Monday, November 12, 2007
The City Won’t Get Better By Getting Bigger
A newspaper columnist took issue with our Benchmark City comparison in a column this weekend stating that Pittsburgh’s problem is that it is just not big enough to solve its problems. Cities like Charlotte, Omaha, Columbus, and Salt Lake can get bigger by annexation and thus right-size their costs, according to the columnist. “That's the key to survival in a commuter age: A city must capture where citizens make money and spend money for a stable tax base”.
Well, if Pittsburgh got bigger and essentially became Allegheny County, the population drain would not be solved since the County is still losing population and it would be likely that even more residents would flee the new borders to escape the larger metropolitan City.
It can’t just be size: the Benchmark City performs better because it has fewer sources of local taxation, does not spend nearly as much on general services, does not have the level of authority employment, and, on a key component, its schools are not taxing and spending at the level Pittsburgh does. None of the cities has a local option 1 percent sales tax that was intended to relieve the City of the costs of cultural assets and provide tax relief.
Taking in more taxpayers by annexation is not likely to happen, as the columnist later points out. The columnist also notes that moving to a countywide police force or solving the pension crisis is just not “on the radar now” and “won’t be easy to figure out”. The City and its overseers could be moving to a 401K plan for all new employees and could be combining services with the County—we’ve been recommending those moves for years, but to no avail. The City is looking for a bailout, and luckily, there does not seem to be any movement in that direction.
Well, if Pittsburgh got bigger and essentially became Allegheny County, the population drain would not be solved since the County is still losing population and it would be likely that even more residents would flee the new borders to escape the larger metropolitan City.
It can’t just be size: the Benchmark City performs better because it has fewer sources of local taxation, does not spend nearly as much on general services, does not have the level of authority employment, and, on a key component, its schools are not taxing and spending at the level Pittsburgh does. None of the cities has a local option 1 percent sales tax that was intended to relieve the City of the costs of cultural assets and provide tax relief.
Taking in more taxpayers by annexation is not likely to happen, as the columnist later points out. The columnist also notes that moving to a countywide police force or solving the pension crisis is just not “on the radar now” and “won’t be easy to figure out”. The City and its overseers could be moving to a 401K plan for all new employees and could be combining services with the County—we’ve been recommending those moves for years, but to no avail. The City is looking for a bailout, and luckily, there does not seem to be any movement in that direction.
