St. Paul’s proposed sales tax increase would allow for a serious investment in city parks and streets. It’s been sold as a pothole fix, but here’s a cyclist’s case for the policy.
Cities, try this one weird trick to encourage efficient land use! We sit down with Michael Krantz from Metro Transit to dig into a study his office did on what the effects of allowing LVT in Minnesota could be.
[This post first appeared on the blog The Smallest Cog, a bike shop in downtown Saint Paul that recently closed after a robbery. You can read more about why they shut their doors here.] As we close out our second season in the business we have been reflecting on who we are, what our niche […]
Every day at The Overhead Wire, we collect news about cities and send the links to our email list. At the end of the week we take some of the most popular stories and post them to Greater Greater Washington, a group blog similar to streets.mn that focuses on urban issues in the D.C. region. […]
The recent Seward Commons debate highlighted an important discussion about how the city uses Tax Increment Financing, or TIF. It’s one of the few financial tools cities have and control fully. But it’s not broadly understood. So what is TIF and how does it work? What has Minneapolis used it for in the past? What […]
Last week, an extensive discussion of parking garages and parking as an employee benefit occurred here at streets.mn. As I read the discussion, one thing really stood out to me: Commuter benefits are wildly inequitable, and companies are given more incentive to provide parking than any other possible benefit. Beyond issues like the Fed garage, the issue […]
Every day at The Overhead Wire we collect news about cities and send the links to our email list. At the end of the week we take some of the most popular stories and post them to Greater Greater Washington, a group blog similar to streets.mn that focuses on urban issues in the DC region. […]
In Part I I covered the basics of what property taxes are. This time I’ll dive into how exactly property taxes are calculated, starting with (for Minneapolis) the half billion dollar question. What is tax capacity? In its simplest form, the tax capacity of a property is its taxable market value (explained below) multiplied by its class […]
Via Pedal Fort Collins, here’s a simple chart showing the basic relationship between vehicle weight and the amount of “damage” or wear that is caused to the roadway. The relationship is pretty straightforward, but thanks to the magic of gasoline, people often forget to think about the weight disparities on our roads. Thus the chart, where […]
As I write this, the 2016 Minnesota legislative session is coming to a close, and last-minute discussions are taking place to try and sort out transportation funding. One of the major options is the possibility of a 0.5% metro-area sales tax for transit, an increase from the 0.25% currently collected for the Counties Transit Improvement Board. […]