February
2008
Road Repairs to Stress Budgets from an Unusual Winter
Many homeowners have experienced ice dams here in Wisconsin so they have felt the personal pain of these unusual and excessive freeze and thaw cycles.
However, it’s not just homeowners who have been considering opening their wallets to remediate the problems — it’s also government from the feds all the way down to the villages.
When water gets inside of cracks in the road it’s not a big deal if it’s just draining away. But that’s not what happens when you have freeze and thaw cycles like we’ve been having. What happens is the dampness and the water that has not drained away freezes. As it freezes it expands and pops out pieces of concrete and asphalt.
You would be hard pressed not to have accidentally driven through one of those cavernous holes in the road in the past month. 4, 5 and even 6 inch holes have caused damage to cars and have made transportation a challenge.
The amount of heavy trucks on the road haven’t helped. As pavement has been pushed up in areas, heavy vehicles which drive over these areas which may otherwise only be temporarily heaved up, crack off chunks of pavement.
It would be a godsend if there was a better product for roads than aspalt or concrete but those are the two best cost effective alternatives out there right now.
Unfortunately the result will be that government will again be forced to ask the taxpayers to pony up some extra cash to solve the problem. This is especially frustrating for us northerners since it’s almost like it’s a special tax on us for living where we do.
UPDATE: Over a month later, the Journal-Sentinel finally published a story explaining, in part, the same thing I did.
Jim McGuigan
Jim McGuigan
Not surprised that our present high tax rates and our required residential parking permit fees are just not enough to support this city… Roads/streets were in need of repair along time ago–Just catching up to the cities neglect in order for them to ask for mor4 tax money. Why are the dems all tax hungry. Are is our money going or to whom????????
Where in the World is Jessica McBride?
What we have here is truly, “Failure to Communicate”
She seems to have gone the way of fellow right wing activist mover and shaker Todd Robert Murphy.
Remember Todd (my mother named me Todd Robert)?
Kingmaker, avid fund raiser for political insiders, panel member on the Belling Sunday morning show, a non indicted associate of many involved in the Bielinski “affair.” Some believe he was NGRR (Not Guilty by Reason of being Republican).
But back to Ms. McBride. I wonder what reason she gives the fertile young minds she fills with unbiased knowledge for her sudden cessation of blogging?
This, an election year, ripe with topics for columns full of her wit, wisdom, wishing, wondering and whitewashing but little from the Mistress of Spin but an occasional Henny Youngman one- liner accompanied by a link to someone else’s work.
John McCain goes from impossible recipient of the Republican nomination to the man that lost to the first African American President of the United States and Ms. McBride is not to be heard?
No comment on voter fraud/voter ID, Walker vs. Taylor or Gableman vs. Butler from the Mistress of Spin?
Truly, the silence IS deafening.