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Judging by some recent inquiries and current events, it must be time for another explanation of the Stupid Zone, a term I may have invented a few years ago.
The Stupid Zone was proposed as a compromise. On one hand, there is private property with the associated rights to use your land. On the other, people want low taxes.
These two forces collide when rural land is subdivided and people start building houses on five- or 10-acre lots. They bought the land, and they want to exercise their property rights by building houses and moving in.
When they do this, they cause a need for governmental services: road construction and maintenance, school bus routes, law-enforcement investigations and patrols, that sort of thing.
Do they pay their own way? Apparently not. Custer County, in the Wet Mountain Valley of Colorado, was one of the fastest-growing counties in the United States during the 1990s, and most of that growth came in the form of rural residences on multi-acre lots.
So there was a study to determine whether county taxpayers were better or worse off for all this conversion of agricultural land into residential land.
It turned out that for every dollar that local governments (essentially, the county and the school district) received in taxes from agricultural land, they spent only 54 cents on services. But for every tax dollar that came in from these exurban developments, they were spending $1.16 on governmental services.
Thus the working families who live in trailer parks in town are subsidizing the folks who build 3,000-square-foot houses on wooded 20-acre estates.
But in modern America, that's not an issue that
resonates with a public that keeps building sports stadiums
to subsidize billionaire team owners and millionaire
athletes. Phrasing a question as why are we taxing the
poor to benefit the rich?
just brings accusations that
you're trying to start a class war, and we already have
other wars in process.
Some of these rural subdivisions are in sensible places, but many are not. Most notably in recent years, some sit in tinderbox forests where devastating fires are merely a question of time.
If a county tried to protect its taxpayers by zoning against such subdivisions, it would impinge on property rights. But if it allows such developments, then it's forcing its taxpayers to subsidize them.
The Stupid Zone is a way to resolve that dilemma, and it would work like this: A county planning office would consult with every sort of expert to determine where it would be stupid to build houses, and people within those zones would be on their own.
Mining historians would map old shafts, stopes and tunnels. Hydrologists would specify flood plains. Foresters would identify wildfire potential. Geologists would be busy with rockslide and mudslide routes, major fault systems and swelling or unstable soils. Biologists would describe bear habitat, porcupine haunts and deer migration routes.
It should be noted that most of this information is already available, and so assembling the requisite data shouldn't cost much.
Once it was assembled, the county government would use it to draw Stupid Zones. People would be free to build whatever they wanted in the Stupid Zones, but local government would provide no services other than the absolute minimum.
That is, the sheriff would serve warrants in the Stupid Zone, but there would be no routine patrols or investigations of property crimes. Stupid Zone children could go to school in town, but the district would not concern itself with their transportation. Roads in the Stupid Zone might be maintained or plowed -- but by the property owners in the zone, not by the county. Marauding bears or hungry mountain lions in the Stupid Zone would not be a matter of public concern or expense.
When wildfires broke out in the Stupid Zone, the local fire district would build its fireline at the Stupid Zone boundary -- you should have the idea by now.
The Stupid Zone lets people do whatever they want with their own property. It also reduces, or perhaps even eliminates, local subsidies for development in Colorado's many Stupid Zones. The state could take it a step further and require insurers to take Stupid Zones into account when setting rates for homeowner policies -- shared risk is one thing, but why should you and I pay more just become some people want shake-shingle roofs and wooden decks in a fire-prone forest?
And if the idea caught on, the federal government might adjust its fire-fighting and disaster-relief policies -- after all, just how many times should we all be expected to pay for rebuilding Florida after a hurricane?
Stupid Zones are a way to respect property rights and to reduce taxes -- Republican political themes in a Republican state. So when will some county going to take this sensible step?
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