Maybe Disney came come up with a plan....

While reading about the Texas legislature wanting to do something about roads but not wanting to do the unpopular thing and raise taxes to pay for it I was reminded of when we lived in Pflugerville. At the time Pflugerville still had just a volunteer fire department and a small police force operating out of an all in one police station-city hall –jail in beautiful downtown P-ville. But P-ville had grown from a little spot in the road back in ’86 when I moved to Austin to a full fledged bedroom suburb in early 2000’s, It was time to raise taxes and pay for a full time paid fire department, new larger police force and station with a larger jail because of all the new ‘Otis’s’ in town. (If you get that reference you have told someone recently to turn the music down too)

But it was time as the town had too many citizens for a small police force and volunteer fire department to handle and so I cast my ballot to raise my property taxes to pay for the police, fire and ambulance in P-ville. Growing up is hard and owning a home is part of that and all that goes along with that such as property taxes. But those were services that were needed and had to be paid for in part by me the taxpaying citizen. It would be nice to never grow up and live in ‘Neverland’ and not have to think about nearly everything that you own or do being taxed to pay for something and that something’s upkeep. However the legislature seems to think that there are fairies and elves that will build and repair Texas roadways and rail systems. Not raising the state gas tax that helps build new roads and bridges in the last 18 years has put a real burden on the system. It is estimated that the funds that are coming in by 2012 will all be used to maintain and pay debt incurred in building existing roads. With all the new people driving in Texas we need new roads and bridges to be built so that we can zip around and not have to leave hours early just to get to where we are going.

I am not a fan of paying more for gas but also understand that everything costs more to do over time. Why there has not been a system in place of incrementally raising the state sales tax on gasoline that way you do not have to endure a drastic hike all at once? Is it just the legislature wanting to live in ‘Neverland’ so that they can say they never raised taxes? That is the Texas thing to do it seems, low taxes and lower services.

Hightower said it first it seems

What we will drive on if the ledg does not act soon