Our city council recently agreed to give the money-losing Trenton Marriott another $500,000 to satisfy the demands of the very management company that made it money-losing in the first place.

This begs the question of whether this is the best way we could invest that kind of money.

We could pay for 5 police officers, but that would be for just one year and then we’d have to lay them off in 2013. A better idea is to make investments in our tax base and quality of life that will be permanent and predictable.

With $500,000 we could stimulate investment in 50 new homes for 50 new families in Trenton.

Our fundamental problem (and all but the lunatic fringe agree) is that we don’t have enough people with disposable income living in Trenton. For now and to make the math easy, I’ll define that as people who can afford a home that costs $200,000 or more.
A home like that yields approximately $4,400 city revenue given our current tax rate and the 60% discount on home value our tax office builds in to the appraisal.

What if we give $10,000 grants towards anyone who will buy a new $200,000 home in Trenton. Given our tax rate this would yield a 79% rate of return over 10 years and would be paid back in just over two years.

For $500K we could make 50 grants to 50 new Trentonians that will help the rest of us pay for our city government going forward. Those 50 homes would generate $220,000 a year in revenue to the city or $1,720,000 over 10 years.

This plan recognizes an inescapable fact that much of our property in Trenton now has negative value. That’s right, we’d have to pay someone to take it off our hands. Free isn’t good enough. This happens all the time around toxic waste dumps. High murder rates aren’t much different.

The good news is that by simply building on a lot and living there, the land value is increased. We create value by stimulating development of new neighborhoods populated with people who won’t stand for crime. The criminal element hates houses with people and lights.

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