Off Beat: Sprawl is plan for all

It's deja vu in Yuba County.

The county, through the Board of Supervisors, has hitched its wagon to sprawl, hoping that thousands of new homes will lift it from its perennial status as one of California's most woebegone counties.

That was the same plan back in the early 1990s when the board — different crew of politicians, however — saw the future, and it was good. It was Plumas Lake, where 5,000 homes laying waste to low-value farmland would usher in a new era of prosperity for lowly Yuba.

Well, it took a decade or so for the homes to sprout. For a few years, the good times rolled.

Heck, unemployment actually dipped below 10 percent, albeit briefly, which was cause for a near-bacchanal in the streets.

The homes were built, the homes were occupied and then the homes were unoccupied when the banks foreclosed.

So where are we now? As of September, Yuba County had the state's second-highest jobless rate. Sound familiar?

So much for that strategy.

Last month, in a near replay of the early 1990s, the board voted to add two major residential projects to the General Plan update.

Developer representatives spoke glowingly about the thousands and thousands and thousands of jobs these projects would attract through associated commercial and residential construction.

And all this may happen by 2050. Mark your calendars.

Your tax dollars at work

If you were wondering how much the local general aviation airports have received from the federal government since 2005, you're in luck. There's a Web site with the answers.

It's subsidyscope.com, sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trust, and it has oodles of information about where those federal dollars have gone since 2005.

For example, the Yuba County Airport has received about $450,000 in federal grants between Oct. 1, 2004, and Sept. 18 of this year. Over at Sutter County, the figure was nearly $600,000.

In reporting these numbers, subsidyscope.com also lists the total number of "emplanements" each airport had during the five-year period.

Emplanement? According to the Federal Aviation Administration, that's every revenue-generating passenger departing from or arriving at an airport.

As you might expect, that may not mean much at a general aviation airport. The Yuba County number was 271. Over in Sutter County, it was six.

Maybe listing the emplanements isn't the best way to judge need for funds.

The Apple Valley airport, for example, had just two emplanements, but received about $1.4 million from the feds.

Big Bear City had a grand total of five paying passengers, but that was enough to qualify for nearly $8 million from the feds.

Of course, if you're LAX (Los Angeles International) with 146.3 million emplanements, you collect about $280 million.