Like being a "little" pregnant
In an otherwise good article about the probable impacts of DIA/NGIC on our community [“In jobs we trust?”, January 26], Will Goldsmith—one of our community’s best reporters—concludes with a crumb of serious misinformation. He accurately points out that the new government outfits will hire few of our own un- and underemployed, but will bring hundreds of new workers from outside; they in turn, will bring families and others—swelling our population by thousands.
The misinformation? Goldsmith writes, “…you can imagine what your new community will be like. It will be like it is. Just a little bigger.”
Wrong. Size matters. The character of a community changes as it grows: a place with 135,000 residents (roughly the current population of Charlottesville and Albemarle combined) has a different feel, a different soul, than a place with a population half the size, or twice the size.
Growth will also impact our natural environment, as fields and forests are replaced by residential and commercial development. Not just the beauty of the area will be reduced, but essential ecosystem services will be diminished, and streams and groundwater compromised.
With a larger population one of the things that will be “just a little bigger” is our tax burden. It’s now evident from studies around the country that growth does not pay for itself. Taxes and fees rise to support the demands for new infrastructure: schools, fire and police protection, water and sewer service, etc.
Goldsmith proposes that we imagine what our future community will be like with population growth spurred by DIA/NGIC. If our imaginings build not on self-serving interests of personal profit, or on naïve optimism, but rather on hard evidence about environmental, social, and economic consequences of growth, it is obvious that our community will NOT “be what it is—just a little bigger.” Rather, it will be a quite different place. And for most of us who live here now, it will be less attractive.
Jack Marshall
President
Advocates for a Sustainable Albemarle Population