On Roads and Debt

Here’s a piece from StrongTowns.org about how to deal with deteriorating roads and increasing municipal debt. The story is from Brainerd, Minnesota, but common sense works everywhere.

With all the talk of how to pay for a five year road plan, nobody seems to be willing to publicly acknowledge the obvious: Brainerd has more roads to fix and maintain than it has tax base to pay for them. This isn’t a taxing problem and it isn’t a spending problem. It is an insolvency problem, one that debt can only make worse.

There is no budget solution to this problem that will allow us to continue as we have, only rational ways to respond.

Read the whole piece here.