The Journal Star has run a couple articles recently ("State law makes it difficult to get money for pothole damage; Taming the Wilderness: Couple volunteers time to keep park tidy) that talk about maintenance issues around town that are victims of the City's slacking off. Reactions were predictable and, in general, wrong.
Folks love to complain about pothole-filled streets; crumbling sidewalks; unmowed parks; weedy medians; and so on. They aren't wrong to be disappointed. It is frustrating to see these problems around our community, and it does reflect poorly on our City. We've got it pretty good here in Lincoln, but it's obvious that we could do better. There's nothing wrong with having high standards for ourselves.
Likewise there's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to get our money's worth. We pay taxes for all this stuff after all. A lot of taxes: sales taxes and property taxes and arena taxes and so on. It's pretty dang annoying to fork over thousands of dollars each year, only to find uneven sidewalks and substandard streets in front of your home.
So the predictable component of the reactions is that people want the City to do more to benefit them personally in some way. Where they go wrong is in asserting that the problems they see are somehow "the City's" fault. That may be true in a very shallow sense, but it is more true to see that it is our fault. We are all responsible for which and how many problems get addressed. Folks like to talk as though "the City" is some sort of rogue entity with a penchant for neglecting the people who live within its boundaries. That line of thinking is the path to frustration. "The City" is not a unified entity. It is a collection of people and departments, each with their own responsibilities and priorities and budgets. If you think about "the City" as a single thing when you're trying to get a problem addressed, you're practically guaranteeing failure.
There are two causes to all of this, and two related solutions. The causes are resource prioritization and/or limited funds. The solutions are resource prioritization and/or increasing funds. It really is that simple.
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