Is Property Tax Reform Needed?

File photo by Jeramey Jannene.

Every day at The Overhead Wire we sort through over 1,500 news items about cities and share the best ones with our email list. Each week, we take some of the most popular stories and share them with Urban Milwaukee readers. They are national (or international) links, sometimes entertaining and sometimes absurd, but hopefully useful.

Transit projects for 2025: Yonah Freemark is out with his annual update to his Transit Explorer program that shows all the fixed guideway transit projects planned, under construction, and completed in the United States. It’s interesting to see all the projects that are moving forward. Check out the map and his post here. An international update is forthcoming. (Yonah Freemark | Transport Politic)

Rethinking US housing construction: As cities in the United States struggle to build housing, perhaps they should take best practices in building from Vienna and Paris. From Vienna, take how they’ve flipped the entitlement and permitting process to reduce costs and from Paris take the already approved standard building plans that developers can choose from and neighborhoods have approved of for building. (Gerhard W. Mayer and  Lindsay Sturman | Common Edge)

Property tax reform and local inequities: Property tax revolts are happening right now but most people aren’t noticing. The movement is mostly people upset about higher property values that are resulting in higher taxes but it does bring into question whether the system needs reform. And there could be a silver lining, the development of a more equitable funding mechanism that reduces inequality. (David Schleicher | Slate)

An intergenerational arrangement: Shannon Penner moved into intergenerational housing as an experiment and found the experience beneficial all around. In exchange for housing, she had to volunteer 30 hours a month by socializing and teaching exercise classes. The folks she lived with gained companionship and understanding and she got access to affordable housing as she studied. (Shannon Penner | Maclean’s)

Forever chemicals reaching tap water: Research is finding that PFAS, commonly known as forever chemicals and linked to cancer, are finding their way into the water supply through treated wastewater. Studies are showing that after treatment the chemicals are becoming more concentrated and that sludge used as fertilizer for growing crops includes large amounts of PFAS as well, calling into question the practice. These findings emphasize that PFAS use must be cut down and eliminated to reduce contamination. (Hiroko Tabuchi | New York Times)

Quote of the Week

The reason you can get the same amount of energy to move a vehicle from a tiny fraction of the land area (just 0.65%!) is that plants are really, sh!tty solar panels. It’s easy to understand: The sunlight-to-energy conversion of plants is 0.023% versus 20% for a solar panel. (That’s nearly 1000x better.)

–Stephen Leahy in his newsletter Need to Know discussing benefits of replacing 30m acres of corn for ethanol with 200k acres of solar panels.

This week on the Talking Headways podcast, we are joined by Ryan Kelley, Community development Manager for Hennepin County in Minnesota.  Ryan chats with us about the county’s transit-oriented communities program and how they support commercial preservation and aid businesses.

Want more links to read? Visit The Overhead Wire and signup.