5 ms·
Yes, Carmel took on a lot of debt And as bonds mature, tax abatements and incentives expire in a way that will enable rapid retirement of the debt. Oh boy.
by bilbo0s 2y ago
Yes, Carmel took on a lot of debt
And
as bonds mature, tax abatements and incentives expire in a way that will enable rapid retirement of the debt.
Oh boy.
I’m going to go ahead and wish Carmel the best of luck with all that. At the same time, I can’t in good conscience, advise other municipalities to follow this example. Prove it out first, then we can declare it a success.
- PandaRider 2y agoWhat's the alternative of long-term bond investments? Republican-style tax cuts? If I understand the article correctly, Carmel's Republican mayor Jim Brainard broke off from his party's motto. > The prevailing model of austerity, low taxes, and limited government in many Republican-led states and cities has often failed to improve the quality of life. Meanwhile, Democratic-led cities struggle to effectively address issues like homelessness, housing affordability, and public safety despite greater willingness to invest, just not in actual services and infrastructure.
- pas 2y agoNo, there's nothing wrong with bonds, if the thing they get invested into has good positive ROI. The elephant hiding in the rural balance sheets is boring economics, meaning that there's usually no such high-ROI thing within city limits, because to get good and affordable services the city needs economies of scale, and that requires both sizes and density. This basically translates to things that these cities could do: rezoning and waiting, joining up with neighboring cities for deals (but this is usually already the case, school districts and water districts). Homelessness and public safety is worse in urban cores, and this would require a lot more spending to fix. [0] (These cores are usually poorer, have funding issues, crowding out effect of rich suburbs means that the police force of the urban core needs to sort of match the salaries, etc. [1]) Also ideological differences lead to worse outcomes in public safety definitely. (Again, especially in these metro areas where - as other comments have mentioned - it's relatively easy to push poverty and crime around.) It's not a uniquely American problem, but the combination of wealth and income inequality, extremely fragmented hyperlocal institutions, gang and gun violence, plus senate veto make progress extremely hard. And in practice it serves as the perfect fuel for political radicalization. [0] https://www.slowboring.com/p/fixing-the-police-will-take-more https://www.slowboring.com/p/fixing-the-police-will-take-mor... [1] https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-police-are-in-the-wrong-places https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-police-are-in-the-wrong-pla... - https://pastebin.com/PHzjrCU6 https://pastebin.com/PHzjrCU6
- indymike 2y ago> Prove it out first Carmel has proven it. Now neighboring cities are following suit with same results see Zionsville, Westfield, Noblesville and Fishers for other examples with results that are tracking right along with Carmel (although 10-15 years behind).
- pyrale 2y agoSo, where do poor people live in that area?
- tecoholic 2y agoHave they paid off their debt? Or how have they proven it? If they don’t get the surplus to payback bonds at maturity, are they just going to issue more bonds and keep this going perpetually? I am really curious about the bonds/debt driven development
- kelipso 2y agoIt's a small rich city. If they get into trouble, they can do one time tax levies. Usually how they do things in the midwest.
- bilbo0s 2y agoOnly they aren't rich. Places that are rich don't need the debt. Look up the average household income in Carmel, IN. Then compare it to, say, Darien, CT. Now consider, Darien's per capita debt load works out to about 2% of the average annual per capita income. Carmel's per capita debt load works out to roughly 25-30% of its average annual per capita income. Look, I have nothing against small places in the midwest. I'm from small town Wisconsin. So I have just as big an affinity for flyover country as anyone else. But few of the fiscal indicators are pointing in the right direction here, and there's nothing wrong with pointing that out.
- dsr_ 2y agoThe article: "Took on $1.4B in debt ($14k per capita)" The reality: 100,000 citizens, 1.4B: $140K per capita. It did not pass the smell test that there was a city of 1 million people in the US that I had never heard of.