PD Editorial: Sonoma County gets a little smaller

For decades, Sonoma County has debated population growth — too much, too little, too fast, too slow.

Between 1970 and 2010, the county more than doubled in size, growing from 205,000 residents to 485,000, according to the U.S. Census.

Now the county is shrinking.

The state Department of Finance’s most recent population estimate put Sonoma County at 480,261 as of July 2022. That’s a decline of about 23,000 people — a little more than the combined populations of Healdsburg and Sonoma — from a peak of 503,500 residents in July 2017.

What does it mean, especially if the trend continues?

On the upside, there may be a little less traffic at rush hour, shorter checkout lines at the supermarket, fewer people competing for housing. On the downside, there may be fewer people patronizing local businesses and paying taxes that fund public services like police, fire protection and road maintenance.

Many local employers — from private businesses to health care providers to public agencies, including law enforcement — say they’re already struggling to fill vacancies, prompting some businesses to reduce hours or even close. Meanwhile, declining enrollment in public schools, Santa Rosa Junior College and Sonoma State University portends continuing shortages in the labor force.

People come and go for all sorts of reasons — the cost and availability of housing, career opportunities, retirement, proximity to family.

Wildfires almost certainly were a big factor in Sonoma County’s recent exodus. Four months after the county topped a half-million residents for the first time, the Tubbs and Nuns Fires burned more than 5,300 homes and many people chose to rebuild their lives elsewhere. More people left after wildfires in 2018 and 2020.

It’s quite likely the shift to remote work during the coronavirus pandemic resulted in a mix of people coming and going. How many came? How many left? We don’t know. Overall, however, the county, like California as a whole, is experiencing net out-migration — that is, more people are moving elsewhere than moving here.

Yet, as Staff Writer Jeremy Hay reported, more subtle factors also contributed to the loss of population. For instance, Sonoma is one only two Bay Area counties to record more deaths than births since 2020. The other is Napa.

The local population is not just getting smaller, but its characteristics are changing in some potentially concerning ways.

For example, the number of residents aged 20 to 54 — prime working years — shrank faster (about 6%) than the overall population (4.5%). Meanwhile, the number of residents 19 and younger dropped slightly, while the lone growing segment of the population was people over 55.

“The biggest concern about it is whether or not we are trading working families for older couples or older residents who are not planning to have kids, are not necessarily going to work when they come here or” residents who only live here part-time, said Sonoma State University economist Robert Eyler. “Because that could easily be where you’re losing not only current workforce, but you’re losing future workforce.”

A recent surge in housing construction may make Sonoma County more affordable for people who want to move here — and for people who want to stay here. Perhaps Congress will finally lower barriers to legal immigration, or population growth will resume for some other reason. Still, if after years of growing pains, Sonoma County must deal with getting a little smaller, we’re certain it will remain, in Luther Burbank’s words, “the chosen spot of all the earth.”

You can send letters to the editor to letters@pressdemocrat.com.