The Detroit News Editorial: Find more money to keep roads safe
Cutting municipal budgets is a necessity when revenue declines. But public safety shouldn't be put at risk as a result. That's what's happening this winter -- the harshest in recent years -- as counties in Michigan trim back plowing and salting roads to save money.No kidding. Our street, while a tertiary one, has rarely seen a plow come by (we've lucked out that at the botton of the hill, we have a guy who has a truck come plow his driveway and the truck makes a one-way lane all the way down the road as he goes. As a result you'll see clean driveways but a good layer of ice and snow still on the road, so much so that you have to go to the bottom of the hill and make a running start to get off the street unless you have four wheel drive.
This has been an unusually cold and snowy winter. The National Weather Service says Metro Detroit has already seen 45 inches of snow, almost double the normal 25 inches, and it's not even February.
So it's understandable that commutes are more challenging. But the tougher road conditions have not been matched with an increase in snow plows and salt.
But that could be understood, it sucks but we can deal with it.
The problem is the more major roads in Oakland and Wayne and Macomb Counties that I've traveled on are still slick and snowy - including Telegraph and Woodward as well as the parallel mile roads that make getting around quite hazardous.
Snow removal and road safety is a core government function, if they can't do that well, its a major problem. It's not as if they don't know that it snows here in Michigan in the winter with regularity, and that we get slick and icy roads as a result.
Indeed its a transfer of spending, and a false saving by cutting back on this service. Instead of the government having to keep up keeping the roads clean with the costs it entails, drivers have costs to pay in lost time, car damage and even injury.
4 comments:
Why shouldn't they proceed with remorseless, shameless, impunity? The mafia fascist molestor league elected Baerpheon O'Phalleigh O'Bamaugh as president with the most Catholic cabinet in history. They killed six million Jews, a million Serbs, half a million freemasons, a quarter million Gypsies, they guided the slaughter of Assyrians and Armenians, and promoted the art of genocide throughout the world.Ellis Island Popeholes brought in FDR. Carolignian Brzezinski spawned Zia al Haq, Khomeini, and bin Laden - breaks up superpowers via Aztlan and Kosovo as per Joel Garreau's Nine Nations. Brzezinski, Buckley and Buchanan winked anti-Semitic votes for Obama, delivered USA to Pope's feudal basket of Bamana Republics. Michael Pfleger and Joe Biden prove Obama is the Pope's boy. Obama is half a Kearney from County Offaly in Ireland. Talal got Pontifical medal as Fatima mandates Catholic-Muslim union against Jews (Francis Johnson, Great Sign, 1979, p. 126), Catholic Roger Taney wrote Dred Scott decision. John Wilkes Booth, Tammany Hall and Joe McCarthy were Catholics. Now Catholic majority Supreme Court. Catholics Palmisano, Grasso, Damato, Langone, Dioguardi, Palmieri destroyed American industry. Subprime construction mobsters had hookers deliver mortgages to banks. McCain's Keeting started it all. They find American cars too advanced to use or their mechanics to fix. Their slovenly, anti-intellectual work ethic produces vacuous, casuistrous blather and a tangle of contradictory regulations. NYC top drop outs: Hispanic 32%, Black 25%, Italian 20%. NYC top illegals: Ecuadorean, Italian, Polish. Ate glis-glis but blamed plague on others, now lettuce coli. Their bigotry most encouraged terror yet they reap most security funds. Rabbi circumcizes lower, Pope upper brain. Tort explosion by glib casuistry. Bazelya 1992 case proves PLO-IRA-KLA links. Our enemy os the Peking-Mecca-Vatican Axis and the only answer is alliance with Israel and India.
Wow - the streets not being plowed is the fault of: catholics, europeans of all stripes, hispanics, mafiosi, and lawyers. But not jews or those from India. In the words of our Goobla friend "Interesting. I must study this"
It's the same up here. I know the plow runs through sometimes because I keep having to clear the end of the driveway, but you wouldn't know it to look at the road - there's several inches of show on top of the hardpack. Up here it's probably Mayor Virg funding the new (and unneeded) State Police HQ to keep Joel Ferguson happy, rather than buying salt and paying the plow drivers. Or maybe the new City Market development. Something's keeping the plows from running, that's for sure!
Scott:
I'm just happy that for once the Jews aren't being blamed for everything that goes wrong in the world, including in this case, snow removal.
Certainly an interesting comment isn't it?
Interesting, indeed. But you only get half credit in his eyes, as you are a lawyer. I also notice he mentions the Chinese, and I know you enjoy Chinese food, so there's probably another mark against you. He didn't mention Masons or the daVinci code as far as I could tell.
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