[xyzzyz]

> American cities and suburbs are so low density that they end up losing money because infrastructure is spread out over such a large area that taxes collected per square mile aren't enough to keep things working.

This is very much false. I don’t know why this misinformation is so widespread, but even a glance look at the municipal budgets is enough to see the facts contradict it. The typical suburb only spends around 10% of its budget on infrastructure, and this spend is dwarfed by educational spending by a lot.

[com2kid]

It depends on the age of the suburb/city.

Newer areas do fine. Infrastructure eventually needs not just maintenance, but massive replacement.

Roads, bridges, sewer systems, all start to fall down. Ideally a city would estimate the worst cost of replacement at the time infrastructure is first built, and set aside money from year 1 such that the replacement cost is fully funded when the roads/pipes/bridges wear out.

If that ever does happen (and maybe it has happened a couple times in history) what will end up happening is some candidate for city council comes along and says they can reduce taxes, just vote'em in, and now all of a sudden the "50 year in the future replacement fund" is no more.

There is of course the economic argument that saving money in the bank with crap interest rates is terrible finances, and that it is in fact better for the city to just borrow 50 years hence, but the counter argument is that low interests were a recent anomaly in US history.

(The investment options cities have for where they can save money for 50 year later projects are fairly limited, which is another point against cities saving money up).

Now, a bit ironically, large condo and townhome associations in many cities are required to have savings sufficient for future expenses. These laws were passed because without the backing of "the city is making us" board members on HOAs will quickly get kicked out the second they propose a budget that actually covers future expenses. In cities that don't mandate responsible reserve funds on the part of HOAs, what you find is tons of complexes are underfunded because despite having a (mandated by law) prepared document of future expenses, the can is just kicked down the road.

(cities do have reserve funding, but rarely do those take into account all future infra needs)

> The typical suburb only spends around 10% of its budget on infrastructure, and this spend is dwarfed by educational spending by a lot.

I opened the budget for the city of Kirkland WA[1], which is obscenely well run financially (they regularly run a surplus despite Washington state having a law capping properly tax increases are below inflation levels, a law which has slowly starved many cities of funding), and capital projects are over 25% of the budget. Just water and sewer appears to be around 13% of the city's overall budget.

Looking at Seattle's budget, a city that other countries would call "low density" (and honestly, in some countries Seattle is small enough that it wouldn't even be considered a major city!) of a nearly 6 billion dollar budget, 2 billion is spent on utilities. As someone who lives in Seattle, I can attest that one of the current problems we face is our sewer system is way behind the times and needs lots of updating, but again, no money.

Shoreline WA [2], 22% of the budget goes towards utilities ($82.809m), about 38% goes towards capital projects ($136.065m).

Washington State is actually a bit odd in that district funding largely comes from the state, by way of property taxes, but even so let's compare the funding for schools to the rest of a city's budget.

Shoreline School District has a budget of around 160 million [3], which is less than the city spends on utilities + capital projects.

Is it a huge chunk of the city's budget? Yeah. But by no means do educational expenses dwarf other city expenses.

[1] https://www.kirklandwa.gov/files/sharedassets/public/v/2/fin...

[2]https://www.shorelinewa.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/57270...

[3]https://resources.finalsite.net/images/v1694655298/shoreline...

[skissane]

What you are not considering here, is that in many states, school districts are separate special-purpose local governments, independent from the county or municipality, with their own separate elections, governing bodies, budgets, taxing and borrowing powers. So how much the county or municipality is spending on whatever has no direct impact on how much the school district has to spend. It is possible for the county or municipality to go bankrupt due to financial mismanagement, even while the school districts are in good financial shape.

[com2kid]

I was replying to the statement that education spending dwarfs infra spending, by providing evidence that the two are on par with each other.

Around where I live, schools are in financial troubles, and infra is in financial trouble, nothing is doing well.

West Coast cities are older (rising costs) while also being low to medium density (low tax base) and honestly outside of LA and SF, don't even have a large population for how much area they take up.

It isn't a great combo.

In regards to city vs school funding, the two are separated in WA state because of how schools are funded, except that cities pass special levies to fill funding gaps, which is a separate political problem.

Of course city residents rarely understand how funding works, and they yell at the city council when schools start falling apart. (Quite a few of the public schools I went to had broken heating and crumbing walls, and from what I grok, the financial situation of the district was better back then compared to now!)

[xyzzyz]

OK, what I wrote was incorrect. What I had in mind was that cities spend less than 10% on road infrastructure, but I carelessly didn't specify that. You seem to understand these issues much better than a typical person, and I think you deserve a careful and thorough reply.

> Shoreline WA [2], 22% of the budget goes towards utilities ($82.809m), about 38% goes towards capital projects ($136.065m).

> (...)

> Shoreline School District has a budget of around 160 million [3], which is less than the city spends on utilities + capital projects

First, the Shoreline School District's budget is more like $220M. $168M is just the General Fund, additional $26M go to capital projects, and $35M go to debt service. That's $16k per student, which, by the way, is around 50% more than the private school tuition for my children in Seattle, which does not exactly makes me sympathetic to the narrative of starved school budgets being cut to pay for infra.

Worth noting is that many Shoreline parents pay for private education, but do not pay for private roads or water or sewer. Thus, $220M is underestimate of educational spend, whereas infrastructure spend is not underestimated by looking at the budget.

Second, if the argument is that low density makes the infra spend untenable, you need to compare the spend to the hypothetical spend in the alternate universe where the density is higher. In that universe, we'd still spend on infrastructure, though maybe somewhat less (not a given though: we'd have fewer miles of roads to maintain, but average right of way would become much busier, and work on busy road is typically much more expensive). So let's dive into Shoreline budget to see what spend could look like in more dense world.

The $136.1 capital spend is split as follows:

* $43M is General Capital, and $92M is Road Capital

* The $43M General Capital fund is split into $5M spend on Maintenance Facility, $5M on "Debt Service and Other", and $33M is spent on capital improvements to city parks. I'll assume that all of this spend would remain in denser world (unless denser world means fewer/smaller city parks per capita).

* $92M is spent roughly in half between Pedestrian/Non-Motorized Projects, and Safety Operations (which I assume is mostly motorized infrastructure).

* Half of pedestrian spend is on a pedestrian bridge over I-5, which would still be built if Shoreline was denser (in fact, we might then need more pedestrian bridges). The other half is building new sidewalks. More pedestrians means fewer roads, but more sidewalks required, so it's hard for me to estimate how sidewalk spend which change with increased density, but let's say that increased density means spend on sidewalks could be cut by half, so we'd see something like $15M savings.

* In the Safety Operations (i.e. motorized) spend, large majority is N 145th St improvements. This is the major arterial in Shoreline, and would likely still be part of Shoreline's budget if it was denser. It would probably be shorter then, so let's cut the spend by half. The rest we can also cut in half, for $20M in total savings.

* Worth noting is that road resurfacing spend (which accounts for most of road maintenance) is less than $3M, which is a tiny fraction of the whole budget. Maintaining suburban roads is very cheap.

* Thus, increased densification would result in savings of something like $35M, which is a quarter of capital projects.

* If you do the same exercise for utilities, you'll find that a third of it is surface water spend (storm drains etc), which would probably be cut by half in denser world. Two thirds is wastewater spend, which would be reduced by much less in denser world (as the spend scales much more with volume than with length of the system).

* To sum up, densification would save Shoreline something like $60M, which is a small fraction of educational spend. In fact, much more would be saved if Shoreline School District got its costs under control, to the level of my private school in Seattle.

[com2kid]

Part of what cannot be determined here is what long term costs Shoreline will face when its (relatively new) infrastructure starts to fail. Those are the kinds of costs Seattle is facing now with its stormwater projects, and its failing bridges. "old bridge suddenly collapsing" doesn't show up in a year's budget proposal, but rather it shows up in next year's proposal under "unexpected costs", but really, everyone knew the bridge was going to fall down soon, so how unexpected was it?

Though compared to Seattle, Shoreline isn't going to have as much of a "random bridges falling down" problem. :-D

But that aside, I did notice this

> In fact, much more would be saved if Shoreline School District got its costs under control, to the level of my private school in Seattle.

Public schools cost more to operate because they have to serve everyone, including those with special needs and learning disabilities. They have to help feed children who do not have enough food, and they are expected to have after school programs from children that do not have a safe place to go home to (which, given how early schools get out, is honestly a problem for many families, public or private school).

As more children from (comparatively) wealthy go to private schools, the average cost of schooling the kids in public schools actually goes up, as a larger % of the kids left need extra help and support.

> The other half is building new sidewalks.

I am happy that the residents in Shoreline have finally decided to stop running over pedestrians! But seriously, Shoreline needs more sidewalks, it'll honestly add a lot to property values there.

> Second, if the argument is that low density makes the infra spend untenable, you need to compare the spend to the hypothetical spend in the alternate universe where the density is higher. In that universe, we'd still spend on infrastructure, though maybe somewhat less

There would also be a lot more revenue per given square mile. You could take my Seattle neighborhood and 2x the density w/o much harm to the "feel" of the neighborhood. If you 3x it, now you can add tons of commercial activity, allow small business owners to actually live close to their business (why does my barber have to drive in to work? Oh because zoning makes living in Seattle absurd), and cities start to actually make money.

The economics of dense cities are incredibly different, and they start a virtuous cycle that works out really well for everyone. Sadly America shut down all the goodness when we added strict zoning laws.

Also where the heck are you spending only 11k on private school? The non-religious private schools in Seattle that I looked at cost 30-40k. (Heck the at home daycare we use right now costs over 25k a year!)