taxes

At noon today I attended a seminar on the economics of town development. The speakers were sponsored by the town, county and chamber of commerce. The argument they presented was that most suburban development both residential and commercial require a very long time to pay back the costs of maintaining the initial infrastructure much less the general government cost of services. They analyzed the tax value/acre of land of various properties in town.  Multiple store buildings create the greatest value although the Spotted Dog also was high in their calculations. Box stores like Walmart rated relatively low on their scale. Implied by their presentation is that the cost benefit formulas used for residential, commercial and industrial are misleading. By the way the title of their talk: Dollars and Sense is a name of a magazine I've subscribed to for years. It is edited by a "collective of economists, journalists and activists who are committed to social justice and economic democracy." www.dollarsandsense.org

Loren

Well the Transit Tax for Orange may have some added poison. I say poison as for the Proponents of the Transit Tax for the Light Rail will not want an added sales tax Governor Bev Purdue has cast into the political winds this year. Outside the overwhelming distaste for more taxes by District Two, the poison for D1 is not notion of paying more tax for their costly train, it is the added threat to fuel to the fire in the pockets of D2 Citizens who have no use for a Choo Choo in a huge election year.