Are you double-plus sure about that? I'm running a 19% tax rate on two regions and they both have perfect stats, without me performing any sort of maintenance at all. I haven't even been to those regions in weeks, and one had some monsters attack it in the meantime. Could a mere 6% difference really make it unsustainable? I'd have thought that, with two chances to hold court every day, it would be entirely possible for the Lord alone to offset the daily stat hits.
In any case, even if it's not possible to carry out my... aspirations... exactly as intended, it should still be entirely possible for a lord to turn a pretty penny even while paying for food -- even while paying for food, at a cost of one gold per bushel. I can't imagine a city running at a deficit without the addition of some hefty optional expenses.
To your last paragraph, not really. The max possible assuming no expenses for a lord of GF to receive max income is 1460 but food costs lower that to 570 and that assumes no buildings and no militia.
