Does something similar exist in CA?
For example, we had a commitment for a water line to the development from the water control district. Only later after buying the land, the politics had changed and we found that yes they would bring water to the project only not in our lifetime. We would have to pay for the water lines ourselves if we wanted them. Over the years as the development grew (hundreds of residential lots) we went to the city council to request a left turn lane for the entrance. They would let us pay to put one in, but only if we planted wildflowers along the city's highways.
There seems to be constant sleazy negotiation required for any development one does. The local governments have monopoly control over the process, and they force developers to pay up.
In some cases, companies get sweet deals from locations to move there - Tesla is getting a whopping $1.2B from Nevada. But in Apple's case, they're paying.
Yeah. It's not a property freedom issue, it's a cost ecosystem issue. As time goes on and life changes, owning property is going to have fluid costs, and tax assessments on people who come in to develop land is one way to defray those costs from disproportionately hitting people who have lived in an area for a long time. Frankly, those people would never really plan for that kind of thing to happen, so you're avoiding a lot of nasty repercussions by taxing the person upsetting the ecosystem, rather than the members of the ecosystem itself.
2) if you do perceive them as "bringing" business, then it's only right to equally perceive them as bringing congestion, pollution, and all the other undesirable side effects of economic activity.
3) when does one ever "own" land? Property rights are enforced by the government, it's only fair that they receive compensation for that.
The compensation they extract has nothing to do with the cost of enforcing property rights, because those costs are trivial.
http://www.cupertino.org/index.aspx?page=1222
What fraction of that do you want to bet has anything to do with protecting private property, as opposed to the large revenue generating activities like parking tickets?
Is your point that they need a blank check to protect property rights? Because that's preposterous and would only demonstrate your own misunderstanding of property rights (or rights in general).
https://fee.org/search/?q=protection%20property%20rights seems pretty clear they understand the government is responsible for protecting property rights, which is a prerequisite for capitalism.
Is the irony seriously eluding you?! You're saying in order to protect our property rights, they need to further violate our property rights! For the love of god...
In one sentence you claim we never own our property, the next you say they're in charge of protecting our rights as property owners... You literally contradict yourself in one sentence...
Real estate is taxed ongoing because the Earth has finite land.
Google "Land Value Tax"
How can something that is common property, like you assert (I disagree) be claimed arbitrarily by one group of people and charged for?
It's very possible for situation where whatever property tax the city gets isn't enough to cover the actual services a company requires. Fire, EMS, police, road construction, etc. This is especially true when the workers are mostly commuters. Then the workers don't pay local taxes either.
There are positive externalities like nearby restaurants and hotels with increased business.
Its really unfair to blame apple for it since they didn't make the rules.
But I think it would be fair to levy a "worker" tax that tries to raise revenue for teh city to service the thousands of employees who spend 8-12 hours a day in Cupertino but don't pay a cent in taxes.
1) Prop 13 allows commercial property owners to avoid tax reassessment when the property is transferred (they sell the shell company owning the property rather than the property itself so the property doesn't trigger a reassessment) . This means a lot of property owners are paying 80s or 90s levels of property tax rather than the amount they should be paying under current rates thus depriving cities of revenue.
2) NIMBYs. CA and especially the Bay Area is full of people that are supportive of building more infrastructure or housing as long as it isn't built where they live. They fear that any kind of infrastructure (roads, public transit) or new development (affordable housing) will bring "the wrong sort of people" into the area and affect their property prices. Cupertino and other valley cities are notorious for not building enough housing relative to the number of office space for this reason.
3). Environment impact studies. Any proposed development needs one of these and if your plan gets sucked into the detailed version then it can take years or even decades to get the project approved. If people don't approve of your development then generally they get lawyer-ed up and file a review. This will stop most developers cold as nobody wants to spent years and potentially millions dollars in court before they can break ground.
So there you have it. It generally considered to be impossible to get any large infrastructure project built in California in under 20 years. See the high speed rail project. 19 years to deliver a link between two nowhere towns (Merced and Bakersfield). China is positively rolling in the aisle with laughter.