The only way these big developments have been able to get planning permission is for a local authority to parcel together a big tract of land (usually formerly industrial or railway land, often formerly publicly owned) and to give over the whole thing to a developer who is charged with driving the “regeneration” that the public sector has largely lost the ability to conceive. Consequently, rather than the network of public streets interspersed with public spaces, private blocks and semi-private but accessible courtyards that forms the fabric of the traditionally complex city centre, we get the pseudo-civic space of the mall without walls. Protest in these spaces is banned, as is public gathering, distribution of leaflets, drinking, sleeping and, of course, photography. Yet there has been no outcry.
Particularly in the UK, we have become so inured to the smooth transition of public assets into private ownership that even the loss of our public spaces seems to us quite natural. I have been asked to stop taking photos of new office buildings from the public street outside, I have been stopped in malls, in piazzas and by canals. I have even been asked to stop taking notes. What Debord was calling for was a city in which what was important was not the way it looked or how many new shops it had but the multiplicity of ways in which it could be used. His way of subverting the structure of a Paris that had been conceived by Baron Haussmann, with wide avenues to enable an army swiftly to quell a revolution, was to walk across it on an aimless walk – the famous dérive – in which the flâneur concentrates on the mundane and the banal and does not allow his gaze to be directed to the formal or the ceremonial.
. . .
The Guatamalan architect Teddy Cruz, who works in the strange hinterlands between the wealth of San Diego and the poverty of Tijuana just across the border in Mexico, has called for a new system of measuring the success of a city – one based not on density of population or on the value of turnover and rent but on the frequency of social transactions. It represents a radical departure. The idea of regeneration that has emerged over the past couple of decades has been based solely on the generation of money. Big, retail-led and commercial schemes are encouraged, even subsidised, planning controls are loosened to accommodate them and civic democracy and local objections are overridden as the objectives of rising property prices, increased local taxes and the presence of “flagship” and “anchor” stores and brands becomes a planning Xanadu.
Search Results for: Property tax
When Public Records are Too Public
But then there’s another set of personal details that have made their way online, and these documents are much more worrisome. Property deeds, marriage and divorce records, court files, motor-vehicle information and tax documents are increasingly being digitized, and contain a wealth of information that few of us would want online: Social Security numbers, birth dates, maiden names and images of our signatures. Local governments have rushed to put those documents online for a decade or so, often without scrubbing them of such information. And that’s made them potentially fertile ground for busybodies, stalkers and identity thieves.
Betty “BJ” Ostergren, a 58-year-old from outside Richmond, Va., has made it her mission to alert people to the dangers of public records online. Ms. Ostergren is feisty bordering on ferocious: Her tactics include mailing letters to people alerting them that their personal information is online and posting copies of public documents (or links to them) displaying the personal information of circuit-court clerks and other politicians, including former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. (See her Web site, the Virginia Watchdog, here; this Washington Post profile of her is also a good read.)
Should Milwaukee Suburbs Pay for City Services?
AP:
A new study shows Milwaukee residents are way behind their neighbors when it comes to taxable property values, prompting some officials to urge wealthy suburbs to share their tax revenues in exchange for their use of city services.
The Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission ordered the study from consulting firm Ruekert & Mielke Inc. to analyze 147 cities, towns and villages in the counties of Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington, Racine, Kenosha and Walworth.
The study released last week shows that Chenequa in Waukesha County boasts the top “fiscal capacity” rate, a measure of property value per resident, of $600,570, while Milwaukee ranks at the bottom with a rate of $36,507.
Former Madison Mayor Paul Soglin mentioned this strategy as well – tax ’em while they are driving in.
Political Math
Mary Lazich comments on the political spin around small changes to the State’s UW Budget (the budget is going up, just not quite as much as Governor Doyle wants). Doyle refers to this as a “cut” while Lazich corrects his math:
There are two ways to do simple math. There is the way most everyone does it. And there is the way Governor Jim Doyle does it.
As a member of the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee entrusted with crafting the state budget, I voted with the majority to approve a package to give the University of Wisconsin System a slight increase in state aid over the next two years. The increase amounts to $9 million.
Nevertheless, the governor could not resist issuing a news release referring over and over again to “cuts” he called “senseless.” Apparently in the governor’s world of fuzzy math, an increase is considered a cut.
The fact is the Joint Finance Committee gave the UW System more money for the next two years. The UW System is not being shortchanged. It receives close to $1 billion a year. That is billion with a “b.” Funding for the UW System accounts for close to 8% of the entire state budget.
Matt Pommer, writing in the Capital Times also referred to this change as a “cut”. He doesn’t mention total state support anywhere in the article. We’re better off getting our facts right. There’s no doubt that education funding at all levels has its challenges, but we do currently spend a great deal of money on education, at all levels. Choices must be made, perhaps there are things the State should not fund, allowing additional cash for education purposes.
Finally, Madison’s recent school referenda initiative was also somewhat guilty of this. The questions were often phrased as costing a taxpayer no more than a Latte per day (avoiding any mention of the current, growing school taxes that property owners already pay). Transparency is critical to public support. Our politicians, and some writers, have a ways to go on this matter.