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. (more…)

Recall that residential construction costs us
In Exploding the Big Myth, we began to see that growth through residential development does not offer the economic boost claimed by its advocates. Indeed, we showed that such development nearly always costs more in services than it generates in new tax dollars. Let’s be totally clear on this: Ongoing residential development will raise your taxes. ( “Taxes” in this case include primarily state income tax, property taxes, bond issues, a variety of possible special tax levies, and potentially certain sales taxes.) To the extent possible, the surplus revenues from farmland, open land, and commercial property make up for the deficit created by residential development. But they can’t work miracles. Tax increases seem inevitabley to come along, and to a large extent you can blame the growing deficit created by ongoing residential development. More importantly, without it, those revenues from other land uses could be put toward needed community projects! We looked at a bit of the extensive “cost of community services” data to support this, and we’ll examine other supporting data in future articles.

Signs of things to come in the Novak development outside Lisbon.

In our area, we’ve already seen some of these increased tax levies. In MV, for example, the growing population has caused over-crowded schools, and the $8.9 million bond issue for the new high school was the result. Thankfully, one of our great strengths here is our passion for education, and we enthusiastically passed the bond issue. It’s not hard to see, though, that had the schools not been bursting at the seams, it might not have been necessary to begin with.
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There is more debunking to do! Growth and development myths are pernicious little creatures. Thankfully, some are based on such blatantly flawed bits of logic that we can do away with them with one hand tied behind our back. Well, figuratively speaking; I gotta type here. Let’s look at one I’ve heard applied to Mount Vernon. (I suspect you hear it around Lisbon too, but would appreciate any confirmation or correction.)

Myth #2 — “We need growth and so must continue building. But don’t worry, we won’t grow too big — only out to the city limits.”

Okay, so those two sentences together are more an error of logic than a myth per se. (Still, the first sentence is simply a broader version of the myth we exploded in our last article.) But raise your hand if you already see the problem here. Seriously, I’ve heard each of the two sentences above multiple times from MV city officials. No, probably not right in sequence as they’re written here, but so what; these are two ideas that some in power accept and espouse without blinking.
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Sometimes they tell lies
and put ‘em in a truthful disguise. — Gil Scott-Heron

We’ve all heard it: “This town must grow to thrive!” or “We have to grow or die!” This is the major tenet the “growth machine” — that network of people in every community which profits from residential development — repeats constantly as a large part of its justification for ceaseless residential expansion.

Sprawl in Marion. Does this have to be MV/Lisbon’s Future?

There’s just one problem with it: It’s a myth. It’s propaganda spread by an industry which needs to justify itself to continue reaping the enormous profits generated by subdivision construction and suburban sprawl, regardless of what happens to existing towns as a result.
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Jewels of Eastern Iowa
We must protect these jewels of eastern Iowa. These towns. Mount Vernon and Lisbon are near perfect examples of classic American small towns. We residents cherish their small town character. Indeed, many of us live here in large part because Lisbon and MV are such lovely small towns. These are towns where our children can walk to school, where half the town shows up to cheer on the high school football team, towns surrounded by farmland and open spaces, where neighborly values lost in larger cities remain — towns, in short, with true small town character.

But today that character is at risk. Current residential development threatens to erode it. New subdivisions are appearing at an alarming pace, and continued development is planned with no clear end in sight.

The largest development currently under construction is the near 300 home Stonebrook subdivision under way in Southwest MV. That’s easily 1,000 new residents. This town of 4,000 will go to 5,000, a 25% jump in population as a result of this single development!
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