{"id":42877,"date":"2014-04-08T05:00:35","date_gmt":"2014-04-08T10:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=42877"},"modified":"2014-04-06T20:30:09","modified_gmt":"2014-04-07T01:30:09","slug":"saint-paul-start-with-the-luxuries-the-necessities-take-care-of-themselves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=42877","title":{"rendered":"Saint Paul: “Start With The Luxuries; The Necessities Take Care Of Themselves!”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The roads in Saint Paul have been particularly awful this year. \u00a0Hamline Avenue between I94 and University was (until about a week ago) a strut-crunching road worse than a Bolivian goat path, passable at maybe 5MPH (maybe 10, now, with a coat of hot patch a week or so ago). \u00a0And others are just as bad; I saw a few “smart cars” completely disappear into a couple of potholes in the past few weeks.<\/p>\n

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n

The streets in St. Paul are falling apart.\u00a0 The Mayor has no money to fix them without\u00a0help from Congress<\/a>.\u00a0 Why not?<\/p>\n

Take a typical house in the Midway valued around $175,000.\u00a0 The homeowner pays property taxes totaling nearly $300 per month: $900 to the county, \u00a0$700 to the city, $1,000 to the school district, more to other entities including $70 for the Light Rail and $100 to \u201cother special taxing districts.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But wait, there\u2019s more!<\/span><\/p>\n

The homeowner also pays a $175 Special Assessment for Right of Way Maintenance and an additional $50 Special Assessment for Storm Sewer. \u00a0That sounds suspiciously like money dedicated for street repairs including curb-and-gutter.\u00a0 And it isn\u2019t a one-time deal: St. Paul charges those Special Assessments to every property including schools and churches, every single year.\u00a0 So where\u2019s that money?<\/span><\/p>\n

Spent it all on street repairs and it\u2019s still not enough?\u00a0 Then the city\u2019s budget managers are incompetent.<\/span><\/p>\n

Spent it all on . . . something else?\u00a0 Then we need some tar, all right, and feathers, too.\u00a0 And a rail, so certain people can ride it out of town.<\/span><\/p>\n

As society evolved from savagery, cities were formed to provide basic services: police, fire, sanitary sewer, clean water, passable roads to move goods from farm to market.\u00a0 Everything else is gravy.\u00a0 St. Paul city government is failing its fundamental purpose.<\/span><\/p>\n

Joe Doakes<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But..refrigerated ice rinks!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The roads in Saint Paul have been particularly awful this year. \u00a0Hamline Avenue between I94 and University was (until about a week ago) a strut-crunching road worse than a Bolivian goat path, passable at maybe 5MPH (maybe 10, now, with a coat of hot patch a week or so ago). \u00a0And others are just as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-st-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42877","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=42877"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42878,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42877\/revisions\/42878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}