Politician Archive

Well in the past I had always operated harvestors planted on volunteer's lots to pay the cost of running the city. On my server the resource market bottomed out so as to make that no longer profitable.

This leaves me with the problem of finding new ways to raise revenue for the city. If at all possible I'd rather not raise taxes to maximum (they are already at 1500 credits per week, and 20% maintenance, which is high enough so far as I'm concerned).

I have around 40 citizens and a weekly maintenance of 250k or so.

So how do you fund your city? If it's just, I have millions of credits and pay for everything myself, then can you lend me some advice on how someone with less of a bank account might find funding?

Koweim

By properly taxing the residents of the city. Don't take in less than it takes to keep the city going. Plain and simple.

People have little to no reason to **edit** about paying 5k - 10k per week. Yes of course they'll **edit** anyway, but I strongly recommend you talk some sense into them, or start notching down city services to cover the gap.

When trainers, fountains, and other city stuff start going by by people will take notice.

Cheylin Mena - R.I.P.
Menon Mena - R.I.P.
Hunglo Bavmador - R.I.P.

That's all well and good, but those things are the CHEAPEST part of running a city by far. And the citizens don't have to stand for it when there are dozens of cities per planet that they could move to instead.

Even still how would I enforce 5-10k weekly from the residents? It can't be done automatically, and I'd constantly be going after people to pay.

Koweim

---

stupid_people_happen . .
Pappi Inc Tailoring (home of the black tax) - Odi's meds and chef tissues - closed
- I support literacy, common sense, and apostrophes

I have around 38 citizens. My taxes are 2000k income, 50% property, but 0% Sales (To make merchants happy). So far only two people complained about taxes. But I mean, I would raise it to 5000k income if I could. 2k is nothing. The best thing to do is this. Just send a mail to your guild/city and say that the only way to pay hundreds of thousands of credits is taxes or donations. I get pretty upset when somone complains about taxes. My city is only 120k creds right now but I cant pay that weekly. Another thing to do is cut down on decorations. Put 1 fountain in front of the city hall, and maybe 5 lamps, and 2 statues in the whole city max. For more scenic cities, you may want more, but mines more like a military city so statues mostly go well with it. Another way to raise money is do missions with your city, and the money they get from the missions gets tipped to you for the city. This way they dont actually lose anything.

Lexx Yovel

ORegal Imperial DefendersO
--"Rid of that Rebel scum"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lexx Yovel: Leader of RID; Mayor of Fort Oasis, Tatooine (Officer)
Hel'mut Yovel: Mayor of Fort Farpoint Valley, Tatooine (Spy)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
RID Forums_______________RID Thread________________RID Videos
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I had a city maintenance of 760k each week. 280k was due to gardens. I was paying for this out of my own pocket, and using the city taxes to pay for the standard 500k or so of bills for a metropolis. Removing some gardens, getting others sponsored and raising some taxes helped. I have promised to reduce taxes though and I intend to do so this week.

Placing gardens is the real cost problem for my city. Gardens make a city pretty. Otherwise it is a "concrete jungle" with little character. Most citizens will tell me that they like the gardens. But when I tell them that a single large garden costs 30k each week, they tell me to get rid of it -- "it isnt that important." They also tell me to get rid of 2 of my 3 banks. WhenI tell them that each bank only costs 1500 each week they understand why I leave them. Like may mayors, I am financially stable -- reasonably rich even. I could afford to pay for Aurora out of my own pocket for a couple of months even if I never earned another cent.

I watch my taxes very closely. Right now my city taxes are quite high. This is simply to rebuild the city's coffers. Once we have a nice little reserve in place, Ill drop the taxes substantially. Garden sponsorship is important to keeping the city cash flow positive. Also...Aurora has numerous vendors that keep their prices low...very low. When I add 8-10% sales tax, their prices are still lower than average for other vendors. This allows the city to make cash from each sale and allows the vendors to still offer fire-sale level pricing to their clientelle. Like many people I would love to have a zero tax situation for the city. But that is unreasonable for a community of our size and rate of churn/fluctuation.

Cheers!

Hadrian

Hadrian Augustus
Mayor and Master Architect of Aurora
Naboo, Flurry Server


Catapultam habeo.
Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.

Translation: I have a catapult. Give me all the money, or I will fling an enormous rock at your head.

My city has about 41 citizens, a couple factories and vendor tents. Our head tax is 2K, Sales tax 5%, Property tax 2% and garage tax 20%. This only covers about 120K of our 172K weekly maintenance. (and I consulted the citizenry when setting the taxes). To make up the difference:

1) Donations......true some of our richer citizens kick in 100K from time to time, but we also ask for about 3K per week per citizen.

2) Sponsoring of trainers. You want a trainer? ok, 20K donation forto sponsor a trainer for 3 months. This works extremely well....3 months is adequate usually and there is always a clamor for someone else wanting a different trainer. Sometimes the sponsor tells me sooner they are through with the trainer.

3) Sponsoring of streetlamps, statues, fountains etc. So you want a red streetlamp named "Desire Drive" out in front of your house named "Madam Mimosa's Elegant Palace of Delights" ?? sure, just donate enough to cover the maintenance for a year. Similar with fountains and statues.

We have been a bit frugal financially, but have weathered first the Rebels splitton off and leaving, then the "Hard Core PVP" Imperials splitting off and leaving....as well as the usual ebb and flow of indifferent players. I have held off on parks until we get a litttle stronger financially.

I have told the artisan/crafter crowd that if they are willing to help cover the costs of being a manufacturing center we could go for that. People seem more open to making donations than to raising taxes.

The damn Mon Calamaris keep asking for a swimming pool.......

Our city wasTAX-FREE andI used to cover all the weekly cost of our city maintenace, which for 70 citizens, bank, trainers, structures, small park and specialization is about 380k/week.

I did try asking for donations but it was always the same few donating but got tired of asking and since I found it unfair that I should take 100% cost myselfor for same few always the ones donating, I finally sent an email indicating that lack of donations has forced tax to be implemented and although I now STILL pay about 50%, at least the other 50% are now also contributing. That's a little bit more fair.

It is my opionion that running a city is too expensive and an added burden to players and to new players. It's Player Cities that help keep players out of busy static cities. It's Player Cities that welcomes, helps&guides and provides additional content to the new players and contributes to help keep them ingame.

I think a BASIC city should cost less - Look how much it cost just to place streetlamps.....of course, I have removed most of them and kept just the essential few.

And really, why should it cost 1kevery time I place a trainer ? Especially, when a Play City doesn't getany revenue backfrom them. It wouldn't be bad, if it costa Mayor1k to place it, if it would cost the user 100cr each time they used it to helpgenerate some revenue back into the player city. User fees such as speeder garage and shuttleport (although the shuttleport always resets back to 100cr - which is a pain!) help generate money towards player cities. Maybe, even Clone centers could have user fees that can be set too.How about even getting 100cr from every mission terminal that isin a Player City??

Lastly, in my opinion, paying 2k to 3k intaxes a week is reasonble - certainly not 5k.

It's an added cost to new players and also, the cost to live in one FAR exceeds the revenue generated by one. At least,other than taxes, shuttle and garage - give us other ways to generate more money such as:

+ revenu from trainer

+ cloing fee (maybe after 5 incaps you need to reset your predesignated cloning station)

+ revenu from Player City Mission terminals

So, I'm open for new ways to generate money to PC's

---------------------------------------------------
I used to be pretty frickn' cool, now I'm just old.

Our city was in the same boat. Donations just weren't cutting it and taxes just didn't pull in the required credits necessary to cover the cost of the city. Mind you we are a small city but that's the way we like it but it was still too much for one or two people to covermost of the cost each week. So our mayor organized a weekly city maintenance hunt.

The rules of the hunt are simple:

1) Anybody can join in. We have a couple of crafters come along with us and bang away with their CDEF pistols while the rest of us tank. They find it's great fun to do since it's an aspect of the game they have never really done before....and plus they give us another two missionsperfor the group.

2) All mission payouts go into the city treasury.

3) Any loot is yours to keep.

It's great fun, you get to meet your fellow citizens, you get some good xp....especially for lower level characters, and you are helping to fund the city.

We have been pulling in on average 300k each hunt. The hunts are so successful that the mayor has even revoked all taxes since they are not needed anymore. This would even work for large cities since you could have multiple hunts during the week. If you did three each week that would be almost a million credits income for the city!

Big Z's House of Stuff
Harvesters, Housing, Furniture and More! -closed
Zel - Master Structure Trader/Fearless Taunter of Krayts and Rancors -retired
Akadia - Master Spy -bored

Our city just made ran k2 last week, and i started out with a 5 % garage tax(all money goes from mayor to treasury), and a 3 % sales tax.

Most customers i know always /tip bank (5%) so anything under or = to that seems fare. i dont haver any property tax or income tax yet (and wont if i can help it).

Just get a good numbers of crafters in, and aslong as the crafters arent price gouging, a few % sales tax wont make a difference o nthere sales, and the money wil laid the city cost.