| 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. |
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!)