Is Columbus a liberal city?

[Parker]

Andrew Hall wrote >>
@gramarye I know we are in the same chapter if not on the same page for most of this.
I think by their very nature cities are going to be more regulated and planned. And living in them is a consensual act based on the payoff being higher than the costs in liberties forgone. If one doesn’t want to pay that cost, one doesn’t have to live in the city. What I object to is that much of that choice has been artificially weighted against the city and the cities even pay for that. Not just gas tax allocation but the true cost of water/sewer (like runoff), emergency services and other subsidies. The anti-urbanites live in an illusory world which is willfully oblvious to how much their choices have been subsidized all the while wailing about it when it might go the other way. It is exactly entitlement mentality.
A.
A.

Andrew – I think your above comment makes a lot of sense. Coleman stated in his State of the City that one of the reasons Columbus is “able to pay its bills” is the process of growth it follows in which the city basically says “you want sewer and water, you join us”, unlike many cities that run pipe and end up subsidizing the suburbs. By the way, that’s old school conservatism for anyone keeping track of our Democratic liberals at City Hall.

One clarification – By “antiurbanite” do you refer to suburban and exurban as well as rural, or one of the above?

[Andrew Hall]

Parker wrote
One clarification – By “antiurbanite” do you refer to suburban and exurban as well as rural, or one of the above?

Yes.

More seriously, it is complicated. On the gas tax issue, the suburbs get the shaft as well. On other aspects of development like big box retailers surface lots creating burden and cost on the sewer infrastructure, suburbs/ex-urbs get effectively subsidized. In the big picture, the population centers (urban/sub/ex) have a large degree of interdependence and much of that is opaque. And the rural areas are also subsidized from mail to the classic rural telecom tax to the aforementioned road money distribution. I am not saying that any of these are a priori bad things, just that they get ignored whenever these discussions occur.

A.

[Parker]

I agree. Many suburbs and exurbs are finding that subsidies are needed because residential taxes just don’t pay the bills for the services needed to make them exist. On top of it, the tax incentives that bring in big box stores become a drain on the tax base because they don’t pay in and sometimes their “shelf life” doesn’t go much beyond the tax breaks. Sawmill is a good example: I lived off of Hard Rd. when Sawmill was being developed for strip malls and shopping plazas in the 90s. A drive through the shopping second-tier shopping centers today (just off Sawmill) shows a wasteland of developed retail space that is vacant. Yet, the same development continues to occur north, to Powell and beyond.

[ehill27]

“…in [Columbus] there are five registered Democrats for every three Republicans and the unaffiliated majority tends to lean Democratic.”

Source: http://www.dispatchpolitics.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/04/18/copy/sb-5-likely-to-swing-voting.html?adsec=politics&sid=101

[melikecheese]

I think most cities are, at least the voters who live directly in them, political maps by polling location and county always seem to be blue around major cities. But I suppose that’s a fairly simplistic view…

[ehill27]

“Democrats outvote Republicans in Columbus by a 4-to-1 ratio.”

Source: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2014/12/07/columbus-mayors-race-might-draw-several-prominent-politicians.html

[GeeDee]

In my 7 years of living here, I find Columbus to be largely full of raging moderates. Which is an improvement over, say, 10-20 years ago.

(I’m also one of those who doesn’t equate being or voting Democrat with being liberal).

[Author]

Posts