Friday, December 09, 2005
What If Portland Held Neighborhood Cake Sales to Fund Rail Transit?
Portland can spend $45 million on a cable tramway to connect a hospital in the hills with waterfront doctors' offices.
It can spend $11 million extending its silly downtown streetcar by eight blocks (sixteen blocks round trip).
It can give tens of millions in tax breaks and other subsidies to developers of New Urbanist high-density housing projects.
It funds or plans to fund the tram, streetcar, and many of the subsidies to New Urban developments out of "tax-increment financing," meaning the property taxes from new developments will go to subsidize urban monuments (or the developments themselves) rather than to schools, fire, police, and other things that the taxes would otherwise fund. (For more information about problems with tax-increment financing, see this paper.)
Things like parks. For some strange reason, Portland has a shortage of money for parks, so it has demanded that neighborhoods raise money to keep their parks and community centers open.
If neighborhood fundraisers are such a good idea, why not use such fundraisers for the tram, streetcar, and New Urban developments?
It can spend $11 million extending its silly downtown streetcar by eight blocks (sixteen blocks round trip).
It can give tens of millions in tax breaks and other subsidies to developers of New Urbanist high-density housing projects.
It funds or plans to fund the tram, streetcar, and many of the subsidies to New Urban developments out of "tax-increment financing," meaning the property taxes from new developments will go to subsidize urban monuments (or the developments themselves) rather than to schools, fire, police, and other things that the taxes would otherwise fund. (For more information about problems with tax-increment financing, see this paper.)
Things like parks. For some strange reason, Portland has a shortage of money for parks, so it has demanded that neighborhoods raise money to keep their parks and community centers open.
If neighborhood fundraisers are such a good idea, why not use such fundraisers for the tram, streetcar, and New Urban developments?
Comments:
Post a Comment
