The Small Town Project

Stonebrook — They claim this pays for the rest of the town. Hmmm…

So far on the Small Town Project, we’ve debunked two common assertions made by the “growth machine,” showing how they are in fact myths. When you examine the various arguments these folks toss about in their efforts to justify unending residential development, it’s not only the disinformation which shines through; it’s the illogic as well. And as we’ve seen, the two sometimes overlap.

Now we come to a myth which flatly contradicts another. In so doing, it reveals how developers, the city officials who pander to them, and others in the growth machine spread their mythology in one breath while unwittingly admitting to its falsity in the other. We’ll look in this installment only at this “admission.” In the next, we’ll do away with the myth itself.

Myth #3: “The new developments pay for the old ones.”
This myth is common around here. It was, in fact, Dan Stoner’s answer to a question from me at a Mount Vernon P&Z meeting over the summer.

The idea is that brand new developments need less maintenance, less in the way of services. The assertion would be that the tax revenues they generate, therefore, actually succeed in paying for those services for a time, with money left over to pay for the services required by the older developments.

This is wrong on several levels, but we’ll leave that for the next installment. For now, let’s look only at one thing it implies. It’s easy to see if I simply repeat the assertion, adding the implication in brackets: “The new developments pay for the old ones [which don’t pay for themselves.]” This is unquestionably the meaning of the claim. We’re told we need new developments because they “pay for” the all the older ones which can’t pay for themselves.

The growth machine, caught!
By golly, I think we have something. So all the developments other than the newest ones do not pay for themselves. That’s the majority of all residential development in town. In this instance, the growth machine admits this, unwitting though their admission may be. Yet these are the same people who tell us constantly that we need residential development, that such development, as a whole, brings in needed revenues. They tell us, in fact, that it does pay for itself and much more, that it’s nothing less than the economic fuel on which our towns run.

So what are we to believe — that it pays for itself, or that it doesn’t? Well, um, in this particular claim they’re saying only brand new development does. But surely they’re not basing their entire rationale for unceasing residential growth on the supposition that only the very newest sliver of development pays for itself!

No, it’s much more likely we’ve simply caught them in their own web of disinformation. It’s the same problem compulsive liars run into. Make up enough stories and sooner or later people notice places where the picture you’ve created doesn’t quite hang together. Well, the growth machine’s picture is falling apart.

It’s propaganda. Don’t be fooled.
So now we see how one of their favorite lines clashes with another in a way that exposes their arguments for what they are: propaganda designed to serve the financial needs of a few, regardless of how the truth is lost in the process, or how it ruins the towns in which they “develop.”

Feel free to contact your city representatives, or go to a city meeting, or write a letter to the Sun to let them know you’re not fooled by the propaganda. A few of them might even listen. As they hear from enough of us, they will listen.

Next up, we’ll show just what makes the assertion above nothing more than another growth myth. After that we’ll examine its incredibly destructive implications.