Of course new developments bring more tax dollars in. No matter who lives in them. Taxes are often higher in the suburban areas. Apples to apples, I'm not sure, but the average 'burb house pays much higher taxes than houses in the city limits. Part of that of course is the valuation, but also if they bring more taxes in, there is more money to spend.LenexatoKCMO wrote: Let me see if I am right about where you are trying to go with this - Are you trying to analyze whether the people who live in the new areas provide enough tax revenue to fund their own infrastructure expansion and maintenance?
If so, its a fair question. But there are at least a couple good reasons why this isn't the case 1) the people relocating to newly built areas are by definition coming from someplace else - if it is within the same city, then their move creates little to no tax increase. The new house may have a higher property tax value, but the old house's value may well suffer from the exodus - especially if there is no one to move in. Moving people from the established parts of a city to new parts of a city just isn't a big net revenue gainer. 2) As you get sparser in density, the actual quantity of infrastructure needed to serve those people increases dramatically. Going back to the 100 people on one road v. 10 people on 10 roads example - on the first road, one person only needs to generate 1/100th of the cost in tax revenue to be self supporting - in the second example, one person needs to generate 1/10th of the cost in tax revenue to be self supporting. Even if the dense road costs twice as much to build, its still cheaper in the dense setting (1/100th of $200 = $2; 1/10th of $100 = $10). Not to mention that the dense road is more often than not, already going to be built and only needs maintenance, not new construction.
I'm still looking for an understanding of the per mile costs for the roads that someone posted below. Why do urban roads seem to cost more. Even if it is Florida, roads are roads.
