What I mean is, Muncie’s Fire Department with 100 firefighters can handle the city’s area when there are about 70,000 residents. When the number of residents increases to 70,001, or the area increases by one square acre, MFD doesn’t grow by one firefighter or one piece of equipment. The 100-firefighter threshold is good enough to handle over 70,000 residents in 28 square miles but at some point, it will not be and before that capacity is reached MFD will need to grow to the next threshold. If Muncie were to grow towards 100,000 residents and 38 square miles, MFD would need to increase the number of firefighters and the number of equipment and vehicles. Public safety departments increase their staffing by tens, not one or two personnel and you cannot build and purchase half of a fire truck.

Chuck Marohn (the founder and president of Strong Towns with decades of experience as a land use planner and civil engineer) describes this threshold or plateau growth rate better than I can. He does so by using a water storage tank as an example: “It’s even simpler to illustrate in terms of a water tower. A tower has a certain amount of storage capacity. It can provide service to a finite mix of commercial and residential property. Go over that finite amount and you’ll need to build another complete water tower. You can’t build a quarter of a tower or half a tower; it’s all or nothing. The capacity you have left in your water tower is your spare capacity.“ 

If you’re a fellow Munsonian, think about that last sentence. In essence, it is saying that the unused capacity in public systems is that system’s ability to take on growth. I don’t know about you, but I live in a neighborhood where neighbors get to hear, besides being told they live in the wrong neighborhood, the police just do not have the capacity to handle every call. And if you’ve lived in Muncie for longer than 4 years, you know we have a history of fire and police battling the city administration for more firefighters and officers. In fact, I can’t recall a time living in Muncie, where either said they didn’t need more staff, equipment, or facilities. Yet in that fiscal plan for the annexations, both departments claimed they have the capacity to cover these areas because they already are. I wonder if residents in these areas with half-a-million-dollar gross-assessed valued homes get the same level of police service as residents in the southside and near-downtown areas.

Those neighborhoods to be annexed already have roads, curbs, storm drains, and sanitation lines; and as the fiscal plan stated the Muncie Sanitary District is already serving these areas. (The Muncie Sanitary District is a special taxing unit that does not share the same boundaries as the city of Muncie or Center Township.) Just like providing non-capital services like public safety is expensive, so is maintaining streets. 

Muncie does not repair every section of the public right-of-way today. When citizens ask why their road or street didn’t get repaired, the city (no matter the administration) usually says something along the lines of not being able to fix every mile of city roadway. Or more simply, they lack the financial capacity to do so. That means every year more repairs are needed than can be addressed and so repairs begin to accumulate. Without the city sharing ongoing costs of current repairs, current repairs occurring, and repairs needed, it is near impossible to determine the amount in either area, distance, or cost of accumulated repairs. However, even without those figures, one thing is apparent, Muncie as we live, and as we operate does not generate enough revenue to pay for all the services required; and in fact, that amount is in deficit to the demand. 

While the fiscal plan goes over the net assessed value of these properties, it does so to explain how the property owners’ tax bill will not be increased by this annexation (never mind that property tax caps work on gross assessed value). It does not attempt to do any calculation to show the public investment needed to keep up this newly annexed public responsibility. The net property tax revenue from all proposed annexed areas using the 2023 pay 2024 property tax bill and the distribution rates of tax revenue to multiple public agencies is about $242,000 a year. 

There is approximately 900 feet of new road needed to connect the annexed area to a potential housing development. The fiscal plan for the annexation states the estimate for that connector road to be approximately $150,000. Let’s estimate the life expectancy for low-traffic road surfaced with asphalt is about 20 years even though we see our roads resurfaced more frequently. 

$ 150,000 / 20 years = $ 7,500 a year

The plan says there are approximately 4.4 lane miles of road in the areas to be annexed and estimates for the first year it will cost approximately $5,000 a lane mile to maintain. It is estimated to take about $20,000 a year to maintain the roads of the new annexed areas. Property tax revenue pays for more than just infrastructure, it must pay for public staffing, public safety, public debt, and a whole host of government incidentals. Let’s say that only 5% of property tax revenue goes toward the $20,000 road repairs and the $7,500 per year for the new connector road. How much do these annexations need to generate to pay for these roads? 

$ 27,500 / 0.05 = $550,000

If only 5% of property tax revenue goes directly toward road repair and the annual cost for the connector road, these annexations wouldn’t be worth enough to cover the cost. This simple calculation doesn’t take into effect the cost of other public services, the fact service delivery tends to be more expensive to deliver to the periphery of the city, or that infrastructure maintenance costs rise more quickly than inflation. 

That calculation also doesn’t contribute to addressing the City’s accumulated road repairs year after year and with approximately 350 lane miles the City could quickly accumulate more backlog repair. While these additions are only about 4.4 lane miles, they only add to the potential backlog of repairs and potentially create more inequity in public service delivery. 

As most most streets in Muncie have approximately the same cost to build, maintain, and service (there are no dirt roads in Muncie with lower costs, nor do Muncie households rely on septic whose financial burden is private), the lower the density, the fewer the people paying for any particular mile of infrastructure. Lower density also equates to longer 911 response times and less productivity for other services such as trash or code enforcement. Lower density also means slower travel times for all modes of transportation. While it may be obvious that the longer a distance, the more time it will take to walk or bike somewhere, it also means parents need to spend more time transporting kids, and that transit service is infeasible for anyone who cannot drive. Further, development that is only based on driving is not self-serving. Higher density means safe travel speeds in populated areas and faster travel speeds in the country where population is sparse. Sprawl development means traveling fast enough to not be safe or comfortable, but not fast enough to get anywhere expediently.

The two neighborhoods total area is 110 acres, 140 parcels, which generates about $427,000 in gross assessed value per acre and $4,600 in annual property taxes per acre. The areas are suburbs to Muncie lying on the periphery of the city (hence annexation). The two areas total about 264 residents resulting in a density of 2.4 people per acre. It is interesting to compare that performance to an existing dense residential area in 47305. One acre in a near-downtown residential area consists of 8 parcels with 20 residents. That same 8 parcel, 20 resident acre generates about $450,000 in gross assessed value and $6,200 in annual property taxes per acre. That downtown neighborhood totals 180 acres with 1600 residents (a density of 8.9 residents per acre) but has poor public infrastructure and struggles with appropriate police response. This is the neighborhood the city doesn’t have the current capacity to serve and yet it out performs the proposed areas to be annexed in annual gross assessed value per acre and property taxes per acre. 

Speaking of density, the Together DM plan calls for a focus away from sprawl, and to lay the foundation for higher density areas. It demonstrates where there is the highest demand and most private action in housing is – in suburbs like the areas considered for annexation – and in areas where there is low housing demand it calls for public intervention – in downtown neighborhoods that outperform suburbs in terms of gross assessed value per acre and property taxes per acre. 

Muncie has existing neighborhoods that outperform these suburbs with existing streets that cannot be maintained annually. If existing neighborhoods cannot attract new residents or retain existing citizens, then investment is needed there, where there is a higher return. Today, Muncie cannot generate the revenue needed to maintain its existing built footprint resulting in needed repairs accumulating annually. The municipal practices have not improved the prosperity of current residents; which in turn leads to a leveling off or declining investment in property which keeps values low or even depressed. Annexations have to make more than sense; they must make dollars, not just for new residents but the existing ones too. If they cannot reasonably pay for their foreseeable long-term public costs, then they will contribute to the accumulation of repairs by being deferred themselves or in other areas as they receive disproportionate attention than denser, core neighborhoods with greater value per acre.