For her fifth birthday, we took our little one to Pipestone for dinner at the Calumet Inn and then the children's theater production at the Pipestone Performing Arts Center. (Boy, wouldn't it be something if Madison had a downtown hotel and arts center like our smaller neighbor across the border?)
We came home on Highway 34. When you cross the border from Minnesota to South Dakota, you find fifteen miles of state highway reduced to bombed-out gravel. With no stripes and few if any side reflectors, the highway would have been invisible in fog or snow. In rain (see today's forecast), Highway 34 may be impassable to any vehicle not powering all four wheels.
Highway 34 has been ripped up for a couple years, and it had deteriorated precipitously before that. It's on the STIP for $8.6 million in surfacing this year... 80% of which is covered by federal funds. We need spend just $1.7 million to make a main "Welcome to South Dakota!" stretch of highway passable.
Governor Dennis Daugaard vetoed an increase in vehicle registration fees, saying we should wait around for the feds to decide how much money we'll get on the highway dole before we reach into our own pockets for our own roads. Governor Daugaard also suggested local governments should raise their own levies and patch their own roads rather than burdening everyone in the state with their potholes.
The Legislature wisely overrode this veto. Even no-taxes-ever Senator Russell Olson voted for the fee increase... maybe after bottoming out his pickup one too many times visiting friends at the Egan bar.
Highway 34 from the Minnesota border to I-29 is a metaphor for the state of South Dakota's public services. Roads, schools, health care, police, parks—we must provide some minimum level of service to maintain civil society. We must pay some price to enjoy the fruits of civil society. Self-reliance does not mean buying your own big truck and four-wheel-blazing your own trail across open prairie to town. Self-reliance does not mean leaving folks in Egan and Flandreau to pave their own highway to Minnesota, any more than it means telling folks in Faith, Lemmon, and Timber Lake that they need to home school all of their kids. Self-reliance in civil society means recognizing our obligation to our community—in this case, South Dakota as a whole—to provide the basic infrastructure we all need to travel and do business.
We should take pride in our public works. We should pay our fair share to build the best roads and schools in the region. At the very least, we should be willing to spend the money necessary to remedy gross embarrassments like Highway 34 west of Pipestone.
Every time I go home to see the folks I am shocked that this 3 year project isn't done yet.
My mother is a floater at the banks in Flandreau, Baltic and Dells and has had to use the Interstate rather than highways (the shorter route) due to the construction. This has been a disaster project.
You are being kind Cory by saying that it has been torn up for a couple years. It has been longer than that I am afraid. I belive it must be an economic stimulus ploy as if the State allows our highways to fall into further disrepair then we will just stay home and not risk the increased repair bills to our vehicles. We then do not spend our money in Minnesota. Western and Southwestern Minnesota exports a large number of students to our eastern universities (or at least SDSU and DSU). Minnesota Highway 30/South Dakota Highway 34 is the path that many of these students would like to travel.
I nearly wrecked my car driving from Flandreau to Dell Rapids via HWY 34 last year. There was a monster set of craters in my driving lane. I put the car into a slide and by some miracle, I avoided all of them. The holes we 6 to 12 inches deep with no signage to warn motorists. It really pissed me off at the time, but I've slid into apathy since then.
Nearly every other semi that loads organic grain at our farm drives west out of Pipestone and thus onto 34. Needless to say I hear repeated comments about the road condition. The end result is that we will have a road in better condition and safer to drive. The project was divided into two stretches-Flandreau to 29 & Flandreau to state line. Each stretch requiring two years(year one to redo and regrade the road-2nd year to put the new surface down. The time between the two years is to allow thawing, freezing, and settling in order to allow a road that will stay in shape long term. What we need on a state wide basis from township up to SDDOT to bigger and stronger commitment to roads. No other approach to economic awareness has a better bang for the buck. Money in the REDI fund would be better spent on education and roads.
As to your trip to the Calumet. Yes, the hotel is a crown jewel along with all of main street in Pipestone. Every year on our anniversary, we spend a day in Pipestone buying new outfits(just the female side!!) at the Clothier by Dawn and enjoying a special supper. Before we even walk into the store, we receive a 6% discount-no sales tax on food and clothing in Minnesota(that outrageous tax and spend state).
Self-reliance also should not mean that we sacrifice the children in our smaller communities to a school funding policy that clearly is not working!
My family has been avoiding the Flandreau stretch for longer than two years. No project should take this long. I tried it once last year as I figured it had to have been fixed by that time, but nope. Now I take the road thru Chester, Trent, Ihnen MN, and into Pipestone when going to MN. There is no excuse for the delay in this project.
We drove to Pipestone a week ago and attempted to traverse the mucky clay trail. What a bumpy, dangerous mess. Insurance agents hate that section of road (rock chips).
Took about two more years than that to get 212 finished from Redfield to past Zell - wait your turn! have heard the argument that increased fees are hard on blue collar folks. Wonder how those shallow-end-of-the-pool thinkers figure a busted axle, a towed vehicle, and missing a day of work affects those blue collar folks. Good roads are good for everybody, especially those who can least afford unexpected expenses.
Lee's right. A rich lawyer type can just pay for the repairs or buy a new 4x4 with the deluxe suspension package. Some poor soul trying to eke a few more years out of a 20 year old jalopy is in a much more difficult position.
Lee, that blue-collar fees-vs.-repairs analysis is the second-smartest explanation I've ever heard you give. (First-smartest: that pheasant assault map you drew on the tailgate of your truck for Nick.)
this attorney buddy of yours started life as a mechanics kid ---- actually, bad roads were good for business, but Dad didn't own the place, just worked there
We've lived in two no-income tax states (entirely inadvertantly) - Tennessee and South Dakota - and so far, what I've seen is they always have bad roads, crumbling infrastructure, low wage businesses, and a legislature that says "See how much better off you are here than in those tax-and-spend states [like Minnesota, Virginia, etc.]."
Eve - and we don't waste money on road blocks, in case people that don't like it here want to go back to where they came from :)