The Largest Mistake of Our Generation

The point I’m trying to emphasize here is that while this might seem outright luxurious to us today, there was a time in our city’s history, which lasted many, many decades, when we could afford this. We could afford to pay staff to make even our small neighborhood parks breathtakingly beautiful.

And we continued to afford it through a World War, a ... See more

But if more roads meant more prosperity, surely we’d be feeling it by now. We have three times more roads per person than New York City. Are we three times more economically productive?

Because of the long lifespan of roads, mistakes we’ve made 20, 30, even 40 years ago haven’t had their full impact yet. That’s going to be felt in future operating budgets, which are already going to be strained by our negative Net Financial Position.

As a reminder, the simplest way to explain the relevance of the city’s Net Financial Position being... See more