On Friday, March 8th in a special meeting of the Waxhaw Board of Commissioners, Randall Arendt (Fellow of the Royal Town Planning Institute) from Greener Prospects was brought in as an expert, and stated that “you never get more tax dollars from development unless it’s non-residential”. However, there are a few exceptions:
- Age-restricted with no school children
- Seasonal housing (only occupied for 3-4 months per year)
- Super large houses (mansions that pay a lot of property tax)
If this is true, our town has not been pursuing the kind of residential development that pays for itself. That is, residential development which pays enough in property taxes to fund the services they consume.
In a very small town it could be argued that population is needed before commercial growth can be supported, but this is not the case in Waxhaw as there is already plenty of demand for commercial space in our downtown. We also have plenty of visitors and passthrough traffic from surrounding areas that help support our businesses.