“Cities also assume the long-term liability for servicing and maintaining all the new infrastructure, a promise that won’t come fully due for decades.”
A new subdivision pays the city up front in permit fees and taxes. The pipes and roads it leaves behind come due thirty years later. The only way to cover that bill is more new growth. Every suburb that balances its budget this way is borrowing from a future council that will have to raise taxes or let the streets crumble.