As you drive up the Hwy 49 Scenic Corridor past Downieville, through Sierra City, and back down into the Sierra Valley, you certainly won’t find a more beautiful and geographically diverse county in perhaps the whole country. That’s largely why we all live here.

You will also see a collection of shuttered businesses in the commercial districts, and most businesses that are still open are struggling to survive. It should be no wonder that Sierra County’s GDP ranks #58 out of California’s 58 counties. Dead last. Even Alpine County, with just over one-third of the population of Sierra County, ranks above us.

It really shouldn’t be a surprise if you look at the fact that Sierra County is the only county in the state of California that has no focus and no plan for economic growth beyond increasing fees and taxes. The number of businesses throughout this county that shutter year after year steadily outpaces any new businesses. Those that remain find themselves shouldering more of the tax burden, and a good number of them are struggling to survive, let alone turn a profit. There are fewer and fewer places to eat and no incentive for anyone to start one, given the costs. Most of the establishments in Downieville, for instance, stay open pretty much for charity to ensure that their employees have jobs. This is unsustainable.

Business, workforce, and housing are intricately linked in a downward economic spiral.

In Downieville, over 50% of commercially zoned property is vacant. We have no gas station, very few places to eat, and limited grocery options that locals can afford.

COVID has provided the opportunity for people to live and work remotely as broadband and 5G coverage continues to expand. I have met a good number of people over the past several years who are fed up with the urban rat race. They would prefer the mountain lifestyle and would live here full-time, be a part of our community, and put their kids in our schools. However, there is nowhere to live despite having a plethora of empty houses. While the short-term rental ordinance should be good for us in the long term, it won’t make a difference to someone wealthy who just wants a vacation home to come to a few times a year and doesn’t need rental income.

It’s not all doom and gloom as quietly there has been a small influx of people from their early 30s to mid-50s making the difficult transition that has been filling the gaps in our workforce, but we still mainly rely on a senior volunteer workforce that isn’t being replaced. The Sierra County government, local businesses, and the USFS struggle to fill critical jobs. The county needs more full-time residents. For that to happen, they need a place to live, eat, and work.

Tourists know this now as well and come prepared often with their own groceries or plan to keep driving for gas and food options, making us less and less of a destination and more of a pass-through. This only exacerbates the problems in our economy, which is highly dependent on tourism.

There seems to be a pervasive fear from some that “flatlanders” like myself will ruin Downieville and turn it into Truckee. This is ridiculous. Beyond our geographic isolation, we have done a good job in this county over the decades to prevent that, but protection without a plan for economic growth just leaves us slowly and painfully dying.

We are too small of a community not to have an overarching plan that brings us all together. Our ecosystem is too fragile. Our economy depends on people living and visiting here. Our schools need children to fill the classroom. Instead, we are in a vicious cycle.

The communities on the east side of the county in Sierra Valley face a different problem, where it has slowly been overtaken by the growth of Truckee and Reno, looking for more affordable housing options. Both sides of the county share the same problem: no roadmap for economic development. Instead, we all slowly watch our precious communities picked apart and dying by a thousand cuts.

Comparing us to Alpine County again, the Sierra County General Plan was last updated almost 12 years ago in 2012. Alpine County was updated in 2021. Most counties establish 5-year plans that they regularly update, not every twelve-plus years. Right now, this burden falls on the Planning Department, which isn’t where this process lies in other counties, and they don’t even have the personnel or resources to focus on this. Sierra County did have an Economic and Business Development Committee, but it last met in June of 2015.

We need to sober up to the reality of the situation. The benefit of being a small community is finding common ground to bring this county back to life. Just as cancer doesn’t heal itself, ignoring the problem and believing it will solve itself certainly isn’t working; it’s only a roadmap to vacation ghost communities.

It’s time we all come together and take this seriously. We can change this, but it has to start now.