To the editor:

I read with interest Mr. Rosenbloom’s column on growth (Journal-World, June 20). Yes, Lawrence certainly has grown, and I would suspect that there are many who have reaped rewards from that growth. The author lost me, however, when he jumped to the conclusion that owner-occupied homes are the biggest beneficiary of growth. The absolute linkage of property values to growth was completely unsubstantiated.

Yes, city services are growing quite fast, much faster than inflation. I would theorize that many of the growth areas in the city budget are not correlated with demands for service by the owners of single-family owner-occupied homes. I would further theorize that social services, city investments in guiding growth, water, police, fire and the like, which are services correlated with population not with where the population lives, are some of the more dynamic growth areas.

I can only hope that when the city invests in the planned study to sort out who should pay for growth that a more scientific and less arbitrary effort will be undertaken. I would certainly like to know who we think is the real beneficiary of growth, whatever we actually mean by that term. I know that my demands for services in my owner-occupied home have not grown at all.

George Lippencott,

Lawrence