Every week or so you can read another condemnation of landlords in downtown Madison. As a tenant myself, I can say there are some things I think my landlord could do better. That does not mean I am going to go whining to the City to force them to do something. If they violate the contract, I won’t pay rent. If they just do a crappy job, I won’t rent from them again. So far, all is well.

The current property tax system creates a penalty for landlords to update their properties; improving your property often increases your tax greater than whatever gains would be had by it. This especially applies in the case of energy-saving improvements, which are often expensive.

What Madison needs is to encourage renters to update their structures through a property tax system which is tied to income instead of property value. This way, there would be an incentive for the owners of the property to reinvest as much of their earned income as possible into maintenance and remodeling.

Finally, the planning committees need to get out of the way. Time is Money, and that crap across from the Fluno Center on Campus Dr. needs to be demolished. This city gives private developers hell and then allows the ugliest sculpture in the history of man to be built without question, a metaphorical middle finger to us all.