Why aren't local governments more innovative? (Pittsburgh, Wilkinsburg: sales, employment, subsidized)

[jimmyev]

With all the different municipalities in Southwestern PA, one would think there might be one or two out there with some innovative ideas to gain residents (and grow their tax base). What would happen if free wireless was a municipal service? What if there was no zoning? What if the municipality used form-based zoning instead of Euclidean zoning? What if tax abatements were used to attract residents (rather than businesses)?

Yet every municipality seems to run more-or-less the same. Normally when you have a large number of entities competing for the same customers (in this case residents), there's usually a lot of creative ideas to attract them. So why doesn't this happen here?

[jimmyev]

Just to clarify, I'll throw an example out there. In the state I moved from, municipalities had two main sources of income - property tax and sales tax (as opposed to property tax and income tax here). The metro area didn't have a large number of municipalities, but, regardless, it wasn't long before a few incorporated cities figured out that attracting a large amount of retail would grow their tax base and allow them to eliminate the city residential property taxes.

Because of the tax structure here, you can't eliminate residential property taxes. But by using innovative ideas to lure a large number of high-income residents, in effect growing the income-tax base, you could potentially reduce the residential property tax rate.

Replacing Euclidean zoning - which dictates the use of the property - with form-based zoning - which dictates the architectural 'look' of the property but not the use - or even no zoning, would allow the natural development of the mixed-use (aka 'walkable') areas that are so desired by high-income earners now.

[BrianTH]

Recently my municipality, Wilkinsburg, has been working in conjunction with private entities like the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation and CMU to come up with some creative solutions to some of its problems. They've been working on tax abatements, subsidized residential development, and so forth. All of which is great.

Nonetheless, it is also quite apparent there are no quick solutions. The steel bust in particular created an employment problem that led to a depopulation problem which set off all sorts of other problems for local municipalities. And unfortunately some of that is a zero-sum game: when overall regional employment and population declines, one local municipality doing something creative and successful often just means other local municipalities are going to face even more problems.

Fortunately those regional problems have died down and I think there is now room for local improvements that don't necessarily take jobs/residents/resources away from other localities. But that is a relatively recent development.

Edit: Oh, and at least around here, zoning is more or less a non-issue. There are plenty of mixed-use areas available, and a credible project will likely get variances if necessary. Generally, at least the central parts of the Pittsburgh region take it for granted mixed-use is the norm.

[Katarina Witt]

^^I agree that until Pittsburgh begins attracting more new residents, any innovations will just likely rearrange the population that is already there, if anything.