Downtown Missoula
Bad news for my veteran pickup truck: Missoula transportation manager Jessica Morriss has announced that the city needs more transportation improvements than it has money to execute. Spring is here, and that means gaping holes in the city’s roads. We might get help from the federal Highway Trust Fund, but that’s insolvent. The state of Montana has no excess of funds, either, possibly because the gas tax hasn’t been raised since 1994. That’s the last year anyone in the federal government was able to raise it, too. We need money, but popular consensus on Missoula City Council is that a local gas tax is a nonstarter. Voters don’t like it, even though we don’t like potholes, either. Meanwhile, inflation effectively lowers the gas tax every year. What we have here is a system of unintended consequences. You can read all about it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent, which contains lots of whimsical jokes about what’s to be found in very deep holes. The Indy indulges me so. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links!
