Through the years, Fountain Hills has funded itself in primarily two fashions: Its share of the state’s taxes collected and development fees. The town’s share of the state taxes is based on population. Therein lies the problem. While other community’s population has been increasing, Fountain Hills has remained stagnant. Places like Gilbert, Peoria, Mesa and the like are ever increasing, taking more share, which means ours is going down.

The second funding pool has been sales taxes and development fees. Know that a large project yields large fees to the town. A $40 million project may yield as much as $650,000 to town coffers. This has caused the town over the years to approve projects of dubious value to the town, other than the quick fix of that big chunk of cash, but don’t bring families to the town, thus increasing population. The Fry’s and Target centers stand as monuments to this failed approach to development as one is a ghost town and the other is approaching ghost town status.

So now we have another dubious project that will not enhance our town in any way coming before P&Z, a third nursing home at the corner of Trevino and Saguaro.

More troubling is that when I pressed Grady Miller, town manager, at the property tax meeting if voters gave the town the property tax, would they stop chasing dubious development projects to get that development money, too, his answer was inconclusive. I’m not sure I like that answer.

Thoughtful development to attract families, not nursing homes. Bad math on the development, leading to bad projects and continuing population stagnation, only it will cost residents more. Think about it, then decide.