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To be crystal clear here, I'm not complaining about funding parks. I'm complaining about misplaced priorities for additional funding created by Fritz through higher fees that will drive up the cost of development.
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Yeah, agreed.
I think the problem is the proverbial cart is being placed in front of the horse. They want the money first, then they'll decide what to spend it on later. Even as a liberal progressive I see this approach as being fiscally irresponsible.
500 million dollars for parks is also ridiculous, and I have no idea how that much money could even be spent. A big centerpiece park might cost 30 million, a big facility like an indoor sports and aquatics center might cost 20 million. Both things are crown jewel items that most cities only have a few of, and build after years of planning.
Ideally advocates for parks, homeless services, etc, should have their own carefully constructed long term plans and wishlists and then the city has something to go off of when deciding how much revenue they need to raise to spend on which of those projects. That process of deciding what is worthy and when to pursue something helps everyone in coming up with the best ideas.
If they go the other direction, where the city is offering up a bunch of money that must be spent immediately, I fear a lot of it will get wasted because it will go to things that were rushed or whose only merits were being shovel-ready at the time(incidentally, this is how Robert Moses took over NYC). Careful plans could be disrupted when all of a sudden there is a massive change. And then everyone is left with disjointed public services and giant white elephant civic assets that are hard for future generations to maintain.