Alternative Futures
for
Monroe County, Pennsylvania

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Impacts: Economic
What Differences Might the Alternatives Bring About?

How much will it cost to implement the public actions of each Alternative Future? Based on partial infrastructure investment &emdash;roads railroad, and the cost of land conservation, the Alternatives ranked from least expensive to most expensive, are:

However, most of these capital expenditures are shared among the County and other sources (see Evaluation: Economics). If the County were to issue a twenty year bond for its share, the annual costs associated with each Alternative are:

These numbers only provide rudimentary financial analysis in that they do not consider changes in each Township's tax base. A model for this analysis is currently being prepared for the County.

The key cost to the Townships and the County is the conservation of undeveloped land. Although preservation of large parts of the County is very expensive, or even unrealistic, a deeper look reveals that its costs are actually lower than those of development. The yearly cost for repayment of a bond issue for Conservation B over 20 years is approximately 100 million dollars (at a 4% discount rate). This is approximately the annual cost for educating the additional projected population, at the current rate of $6000 per pupil per year. New residents will contribute their share of these financing costs, but as experience has shown, most of these costs will be born by the current residents. Consider the implications: If population growth slows down or reaches capacity, it is likely that education costs will continue into the future; but the capital expenditure for landscape protection will have been fully paid and current porperty will have become substantially more valuable because of a protected, higher quality environment and higher demand.