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The problem is best labeled as Ribbon Cutting. Politicians love to cut ribbons but spending money to maintain does not impart any name recognition. The second

The problem is best labeled as Ribbon Cutting. Politicians love to cut ribbons but spending money to maintain does not impart any name recognition. The second motive is anything that fills their campaign coffers. However it should be noted that one of the most major expenses in cities is paying their payroll and in particular their pension requirements as public employee unions pretty much have them over a barrel and politicians trade public money for political favor without regards to the costs. finally it also comes down to the penalties, fees, and such, of government services affect the poor far more than any other group. That twenty dollar renewal for your license might be nothing to you but it doesn't work that way when your poor. Throw in that municipal fees tend to be a lot higher and you can see the difficulty. Atlanta was only forced in fixing their sewers which of course exploded their service costs after they kept dumping into local rivers. PDF of city of Atlanta budget https://s3.amazonaws.com/saportakinsta/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/FY2021-Proposed-Budget-Book_Final-05032020.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/saportakinsta/wp-content/uploads/20...

nervousvarun 6y ago
Exactly...the same reason many of our public schools are conducted in immaculate modern buildings (easily visible from the road/campaign commercials and identifiable as something the current politician spent on 'education') yet our teachers are paid a relative pittance.
- Exmoor 6y ago
  I would encourage people to actually look their local teacher's salaries, they should be a matter of public record. The "teachers make terrible money" talking point has been a talking point my entire life so I was surprised when my wife pulled up our local elementary school records and showed me that our child's kindergarten teacher made over $100,000/yr. Her school's PE teacher made $120,000/yr. This is in a county where the median household income is $66,000/yr so I wouldn't call it a pittance. I'm sure there are plenty of places in the country where teacher pay is lower than it should be, but teacher's unions have benefited greatly by the perception that they're universally underpaid.
  - yardie 6y ago
    In many cases teachers salaries are based on a schedule. If you know how long they've been teaching you can pretty much figure out where they are on the band. And there are additional grants subsidies; Title I school teachers get a Ed Dept supplement for teaching at poorer schools. They also get paid more for having a Master's or Ph.D. A teacher who has a M.Ed in early childhood development and also designs the curriculum (lead teacher) at a Title I school with 10+ years of experience will be pretty far up there. My college roommate became a biology teacher and his starting salary for a small T1 school district was $28k. If I remember the schedule correctly it was going to double once he completed his Masters and gained 4-5 years of experience. > teacher's unions have benefited greatly by the perception that they're universally underpaid. The union would still be closer to correct, teacher salaries, on average, are still low [0]. School performance and property prices are intertwined so maybe your district has decided that to retain good teachers they have to pay good salaries. 200 $500,000 homes will kick in over a $1.2-1.4MM/year in property taxes. [0] https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2018/a-look-at-teacher-pay-across-the-united-states-in-2017.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2018/a-look-at-teacher-pay-acro...
    - Exmoor 6y ago
      > The union would still be closer to correct, teacher salaries, on average, are still low [0] A spot check of the linked BLS.gov numbers with Wikipedia's list of household income by state [1] showed that about 2/3 of states I checked paid teachers above the average household income and the rest were within about 10%. As you say, there's likely a large amount of variation in there and there are likely a lot of young teachers who are not getting paid fairly since union members have an inherent tendency to enact policies benefiting current members over future members. But with that said, I still stick by my original point which is that teachers do not, on average, make a "pittance." They make pretty close to an average household income, on average, and typically also have significantly better than average pension benefits and vacation benefits. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States#Income_by_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...
      - 6y ago
nickik 6y ago
This was also a huge thing in the Soviet Union, opening the biggest Truck factory in the world, fantastic propaganda. Actually economically efficiently producing trucks, far less relevant. I totally agree that public unions are a huge issue. The prison guard union is one of the worst, basically undermining criminal justice reform. The police union is terrible, as everybody is slowly learning. But even teacher unions had negative effects.

nervousvarun 6y ago

Exactly...the same reason many of our public schools are conducted in immaculate modern buildings (easily visible from the road/campaign commercials and identifiable as something the current politician spent on 'education') yet our teachers are paid a relative pittance.

Exmoor 6y ago
I would encourage people to actually look their local teacher's salaries, they should be a matter of public record. The "teachers make terrible money" talking point has been a talking point my entire life so I was surprised when my wife pulled up our local elementary school records and showed me that our child's kindergarten teacher made over $100,000/yr. Her school's PE teacher made $120,000/yr. This is in a county where the median household income is $66,000/yr so I wouldn't call it a pittance. I'm sure there are plenty of places in the country where teacher pay is lower than it should be, but teacher's unions have benefited greatly by the perception that they're universally underpaid.
- yardie 6y ago
  In many cases teachers salaries are based on a schedule. If you know how long they've been teaching you can pretty much figure out where they are on the band. And there are additional grants subsidies; Title I school teachers get a Ed Dept supplement for teaching at poorer schools. They also get paid more for having a Master's or Ph.D. A teacher who has a M.Ed in early childhood development and also designs the curriculum (lead teacher) at a Title I school with 10+ years of experience will be pretty far up there. My college roommate became a biology teacher and his starting salary for a small T1 school district was $28k. If I remember the schedule correctly it was going to double once he completed his Masters and gained 4-5 years of experience. > teacher's unions have benefited greatly by the perception that they're universally underpaid. The union would still be closer to correct, teacher salaries, on average, are still low [0]. School performance and property prices are intertwined so maybe your district has decided that to retain good teachers they have to pay good salaries. 200 $500,000 homes will kick in over a $1.2-1.4MM/year in property taxes. [0] https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2018/a-look-at-teacher-pay-across-the-united-states-in-2017.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2018/a-look-at-teacher-pay-acro...
  - Exmoor 6y ago
    > The union would still be closer to correct, teacher salaries, on average, are still low [0] A spot check of the linked BLS.gov numbers with Wikipedia's list of household income by state [1] showed that about 2/3 of states I checked paid teachers above the average household income and the rest were within about 10%. As you say, there's likely a large amount of variation in there and there are likely a lot of young teachers who are not getting paid fairly since union members have an inherent tendency to enact policies benefiting current members over future members. But with that said, I still stick by my original point which is that teachers do not, on average, make a "pittance." They make pretty close to an average household income, on average, and typically also have significantly better than average pension benefits and vacation benefits. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States#Income_by_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...
    - 6y ago

nickik 6y ago

This was also a huge thing in the Soviet Union, opening the biggest Truck factory in the world, fantastic propaganda. Actually economically efficiently producing trucks, far less relevant. I totally agree that public unions are a huge issue. The prison guard union is one of the worst, basically undermining criminal justice reform. The police union is terrible, as everybody is slowly learning. But even teacher unions had negative effects.