Impact Fees With An Impact On Oak Island

Oak Island has adopted new impact fees.  The story is interesting in that it doesn’t really say WHY the fees are needed as if they’re required for local government to operate.  In fact, you cannot find a single listed reason for the fees in the entire story.  But the cost is worth noting and can be HIGH.  From the State Port Pilot:

Under the new impact fee assessments, new construction started on or after November 10, 2010, will be charged an impact fee of $7.34 per gallon of use as determined by the state and the actual cost of installing the tap.  For example, a 40-unit condominium building with two-bedroom units currently pays a $62,956 impact fee, but will pay a $140,928 impact fee under the new schedule, but a three-bedroom residential home that currently pays a $3,466 impact fee will pay a $2,642 impact fee with the new schedule.

So, that’s the new deal on impact fees, but they’re also increasing recycling costs as well. The new recycling contract will include a change to 96-gallon recycling carts from the current 18-gallon ones with pick-up every other week, at a cost of $3.50 per home per month, up from $2.79 a month.  Cost of living on Oak Island continues to rise.

But I thought we were all sold on the benefits of recycling generating money?  Truth is, we’re subsidizing recycling because it isn’t paying for itself.

Chicken Plants And Concrete

Ok, these two industries have very little in common save for the fact that they invoke NIMBY responses.  In Titan’s case, the assertion that they will emit and/or allow mercury to flow freely into the Cape Fear River means they have no right to exist and especially not here.  Titan withdrew from $4.5 million in proposed incentives due to the government’s red-tape created for the incentive process.

The Wilson City Council has an opposite reaction, rather than try to entice and industry they’re trying to kill one and they’re willing to spend big bucks to stop it.

WILSON, N.C. — The Wilson City Council voted unanimously Thursday to allocate $1 million to fight a proposed chicken processing plant in Nash County that the city believes would impair its water supply.  Construction on the plant could begin before the end of the year. The plant is expected to bring more than 1,000 jobs in the area.

$1 million in taxpayer dollars!  Does anyone REALLY believe that the chicken plant will hurt the water supply?  Would people really sacrifice the health and well being of tens of thousands of PEOPLE for the sake of chickens?  But the reaction is always the same whether it’s a landfill or a chicken plant or a concrete production facility.

A group of residents also opposed to the plant plan to hold a “Save the River” rally at N.C. 97 and Tar River Road Sunday afternoon.

The above statement was from the story at WRAL.  The same happens everywhere.  Get environmentalists to highlight all worst case scenarios, scare people to death, takes lots of money from them to fight it and illustrate that, in spite of following all environmental laws that it still won’t be safe enough.  But running sewage through a treatment plant and then putting it back in the river is completely acceptable in the Tar AND the Cape Fear.

I understand the fear, I understand the spin, but I’m always hopeful that an honest assessment and debate will ensue and it never does.

Education “investments”

Wilmington StarNews editors have made some bizarre statements about proposed (or presumed) reforms of the North Carolina public university system. At best, they are questionable; at worst, they have no basis in fact. For example: “Pricing students out of is (sic) public universities would cripple North Carolina’s economy.”

No one has proposed or even suggested “pricing students out of” our state-run university system. However, it is not unreasonable to expect students to pay for whatever benefits they personally gain from higher education. Other state citizens, many less fortunate than these students, should not have their limited resources confiscated to subsidize wealthier people.

Star News progressives often argue for income redistribution—state subsidies for university students reverse this because the greater beneficiaries of the UNC system are middle- and upper-class people. Jay Schalin, in a paper titled “State Investment in Universities: Rethinking the Impact on Economic Growth,” published by the Pope Center for Higher Education, reveals that “higher education subsidies probably have ‘regressive redistributive effects.’”

“For instance,” writes Schalin, “in North Carolina, middle-class and wealthy students flock to the state’s top universities; the state’s elite often educates its next generation at UNC-Chapel Hill.” Editors disconnected from that reality worry that the Wascally Wepublicans will “shift more of the burden of higher education onto already overburdened students and their families.” Really?

Would reducing subsidies to beneficiaries of higher education “cripple North Carolina’s economy”? No. However, unsubsidized higher education would result in consumers choosing only offerings that would meet their needs; they would not pay to support all the excessive administrative costs, unproductive programs and the expense of social-justice propaganda. Universities would become much leaner, but still sought-after, valuable resources.

In fact, one could credibly argue that eliminating subsidies for higher education would result in much greater efficiencies in learning and, thus, improvements in our economy. Most students would invest their money only in learning that would help optimize their individual talents to achieve a higher standard of living—thus, benefiting all of society by the innovations and jobs they would create.