Pirate's Cove

I’d suggest that all those who Believe stand up, make themselves known, and get taxed out the ying yang

With federal aid dwindling, how can cities embed climate resilience in their budgets?

Over two decades, Geography Professor Mark Davidson of Clark’s School of Climate, Environment, and Society has emerged a leading expert on the municipal budgeting and fiscal health of cities grappling with shifting economic, demographic, and political realities.

Working in international finance in London and obtaining a Ph.D. from King’s College, Davidson observed the city’s exploding housing crisis and wealth inequities of the 2000s.

The urban geographer then turned his attention to the U.S. At Clark since 2010, he has examined U.S. “donut cities” like San Francisco and San José, with downtowns hollowed out by the global pandemic, growing homelessness, and fleeing businesses and customers; the gentrification of historically industrial cities like Detroit and Clark’s host city of Worcester, Massachusetts; municipalities’ Chapter 9 bankruptcies after the 2008 Great Recession; and local governments’ responses to ever-growing public pension liabilities.

So, basically Democrat run cities destroying themselves

Yet, Davidson says, cities now face an additional, unpredictable and daunting fiscal pressure layered onto all of these existing obligations: climate change.

“When I look at the obligations that cities have — the bonds they have outstanding, the pension promises they’ve made, the OPEBs [other post-employment benefits] that they carry, the deferred maintenance, there’s a big debt stack there,” said Davidson, whose current book project, “Red Ink Urbanism” (University of Minnesota Press), examines how accumulated fiscal obligations in Nashville, Buffalo, and San José shape urban governance and capacity.

Or, they could just say “weather happens, let’s not freak out.” Of course, all that money is ripe for being spread around to friends, family, associates.

In Massachusetts, Hoffer said, the Healey administration identified $90 billion to $130 billion worth of investments needed to address extreme-climate-related issues, including improving culverts, dams, and other infrastructures and maintaining natural carbon sinks — trees and wetlands — to prevent coastal and inland flooding. The administration created the Massachusetts Community Climate Bank to preserve and retrofit affordable housing for energy efficiency.

“It’s now achieving 70 to 100 percent-modeled energy reduction, which is incredible because that means lifetime energy cost savings for the inhabitants of that housing,” she said.

Residents also can obtain low-interest loans from the Community Climate Bank to fortify or replace their roofs and add solar panels, as well as install energy-efficient heat pumps.

I’d love for the whole program to be audited just like a private business, see where that money is actually going.

Hoffer acknowledged the lack of funding as well. “There will never be enough public dollars,” she said. “What we had previously in the IRA was a good accelerator. But now without that, we have to figure it out.”

Tax the Warmists!

Read: Say, How Can Cities Make Up For All That Missing Federal Money To Fight Climate Doom? »