Making Our Grandchildren Pay for Yesterday's Potholes?

City Council Wants Future Generations to Pay For Their Failures 

The environmental activist Wendell Berry wrote: the world is not given by his fathers but borrowed from his children. The Berkeley City Council’s $650 million mega bond is the embodiment of taking from our children. When City Council discussed the mega bond, they debated how to make the cost “acceptable” to voters. Their solution was to use a credit card and spread the repayment period over 45 years. Unfortunately, as we all know, credit card companies charge interest, so the cost of repayment will be upwards of $1.2 billion.

Long repayment periods make sense in some situations. For example, we took this approach to cover the cost of under-grounding Berkeley’s BART tracks. Under-grounding benefits our children by providing future aesthetic and environmental returns and preserving space. However, in the case of Berkeley’s mega bond, City Council is asking future generations to pay for yesterday’s problems. Specifically, City Council has failed to maintain our parks, sidewalks, bike lanes, Marina and other infrastructure.

To be clear, our infrastructure is in desperate need of repair, and Within Our Means Berkeley actively supported a new tax for this specific purpose. We spoke at City Council in favor of a parcel tax dedicated towards repairing our streets and sidewalks. We supported a parcel tax because it is a “pay as you go” policy. Rather than using a credit card, you collect a dedicated “repair tax” each year and then spend it to fix what is broken. The costs are paid up front rather than pushing them down the road and saddling future generations with burdensome interest payments.

Why would City Council forgo this common sense approach in favor of imposing burdensome interest payments on future generations? We suspect the answer may lie in the fact they are not committed to fixing infrastructure at all. They have competing visions for how the $650 million will be spent. City Council’s priorities include a $122 million recreational pier, approximately $100 million to renovate the Civic Center, and $200 million for subsidized housing. By opening a $650 million line of credit, City Council will have a blank check to spend as it chooses. It is unclear whether any of our existing infrastructure will be repaired. What is clear is that our grandchildren will be left to foot the bill. 

$1.2 Billion in Debt is a Lot to Be Tied To - 

The Embodiment of Taking From Our Children