By David Stanczak
It’s the off-season for street repair. As we finish off November, it’s clearly too cold to do much of anything with streets. If there’s something wrong with a street, nothing will happen to it until well into spring, so we’re stuck with anything that can’t be fixed with cold patch until then.
The good news is that the Bloomington City Council gives every indication of realizing the gravity of the street conditions in town and the need to do something about them; that’s good because they’re the only ones who can do anything about them. They bit one bullet and imposed a 1% additional sales tax. That’s a good first step. They also, at least for the time being, resisted pressures to do lots of other things with the proceeds. No governmental unit ever has enough money to do all it would like to do. That has been particularly true of Bloomington for several years now. The only question is which of the supplicants for city money get stiffed and for how much.
In making decisions on where to cut, the Bloomington City Council appears intent on getting back to basics, and there’s nothing more basic than the condition of streets. Fully addressing that problem means saying no to a whole host of other interests. Many of those interests are justified as advancing the “quality of life” in Bloomington, a justifiable concern. However, when people feel they have to avoid a street out of concern that the rumble strip surface will pop the fillings out of theirteeth, or have to be concerned over a hole in Main St. that could swallow their car, with them in it, that impacts the quality of everyone’s life on a daily basis.
In the past, the Council has fudged on streets. When they issued $10 million in bonds a couple years ago for streets, they did not simply add it to amounts normally spent for that purpose in prior years. I hope the current focus on streets will remain.
When you travel on highways, you don’t need to see the “Welcome to Illinois” signs to know you’ve crossed the state line; your shock absorbers let you know. I don’t want people to be able to tell they are driving in Bloomington the same way.
David Stanczak, a Forum commentator since 1995, came to Bloomington in 1971. He served as the City of Bloomington’s first full-time legal counsel for over 18 years, before entering private practice. He is currently employed by the Snyder Companies and continues to reside in Bloomington with his family.
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