We have to grin and bear it

Our Opinion

Friday, Sept. 25, 2009

There was a time when the current buzz words were "proactive," "synchronicity" and "synergy." In today's world, the biggest buzz words are "budget cuts."

There's barely a day that goes by that we don't hear about more budget cuts in the state government, the county government and in private businesses. It's pointless to even talk about tightening a belt, when there's barely a belt to be tightened in some industries.

On Tuesday, the Calvert County Board of County Commissioners heard from state transportation officials about the status of highway projects in Maryland. Department of Transportation Secretary Beverley Swain-Staley painted a grim picture of the immediate future, and left open the possibility of long needed projects being put off.

She said that the DOT gets a large amount of its money from the titling tax, which only comes into play when people buy cars. But people are not buying cars right now, and apparently even the "Cash for Clunkers" program, while it helped a little, was not enough to jumpstart the department.

Last year, Calvert got more than $6 million from the State Highway User Revenue fund. This year, it will be $259,000. That will barely cover pothole repairs after an icy night in winter.

There are stimulus funds coming our way, and that money will go to the resurfacing of 5th Street and Brickhouse Road, as well as two transit buses.

Calvert's need for major highway renovations is no secret.

The project at routes 2-4 and 231 is near completion, but the Gov. Thomas Johnson Memorial Bridge is ridiculously inadequate for the traffic it attempts to serve. Plans to fix that are in the works, and although we still hear that it's a priority, things are not looking good.

The sad thing is, there is nothing to be done about any of this. The budget is the budget, and the only way for the state to make more money is to raise taxes. The last thing citizens need is more taxes to stretch our already-burdened budgets.

So what's the solution? Right now, there isn't one.

We just have to wait this out, and do our best to conserve the resources we have. There is nothing to stop potholes from forming and existing roads from needing repair, so we have to be as conservative as we can throughout the budget.

All we can hope for is that we've learned our lesson, and we can continue to be fiscally conservative in the future.