Editorial: Our needs are glaring

Scan the newspaper and a theme emerges: Alta needs a massive sewer upgrade that could mean steep increases in rates. Storm Lake needs to spend more than $1 million on telecommunications for its sewer system. The Linn Grove Bridge needs to be replaced and something done about the dam. Sac County needs to spend nearly $5 million, hoping on a bond issue, on a telecommunications tower for public safety. The Storm Lake School Board knows it needs to tackle another expansion to its elementary facilities. Sac and Pocahontas counties each need a new jail. Our city streets are shot and our gravel roads rutted out from honey wagons and semis, while road funds are steady to declining from less fuel use.

It all screams for a federal infrastructure program.

Our local tax base can’t make up for the long disinvestment in rural areas by state and federal governments. We aren’t covering our basic needs: inmates are escaping from the Sac County Jail, scores of bridges are structurally deficient, and sewer backups are common in Storm Lake and Alta. This is the basic stuff of health and safety.

Disinvestment and depopulation get caught up in a vicious cycle.

Over the past 20 years Iowa has cut income and corporate taxes by nearly $1 billion. President Donald Trump signed a tax cut that gave the wealthiest a $1 trillion spiff. The results are showing. We can’t keep up with our basic needs. You can’t blame Republican county boards of supervisors in Buena Vista, Sac and Pocahontas counties for being mindless spenders. The federal government subsidizes an agri-industrial complex that makes the ruts in the roads and causes the Storm Lake school system to change so rapidly. We need help to rebuild and move forward.

Northwest Iowa school districts have benefited greatly from wind turbine investment that lifted property tax revenues (seeded by a state renewable energy requirement). It shifts the tax load away from farmland. We could have a lot more if key investments were made in wind and solar energy transmission. Chicago faces brownouts and blackouts while we can’t get power from here to there. We need a smart grid that gets power to Texas when the ice hits. Building out a new energy system will provide solid jobs for a generation on the Great Plains. It won’t get done without federal involvement.

China is making historic investments in infrastructure while we watch ours rot. They are building ports in Central and South America to ship soybeans and beef to Asia. They are helping develop a farm-to-market road system that we seem to be abandoning. They are whipping us in battery technology and electric vehicle production. Meantime, we’re hoping the bridge holds out long enough to get that wagon full of beans over it. It’s time for us to take stock in ourselves.