Reality Is Trying To Tell Us Something
Who’s to blame for the condition of Spokane’s roads? Since ours is a representative form of government, a truthful answer won’t be popular: The community is to blame. What’s more, only the community can whip its government into shape and supply it with the money required to fix the roads.
This will not be easy. It will not be cheap. It will take some time. For a while, we will continue to suffer smashed oil pans, blown shock absorbers and an image as a city too dumb, poor, stingy and mismanaged to take care of a basic need.
But there is hope. This fall, Spokane voters will elect a mayor and three City Council members. This gives us an opportunity to enhance the credibility of city government.
Once government is credible, perhaps the taxpayers can be responsible.
Ask people on the street about higher taxes for road maintenance and one of the first things you’ll hear is a story about seeing a road maintenance crew with one guy working and three guys leaning on shovels.
That’s a credibility problem and we need some candidates with a plan to fix it.
But the plan had better be more sophisticated than offering to cut the budget and flog the “bureaucracy” so that crews will have no choice but to work harder.
Been there, done that. Spokane City Council meetings feature endless bureaucracy-flogging by local malcontents. And, our wretched streets are the direct result of more than a decade of budget cutting and penny pinching.
Some of the cuts, such as the elimination of a crew that sealed cracks in pavement, were nothing short of idiotic. That crew was restored this year, so score one point for credibility.
Other cuts resulted from public concerns about crime. Drug-dealing gangs were in fact invading Spokane during the past decade. Under public pressure, the City Council made police spending its top priority. In retrospect, it is clear the council overreacted, sacrificing street maintenance on the altar of crime fears.
As a community, we have to become sophisticated enough to support a balancing of multiple priorities, rather than lurching from one crisis to another.
And, we have to give our government enough tax revenue to do its work. Spokane’s low-wage economy makes that tough; that’s why economic development’s crucial. Still, the city contends it will need roughly $50 million for road repairs and $6 million a year for better maintenance. That kind of money will not be available until local leaders prepare, and voters approve, a package of tax increases. Denial is not a solution.
, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster For the editorial board