Would you pay more tax to get potholes fixed?

[MotoNews]

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A survey reveals as many as 10% of the public would be prepared to pay more tax if it meant potholes and poor road surfaces across the country are fixed

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[Hosstage]

No I would not pay more, I would go through the budget and cut out the excess spending on unnecessary "services". My local city has 17 staff in the mayor's office, including a "resource recovery redistribution manager", or some such title. No one is really sure what that person does, but the mayor really needs him. How much do 17 staff with made up jobs cost?

The mayor from 20 years ago was asked how many staff he had, he said one secretary, and a friend not on the payroll that he would talk with to hash out ideas.

People that say they would be willing to pay more for services that they already pay for are fools.

[Red]

NO.  Government at all levels have demonstrated they can and would use a large portion of the money for things other than improving road surfaces.  I'd say yes for a few years if there was a prohibition against using any of the $ for overhead like rent, utilities, unrelated training, sick and vacation pay, 2nd level and above supervision, new vehicles and equipment, or expanding trails, bike paths, and other unrelated items.  Oregon has this bad habit of expanding the list of expenditures that are not directly related to fixing the road surface directly related to motorized travel.

[wbw6cos]

No.  

 

Have you ever noticed the equipment the municipalities have?  Around here it is mostly high end and new.  There are exceptions, but I noticed that the equivalent private sector has older machines.  It has to do with the revenue stream, I guess.

[mickeym3]

No...on the highway coming to my place the county worked weeks bringing in dirt to bring up the level of the shoulder.  They had two new dump trucks ferrying in dirt from 30 miles away, a grader operator, two flag men, a site supervisor and what appeared to be another manager periodically checking on them. Never mind that in no spot was the shoulder more than two inches below the road service and the first good rain washed most of it away to expose large rocks they also brought in.  Home owners collected the rocks to stack around mailboxes.  Did I mention that our highway dead ends two miles beyond my property because we have marsh on three sides?  Minimal traffic to say the least.  When local electric company needs to add service to a lot or clear storm damage they have two guys in a truck with cones on the road when they need to block a lane.  Local governments learned from the Federal Government that the more people they can add to the payroll the more tiers of bureaucracy they can add. Customer focused companies DO NOT operate like this. 

[Hosstage]

A follow up to my post regarding the mayor's staff, I have found the job titles for the people on his staff. These 17 people (now 18, a new position was just created today, wtf?) are city employees in the mayor's office, getting very nice salaries, which I will try to find as well. This does not include the city council, or any staff that actually produce goods and services. (For the record, I no longer live in this city)

Here we go:

1. Executive Assistant and Scheduler 

2. Deputy Mayor

3. Senior Aide to Deputy Mayor

4. Chief Security officer

5. Communication Director

6. Policy Director

7. Senior Policy Advisor

8. Policy Associate

9. Policy Associate (no, that is not a mistake, there are two.)

10. Chief Innovative Officer 

11. Chief Resilience Officer (still can't figure that one out)

12. Chief Equity Officer (that's a lot of chiefs)

13. Program Manager

14. Constituent Outreach Coordinator

15. Director of Intergovernmental Relations

16. Deputy Director of Intergovernmental Relations and Community Engagement

17. Americorps VISTA Program Manager

And finally,

18. Political Advisor (seriously, just added today)

 

All of this in a city of 307,000 people. Not a million, not even 500,000, but 300,000 people.

Two years ago, the mayor cut out the fireworks for the 4th of July celebration to save budget. Yeah, that really helped. He has now proposed a $9million cut to the police department. Currently crime is at an all time high, and we just went through the worst riots this city has ever seen.

 

Any citizen willing to pay extra for pothole repair is not only a fool, but a damn fool.

 

I'm sorry if this seems like it should be in the Full Throttle section, but it was presented here as a story of road repair, and specifically here as road repair to help motorcyclists. I'm just responding in kind.