If evidence will do the trick, there's plenty of it in a March 1997 article in the journal Population and Environment. The author, Eben Fodor, a planner from Eugene, Oregon, performs two useful services. First he summarizes previous studies of the relationship between growth and taxes. Second, he does his own calculation of how much a typical new house costs a typical community in Oregon. Studies over 25 years from all parts of the nation are unanimous.
Growth raises taxes.
A 1991 survey of towns in DuPage County, Illinois, showed a clear relationship between new development and rising property taxes. Amazingly, commercial development was even more expensive to the towns, and thus the taxpayers, than residential development. As settlement density thins out from 30 houses per acre on one end of the scale to four acres per house on the other end, the cost per house of providing and maintaining roads, sewer, water, storm drains, and schools zooms upward. Fodor's own study shows why growth raises taxes. He assumes that the houses must be supplied with municipal water and sewage treatment and that every three houses bring two kids into the public school system.