People around the nation say South Dakota and our "lovely" winter conditions often find themselves into the conversation. It goes without saying that South Dakotan's do not move here for our winters; we have some of the toughest snow and temperatures around.
Luckily, I believe tough conditions make tough people. I also believe that South Dakota is accelerating towards a path of excessive road salt and deicing chemicals; a path joked about during my youth as being the reason not to by a car from the state to our east. This is a question of tradeoffs where no side has a perfect solution. How much are dry roads after a winter storm worth compared to the cost of treatment and the negative side effects of that treatment? I feel we are undervaluing the negative side effects of the that treatment. Please see the notes below. 1. I am often seeing our winter storm patterns come with above freezing temperatures Day 1, snow Day 2, and a 30F degree drop on Day 3. SDDOT will proactively apply salt brine to the roads pre snow. This causes snow that would otherwise stay frozen to partially melt. This salty slush will then act as a sponge that will accumulate wind driven snow increasing the depth of slush on the roadway between plow passes. On Day 3, the falling temperatures slowly freeze the wind polished slush into patchy roadway ice that cannot be plowed or melted off. Winter 2022 put 20 or so cars in as many miles in the ditch on Highway 46 a day after the storm because the road salt caused blowing snow to stick to the surface. I feel road salt should not be used when temperatures are 30F and falling. Let the snow stay frozen and let the plows plow frozen snow, not salty slush. 2. It has become almost impossible to haul equipment and trailers on South Dakota Roads for three to four days following a snow event. The splashing slush turns frames, axles, and wiring into a frozen grit filled popsicle. Local car washes work great for cars but not for trailers and commercial vehicles. 15 miles of driving down Highway 42 resulted in a black trailer turning first white and then rust red in less than a day last year. I feel we are damaging our citizens property when other solutions exist. 3. The use of road salt damages our pavement resulting in poor summertime travel at the expense of an extra day of travel in the winter. When we are facing rural county roads being converted from oil chip seal back to gravel due to pavement damage, it is a bad idea to be actively damaging our roadways with excessive winter deicing chemicals. 4. Salt does not decompose. When we haul a ton of salt into our state, it stays here in our ditches, our streams, and our ground water. The only way chlorides leave is when they are flush down the Missouri river to our neighbors. While the health effects of road salt on our plant and wildlife may not seem large now, every year the effects accumulate. I would rather not create a long-term problem in exchange for faster road speeds for a few days per year. In closing, I plan to pull for less road deicing chemical use in South Dakota. There simply are some days where we do not travel and some days we have to drive more slowly. That's just winter in South Dakota.
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We are living in a time where opportunity is abundant; the capacity of those who do is waning. I feel government in general has set the stage for the cart to become too top heavy. This leads to burnout amongst those who are laboring in their productive years and lack of purpose and fulfillment in life for those who are idling by.
This is not a ship that has turned in the last week or month but is a slow wondering of our cultural ship. If one tries to grab the rudder and make an aggressive quick correction, you risk a capsize leaving things worse than before. My view is that a course correction only occurs by the continual effort of engaged citizens that keeps the focus on small wins that direct the culture away from rewards of overindulgence at the burden of others and seeks the principles in our South Dakota Constitution Article VI. Item 27 § 27. Maintenance of free government--Fundamental principles. The blessings of a free government can only be maintained by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality and virtue and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles. They way we handle mental health as a society is broken and not one single person can fix it.... but together we can turn a new direction.
Please see my views of the current system below. 1. We have failed to support the staff at the State hospital in Yankton. We have physical bed space open but we choose not to fund the operations sufficiently to provide beds for those who are in crisis. 2. JFK started a process in the 1960s that began the downfall of central mental healthcare; intending to move from state run operations to community provided care. This community provided care has failed to launch at sufficient levels. We need to rebuild the support that has been eroded since then. 3. When our neighbors are starting to struggle, government stays hands off. Only once people commit a crime does law enforcement have a path to intervein. Often this leaves a person trying not only to get mental health treatment but also fighting a criminal wrap sheet. In my opinion, this is a step too late. The City of Sioux Falls is actively working to use a property tax reduction method originally created in the 1970's to help clean up blighted areas such as Falls Park to subsidize the building and ownership of 65 residential homes in northeast Sioux Falls. Mind you that this practice is explicitly prohibited by the below statue. In short, their goal is to write a check to the contactor preparing the soil and infrastructure for this housing site, sell this debt to bond holders who collect interest on this debt, sell the finished houses below market value and then divert future property tax dollars that these new houses would produce for up to 20 years.
Mind you that this would mean that these dollars would not be available to pay for services such as Fire Service, Police, and Street Maintenance. While these houses will equally consume these services, they do not pay for them. These costs are paid for by their neighbors outside of the TIF District. As of 2005, the below law was placed on the books. Since then, over seventeen hundred Legislators have had the opportunity to modify or repeal this law.
I will not be the one to lead any effort to change the current law that is in effect. Moreover, I tend to focus on the long-term societal harms 50 years of abortion has done to our communities, schools, and economy. When people stop having kids above replacement rate, who will be the next generation to take care of our infrastructure, provide our food, and take care of us when we are old and beyond our working years? Abortions are but one method for treating the symptoms of underlying social issues. Let's tackle the underlying issues and the need for symptom relief will continually diminish. Every attribute of our daily lives are affected by how we transport goods and ourselves to and from our work, our homes, and our recreation.
Government is well suited for providing the common use roadways and right of ways; we could not function in a world of exclusively private toll roads. We cannot just rely on the work done in the 1950's. We have to continue to honor the labor of the past by advancing and optimizing our transportation methods to serve our needs and the growth of the future. |
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