Bacon's Rebellion

  • New Kent Ferment

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    I’m always on the look-out for niche economic development strategies, and I think I’ve spotted one in New Kent County. In “New Kent Ferment,” I write about a huge project underway, New Kent Vineyards, that could generate $1.5 billion in development over 15 to 20 years. The secret: Tapping the 55-and-older retirement/pre-retirement market.

    Retirees are souring on Florida. Blame hurricanes, the threat of global warming, Al Gore’s scary video showing half the Florida peninsula swallowed by rising sea levels, and soaring insurance premiums. Plus, baby boomers tend to want to settle in a retirement community within a day’s drive of their own home, so they can stay in touch with family and friends. North Carolina is the new East Coast retirement hot spot, but Virginia is looking pretty good, too.

    Affluent retirees are a gold mine. They pay lots of taxes but demand little in the way of services. Their kids have grown up, so they don’t burden local schools. They don’t commit crimes. And they’re well off enough that they don’t qualify for Medicaid. In New Kent County, of $250,000 is the break-even point for housing prices. The vast majority of houses in New Kent Vineyards will sell for more than $350,000, meaning that most households will pay more in property taxes than they demand in local government services.

    Pete Johns, managing partner of New Kent Vineyards, has structured the project so that it is a net contributor to the county tax base from Day One. An $86 million Community Development Authority pays for water, sewer and roadway infrastructure improvements up front. Another $7,500 per house in proffers will underwrite the cost of a police/fire/rescue sub-station. Schools are not an issue.

    There’s nothing remarkably scenic about New Kent County. The land is mostly flat, with a few gentle hills and not much waterfront. But New Kent Vineyards is creating a number of distinguishing features: a winery, a Rees Jones golf course, a polo field and a neotraditional town center with farmer’s market and two-block pedestrian mall. New Kent County also benefits from proximity to other assets within easy reach: Colonial Williamsburg, the beach and the Chesapeake Bay. Oh, yeah, and access to an Interstate highway, and two commercial airports within easy driving distance.

    Not every woebegone rural location in Virginia can muster such a mix of assets, but a number of them can. A good number can do even better, offering mountain vistas or recreational boating. North Carolina has figured it out already. Virginia, it seems, is learning.

    There are three caveats, two of which I explore in my column: traffic congestion, affordable housing and environmental impact. While a development like New Kent Vineyards is tax-positive for New Kent County, it is less clear whether it is tax-positive overall when traffic, housing and run-off are taken into consideration. But, then, the Vineyards project is clearly preferable to the alternative — by-right development leading to scattered, disconnected, low-density development — which is what New Kent would get in its absence.

  • Fan the Flames, Spread the Rebellion!

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    The May 14, 2007, edition of the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine has been published. Click here to view the e-zine. Don’t miss a single edition — get the e-zine mailed to you directly. Click here for a free subscription.

    New Kent Ferment
    Pete Johns has found a way to make growth to pay for itself: Pay $7,500 per house in proffers, issue $86 million in CDA bonds, and sell houses to affluent retirees with no children in school.
    by James A. Bacon

    Leadership in the New Economy
    Technology is still propelling the American economy forward. Virginia is doing well in this sector — but not as well as it could.
    by Doug Koelemay

    What Is Wrong with this Picture?
    Yes, the United States does need to invest more money on infrastructure. But without Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns, most of the spending would be squandered.
    by EM Risse

    Putting the Family back in the “College Family”
    One way to make colleges safer is to keep parents informed when their children pose a danger to themselves or others.
    by Chris Braunlich

    Ten Reasons to Read Rosetta 6.2
    Jim Bowden plugs his newly published novel, a spiritual/political thriller set in the near future.
    James A. Bowden

  • A GREAT DAY FOR BALANCED COMMUNITIES

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Today is a great day for Balanced Communities according to WaPo.

    This morning WaPo published their most recent “Post 200: Where the money is.” The biggest corporate offices, the best jobs, the places all the startups want to be, a good place to get a great meal, the best place to …

    Draw in the Radius = 10, Radius = 20 and the logical location for the Clear Edge around the Core of the National Capital Subregion on the map that is the cover of the special “Post 200” tabloid and what do you see? Most of the biggest dots are inside R=10, all the biggest dots are inside R=20 and everyone of them is inside the logical location of the Clear Edge.

    Given that there is plenty of room for all the J / H / S / R / A inside R=20, much less inside the Clear Edge – See “NO SURPRISE” posted 9 May and “Lots of Room for Growth Left in Fairfax County” posted 26 April – and you have a sustainable future in focus. Well it is in focus if citizens take actions in the voting booth and in the market to evolve functional and sustainable human settlement patterns within Balanced Communities inside and outside the Clear Edge around the Core of the National Capital Subregion.

    Yes, there is a need for jobs to create Balance in the Beta Communities that are inside but near the Clear Edge around the Core (Greater Leesburg, Greater Ashburn, Greater West Prince William, Greater East Prince William. For a start the prospect of recycling the Potomac Landfill into a new Zentrum for East Prince William is on the front page of today’s WaPo.

    Yes, there is a need for jobs and services to create a Balance of J / H / S / R / A in the Beta Villages, Beta Neighborhood and Beta Clusters that need to evolve if there are to be Balanced But Disaggregated Communities in the Countryside. (For those who came in late, the Countryside is outside the Clear Edge around the Core of the National Capital Subregion and surrounds some larger agglomerations such as Greater Fredericksburg and Greater Winchester.)

    Of course, every one of these urban agglomerations – larger ones like Greater Fredericksburg and the smaller ones like Greater Warrenton-Fauquier and Greater Culpeper-Culpeper – must evolve their own Clear Edge to achieve functional settlement patterns in the Countryside and in the Urbanside.

    Both in the Urbanside and in the Countryside, the biggest problem is scatteration of urban land uses and the fact there is far too much land set aside for urban land uses. But, for at least the 17th time since we have been counting, WaPo has demonstrated where the lines need to be drawn to evolve a sustainable future.

    EMR

  • Multicultural Diversity in a Liberal NoVa Neighborhood

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    The Washington Post has a fascinating story about the clash of cultures in the Bailey’s Crossroads area of Fairfax County. Anglo homeowners are upset by immigrants who purchase houses in their neighborhood, pack them with people, crowd the streets with parked cars, come and go at all hours of the day, play loud music and generally disrupt the peace and tranquility of suburban life.

    Supervisor Penelope A. Gross, D-Mason, takes an academic, almost anthropological perspective: “It’s a different model. A transition from the nuclear Caucasian family to the ethnic extended family.” The Anglos are not quite as detached and broad minded. Chafing at the violation of county ordinances, perceiving threats to their quality of life and worrying about the impact on their property values, they warn that Gross may pay politically in the next election.

    And who are these yahoos, these know-nothings, these nativist bigots who rail against the brown people from south of the border who are simply trying to make an honest living in the United States but can’t afford the sky-high real estate prices in Fairfax County without living two or three to a room, including basements and garages? Are they Bible-thumping Jerry Falwellites? Are they rednecks with gunracks in their pickup trucks? Well, not exactly.

    Rick Gordon, of Falls Church, has complained to county officials and talked to the Washington Post about an illegal boarding house of between eight and 10 men in his Lakewood neighborhood for more than a year and a half. Two trucks and as many as nine cars park in front. Here’s what he told the Washington Post.

    “We’re not some right-wing Nazi community,” Gordon said. “Everybody is a liberal Democrat. In my community, without a doubt, people will not vote for [Gross] unless this problem is solved soon.”

    Verrry interesting. “Everybody is a liberal Democrat.” Presumably, everyone appreciates diversity and multi-culturalism — at least in the abstract. Presumably, everyone would steadfastly deny having a racist bone in their body. And, I’d be willing to bet, a goodly number consider themselves morally superior to the bigots, klansmen and right-wing Nazis who live downstate.

    There are two morals to this story. First is the inherent flaw in Fairfax County’s human settlement pattern. There is a huge demand for low-wage, unskilled/semi-skilled labor in the county. The demand for this labor is met by immigrants, mostly central American. As low-wage workers, they cannot afford to live in the one-nuclear-family-per-dwelling lifestyle that native Fairfaxians consider the norm and have ensconced in their zoning codes. Long-range commuting from downstate trailer parks is expensive, too. But living in boarding-room conditions in Fairfax is no worse — perhaps even better — than the Third World conditions they came from. Trouble is, the immigrants haven’t been acculturated yet to middle-class American norms. Bottom line: Fairfax County wants their labor but doesn’t want them.

    Multi-culturalism is wonderful — as long as it’s limited to school rooms and politics.

    The second moral is this: Liberals who complain about the behavior of low-wage immigrants, a good percentage of whom could be illegal, are not necessarily racially prejudiced. Liberal Anglos have as much right to their tranquil, nuclear-family suburban lifestyle as Latin immigrants have to their lifestyle of packing large extended families (with uncles, cousins, fellow villagers from the old country) into a single dwelling. Likewise, conservatives who want to uphold the rule of law — reminding people that illegal immigration is, in fact illegal — are not necessarily racially prejudiced either, as their detractors often claim.

    Fairfax Board Chairman Gerald E. Connolly puts the onus on the Anglos and Hispanics to work things out. “Every neighborhood has a clear balance of harmony to it, and I have some obligation to respect that harmony if I move there. But neighborhoods also have an obligation to expand that harmony to accommodate different cultures.” Hmmm. I don’t think Rick Gordon’s problem is that his neighbors are playing salsa music instead of rock and roll. His problem is that they are violating county ordinances and changing the nature of the neighborhood.

    The solution, I would argue, is not asking the people to change — under different conditions, they would get along just fine. Rather, Fairfax County has an obligation to permit a wider range of human settlement patterns — more high-density neighborhoods and fewer restrictions on minimum living space — that would allow immigrants to find accommodations in settings that don’t disturb their more peace-seeking neighbors.

  • An End to the Chronic Budgetary Surplus?

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Well, it had to happen sooner or later: State revenues are coming in behind budget. Reports the Associated Press: “With just two months left in the state fiscal year that ends June 30, overall growth came to 3.6 percent compared with the budgeted estimate of 6.5 percent growth.”

    Revenues have been trailing projections since the beginning of the fiscal year, but there was no way to know whether the shortfall was just a momentary blip. But with only two months left, the chances of making up the gap is not promising. Fortunately, everyone has seen the shortfall coming, so no one seems too alarmed.

    Cuts to nonessential spending wouldn’t harm key services such as education and health care and could balance the state budget in the short term, said Del. M. Kirkland Cox, R-Colonial Heights, a senior budget negotiator. But he said the shortfall could have an effect on planned programs, such as the governor’s campaign promise to create universal pre-kindergarten programs.

    With a fat rainy-day fund, and multi-hundred-million-dollar-a-year commitments to one-time capital projects in the current biennial budget, there should plenty of padding for ongoing programs in the next biennial budget. There may not be as much money available for one-shot spending like mental health facilities and Chesapeake Bay clean-up, but core programs should not suffer. Plus, there’s always the chance that the economy, which slowed noticeably in the first quarter of 2007, will regain momentum.

  • Good News/Bad News for Newspapers

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Newspaper circulations may be declining but viewership of newspaper websites are soaring — growing at nearly twice the rate of the general online audience, according to data released today by the Newspaper Association of America. Reports the association:

    An average of more than 59 million people (37.6 percent of all active Internet users) visited newspaper Web sites each month during the first quarter, a record number that represents a 5.3 percent increase over the same period a year ago, according to Nielsen/NetRatings NetView custom analysis. During the same time period, the overall Internet audience grew just 2.7 percent.

    Said Shawn Riegsecker, CEO of Centro, a Chicago based company that works with interactive media agencies to facilitate online ad buys:

    It’s no surprise newspapers are attracting online readers at this incredible rate. As consumers become more sophisticated in navigating the Web, they are turning to trusted sources of news and information, like newspapers, instead of content aggregators or portals. This couldn’t be better for the industry, as newspapers control more of this information than any other medium. As newspapers continue to invest in their digital properties and produce world-class content, I predict they will capture a much larger percentage of the overall online pie.

    I suspect that Riegsecker is right. But there’s just one problem. Print newspapers generate considerably more revenue per reader than does online news. Internet-based news operations cannot support the same level of editorial overhead. So, I return to my usual tag-line:

    Who will gather the news?

  • Tax Breaks for Green Buildings?

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Here’s a sleeper: The General Assembly passed a law in the last session that would enable localities to tax energy-efficient buildings and homes at a lower rate than other real estate. Now a group in Charlottesville is urging the city to pass an ordinance instituting the dual tax rate.

    Writes Seth Rosen with the Daily Progress:

    To qualify for the lower tax rate bracket, buildings would have to be 30 percent more energy-efficient than the standards prescribed in the state’s building code. Any home or business that is Energy Star or Earthcraft certified – two of the most common energy-saving classifications – likely would meet the criterion, officials said.

    I’m conflicted. I totally believe that Virginians need to more toward more energy-efficient buildings and patterns of development. Tax incentives, which work through market mechanisms, are preferable to government mandates.

    But I’m worried about the legal precedent of establishing two classes of property for taxation purposes. Could this open the door for all manner of preferential tax treatment? The state income tax code is already swiss cheese, riddled with exemptions that, according to a Warner administration-era study, shifted some $1 billion a year in tax burden from privileged categories of taxpayers to the rest of us. Do we really want to see the same process replicated with the personal property tax?

  • “The Origin of Violence in Virginia”

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Do you regard Seung Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech killer, as an aberration? Think again, argues Jonathan Scott, a writer for Black Agenda Report in an essay reproduced in Oread Daily. The deranged loner Cho stands in a long tradition of mass murder and genocide that began with Jamestown. (To read Scott’s brief essay, scroll down a couple of screens past the introduction.)

    According to Scott, the capitalist planters of early Virginia rank right up there with the Nazis as the great mass murderers of history. (There’s a special place in my heart for leftist screeds such as this: They regard the original Bacon’s Rebellion, otherwise relegated to obscurity, as one of the pivotal moment in American history. Indentured servants and slaves revolted against their capitalist overlords. After suppressing the rebellion, the planter class instituted race-based slavery to divide the white and black underclasses.)

    Concludes Scott after a recitation of Virginia’s blood-drenched history:

    American violence and mass murder, which began in Virginia, will not be prevented by gun control laws in Virginia today or any time in the future. This kind of violence can only be ended by putting a stop to the law superseding it and every other one, the law of rich eat the poor and the use of imperialist war to keep the rule of money continuously functioning.

    Yes, friends, the history of Virginia is ugly, ugly, ugly. Celebrating the founding of Jamestown is like celebrating Auschwitz. Our ancestors contributed nothing of worth to the world. The state panel studying the Virginia Tech massacre should absolve Cho and the rest of us should slit our own wrists in self-loathing.

  • Take the Quiz!

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Don has a handy little quiz on the Richmond School Board v. Mayor Wilder follies.

    You know, before folks get too wonkily agitated about imposing a new tax on city residents to handle water run-off, crab grass, the heartbreak of psoriasis, or whatever fresh crisis confronts River City, they ought to consider what our betters do with the money they already have.

    In this case, the funds sure aren’t going into the classrooms. And given this prominent, ongoing, outrageous waste (which is saying something for Richmond) the mind boggles over the hijinks the city could indulge in with yet another new source of funds.

  • Speed Bumps or Narrower Streets?

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    The City of Suffolk, which has recently taken over responsibility for secondary roads from the state, is getting a taste of the kind of issues that the Virginia Department of Transportation once dealt with. Judging by today’s column by John Warren at the Virginian-Pilot, the issues require a detailed knowledge of local conditions.

    Applewood Farms has speeders, and Heather Dulene has fingered Public Enemy No.
    1.

    “There’s a red Mustang driver I’d love to see jolted out of his seat by a speed bump, that he, of course, wouldn’t see, considering he’s driving 75 mph,” Dulene said.

    Her neighbor in the Suffolk subdivision, Mary Adkins, squinted her eyes.

    “The kid with the ponytail,” Adkins said.

    Are speed bumps the best solution? Or are there better options, such as creating “visual breaks in the streetscape, reducing the ‘raceway’ appearance of wide residential streets”? Such decisions are probably best made locally by the level of government closest to the people affected. In Suffolk, devolution seems to make good sense.

  • NO SURPRISE

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    It should come as not surprise to anyone that, as Jim Bacon’s 26 April post is titled: there is
    “Lots of Room for Growth Left in Fairfax County.”

    The surprise is that the Greater Merrifield re construction effort has stayed on track for so many years.

    It was decades ago that graduate planning students outlined parameters for how the area along Gallows Road between I-66 on the north and US Route 50 on the south to Gallows Road on the south could to evolve to become the METRO-station-anchored Zentrum of an Alpha Community.

    This Alpha Community would be bordered by Greater Tysons Corner on the north, Greater Fairfax Center on the west, Greater Springfield / Annandale on the south and Greater Bailies Crossroads / Falls Church on the east.

    That there is “Lots of Room for Growth Left in Fairfax County” has a theme at SYNERGY/ Planning for 35 years. We demonstrated this point during the 1972 to 1975 Pause For Planning (PLUS) process in Fairfax County.

    Over the next few years in our work with the Fairfax Chamber of Commerce, the Fairfax Committee of 100, the League of Women Voters, the Gang of 10, the Sierra Club and the Fairfax Audubon Society the plenty of room reality evolved into the mantra:

    “If all of Fairfax County were redeveloped at Reston Density, 2/3 of the county would be vacant.”

    As years went by the percentage of openspace become somewhat smaller and the data was refined to became the basis for “Five Critical Realities the Shape the Future” which is a Backgrounder at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com . The data and analysis of this work became the framework for Regional Metrics.

    No one ever challenged the assumptions and data in the Backgrounder. Many doubted that such “radical” transformation would ever take place “because that is not what the market demands.”

    Later we demonstrated that these more functional and transportable settlement patterns are exactly what the market supports.

    Those who profit from, or hope to profit from, settlement pattern dysfunction are counting on the fact that regulation changes and education processes are never put in place to implement the transformation.

    The jury is still out on whether citizens will come to understand that there is “Lots of Room for Growth Left in Fairfax County” while there are still resources to make Fundamental Changes possible. The Greater Merrifield example provides cause for hope.

    EMR

  • Annual Infrastructure Maintenance Deficit: $1.6 Trillion and Counting

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    The Urban Land Institute and Ernst & Young have just published the latest must-read on the topic of lagging infrastructure investment in the United States. The U.S. faces a $1.6 trillion deficit in infrastructure for transportation, energy, water and wastewater through 2010 just for maintenance, concludes “Infrastructure 2007: A Global Perspective.”

    Says Dale Ann Reiss, an Ernst & Young executive and vice chairman of the ULI, a land-use tank: “At some point, the system is going to grind to a halt.” (The Wall Street Journal summarizes the report today on page B-4. You can acccess the ULI summary here.)

    Writes the Journal:

    The study urges leaders and planners to reconsider the way U.S. cities are built, with hub-and-spoke systems to better handle mass transit. It also suggests infill housing and mixed-use development to reduce dependence on cars, especially in Sun Belt cities such as Houston, where the average commuter already drives 39 miles a day.

    Some interesting factoids…

    Transportation costs paid directly by user:

    • Driving—98 percent
    • Transit—36 percent (Urban areas over 1 million)
    • Parking—1–4 percent

    Cost of providing transportation:

    • Local bus—$0.76/ passenger mile
    • Heavy rail—$0.49/ passenger mile
    • Driving —$0.37/ passenger mile

  • Another Self-Destructive Homeowners Association

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Determined to enforce its covenants, the Lansdowne Potomac Club Homeowners Association has cracked down on some 40 homeowners who operate small businesses out of their homes. The Loudoun Times-Mirror highlights the plight of a day care run by Oksana Downs, who caters to Russian-speaking children.

    The Association is probably within its legal rights to order homeowners to close their businesses. But association board members should at least be honest with themselves: They’re part of the broader problem, not the solution. Small home-based businesses should be encouraged, not discouraged, as long as they do not prove disruptive to the neighbors.

    The business owners have three alternatives: shut down, move to a neighborhood with a friendlier home owner’s association, or move the business to a location zoned for commercial activity. None are desirable. The notion that business and residential activities must be rigidly separated is an underlying cause of dysfunction in contemporary human settlement patterns. People working at home… people dropping off kids at the neighborhood day care… people seeking services from tax preparation to lawnmower repair from someone working out of their home… translates into people not overloading collector and arterial roads as they rush between scattered destinations to procure those services.

    Furthermore, a community where residents interact as vendor and customer enjoys a richer network of personal interaction — something that is sorely lacking in the neighborhoods of strangers that dominate American suburbia. Permitting limited business interactions helps build trust and community. Homeowners associations should foster those attributes, not squelch them.

    The Lansdowne Potomac Club Homeowners Association should consider revising its covenant. Far from hurting property values, the convenience of accessing unobtrusive services locally, and the feeling of community that the business interactions engender, will make the neighborhood, and the homes within it, more desirable and more valuable.

  • Nukes, Nukes, the Magical Fuel

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    I’ve been critical of Dominion’s “big grid” strategy of building monster power plants in outlying areas and linking them to customers with monster transmission lines. But I’m realistic enough to know that Dominion, like Virginia’s other power companies, will have to add more capacity eventually — no matter how much we conserve, and no matter how rapidly we bring renewable energy sources online. And when Dominion does bring on new capacity, I’m perfectly happy, like the Daily Press, to see it to run on nuclear energy.

    Dominion has established an excellent track record for safety and efficiency of its nuclear units. If we can solve the problem of disposing of the spent nuclear fuel rods — surely the United States is big enough and has enough empty places that can take them — nukes are cleaner than fossil fuels. And, if man-made global climate change charges your batteries, nukes don’t emit greenhouse gases.

    Indeed, I would go the next step forward. Virginia ought to encourage the use of electric vehicles — all running on clean, nuclear-powered fuel. I may have issues with Dominion, but I’d far rather rely on a home-grown electric utility for my fuel source than fossil fuels (whether oil or natural gas) imported from Venezuela, Nigeria or the Middle East, where our money props up dictators and underwrites terrorism.

  • Money Down the Drain? I Don’t Think So.

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Bart Hinkle at the Times-Dispatch has taken after Mayor L. Douglas Wilder for the second time in a week for proposing to levy a fee upon property owners to pay for much-needed storm water projects. While Hinkle concedes the need for improvements — citing the devastating flooding in the Battery Park and Shockoe Bottom areas — he questions the need to “sock homeowners with an annual fee of $89, and levy considerably higher fees upon businesses, nonprofit groups and even churches.”

    Normally, I find Hinkle’s logic impeccable. This time, I fear, he has stumbled. He cites evidence, for instance, of widespread waste in city government. A city auditor found $19 million just by looking at a part of school system operations. He also takes issue with the city’s absurd rate structure for water and wastewater. The basic rate is $43.56 per month, more than twice that of neighboring Henrico County. But volume users get a price break. “The more water and water-disposal service you use, the less you pay per volume unit,” he chastises. “Not only does this not encourage conseration — it actively encourages consumption.”

    Wasteful and counter-productive? You bet! Relevant to storm-water improvements? No, not really. No. Two wrongs (or three, or four, or even more — we’re talking City of Richmond here) don’t make a right.

    Of course, Richmond needs to tighten up operations and cut administrative overhead. And when it does so, it should rebate the savings to taxpayers in the form of lower property taxes. Absolutely, Richmond needs to implement a water/sewer rate structure that encourages customers to conserve water rather than reward them for wasting it.

    Following the same line of logic, Richmond needs to pay for storm water improvements in a way, to quote my previous post on this topic, establishes “a logical nexus between who pays, how much they pay and what they’re paying for.” And that’s what Wilder’s proposal would do. In contrast to city water/sewer rates, Wilder would charge property owners according to the amount of rooftop and pavement on their land, and it would reduce the charges based on the implementation of measures that reduce the run-off or improve its quality.

    Is there a way of achieving that aim more efficiently than Wilder has proposed? Perhaps. I’m open to suggestions. Hinkle recommends taxing tarmac “by charging a runoff fee for every hundred square feet of parking lot.”

    That might well make sense. It shouldn’t be too difficult, using aerial photography, to calculate the square footage of impermeable surface on individual properties. Adjustments could be made for the existence of curbs, gutters, storm sewers, drainage ditches, retaining ponds and other control measures. Whatever the final calculus, however, the solution should have nothing to do with waste in the school system or the improvidence of water/sewer fees. The levy should adhere to one core principle: Polluters pay. The more they pollute, the more they pay. The less they pollute, the less they pay.

Now Available

Book cover of 'Dust Mites: A Second American Revolution' by James A. Bacon, featuring astronauts planting a flag with a blue and white emblem on a lunar landscape, with Earth visible in the background.
For sale on Amazon.com

The year: 2075. The American colonies on the Moon are getting restless under Washington’s tyrannical rule….

This second edition of “Dust Mites” has a snazzy new cover, includes helpful lunar maps, and is 5,000 words tighter than the original. The sequel, “Trogs,” is scheduled for publication this summer.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

About

Bacon’s Rebellion is Virginia’s leading politically non-aligned portal for news, opinions and analysis about state, regional and local public policy. Read more about us here.

Fund the Rebellion

Shake up the status quo! Your contributions will be used to pay for faster download speeds and grow readership. Make a one-time donation by credit card or contribute a small sum monthly.

Can’t wait until tomorrow

For your Bacon’s Rebellion fix?

Enter your email address to receive immediate notifications of new posts by email.

SUBSCRIBE

Search Bacon’s Rebellion

Categories

Archives

The Jefferson Council

Protecting Thomas Jefferson’s Legacy at the University of Virginia

Forgot Your Password?

Shoot me an email and I’ll generate a new password for you.

Latest