City zoning quality inspectors last week poured over documents provided by the Department of the Police tallying up numbers on crime ridden streets.
Officials, having started with a troubling motel area now in a lawsuit, have turned their eyes to other crime heavy areas of the city. As larceny and drug abuse charges rise in repeated neighborhoods, it has become clear these areas are a cause of concern for other residents and businesses.
Since the city can not bring a lawsuit against a street, quality of life officers are considering simply removing troublesome neighborhoods from the city limits by de-annexing targeted areas.
The plan is expected to immediately reduce crime in the city by 32%.
To compensate for the loss of tax revenue, city officials are looking at two possible scenarios to to fill the gap.
One option is to study the latest home assessment tax values to determine an equal land size area to annex into the city limits that would provide the most tax collections.
Another option is to select a heavily populated road, even with low assessment value, that would be easy and cheap to install city water and sewer system. With recent changes to the city code, homeowners would be forced to pay for the availability of the services, even if they are not connected. This could result in the city boundaries to include a single long strip extending out down that road from the current roughly circular pattern creating a Popsicle like shape on the map.
Of course both of these options would have to have existing low crime rates in the areas, and carefully crafted in a way to preserve current school and voting districts.
Officials hope the reduced crime rate will satisfy concerned citizens, attract new businesses, improve insurance ratings, and lower costs of the department of police as the city would not need as many officers to cover the reduced crime areas.
County officials are rushing to enact a similar water and sewer availability fee, as the de-annexed streets would then become an instant tax revenue for the county.