{"id":19493,"date":"2011-04-22T05:16:04","date_gmt":"2011-04-22T11:16:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=19493"},"modified":"2011-04-22T05:16:04","modified_gmt":"2011-04-22T11:16:04","slug":"your-tax-dollars-at-work-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=19493","title":{"rendered":"Your Tax Dollars At Work"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s what MNDOT spends your tax dollars on; the state <a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/etv6eI  \">telling cities what <em>kinds of signs they can plant<\/em> along the road<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Two new signs along Highway 57 on either end of town say it all:  \u201cWelcome to Historic Mantorville.\u201d  The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) \u201coutdoor advertising control agent\u201d who recently conducted a drive-by state sign inspection may have worn out his welcome, however, after notifying city hall that three older signs along the state highway in this small, southeastern Minnesota town violate state regulations and must go, including one for the community\u2019s annual Marigold Days celebration.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s like his job to go around and look at signs,\u201d said Camille Reger, Mantorville city clerk. \u201cI\u2019m just surprised that after how long [the sign] it\u2019s been there that they\u2019re cracking down now. What\u2019s the reason behind it? \u201c<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Possible reasons:<\/p>\n<p>a) The state&#8217;s roads are in such fantastic shape that MNDOT finally worked its way down to &#8220;The Mantorville Signs&#8221; crisis.<\/p>\n<p>b) Someone finally got around to it.<\/p>\n<p>c) MNDOT needs to gin up more work for itself, to justify more spending. \u00a0To justify more budget. \u00a0To justify taxing your sorry ass back to the 1970&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>State regulations allow cities to post identification signs on state highways at each entrance to town. For years the Marigold Days signs informally served that purpose for Mantorville\u2014until the new welcome signs were erected in 2010. According to a city employee, a MnDOT road sign inspector recently reclassified one of the Marigold Days signs as an advertisement that he believes is also in the right of way.  This, despite the fact that the offending sign has been in place for  at least 20  years. MnDOT ordered city employees to remove the sign.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Isn&#8217;t this a sign that Minnesota has <em>just too damn much <\/em>government?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s what MNDOT spends your tax dollars on; the state telling cities what kinds of signs they can plant along the road: Two new signs along Highway 57 on either end of town say it all: \u201cWelcome to Historic Mantorville.\u201d The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) \u201coutdoor advertising control agent\u201d who recently conducted a drive-by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-socialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19493"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19500,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19493\/revisions\/19500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}