Good job Idaho Power! We need to stop encouraging developers and make them pay the real costs involved so that their profits are not artificially increased.

There is a place that makes the developers pay the full cost of connecting to the infrastructure, I think it is San Diego, and if I remember correctly, it raised the cost of new development by 25%.

This huge cost was previously an ‘externality’ that was shifted to existing residents. The old way of doing things destroyed open land, and decreased the quality of life, while punishing existing residents with higher taxes.

Growth creates a ton of tax revenue that more than pays for itself. The problem is that local governments aren’t very good at allocating that money to improvements that prevent the problems that Growthophobes and Growthophiles both detest.

I have a statistical report in hand that shows how the tax revenue generated by new homes, based on current market conditions, pay for their burden on society within one year. This is down from seven years to pay for itself that the same economic report showed in 2006. The current burden of a new home in the community is $15K. The tax revenue received is more than that. (I’ll forward a copy of this report to the Guardian to dissect)

Don’t just look at the property tax revenue for a new home. You have to look at the taxes and impact fees paid by the developer and the builder. Then look at the ripple effect of the taxes paid by the subcontractors and all of their employees. Then look at the steady stream of all the various taxes paid by the residents in the new home. All this adds up and proves that growth does indeed pay for itself.

Being that the agenda of this blog is to stop growth all together I’m sure you don’t object to Idaho Power increasing the costs to new home buyers.

I just want to make the point that the problems related to growth are not the fault of growth itself, but rather the problem of those holding the purse strings who decide to spend the money on other things at the expense of better transportation and education.
/Users/dave/Desktop/Ada County Idaho Net Benefits.pdf /Users/dave/Desktop/Ada County Idaho Report.pdf
Let’s hold our elected officials to task, not the developers.

Who wrote that report? How did they get access to data on impact fees anyone paid (to my knowledge, that information is not available to the public, at least not easily available? And how did the report writers value the income taxes paid by these hypothetical new homeowners, or the ripple effect of taxes paid by construction workers?

Elected officials and developers should both be held accountable. Electied officials (usually) cannot be corrupted without someone else to gain from the corruption.

Growth Does Pay for Itself says: “The current burden of a new home in the community is $15K” and then goes on to name a litany of taxes that do not benefit the community impacted directly. Taxes paid by contractors and subcontractors is monies tossed into to the wind and is unlikely to come to earth in a manner that will benefit the community from which it was ripped, the same as with the developers and builders profits. Just a huge sucking sound of dollars moving out of the community.

Would someone please read the report that says growth pays for itself and supply Cliff Notes. I am way too busy looking for the Easter Bunny to spend much time on such an enlightening report!

Serendipity,

I couldn’t agree with you more.

C’mon, Growth Pays for Itself, cough up the study… I’m dying to see this one. There was a time when you could sell this baseless BS to the Commission, but I think that time is fading fast. Reality has a way of doing just that. Nobody wants to subsidize you all anymore, get it?