Raise the Hammer

"If anyone can disprove what I'm saying with empirical evidence - I'd be interested to see it and will willingly change my position. I ask though - why would a municipality allow growth if it didn't pay for itself? It doesn't make sense"

Empirical? Don't have to, how about Logical Reasoning.

Picture a 100m stretch of road in saaayyy.... Herkimer Neighborhood. Tightly packed duplexes with the ocational 3 story apartment building. Population density of lets just pick a number of 100 individuals. I don't think this unreasonable and in accuality is probably higher.

Picture an idylic rural road say along 6th Conc. Flamborough. Same stretch of 100m. Larger lots, mucho space between houses, fewer individuals per metre. lets saaaaayyyy 30 people live along that 100m stretch. This might be charitable, in reality it's probably lower.

Lets use trash collection as an example. Both 100m stretches of road get their garbage collected once per week. Each has the same limitations on the amount of garbage that can be tossed. Each neighborhood recieves the same level of service yet which one costs more to provide that service?

Lather rinse and repeat for snow plowing, road maintenance, police and fire coverage. Add in capital costs for building new infrastructure to service sprawl development. And taaa daaaa! Short term gain of immediate tax revenue for long term pain or increased maintenance and servicing costs down the line.

What's that you say? You don't recieve the same quality of service as those in the City? Well guess what? We don't get a very high quality of service either. After a big snow storm it may be 2 days until I get plowed out. Many people phone the police and if its a busy night the police may not get to them right away if it's not a serious emergency.

There is this misperception that City folk are just swimming around in municipal services, laughing away at how the stupid rural folk are paying for it all. THIS IS NOT TRUE!