Determine True Costs of Development

Today, I emailed the following letter to District 4 Alders (Steve Arnold and Jay Allen):

As all city leaders know, the costs of residential and commercial development can not only be measured in dollars spent constructing the buildings, and the benefits are not only measured in increased tax revenues. Unfortunately, the process by which a development goes from ink and paper to wood and steel often sidesteps some necessary considerations to complete the full cost/benefit analysis.

A full cost/benefit analysis would factor in the long-term cost of city services as well as environmental, socio-economic, and traffic impact expenses. This analysis would be rigorous, comprehensive, specific to each development, and fully public. It would function as a standard tool to measure all new development proposals by, and it would take most of the guesswork out of the process.

Luckily, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Land Use Research Program has developed the framework of such a tool and has made it readily available to the people of Wisconsin. The “Community Guide to Development Impact Analysis” is available for download in PDF format at: http://www.pats.wisc.edu/abscomguide.htm

Every citizen and taxpayer deserves to have all the information necessary to form intelligent opinions about land use policies. I urge the Council to require this type of comprehensive analysis for the Northeast Neighborhood Plan and all new development proposals, and to resist pressure from developers to hasten the process. Land use decisions are too important and too complicated to continue to use the old, outdated methods of consideration.