4 ms·
This is just bad reasoning. How much they spend on other items is irrelevant to whether the amount they spend on roads is sufficient. The effects of deferred ma
by imgabe 4y ago
This is just bad reasoning. How much they spend on other items is irrelevant to whether the amount they spend on roads is sufficient. The effects of deferred maintenance take years or decades to show up. Then a bridge collapses or a road needs to be completely redone and there’s no money to fix it.
The same effect scales to other services anyway. You need more cops to cover 50 square miles than 10 square miles and if the areas is low density it’s producing less $ / square mile in taxes so they can’t afford it.
- nradov 4y agoNo that's not how it works. Many low-density areas have very few law enforcement officers, and still have low crime rates. Whereas some of the densest cities actually need more cops because the residents act out in antisocial ways. Strong Towns just cherry picks data to support their preferred political narrative. I actually agree with some of their recommendations, but let's not be fooled into believing that they're doing high quality analysis.
- imgabe 4y agoMaybe, maybe not. That doesn't change the fact that "we spend more on public safety so the amount we spend on roads is enough" is straight nonsense. They are two different things with different requirements. How much is spent on one has nothing to do with how much needs to be spent on the other. You can underspend on roads for quite a while before things start obviously falling apart. People notice pretty quickly if the cops or ambulance aren't showing up though.