51–60 of 424 posts
There are some cities that get around this by requiring HOAs in new subdivisions, and requiring those HOAs to pay for maintenance of much of the infrastructure. The homeowners pay the same property tax they would pay anywhere else in the same city. There are a number of cities in the Sacramento area that have been doing this kind of thing for over a decade now. That approach brings in another set of problems, but it'…
I can't say much about mathematics of taxes described in the article, but I always thought that Soviet Union got a lot of it's city planning very much right. Even a small town is built as a relatively tight formation of high-rises, yet leaving plenty of public space and greenery in the middle. The quality of life in the town that I grew up in is super high, because everything one might need: school, hospital, store,…
As you scale from town to city, it is too easy for this discipline to break down. Whereas in my town, the town manager has to put up a pretty strong argument to justify hiring another employee or buying a piece of expensive equipment, in a medium to large city I, as a taxpayer, don't have any visibility let alone say, in any such expenditure.
Fiscal discipline comes mainly from individuals not wanting to spend their hard-earned money - unless going so is necessary to keep things in their current working order. Once these spending decisions are made by nameless bureaucrats, that personal discipline is lost.
I'm not sure they're drawing the right conclusions from that winning/losing graph. That area downtown is green because that's where all the toniest businesses are located, and you can't have a city that consists of only upscale businesses.
The amount of road surface a tall, mixed-use building requires per occupant is dramatically less than what a detached single family home does, but the latter road needs more maintenance than what the taxes on that single-family home provide for.
There are some cities that get around this by requiring HOAs in new subdivisions, and requiring those HOAs to pay for maintenance of much of the infrastructure. The homeowners pay the same property tax they would pay anywhere else in the same city. There are a number of cities in the Sacramento area that have been doing this kind of thing for over a decade now. That approach brings in another set of problems, but it'…
I can't say much about mathematics of taxes described in the article, but I always thought that Soviet Union got a lot of it's city planning very much right. Even a small town is built as a relatively tight formation of high-rises, yet leaving plenty of public space and greenery in the middle. The quality of life in the town that I grew up in is super high, because everything one might need: school, hospital, store,…
I can't say much about mathematics of taxes described in the article, but I always thought that Soviet Union got a lot of it's city planning very much right. Even a small town is built as a relatively tight formation of high-rises, yet leaving plenty of public space and greenery in the middle. The quality of life in the town that I grew up in is super high, because everything one might need: school, hospital, store,…
I'm not sure they're drawing the right conclusions from that winning/losing graph. That area downtown is green because that's where all the toniest businesses are located, and you can't have a city that consists of only upscale businesses.
There are significant economies of scale for infrastructure that happen with density. The amount of road surface a tall, mixed-use building requires per occupant is dramatically less than what a detached single family home does, but the latter road needs more maintenance than what the taxes on that single-family home provide for.
There are some cities that get around this by requiring HOAs in new subdivisions, and requiring those HOAs to pay for maintenance of much of the infrastructure. The homeowners pay the same property tax they would pay anywhere else in the same city. There are a number of cities in the Sacramento area that have been doing this kind of thing for over a decade now. That approach brings in another set of problems, but it'…
Curing cancer with AIDS? No thanks.
In the intro, it is stated that "literally five or less" cities do not have these monetary problems. I'm curious what those cities are, and why are they special. If the answer isn't "they've always used accrual accounting", I don't buy that most cities are doomed due to accounting problems.
The article author Charles Marohn addresses this question in the comments section. His entire comment response: " They are the ones with a very dominant urban core, where the urban fabric overwhelms the horizontal, auto-oriented stuff. I'm not saying these places won't struggle for the same reasons Lafayette will, but I suspect their decline/contraction will be less pronounced, less a defining characteristic. NYC, Bo…