Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
In Canada, Montreal city officials are engaged in a nearly impenetrable squabble with several surrounding towns, after the towns were spun off into proper suburbs. The fight, which has been going on for months, centers on accusations by the de-merged towns' mayors that Montreal has overcharged them for city services.
Suburban expansion has created the same problems to the south. The nabobs of Nashville, Tenn., are trying to force 10 suburban cities to pay more for the sewer service they buy from the city. Those towns, in return, are saying that Nashville needs to measure their flow better to make sure the suburbs don't end up footing the bill for city residents.
There's more than one way to stop the financial drain of clinging suburbs, however. Indianapolis annexed its suburbs, soaking up the tax revenues generated by the development boom for itself, and creating a small-city superpower that is the envy of its Midwestern neighbors.
Suburban expansion has created the same problems to the south. The nabobs of Nashville, Tenn., are trying to force 10 suburban cities to pay more for the sewer service they buy from the city. Those towns, in return, are saying that Nashville needs to measure their flow better to make sure the suburbs don't end up footing the bill for city residents.
There's more than one way to stop the financial drain of clinging suburbs, however. Indianapolis annexed its suburbs, soaking up the tax revenues generated by the development boom for itself, and creating a small-city superpower that is the envy of its Midwestern neighbors.
posted by burb at 11:34 AM
1 Comments:
Nashville and Davidson County merged a long time ago. A county can't annex another county anywhere, to my knowledge. The legislature draws the county boundaries pretty much everywhere, unless Indiana law is different.
To my knowledge, Indianapolis and Marion County have something called a Unigov that includes all the counties but lets some towns continue to operate independently. All this is pretty well documented in "Cities Without Borders," which also includes a mention of Nashville-Davidson. Neither govt. streches into neighboring counties. What seems to be happening, instead,is that the neighboring counties are seeing some annexation of townships and whatnot--the suburban counties, in other words, are heading towards consolidation, which is happening in a number of other states. The best thing would be to have some sort of supra-regional govt., and some say counties are way too archaic for an America dominated by metropolitan areas, but I don't see them going away soon, so such supra-govts. can only be formed by intrer-governmental agreements.
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