The Price of Progress: Who Should Pay for City Streets?
Tacoma’s City Council debates whether property owners or the general public should shoulder the cost of local infrastructure improvements.
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Councilman Hammond’s ordinance calling for a rebate of $7,000 to property owners in local improvement district No. 54 faced a contentious review by the finance committee. The committee was split on the issue of whether taxpayers should bear the cost of public improvements that benefit the city at large, or if the burden must remain solely with abutting property owners. Proponents argue that since the general public uses crosswalks and intersections, the city should contribute to their cost, while opponents warn that such a policy would set a precedent that could invite graft and unsustainable fiscal demands from other wards. Judge Parker, testifying before the committee, noted that in thirty years of Tacoma’s history, local property owners have been consistently saddled with the costs of sidewalk districts, and he suggested that a rebate for crosswalk costs specifically might be a fair compromise.
“We are facing a condition and not a theory.”
This debate over local improvement districts echoes contemporary struggles in Tacoma regarding how growth and infrastructure expansion are financed—often falling on the backs of homeowners via assessments—versus the wider benefit to the tax base.
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