It seems that the owner, publisher and staff of the local newspaper had always dreamed of becoming major city journalists. In their youth, they surely had no dreams of the kind of Pony League journalism that has been the lot of the local newspapers. So they go on a campaign to get the community to annex everything in sight so that they can be part of a newspaper for a city twice as big. That is, like in that early Tom Hanks movie, something called Big.
Just the notion of “annexing everything in sight” is of course a nutty idea even by the mere sound of it. After everything in sight is annexed, will that be Santa Clarita’s last territorial demand? Or will they get a hankering to annex Poland down the road? Ha, ha. That’s just a joke.
But this is the time to remind ourselves that annexing everything will not change the look of anything. It is not fair to say that a “one valley, one city” Santa Clarita will create more crime, more gridlock and more graffiti. But neither will a new Santa Clarita metropolis reduce anything nasty like that either.
What a grand unification will surely do is centralize a local government more intensely and stretch its octopus arms throughout the valley.
Personally, I am against this kind of unification. I would rather be with a leader in my own neighborhood than with an octopus arm from the Santa Clarita City Hall that is being stretched into my doorway.
Looking at history for a minute will always remind us that when government is centralized into bigger boundaries, the people who are supposed to be served by government lose their capacity. They become further distanced into abstractions.
The potential for abuse always is magnified by stretching a centralized government. Say a person didn’t get enough attention as a child, so he runs for the city council so he can become mayor of an entire city. Then he might as well shout at an entire city as payback for not getting the attention he wanted before it became too late.
Then when his city is annexed to bring more human beings into it, that’s more people to shout at. So this growing annexed city increasingly becomes an opera between the shouting tenor and his audience.
The false premise that annexing can make a city great is indeed belied by great cities in America and throughout the world that have the highest standards of life.
Princeton, New Jersey may be one of the oldest towns in America, but the population of the township is only small fraction of the population of Santa Clarita. Yet Princeton remains a structured in a style that made America great. With a main street named Nassau Avenue, it provided a heart for its high culture to be circulated among every Princetonian. The population of the township of Princeton including its separate borough is still not 30,000, and in 2005 it was voted the fifth best place to live and work in America by Money Magazine.
My daughter Stephanie is now attending Southern Utah University in Cedar City. This little town has been described as lending to be the Princeton of the Rocky Mountain states, with a pervasive university atmosphere like Princeton influencing the entire small community. The town also draws tourists from all over America with its Tony-Award winning annual Utah Shakespeare Festival. As my daughter describes Cedar City, there is something about a town like Cedar City that makes a young woman feel safer and freer. There is also something about Shakespeare and the arts that makes that local person you may see in the proverbial dark alley a better individual. In any case, there are no dark alleys to be found in a city like Cedar City There are only about 20,000 people living in the whole town, located where some of America’s earliest prehistoric people settled.
Ashland, Oregon is like Cedar City in that it also has a Tony-Award winning theater in its Ashland Shakespeare festival. Agnus Bowmer, the founder of this Shakespeare festival, used his influence to make the entire town a backdrop for the plays he produced, lending a Tudor motif to all the keynote architectural locations. It is like the other towns I have mentioned a university town, with a learning and cultural circulation among its entire population. Like Cedar City, Ashland has a population of a little over 20,000 people.
Strangely, it seems that municipalities between the cities between the populations of 20,000 to 30,00 seem to have the best organized and functional governments, as well as the best quality-of-life ratings. It seems city leaders begin to lose touch once the temperature reaches over 100,000.
It is also clear that it is culture – not more human bodies – that creates a great city. Sparta once thought it had a become a great city through muscling into other populations. Athens mostly produced culture. Today, it is Athens that is the mother of all Western cities, while Sparta is a mound somewhere.
I will offer Part II of my argument for one valley, more-than-one city next week.
Chris Sharp- Commentary
Chris Sharp is an Educator and a prize-winning professional writer. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon.
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