California 2025: What Kind of California Do You Want?

On Wednesday, June 1, 2005, “the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) today released “CA 2025,�? a comprehensive study of the major trends and forces that will shape California in the next two decades.”

I read California 2025: It’s Your Choice and I encourage each Californian to do so because the report is brief, but loaded with essential information about the future of California.

The report opens with a basic question: “What Kind of California Do You Want?” The authors structure the colorful report with a description of “The Challenge,” “Where the Trends Lead,” and “Making Choices.” Throughout the report, the authors include eight interesting facts about California 2025. The eight facts are:

In 2025, 30% of Californians will be foreign born. Almost half will be Latino. One in seven will be over 65

By 2020, the workforce is projected to grow by more than 30%.

77% of Californians have only some or very little confidence in their state government’s ability to plan for the future.

By 2025, the college age population — 18 to 24 year olds — 04 will have increased by more than 800,000.

Municipal water use could expand by 3.1 million acre-feet over the next 25 years.

Congestion will cause travel time in the state to increase by 48%.

In many of the state’s urban and coastal areas, population growth and jobsshould be roughly in balance for the next two decades, but there could be an imbalance inland.

Whites will still be a majority in the electorate in 2025, even though they will represent only a third of the population.

In the final segment, “Making Choices,” the authors present ten options and note: “We cannot consider every issue, question, or option here. Nor do we have a list of quick and easy solutions to offer. There are choices to be made by Californians and their elected leaders, and selecting a course of action will involve tradeoffs. But we can prime the pump of policy debate by highlighting selected options — some suggested by the trends and directions we’ve been discussing, some by other concerned commentators on the state’s future. Here are some examples identified by issues we have raised.” The ten options are:

Invest in education now, given the potential shortage of college-educated workers in the future economy

Greatly increase voter registration efforts to make voters more representative of the state’s population

Make a priority of investment in low-income areas

Use public-private partnerships for new infrastructure

Rely on demand management and conservation for maintaining infrastructure

Extend term limits to change the context of long-term planning in the legislature

Encourage localities to think and act regionally

Revisit Proposition 13

Increase the transparency and accountability of the state-local fiscal system

Reduce the supermajority requirements for local revenue raising

I believe that the public and its government must function and make decisions with the long term in mind. The adage of “we are all dead in the long run�? is not true because people will be walking this world for a long time and our actions now, to some degree, will form the future. Therefore, I will make each effort to promote California 2025, generate a discussion about the future of California and what we can do to meet the needs and exceed the expectations of the future.

An altruistic mindset is preferred over an egotistical one because the former will take what we know about the future and utilize it.

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One Response to “California 2025: What Kind of California Do You Want?”

Josh Franco » Blog Archive » Governor Schwarzenegger: “Build it!�? on January 5th, 2006 10:36 pm

[...] During his speech, the Governor asked a critical question: “Let me ask you, what California do you want in 20 or 30 years?�? I remembered hearing that question before, actually, I blogged about it in June 2005. [...]

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