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Every politician dreams of spending their campaign kissing babies and giving out free ponies. It’s harder when the bill arrives.

This winter, the Cambridge City Council passed a landmark upzoning bill allowing four stories of residential development citywide in a bid to relieve a historic housing shortage. The topic has become a flashpoint in the upcoming Council election, with a number of challengers opposing the effort to promote market housing development.

Curiously, some of these candidates are simultaneously advertising bold promises of shiny new spending programs to deliver for the city. This is a mistake. In order to deliver on these expensive promises, Cambridge desperately needs extra income, and building is the way to get it.

Take a few examples of candidate commitments. Ayah Al-Zubi ’23 is running on a platform that calls for a smattering of new spending programs, including free buses, affordable housing for artists, and universal afterschool programming. Stanislav Rivkin, another challenger, wants to subsidize nonprofit grocery stores, provide universal childcare, and renew cash assistance programs for low-income families.

Many of these proposals are worthy ambitions. It’s less clear, however, how we’ll pay for them.

The city collects revenue primarily through property taxes and is at fiscal capacity. After years of unrestrained budget growth boosted by Covid-19 recovery funds, Cambridge has had to tighten its belt, raising taxes by 9 percent last year and projecting another 8 percent raise under conservative assumptions. As of this year, we dedicate almost 11 percent of spending, or $101,389,077, to debt service.

To the extent that there’s any fiscal “free lunch” left to squeeze out of the city, it’s in upzoning.

Property taxes collect revenue on the combined assessed value of a property’s land and the structure on top of it. By allowing multifamily development, upzoning raises the value of the land in the city and promotes the construction of high-value buildings in the area. A four-story apartment building is a lot more valuable than an open-air parking lot, for example.

Furthermore, consider who’s moving into these new multifamily units, composed largely of small market-rate apartments. Disproportionately, it’s young adults who consume relatively few local public services, the most expensive of which is public education.

Thus, market development works to expand the city’s tax base, raising revenue to pay for more services for its residents.

Surely you’d think candidates eager to introduce bold new social programs to support Cambridge’s neediest would be supportive of efforts that grow the tax base while simultaneously making Cambridge more affordable?

You’d be mistaken.

Al-Zubi told Crimson reporters last week that we shouldn’t rely on private development, which she blames for the affordability crisis, on getting us out of the problem. On her campaign website, Al-Zubi argues that we should redistribute from housing developers to local nonprofits.

Rivkin’s campaign website explicitly condemns for-profit housing development as “lining the pockets of private equity investors,” saying what we need instead is a system of rent control and public housing.

So where’s the money going to come from? Al-Zubi and Rivkin say higher taxes. They seem to think Cambridge can afford it, with both noting that it’s a fairly wealthy city with relatively low tax rates.

To be fair, both claims are true, although it’s worth noting Cambridge is already one of the highest-spending towns in the state. In my view, a platform built on restricting new housing and further raising taxes to fund new services is far less appealing than one that embraces growth and shares its gains with those who need them most. Still, if candidates are candid about the costs of their proposals, it’s theoretically a legitimate vision for voters to evaluate in November.

But the city doesn’t have unlimited ability to raise taxes. State law limits how much towns can raise in property tax, their levy limit, to maximum increases of 2.5 percent annually, plus a boost for new development.

In fact, over half the increase in Cambridge’s levy limit — the city’s ability to raise revenue — year over year was due to new construction and growth. Recall that last year the city projected it would need to raise taxes by nine percent this year to meet current spending levels. If candidates are serious about their commitment to new spending programs, they need to build.

Ironically, the tension between budget squeezes and development seems to be perfectly well understood by those comfortable with slowed budget growth. For example, the Cambridge Citizens Coalition, a local nonprofit with a related super PAC which has vigorously opposed attempts to increase housing construction in the city, recently hosted a forum in which endorsed candidates criticized how much money Cambridge spends. If you’re dedicated to shrinking the tax base, it’s perfectly rational to embrace fiscal conservatism.

To me, a vision of a city that is dynamic and growing, simultaneously welcoming new residents and providing more for existing residents in need, is much more attractive than one of a stagnating city that gradually shrinks its public commitments. For now, those seem to be the tradeoffs.

Elections are a fruitful time for bold policy entrepreneurship — to experiment with new ideas and get citizens involved in local governance. But the city’s problems won’t be wished away by magical thinking.

Benjamin Isaac ’27, a Crimson Editorial Editor, is a Government and Economics concentrator in Quincy House.