Why add more suburbs to the city of Chattanooga?

There's a great comment from "TheBrainofBrainerd" on timesfreepress.com today. In reference to the Mayor's attempts to annex more suburban areas outside the central city, this brainy guy (or gal) writes:

Mayor Littlefield should at least have the decency and honesty to not insult the intelligence of the citizens of Chattanooga and the City Council with such a ludicrous and border line delusional statement about Volkswagen choosing Chattanooga because of our Fire Department.

Just how naive do you think the people of Chattanooga are?

Volkswagen chose Chattanooga because of the huge tax incentives both the City and County offered to VW.

The areas you are proposing annexing are huge tracts of residential suburbs.

The idea that they need to be annexed, in case something else like VW comes along, is absolutely ludicrous,-- unless your planning on rezoning thousands of families out of their homes in favor of new businesses?

The only reason to annex the proposed areas, is to pass the losses from the huge tax incentives given to VW onto City and County residents. In addition, the City will inevitably have to raise the tax rate on all City residents in order to fund services to the areas you are seeking to annex.

Annexation is a lose-lose proposal for both City and County residents, for it will only put further strains on the city budget and degarde the quality of already stretched too thin city resources and services.

Read the comment and the rest of the article (there's not much) on timesfreepress.com >

There are a couple great points here:

1- VW came to Chattanooga because of the economic incentives. I'm (tentatively) happy they're here, but we do have to understand that there's a very real cost involved in being generous with tax incentives.

2- By annexing more suburbs, and providing them with city services, we're straining already strained public agencies and resources.

We're all going to have to pay for this. Lower density= more money spent per person to create and maintain roadways, storm sewers, public water and other services. Higher density= more efficiencies and less cost to ourselves & the environment.

Littlefield is obviously fulfilling his campaign promises to focus on "neighborhoods" after what he perceived as an undue focus on downtown during previous mayor's terms. Personally I think he's wasting all of our money and ought to focus on sustainable increases in density instead of spreading city services across more land area.