Scary
story #1: Due to the collapse of the US housing market, mayors
in many parts of Florida have been warned that their municipal tax base will
likely shrink by $1.5 trillion this year.
Scary
story #2: Last week, Buffalo, NY’s comptroller’s office confirmed that rising
interest rates on the variable
rate bonds used to finance improvements to the municipal water system have cost
the city an additional
$90,000 in borrowing costs.
We
all know these examples are not isolated incidents.
It
looks like the Wall Street meltdown is the gift that keeps on giving, including
– it appears – the harsh reality that the cost of retrofitting, repairing, and
rehabilitating our aging infrastructure just got a whole lot more expensive. If
this isn’t a crisis, I don’t know what is.
After all, in 2005 the American Society of Civil Engineers released a
study indicating that over the next five years the US would need to spend over
$1.5 trillion to whip US infrastructure into “reasonably decent shape.” And the
EPA has said that it’s going to
cost upwards of $440 billion over the next 20 years to repair our water and
wastewater systems.
Shrinking
tax bases, rising interest rates, and a tightened credit market – not the ideal
environment for promoting infrastructure investment. There’s been lots of talk
by pundits, news anchors, and candidates about Wall Street versus Main Street,
but is it really an either/or situation? As the examples above prove, the
financial and institutional health of our communities is directly dependent upon
the wellbeing of our financial markets. Nobody got into this mess alone,
and it’s doubtful that one-sided solutions will be strong enough to pull us out
of this economic nosedive.
We
need innovative thinking, multi-layered propositions, and a commitment to
continue to invest in our country – its people, its structures, and its
foundation – even in the face of frightening statistics and skittish investors.
Now is not the time to freeze cityworks, shelve construction plans, or curtail
in any way the repairs that must be made, the retrofits that must be installed,
and the rehabilitation that our water and wastewater systems desperately need.