Local Expenditures in Henrico

In October, Henrico County opened a new rec center as part of a building boom financed by a "$349.3 million bond referendum approved by county voters in 2005."  This article calls the Eastern Henrico Recreation Center the "jewel" of the project, which also included new and expanded fire stations.  The center is the product of a suggestion made by a 15-year-old high school student who thought a place like this might help cut down on crime and violence by teenagers in the area.  Now 28, Terrell Pollard is part of the Eastern Henrico Community Action Committee that had a lot to do with the project. 

The new rec center is located in an area of Henrico that is "home to a number of predominantly black neighborhoods that have long sought more public amenities, especially for their youth."  Henrico is a county with good schools, relatively high median household income, and all the benefits that come with being located near a city like Richmond.  However, the community that will benefit from the rec center is one that "feels like it has seen little of the county's riches."  In the same way, this rec center will mainly benefit this particular community and not the entire county, but Pollard hopes it will cut down on "crime and violence among teens in neighborhoods along Laburnum and Nine Mile and Creighton Roads," which would be a positive externality benefiting everyone.  I think this presents an issue with Tiebout's model of locally provided public goods, because if communities are  not homogenous it is impossible for consumer-voters to make decisions based on revenue-expenditure patterns about which community best approximates their preferences.  County-level governance is about as local as it gets, and it would seem that local public goods provision in Henrico has had some failings.  In Tiebout's model, where moving is costless, people in Eastern Henrico could just move, but they may just end up in another county where public goods are provided unevenly, and in reality moving would be extremely costly.  Maybe in this case the problem is that the county's funds are not being used for purely public goods, but either way it would seem that there is some kind of failure here.