The Stimulus is Paving the Way

I live in Richmond CA. Richmond has many points of interest to the outside observer. It has been called the most dangerous city in California. It is home to Chevron, complete with oil refinery and an odd smell in the air nearby. It was the site of the first day care/preschool operations in the USA (during WWII, when women were working at the Kaiser shipyards), and to go along with that home to the Rosie the Riveter Museum. It also has its own brand of politics, the mayor is liberal. By local standards that tells you that she is a member of the Green party (really) and the more conservative city council is populated by Democrats (it is the Bay area).

More striking for me, is that I think I can see the Obama Stimulus at work outside my living room window this morning. A few years ago Richmond was so broke that the city teetered on the edge of bankruptcy and real financial ruin. The replacement of the city administrator and a number of other senior level civil servants seemed to put that city back on a path to solvency. However in the ensuing year, many city services and programs had been cut back to subsistence levels. One of these was street paving. In fact the Contra Costa Times ran an article describing how Richmond had, by downsizing its street maintenance operations created a situation where they would never catch up on street repair, given the normal course of attrition to a city street.

Indeed the road that runs past my house was so riddled with potholes that when a crew came through two years ago t fill them people stopped and applauded as they worked their way down the street- when was the last time you saw anyone applaud a street crew?

Right now, even in the midst of what must surely be a huge revenue shortfall, there is a crew outside laying down shiny new pavement (not to mention that its raining). I can only attribute this continued to commitment to spending money on the stimulus package. Without those promises of funding from the state and federal level I cannot see my fair city blithely spending away like this. While my street was pretty awful, it was not a matter of life or death by any means, and if nothing else it slowed folks down a bit, making it safer for kids in the neighborhood.