barry liss on 
Kathy Tepsa on 
clhughes on I am not sure how many of you are from the Wausau Daily Herald forums from way way back. But, I want to preface this by paying homage to one of those characters. There was a dude (I am assuming a dude) with the screen name DBC. DBC and I went round and round about things like constitutionality of drug testing, probable cause, and work for welfare. I found DBC to be absolutely absurd, ill informed, and bordering on racist in a lot of things. DBC was probably none of these things, but, he and I disagreed and I was ill informed so I had little to fall back on, other than just name calling.
If you couple that with the end of Jim Rosenberg’s time on the City Council, you will see where I am going, I think. I used to not understand the Council at all — its timidity, slowness etc. But, Jim was a good guide, a patient person, and out of him talking to me, I got to see the character DBC in a new way.
And that brings me to today.
I love me some road construction. I love it when I see big trucks, diggers, guys in yellow vests and helmets tearing up roads, sidewalks, peoples yards, and the whole town. Tear it up, fix it up, make those improvements. Spend those tax dollars. I dig it.
Now mind you, I am also a bit of an absurdist in this one area. I get at least 1 email a week asking me why I do not write about the sad state of roads in this town. It is usually from a different email address, but it tends to all be focused on one neighborhood. So, I tend to think that it is the same person.
The absurdity comes into play this way. I get an email railing against the city for not fixing up Street X; I get the email over and over again. The email goes on and on about how the city does not want to spend money on infrastructure, only cares about downtown, and Mayor Tipple is a no good so and so. I get this email with real frequency. The person tends to disclaim any desire for this to be about THEIR street, instead they want to rail against the City for not doing anything.
Well, right now my drive to work is altered at three different points because of road construction that is in the city of Wausau, and is not in what I would consider downtown. There is a lot of work going on right now.
Today I got a repeat email from this person railing against the city for not fixing their street. So, finally the self interest came out, and I can stop and pay attention to the faux altruism from this person.
But, I do dig infrastructure. The fixing of roads, bridges, sewers, water pipes, etc…this is good stuff. You see guys out there working hard, getting paid for their labors. Jobs are created. Good jobs.
More than that, property is improved. Sure, it is a pain to drive down the alley to your house, but, at the end of this, you get a new road. Your road drains better, the snow trucks are more efficient, and its flatter.
You see this all over the place. Lots of city workers out there doing lots of city related business. Mowing lawns, trimming trees, doing lots of things. Would we do these things on our own? Would you trim trees in a city park? Would you volunteer to take care of a city park by driving a shift on a lawn mower? I wonder.
You see, I am sensitive to those people out there who complain incessantly about everything. They want to complain, because they want to feel like they are being heard, so maybe part of the intent is to talk often to increase your statistical probability of connection. That might work.
I think something better might to learn a lesson from people like DBC or Jim Rosenberg, a lesson that I struggle with every time I sit down to type anything. Maybe it is better to know something, than to just yell loudly.
Sure, I am not happy that it takes me 6 extra minutes to get to work everyday. That is 60 minutes a week. 240 minutes a month. I could probably do something better than drive around the long way with that 4 hours, but if I am being honest, I would probably just use that time to read a David Baldacci book, or look up survivalist knives on the internet.
I surely would not, not even close, consider going to city hall and asking to see the construction schedule or budget for the City of Wausau so that I could be an educated complainer.
But I should. The moment it turns negative, and you want to hold the City over the coals, I encourage you to know what you are talking about.
Because I think the idea of investing in our city creates huge rewards. Look at the Pools. People love the pools. So many comments of positive pool experiences. Then, the negative nancies come in, and say, we cannot spend the money, should not spend the money. I wonder if those nancies come to the 400 Block and enjoy themselves.
You see, investing in the City makes the city better for everyone. You do not drive on that street alone, nor do I. So, I love it when I see Road Closed sign. It is going to be open sooner or later, and when it is, it will be even better.
And it will be better for all of us.
This summer, our street is being completely reconstructed — sanitary sewer, water, curb, gutter, storm sewers — the works. I never asked for it when I was on council because I figured people would be unhappy getting assessments for thousands of dollars, so I didn’t want to be responsible for that. But apparently, we came up in the rotation, so that’s what’s happening. It should be a nice scooter ride, once it’s done. In the meantime, it’s kind of like having a permanent house guest or something.
I have actually spent some quality time with the city budget….
I do have some opinions of areas of the city that could use more resources which could be paid by cutting resources in other areas.
Although not a true fan of road construction, I understand its purpose and its need. My only pet peeve is when different entities dont coordinate with each other.
A few years back, before the big I-39 project started, they were going to do some work on Grand Ave south of the Eau Claire river bridge. The theory was that Business 51 was going to be more travelled as a detour for local commuters once the freeway project started. That was good planning.
However, those two projects had different funding sources, and the Business 51 project got delayed a year or two because of budget issues…. So, it finally started about the same time as the freeway project started. So, instead of a newly updated detour for a freeway under construction, we had a freeway and a primary detour both tore up at the same time.
I am also not a big fan of sources of money putting conditions on the work. I absoluetly love the new and improved camp phillips road. I used to worry that the mirrors on my truck would hit the mirrors of large trucks in the oncoming lane. The new camp phillips is smooth, is wide, has bike/pedestrian accomodations… it has everything.. but traffic flow efficiency.
A condition of where a good chunck of the money was that speed limited be lowered from 35 to 45. The old road north of the Eau Claire is still very narrow, and very rough, and very 45 mph. But once the road widens into nice, smoth, wide four lanes, the speed limit drops to 35. That part of the project was NOT an improvement.
(NOTE – It is very friggen hot, so ignore typos in the statement above… the limit was reduced from 45 to 35, not the other way around – oops)
I agree with you that the city is doing a good job maintaining and replacing aging infrastructure and streets, my biggest concern is that we are overbuilding our residential side streets when we reconstruct them. Now I am not talking about all residential streets in the city, but I am talking about residential streets in stable established neighborhoods that are not really seeing any new development and which don’t have any foreseeable increases in traffic loads. These are the streets in our city which when it comes time to rebuild them should be slimmed down a bit to really help the city start saving in the long term. Given that the average vehicle is only 8ft wide, and on slower streets a driving lane needs to only be about 10ft wide, why do we need a 50-60 foot wide street in a residential neighborhood. Couldn’t we slim it down closer to 40 ft. It will still wide enough for parking, and slower 2 way traffic, but will also allow us to save on the cost of construction and more significantly we will save on long term maintenance. Now I do understand that there are some fixed costs in construction which wouldn’t change by narrowing the street, we will still pays the same for rebuilding gutter, sewer, etc, so the short term savings wont be very much, but across the city we could still stretch our public works budget while making some neighborhood streets more attractive, by increasing green space, reducing traffic speeds on side roads, saving money on snow plowing since the roads will require less swipes of a plow to clear it edge to edge, and overall make the city more competitive through long term cost savings that will continue through the 60+ year life of the street that has been reconstructed since general maintenance costs such as sealing, fixing potholes, and resurfacing every other decade, where the projects costs are more closely tied to square footage of roadbed can see a cost savings of between 10% and 30%.
Matthew, fire department preferences often determine roadway widths. They like to be able to get fire trucks past cars parked along the roadway. Narrow streets can impede that. I share your frustration with the need to build wide streets from both a cost and an environmental perspective, but it is difficult to disagree with the fire department’s perspective, especially when I imagine it being my own house that is on fire.