Apr 15th, 2008
Avon Park Gets Busy Fixing Roads And Sidewalks
AVON PARK — Feagin Avenue needed to be re-paved, Bob Reisig thought.
When one of his employees at Florida Tire Terminal got a back injury after his forklift rode into a pot hole that reached all the way to the clay underneath the asphalt five years ago, he knew the 100-yard stub of a road needed work.
Last week, that and parts of 16 other streets were re-paved as part of a city-wide improvement.
Avon Park Public Works Coordinator Ted Long said the city’s now working on sidewalk projects, mostly on the south half of the city.
Both streets and sidewalk projects are selected in part by the number of residential complaints and, for the latter, on pedestrian traffic.
“We generally look around to see where the kids on the street are at,” Long said. “We’re trying to get the kids out of the streets.”
Long said his department is adding sidewalks along the west side of Lake Tulane, on South Central Avenue and on Wilhite Street.
Long added that the city will use part of a $200,000 transportation fund for the ongoing sidewalk construction. The $207,000 needed for the repaving projects were funded by a county infrastructure fund generated from a 1-percent sales tax.
Some area residents were happy to see the new sidewalks. Reyes Hernandez, who walks five or six miles a day around the city, found the concrete from McDonalds along Wilhite Street to be more comfortable than the grass shoulder he treaded upon earlier.
“This is the first improvement I’ve seen in years,” he said.
Reisig also thought the re-paved streets made the city look better, as well as safer for his employees, even if his street doesn’t normally get a lot of traffic.
“The only reason it’s really nice is because of the holes in the roads,” he said. “The road was just falling into disrepair.”
Tags: day, mcdonalds, tax
8 Responses to “Avon Park Gets Busy Fixing Roads And Sidewalks”
i think the argument is that the taxpayers are subsidizing a larger than necessary prison system by paying for the processing of criminal cases and imprisonment costs. i would deduce that various groups are lobbying politicians to keep these laws that are the basis of the war on drugs in place. so the cost to those who profit is just what they pay for lobbying firms, and revenue is what the government pays them for their services from tax revenue. the ‘losers’ are the taxpayers and the convicts. taxpayers pay for an imaginary benefit, and convicts are just collateral damage.
You’ll have to forgive my ignorance on the subject. I always was under the impression that all of the money they spend investigating, arresting, and convicting drug users and traffickers would far outweigh anything they get back from cheap labor, etc.Do you have any numbers to back this up?
I guess people never caught on that when a judge sentences someone else to 20 years of prison, the judge is also sentencing you, the taxpayer, to twenty years of paying for the prisoner’s imprisonment.
just kill everyone who commits felonies requiring over 10 years of punishment
Don’t worry, over the next 50 years as the white population base declines and tax revenue fall, there won’t be enough revenue to even bother imprisoning people at these levels. We are slowly turning into a Latin South American or South African style country where crime and corruption dominate.Today, tax day. 50% of the people pay 97% of the taxes. Money that’s taken from you by force. Ask yourself, who are the tax producers and who are the tax consumers and why are you working half a day just to give it away?
For those of you debating where the profit is in the War on Drugs, please study up on the Iran-Contra Affair (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Contra_Affair) and you will find the working model on how USA gov’t agencies privately finance agendas not officially approved by the proper gov’t channels.
michigan is not alone. the dept. of corrections is the largest employer in the state of virginia,and i’m sure if you check,you will find that the prison system is the largest,or next to the largest employer in most states. something we should all beam with pride as americans. now i know why other countries don’t want our imported democracy.