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Town's have totally different economics. My town is fiscally solvent, takes are of it's infrastructure, and doesn't much raise taxes. And we are very spread out

Town's have totally different economics. My town is fiscally solvent, takes are of it's infrastructure, and doesn't much raise taxes. And we are very spread out, with an average lot size of 2 acres. Small roads are the responsibility of the town. Bigger roads (there aren't many) are the responsibility of the county. I'll claim that the layout of the town doesn't matter nearly as much as the fiscal discipline of the town government. As you scale from town to city, it is too easy for this discipline to break down. Whereas in my town, the town manager has to put up a pretty strong argument to justify hiring another employee or buying a piece of expensive equipment, in a medium to large city I, as a taxpayer, don't have any visibility let alone say, in any such expenditure. Fiscal discipline comes mainly from individuals not wanting to spend their hard-earned money - unless going so is necessary to keep things in their current working order. Once these spending decisions are made by nameless bureaucrats, that personal discipline is lost.

xenadu02 10y ago
That's not quite correct... fiscal discipline isn't going to make most suburb-heavy cities in America solvent. You can't cut your way to profitability in the long term, you can only stave off bankruptcy in the short term. The article is saying that mostly-suburb cities are not sustainable. They cost more to build and maintain over the long term than the majority of cities can recoup in taxes. That has little to do with employees, they are mostly talking about straight-line capital costs to dig up the streets and install new sewer lines. Even worse is that many cities grew in a relatively small post-war boom so a lot of that infrastructure will need replacing at the same time. Towns don't typically provide all of water, sewer, storm sewer, and other such services... they might provide water. They can also just dig up everyone's yard to replace what infrastructure they do have because things are more spread out (lost of "wasted" land between the house and road) and far fewer people are disrupted (that also means projects can be done at a slower pace). They also have a much sparser police and fire department, far fewer parks, etc.
- intrasight 10y ago
  You are indeed supporting my assertion that towns have different economics. Mine is an old suburb (1920s) of a medium-sized city (Pittsburgh). And as I stated, our town is sustainable. We have "more" parks not "fewer parks". Parks require much less maintenance cost than does residential spaces(plus much is done by volunteers). I'll also assert again that how "spread out" things are doesn't matter. If anything, denser clusters will have lower maintenance costs (less digging). So how can we make cities have the same fiscal discipline of towns? We'd have to reverse the land-grab of the cities. Have them split into fiscal units the same size as my town (20K people). Have the managers have to come ask those residence to approve their budget. Same issue with schools. Why does the Pittsburgh city school district spend the same per pupil as the suburbs, but the such worse results? Lack of fiscal discipline.
  - dkuebric 10y ago
    I don't think the schools example is parallel. There's a lot of factors that go into the success of a student, both in and outside of school. Equal funding doesn't translate to equal opportunity.
    - intrasight 10y ago
      But I'm not talking about individual students. In my example, we'd be averaging the students individual situation over the 20-30K in their new fiscal neighborhood. Any "success factors" that did exist across such averages would be more than canceled out by the empowerment given to parent and child.
  - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
    For your last point, if your student demographic is more impoverished, you will get worse results compared to a more well off demographic even with the same per pupil spending; the resources the kid has at home is important! (Charter schools get their results through selection bias, American suburbs with large lots that aren't suitable for low income housing likewise). The white flight to the suburbs in the 60s is largely responsible for that, creating a negative feedback loop that we haven't been able to break even now. Anyways, it isn't always about fiscal discipline, often the answer is much more obvious than that. Suburbs basically outsourced poverty to the cities.

xenadu02 10y ago

That's not quite correct... fiscal discipline isn't going to make most suburb-heavy cities in America solvent. You can't cut your way to profitability in the long term, you can only stave off bankruptcy in the short term. The article is saying that mostly-suburb cities are not sustainable. They cost more to build and maintain over the long term than the majority of cities can recoup in taxes. That has little to do with employees, they are mostly talking about straight-line capital costs to dig up the streets and install new sewer lines. Even worse is that many cities grew in a relatively small post-war boom so a lot of that infrastructure will need replacing at the same time. Towns don't typically provide all of water, sewer, storm sewer, and other such services... they might provide water. They can also just dig up everyone's yard to replace what infrastructure they do have because things are more spread out (lost of "wasted" land between the house and road) and far fewer people are disrupted (that also means projects can be done at a slower pace). They also have a much sparser police and fire department, far fewer parks, etc.

intrasight 10y ago
You are indeed supporting my assertion that towns have different economics. Mine is an old suburb (1920s) of a medium-sized city (Pittsburgh). And as I stated, our town is sustainable. We have "more" parks not "fewer parks". Parks require much less maintenance cost than does residential spaces(plus much is done by volunteers). I'll also assert again that how "spread out" things are doesn't matter. If anything, denser clusters will have lower maintenance costs (less digging). So how can we make cities have the same fiscal discipline of towns? We'd have to reverse the land-grab of the cities. Have them split into fiscal units the same size as my town (20K people). Have the managers have to come ask those residence to approve their budget. Same issue with schools. Why does the Pittsburgh city school district spend the same per pupil as the suburbs, but the such worse results? Lack of fiscal discipline.
- dkuebric 10y ago
  I don't think the schools example is parallel. There's a lot of factors that go into the success of a student, both in and outside of school. Equal funding doesn't translate to equal opportunity.
  - intrasight 10y ago
    But I'm not talking about individual students. In my example, we'd be averaging the students individual situation over the 20-30K in their new fiscal neighborhood. Any "success factors" that did exist across such averages would be more than canceled out by the empowerment given to parent and child.
- seanmcdirmid 10y ago
  For your last point, if your student demographic is more impoverished, you will get worse results compared to a more well off demographic even with the same per pupil spending; the resources the kid has at home is important! (Charter schools get their results through selection bias, American suburbs with large lots that aren't suitable for low income housing likewise). The white flight to the suburbs in the 60s is largely responsible for that, creating a negative feedback loop that we haven't been able to break even now. Anyways, it isn't always about fiscal discipline, often the answer is much more obvious than that. Suburbs basically outsourced poverty to the cities.