The Civic Genie appears and will instantly pass three pieces of legislation in your town. (Not state or federal) What laws will you choose?
The Civic Genie appears and will instantly pass three pieces of legislation in your town. (Not state or federal) What laws will you choose?
1.) Law to make me eternal king of the city.
2.) Law to mandate my exorbitant salary and discretionary fund.
3.) Law to stipulate the various details of my city-provided harem.You guys suck at genies.
Your town is now bankrupt.
Ice town costs ice clown his town crown.
I would mandate all sidewalks replaced by moving sidewalks.
Also I would wish for infinite towns
"The Roads Must Roll"
I think the state or federal government might step in.
I'm in Utah. I'm just returning the place to its roots.
Granted. You are now the eternal king of The City.
The City pretty much immediately falls to ruin because you don't know anything about economics, and most of your residents leave. With the economy unable to support your rule, the state has to intervene to save the region.
They charge you with gross neglect, and considering all the lives you've ruined, give you a life sentence. You're immortal now (eternal king), so they pretty much just seal you in a steel reinforced concrete box and drop you in the ocean.
Nothing happens for billions of years.
The sun expands and incinerates the earth. You can't die but you're in pain beyond imagining from all the heat and radiation.
This continues for a long time.
Eventually the sun expels the outer layers in a stellar nova and you are condemned to drift across the universe struggling for air for all eternity.
Ban cars in the main street. I'm sure you can learn to walk one block. You might even find you enjoy it when you are not having constant near death experiences with cars.
All those parking spaces are now spaces for pop-up businesses. Food vans, shipping containers that are now selling vegetables, outdoor dining, art fairs, etc.
You can now legally live in those apartments that people used to live in built above the existing shops, before that was made illegal for reasons unknown.
I'll add some aspects for the areas outside of the main CBD street:
- Separated, protected bike lanes that run the entire city with easy access from the suburban parts
- Traffic calming measures including speed bumps, reduced (and narrower) lanes, continuous sidewalks, and speed limit reduced to 30 km/h (around 20 mph)
- Free public transport
- Progressive vacancy tax - the longer a commercial site sits empty, the more the tax is.
- Abolish most residential height and density limits.
- Rent control
I like the progressive vacancy tax!
Ah, but 1 and 2 could be done with the Land Value Tax
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If you buy it, live in it- no more commodification of homes.
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zero tolerance driving policies that prioritize pedestrians and cyclists and blatantly discourage driving.
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safe supply. Anything that was going to be disposed of in police evidence is to be tested and used to start the program. Can't get people to a place where they want to be treated if they're dead.
So, no such thing as renting? If I move to the city I'm just homeless until I can afford a house?
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Property and income tax funded high speed internet available to all persons and businesses in city limits free of charge. Also, power, water, waste management, and any licensing and registration fees are all eliminated and they get funded by property and income taxes instead (also fees for public copiers at court houses, libraries, etc).
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Sleeping in public is legal, sleeping in parked cars is legal, cars can't be towed from the parking lots of businesses outside of the businesses' operating hours, and no person can be denied use of a public bathroom (regardless of whether or not they purchased anything).
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All businesses and public buildings will be made handicap accessible through city funded grants and fines for non compliant property owners, and rental property owners will be required to make any accessibility modifications a tenant might require.
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A perpetual levy to keep the schools funded, and it floats with CPI or some other index to remain relevant.
Public oversight of police.
Outlaw police unions.
Ranked choice voting.Free public transport, buildings/residences incur additional council rates when sitting empty, better permitting system for food trucks on public property.
- Term Limits (Goodbye family-connected people who haven't done shit in 20 years)
- Church Is Now a Library (Goodbye assholes who expelled my friend's fiance for cohabitation, while the minister cohabitated with his girlfriend)
- Anticorruption (Certain people on the council rent their properties/sell things to the town at "market rates")
No income properties for single family homes. Punishable by jail.
Companies will now have their minimum pay decided by majority vote for up to 70% of the previous year's profit divided by the number of people employed and companies are decommissioned when they're found to exploit people in large scale.
People have to give me specifically a blowjob on request. I mean universal basic income. That.
Is this lah lah land where I can pass any law I want locally without it being superseded by state or fed? Then
1.recreational pot is now legal with 32 plant homegrow limit
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Psylocibin mushrooms are now legal and can be sold wherever alcohol, tobacco, and weed are sold including state run stores
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HOAs are outlawed, you can now do whatever the fuck you like with your own properties and not pay yet another yearly fee to an at-best-incompentent-at-worst-malicious burocracy. I have to deal with enough of those already
Absolutely based
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More bike lanes in the center, especially for long distances
More rail infrastructure in the outer parts, especially an outer ring by light rail or subway
Better funding for Schools and stuff
Return downtown's roads to being footpaths.
Allow safe biking on the sidewalks
Free electricity and water
No one eligible for social security can hold office.
the monkey's paw curls Social Security is abolished
Fine. No one eligible for Medicare. That can't possibly go...
Fine no one over 60 can hold office.
- Term limits, the same 3 families have been running my town for 40 years.
- a bypass, we're a very small town with a huge tourist industry, and the township refuses to approve a bypass because it would divert traffic away from the tourist trap, regardless of the fact that it takes half an hour to cross a town with a single traffic light.
- investment of the tax money into the community. Again, we have a huge tourist industry and a shit ton of money comes into town from it, yet our roads are absolutely terrible, half the town doesn't have sidewalks, and honestly I don't know where any of the money goes.
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Make all local utilities city-owned (including internet access as a utility).
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Make all city employees part of a municipal employees union (opt-out available)
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Require all legal judgments against the police department to be paid out of their pension fund.
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- Mixed Zoning
- All streets/roads must have sidewalks and separated bike lanes
- UBI
Reminder that the prompt said a town level not state or federal. There is no individual town that would be capable of sustaining Ubi it would have to be at minimum a state level thing to be successful
Idunno, I feel like a sufficiently large city could do something along those lines with sufficient political will.
Maybe not some little population 47, one stop sign "town" out beyond Bumfuckistan...but maybe a proto-UBI as a economy-boosting supplement could be worked out in a city of 100K+ residents.
Towns find the money for stroads and highways, I don't see why UBI would be difficult
Naturalized Landscapes: Reduce budget by naturalizing all public landscapes, alter "unkempt yard" qualifications, incentivize against lawns.
Smart Density Overhaul: Destroy developer's abilities to build detached home subdivisions, build public homes that are integrated with landscapes and require less upkeep from homeowners, maximize leisure and the things that actually make people happy, roads are... not what they currently are. Subsidize rural taxi service.
Industry Perks: Tax incentives for industrial employers relative to employee's salaries. Similar remote work incentives for professional-managerial employers. A study on commercial office use will be conducted to determine how to best move in to new work arrangements.
Winner winner chick fucking en dinner right here
- Ranked choice voting
- Real estate reform law regulating and limiting the powers of home owners’ associations, and banning corporate ownership of single-family dwellings
- UBI for the un-housed and homeless
It's not called UBI if it's not for everyone.
Unhoused Basic Income
- Ban cars
- Legalize drugs
- Basic income for unhoused and impoverished funded by said drug taxes
Umm I don't think a municipality can superscede state and federal law.
So maybe you could ban cars, with the exception of state vehicles.
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Would work in some cities, but not others.
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Is terrible. Drugs fuck up your brain.
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Is based
Some drugs (alcohol, opiates, meth) do fuck up your brain with long term consistent use associated with addiction, but most people don't fall into that unless they have some sort of severe external stress or genetic predisposition. You can see this with alcohol which despite its acceptance by society is one of the most harmful drugs out there, but most people who consume it do so in relative moderation.
Drug prohibition fucks ups society way more than drugs can fuck up your brain. It creates a police state that targets the poor and minorities. It gives money to cartels and gangs that cause violence. It doesn't even stop drug use, those who want it can still get it, it just makes drugs less safe as theirs no quality control leading to adulterants and an incentive to make overly concentrated substances like fentanyl, which probably wouldn't exist without prohibition.
What fucks up your brain even more than drugs is being forced into perpetual childhood.
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Mandate funding of public transportation at a level that makes it easier to use than a car.
Make roads (all roads that are already built) available for that transit, any existing road can become a trolley line or train.
Set the footprint of the county where it is, already there is too much sprawl so no more expansion allowed, build where there are buildings only, all green space preserved, fund to buy back land for parks when density increases, and once "greened", no longer available to build on.
That last item is, combined with all the other things like it, the source of the housing crisis in this country.
Where I am we need density to increase in the populated areas, not to pave out the rest of the county, The plants and animals need space too.
Phase in a ban on consumer grade gas powered outdoor equipment. Electric only.
Revise residential parking to allow more in line with densification.
Crack down on negligent property owners that let properties get run down. Especially developers that let properties sit,.and most especially with houses that just get boarded up and the property goes to hell.
You should post a federal version of this question after this post calms down.
- City cycle network.
- Tram lines for entire Greater Manchester including my area.
- Better funding for mental health care.
The current laws aren't really enforced so none
The genie will also make sure the laws are enforced. What is your legislative wish?
Land Value Tax. Election by sortition. I'll have to think about the last one.
Is there a mayor or a council? I admit don't know ins and outs of sortition. I kind of like it, but not sure I have the stomach for a single major role left to chance. Seems more plausible that a group of people selected by chance would still function.
Right, I guess this isn't the same everywhere. I was thinking of the mayor as a member of and accountable to city council.
I live in a weird semi-rural not-a-township so my laws may seem petty compared to others because my "town" is generally governed by the county/state.
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No idling automobiles for more than 60 seconds. Drive or get off the pot.
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Leash law for dogs and cats (currently we have neither)
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Ban on all wood fires, both inside and out (I'm sick of choking on other people's fire smoke every time I go outside, we already get that enough from wildfires)
I'm interested to hear the story behind no idling automobiles
It's in the same vein as point #3: because of inversion effects and occasional wildfires, we often have mediocre air quality. As mentioned, this is a semi-rural area, where you'd think "peace, quiet, and fresh air," but we don't have those things because of constant noise and/or air pollution from idling vehicles, lawn mowers, leaf blowers, barking dogs, bonfires in summer, wood stoves in winter, burn piles all year round (they get SO smokey when damp, which due to the climate is 75% of the time), etc. So it's a general quality of life thing for exercising/working/relaxing outside (and because we're such a small community, outside activities are all there is to do around here, unless you drive to the next town over). Furthermore air conditioning in rare in my neighborhood so we rely on open windows on hot days, which means inviting all those unpleasant sounds and bad air inside.
However, I have a personal reason why the car idling issue is especially bothersome. One of my neighbors insists on idling their car for 5-10 minutes every morning before work. They leave between 5-7am (way before I wake up) and their driveway is right next to my bedroom window. So in summer I either have to a) boil alive with the window shut or b) get woken up before dawn by the sound and smell of their car exhaust. I've also witnessed people watching videos or chatting on the phone in their cars outside the only entrance to our only park while their car idles for god knows how long.
Throw in the occasional dog attacks (because of #2, we have loose, poorly-trained, unsupervised dogs wandering the streets), and it's unnecessarily uncomfortable trying to stay active and touch grass around here. So considering what little purview our town has, those are the things I'd change.
Nothing against you, but as someone from the rural southwest, I cannot see any level of compatibility between your gripes and rural life. It’s like some from NYC complaining about too many people around.
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Im surprised no one mentioned outlawing HOAs
I think that they should just have an automatic expiration date. Maybe like 10 years after their establishment
Because when they work as intended they arent evil, you only hear about the horror stories.
My parents had a hoarder move in on the corner of their culdesac, HOAs arent a thing here and when my parents sold their house their agent told them "that house just cost you $50,000" theres a really nice guy who lives in a really nice suburban neighbourhood where I work who has a neighbour who has 3 half disassembled cars in his front yard with the grass up to the door handles and disintegrating xmas decorations from 4 years ago all over his house. HOAs go too far alot but they also do stop one asshole from destroying everyone elses property values.
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There's a big cult headquarters in my town. I would take away their "religious" tax exempt status. They own so much property!
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I'd increase funding for education (teachers salaries, classroom supplies and resources, funding for building and field trips and experts to visit) The funding can come from the other two changes
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I would put a huge tax on any homes where the owners of the home are not the primary/full time occupants. This is a big tax on private equity firms that buy houses, second homes owned by out of towners, and landlords. Our community will benefit from citizens who are fully committed to our town and single home owners should have an advantage in our housing market.
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all rentals must offer an option to build equity and own the dwelling in at most 35 years.
incorporate as a city with municipalities sharing the same school district.
bds.
edit: fuck those downvotes are fast. I guess some people love landlords and Israel.
No downvotes here. If anything I feel like if you're getting genie laws then the first one could be more ambitious.
They disagree because all rent should result in a proprtionate share of equity.
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Some people just want to watch the world burn
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- Tax exempt status not based along traditional lines but based on what brings people together, if it has to exist and if taxes have to exist. I'm surprised people aren't rewarding what makes a dead town not dead.
- A better school system with a better teacher's union and better restraint of powers of faculty, because what has become a vessel of knowledge and community has become a body that dismisses all except the preservation of wealth and power.
- Refine transportation so it's less crude and isn't taken for granted.
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All zoning and appearances laws banned unless it is by direct vote supermajority, over 66% of registered voters vote yes for it, and it has to be on the ballot when it is not November.
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No evictions or plea bargains without a jury trial with no legal way to wave that right.
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No business may garnish the pay of an employee for student loan or medical debt. Likewise no bank. Failure to do obey will result in a special tax on said business equal to double the amount taken.
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