Articles

The survey came back with three loud, shared wishes: don’t change Nowthen, fix the roads, and don’t raise taxes. You can have any two of those. You cannot have all three. Here is why, in the city’s own budget.

You’ve heard that development “grows the tax base.” Here is the math behind that idea: how the city tax rate is set, why even a lot of new residential development may not move the needle on the rate even with an expanded tax base, and what it costs every home in Nowthen to keep the city undeveloped, worked through a real commercial project proposed in recent Nowthen history.

The council voted 3 to 2 to order a new tandem dump truck and plow instead of rebuilding the city’s 26-year-old Sterling. Here are the real numbers, why a used truck was not the cheap shortcut it sounds like, and why salt, not mileage, retires a plow truck.