Thursday, February 10, 2011
Wonk / Guv'ment Fixing Atlanta's broken infrastructure will require patience — oh, and $922 million
Posted by Thomas Wheatley @thomaswheatley on Thu, Feb 10, 2011 at 9:01 AM
The city needs $289 million to repair and replace crumbling bridges, officials said. Three in downtown Atlanta have giant nets under them to protect pedestrians from falling chunks of concrete and asphalt.Officials said $262 million is needed for street resurfacing. Fifty-one percent of Atlanta’s streets, or 834 miles, are past their life cycle and in need of repaving.
The administration also said the city needs $240 million to repair sidewalks, curbs and ADA ramps. The annual amount the city should budget to whittle away at all its infrastructure needs equals the entire budget of the police department.
Some state lawmakers are pushing to allow cities and counties to levy sales tax by less than a penny — in one-tenth increments — to help pay for the fixes. (Last we heard there was talk of doing the same to help fund arts programs.)
They better hurry. In 2009, then-Mayor Shirley Franklin warned that the city's infrastructure backlog hovered around $750 million. Projects are going to pile up — and only become more expensive.
Comments (16)
Showing 1-16 of 16
this kind of expenditure is a liberal red-herring and nothing more;we have NO MONEY!
we need to get out of the red first and then worry about the unending democrat battlecry of "let's repair our roadways"
to sum up NO NO NO SPENDING NO NO NO TAX HIKES
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Have you driven around this city lately or tried to walk down some of the sidewalks (when they even exist)? It is time to fix this tore up mess.
So, SimplePete... since you seem to be so intelligent; how do you propose we 'get out of the red' so we can worry about little things like crumbling overpasses that drop concrete and asphalt on pedestrians... or giant potholes that cause your car to lose alignment or worse... in turning causing you to waste money on fixing your car rather than paying for food, your kids education, or a myriad of other important things.
Simple Pete is a very good impression of Pistol Pete (the dumbest person on the internet). Its satire. Dont get your panties in a wad.
The people who cry about raising taxes aren't living on a fixed income worrying about how to make ends meet. They're miserly control freaks who (A) equate their self-worth (or worthlessness) with how many zeroes are in their bank accounts and (B) detest the idea of anybody except them deciding the city's priorities.
The latter wrong-headed notion is why they advocate charities and privatization: In their warped rationalization, government poisons what it touches, while business responds to economic laws. (So do starvation and war, but that's another rant for another day.) What they really are aiming for, though, with charities and business is a security that they can buy influence with their fortunes -- while government treats all of its constituents as equals.
Hear me loud and clear Kasim Reed and Kwanza Hall (my representative on the City Council): I DEMAND THAT YOU RAISE MY TAXES (and everybody else's). And then I demand that you spend that money to preserve, restore, and build Atlanta into a city that I can be (even more) proud of.
I love when new people are first confronted with Simple Pete's mad ravings. They almost seem serious.
Our entire nation is backlogged on infrastructure repairs. I seem to remember learning something in my public school social studies class about the difficulty of paying for butter and guns that could be applicable in such a situation.
While we're waiting on the infrastructure fairy to leave a billion dollars under our pillow, take a look on the bright side. There are advantages to letting roads crumble to dust while we delay infrastructure repair.
- Re-paving roads is yet another aspect of our dependency on crude oil (for the production of asphalt). Crumbling roads = lower oil imports. Yay!
- Asphalt creates impervious surfaces that pollute rainwater and disturb the natural flow of water to basins. No asphalt, no problem.
- Crumbling roads = slower drivers and greater safety for pedestrians. Traffic calming!
- Think of all the media attention Atlanta would get if we had a bridge-collapse tragedy. TV news eats that stuff up! A crappy Pirate Museum would hardly get us this much media coverage.
http://www.google.com/images?q=bridge+coll…
There were no shovel-ready projects in January 09 when the Feds wanted stimulus? That's what 'experts' and media repeated endlessly. It is astonishing that we are more politically and economically primitive now than we were 80 years ago.
Dont worry anyone....Im sure our savior and uber mayor the great Muhammad Reed will be along shortly to save us all!!!!! Well according to all the papers in this town.
So what's happened with all the Quality of Life bonds funds?
Just where did they all get spent?
You mean to tell me all the projects that didn't get funded from that were *not* at the Mayor's fingertips to go after Fed funds?
The City does not usually raise taxes for this kind of chump change - they go to the municipal bond market. Which is having a stroke right now after the one analyst went on a rampage diatribing (sp) about how the muni bond market is going to tank like a -?- b/c of the wretched shape of cities...
The last Beltline bond issuance went out at near junk bond level, i think i heard...
If Reed's gonna go to the market to whittle away again at the disaster that is COA infrastructure (like that sewer tunnel instead of actually FIXING the decrepit crumbling sewer systems themselves) he's gonna have a fun time. But he seems to snow the local corporate community pretty well, so maybe he can snow the bond rating community too.
People think SimplePete is serious because he basically is repeating the kind of logic one hears from Sean Hannity or Glen Beck - check the AJC posts or countless other political blogs - they make SP look very mainstream. How else you gonna splain Sarah Palin. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/columnists…
This town is getting a little depressing. There is loads of potential here, but the city is currently dump (both structurally and visually) and there isnt a fix in the near future. I've been here almost four years and I am starting to lose my optimism. I know I'm not alone in this thought.
Assessments and user fees = things get done! People want yellow brick roads, but they don't want to pay for them! No free lunch...and no free roads either...Toll roads everywhere; more fees and taxes for transit, and so on...
It drives me nuts that Atlanta places no responsibility for owners of a property to keep up their portion of the public right of way. I understand that this isn't politically feasible both because wealthy Atlantans hate taxes and poor Atlantans can't afford it, nor can the city afford to enforce it in terms of finance or competency. You see this in a number of ways: just recently, no one cleared their icy walkway during the "storm," an infraction that many cities will fine you for by the day. Additionally, the city has no rhyme or reason for constructing, repairing, or maintaining sidewalks. They put down the hexagonal concrete that crumbles within a few years as the clay below it shifts, particularly in recent years when extreme drought followed by flooding makes the foundation even more volatile. Finally, if the city can't find the money to construct or replace sidewalks (we're not exactly talking 500 miles of bake lanes for granola eating, bike-commuting hippies here, we're talking about a basic urban feature), they might as well incentivize citizens to take care of their portion of the public ROW themselves through property tax credits for replacing crumbling or non-existent sidewalks. As an out-of-work city planner, the fact that no one at city hall would even consider even doing a cost-benefit analysis on such a plan is one of the things that may drive me away from Georgia very, very soon. There is no sense of urgency or ingenuity amongst city leadership. I would take a 75% pay cut to go work for the city and help extablish such a program for the city, but none of the council memebers give a shit about such basic urban necessities, not even Kwanzaa Hall. They are still convinced that Atlanta is now going to get the Winter Olympics, World Cup, Super Bowl, build the largest Bloomingdales ever at Atlantic Station, and find parking for it all that they fail to recognize the fact that the people who actually live here don't want any of that shit. We want to be able to walk down the street without tripping over the fucking pavement after we get mugged outside of our apartments.
Hmmm...simple pete I hope a bridge doesnt shed some concrete on top of you. Wonder if you'd be wearing ruby slippers...(Oz looked like it had good infrastructure)
should have known that simple pete was a parody from the name-- but definately from the 'unending democrat battlecry of "let's repair our roadways" ' remark... very funny-- I'll add the 'lets have better schools' to that one too (as an unending liberal myself)...
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