INC NEWS - Letter: effort to "streamline" development process

[RW Pickle]

I beg to differ with the opinion that all developers have bottomless
pockets. Many developers are your neighbors, not some
national-publicly-traded-stock-selling group trying to make investors
happy. They do not have all of the resources you might think. In fact,
it's more development on a shoe string than the luxury that seems to
thought of by some. Development at any level is just speculation. Market
forces, population shifts, jobs, all create a demand for development.
There are a number of cities across this country that have plenty of empty
housing stock; none of it as new as those in LV or AZ. In fact, some of
the places in Ohio I am thinking of may have vacant historic homes just
waiting new owners. But that's not to be since there are no jobs to even
get folks to consider moving there. So development ends up being built
where people/jobs/ corporations want to be and where economic forces will
smile on them. And here we all are...

In AZ and LV, it was the need to drive stocks in the right direction for
investors. Not something I see a great deal happening around here. You
don't see new development being built here for that reason because people
are moving here every day. We're fortunate to live in such a desirable
place that consistently finds itself on the top of someones list. We can't
be this good, or continue to be this good, without the things that make it
so good. And development is part of that good. It's not bad. Sure there
may be some bad developments, but in general, it all grows to meet the
needs of the people who live/move into an area. And like I said in the
earlier email, we have a million more people coming here in the next 20
years. So if development is bad and it is not going to happen, someone
needs to get the word out to these folks who are coming so they'll go
elsewhere...

To think that communities, any community, looks 50 years down the road at
anything, must be a joke. Our long-range transportation  planning, which
is critical to moving all of the folks here and coming, looks at 20 years.
The longest date out ahead of us I have ever heard is 2035 (still just a
30 year plan). And if you even look back 50 years, here or in LV, who
would have ever thought our populations would have grown so much. In 1958
LV had 22% of the states population on only .02% of the land. It seems
unlikely, as it grew, that everyone wanted to live that close to city
center. So LV started spreading out. Today, LV is just not LV, it's North
LV, South LV and so on. From 1990-2000 some of these areas grew by 145% in
population (ie: North LV grew from 47,707 to 115,488 in population; in
2006 it had grown to 197,576). In the same period of time here in Durham
(1990-2000), we grew by 36.9% (from 136,611 to 187,035). Today, I believe
the figure that is generally tossed out is a quarter of a million. So this
is why development has to happen. We continue to grow! But the downside of
all this growth (in residential units) is that this is the worst kind of
development to have. Residents demand many services but rarely pay for
them in additional taxes. So our entire tax system gets more costly for
all of us. We need a healthy mix of industrial, commercial and then
residential to keep it all at some sort of sustainable level. And as bad
as they may seem to some, we need impact fees. Otherwise we'll all end up
paying for the services these new residents will want...

Barry said:

"And don't you think that a public policy that encourages farmers to keep
their land
in production makes a certain amount of sense? With food and fuel prices
at all-time
highs, minimizing our reliance on food produced 4,000 miles away or more
seems like
a good idea to me."

We do this already. They are called farm subsidies. Our government pays
farmers to grow (or not to grow in some cases) all sorts of our food
chain; milk, wheat, soybeans, cotton, corn and the list goes on. In
addition to routine cash subsidies, the USDA provides subsidized crop
insurance, marketing support, and other services for farm businesses. The
USDA also performs extensive agricultural research and generates
statistical data for the industry. These indirect subsidies and services
cost taxpayers about $5 billion each year, putting total farm support at
between $15 billion and $35 billion annually. In recent years, it has
risen to $121 billion. So more than encouragement is happening already.
But most of the subsidies go to large producers (because small producers
are just that and their addition to the food chain is marginal at
best...). For example, the largest 10 percent of recipients have received
72 percent of all subsidy payments in recent years. Even late-night talk
show host David Letterman gets some. I read an article where the
government sends him an $8K check for his farming efforts. The extensive
federal welfare system for farm businesses is costly to taxpayers and
creates distortions in markets. It's a bad idea whose time has come to be
changed. Let markets decide what something costs. The downside to this is
shortages as farmers quit growing a crop because it's no longer
profitable. And in the end, it'll only hurt us as we'll no longer be able
to get something we once were or that milk goes to $23 a gallon. So it's a
fragile line... We can't grow all of our food here anyway. So that's why
we buy it cheaper in foreign countries and bring it here. We have just
become accustomed to having our blueberry pancakes year 'round I guess.
Otherwise, if there wasn't a demand for them (blueberries are just an
example), they'd rot on the grocers shelves.

RWP
27 Beverly