My main concern is that in order to have this discussion we first need to separate "value capture" from "growth pays for growth". Right now we don't, current City and Metro development cost charges are not based on honest lifecycle cost accounting.
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Should we not be looking at the costs of serving all the people who will live in Dunbar, what they’ll pay in prop taxes (the more future people the less current will need to pay) and the costs of local infrastructure, and go from there? Should taxes be higher? Should we add more tax payers?
Incremental costs that can be allocated of course matter for the right level of different taxes. But elasticities and distributional considerations matter, too.
A good thought experiment is what would happen if we had no growth in Dunbar. A large portion of sewers there have to get renewed in the next decade or so. Ideally we would have accumulated reserve funds to pay for this, but we did not. How to pay for that if we can't rely on growth ponzi scheme?
An alternative answer would be user fees. Which is what we do for electricity. We aren't having discussions about tacking the cost of a new hydropower project onto new development, or how we should split cost between existing and future users. It's all rolled into user fees.
I tried to make that point at the panel, not sure successfully. Average versus marginal cost distinction is hard to get right even if one is motivated to try.
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