Municipalities don't have it easy. There is tension between elected officials with an election cycle achievement window, and the need for long term management of city assets. As Charles Marohn of Strong Towns so eloquently puts it: "Cities routinely trade near-term cash advantages associated with new growth for long-term financial obligations associated with maintenance of infrastructure".
Growth is pretty irresistible to cash starved municipalities. If they are lucky enough to have developers asking to build and promising new sewer lines, new roads, and increases to the city's tax base, it is hard for a municipality to say, "wait, let's make sure this development is going to be good for our community long term", much less refusing the development all together. It is so much better to be able to show some shiny new initiatives and increased tax revenues especially when re-election rolls around. And who can blame them? There are short term needs to be met. Garbage to be collected, potholes to be repaired, schools to pay for. That short term revenue is important. The problem is whether the long term returns are adequate to cover the increased infrastructure burden. Sadly, it often is not.
This is where we residents come in. Our job is to ask the hard questions to determine whether the spangly rainbow the developer is holding up is leading us to a pot of gold or a sink hole. Local governments don't always have the capacity to undertake long term analysis and also don't have the time, or maybe more accurately don't believe they have the time, to analyze that rainbow fully before it fades away and lands in some other municipality willing to stake claim more quickly to that pot of rainbow gold.
Growth is pretty irresistible to cash starved municipalities. If they are lucky enough to have developers asking to build and promising new sewer lines, new roads, and increases to the city's tax base, it is hard for a municipality to say, "wait, let's make sure this development is going to be good for our community long term", much less refusing the development all together. It is so much better to be able to show some shiny new initiatives and increased tax revenues especially when re-election rolls around. And who can blame them? There are short term needs to be met. Garbage to be collected, potholes to be repaired, schools to pay for. That short term revenue is important. The problem is whether the long term returns are adequate to cover the increased infrastructure burden. Sadly, it often is not.
This is where we residents come in. Our job is to ask the hard questions to determine whether the spangly rainbow the developer is holding up is leading us to a pot of gold or a sink hole. Local governments don't always have the capacity to undertake long term analysis and also don't have the time, or maybe more accurately don't believe they have the time, to analyze that rainbow fully before it fades away and lands in some other municipality willing to stake claim more quickly to that pot of rainbow gold.
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