Indianapolis, IN
Fix Indy’s potholes with state support, not tax increase | Letters
How potholes form and how they’re fixed
Rain and the freeze-and-thaw cycle wreak havoc on Indianapolis’ streets. Here’s how potholes form and how they’re fixed.
Dwight Adams, dwight.adams@indystar.com
As a taxpaying citizen of Indiana, I am outraged to read in IndyStar that House Roads and Transportation Chair Jim Pressel wants Marion County to address our potholes and maintain the county’s nearly 8,500 lane miles of roads by allowing us to raise taxes to meet funding needs.
Pressel and his fellow rural Republican legislators support a lane-mile funding formula that gives as much money to a one-lane county road as to six lanes for a street such as Keystone Avenue. Our county receives about half the lane-mile funding as most other counties. We also get 11 cents per every dollar our taxpayers generate for the state’s Community Crossings program, while other counties receive $1. Pressel says, “I’m trying to help them help themselves.” He rounds out his subterfuge by saying, “They know they have a problem.”
Yes, we know we have a problem: It’s the Republican-dominated state government with its anti-Indianapolis bias. Don’t they notice the discrepancy when they are in town spending their $196 per-diem staying at our hotels or eating at our restaurants courtesy of corporate lobbyists? Why wouldn’t they want their state’s capital city to thrive and serve as a magnet to attract businesses and new residents to Indiana? Instead, they spend their time trying to dismantle our public school system, put roadblocks in the way of efficient public transportation, prevent us from banning right turns on red, and take our money to prop up their backwoods towns.
When the legislative session is over and Pressel is driving back to Rolling Prairie, let’s hope his mega truck doesn’t hit a pothole, bend a rim and destroy a tire when he hits a pothole within our city limits.
Michael Nolan lives in Indianapolis.