PUBLIC WORKS AND INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS January 13, 2009

Today I went for my daily walk at a place I haven’t been for some time. It’s a narrow paved road, which the State has labeled a trail, along a tributary of the river that winds its way through the area. One side of the pathway is a pleasant view of a stream, some marshy fields and a pond and, at a few spots, a view of the river. On the other side of the walk are on and off ramps of a major highway and the air base. So you have Nature on one side and the Military Industrial Complex on the other. America is a great place.

As I was walking I noticed that new distance markers had been placed along the path. The markers were metal signs with a little hiking guy and a number indicating how many tenths of a mile the hiker had hiked. So at the beginning of the trail was the first sign marked .0, and then, in succession, .1, .2 and so on. I walked to the 1.2 sign and then turned around and subtracted myself back down to 0. Another improvement on the path was the placement of several heavy metal park benches. Oddly the benches were positioned not facing the natural beauty of the river and marsh but facing the pathway and the highway. And at several points along the way signs announcing that this was indeed the “Isaac Branch of the St. Jones River Greenway” were placed at roughly eye level so that a hiker can be sure he has not strayed into some uncharted territory. At each access point to the trail additional signs had been placed describing the handicapped accessibility features, and I’m not making this up, the degree of steepness of the hills, the width of the walkway in feet and meters and the materials used in construction of the walkway itself. Finally at about the .6 marker is a lovely little seating area with a large three sided sign showing how this area was developed, the wildlife living there and a big photographic type map with one of those “You are here” arrows. The bench in this area also faces the path even though it is positioned at the highest point on the trail and overlooks a nice pond full of wild geese, ducks and even a great blue heron.

I’m not one to look the proverbial gift horse in its mouth but all these “improvements” piqued my curiosity. (Two clichés in one sentence, not bad) I began to question the cost of this project and the source of funds used in its completion. So I made a couple of phone calls and some surprisingly accommodating public servants filled me in on some of the details of the costs and how they were met. First the entire project is a County enterprise funded by a combination of monies from a federal grant, State tax revenues and contributions from the county government and private and corporate donations. Of course the federal, state and county portions are all taxpayer provided. Secondly the roughly four mile section known as the Isaac Branch Greenway first and second phase is costing in excess of 5 million dollars. About 3.75 million is being provided by federal grants. I’m not a road building expert but I bet I could build a six foot wide asphalt path a little cheaper than that. Each one of the seven foot long 4x4 posts of pressure treated wood with an 8x6 metal sign costs just over 300 dollars. That doesn’t include the cost of labor and machinery involved in placing the signs in the ground. The benches facing the highway, mounted on an asphalt pad, run about 3000 bucks each. It sure adds up fast.

So here you have a public works project which did give work to a lot of people for quite some time. In fact the project has several more phases planned for the future. But the economic cost of these things is so out of proportion to the benefit that it seems difficult to justify their implementation. If our economic recovery from the current “crisis” is dependent on projects like this, but on a far larger scale, then I think we’re in for some real problems down the road. Putting the responsibility for recovery into the hands of politicians is like giving a three year old a chainsaw and firing it up. Damage will be far reaching and very costly.

My grandfather, my mother’s dad, liked to discuss politics. And every discussion would turn to the long lasting and unbelievably costly damage that he felt was done by the FDR administration in its efforts to bring the US out of the depression of the thirties. Grandpa would rant and roar about Roosevelt raising taxes on people who were working and driving more people into relying on the government. He would say that all those make work projects could have been done better and cheaper if the G.D. politicians would just stay out of the way. And don’t get him started about how FDR sold us down the river to the communists. Maybe the old guy was a little extreme in his assessment but some historians are looking at those times in the same way now. If our new president was smart he too would look back at those times and perhaps learn something.

I really like walking along the well groomed, beautifully paved, excessively signed path through one of Nature’s treasures. But I could just as well do it on a two foot wide dirt path, figuring out how far I walked by the amount of time spent doing it. It might even be a nicer walk, at a fraction of the cost. By the way, I was the sole walker on that path between 8 and 9 this morning.

Have a fine day.