Stuck On Marginally Less Stupid

A friend of the blog emails:

Saint Paul mayor is pitching a 1% sales tax to increase revenue to repair roads. People say the awful shape of the roads is the reason there are no businesses in Saint Paul “negatively impacts the mobility, safety, and access to the businesses that do so much to grow our community.”

I have some thoughts on this-

A) Does repair roads mean automatic bike lane on any street that this money touches for repair? Because that has been the norm lately, despite what businesses were asking for.

Saint Pauli has one huge advantage in this area: it has Minneapolis next door. If it’s just a little less crazy than Minneapolis, it flies under the radar.

So. yes – I’m sure there will be bike lanes on any street this money touches. But fire hydrants won’t be replaced by EV charging stations [1].

See how that works?

B) Before we go with the 1% sales tax, can we tax and charge all of those multi-unit apartment buildings more if they aren’t adding adequate parking for their tenets? The street parking definitely has an affect on the condition of the streets all year, but especially during snow plowing season.

The city’s mission to make driving an untenable lifestyle choice is proceeding according to pan. . But I can totally see the city taxing multi-unit buildingis 1% more if they have inadequate parking. And 5% if they have adequate parking. Because that sends the right message…

C) As for the actual 1% sales tax, sadly, I’m trying to figure out how this will actually affect me since most of the business that I used to support in Saint Paul have already been chased away.

I’m trying to remember the last time I went to a Saint Paul business that isn’t a restaurant. It’s probably been a few years since I even bought non-Asian groceries here.

[1] Minneapolis hasn’t actually done this yet. Just wait.

5 thoughts on “Stuck On Marginally Less Stupid

  1. The thing that gets me is that city buses get only about 25 passenger-miles per gallon of diesel, which is equivalent to only about 18 passenger-miles per gallon of gasoline in a car. Actually, it gets worse, because cars don’t go an extra 20% or so miles to get to their destination, so it’s actually equivalent to about 15 passenger-miles per gallon of gas. It would be more environmentally sound to put every bus rider in a 3/4 ton pickup, and (bonus) it would (given that street wear goes as the square to the fourth power of weight) actually reduce road repair costs.

    But we cannot, apparently, suffer ourselves to do the math and realize what a dead end (pun intended) street we’re on.

  2. So 8.375% in Saint Paul versus 5.5% ten minutes away in Hudson.

  3. Pingback: In The Mailbox: 01.03.22 (Evening Edition) : The Other McCain

  4. Saint Paul threatened to charge my brother $160/hr to clear the half inch of snow dusting his sidewalk after the Karen down the block reported a list of neighbors who had not cleared their walks to her satisfaction.

    Side note: at the time of the threat, the city had yet to plow his street.

  5. 1% isn’t enough. St. Paul needs at least a 10% sales tax, but 20% would be even better. Higher tax rates always work as expected, right?

    Sadly, the city of St. Paul has become a public administration case study in fiscal incompetence starring Mayor Melvin Carter with no improvement or remedy in sight.

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