| > Of course Amazon should be asking tough questions of cities akin to “and what are you going to do to support me” before spending $5 billion building a new campus. Nothing. We exist to support our tax-paying residents and local businesses, and so you will have to work with everyone that's already here if you want something in particular. You can probably expect a new bus line, an extension of the road, sewer, and water system, one new police station, one new firehouse, two new elementary schools, half a middle school, and a new wing of classrooms at the nearest high school. The quality of all that will depend on how much your company improves the local tax base, so don't get too stingy, or the local news will have no problem airing all the dirty laundry for Amazontown a couple years down the road. The zoning board will be busy changing colors on their map so that your people can eventually spend money on drive-through coffee and dog-walkers without having to go all the way downtown. Amazon needs to come to the table with the attitude "We're going to increase your tax base by $X. What's your plan for spending it?" The ideal city just has to blow the dust off the growth plan they already have and write new names and dates in all the blanks. Any city that says, "we're going to give you a tax discount" is basically saying "we would rather you send your money off to Wall Street than actually spend it to improve the community that you intend to join here." I suppose a city could also offer a bureaucrat dedicated to expediting issues related to the new HQ, like building permits and inspections and NIMBY lawsuits, if they wanted to pay the cost of that person's salary as a donation to the city. I just never quite understood the concept of offering discounts to rich people. |