New McMansions are demolished in Victorville, CA earlier this year to free the city from liability resulting from possible vandalism, crime and fire danger. (LA Times photo)
I have before me the city of Franklin "Mayor's 2010 Recommended Budget," and it's not a pretty picture. Services are going to have to be cut; fire and police positions unfilled; city staff thinned.
Still think suburban sprawl - "planning" dictated by developers' schemes and their personal ROI - is sustainable? How about another movie theater or gym a mile and a half out of town, standing alone in the middle of a field?
There will be a public hearing on the proposed budget, by the way, on Tuesday, September 17th at City Hall.
Speaking of budget coverage: Another of the unfortunate results of dwindling local coverage by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is the fact that it's become clear that you cannot count on the weekly FranklinNow newspaper to provide clear-eyed coverage of ongoing budget issues. Editor Mark Maley thinks it appropriate, for instance, to reprint in the paper the blog entries of a Republican state senator's aide whose ongoing income and media aspirations are dependent upon maintaining the party line. Even after I successfully forced him to acknowledge his blogger's place of employment in his blog bio (which makes clear his particular bias) Mr. Maley continues to identify this gentleman in print as nothing more than "a Franklin resident," robbing the readers of any manner of context.
When did Mr. Maley relieve himself of his editorial responsibility to his readership?
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With our tortured budget in mind, I'm passing along a great two-part post on the connection between our current economic situation and decades of government-aided sprawl.
Some excerpts:
Note the New York Times on November 6 (p.A13):
New research about the recession has also bolstered one of transit's central premises -- that highway-driven sprawl is bad for a city's economic health. Recent studies at the University of Utah, for example, concluded that foreclosure rates in the Washington area were much lower in counties served by the Metro rail system, compared with the next ring of counties farther out, and that home prices in Phoenix had also fallen in direct proportion to the distance from downtown....
This is the first time in US history that sprawled low-density suburbs or exurbs have fallen faster in average value than city or inner-suburban areas; suddenly "Smart Growth" is more than a niche market or trend--it will be at the core of financially successful planning and development.
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