How do we get philanthropy involved in community building, and how do we make good investments in our cities and towns? How do we access federal programs and bigger resources effectively?
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For local governments, it’s often easier to let the tangled web of debt at the heart of the budget go unexplored. In cities reliant on sales tax, these problems are only magnified.
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At a glance, the sales tax is a nearly invisible revenue source that is also a cash cow. Yet, for local governments, it is the most distorting of taxes. Here’s why.
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In this week’s episode of the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck Marohn talks about the financial system, and provides insights on what’s currently happening in the banking industry.
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The proposed annual budget for Winnipeg, MB, reveals the true cost of the Suburban Experiment, and the vibrancy that the city (and so many others like it) has sacrificed in many of its neighborhoods.
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The town council in Castle Rock, CO, received a shocking briefing at a recent meeting: that their single, mid-sized region within a single, mid-sized state has accrued almost a billion dollars of debt. But how?
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All over the U.S., studies have shed light on how much residents in lower-valued homes are being overassessed on property taxes. Now, Buncombe County, NC, is offering residents a space to appeal their assessments.
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Warren Buffet has broken his practice of “staying out of local politics" to criticize a streetcar project in his home city of Omaha, NE…but why does he have nothing to say on the city’s ridiculous and reckless highway projects?
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This week on the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck Marohn chats with Epsilon Theory’s Ben Hunt about Bitcoin.
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A recent study on curbside dining in Toronto found that there are loads of financial possibilities waiting in empty parking spaces.
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If a natural disaster hit your city, would your tax revenue pay for the damage, or would you be underwater—literally and figuratively?
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If one thing’s clear about the housing market, it’s that it’s currently more sensitive to factors outside of your community—outside of your control—than anything within.
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Property taxes represent the largest source of revenue for most local governments, and data shows that even unglamorous downtown areas offer more value as taxable properties than big box stores.
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The Suburban Experiment is a bad business model, and nothing demonstrates that more clearly than Jackson, Mississippi’s, ongoing water crisis.
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Mansions on large lots, not rundown properties in low-socioeconomic-status neighborhoods, are the real blight on a community’s financial health.
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Yet another failed mall (this time in Milwaukee, WI) proves to be a drag on—and an active harm to—its surroundings.
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Strong Towns interviews Dr. Christopher Berry, of the University of Chicago, on how we can begin making meaningful changes to the U.S.’s broken property tax system.
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There are some obvious anomalies that are being overlooked in the property tax assessment system. Joe Minicozzi of Urban3 pulls back the curtain in this episode of the Strong Towns Podcast.
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As an ad hoc committee recently discovered, owners of higher-valued properties are more likely to receive a tax break…simply because of bad data.
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If you don’t own a home, and don’t have plans to own one anytime soon, you might think property taxes don’t concern you. But, what if we told you that they definitely do?
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