Brace yourself, Southwest Riverside County, another massive development boom is about to rumble through the region. That represented the good news at a wide-ranging forum of top local government leaders last week.
“I think you’re hearing the same thing throughout the region,” Rick Dudley, Murrieta city manager, concluded. “It is going gangbusters.”
But all the news wasn’t good. The five managers admitted their cities will struggle financially to provide the police, fire, traffic circulation and other basic services sought by the flood of new residents, workers and tourists.
Much has changed in a mere few years, the city managers agreed.
The crippling “Great Recession,” a sharp downturn that hit in 2008 and gripped the area for nearly five years, has faded into a distant memory.
And gone are the border clashes where neighboring cities battled over tax-rich retail, office and tourism-related projects.
“There aren’t any wars going on,” Robert Johnson, Menifee city manager, told his rapt listeners. He described his colleagues as “a phenomenal team of city managers” who see the area as a region rather than distinct empires.
The competition – if it can be called that – is far more tongue in cheek today.
Johnson noted that one of his city’s goals is to meet all the retail needs of Menifee residents within their own community. Doing so, he said, will keep precious sales tax revenues from migrating south to Temecula.
Greg Butler, Temecula assistant city manager, countered that his city is well aware of the “sleeping giant to the north.” Temecula, he said, is reacting by boosting the size of its regional mall, increasing its car dealerships and attracting an array of retail stores that will draw shoppers from far away.
The audience at the annual breakfast event, the sixth of its kind sponsored by the Southwest Riverside County Association of Realtors, reacted with audible gasps of “wow” at various stages of the upbeat presentations.
About 300 people – roughly double that of last year – paid $20 each to attend the nearly four-hour session in Murrieta on May 20. Turnout at the event reflects the state of the economy, and this year’s large group mirrors the post-recession uptick, said Connie Lynch, the association’s chief executive.
Lynch and several speakers at the breakfast event noted that most of the audience is in the business of championing the area’s charms.
Some of the speakers described the attendees as “ambassadors” to the region and disciples of the upbeat messages that they were presenting. The association boasts about 4,000 members, and it is also involved in fundraising for industry-oriented political action committees.
Each manager spotlighted explosive commercial growth, hundreds or thousands of new housing units and a flurry of new hotels, motels and other tourist-related attractions that are under way or on the drawing boards.
They agreed that all of the cities and their economic sectors are booming.
“Lake Elsinore is on fire,” said Grant Yates, who heads that fast-growing city. He said numerous public and private projects that have been in the pipeline for years are now becoming reality. He noted that new homes are selling as fast as builders can complete them.
“There’s a lot of growth that’s coming our way,” Yates continued. “We’re on the right track and a lot of things are happening. You are going to see some amazing things coming our way.”
Growth is also rippling through Wildomar, the smallest of the five cities represented at the forum. City Manager Gary Nordquist reeled off a series of projects that are now perched on the front burner.
They include an 80-acre complex planned by Mt. San Jacinto College.
“We’re looking forward to that coming on board and adding to the region,” Nordquist said. He used a pair of photographs to illustrate the rebounding local economy.
The first picture showed an idle Wildomar development site where a forlorn “Coming 2008” sign anchored its street frontage for years. The new photo showed grading equipment in the background and a gleaming new sign that proclaims: “Coming 2016.”
“You’ve got to have faith,” he said.
The forum was capped by a question-and-answer session led by Gene Wunderlich, the association’s government affairs director. Some of the queries touched on sensitive issues.
One of the questions sparked a discussion over the financial pressures caused by skyrocketing public safety costs and an inability to win the return of funds that the state siphoned away from cities over the past decade.
Those pressures may prompt some cities to ask their residents to decide between paying higher sales taxes or experience an erosion of police response times or other services.
Property taxes only cover a portion of the costs to serve new residents, the managers pointed out. Waves of newcomers could stretch municipal budgets to their breaking points, they said.
Temecula, Lake Elsinore and Menifee are among a group of cities that are funding a study to determine whether they can stem the rising cost of police services.
The $195,000 study marks the latest step in a years-long regional push to counter annual cost increases assessed to cities that have law enforcement service contracts with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.
Several managers grumbled that the rising costs have forced them to freeze the size of their police forces or cut their officers at a time when the populations of their cities continue to soar
“Something is seriously, drastically wrong,” Johnson said.
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