By outward appearances, Stockton, a city of nearly 300,000 on the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, seemed in the mid-2000s to be emerging from decades of struggle.
Next to its gleaming downtown waterfront -- a window to the West's largest fresh-water estuary -- a beautiful new $46 million glass hockey arena rose in 2005. That same year, an Oakland A's minor league baseball team began play in a new taxpayer-financed stadium, amenities sought by elected officials catering to a wave of new residents fleeing Bay Area congestion and soaring home prices.
High salaries and lucrative benefits were supposed to attract and retain the brightest city workforce to improve the quality of life for its residents. "We spent like the good times would go on forever," said Stockton spokeswoman Connie Cochrane.
[...]
After the city's population grew by nearly 20 percent between 2000 and 2005 and real estate tripled in value, home prices plummeted 40 percent the following year before bottoming out at 70 percent.
Within two years, Stockton had accumulated nearly $1 billion in debt on civic improvements, money owed to pay pension contributions and the most generous health care benefits in the state -- coverage for life for all retirees plus a dependent no matter how long they had worked for the city.
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