Flood of BRAC transferees actually a trickle
Posted by BrianIt wasn’t even two weeks ago that officials downgraded the estimate of BRAC transferees to north Alabama from a high of 60% to 30%. Well, two major agencies have determined how many of their people are moving to Redstone and both fall well short of even the lowered estimates.
Only 15%, or 337 of 2,246, of MDA employees will follow the agency from the D.C. area.
SMDC will be bringing a grand total of 33 out of 180 people (18%) whose jobs are moving to Huntsville.
Both agencies say they are conducting a nationwide search to fill those positions, but we all know what is really going to happen. They’ll scavenge from local contractors and government agencies as the influx of open positions causes considerable upheaval in the local job market, but results in no dramatic influx of new citizens.
It will be interesting to hear the Madison County Commission attempt to justify the urgently needed tax increase they are trying to pass to deal with the flood of new residents BRAC was supposedly bringing us.
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March 12th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
So, is the MCC not planning to collect taxes from the new BRAC residents? It boggles my mind that taxing authorities always want higher taxes to deal with a growing population. It’s basically a scam. Most taxes are assessed as a percentage of some base value. When that base value increases — more homes and businesses built, more gasoline burned, more consumption of goods — the taxes collected increases. Why does a new resident require more services than an existing resident?
Restaurant servers behave like taxing authorities. The expected gratuity has increased from ten to fifteen to twenty percent of the tab. The rationale is always that everyone else gets raises because of inflation, so why shouldn’t we? It’s like they don’t understand that inflation causes the tab to go up which then increases their tip.
Actually the taxers and the servers do understand. We’re the morons for allowing it.
March 12th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
Bingo. I have made that same argument, but some on the MCC are desirous of impressing the transferees and increasing their own power through greater tax revenue.