RCAA ON-LINE LIBRARY
Impacts on Local Governments
Issues in Brief: Five different kinds of local government exist in the immediate Sea-Tac area: cities (six); school districts (three); fire districts; sewer districts; water districts. Cities and schools in Washington depend heavily on revenues from real-property taxation & sales taxes, & they are the governments the most heavily impacted by Sea-Tac Airport.
The Airport's purchases (and condemnations) for expansion have taken hundreds of homes and numerous businesses off the tax rolls (Port property is exempt from the real-property tax.) This reduces the revenue for the cities of SeaTac and Burien, & for the Highline School District (whose area includes those cities). Just the property recently acquired for the third runway produced over $225,000 a year for the two cities in direct property-tax revenues. Lost sales-tax revenue from displaced business is another loss.
Sea-Tac Airport's residential buy-out program, ostensibly a noise-mitigation measure, has a similar impact.
The Airport's effect on property values is the subject of sec. 9 above; as property values decline, real-property taxes decline proportionately. The State study (“H-O-K”) estimated third-runway impacts on tax revenues for five of six near-by cities as amounting to $39.9 million in the first 20 years of runway operation (a 1997 estimate).
As the tax rolls shrink and property values decline, local governments have fewer taxpayers to help retire pre-existing bonded indebtedness, & less revenue to meet the increased demand for social services that inevitably comes with Airport-induced socio-economic changes.
Neither the Port nor the FAA provide the cities and other local governments with assistance to compensate for these losses.
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