This is what you get when you don't pay taxes

You take a place with very low property taxes. Add a little tea party magic and voila! The city will start dying. Such is a place called Colorado Springs. They voted down a property tax increase and now they have to face the consequences. City services have been drastically cut. Street lights have been disabled in order to save money. The police helicopters have been sold as they were too expensive to operate. Transit service does not function after 6:15pm or on the weekends. I guess people will have to learn to walk again or buy a car they can't afford and choose between gas and paying the bills or rent or whatever. To a lot of conservatives I suppose a car can be a good home for the poor.

Our area faced this as well. St. Louis County voters rejected a proposed tax increase to fund basic services for Mass transit. They, in their infinite wisdom, rejected it. Then came the cuts in services. Doctors who had relocated their offices to the county then realized that a lot of their lucrative medicare patients use the bus to get to their offices. Businesses realized that a lot of their employees use the bus to get out to jobs at the malls in the county. The affluent in the county realized that their maids and other cleaning people need a bus to get to their McMansions. After slashing mass transit to the bone, the local business community realized that they needed mass transit and supported an increase in taxes. The proposition passed overwhelmingly and now the local mass transit system is slowly restoring services.