But awareness is a chronic problem.
I've been actively trying to be oblivious to more things as a way to stop myself from constant anxiety.
Chronic helps with awareness problems.
Cities under 100,000 (unless they're surrounded by rurality on all sides) are a mistake. Metropolitan boroughs for everyone!
And even the metropolitan boroughs are going to be bad at distributing means-tested social welfare. You need a bureaucracy with big data for that.
3 is probably true. But we used to be surrounded by rural country on all sides, and we're not yet close enough to one of the major cities to be adopted by them.
A funny thing that happens is that frequently, when Austin wants to launch a project aimed at rural counties or measure how rural counties are doing, or whatever, they come use us as a test case because we're close and feel comfortable. So we end up getting a disproportionate amount of "rural" benefits because we're not actually hard to get to.
6: I know Texas cities still do a lot of annexations (less here in CA), but do cities merge anymore, or is it just a perpetual patchwork of whoever incorporated first?
There was a case in Nebraska where a small town tried to annex (unwillingly) smaller town so that it would have too large of a population to be annexed (even more unwillingly) by Omaha. Omaha won, I think.
If you're interested in how Columbus managed to grow without the Columbus City Schools District growing --
https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/education/2016/05/28/win-win-q-agreement-was/23537733007/
I'm in a city about 13% of whose land area (probably a greater share of population) is not in the school district of the same name, but shares with the unincorporated area to the south.
7: There was a recent law change around annexations that's made it much more difficult. (Agreement by all parties, maybe?) So all of a sudden, my understanding is that state-wide, development agreements are massively in ascent as the workaround.
What are "development agreements" in this context?
Contracts with specific developers trading tax credits and agreeing to run utilities to them in exchange for them speculating on some piece of property. With only the vaguest promise of what the land will turn into.
Usually they do agree to abide by city ordinances.
Locally we created a law that landlords have to give a flier discussing tenant/eviction protections to new tenants when they move in. So it's more targeted than just mailing everyone in the city a flier (though I think we did that too). It hasn't been in place long enough to find out how much it helps, though. Or if it's being enforced or checked by anybody.
Contracts with specific developers trading tax credits
Tax credits are the biggest scam. Instead of paying for things directly there is this whole credits trading scheme where businesses get to skim off a piece of what might have been social spending.
In the class action business, we frequently have settlements where we send emails saying, click on this button in the email, confirm your address is accurate or update, and you get a check. Often hundreds of dollars, not unusual in the thousands. Rare to get a 20% acceptance rate, even if the email list is up to date and the recipients are sophisticated folk who get large checks.*
The only foolproof method is to cut out the application entirely. E.g. in a case about a defective product sold through Amazon, all Class Members get a gift card added to their account. Theoretically could be done with utilities or large landlords: the electric company or landlord provides a list of people with overdue accounts, and the Fund is divided among the accounts. If there's a means test, it's harder but you could do this for families on the utility/landlord list who are also eligible for free school lunch, or a similar program.
Probably not permissible under current law, but may be doable in limited situations.
Tax credits are the biggest scam. Instead of paying for things directly there is this whole credits trading scheme where businesses get to skim off a piece of what might have been social spending.
It made sense on paper in the 1986 tax reform when they were looking at a really Christmas-tree-laden tax code that needed simplification. So the reform here was, stop subsidizing all construction indiscriminately, replace it with a more targeted tax expenditure (LIHTC) to subsidize genuine affordable housing. But in retrospect, it created a way too complex system that only worked for relatively large nonprofits. I now think we should restore the pre-1986 system where all housing gets an unrealistically rapid depreciation schedule (say 15 years), but only for dense multifamily, so that that gets a leg up over sprawl in the market, and it's more profitable to build than to landlord.
Wait, it's that much?! I always assumed it was at most $15 or something.
I've tried to fill those out, and I always get bogged down in the details and bail.
Tax credits are the biggest scam. Instead of paying for things directly there is this whole credits trading scheme where businesses get to skim off a piece of what might have been social spending.
This. And it's such a race to the bottom. If we all stopped giving tax credits, the businesses would keep doing everything 100% the same, but elected officials are scared that businesses will go somewhere else if you don't make a great offer.
I am convinced that tax credits do not actually affect where a business chooses to locate one iota. That the costs of operating and benefits of running their business in a given location is actually the entire decision.
Oh yeah, if we're talking about the "please locate your business here, here is our tax money" discretionary-type tax credits, those should be banned outright.
In our city, we wanted to fund a program to winterize some of our more run-down housing stock, so we applied for a grant that got us a bunch of tax credits. Then we sold the tax credits to a business so we could get the money. I really don't understand why these things need to be structured so the business gets inserted as a middleman to that transaction.
"please locate your business here, here is our tax money" discretionary-type tax credits
I think so? The city never writes a check to the business, it just agrees not to collect taxes for a while, or to forego some portion of the taxes.
Not collecting taxes is cutting a check with one extra step.
24, 25: Depends on the case. Just read the email, they're usually short! If it's for a cheap defective product that only costs a few dollars, you won't get much. But we have one now where $50 million will be distributed to about 3,000 current and former California insurance agents who were stiffed on expense reimbursement over several years. And they aren't clicking the link.
You have to admit publicly that you sold insurance? No thanks.
Usually I get ones that are like "Did you shop at The Gap or Old Navy between 2005 and 2015?" and it's like, well yes I did! Can I recall any supporting details? not without effort!
The other thing municipalities trying to distribute money can do is bring in professional marketing. Municipal employees may do their best to create flyers, but marketing isn't their interest or their skill, and . Bring in an ad agency connected to a payday loan, or low end tax prep business. They know how to reach the people who qualify for rent relief, and get them to fill out some forms! If hiring some marketing consultants helps gets more people to take advantage of federal money, it pays for itself.
Allegedly, for some demographics an invitation to apply sent by text will do much better than an email. Or maybe posters with large headlines and QR codes at hair salons will reach the people. There are professionals who know this stuff.
33: You have the details if you shopped at Amazon, or Sams Club, or Costco . . . yeah, those usually are barely worth it. But if its 10 bucks, and you can get the data by signing into one account and seqrching for one word, why not?
I mean, I probably don't even open the emails.
34: Probably true, my new rule though is that if somebody (like a politician or advocacy group) asks me to do something over text, I ignore them and block.
For certain things, I've come around to liking old school fliers. Like, I went for a walk in the mill town next to mine, and they had posters up about events at the library and local independent theater as well as an arts festival. I don't need a clas in how to use gmail from the library, but I'd go to the arts thing.
I know that targeting vulnerable citizens must be extremely labor intense.
Just sending out info from The Government is pretty ineffective. You have to find people where they are, using community partners that already have presence in the populations you're trying to reach. For my (and Nathan's) community, some of those are the Haitian churches, the Brazilian radio station, private clubs (italian, greek), hair salons and barbershops. The schools, for some family-related initiatives, like diapers and food. (Not coincidentally, hese are the same networks used to increase vaccine penetration in underserved communities.)
That would be been funnier if I'd said "needles". My apologies.
If not funnier, more logically consistent.
But "arms" has the perk of being bleaker.
I'm trying to be beside the point but cheerful.
... Heebieville is seen as a stepping stone to a real place ...
Sounds like every position in university administration up to becoming president at one of HYPS
I feel like you've insulted Gordon Gee.
Yeah, like Blume said, the actual answer for effective outreach on government programs is to partner with local nonprofits and community organizations that already have a place in the lives of the people you're trying to reach. It's not always easy but it's the most effective way.
The mayor has been sandbagging the committee on homelessness that we had to twist his arm to get him to agree to. I'm hoping the committee will come out with some language in the report that can at least keep the idea of legalized camping alive in some form. The way he wanted to write the report was to start by explaining why camping wasn't going to happen as part of his opening letter. The committee pushed back a bit, but doesn't exactly seem to be ready to embrace a campground either. I think we are in for a few more rounds of this. Unfortunately that means limited progress before winter.