to such growth management tools. In unincorporated areas outside the structure of the AMAs, county officials are generally impotent against subdivisions and “wildcat” lot splits. A case in point is Yavapai County, where subdivisions of as many as 38,000 homes will be built next to the Big Chino Water Ranch, the planned water source for Prescott and Prescott Valley. Also in that area, according to a 2004 County Water Advisory Committee report, golf courses will consume 882 acre-feet of water by 2010.

ADWR Director Guenther labels this legal impotence “dysfunctional.” State Rep. Lucy Mason’s House Bill 2693 (and its Senate twin) would allow counties to deny subdivision plans with inadequate water sources, but the bill collected an amendment in its waltz through committees, and now each county may “opt in” to this management tool only by a unanimous vote of its board. Supervisor Springer opposes the bill, so even if it becomes law, Yavapai County will not acquire this power while she is in office.

Knowing how to do our best

Our best hope for figuring out how to grow starts with clearing away the suspicion by sitting down together and coming to terms. And it’s happening.

It starts with seeing the big picture. One water management organization, Yavapai County’s Water Advisory Group (WAC), has engaged Hoyt Johnson’s H3J Consulting to create a growth and impact model. Tying population and water-use data to maps, the spatial growth model (SGM) he’ll produce will create long-term development scenarios for areas impacting the Verde River watershed. Johnson feeds his software the data he collects from the cities, towns and counties (the “jurisdictions”) about how they have grown up to now, and how they themselves expect to grow, accessing land use information presented in their own population projections and their general plans. The SGM shows, graphically, the results of different land use and housing density patterns, making it clear that mere estimated numbers of future residents don’t tell enough.

And numbers, as we’ve seen, are slippery anyway. Johnson says, “I don’t think there can be any such thing as an ‘accurate population estimate or projection.’” He believes that striving for precise numbers is beside the point, agreeing that “at times, estimates and projections can be influenced as much by political climate as they are by scientific method or rigor.” DES projections, he explains, purposely work from past rates of growth, rather than from speculation about what future rates will be. “In my opinion they give us a very valuable baseline to work from” in the overall project of providing “stakeholders, decision-makers and others” a handle on “the short- and long-term impacts of their decisions and actions.”

Johnson’s goal is to give the WAC the information it needs to “assess and consider the impacts of development on water resources.” The program can then forecast how they will grow in the future if current trends prevail and they follow the same rules that guided growth in the past, or if they modify their planning and zoning rules. And instead of eye-taxing, charisma-deprived charts and tables, the program translates the figures into maps, with colored dots or patches indicating where the concentrations of different types of housing and land use will occur. Then, the way each growth scenario will play out can be translated into an animation, so policymakers can see the advance of development before their eyes. They’ll learn where water will be needed, and how much.

This project will integrate each local jurisdiction’s data with the regional effects, allowing each to see how collaboration would be useful, a big step forward over common practice. The first phase will concentrate on the land use and development scenarios, leaving water use data for later. Johnson’s work will also produce long-term development scenario data useful to the USGS modeling effort, which is underway and scheduled to produce an initial groundwater model by the end of this year. Thus it will integrate with, and add to, the growing storehouse of information about water consumption and supply in the Verde watershed, rather than duplicating work done by other organizations.

The WAC project “will help us understand if where we are headed is where we really want to arrive,” says Johnson. Catastrophes may happen, but we cannot reasonably plan for or control such eventualities. “What we can do, and I believe must do,” says Johnson, “is get a … picture of how our actions today might impact the future of where we live, because these actions are [among] the few things we can control.” Most importantly, such a picture gives people “the ability to alter [their] decisions before problems arise,” working against the unpreparedness, the reactivity rather than planfulness, seen as a past failing. And with all the suspicion, the bickering and complaining out there, Johnson says, “I think it is important to remind folks that there are positive, collective efforts underway.”

What’s Your Plan?

For example, Prescott’s General Plan, ratified by voters in 2004, mandates well-planned, moderate growth that “pays for itself” through a “reasonable and equitable tax and fee structure,” supports a “vibrant city center,” connects streets and neighborhoods with pedestrian- and bike-friendly roadways, and coordinates regionally with surrounding communities. It foresees a moderate growth rate of 2.2–2.5% (or 2.5–3% in a different report section).

Any policy decisions by City Council must reflect the community’s wishes as expressed in the General Plan, which declares:

"1.0 - introduction: The General Plan does not have the effect of law. Simply stated, the General Plan is an expression of a community’s preferred future. It is a road map describing the destination and the paths to be taken to reach it. The plan is made up of Elements, but each Element of the plan interacts with every other Element in the plan.

“In more practical terms the General Plan is the guide for land use decisions in the City. Rezoning and new development proposals must be consistent with and conform to the adopted General Plan.""

“Consistent” and “conform” are terms supported by Arizona’s Smart Growth legislation, which aims to empower communities to plan, zone, and otherwise regulate the jurisdiction’s land uses.

Many area general plans, including Yavapai County’s, are available online. Prescott’s gives the names of the citizen volunteers, elected officials and city staff who labored on the document.

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