Boulder County doesn't do roads?
Published in the Boulder Daily Camera, 7/28/13
Government can be really annoying sometimes, even when they're doing good things. Like getting a permit for a simple home remodel, which always seems to involve government people asking strange questions and seeming to make up rules as they go along. Even though they do this for, I'm sure, good reasons, it's still annoying.
But, there are some things that we just simply love about government, and right at the top of the list is roads. In America, we can count on our government to build and maintain our roads. Through the Middle Ages, road building wasn't always a government function. Lots of crummy cart paths connected by private toll roads made getting around difficult and expensive. Over time, nations came to appreciate that building and maintaining roads was a perfect thing for the government to take over since moving around efficiently serves the common good and, therefore, should be paid for communally. That concept has led to vast improvements in human mobility everywhere.
Apparently, though, Boulder County government prefers the Middle Age perspective on this one.
Over the past few years, the Boulder County commissioners have twisted themselves in knots trying to explain to county residents why the county should not be responsible for the maintenance and repair of all Boulder County roads. Instead of continuing the longstanding precedent of sharing the cost of county road maintenance across all county residents, the county commissioners now tell us that they aren't really responsible for maintaining 150 miles of roads that lie within subdivisions even though 1) the roads are all publicly accessible county roads and 2) the county promised that it would maintain these roads when they were originally paved. So, county residents living in these subdivisions are now being told that they will have to buck up big additional fees unless they want to resort to, I guess, crummy cart paths and toll roads to get to and from home.
Well, that's sort of what the commissioners are saying. When you start fiddling with a simple concept like "we all share in the cost of our roads," things get messy fast. Rather than just saying, "We don't do subdivision roads anymore," the county commissioners started drawing lines between road "routine maintenance" (which they are more than happy to pay for) and road "rehabilitation" (which they feel is completely inappropriate to pay for). I'm confused. It seems to me that, maintaining a road routinely involves occasional major repairs. I never knew that roads had to go into rehab occasionally, like Keith Richards should have. But, it's the government and I'm sure they know what they're talking about. Or, maybe it's just doublespeak to keep us confused. Hard to tell.
Of course, what this is really about is raising taxes to pay for a growing county government. Everyone understands that all this road maintenance and rehab isn't free and never has been. What changed? Did our roads develop substance abuse issues leading to higher rehab costs? Probably not. I did some research on Boulder County budgets over the past 17 years and it's clear that Boulder County has simply decided that it's more interested in things other than maintaining county roads. Since 1996, the portion of the county budget that is allocated to road maintenance has dropped by almost 20 percent. If Boulder County allocated the same portion of the county budget to road maintenance today as it did in 1996, there would be an additional $2 million per year in the county road maintenance budget. Coincidentally, I'm sure, this is most of what the county commissioners now say they need to pay for subdivision road rehab.
It's pretty clear that what Boulder County leaders are really trying to do is find a way to raise money for county government without having to tax most county residents, just those living on these rehab-ready roads. But, to do that, they have to break one of the social contracts we've had with our government for centuries. That seems like a bad deal for everyone. One of the hallmarks of Colorado government is transparency, and if the county needs more money to fund their activities, then they should make the case for additional taxes and ask us all if we are willing to pay them. By squeezing the road budgets and then forcing a small subset of county residents to pay more for what the county had already promised them, our County Commissioners will only make us all more cynical about future government promises.
Government can be really annoying sometimes, even when they're doing good things. Like getting a permit for a simple home remodel, which always seems to involve government people asking strange questions and seeming to make up rules as they go along. Even though they do this for, I'm sure, good reasons, it's still annoying.
But, there are some things that we just simply love about government, and right at the top of the list is roads. In America, we can count on our government to build and maintain our roads. Through the Middle Ages, road building wasn't always a government function. Lots of crummy cart paths connected by private toll roads made getting around difficult and expensive. Over time, nations came to appreciate that building and maintaining roads was a perfect thing for the government to take over since moving around efficiently serves the common good and, therefore, should be paid for communally. That concept has led to vast improvements in human mobility everywhere.
Apparently, though, Boulder County government prefers the Middle Age perspective on this one.
Over the past few years, the Boulder County commissioners have twisted themselves in knots trying to explain to county residents why the county should not be responsible for the maintenance and repair of all Boulder County roads. Instead of continuing the longstanding precedent of sharing the cost of county road maintenance across all county residents, the county commissioners now tell us that they aren't really responsible for maintaining 150 miles of roads that lie within subdivisions even though 1) the roads are all publicly accessible county roads and 2) the county promised that it would maintain these roads when they were originally paved. So, county residents living in these subdivisions are now being told that they will have to buck up big additional fees unless they want to resort to, I guess, crummy cart paths and toll roads to get to and from home.
Well, that's sort of what the commissioners are saying. When you start fiddling with a simple concept like "we all share in the cost of our roads," things get messy fast. Rather than just saying, "We don't do subdivision roads anymore," the county commissioners started drawing lines between road "routine maintenance" (which they are more than happy to pay for) and road "rehabilitation" (which they feel is completely inappropriate to pay for). I'm confused. It seems to me that, maintaining a road routinely involves occasional major repairs. I never knew that roads had to go into rehab occasionally, like Keith Richards should have. But, it's the government and I'm sure they know what they're talking about. Or, maybe it's just doublespeak to keep us confused. Hard to tell.
Of course, what this is really about is raising taxes to pay for a growing county government. Everyone understands that all this road maintenance and rehab isn't free and never has been. What changed? Did our roads develop substance abuse issues leading to higher rehab costs? Probably not. I did some research on Boulder County budgets over the past 17 years and it's clear that Boulder County has simply decided that it's more interested in things other than maintaining county roads. Since 1996, the portion of the county budget that is allocated to road maintenance has dropped by almost 20 percent. If Boulder County allocated the same portion of the county budget to road maintenance today as it did in 1996, there would be an additional $2 million per year in the county road maintenance budget. Coincidentally, I'm sure, this is most of what the county commissioners now say they need to pay for subdivision road rehab.
It's pretty clear that what Boulder County leaders are really trying to do is find a way to raise money for county government without having to tax most county residents, just those living on these rehab-ready roads. But, to do that, they have to break one of the social contracts we've had with our government for centuries. That seems like a bad deal for everyone. One of the hallmarks of Colorado government is transparency, and if the county needs more money to fund their activities, then they should make the case for additional taxes and ask us all if we are willing to pay them. By squeezing the road budgets and then forcing a small subset of county residents to pay more for what the county had already promised them, our County Commissioners will only make us all more cynical about future government promises.
