Bed Burning

I’ve been preaching for sometime that a town can’t be just a bedroom community. It is a loser’s game. It’s impossible to win.

The reason? Research that I found when I wrote Boomtown USA done by the American Farmland Trust, on over 100 towns scattered all over the country, showed that residents in a town get $1.17 back in city services like fire, police, water, sewer, schools, etc. for every $1 they pay in property taxes. Commercial and Industrial firms get $0.27 back for every $1 they pay. One city manager in Arizona told me that they calculated it at $1.75 for every dollar that the residents paid.

Post Falls, ID is a town of 17,000 midway between Spokane, WA and Coeur d’Alene, ID. Some called it a bedroom community for these two booming communities. But Post Falls understood the ramifications of taking that path. They wanted to stress this to their residents. They held a bed burning party, actually burning a bed.

Burn your beds! Make sure that you have a diversified economy and don’t just depend upon people choosing your town because it is a nice place to raise a family.