OH BOY!!!!!

I am so excited all the the Bob Dylan Way signs are up in Duluth. That is great news because you know Duluth has nothing to worry about as long as we take care of Bob Dylan.

Street more importain then skywalk?

Duluth Mayor Don Ness said earlier this week that our streets were a bigger issue then a sky walk. He hopes that there will in the future be money for the sky walk. He said however if the sky walk was funded by the street improvement fund he could not support it.

Well I could not agree with him more. Our streets are a mess and need priority over any sky walk. In fact we need to stop using the street improvement fund for every things but streets. The city use to fix 6 miles of street a year. This year we are doing just over a mile. This is because of funding.

Don't we pay taxes?

It seems like the City of Duluth and it's leaders at least some of them want us to pay more for our roads. One councilor is bringing up when the assessment comes to those that live on the street being fixed, they should pay more then the 25%.

Councilor Stauber said he believes that when assessed citizens should pay more then 25%. He said that some city's don't pay anything and citizens pay it all. This is a hard argument for me to follow as a citizen of Duluth. We pay so much in taxes now and get little for what we pay.

The police are underfunded and we don't have enough cops to police our streets. As crime increases. Our streets are falling apart before our eyes. Main of our streets are worse then wagon trails were. Our infrastructure is one of the oldest in the country.

We pay city taxes for what reason?

Core Services.

What is a core service to you that the city should provide? I believe that the city needs to focus on emergency services, controlling crime and drug deals that go on in Duluth. I also believe that the city must work heavily on improving our roads. As many of you know Duluth roads are in deplorable shape.

This is not because of city workers, it is because of the city's choices. We have decided for far to long to not pay any attion to our streets. Now in most cases we are needing to totally re-haul a street that is fixed. I know many people don't believe that the over-lay program works. Here is the deal it would if we did not let the streets get so bad. I also think it is time that Duluth takes a look at alternate forms of street martial. Most of our streets are pavement (black top). I believe we would get better wear and longer use of our streets if we used concrete. Much like Mesabi Ave. is.

The Duluth City Council has robbed the fund that is to improve our streets for many years. We can ill-effort this to continue. Many of the new faces on our city council ran saying that our roads and infrastructure was a major focus. Now is the time to hold the feet to the fire.

I will have much more on this topic tonight and all this week. This is a huge topic facing Duluth politics right now. We all need to encourage our councilors to support core services. I have not yet said what I believe are all the core services but they will all be brought up in the post to come. What do you believe our core services are?