Cities show growth rates of 2.2 percent, highest in county
– Growth rates in Gilroy and Morgan Hill once again outpaced the rest of Santa Clara County’s largely land-locked cities, according to state population estimates for 2005.
The cities came in neck and neck at growth rates of 2.2 percent for the year, with Gilroy adding 1,045 people and Morgan Hill attracting 812 new residents, according to estimates from the California Department of Finance.
The report places Gilroy’s population at 48,527 and Morgan Hill’s at 37,091.
While San Jose and Santa Clara far outstrip the county’s 13 other cities in the number of new people, South Valley generally grows at a quicker pace than its neighbors to the north.
As a whole, Santa Clara County added 20,159 new residents last year, placing it in the middle of the pack among California’s 58 counties with a 1.2 percent growth rate. That state population grew at an identical pace with the addition of 444,000 residents, bringing the total number of people in California to 37.1 million.
State analysts with the Department of Finance said the numbers continue a downward trend in growth that began in 2001.
But growth rates are far less important than the actual number of people entering the community, at least in the view of Morgan Hill City Manager Ed Tewes.
“It is the number of people that affect the services that need to be provided, not the growth rate,” said Tewes, calling Morgan Hill’s 2.2 percent rate “meager.”
He chalked up the gradual rise in the city’s growth rates to changing demographics.
“Morgan Hill has voter-approved growth control and the demand for housing far outstrips the supply, but our growth control program is fairly predictable,” Tewes said. “We construct about 250 homes a year, and they are attracting younger and younger people with bigger and bigger families.”
Tewes predicted the city would climb steadily toward 48,000 people by 2020. Gilroy expects to reach 62,000 people by the same year.
Whereas Morgan Hill has capped growth at 2,500 new homes for a 10-year period, Gilroy has set the bar at 3,450. Many residents and officials have taken issue with that figure, however, due to the city’s off-the-books accounting for hundreds of units. Large projects that provide affordable housing or provide added layers of planning, as well as downtown projects, have received permits outside the growth cap.
By the time a new 10-year period starts in 2013, Gilroy officials expect to have overshot the growth limit by more than 1,000 homes.
“There seems to be a natural threshold within this community that 4,000 units for a 10-year cycle is about the top of that threshold,” City Planning Manager Bill Faus said. “We’ve allowed a fair number of additional units and we’re starting to hear quite a few comments and concerns being expressed about holding the line.”
Faus said that such overall trends outweigh one-year blips in growth rates.
Gilroy City Councilman Peter Arellano said growth rates alone are inadequate for judging the pace of development.
“It depends on how we grow,” he said. “If we keep growing the way we have been in the past, in terms of growing out and out, we can’t sustain that. If we start growing in, by filling in the downtown and other places inside the city, I wouldn’t mind staying at the pace we’re at now.”
