New Blog

My office spring cleaning is beginning by changing my blog. I've had this blog for a 7 or 8 months and I'm tired of the title and the format...so I'm turning over a new leaf and turning to word press. The name of the new blog is The City Cafe. What does that mean? I'm not really sure...but it allowed me to incorporate a photo I really like into the header. So The City Cafe will remain a blog that discusses all things related to cities, with a focus to local government fiscal policy. I look forward to your comments.

Tis' The Season--Budget Season

For local governments May is budget season. A number of cities are presenting their budgets for the 2007-08 fiscal year (Mayor Billings' presents Provo's budget on a bus tour of the city). I'm sure you'll see a lot more news stories about city budgets as they are debated and finalized.

Today on KCPW's Midday Metro show Bill Anderson (South Salt Lake City Councilmember), Gary Hill (Park City budget officer), and myself discussed the state of local government finance with KCPW host Bryann Schott. If you are interested in the 20 minute podcast check here: KCPW discussion May 14th 2007.

So city council meetings aren't so bad, after all

Excellent column in the The Spectrum this weekend written by Steve Kiggins, Cedar City Bureau Chief. I keep telling people that local government finance really is an interesting issue that people should pay more attention to...sounds like Steve agrees. One quote from his column, "In the past 21 months, I've learned more about the world around me than I did in all my years as a sports reporter. That's because I've covered city council meetings, interviewed state, county and city leaders, studied subjects such as health care, taxes and education, opened my eyes to the issues and challenges around me....If you don't pay attention to city government, I urge you to start."

You can read the full column here.

On another note...how about those Jazz? Western Conference Finals here we come (am I jumping the gun?).

Housing Development

The housing market continues to capture a number of headlines. Especially with reports today of the sharpest decline in home sales in 18 years (here). Overall the housing market in Utah still appears strong, but when the market continues to fall in Vegas and Phoenix it makes you wonder what is in store for the Salt Lake metro area in the next year or two.

I also found these two recent articles regarding housing development interesting.

• New York Times article on housing development along the TRAX lines in Murray City.
  
• Article in Slate about how a cornfield became a town.
  

Cluster Analysis

I've been working on an interesting project the past few weeks, clustering of Utah's cities and towns. Often our analysis here at ULCT requires grouping or clustering of cities. But usually this grouping is dictated solely by population size or regional location--very surface and misleading variables. In an attempt to find a more accurate grouping, ULCT has attempted clustered cities together based on demographic, financial, and economic characteristics. The variables used to group cities are:

• 2005 population
• Percent population change 2000-2005
• Household median income (2000 Census data)
• 2003 Primary residential land value (& per capita)
• 2003 Commercial and industrial land value (& per capita)
• 2003 Property tax revenue (& per capita)
• 2003 Sales tax revenue (& per capita)

Our results led to 11 clusters of cities, with Salt Lake City as the one outlier. The eleven types of clusters are: major cities, commercial centers, high growth communities, residential transitioning, high income residential, urban edge, resort communities, natural resource/mining based, old established, traditional agricultural, and small towns.

If you are interested in where your city grouped or would like to see the analysis write-up please review the report: 2007 ULCT Cluster Analysis I'm interested in hearing your feedback on this project. I think we will find it a great tool enabling better policy analysis. Please contact me with any questions.

Tax Burden -- How much goes to your city?

Taxes become a common discussion during the middle of April...but how many of us really know our complete annual tax bill (federal, state, and local)? The Utah Taxpayers each year provides an analysis of a typical Utah family each year--this year the average Utah family of five spends $15,877 in taxes or 25% of their income.

However, of this $15,877 in taxes how much goes to your city or town? Based on this analysis a family of five spend around $700 dollars a year (combined sales, property, and franchise) in municipal taxes.

• A median Utah household spends 1.2% of their income in municipal taxes
• Less than 5% of a Utahns entire tax burden is dedicated to municipal government.

$700 dollars a year for all the municipal services I use (sidewalks, city parks, water, garbage collection, sewer, city library, roads, etc)...sounds like a bargain to me. And I'm a libertarian who hates taxes as much as anyone.

By the way, the Utah Taxpayers have scheduled their 29th Annual Conference for May 4th. You can check out the packed agenda here.

Huckabee in St. George

Overall I would say the mid-year conference this past Thursday and Friday was a great success. One highlight from the conference was Thursday speaker, presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. Huckabee was great, personally engaging and a captivating speaker. His comments focused on the need for citizens to solve the US health crisis by becoming active. Huckabee emphasized that success needs to be a long-term cultural shift that leads to more individual physical activity. I thought it was interesting that he mentioned four examples of cultural changes that have improved our overall quality of life: wearing of seat belts, reduced littering, reduced smoking, and a crackdown on drunk driving (think about the acceptance of things activities 30 years ago compared to today...huge changes). These are all evidence that the same cultural change can occur to enhance our level of physical activity.
Spectrum article on Huckabee
Spectrum video
Deseret News article

St. George Fastest Growing Metro Area

Many of you maybe saw the news last week from the U.S. Census Bureau announcing St. George City as the fastest growing metro area in the nation. St. George area great by 39.8% between 2000 and 2006, this rate is almost 9% higher than the second metro area (Greeley Colorado at 31%). St. George is not the only Utah metro area to make this list...Provo-Orem metro area grew by 26% since 2000, ranking them 6th nationally. You can read and watch the KSL news story here or read the Census Bureau press release here.

On another note I'm looking forward to spending this coming week in the fastest growing metro area in nation for our 2007 Midyear Conference.