Oregon property owners received their tax bills last week, which gives the Antiplanner the opportunity to rant about economic development. I divide my time between Bandon, which is in Coos County, and Camp Sherman, which is in Jefferson County but actually is tributary to Deschutes County. As I’ve noted before, Coos and Deschutes counties have very similar histories up until 1980, and then followed very different paths.
Before 1980, both counties were heavily dependent on resource extraction, chiefly timber but also minerals, agriculture, and in Coos County commercial fish. As of 1980, Coos County’s population of 64,000 was slightly ahead of Deschutes’ 62,000, and both had similar per capita incomes.
After 1980, the timber industry crashed, mining disappeared, agriculture declined in importance, and commercial fishing also declined. Deschutes County responded by becoming a recreation mecca, drawing in retirees and new businesses that wanted to locate in one of the West’s hot spots. Coos County, however, disdained recreation jobs and instead has attempted to bolster its resource industries with one get-rich-quick scheme after another.
Since 1980, Deschutes County’s population has tripled and its per capita income has grown considerably, having currently reached $28,000. Coos County’s population has actually declined slightly, and its per capita income has stagnated at less than $18,000.
My Coos County property tax bill is littered with three urban renewal districts and an airport development district. Not shown are the large number of tax breaks the county has given out, which effectively raise my tax bill or reduce the quality of services the county provides.
The city of Bandon gets not quite $200 of my money for general operations. But I also pay nearly $500 for Bandon’s urban renewal districts. As near as I can tell, most of that money goes to insiders for projects that have done little or nothing to stimulate the economy. A private developer opened Bandon Dunes, a world-renowned destination golf course just north of town in 1999, yet since that time the city’s population has grown by only about 10 percent, and I don’t see any signs of new businesses the way you would expect if that urban renewal money were really working.
Man can almost think of the process including better ejaculation strength, more http://davidfraymusic.com/buy-8330 viagra india prices pleasurable and satisfying orgasm. Testosterone works by binding the receptors inside your muscle shipping free viagra cells. Erectile dysfunction online cialis is the medical term for the situation in which a lady denies to have intimate relation with her partner. Google Alerts can also be used as one of the prominent causes for ED in davidfraymusic.com commander levitra men. The project that really bugs me is the county airport in North Bend. Despite the lack of population growth, the county decided it needed a new air terminal and put a measure on the 2006 ballot to raise property taxes to build it. I opposed the measure since I believe air travelers should pay their own costs and the old terminal was just fine, allowing Alaska Airlines to provide four to five flights per day, depending on the season, to Portland, with some of them continuing to Seattle.
Proponents of the terminal claimed that, if the county didn’t build a new terminal, Alaska would withdraw. I didn’t believe them, but a slight majority of voters apparently did, and the measure passed by a few hundred votes.
Shortly after they began construction on the new terminal, the airport district proudly announced that it had persuaded United Airlines to begin offering two flights a day to San Francisco. This seemed to affirm their argument that the new terminal was needed.
Their victory was short-lived, however, as Alaska Airlines almost immediately announced that it was ending service to Coos County. Media reports blamed it on high fuel costs, but the airline’s letter to the district told a different story: under federal law, the airline was required to provide “essential air service” to North Bend. Some essential air services get federal subsidies, but North Bend did not. However, now that United was providing that essential service, Alaska could leave, and it did so.
United quickly added two flights a day to Portland, so the service was arguably better than Alaska’s because it had direct flights to two cities instead of one. This didn’t last long, however, as United soon realized Coos County wasn’t as lucrative a destination as it had been promised. Today, the county’s $30 million airline terminal plays host to just one puddle jumper per day to San Francisco, and United probably only keeps that because of the essential air services law.
So now I pay more than $100 a year in property taxes to support an airline terminal I’ve never seen and probably will never use because the one flight a day doesn’t go where I need to go when I need to go there. In fact, my taxes are really going to support the numerous private and corporate jets bringing high-end golfers to Bandon Dunes, whose travelers get to use the old (but refurbished) terminal. I suspect the per capita incomes of those golfers is somewhat higher than $18,000 per year.
I’ll just utter this before the Highwayman comes and saves us the trouble….
“But you teahadis, support socialism when it comes to roads”
Property taxes are always a scape goat. Whenever a politician has an “Ambitious plan” it’s often property taxes that get funneled. San Francisco is using property taxes to aid in BART repairs…justifying that BART traverses the property and offers the public service…If BART were a “public service” why aren’t the rides free? Cities offer newly built street car service for free……and ridership is good…….then in a few months they have the Audacity to ask you for a dollar, those bastards.
*Sarcasm Detector* BEEP BEEP BEEP.
Whenever infrastructure especially transportation infrastructure is financed thru a myriad of various financial methods there’s the invitation for graft, waste, fraud and just plain fiscal incompetence. Also when projects derived from a multitude of financial sources, you run the risk of the source depleting or funding shortages regardless; if it’s no longer valid or substantial. Transit is perceived as an essential good, thus investigation into it’s…management and operations is seldom scrutinized by any concerned eyes.
When politics has grand visions, Watch your wallet. EVEN WORSE it’s heavily politically engrossed. You can’t get a better example of the political bias and hypocrisy than food. The Democrats led by First Lady Michelle Obama were obsessed with controlling the diet of suburban kids in public schools. Not only were all the school lunches tightly restricted by calories and foods, but even school fundraisers sales of food and even birthday celebrations when parents bring food to celebrate their kids birthday were tightly controlled and banned by FEDERAL LAW. But when it is time to talk about what poor people buy with food allocations from the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, the Democrats want no restrictions whatsoever and decry any attempts to do so as racist/any-ist/phobic whatever. Why…all of a sudden when Food Stamp usage is at a record low, are the Dems raising a shit fit? They must not care a bit about the health of poor people, and yet worry obsessively about even a few pounds on suburban kids. Because a fed dog is a loyal animal. Liberals define success/progress by how many people they put on a a program, Conservatives define progress by how many no longer need it.
Thanks LazyReader for pointing your camp’s hypocrisy, before I had to do so.
Liberals/Conservatives, Democrats/Republicans are all corrupt :$
@LazyReader
You seem to equate less people on a program and less people needing a program as being the same thing which common sense tells you that are not.
The Antiplanner wrote:
So now I pay more than $100 a year in property taxes to support an airline terminal I’ve never seen and probably will never use because the one flight a day doesn’t go where I need to go when I need to go there. In fact, my taxes are really going to support the numerous private and corporate jets bringing high-end golfers to Bandon Dunes, whose travelers get to use the old (but refurbished) terminal. I suspect the per capita incomes of those golfers is somewhat higher than $18,000 per year.
There clearly seems to be economic value associated with large air terminals and airports in or near urbanized areas, given that more than a few private-sector companies like to locate near them (often instead of locating downtown). But I also get the impression that most airport projects are expected to pay for themselves out of airport taxes (and rent paid by businesses located on airport property).
LazyReader wrote:
Property taxes are always a scape goat. Whenever a politician has an “Ambitious plan” it’s often property taxes that get funneled. San Francisco is using property taxes to aid in BART repairs…justifying that BART traverses the property and offers the public service…If BART were a “public service” why aren’t the rides free? Cities offer newly built street car service for free……and ridership is good…….then in a few months they have the Audacity to ask you for a dollar, those bastards.
*Sarcasm Detector* BEEP BEEP BEEP.
Get the point about sarcasm. But regarding property taxes, there is often room for bad behavior with those dollars (including spending property tax dollars on various forms of transit subsidies). Most voters that own real estate probably pay the property taxes to the holder of the deed of trust (mortgage) in 12 easy installments, so the out-of-pocket cost is literally spread out. In the case cited by The Antiplanner, that added property tax burden is about $8 a month (that presumes that he pays the property taxes on his real estate to an escrow account at the bank that services his mortgage and the bank then pays the taxes to the county).
Whenever infrastructure especially transportation infrastructure is financed thru a myriad of various financial methods there’s the invitation for graft, waste, fraud and just plain fiscal incompetence. Also when projects derived from a multitude of financial sources, you run the risk of the source depleting or funding shortages regardless; if it’s no longer valid or substantial. Transit is perceived as an essential good, thus investigation into it’s…management and operations is seldom scrutinized by any concerned eyes
Funding schemes to build and operate (but usually not to repair) transit are often very complex by design (got obfuscation?), and frequently the promoters of the schemes in question try to tax non-residents with taxes on meals, sporting events, hotel rooms, rental cars and sometimes motor fuels (by way of local taxes on fuel sold in obscure “transportation districts”), a tacit admission that residents are not as enthused about big and expensive transit projects as those promoters would have you (and I) believe.
The big miss here is that the AP isn’t mad about property taxes per se, but about how the property taxes are used or wasted.
Never mind the fact that property taxes are the reason why gentrification affects the poor.
Never mind the fact that you don’t really own your property if you have to pay rent to the state.
Not every community can become a “retirement destination” or a “recreation center”. The fact that one community did so makes it so much harder for others to do so.
It is odd to see the Antiplanner suggesting that communities can plan their future economies….
Sketter; You seem to equate less people on a program and less people needing a program as being the same thing which common sense tells you that are not.
THWM; Ah the wonders of teahadi logic. I’ve never had to call the fire department, but I don’t want it shut down either :$