Source:


Deaton Investment Real Estate & The Wake County Apartment Association



Wednesday, May 21, 2008

How to stop Growth 101

Course Description
This course is being taught by Your Mayor, Charles Meeker, who will lead a panel of your instructors (consisting of his close friends on the City Council) through aimless discussions about how new growth in Raleigh is detrimental to its longevity as one of the nation's premier mid-major metros. Because building new buildings, apartments, homes and commercial centers increases the tax base and encourages more of our well-educated work-force to stay put and provide regional employers with qualified staff and brain-power, the area needs to do all it can to curb this abhorrent trend toward regional success and outstanding livability.

This course will also teach you to waste countless tax payer dollars on fruitless, personal pet projects, such as banning garbage disposals and eliminating affordable housing in the city's urban districts.

Credit hours
Course offers zero credit hours because quite frankly, it's worthless.
Pre-reqs:
The student is expected to have read the following course articles by the beginning of the semester:

Raleigh taxes to increase.

Impact fees on the way up.

Council majority favors higher impact fees

Raleigh panel calls for phasing in fee hikes. (Or, Mayor says "Heck with panel, do it all at once.)

Council wants to see bill voted down (Or, Inspectors should be allowed free reign over every rental property at all hours without any cause. Except the ones owned by City Council members.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is one of the most rambling, flawed, and inaccurate posts I have ever read.

Raleigh's impact fees are laughably low when talking with people from other parts of the country (I have witnessed more than one mayor and council members laugh out loud when I told them how low our impact fees). Further, companies come here because of an educated workforce and good infrastructure. Both those cost money. Money will either come from residents through property tax or as an impact fees on new construction (which creates much of the need for new roads, etc). It seems fair to me if impact fees were doubled or tripled again (along with a complete reeling in of the areas sprawl).

As to your point of being a great city. List the medium size cities you consider great. For me the top three cities are Vienna, Portland, and Amsterdam all of which have much tighted regulations on construction. And in all of which investors get good to great returns. Now to list the two that I think are the worst: Phoenix and Atlanta, and those are the two that Raleigh is heading towards unless it controls the sprawl.

Your kneejerk reaction is sad and certainly does not help you win business from this investor.

Craig C. Rowe said...

Inaccurate? All I did was make a sarcastic premise around some articles published in the local newspaper. How is that inaccurate?

Nevertheless, your opinion is why blogs are written, regardless of the level of disdain behind it. So, thanks for reading and keep the comments coming.

To clarify my stance, I think these initiatives on the part of the city are counterproductive. Current economics are already slowing things down and sprawl will be curbed by market demand. People all over the US, and in Raleigh, are moving back to urban centers. Why else was Fayetteville Street re-opened and are so many downtown condos being built?

I've never been to Vienna, Amsterdam or Portland. But I would like visit Portland and understand they have handled growth quite effectively. I hope we get a light rail some day, as I think this argument against "ridership" is remarkably short-sighted. (What was the tagline from Field of Dreams again?)

To your last comment, I'm glad you're not buying based on what I said here. Who makes investment decisions based on a blog post, anyway?

Thanks again.