Urban Afoot
  • Purpose
  • KNOW YOUR COMMUNITY
  • Urban Afoot Blog
  • Articles
  • Contact Us

Short term gain, long term liability

1/7/2018

0 Comments

 
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. 


0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author: Nina Arron

    I am an enthusiastic pedestrian, urban planner, and project manager currently living in New Rochelle, New York.  I am grateful to be living in a walkable city with affordable easily accessible public transport (both trains and buses). My appreciation became even greater after spending three years back in New Zealand where  it was much harder to fit daily walking into my life in what is considered one of the great natural, green environments in the world.  

    Archives

    January 2018
    December 2017
    June 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013

    Categories

    All

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.