Much has been written on this list lately about our city's
financial woes, largely concentrating on cutting the budget to
varying degrees. The problem is that large government and private
sector entities, be they Amtrak, the Postal Service, International
Harvester, or Minneapolis have substantial infrastructure investments
to make and pension liabilities. In other words, you could lay off
half the employees of these organizations tomorrow and the cost would
barely drop. This leads one to a logical conclusion- big budget cuts
won't work, the only solution is to grow our way out of this problem.
So let me take this down to a macroeconomic level, namely my
little corner in Hawthorne:
My corner once contained 4 homes, built in 1887. One burned
down shortly thereafter, so for most of the 20th century there were
three homes on my corner. Until the 1960s the adjoining 3 corners
were on the tax rolls. Interstate highway 94 took one whole side of
the street off the tax rolls, and another of the remaining corners
was taken off the tax rolls to build a public housing "low rise". So
as the 1960s closed we had lost all the property taxes from the
adjacent corners.
None the less through the 1960s and 70s this was still a
decent working class neighborhood. The aging owners of the 3
remaining homes could not afford to upgrade their properties, but at
least they were still paying taxes.
Then the neighborhood literally went to hell in the 1980s and
early 1990s. The elders on both sides of my home died, and their
homes were rented out to a succession of criminals. In 1995 my dear
grandma Gertrude died, and I inherited her home on the corner and
moved in during 1996. By then the homes on either side had been
torched, and mine was the sole remaining on the corner. The city
spent about $20,000 tearing down the burned out hulks of the
neighboring homes, assessed against their lots that were going tax
forfeit anyways. When they went tax forfeit I bought these two
unbuildable lots for $100 each. I then built a garage on one with
$4,000 in NRP help, adding $9,000 in property value.
At this point we have another crime epidemic of early '90s
proportions starting, and I and my neighbors are unlikely to add to
the property values when we wonder if our homes will still be
standing unmolested when we come home at night.
Time to do the numbers. Before the crime wave of the 1980s
and early '90s their were 3 houses here. If the city had fulfilled
it's responsibility and rid this neighborhood of crime we would have
3 homes here yet. They would have passed from the elders to young
folks who would be investing in them. With a location 2 miles from
downtown and shopping, parks, and the river within less than a mile
these 3 homes would be worth about $200,000 each. This would give my
corner over a half million dollars in assessed value, and had not the
freeway and public housing taken the adjacent corners we'd be looking
at a couple million dollars in assessable value here.
Instead, after eating $20,000 in assessments on the tax
forfeit lots and a further $4,000 grant for my garage this corner now
has less than $50,000 assessed value. After "circuit breaker" and
such tax limiting laws this corner pays only about $600 a year in
property taxes,
With a drug/party house next door and plenty more crime up
the street I'd be crazy to make any further investment in this
property. So thanks to our city's tolerant attitude to crime my
corner pays less than 1/10th the property taxes it is capable of.
My corner is typical of my Hawthorne neighborhood and the
Northside. As property values continue to fall while the demand for
city services in these troubled neighborhoods increase, our city is
headed for the same fiscal death cycle that has all but consumed
cities like East St.Louis and Gary.
I think that's the bottom line here- make this city a safe
place and it will flourish. Leave the citizens to duck bullets and
hide behind locks and bars and it will die a slow and painful death,
peace,
Dyna Sluyter, hanging on on the Northside
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