Politician Archive
Thread: Do cities ever break even?
Kinshi wrote:
Personally I wish SOE would kill off the "Donate" mechanism of the city because that feature by its lonesome is what makes the Politcian profession irrelevant as a playable class.
Because donate allows just one person to simply pour money into their artifically populated town. They dont have to try and justify themselves to anyone, and it fosters this sense of entitlement/ownership Mayors get about their towns.
If a Mayor actually had to justify their civic decsions and be held accountable for the tax money going into the city, we would see a lot more Politician activity come election time.
As it stand, a city can have near infinite deficit spending w/o consequence because of donate and the Politician doesnt even have to TRY to play a Politician. Its also a total falsehood that city taxes are 'burdensome' on the players, in fact thats a load of baloney spouted by the same people who think life ended when solo-grouping was eliminated.
It is a true feat to balance a civic budget because everyone wants their little playtoys for the city but no one wants to pay for them and the Politician has to figure out how to do what they want w/ little to no money.
Get rid of "Donate" and Politician would become a LOT more interesting. Cities can run break even or at a profit by taxes alone. The Mayor just has to know what he is doing and understand simple concpets like sticking to a budget and telling people if they want goodies, its going to cost them. No such thing as a free ride.
I like this suggestion. My city is currently the extreme opposite - like most player cities - paid for by one individual (me) and run by an "elected despot" (me, I'm nice though :smileyhappy
.
However, if all cities would be forced to balance their budget I would not loose citizens to other non-tax cities, because they would not exist anymore.
It's possible, I believe, however you'd have to raise all the taxes, remove all the gardens, trainers, terminals, and decorations. But once you do that, what's the point of having a city in the first place?
Our city sucks up about 890k per week. I've started to use the lottery droid in our city and use the droid's owner's cut (30%) to try to offset some of the maintenence.
Personally I wish SOE would kill off the "Donate" mechanism of the city because that feature by its lonesome is what makes the Politcian profession irrelevant as a playable class.
Because donate allows just one person to simply pour money into their artifically populated town. They dont have to try and justify themselves to anyone, and it fosters this sense of entitlement/ownership Mayors get about their towns.
If a Mayor actually had to justify their civic decsions and be held accountable for the tax money going into the city, we would see a lot more Politician activity come election time.
As it stand, a city can have near infinite deficit spending w/o consequence because of donate and the Politician doesnt even have to TRY to play a Politician. Its also a total falsehood that city taxes are 'burdensome' on the players, in fact thats a load of baloney spouted by the same people who think life ended when solo-grouping was eliminated.
It is a true feat to balance a civic budget because everyone wants their little playtoys for the city but no one wants to pay for them and the Politician has to figure out how to do what they want w/ little to no money.
Get rid of "Donate" and Politician would become a LOT more interesting. Cities can run break even or at a profit by taxes alone. The Mayor just has to know what he is doing and understand simple concpets like sticking to a budget and telling people if they want goodies, its going to cost them. No such thing as a free ride.
rockcrown wrote:
Some city members who do not use all there lots, donated them to the city. we have a series of harvesters just outside the city limits. those we leave in 1 place and harvest what we can, sell it asgrind or quality.. 50% goes to the city hall, the rest goes back to the harvesters. We just started this a few weeks ago, but it seems to be helping a lot.
Thats cool :-) I like creative solutions like that.
Though still, the most stable way to keep things rolling is via taxes and a city budget, that way you can sit down and KNOW exactly how much is going to arrive in the treasury every week and the weeks to come.
Big problem with using donate is that if everyone decides to slack off for a cpl weeks the city starts to fall apart.
I like to rely on the taxes and use the creative fundraisers only when we have a deficit, basically only long enough to cover the shortfall and re-balance the budget.
If you are saavy, you can walk around your town, count up all the houses, and know who owns them and who is a citizen, and calculate the minimum amout of tax revenue all those buildings and citizensin city limits will generate, and even figure up how much extra tax revenue will come in or be lost if you change the tax rate.
Kinshi wrote:
rockcrown wrote:
Some city members who do not use all there lots, donated them to the city. we have a series of harvesters just outside the city limits. those we leave in 1 place and harvest what we can, sell it asgrind or quality.. 50% goes to the city hall, the rest goes back to the harvesters. We just started this a few weeks ago, but it seems to be helping a lot.
Thats cool :-) I like creative solutions like that.Though still, the most stable way to keep things rolling is via taxes and a city budget, that way you can sit down and KNOW exactly how much is going to arrive in the treasury every week and the weeks to come.
Big problem with using donate is that if everyone decides to slack off for a cpl weeks the city starts to fall apart.
I like to rely on the taxes and use the creative fundraisers only when we have a deficit, basically only long enough to cover the shortfall and re-balance the budget.
If you are saavy, you can walk around your town, count up all the houses, and know who owns them and who is a citizen, and calculate the minimum amout of tax revenue all those buildings and citizensin city limits will generate, and even figure up how much extra tax revenue will come in or be lost if you change the tax rate.
Thanks! I will say it does take some work though. I have gotten 4 or 5 milita members to help out tho, so its starting to go smoothly
Although I target a different playerbase than most (Veteran's only), I charge a move-in fee.
Each level of the city the price has gone up:
Initial 10 people: $100k each
Level 1 : $250k each
Level 2 : $500k each
Level 3 : $1mil each
Level 4 : $2.5mil each <-- we are here
Level 5 : $5mil each
Maintenance is paid for 3 1/2 years with no taxes and we are still growing nearly every week.