| 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!) |