Geographer's critique: The supplied USGS/GAO choropleth map is terrible.

True happiness is knowing you are a hypocrite. -- Ivor Cutler

The cost of all this pavement and infrastructure is just enormous, and taxpayers subsidize a huge amount of it.

here is a repost from
http://www.knoxviews.com/blog/1743

Half a BILLION $ in Handouts for Developers EACH YEAR in Knox Co!!!

MPC fails to calculate the “cost of community services” for new development
Metropolitan Planning Commission (MPC) makes NO EFFORT to figure out the costs of serving new residential development with basic services such as roads, sewer, schools, fire, police, etc. As a result development occurs in parts of Knox county that are very costly to serve. 500 million dollars a year more costly! A report put out by Rutgers estimated that Nashville would save almost a billion dollars a year by managing all its growth so as to minimize the "cost of community services". At half of Nashville’s size, Knoxville could probably realize half as much by doing the same.
Currently we are giving all of this money to real estate developers, who get to buy cheep land in far flung parts of the county, and then have services extended regardless of the costs to taxpayers.
The plan to put a new sewage treatment plant on the French Broad is an extreme case of taxpayer funded welfare for developers. The Development Corporation of Knox County, which is run by real estate developers and other members of Knox County's business elite, is trying to leverage the 4 million that they have budgeted for wastewater treatment for the Midway Business Park towards a 13 million dollar sewage plant/handout for residential real estate developers. The result will be intensive real estate development at the very edge of Knox county, costing taxpayers millions in road upgrades and expansion of police and fire services.
If this development were shifted towards the many vacant tracts of land in the parts of Knox county that already have sufficient services to accommodate new growth, 500 million tax dollars could be saved!!!
Can you imagine what Knox County could do with half a billion dollars more each year?
Here is a press release for the report on the cost of community services: Link...
Link...
Thanks
Sugarfatpie

"X-Rays are a hoax."-Lord Kelvin

are buying up public (water) utilites here and there where they can. Or so is my impression from reading the news. They know something we don't? Water will be the oil of the future perhaps.

Water will be the oil of the future perhaps

Who knew the movie Ice Pirates would end up being so prophetic?