Word: halverson
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Halverson examined four different methods for calculating the in-lieu-of-taxes payment. Halverson said that while the different approaches failed to produce a consensus on determining a fair payment, he argued that the adnvantages and disadvantages of each method presented in the report will be useful in future town-gown debates...
...Halverson said the flaw in this reasoning is that it assumes property taxpayers should only pay according to the city services they use--which would prevent transfer of wealth from more affluent property owners to needy individuals in poorer neighborhoods...
Under the second method, universities would be charged according to the amount of money the city loses in revenues from tax-exempt land. But in the report, Halverson argues that in the case of Cambridge, the city actually benefits from the universities' presence because the remaining property values and resulting taxes, are on average "two to three times those of other suburbs around Boston...
...Halverson's third approach "involves asking how much a private or profit-making owner might pay for the land." But he said that it would be too hard to accurately measure the worth of the universities' real estate when including the positive externalities such as tourism...
...Halverson's final approach compares Harvard and MIT's town-gown contributions with those of other universities, requiring that universities donate as much as other schools relative to their enrollment sizes or operating budgets. But the flaws in this approach are that every school might be underpaying, and that payments for some universities, such as Yale and Brown, come from the states instead of the institutions...