Opportunity slipping – contact your legislator now!

I read the Detroit Free Press article yesterday on a recently completed voter poll. The good news from the poll related to road repairs is that respondents are willing to increase the state sales tax by one percent to fix roads. The bad news? The poll indicated that roads are no longer the top issue in the state with voters. It has slipped to third behind education and jobs. The article implied that maybe the time for the legislature to deal with roads has come and gone yet again. That might be right.

The legislature is out now until after the election. There will only be a few days in the so called “lame duck” session to act on the needed revenue for roads and transit improvements. If they do not act, it will be yet another year of doing nothing to improve our crumbling transportation infrastructure. Another year of things getting worse and more expensive to fix.

I wish I understood the plan. I wish I knew if there was a plan! It is difficult to find $1.5 billion to improve the condition of the system – and that is just to improve pavements. After another winter, the condition of the system will continue to deteriorate – guaranteed! Every year the cost to improve the system will increase, making it harder and harder to address. I guess people would rather continue to pay hundreds of dollars to fix cars that have been damaged by bad pavements than pay much less in increased taxes to start to fix the problem today.

We will try to talk to legislators while they are off and encourage them to fix this problem when they get back. You should too. The hole in the roof keeps getting larger and we just continue to look at it and measure how much bigger it is getting rather than trying to fix it.