[thechat] balancing old and new (was re: Knife-man found in BusinessWeek)

[Jeremy Weiss]

Matt Warden wrote:
> What are your thoughts on what local governments should do in that situation?
>
> It sounds to me that the local government suddenly found themselves
> with a ton more revenue than they had before and decided to grow
> government instead of give some of it back.

It's not always that they decided to grow the government itself. Many times the new comers expect things to be similar to where they moved from and put pressure on the local government to provide those services. But, it has to be a balancing act. The people that have lived in that county all their lives are used to it being the way it is. The newcomers all hail from big cities and expect this rural county to provide them with all the conveniences they're used to.

For example, just about everyone in the county outside of the incorporated cites live on well water. And the locals are fine with that. You start talking to them about bringing the city water line out their way and most will tell you it's just another monthly bill they don't need. But for the city folk, the idea (and taste) of well water doesn't sit well with them.

And there's many other issues that play out the same way. Many county roads are still dirt or gravel. The locals are used to it. The wealthy executives don't like the way the gravel gets kicked up and dings their luxury cars.

The county and city officials hear so much complaining from the newcomers that they start responding and trying to make them happy (the squeaky wheel gets the grease). But too often they don't take into account their longtime constituent base, and I think that's where they start getting into trouble. This makes the locals feel like their elected officials are ignoring them, which makes the whole 'you're not from here' issue even worse.

What I think Benton County, Arkansas (county were Bentonville, and thus Wal-Mart HQ, are located) could have done was to find a way to protect the families that had been there, some sort of grandfather clause or something. For example, they could have only reassessed the value of a property when it was sold, that way the family farms would not have been effected. Or they could have set the value of the land to a specific amount ($x per acre) where $x was low enough so that it wouldn't significantly raise the property tax on the farms, but then increase the multiplier on the assessments of the structures/improvements so that when someone builds a multi-million dollar home, the county still receives an appropriate amount of revenue. This would, for the most part, leave the locals where they were, but still increase the county's revenue which is needed to start providing the new residents all the services that they feel they need (such as city water, paved roads, cable tv, etc.). Of course this is my $.02 worth and while I've worked in many industries, I've never been an accountant or a tax assessor so I may be way off base. 


-jeremy