We must empower our local government

By KEN MIDKIFF
Columbia Daily Tribune, July 22, 2005

Last week, a notion was introduced that likely strikes fear into the hearts of developers and their hangers-on - lawyers, engineers, consultants, real estate agents and city managers.

For years, the developer of each residential or commercial project has touted how the greater community of Columbia and Boone County will benefit, usually citing jobs, economic growth and increased tax revenues. Though there might be some truth to this, it ignores the negative side of the coin. Overall taxes - particularly sales taxes, transportation district taxes, special district taxes and so forth - have gone up. For the most part, construction jobs are temporary with low wages and few or no benefits.

Meantime, those of us who already live here are saddled with the burdens of providing roads, water, sewer and electric services to developments that are almost always on the fringes or just outside of the city limits and immediately request annexation. In addition, there are all the ancillary costs: schools, libraries, emergency services, law enforcement and transportation.

Those who live in the residential developments don’t pay the full costs for all these services. To be sure, there are increases in property taxes - taxes on many single-family residences on subdivided farmland far exceed whatever small amount was paid under the agricultural tax rate. But these costs merely pay for day-to-day operation and maintenance of city services and come nowhere near paying for the capital outlay required to initially provide those services.

Nowhere in this formula or the lack of one is the true "highest and best" use taken into consideration. Highest and best use refers only to economic gain for whoever has designs on the property in question. When one considers urban sprawl and its commensurate expenditures and the concomitant loss of open space, green space and habitat for wildlife, the costs to society are magnified. Are there ways to account for these costs? The answer is a resounding yes. It is totally possible - indeed, it has become almost mandatory - to place a dollar amount on the costs of loss.

While, of course, a few benefit - developers and their minions - everyone else loses. It is time to take a hard look at the costs as well as the benefits. For too long, the Powers That Be have assumed that growth equals progress.

Growth in most cases actually equals regress.

We are going backward. We are losing the very amenities that cause this city and this area to be such fine places to live and to work. But there are choices. We can choose to limit expansion, or we can let expansion run amok until this is no longer a desirable place. In the latter instance, growth will be self-limiting.

By then, however, it will be too late. This will eventually become just another polluted, glutted urban area.

We need to give our city council, the county commission and their staffs the tools to say no.

We need to adopt ordinances that dictate, after consideration of various analyses, that the costs both short- and long-term of a project outweigh the benefits, then the city or the county must have the legal authority to say no.

At present, neither the city nor the county has that authority. As long as the proposed development meets certain physical criteria - density, sidewalks and so forth - the city council and the county commission must grant approval. That’s not right, and it stands in need of correction.

If benefits to the community do outweigh the costs, approval should be given. Cost-benefit analyses would answer the question that now cannot even be asked.