Dependable Erection

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Water main breaks

Gotta love this.
The Durham County Administrative Building is closed Tuesday, November 30, 2010 due to a water main breakage in downtown Durham.

If you're on Facebook, and you follow DurhamNC, you get this additional tidbit:
UPDATE ON WATER MAIN BREAK:
Building at 200 E. Main St is still closed. Taxpayers with bills due today can go to Tax Kiosk at Northgate Mall & pay by credit card or cash.

What's that you say? You don't have a car? You walked over to the County building? Well, there goes your afternoon, huh? I suspect that those on Facebook can figure out how to pay their tax bill online. It's the ones who aren't who are going to need that info about Northgate.

Let's not even get started on how many jobs we could be creating with a real stimulus program that started upgrading our century old infrastructure.

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10 Comments:

  • So... were you also outraged when the Main Library was closed last week due to water main repairs? I'm sure it also inconvenienced many Durhamites who couldn't get their DVDs that day, just as this unexpected water main break is inconveniencing tax payers.

    By Blogger Photo Spread, at 1:54 PM  

  • Somehow i missed that one.

    Can't be everywhere, you know, but yes, i certainly feel the same way about water main breaks no matter where they occur.

    Library users are probably even less likely to have a car at their disposal than people who pay their tax bills in person, and just as likely to be inconvenienced (or worse), by being unable to reach their destination.

    the main difference, i think, is that someone getting to the library to return a book or DVD will owe a couple of dollars, at most, by not being able to drop them off in time.

    Being late on paying your taxes probably carries some more severe consequences.

    By Blogger Barry, at 1:59 PM  

  • Did you know that there have been at least four water main breaks within a block of that location within the past 12 months?

    By Blogger Natalie, at 4:06 PM  

  • I knew it was more than one, but haven't been keeping score.

    Multiply that by the hundreds of cities around the country with the same problem, and it's hard to understand why we don't have a massive public works infrastructure repair program in place.

    1 - it puts people to work and grows the economy.

    2 - modern infrastructure increases competitiveness with all those foreign countries that have been eating out lunch the past decades.

    That's only going to get worse.

    By Blogger Barry, at 4:10 PM  

  • it just makes me wonder when we're going to have a multi million dollar bond referendum to fix our water mains AND if while they are digging up all of the intown streets that were just repaved they can convince Duke Power to bury the power lines.

    By Blogger Natalie, at 10:48 AM  

  • Well, we are the 4th smartest city in the country. You'd think we'd figure it out sooner or later.

    By Blogger Barry, at 10:52 AM  

  • I got it!@

    Instead of putting all of the leaves and trash in the storm water system, why not in the water system! all that junk has got to like seal up the cracks and stuff right?

    And I saw in back to the futere III that folks used to drink brown water and were just fine!

    By Blogger Natalie, at 9:05 AM  

  • I don't know where you were reading this, but if you had gone to the Durham County website you would have also read that taxpayers with due dates on the day the Admin building was closed were given a one day extension. Anyone who came to the building that day would have seen the same information posted.

    By Blogger Unknown, at 12:02 PM  

  • Driving around today I was twice diverted by work crews working in the middle of the road. The first was on N. Roxboro between the Northgate Park and Colonial Village neighborhoods - water was all over the road.

    The second was on Main St. near the new Shell station - Main was completely blocked here, though I don't know what the problem was.

    By Blogger Steve Graff, at 5:45 PM  

  • And here we get into the fundamental issue... tax rates are significantly higher than 20 years ago, and infrastructure spending is almost certainly down.

    The problem? The beasts that started growing in the 60s, and haven't stopped since, known as entitlements. The entire concept really is not fiscally sustainable.

    I'm not saying there aren't some people who really need help, and I'm not saying all entitlement type programs need to go, but we have promised far more than we can deliver.

    By Blogger Simon, at 1:20 PM  

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