Why not put a bike path in all the grass, after removing the bike lanes on both sides of the road?

So I am from NW Ohio and now live in Waterville (the next town over). Maumee used to be amazing and a place people went that was considered the in place to be. When Southwyck mall went underc The Anderson’s closed, and The movie theatres closed, it has gone downhill and downhill fast. I commend the town officials and residents for making recent strides. I won’t lie though from the outside, the problems they have are enormous and from the outside I can’t understand how it’s been considered a strong town. I don’t even frequent downtown anymore and actively avoid driving through it if possible because it sucks so bad. Even new additions technically considered Maumee (Fallen Timbers Mall) are largely vacant and already going downhill.

This story is everywhere. The small hamlet close to where I live is in crazy debt for a water line rebuild. Meanwhile, the water is still dirty and full of biology because the ponds are so old they need to be dredged. Yes they got new pipes in the roads, and rebuilt the water treatment plant but the water source is still terrible. The debt load is 3 million and dredging is another 2-3 million. So the residents flipped because the water rates were rising so high but to double that again for dredging is suicide for the town supervisor and board members. So unless money falls from the sky it is a conundrum.

Low taxes + fantasy budgeting and planning = today’s debt situation.

Some people simply don’t deserve to be a part of your inner circle, not because they aren’t worthy of love, but because you are worth more than they are offering.

Cities should be required to post forecast budgets about 2 decades ahead. The reason people are angry is because, out of nowhere, they find themselves in huge debt with no clue how they got there. When the City builds a shiny new road for a suburb expansion, do they forecast the maintenance cost and report that in their forecast budget, so people can see it?

Are property taxes calculated based on income in Maumee? that's pretty odd. Anywhere I have lived property taxes are based on assessed value of the property, not your yearly earnings.

Strong towns require strong blood

yes

Is there any video out there having to do with how to figure out if your own town's budget reflects these hidden long-term liabilities?

Love the videos as always, but the audio on that mic needs adjusted (lots of background noise). You have such great production values otherwise! Keep fighting for strong towns!

one glaring issue this channel NEVER addresses the problem of maliciously SLOW drivers. when you're pinned behind one for insidiously long stretches of road, its a perfect tyranny.

You did a really great job with this presentation. Thanks for sharing.

"Which kind of organs?" Kid's asking the real questions.

without a unified leadership, its just which robber baron you are feeding all the hard work of our veterans into. sounds like a start. new cities are going to have to be founded because even in a setting like this, so many rotten interests clawing at some imagined future as they burn the present.

I lived in Maumee as a child and my parents have lived in the same home my entire life. I moved back in 2023. I love what the city did with the uptown area and I find myself looking at the stores in conant. I’ve visited shops I never knew were there. I do wish they had come up with a better solution for the sewer issue, but I understand the necessity for a solution. We are poisoning our water sources, a place where we wish, boat, swim. I hope Maumee can thrive again, brining students back to the school system and continue to develop and encourage businesses.

Will it be OK to publish a quality rating on states roads and their services advising avoiding some of them. Some states should be bypassed.

Property taxe is racketeering

Jean Stothert is not known for any interest in keeping the community at large safe from harm. What with her balking laughter directed at her husband before he killed himself because she didn't care about covid killing people and his anguish of seeing covid patients constantly showing up to the ER that we worked in. Maybe we'll get some bicycle gutters and more roundabouts around town to benefit cars best case scenario some meager pedestrian islands downtown/midtown/aksarben/benson.

Not a chance roundabouts are calming.

The regulation in this case is also problematic. The amount of sewage dumped in shouldn't be measured by water volume (storm water should not count), but by the actual impact on water quality.

I'm allergic to most people these days. They are for the most part, intolerable.

I feel for these people but leave my mom out of it sheesh

I wish you guys could reimagine the street outside of my son’s high school. It’s on the corner of Haven and Riverside Drive in Ontario, California. It’s called Colony High School. The front of the school is only accessible by traveling east. The speed limit outfront is 50 mph. The entire school is only accessible by its north and east sides because there is no West or southside. It’s all blocked by wilderness. The Road approaching it is a one lane road that splits into two in front of the school. There is no sidewalk for the children to walk on the south side of the street because there’s a creek bed. There is a strip of asphalt in the dirt that serves as a sidewalk for the children on the south side of the street. It turns into a mud puddle during rainstorms. There is construction going on that routinely blocks the one lane. so we find ourselves sitting in our cars waiting for the construction to finish what it’s doing and allow cars to pass. there’s so much more that I can say about this Street but I think that’s enough for now. I am deeply disgusted.

the city im in has it in an ordinance that they have to have a balanced budget and they cannot go into debt. so if they want something done it has to be paid for in advance or they raise a dedicated tax to pay for specific projects....what's not gonna to happen is the city is not going into debt.

6:29 Because your political vision of what a town must be, externalises costs onto others same as you accuse the 1950's US suburbia model of doing. It upsets the people your ideology externalises onto. Preach your model if you like, but asking questions like that as if that model is all wrong and yours is all right, is intellectually dishonest on your part.

Question: when were the problematic sewer lines emplaced and when were the regulations regarding sewer discharge written and enforced?

I live in the country just outside a small city. New businesses are going up around the city, and the old core is nearly empty. Going into one of those buildings requires a lot of remodeling: asbestos removal, remodel electrical, insulate, etc. A new building is actually cheaper.

Do local government work with engineers or with bozos just to want 70% of the money just to continue with the problem and say "there isn't enough funds, we need more tax"

Did they answer who pays for it?

Seems pretty clear who should pay, the people living in insanely inefficient spread out housing, that shit is just more expensive and its about time that that type of environmentally destructive financially ruinous and personally dangerous type of development stops being subsidized by the people living in ways that are better in every conceivable regard.

absolute crackpot

Money. Money is why we keep building new things and not maintaining old things. Bringing profits to the parties lobbying politicians.

12:56 I believe that's called "Sunk cost fallacy" SoonerLater

thats putting too much trust into states. the Highway Trust fund funds waaaaay too much to just let states run away with it

Notice how they always allow drivers to make mistake, but cyclists/pedestrians don’t and are blamed if they make a mistake or are in the wrong place when a driver makes a mistake.

Totally agree. Social media (and really the internet as a whole) is also partly responsible. People, and in particular young people below the age of about 30, are more socially inhibited than ever before and social media is partly responsible for that. Unfortunately with this country and its culture being so screwed up that it actually but donald trump in the White House for a second time and Republikkkans in control of Congress and SCOTUS, the urbanism movement will get precisely fuck all support from the federal government and many state governments for the foreseeable future.

Ideally, we should be using as few signs as possible for every road.

Absolutely! The requirements of neighborhoods are much more ethical than what the regulations permit. Ideally, single-family zoning should be completely eliminated and four plexes should be permitted at a minimum.

Privatization is the only way forward

This attitude is good but the gas tax should be much much higher. Lowering the gas tax is terrible policy in every way. Is this some weird attempt to court Republicans? They just aren't into you.

I was thinking about this for certain streets neighborhood streets. By vacating the street, it can be transformed into a better use of that land. Instead of having to maintain the entire street, a city could sell off most of that as developable land and let the remainder serve is a conduit for bike and ped traffic.

Because moneyed interests want new car infrastructure because it has (relatively) low upfront costs, but long term maintenance is brutal. Now, high speed rail and public transport infrastructure would help to address this by getting more people off the roads, but then big oil can't profit.

As a accountant, it frustrates me that city and municipal accountants and financial workers don’t read the fine print and think ‘hey, this will be a big depreciating asset in 20-40 years, let’s add that into the budget’. Immediately when I buy a new or used car I automatically budget for the next one. We need to do this with everything we buy, why can’t these people think like that!

I agree with this by and large, but what's the point of cutting the US petrol tax when it's so low in the first place? Is it even enough to maintain what's there?

The title should have been: several competent people elected in Ohio.

I disliked this video because you’re trying to make us more like the big cities and European cities. This is Amerika, and our culture is ruled by the independence of owning cars!

Kinda strange you didn’t mention the infrastructure bill which is the biggest infrastructure investment since the 1950s. $300 billion from the bill goes to repairing and improving roads and bridges. We need more than that, but it’s definitely worth mentioning if you’re asking what we are doing about it! Other parts of the bill go to fixing infrastructure in our waterways and ports, and replacing old water pipes to bring us cleaner water. You may not notice the impact of this bill if you aren’t looking for it but almost every big or small infrastructure project you see getting built has some funding from this bill.

I live in Toledo and go through Maumee quite frequently. While I will commend the City for honestly attacking its problem, I think you also need to address the Toledo Metro as a whole. Toledo has over 280k residents and $500 million in debt. Maumee, $100 million for 14k residents--that's over $7k per person. While I agree the current admin didn't create these issues, I am not sure spending money to make the City "beautiful" was appropriate given its circumstance. The City is small--the downtown really is only four blocks with two main restaurants. There really isn't "shopping" as compared to Perrysburg, but I do recommend all of you check out The Village Idiot and Dales! The main drag through downtown actually is now a bottleneck and has created horrible traffic as it is a main thoroughfare from Perrysburg through to I-80 and major shopping for the area. For this, I just cannot think that spending this much money without helping its citizens was a good idea. Furthermore, I have talked to residents who said their bill to correct the issue was $20-$30k per household without any possible subsidies from the City. Moving to Toledo proper may not provide as good of school district, but taxes and the cost of living in general is substantially cheaper. There is also Sylvania, Manclova, Springfield, Holland, Whitehouse and Perrysburg, all with better schools and a "smaller" community like Maumee. While I do commend the City, I do feel the residents are correct with their concerns and feel bad for the situation they are stuck in.

Adam Curtis in _Can't Get You Out Of My Head_ (2021) observed that this goes back to the 60s. Rapid suburban expansion led to a whole generation of stay-at-home American women - lonely and disillusioned, they turned to Valium, hence the Valium crisis of the 70s. Highly recommend watching the whole series for more on this, it's fantastic.