COURSEY: Choosing to straddle an economic fence

California is divided into two economies – one vibrant, robust and healthy, and the other stagnant, stalled and struggling.

Sonoma County has a foot on each side of the divide.

That was the message delivered on Friday by Jerry Nickelsburg, senior economist for the UCLA Anderson Forecast, who spoke at the annual State of the County event.

Nickelsburg used a variety of statistics and charts to illustrate the two economic realities of California. On the west side of a narrow band along the coast from Los Angeles County to Sonoma County, the precipitous slide from the recession was halted in 2010, and a slow but steady recovery has been underway since then. East of that narrow band, however, inland California continued its economic slide after coastal areas began their recovery. The inland recession was deeper than its coastal counterpart, and its recovery has been delayed.

Sonoma County isn't in as much economic trouble as a lot of inland California, but the path of it's recovery looks a lot more like Sacramento's than it does San Jose's.

Nickelsburg's point is that we live in a hybrid version of California's "bifurcated" economy. Sonoma County is saved from economic disaster by an economy that includes tech and tourism, but at the same time it is hobbled by our reliance on agriculture and construction.

The result is that Nickelsburg's chart showing gross domestic product has our GDP almost flat, while the Silicon Valley's is off the chart and the Sacramento Valley's is in the basement.

But that's what we've chosen for ourselves, isn't it? For the past 40 years, Sonoma County very deliberately has steered a path that straddles the line between urban and rural, keeping one foot in the Bay Area for its culture and jobs and cosmopolitan sophistication, and the other foot in the soil of an agricultural heritage that includes open spaces and back roads and rural charm.

There will always be tensions caused by our desire to be a part of both sides of California. Some of those tensions are political, some are economic.

We're willing to live with these tensions in order to avoid becoming San Jose or Sacramento.

If you're an out-of-work carpenter it may be hard to see this in a positive light. But in the long run, we'll be glad we live in a place that's still a little bit country, a little bit city.

Even if it leaves our economy straddling the fence.

Chris Coursey's blog offers a community commentary and forum, from issues of the day to the ingredients of life in Sonoma County.