If the government came to you and said "We will spend whatever amount of money it takes to do the one thing that you think will improve life in your municipality the most", what one thing would you pick?
The personal blog of author Kelly Sedinger, chronicling the adventures of one overalls-clad wanderer.
9 comments:
Since I live out in the sticks, for myself, I'm going to interpret "municipality" as "county" and the answer is easy: real, unlimited high speed Internet service. Currently the only option for "high speed" internet is satellite. It is a lot faster than dial-up but still not fast enough for some things and it comes with a daily download limit so we can't do things like download entire movies. It would be nice to catch up with the rest of the world.
Eradicate the privatization of our emergency services. People are actually dying because of this fiasco. Also, I'd ask if they could start repairing our roads, which are in terrible condition due to class-biased tax cuts.
I live in a pretty nice suburban neighborhood. I might have wished for better bikepaths, but the municipality put them in last year. :-)
Now what we desperately need is free, widely available after school activity centers for young people.
Not everyone is well-off enough to afford valuable things like music lessons or sports activities. Giving teenagers a place to go and be also reduces drug use and teen sex.
Expand the library hours. After the 2011 budget was passed, the main branch cut its hours by seven hours a week. Three of those hours were on Thursday night. I used to go there in the fall/winter/spring between work and choir and get a ton of blogging done, at least two posts.
In fact, I would expand the hours. NO branch is open on Sundays in the summer. The branches are open only 1-5 on Saturdays.
Lynn - Perhaps your dream will come true.
Roger - That's nice for NY but I live in Oklahoma and I haven't seen any signs that things will ever get better here. A few years ago there was a politician whose campaign ads bragged that he "brought broadband Internet access to rural Oklahoma". We who actually live in rural Oklahoma didn't know whether to laugh or cry about that one.
It begins and ends with a Thunderdome and any politician caught lying to the public would have to fight diseased animals to the death. Or we can just stone that 'legitimate rape' guy on a Friday night variety show.
Pay our teachers what they deserve. Give them lawyer- or doctor-comparable salaries so that this would be the place the world's best educators would want to work and live.
Bring some for real jobs back to our area, everything else would fix itself. Our county is dirt poor and the best hope for our children is to leave after high school. If there were some good jobs here, they would be able to stay closer to home.
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