Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1892-05-21
A Better Plan.


During the winter the JOURNAL gave
a good financial plan for securing per-
manently good roads without increas-
ing taxes, but our legislative wiseacres,
carried away by new schoolhouse
buncombe, could not see anything in
side their range of vision but some
thing educationally romantic, and
would not permit the light of their
countenances to beam on anything so
rigidly prosaic as roads.
But our object at this time is not to
chide anybody for blindness to the
greatest need of the county. On the
contrary, it is to recount the features
of a better plan which comes to us from
Pennsylvania through the Pittsburg
Commercial Gazette, prefaced as follows
There is no department Of public expendi-
ture in which there is so much absolute
waste as in the ordinary method of spending
road taxes. There are scores of townships all
over the State in which thousands of dollars
are spent annually on roads, the benefits of
which perish with the year in which the tax
is collected. The supervisors try to get over
all the roads once year, doing the best they
can in all parts of the township. This is
necessary to keep down complaints and keep
up the reputation of the supervisor, two very
important considerations when election time
comes around. But from the very nature of
things the money is largely wasted. Very
little really permanent roadmaking can be
done and when the spring rains set in the
roads are all about as bad as ever.
Here is the plan:
The taxpayers of one of the townships of
Montgomery county, a short time ago, decided
to reform this wasteful method, and this is
what they proposed to do: Instead ofspend
ing $4,000 each year on roads as they had
been doing, they recommended the borrow
ing of $40, 600 each year for ten years at 5 per
cent interest, the whole amount to be spent
making permanent roads. The tax Of So 900
year would pay the $500 interest on the
$1,000 borrowed the first year, give So, 30
for the repair of roads and leave $500 towards
extinguishIng the loan. By repeating his
course from year to year the principal roads
would be permanent at the end of five years,
needing little repairs, and at the end of the
twenty-third year the entire debt would be
wiped out without any increase of the tax
rate.
Then followsa report of the result:
One would think that practical men who
wanted good roads at least outlay would not
hesitate to adopt SO economical and sensible
plan. Strange to say, however, when the
time came to vote on the proposition it was
defeated. Many of them, no doubt, voted
against 1t because they could not understand
how it was possible to obtain the much
coveted boon of good roads all the year round
and not spend dollar more than they had
been spending. A few object lessons will be
required to convince the farmers that there is
a better way of using the road taxes than
frittering them away on improvements
which do not improve.
The same "object lessons" will do
good service here, not only among
farmers, but Legislators who think the
new schoolhouse fad a thing of more
avoirdupois than the crying need of
roads that should come to stay.
Readers, look at the plan. Spend
ing much more on road repairs in this
county than $4,000 annually, we could
do far more in permanent road build
ing than can be accomplished in Mont
gomery county, Pa.
And that without increasing taxes
on account of roads one cent!