Governor Kristi Noem had to play games with her measly million dollars for pheasant habitat just to keep from breaking her first budget. How does she plan to balance next year’s budget to rebuild all the roads this winter has destroyed?
Estimates of twenty to twenty-five million dollars in damages in Yankton County will go higher.
Commission Chairman Dan Klimisch says they anticipate finding more damage after last week’s snow [“Yankton County Damage Adding Up,” WNAX Radio, 2019.04.15].
That’s $25 million in just one county; we’ve got 66 counties with roads torn all to heck. All of Kristi’s proclamations and prayers won’t fill those potholes or repack that gravel. Will she let the counties starve, or will she get serious and direct some revenue toward maintaining the infrastructure essential to whatever Next Big Economic Thing she’s still trying to think up?
You’re missing the big picture. Ford and GM are getting out of passenger car production and concentrating on trucks and SUVs. We don’t need roads.
Would it be OK if she checked with her handlers first and got back to you next week??
Pols with vision see the need for road maintenance funds before disasters strike and ask for dedicated taxes towards that end.
Pols with tunnel vision see only taxcuts for the wealthy.
Pols with hindsight admire their rears in the mirror while they take selfies.
There are about 555,000 SoDakians out there who believe that if the schools post “In God We Trust” the roads will fix themselves.
(From an LTE in today’s Strib.)
This is how a 2nd generation immigrant sees paying taxes:
“This week I wrote a relatively (for me) large check to the IRS. After grumbling to my wife and feeling sorry for myself, I remembered seven brothers from Washington, D.C., with whom I did business 30-plus years ago. Their father was an immigrant from Russia who arrived in the U.S. with nothing. He instilled in his sons the fact that it was a privilege rather than a burden to pay taxes. One year the brothers paid a little more than a million dollars in federal taxes and were so proud that they brought their tax receipts to their father’s grave and celebrated. Some people think we are taxed to death. After recalling the story and looking at all we have in this country, I think the payment I sent in represents one hell of a bargain.”
BRUCE LEMKE, ORONO
El Rayo, may I take from your comment a suggestion that we’re doing ourselves in by buying bigger vehicles that wear out our roads faster?
Don’t repair many of the roads! With 2,000 fewer farms than the last time they counted farms – the depopulating briskly continues. We don’t need roads to no where.