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No Thin Blue Lines

I want to talk about this flag but first I want to talk about infrastructure.

I live in a suburb that was founded in the late nineteenth century. Some of the houses date from then but there are a lot more that were built in the postwar boom in suburbanization. That means that the pipes we have under the street are getting old. The city was connected with water and sewer pipes and then streets and sidewalks were laid on top of that without much thought of how to access the pipes. The layout was not a problem when the village was shiny and new. But over time things break and you must access the pipes and sometimes that means digging a hole through asphalt and cement. Over time things degrade and you also might realize that the material you made the pipes with has a chance to leech heavy metal into the drinking water. Upgrades are necessary.

We’re looking at this with our sewers as the fall apart. There are connections that have lead that need to be replaced for safety reasons and legal reasons. The question is how to pay for it. Does it make sense to just have the homeowner connected closest to the problem pay out of pocket? Not really — it’s a big one-time expense that needs done and the whole community benefits. The most equitable way to fix it is through taxation or fees. Our village board is increasing the water rates. People…