Sustainable Communities and Smart Growth
With municipal campaigns coming up, what are your views on sustainable communities, sprawl, smart growth, and our approach to these things in North Carolina?
- First, how do you define these terms? They're so broad at this point to be almost meaningless.
- Second, how do you view sprawl? Where do you fall in the smart growth debate?
- Third, what should we do at the municipal level, the state level, and the national level to build sustainable communities?
As it stands, while some affluent people are moving back into cities, there remains a huge divide between suburban and urban in America. Cities have higher taxes and less resources. How can we solve many of the problems facing America without mending this divide?
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Forced Annexation Is Nothing More Than Hilter Invading Poland
Without Guns and Tanks.
the growth of the past three decades has been fueled by the state's 11 large and small metropolitan areas. An estimated 88 percent of the state's job growth has occurred in those cities, along with 86 percent of the growth in personal income. Annexation is a key component.* Charlotte Daily World
If those last 30 years numbers are correct than the whole state should be annexate into one big city....Gosh! Does the term central government or federalism get your attention to destroy a democrative princple that all local government is the closest thing to the peoples and individual liberty....The United States and the principle of State powers were not design nor constitutional, when it comes to making America a world wide Empire as a slave to force Globism.
Requiring a vote by areas to be annexed...
...will put an end to most annexations. While there are examples (Fayetteville) of annexations that seem to go against the spirit of the law, how many develping areas on the edges of municipalities will voluntarily submit to annexation unless they are in dire need of sewer or drinking water?
Instead, these areas in the edge of town, or sometimes surrounded by it, will choose to have their cake and eat it too. They'll enjoy all the benefits of living in or adjacent to a municipality but will continue to be free of taxation by that municipality. The N&O got it right in their editorial a couple of weeks ago: "Let people who already live inside the municipal boundary also vote on whether people just outside the boundary should continue not having to pay property taxes to the town."
Questions
What municipality services are being used by the people living outside but near the municipality?
Does someone living outside of the municipality, on average, use more or less municipal services than someone living inside of the municipality?
Should people living outside of the municipality pay as much taxes as someone living within it?
Just as most people would vote against being annexed, is there any reason that people would vote against annexing others and thereby reduce their own tax burden (other than having a moral conscience, perhaps)?
In a voting scenario, isn't the base population of those seeking to annex generally going to be greater than those being annexed?
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"The natural wage of labor is its product." -- Benjamin R. Tucker
A liberal is someone who thinks the system is broken and needs to be fixed, whereas a radical understands it’s working the way it’s supposed to.
Annexation
http://www.sog.unc.edu/programs/annexation
Forced Annexation
Much of the libertarian platform this year was devoted to getting rid of forced annexation, but it allows cities to keep suburban zones within their tax bases. How do you feel?
From the Observer:
I always wanted to be the avenging cowboy hero—that lone voice in the wilderness, fighting corruption and evil wherever I found it, and standing for freedom, truth and justice. - Bill Hicks