Ah, the old "they only need to double the budget" approach.
So simple and straight forward.
What are they cutting to do that?
That's not really the point. A Ponzi scheme at some point blows up and everything falls apart. But their worst case is the suburbs have to fill <10% of their budget.
No, if the replacement cost is not being factored into to the ongoing costs then it isn't "they just need to double their infrastructure budget" to fix it. They needed to do that over 20 years, the entire lifetime of the infastructure. Every year where the 'true' cost is not being paid means even higher costs later.
> What are they cutting to do that?
False dichotomy.
You can cover a budget where you double a 10% entry by increasing taxes 10%.
Or increase taxes 5% and cut 5% over the remaining 95% budget.
Or a mix in between.
This isn't rocket science. It's politics. In a democracy it is literally nothing more than a matter of personal will by an elected official. Budgets are drafted every year.
Yes, and the history of municipalities raising taxes to actually cover the infrastructure/other costs is that residents that can move out to other municipalities still using the Growth Ponzi strategy to keep taxes low.
No, not really. That's just the strawman you've grabbed hold to. Quite literally every single government institution has its budget set each and every single year, and every single public institution has to allocate their resources to their programs. Even though it's politically easier to increase debt and spending, let's not fool ourselves into believing a fairytale about how no expenditure has ever been lowered ever.
The numbers out there suggest that for 50-100% more spending we could fix everything. That means spending 20% or less of the budget instead of 10% or less. Even a worst case scenario is not the apocalypse Strong towns suggests.
And more to the point it ignores the things that are a threat. As an example, today Flint spends half the budget paying pensions for retired workers. Then there's things like Social Security, Health care costs, education costs, and housing costs. We have a lot of large and looming problems that defy a simple solution. Infrastructure is easy by comparuson.