Crowley, Texas
Informing future land use & growth management plans
Project objective
Use fiscal analysis and context data to inform future land use, housing and infrastructure elements of Comprehensive Plan to position the city for a fiscally sustainable future after the growth phase.
1.
FROM APPRAISED VALUE TO REVENUE PER ACRE
The first step we always start with is to explain the difference between appraised value and revenue per acre. Here is what the difference looks like for Crowley:
Appraised value
This map shows the appraised value of each lot in Crowley. Bigger lots tend to have a higher value while smaller lots have a lower value.
Revenue per acre
When you take the property tax levy revenue for a property and divide it by the area of the parcel, you get the actual amount of revenue the city collects per acre of land. This map shows the revenue per acre for each parcel.
2.
FACTORING IN COSTS
Then, we factor in the city’s budgeted costs along with projected services and unfunded liabilities to get a clearer picture of their long-term fiscal situation.
Revenue minus current budget →
When cities budget, they set costs to match the revenue they expect to come in that year. When we allocate the costs down to the parcel level though, we can see which parcels are revenue positive, and which ones cost more to serve than they generate in revenue. We present this information two ways: a net revenue map that shows the net (revenue minus costs) for the parcels, and an ROI (return on investment) map, which shows the amount the city gets back in revenue for each dollar it spends on services. This map shows the net revenue per acre for levy revenue and budgeted costs for Crowley.
Unfunded liabilities →
Crowley’s future street replacement costs were approximately $127M. Unlike older cities that are behind on maintenance, Crowley has the opportunity to proactively plan for these replacement costs in future years. For our modeling, we spread these costs out over 30 years. When we distributed the $4.2M annual funding gap across the parcels to show the projected cost (or what we sometimes call the “true cost”) to serve development, some parcels and patterns continued to operate at a gain even with the additional costs. These are reflected in green on the map. Note how many of the parcels that were green in the previous map turn red.
This process and these two maps together were used to help city leaders think about how the development they build today impacts the future fiscal health of the city.
Here’s what this looks like with each step layered on top of one another:
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3.
ANALYSIS
Once the modeling is done, we can explore how different development patterns perform and use this data to inform land use, zoning, infrastructure and investment decisions.
Revenue/acre by lot size and structural value (residential and commercial)
Like many cities, Crowley was asking the question “what home value is enough to pay for itself?” Charts like those shown here help us communicate why revenue per acre is a more useful metric for cities to think about, and how this number changes for different lot and structural value combinations. For both residential and commercial properties, we see the same trend: value per acre is highest for the smallest properties (left of chart), and trends down as the property size goes up.
This information was used to communicate the value of more dense, small scale development, especially in the context of maximizing the return on taxpayer investment. The bigger the lot, the lower this return is.
Performance by land use code and zoning districts
Data from the models was also reviewed to assess how different land use and zoning districts perform with the current budget and with projected/unfunded service costs and infrastructure liabilities. This map shows the ROI for current and unfunded street costs for the city’s current zoning districts.
4.
PROJECTING A BUILDOUT SCENARIO
Once we have a baseline of how current development patterns are performing and what the city’s funding gap is, we can explore potential scenarios and solutions to see how they impact the city’s fiscal health.
Identifying opportunities to increase value capture
Once we quantified the city’s fiscal gap and gathered information on how existing development was performing under current and future cost conditions, the discussion shifted to how Crowley could close their fiscal gap. First, we looked at several scenarios that considered new development of remaining greenfield sites along with redevelopment and infill of downtown and existing neighborhoods. Context information from Crowley and other communities in Verdunity’s database was used to project the fiscal performance of different scenarios. The process we used essentially put a price tag to different development scenarios and asked the community to pick the option they were most comfortable paying for.
5.
KEY OUTCOMES
Exploring the math, maps and money helps communities make more informed decisions and build transparency and trust with residents and developers.
The comprehensive planning process is ongoing. Currently, we are in the scenario evaluation process. The plan development is expected to be complete in November, with final adoption in December.
“The critical takeaway from our work is that a city can help close its funding gap through adjusting its development pattern, potentially without raising taxes. Our objective is to provide information and new perspective so that city leaders can align their development and service model with what citizens are willing and able to pay for - now and in the future.”
Client contact information
Jack Thompson, Assistant City Manager
jthompson@ci.crowley.tx.us