Cities And Housing Archive
Thread: City Profitability
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WindSerpent
Wed Feb 09, 2005 2:27 pm
#1
I am just curious to know if there are any cities out there that are truly profitable on their own. I am the mayor of a Rebel city on the Shadowfire server, we have about 75 citizens and we survive mostly on donations. Before they changed the elections from weekly to every three weeks we seemed to survive and break even most weeks. I noticed a huge drop in revenue when this change took effect, is this when the sales tax bug occurred? At the time I assumed taxes simply were not being collected. Once I found out about the sales tax bug we set our sales tax to zero. Just by doing the math a city of my size will only collect about half the revenue necessary to support the city from Property and Income taxes. To me that means Sales Tax is a must for the city to survive. Anyone else have any comments on this?
MyT_Chicken
Wed Feb 09, 2005 3:09 pm
#2
In my experiences, Citys aren't profitable regardless what you do. Which is why we killed ours. It was costing us so much to keep it alive, after we got rid of the city we started seeing the guild start earning money.
I don't much care for cities as they are now. Yeah they are nice, but they are just to hard to manage and keep alive.
jexicredent9669
Wed Feb 09, 2005 3:16 pm
#3
What we did was setup a vendor where citizens can donate loot or whatever they want. All the profits except the vendor mant goes into city hall. This tactic has managed to keep us from setting up a Tax at all. If you havecitizens who really want to help then this is a good way to do it.
Kinshi
Wed Feb 09, 2005 3:49 pm
#4
I dont care what kind of government you run, you will have a deficit because few are willing to spend less than the government earns
It is doable, though you have to be willing to only operate items within the city budget (from property tax, shuttle fees, and the towns cut from the garage). It may mean not having all kinds of street lamps and parks, and if the cash is really tight. it could mean not having certain types of mission terminals and trainers.
Lets not forget about the perks many politicans offer new citizens, like free bikes and houses. Thats gotta get paid for somehow.
Basically having a government run at break even means someone doesnt get something (forget about profits). The a government will always be at a deficit as long as a politician wants to get elected, because he has to promise something to somebody, and its likely the budget wont cover whatever he promises.
its a slippery slope I tell ya.
imho, if you operate a city off of citizen donations, you are treading political thin ice, because the contributors will want you to spend their money they way they want you too (just like r/l politics). If you piss them off, then you risk money flow to the town being cut off.
its even tougher if you are a new politican looking to run against a long time incumbent/city founder as then you have to navigate the politics of the town and the guilds that occupy it..
It is doable, though you have to be willing to only operate items within the city budget (from property tax, shuttle fees, and the towns cut from the garage). It may mean not having all kinds of street lamps and parks, and if the cash is really tight. it could mean not having certain types of mission terminals and trainers.
Lets not forget about the perks many politicans offer new citizens, like free bikes and houses. Thats gotta get paid for somehow.
Basically having a government run at break even means someone doesnt get something (forget about profits). The a government will always be at a deficit as long as a politician wants to get elected, because he has to promise something to somebody, and its likely the budget wont cover whatever he promises.
its a slippery slope I tell ya.
imho, if you operate a city off of citizen donations, you are treading political thin ice, because the contributors will want you to spend their money they way they want you too (just like r/l politics). If you piss them off, then you risk money flow to the town being cut off.
its even tougher if you are a new politican looking to run against a long time incumbent/city founder as then you have to navigate the politics of the town and the guilds that occupy it..
Kinshi
Thu Feb 10, 2005 11:56 am
#5
Its been my observation that folks tend to go overboard on the parks & street lamps in big cities, and the cost of those things add up fast, then toss in duplicate banks & mission terminals and you have another money pit.
I know in my own city the property taxes only cover 25% of the budget at current levels (not counting citizenship perks), and we havent been getting the shuttleport & garage traffic like we used to, so the rest of the budget is being made up by donations to the city.
I know in my own city the property taxes only cover 25% of the budget at current levels (not counting citizenship perks), and we havent been getting the shuttleport & garage traffic like we used to, so the rest of the budget is being made up by donations to the city.
Cdapolito
Thu Feb 10, 2005 1:54 pm
#6
Player Cities are a money sink, they aren't supposed to be profitable. If you skin back to the bare necesseties then you can come close to breaking even at Metropolis (if i remember the math)... if the sales tax is working
josslyn
Fri Feb 11, 2005 3:44 am
#7
I've had 1 Rank 5 City (Metropolis) since September 04. I had taxes in my city when we were still growing but once we reached a Rank 4 I removed all city taxes. I found that more people were willing to "donate" then just give up their money by paying taxes.
Never once have we been "profitable" - but you know something, i don't care. I enjoy the interaction i get with my citizens every day. I LOVE planning new layouts with the main city structures, etc. Solace costs just under 800k a week to operate.. but i'd never give it up for anything.
And as of later today i will be voted into office for another Metropolis City with my "alternate" toon. Both cities will recieve equal attention by me and my citizens. It's difficult to operate any city - but especially difficult when you don't have citizens that are willing to support it at any and all costs. I guess i lucked out with both of my cities as i have fantastic citizens that all donate on a regular basis. 
Solace has 109 loyal citizens
Mos Tera has 90 loyal citizens
Message Edited by josslyn on 02-11-2005 05:45 AM
Message Edited by josslyn on 02-11-2005 05:46 AM
Willvas
Fri Feb 11, 2005 6:06 am
#8
Well when sales tax was added into the city treasury we never had to donate money into the treasury we in fact started gaining and building our treasury although we tax everything...nobody seemed to care because it is indirect and nobody can really see the money or take time to raise the money so in essence it wasnt a problem...
but then the sales tax stopped working so now we need to start picking stuff up we dropped specialization and now we are still losing money sales tax was huge for our city as our city makes a lot of big sales and it was the backbone of our city....
now it is killing us they need to fix this fast....
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