That magic number

By GORDON D. FIEDLER JR. Salina Journal | Sunday, February 17, 2013 8:50 AM

Without the gift of prophesy, predicting the future can lead to miscalculations of this magnitude:

"A city of 80,000 persons and a surge to the south and east. That's Salina, circa 1986, as envisioned by Stanford University education consultants. The estimate of Salina's population is contained in the Stanford report on Salina's school situation submitted to the board of education. The consultants who drew up the report see a bright future for Salina. 'The city of Salina ... has every right to be optimistic about the future,' the report stated. 'Proposed highway development, increased war defense activity, stimulated economic activity and continued residential development combine to ensure a continuance of the existing growth pattern ... .' "

Salina Journal subscribers who read that gem on Dec. 28, 1961, had every reason to be optimistic. A fourth of Salina's population of more than 43,000 were billeted at Schilling Air Force Base on the city's southwest flank, a Strategic Air Command facility that was expanding in anticipation of replacing its fleet of B-47s with the newer, larger B-52s.

The Cold War was hot and would get hotter the next year when the Soviet Union began constructing nuclear missile launch sites in Cuba.

The Department of Defense would be daft if it decommissioned Schilling, Salinans comfortably thought. But that's exactly what happened in 1965. By the end of that year, the Air Force had taken wing, leaving behind an economic hole that required decades to fill.

Instead of advancing, Salina's population march went retrograde, dipping from 43,202 in the 1960 census to 37,714 by 1970, a decline of nearly 13 percent compared with a 65 percent increase between 1950 and 1960.

Still waiting

The year Schilling closed, Salina's population was projected to reach 50,000, a benchmark it's still chasing.

The hope among many was that Salina would reach that milestone by the 2010 census, but the city fell almost 3,000 short. Had Salina reached or exceeded 50,000, even by one solitary citizen, it would have been declared a metropolitan area and qualified to receive regular checks from the federal government in the form of Community Development Block Grants. Cities smaller than 50,000 must compete for those dollars.

Attracting business

Also, once a city bulked up past the 50,000 mark, it had the muscle to attract fetching glances from business entities that wouldn't have turned their heads before.

Salina Area Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Dennis Lauver said that might not be as accurate as it once was.

Yes, Uncle Sugar would automatically bless a metropolitan Salina with federal largesse, but on the other hand, companies might no longer be ignoring cities with populations of less than 50,000.

"It's not as important as it used to be," Lauver said.

He said that at one time, retail companies eyed cities only in the 80,000 to 100,000 range or larger. Those markets have been saturated and now they are looking down the lists of smaller cities.

Manufacturing, however, is looking for an adequate, trained labor force.

The question is, if Salina never hits 50,000, if the population bounces along at its current level, will it still be a retail magnet? Will an industrial prospect look with favor on a city with a stable population? Must Salina -- or any city for that matter -- grow or perish?

Stability, not growth

A local organization that thinks growth is not mandatory is The Resilience Group, formed in 2009 to promote sustainability.

Former Salina City Commissioner Abner Perney is a member of the group and agreed that infinite growth in a finite environment is impossible.

But what, exactly, is growth?

Perney thinks what we imagine as growth is a mirage.

"As far as Salina and the USA are concerned, we need to be addressing how to gracefully convert the society from relying on the illusion of growth," he said. "We shouldn't call it growth because that's not honest."

In his view, growth has been propped up by natural resources overshoot.

"Everybody who's rich, and especially people who got rich by inheriting it, knows you don't touch the principal," he said. "In our overall business world, the principal has been the natural resources. We've been burning the principal."

He cited coal and oil as prime examples.

"We pull it out and once we use it up, most of those natural resources are flat gone," he said.

Instead of chasing the 50,000 mark, Salina should be aiming at a "steady state" economy, one that balances inputs and outputs. In a way, Salina has been in a steady state since the closing of Schilling, he said.

"In a comprehensive plan that was written in 1963, it projected the population would be 80,000 by the 1980s," he said. "By 1980, the population was barely what it was in 1963," Perney said. "So we have been a no-growth city compared to our projection."

That plan, published in 1964, estimated the population range by 1985 at between 54,000 and 94,000. Based on Salina's population growth between 1940 and 1960 -- from 21,073 to 43,202 -- those estimates seemed realistic.

The forecast was for Salina's population to increase by 24 percent by 1970 and by 22 percent in the next decade.

"In the opinion of the (city) planning commission, these projections are not overly optimistic and the plan is based upon populations of 59,000 by 1975 and 72,000 in the year 1985," according to the plan.

Salina's planning and zoning administrator, Dean Andrew, said were the city never to reach or exceed 50,000, there would be little need for extending streets, sewer lines or other utilities.

"It doesn't put so much pressure on growing infrastructure. You're not needing to expand water plants or spend as much on serving a growing population," he said.

Salina isn't there yet, Andrew said, because the population has been increasing every decade since 1970, a trend that shows no signs of reversing.

The expansion of the population in the previous decades has been slow and steady, a far cry from the spectacular growth experienced in the 1950s into the early 1960s. In one year -- from 1961 to 1962 -- Salina gained 2,481 people, 453 more than it gained in the 10 years between 2000 and 2010.

How long that slow and steady growth can continue is anyone's guess but, Perney said, the city would be wise to prepare for an era of sustainability.

As such, he is an advocate of relocalization of manufacturing.

"First, we need to bring back food production," he said.

"Even as late as 60 years ago, at least half the food you ate in Salina came from within a hundred miles of Salina. Now, almost nothing comes from Salina directly," he said.
